Rogue Reverend

Mentor-Friend

I had a mentor once. Actually, she was more than a mentor. She was a friend, just a few years older than me, with a lot of life experience.

Her name was Jan. She sang in an a capella band, with radical feminist roots, which I didn’t even understand. She taught me about money, making a living wage, listening to myself, and the scourge of waitresses. She was smart, funny, fiercely protective and used to make me laugh.

Most of all, she was kind. Thank you, Jan. I needed you and you were there.

I’d like to tell her that, but I don’t know where to find her. She worked with me in a sports bar in Hillsboro Village, back in the day. She has a pretty common name, so finding her in the white pages and on facebook seems to elude me.

I Want to Marry Evernote

If you follow my twitter feed (@roguereverend) you know that I am totally and completely in love with Evernote. Forever and ever, Amen.

Some of you have asked how I use it. Let me see if I can explain. Also, I got these ideas from someone else, and try as I might, I can’t find his original post. I am almost positive that it was a guy named John Mayson, but the links to his blog aren’t working now. I’ve modified a little bit, but not much.

First, you should know that I love GTD (Getting Things Done), but don’t always like David Allen’s categories. But I know that I want an easy way to see my to-do list in my specific contexts, and I want to be able to track information and notes easily.

So I decided to go with only 1 notebook in Evernote. Radical, but true. I started with a bunch of notebooks, but found the storage system very unwieldy. So I switched to tags. I tag everything with only one tag, and I set my tags up to be hierarchical for easier searches.

Let me see if I can do a screen shot:

Notice on the left that there are tags. Lots of them. They are:

0-*Broader Focus*

0-Inbox

0-Random Thoughts

1-Next Action

1-Tickler File

1-To Read

1-Waiting For

2-Lists

2-Richmond Mennonite Fellowship

2-Someday/Maybe

3-Reference/Support

4-Archive

Then there are sub-tags. These are filed under 1-Next Action

Next Action at Anywhere

Next Action at Calendar

Next Action at Car

Next Action at Church

There are also date tags, which are filed under 1-Tickler File. They are specifically made for longer term follow-ups. If i know I need to check on my overdue books in March, I can put that there… Which reminds me. Overdue books in March. Making a note.

2012-01 (January) and so on.

Under the tag 3-Reference/Support I have an alphabet tag (A-Z) and under the correct alphabet, I may have a topic tag, such as Lifehacker.

And under the Richmond Mennonite Fellowship tag I have a sub-tag for each of my church members. Important dates and notes will go in their file. I’m just trying this out, and I don’t know how well it would work if you were in a congregation of more than 35 people, but so far, so good.

Every post gets a tag. If I need to look at it immediately, or if I just emailed it to my Evernote account (you can do this! Did you know that?) it goes to 1-Inbox.

So here’s a screenshot of a note (which, by the way, I made by clicking my Evernote Elephant on the right corner of my MacBook and telling it “Clip Full Screen to Evernote,” then copied it to my desktop).

Please notice that the note has 1) a title, 2) a tag, and 3) a url. By the way, that was a post that I cut and pasted into Evernote from Chrome. And it’s a particularly good post from Jennifer Lutwieler about marketing.

One thing it took me forever to figure out: To delete tags and folders, log on to the Evernote website and do it there (at least on a Mac). Okay, enough of the Evernote primer for now. Be sure to ask me questions if  you want more information!

Sports

When I was 22, or thereabouts, I worked in a sports bar called The Sportsman’s Grille, close to Vanderbilt, in Nashville. I mostly worked days, but for big sporting events, I worked nights. Like the NCAA finals, one year, when Vandy was in them, when the bar was so full I had to carry pitchers over my head and yell, “Messy waitress!”

One night, at a table of 15, a *ahem* gentleman whistled for me. I walked over and asked, “What can I do for you?” He said, “I’d like another pitcher.” I walked to the bar manager and told him about the man whistling for me. My manager offered to kick the man out.

“I’d rather handle it,” I said.

I took the pitcher of beer, slammed it down on the table, and said, “Sir, my name is Lia, and I respond a hell-u-va lot better when you call me my name or Ma’am than I do when you whistle at me.”

He looked apologetic. Then, of course, he paid the tab for the table of 15. And left me a 30% tip.

Still, I think that’s why I don’t like sports.

In spite of this, I watched the Ravens in their bid for the Super Bowl last night. I’m sad that they got beat.

On MLK Day, 2012

As I sit in a coffee shop reading Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, I am touched (as I am every year) by the way Dr. King turned a phrase, by the visual images in my head, and by the depth and breadth of this call to action.

My favorite word from the piece this year is “somebodyness.” Dr. King writes:

One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodyness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses.

And my prayer for today goes like this:

For every time I have forgotten my own “somebodyness,” Loving God, thank you for reminding me that I am somebody. You sent someone or something to remind me of it, and I am grateful.

For every time I have robbed someone of their “somebodyness,” Forgiving God, I ask for your grace and forgiveness. I hope that someone has reminded that somebody of their “somebodyness.”

And may I, Gracious God, be granted the opportunity to recognize and affirm someone’s “somebodyness” today and everyday. Open me the eyes those opportunities and the courage to speak for another’s “somebodyness.”

 

 

Snark-o-Matic

I’m sitting in a coffee shop. The best one in Richmond. And there’s a woman sitting close by, with one of those voices that just carries. I can tell you all about her conversation. CSAs, fresh peas, getting a chicken from the farm…It’s one those new subtleties of class: I can afford to buy grass fed beef, eat only food raised organically, and am willing to drive all over town for the freshest, greenest seafood. It’s not that I mind listening to her be superior about the way she eats, it’s just that I can’t hear the thoughts in my own head because she’s louder.

It made me think about the fact that I usually think ugly thoughts about the people sitting around me, wherever I am. The lady next to me on the plane. The car next to mine. The cart behind me in line at Target. Do you do this?

I’d like to stop. I’d like to be nicer.

I watched the first episode of Enlightened last night. Laura Dern plays Amy, a corporate up-and-comer who makes some very bad choices (affair with married coworker, among them), has a breakdown, and goes for treatment in Hawaii. She comes back, enlightened, with a message from God, that everything is a gift, even the bad stuff.

I didn’t love the show, but I love the concept. Everything is a gift to us, even the bad stuff. The nutty lady who talks too loud and showoffy about her superior food choices? A gift. The fact that I can’t hear my own thoughts? Also a gift. And my ability to snark? You guessed it. A gift.