Unavailing Logic

  If you attend church, you may recognize the title of this post as lyrics from a Hillsong Christian worship song. Don't worry, I'm not turning this into a religious blog, but my faith is a part of who I am and has contributed to my belief structure and attitude. What you may not know is that I am a bassist and I volunteer regularly on my church's worship team, so I've played this song dozens of times.  Recently, someone asked me the old question, "What do you do for a living?". I answered his question. I told him I worked as an IT Solutions Architect and was in a pre-sales role selling datacenter and security solutions to our clients. His response, "oh, you're in sales". No. Technically I'm "pre-sales". Then he says, "so you work on computers?". No, I create solutions for clients. As the conversation continued, I got this knot deep in the pit of my stomach because none of those things are what I really am. It's what I...

Chained to fear There are very few things in this world that I'm scared of. I have horrible "needlephobia". Having endured spinal meningitis when I was 5yo and being held down while doctors performed spinal taps left me with an indelible phobia for those evil little pieces of hypodermic horror. As a rational adult, I understand that needles won't hurt me, yet I still suffer anxiety when I have to get a shot or have blood drawn. Our minds are exceedingly powerful, and we have a tremendous internal struggle for conscious thought to overcome unconscious thought. The struggle between rational and irrational. The other thing I am horribly afraid of is failure. I'm not talking about losing a game or something inconsequential. I'm talking about big failings. Failing as a parent, failing as a leader, failing as a person. My entire life I have put a great deal of pressure on myself to be successful and to avoid failure. In 2001 I learned a very valuable lesson o...