Fall Update

Well, Jenny and I are still here. We're surviving. It's been a difficult summer for me at work. Jenny is doing all right at BIOLA. We miss rain. We miss fall colors. We miss our Arkansas friends.

We set a time on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago to have a video chat with Casey and Traci Letellier, who now live and work in Oxford. It was much fun to show each other our apartments, have coffee and chat face-to-face for a good while (thank you Apple and iChat!). Discussing the pros and cons of living in a new place, I was reminded that there are some predictable stages when relocating. This past summer represented the "longing for home/we don't like this place" stage (at least for me), but I think I'm over it now.

Combined with this nostalgia, I was struggling to get along with my boss at work. I have a "good boss" and a "bad boss". The good one is fun and helpful and easy to get along with - the bad one is anal, passive-aggressive, and difficult to please. Though I think I have now adjusted and learned how to pacify his demands, it is still a bit stressful working there and I dread Mondays (never lived for weekends before with past jobs). Plus the 10-hour workdays added to a 3-hour (combined) commute each day was taking a toll. All that said, I keep reminding myself that I am very fortunate to have this job and when my commitment is up in April, I will be in a good position to get a job that is closer to where I want to be: in a tv writers room.

On the upside, we're grateful for our friends out here (though most of them are from Arkansas!) and we're both getting more involved in our church, RockHarbor. I've started working with the middle school ministry (about to start a small group with 7th graders) and Jenny is in a program to learn about counselling (and she's loving it). We're also preparing to come visit Siloam Springs in mid-October, so the anticipation of seeing everyone makes life eaiser as well. The cool weather of the past few weeks has also been encouraging and lightened our spirits.

Another highlight of the summer happened a few weeks ago when I had lunch with a TV writer (and a Christian) who is (pretty much) where I would like to be professionally in several years. He wrote for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "That 70's Show". He understands that neither of these shows were redemptive in any way, but feels that he made a contribution in making them cleaner than they could have been. He sees part of his role as being the "salt" that slows the decay in our media culture. But it was very encouraging to speak with him and hear his heart for creating media that points people toward Christ without bashing them over the head with it. I'm currently working on several scripts and hope to have them ready by next spring when I'll be looking for a new job.

So that's a small snapshot of the past few months. Looking forward to seeing some of you in October. Thanks for your interest in our lives...