As many of you know, Cori and I had moved to Portland with the intentions of finding a place we clicked and wanted to call home, and for me to pursue a career with Starbucks. Some of that is still true. We absolutely love the northwest. Portland is a great place to be (or Beaverton rather... the suburb on the west side of the river where we live) and we love being close to both mountains and ocean. We've taken one trip out to the ocean for a family camping trip and loved it... we have yet to enjoy the mountains nearby, but having enjoyed mountains elsewhere I can say with confidence that when we do we'll love our trip there as well. The people in the area are great, we're making friends, and I think we can both confidently say that this is a place we'd be glad to call home for a number of years. What has changed is the plans to pursue a career with Starbucks. There's a whole jumble of reasons involved, but it doesn't seem like it would be a great place for me to land as a career, and at the same time there are other things I do feel called to pursue.
To start with, Starbucks has changed a bit since my last round of employment with them. We still make some fantastic coffee, and I still enjoy the interaction my position as a supervisor gives me with both customers and staff, but to advance beyond my current position would be a venture into many of the things that would suck the life from me were I to pursue the job as a career. Many of the tasks supervisors used to be able to do have been heaped onto the manager position, along with taking away a good portion of the time the managers have to get these tasks done. Along with this, as our economy has changed, Starbucks has had to focus far more on the metrics of the position. There are some very restrictive rules on labor costs, huge sales goals for limited time coffees, new product releases and seasonal sales; with the looming threat of corrective action should these goals not be met, or labor percentages exceeded. All of this culminates in the reality for me that this job would likely mean ulcers and nervous breakdowns in my future. So... while I enjoy my current position, I feel that it is as high in the company as I really want to go. At the same time I was figuring out all of these things, I was also feeling a drive to return to full time ministry as a career. This started with a frustration that my job was getting in the way of how involved I wanted to get in volunteer ministry at our church, along with looking back over my life trying to look at what jobs have made me feel the most satisfied and fulfilled as I tried to figure out what career to pursue if not Starbucks. Long story short, Cori and I decided that if possible, we'd like to pursue full time ministry as my career.
Our major roadblock to this is that right now I have about 2 years of school at one college, and 2 at another, and am still about 1 year short of my degree after looking at all the transferring around I had done, and the most recent school was about 7 years ago and halfway across the country. I spent a bit of time in correspondence with the Academic Dean at Ozark Christian College, and having looked over my transcripts, he's figured out a way for me to finish my degree from here through a combination of online courses, private study courses, and a couple classes taken at local colleges and transferred back. At the moment we're waiting on tax time so I have the information I need to do my FAFSA application, and we're planning on me taking classes starting next fall, with the intentions of finishing up the following May.
In the meantime, I'm continuing to work for Starbucks and diving into volunteer work with our church, and have briefly talked with one of the pastors about turning this volunteer work into some sort of internship as well.
In other areas, Cori is still trying to find a job that she enjoys enough to go to work every day without the desire to gouge out her eyes. Prayers on this would be appreciated... both that she won't succumb to the desire to gouge out her eyes and that she finds a job where she's happy and fulfilled. For those of you who sent checks for my birthday I want to say thank you in case I missed doing this. The plan is to wait until after Christmas and to pool all of the personal money I have from lots of saving and from your gifts and to build myself a new computer. I've figured out all the parts going into it and it will be pretty freaking cool. I could go into details, but for most of you this would be boring enough that you may wish to join Cori in the desire to end your ability to see. I'm excited though and am glad that you guys can be a part of that with me.
That's about all the time I've got. In about 15 minutes we've got the people coming over for the new Lifegroup we're starting with our church. Tonight should be a fun night of hanging out getting to know each other and making sure we're all looking for out of our Lifegroup. Hopefully it won't take me another 4 months to post on here...
- adam
