1 week after receiving an incorrect order from Blinds.com the issue is still unresolved. I did my leg work up front. Sending all sorts of pictures of the incorrect blind and the order tag and build tags. Here we are 6 emails later an I am being asked about something that is on the label… By the same customer service representative.
A smart move would be for them to have just admitted fault, sent me a return label and maybe re-ordered the blind for me. Or at least a simple apology for the error. I have received nothing from blinds.com except for more questions and more questions.
If they’d look at my account they may realize that I have outfitted my entire house with blinds ordered through their website.
Blinds.com, you need to do something to redeem yourselves. And quickly…
Ethan Daily, Feeling, Honesty, Struggles
I feel like we have no time for relaxation. Cabin weekend is needed soon. Weddings, friends, weddings, bbq, golf, stuff….
Too much going on.
Next Monday is our next free day! with nothing on the calendar, yet… need to say no.
Ethan Feeling, Life Journey, Struggles
Lately I have found myself trying to figure out if I am en expert at anything. Not just good or talented at something, but an expert.
With projects around the house, playing various sports, programming, friendships, and the list goes on. I know I am talented and very capable. But I don’t feel like I am an expert at anything.
It makes me wonder how many of us actually are experts at something. Last fall I read a great book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He mentions in the book that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, sports, music, law, finance. That is almost 5 years of your life working from 9-to-5 at something with no breaks.
I do 2 things that much, work and sleep. But I am not even an expert with those subjects. At work I do so many different things that I cant have the time or focus to become and expert at one of them.
One thing I am probably closest to becoming an expert is that I talk like I am an expert at everything.
“Jack of all trades, master of none”
I dont want to be that guy anymore. I want to become a master at something, an expert in that field.
Here’s the problem… I dont know what it will be…
Ethan Feeling, Honesty, Struggles
I need you
I miss you
The end
Ethan Daily, Feeling, Honesty golf
Please review my true life story of DirecTv and me over the last few months. I hope its entertaining for you, as it has been painfully painful for me.
Ethan Daily, Feeling
Been some time since i have written out some thoughts.
life is strange, many times this year i have thought I was on a path or had a plan in mind and then it changes… What a blessing these changes have been. Sunday we watched a longer version of the video from our El Salvador trip, it was a great reminder of the amazing people we traveled with, most of the group back in 1 place again, gathering around a single goal, but mostly being back together again. We were amped when we returned from the trip about spending a lot of time together, but have since faded in our weekly gatherings. i have fallen away spending time with a new friend, lots of time with Young Life since the school year has started.  All things good!
been working a ton on a new business venture i have been working on for a few months. It seems like i leave my job, go to Caribou to do some more work for my startup. www.bookalesson.com for you who are interested, there's only a blog that is public right now, but shooting in a few weeks to take the site public!
i am in a good place right now, lots of loving people around me now…
and I leave for Santa Barbara today!!
Ethan Feeling
I see many many people commit to an idea, not to an action.
I like "do'ers" more than "commit'ers"
Ethan Community, Daily, Feeling
There are amazing people in your world. We can be so close to friendship with them and have no idea.
A friend I met on the trip had been on the same support team as me at the Upper Room, the extent of how much we interacted were comments like this. "Where does this go? Not sure, ask Joe." or "Hey great job, see you next week." On the trip and in the short time after I am beginning to see the story that makes up this guy. What makes him tick, what is going on in his head as he breaks down what life is going to look like for him after this El Salvador experience. I am anxious to spend more time with him.
Some others that were close by were a few from a weekend retreat last November. I knew them as names and friendly faces, thats it. I wish I had taken the time to jump out of my comfort zone of the friends I came with to experience life with them.
Another friend I got to know on this trip I first saw sometime early this spring. Steve Weins was giving on February 26th a message about integrity where we ended the time together by going up to big boards on the stage with markers and wrote a word/phrase about ourselves that maybe our image doesn't show. The word I wrote on the board was "lonely". I remember really wrestling with that because of the truth to it, and the fact I had just wrote it in front of 1000+ people. Not everybody could read it as i wrote, but i am sure a few saw it. I remember seeing this person who had sat in front of me alone, after the service standing alone in thought. I remember walking towards this new friend of mine to initiate a conversation, only to be called out by somebody who isn't much more than an aquaintance but helps mask that loneliness I wrote about and I aborted the mission of striking up a conversation with this person. The sad thing is I cannot tell you what the conversation was about that called me away from this person. Was it worth it? Here I sit almost 6 months later and am only now beginning to know this friend. In those 6 months struggles have fallen on my friend, some difficult decisions were made on my end and 1 week in July this stranger was on my team I was leading in El Salvador.
There are other small stories of people I am beginning to experience life with that I am thankful about. These are just a few of the stories that are screaming out to me, what if you would've made a better effort to initiate with them when you first had the chance! Would the stranger have wanted somebody to talk to that night? I know I needed a conversation I could remember. Would my support-team friend and I gotten along if we only talked more while we worked? Or was it the experience we had together in El Salvador that drew out a friendship in a more communal way. Would my retreat friends lasted had I shared more time with them that weekend and after that, or would they have faded.
As much as it kills me to say it was better to become friends on this trip, I think it says something about the power of being in community. Had we talked more and gotten to know each other months, years ago, would the friendships be where they are today and more excitingly, where they are going! I hate "what ifs" cause I feel we are called to live in the present and not dwell on what if this had happened instead. It slows us down from living full lives with those we are with now.
I am so thankful for these new friendships…
Ethan Community, Daily, Feeling
re-entry to the matrix, I will be posting a few of my responses to my time in El Salvador as I process them.
We live in a world we don't know. We live in a world that is for the most part, clouded from reality. I just spent a week with 28 people who are now friends in El Salvador and experienced some powerful moments. These moments may happen here, but most of the time we are too busy to notice or aren't ready to receive them.
I didn't interact with many children this week, only Manuel at our sponsorship party (more on that later). But at our worksite because of the lack of kids my eyes were opened to some special things. Our head construction guy, the master builder Antonio (who was our master builder 2 years ago) had his son working alongside him. Benedicto was 28. Seeing these two work together as 1 was amazing. Antonio would teach Benedicto things and Benedicto would also show his dad a thing or 2. At the end of the days we spent with them, I took 2 poloroids of the 2 of them. One for each. The reaction that followed was something I can't even try to write about. They kept putting their picture, which was the same in front of each other pointing at things and smiles and joy peeked through 2 fairly serious men. As we walked away they continued to look at them and I could feel the presence of the moment as I walked back to our bus.
A lot of times we assume its always gonna be the father that teaches the son. I learned that for it to be a true relationship, this needs to be a 2-way street. Otherwise the son is nothing other than a protege, a student of the father.
I am trying to figure out what this looks like in my life with my dad. I am thankful for our relationship and hope that I am teaching him a thing or 2. Also trying to figure out how that works in my relationship with the Heavenly Father. Not that I can teach him anything, but that I am interacting and loving as if I am teaching him.
Ethan Feeling
Tomorrow morning @ 5:00 AM I will be on a flight with 27 others from my community journying to El Salvador. I am physically and mentally exhausted from my trip to Colorado last week and this week at work trying to cram everything in. Haven't even packed yet. I think as soon as I get on that plane, it will click and it will be game time.
2 things i hope
- Trip will be filled with different experiences than i had in 2004. I don't want to focus on "I remember this, or that" or "I was feeling this or that last time". I want fresh perspective on this trip or I am no better off than sitting on a couch here in MN reminiscing about the 2004 trip.
- Leave things from home at home. I have to bring my phone for work. I just hope it doesnt ring. This is the 2nd of 3 weeks i will be gone and being the only technology guy at the office puts pressure on me in times like this if things go off course. Friendships, relationships, struggles I want to leave here. I want to focus on the new relationships and the new people and their stories. I don't want to be thinking about what so and so is thinking about me while I am in conversation with a new friend. That would be a disservice to them.
Ethan Feeling
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