Posts Tagged ‘lending Utah’

What’s on your to-don’t list today?

A few weeks back, on Facebook, I asked people for their time-management suggestions.  I got a lot of them, and most of them were outstanding.  One in particular, from my old friend Janice Welker, leaped out at me, and set me thinking ever since.  She said that a to-do list was a chance for her to decide on all those things she was not going to do that day, that she used it to remember who was in control of her life.  I thought that was a great concept.

So, in the spirit of that, here is today’s to-don’t list:

1. Don’t stay in bed because you think nobody will care if you’re just a few minutes late.

2. Don’t assume that Jeanette knows you love her, just because you told her last night.

3. Don’t figure that the kids will weed just as hard if you’re not out there with them.

4. Don’t leave the baby for Jeanette to change because you think your work is too important for you to take a couple minutes.

5. Don’t make your body try to do its work on a glass of water and some vitamins.

6. Don’t call later.  There is no “later”.

7. Don’t figure people are smart enough to know what you need without your asking them.

8. Don’t think you can fit everything in that you have to do without taking a couple minutes to plan.

9. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your job is more important than your family.  It’s just louder.

10. Don’t think you’re ever going to get around to going fishing with your Dad unless you put something on the calendar.

11. Don’t think people that need mortgage lending in Utah are going to call you out of the blue, even if you aren’t doing anything to let them know you’re there.

12. Don’t expect blocks of time to magically open up in your calendar so you can take your wife out for ice cream.

13. Don’t get discouraged because two hours of writing only gets 4.7% of your book written.  It’s 4.7% more than you had before you started.

There’s more, but this post was not on the to-do list this morning, which I had better get back to.  What’s on YOUR to-Don’t list today?

Are birthdays magic?  Well, if you ask a four-year-old, they are.  My little son Nathaniel (“Thanner”) talks about his birthday pretty much all the time, despite the fact that it won’t come ’round until next May.  He tells you how old he is.  Tells you he’s almost five.  Tells you what he wants to do.  Tells you it’s next week.  Every day.

What is it about birthdays that we love?  Sunday is the birthday of the country I love best.  We celebrate this birthday with fireworks and barbecues and sixteen straight hours of World War II movies.  The biggest holiday of the year is the celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ.  We have Washington’s birthday, and Martin Luther King’s birthday, and a dozen others.  We all remember the birthday of our marriages (we call them anniversaries, but they’re birthdays sure enough).  I remember every year the birthday of my career in lending in Utah (it’s the end of October).  We, as humans, love birthdays every bit as much as Thanner does.

Today is my forty-second birthday.  It certainly seems magical to me.  I have had already birthday greetings from a one-time prom date that I haven’t seen in many years (hi, Yvette!), from a kindred spirit that I met in Rome 25 years ago (Leslie, God bless you), and from an old girlfriend that now lives with her family in Australia (Jillyn, my dear friend).  And dozens of others.  I slept wonderfully last night for the first time in a good while.  I went to the gym this morning and I’ve lost weight again.  This morning my son Nicholas starts for the first time at point guard for his high school team.  The sun is shining, and the garden looks great.  My wife still loves me.

Many of those things were or have been true for a while, so perhaps it’s just that I’m noticing them more today.  But I am noticing them, and that’s part of the magic of the day for me.

For Thanner, I think part of the day’s magic – perhaps, in fairness, most of the magic – is the presents.  That faded for me a long time ago.  I can’t even tell my long-suffering wife what I’d like to eat for my birthday dinner.  It’s just not very important to me.  But there are birthday things that are important to me.  I like to know that I’m a better person than I was a year ago.  I like to rededicate myself to improving, to becoming better yet.  Birthdays are very good for that.  That’s a gift I give, not that I get, but I’ve noticed that I look forward far more to giving than to getting, anyway.

Every day I get the gift of a new life.  As a Christian, and a sinner (aren’t we all?), I make mistakes every day, and every day I need the grace of Jesus Christ to reach into the broken places in my soul and put things to rights.  I need Him to make things right for others when I hurt them.  He always does.  This is called, in Christian parlance, being “born again”.  So in that sense, every day is my birthday.  Every day is a new chance to be what I really want to be, what I am meant to be.

In the spirit of that, I am going to commit the gaucherie of asking for gifts today.  What I want is this: do something, no matter how small, to move forward one of those I-always-wanted-to’s that you have stored up.  You know the ones I mean.  “I’ve always wanted to write a novel” or “I’ve always wanted to go skydiving” or “I’ve always wanted to see a Broadway show.”  Whatever it is, do something to make it happen.  That’s what I want.  If you’d like to come back here and tell me what it was that you did, that would be great, but it isn’t critical.  Just do it.  Go the whole day without snapping at anyone.  Be cheerful in the face of certain disaster.  Become just a little bit more of the person you know you were meant to be.  Be born again yourself.

Let the magic begin!  Happy birthday to all of us!