Goals

Confession: I am a goal-oriented person.

I'm not sure how that happened.  I used to just kind of fly by the seat of my pants and things would work out in one way or another.

Actually - that's a lie. I know what happened to me.  Graduate school happened to me. 

Graduate school was hard and required much more focus and goals.  Now that I'm entering the world of full-time vocational ministry, I'm realizing how important it is to strike a balance between a spontaneous and goal-oriented approach to life.  I'm trying to find that balance not only in work, but also in my personal life.

So I'm setting goals - professional goals and personal goals. 

One of my personal goals is photography-related.  I've noticed that even though I have a wonderful lineup of lenses, I tend to always fall back on the 18-55mm lens (the stock lens that came with the camera).  The 50mm/1.8 could be so helpful to me, particularly in low-light situations - and yet I rarely have it on the camera!

So I threw it on tonight and took pictures of dinner.  The nice thing about the 50mm/1.8 is that the maximum aperture is much lower than the 18-55mm - it allows more light in and lets you have a very narrow depth-of-field (when one thing is in focus and everything else is fuzzy).

I took longer, but I think was worth it in the end!

The head of our Missions committee left me and our secretary salad that was leftover from our lunch at the church yesterday this morning (thank you Todd!).  I used that as a base for dinner, threw on the last of our mini rigatoni in the fridge and some rotisserie chicken that Bruce had bought.  I seasoned with salt and pepper and topped with ranch dressing.  Very delicious and filling.

A tiny bit of ice cream and decaf coffee for dessert!

***

At WebFest this weekend, we were talking about recording sermons and uploading them to our church websites.  One of the speakers recommended downloading the app iTalk and just doing the recording from the pulpit.  The app was free, so I gave it a try on Sunday. 

I plugged a microphone into my iPhone, stuck the phone in my robe pocket (yes, my robe has pockets and I don't know how anyone lives without them) and clipped the microphone to my stole next to my lapel mic.  I didn't want to just put the phone on the pulpit, because I was afraid that would look tacky.  It seemed to work and the quality is decent.  I created a Sermons Page and uploaded the audio file there.  Let me know what you think!  It's also on the top navigation bar.

I'm going to do my best to record them every week and upload them.  I will still share the actual text - it's a great way for me to archive them.  I'd love your feedback!

I think I am going to crawl in bed and read!