survival

well we made it through.
i might vent for a moment,
if i may.

first of all let me say in all honestly i am completely grateful for the chance to get away from the office and meet some co workers from across the nation and have an all expense paid trip to a place like Denver.

However. i can't help but be irritaed at the vast amount of cash money wasted on said trip.

basically we all got tegether to review a power point presentation that we have all seen about 6 times in the past two months. but in order to look at and talk about the same old material, it was necessary to rent 80 rooms at a nice downtown hotel for three nights. even though only 70 people could come and about 45-50 left after night two.
then we paid for steak dinners and alcohol the first night.
and then night two was hosted at a fancy family style italian place where platter after platter of food was brought out and then left mostly unfinished. oh, and a free open bar.
then day three had boxed lunches from the corner bakery where there was about 20 or so left over. i kindly suggested to the lady in charge of food that we give the left over food to the people who are working at the rafting place we had not yet left. she just shortly said no and began loading them in the back of her personal vehicle.
then we also paid for town cars to cart us back and forth from the air port, instead of hotel shuttle vans.

it just felt like thing after thing was another careless toss of bills.

it just disturbs me for some reason to see so much money being thrown around and all these people thinking they are so much more important then they actually are because some company is paying them too much to do a job that doesn't really impact or benefit anyone.

i mean. why can't there be some aggressive budget cut and the money saved go into college funds or charities or cancer research or any number of venues that make efforts to do something for the good of those that need it.

it's insane that the world works this way.
the more money the more you deserve? what?


anyways.
venting and things aside -
the highlight of the trip was definitely the white water rafting. that is something i could easily become addicted to.
how beautiful to be carried by the natural rushing water through the valleys of these massive foot hills and mountains. it's so belittling - in a good way.
the fresh air and the cold splashes.
oh man.
thank you God for that sweet relief from the emptiness of work.
we had 9 raft loads for our group. our raft's particular guide was ordained by God no doubt.
he was my age, which is approximately half that of all my coworkers.
so i sat in the back of the raft near him and we talked and joked the whole trip. it was nice to have an ally. someone who was speaking my language. a language that has nothing to do with spreadsheets or corperate heirarchy.

he really did make me consider more the bebefits of dropping everything in pursuit of what your heart is called to.
for him it was the outdoors and firefighting. so he quit school and got trained and certified in EMS and firefighting. as he waits for all his applications to firehouses to go through he raft guides in the summer and is on ski patrol in the winter.
he said with a big smile on his face, i finally knew what i wanted to do and went for it and haven't had a bad day since.

not that avoiding bad days is my ultimate goal. but it was very inspriring to see his senserity and passion revealed.

encounters like that nearly bring me to tears. i can feel my heart's strings being tugged.

i know that deeply it is really that my heart is inset with eternity (ecclesiastes 3:11-14 says so) and that heaven is what it is hungry for. and really pretty much anything here will not be fullfilling. but i don't really want to live as a pesimist. i want to be able to passionately pursue and know the things of beauty that God has made available for here and for now.

oy.
sorry bout the ramblings.
but now you know.

signing off.