Weeks 11-16
Finally.
I have been looking at "Write a BLOG" on my to-do list for the past five weeks, but I've been in a state of suspended overwhelm, and the writing itch has been fully satisfied every Sunday with the extensive study guides I'm assembling for the OCIA group every week.
Some updates, in brief:
I hit my first 10,000 minutes of prayer in the Hallow app, and
The Hallow team reached out, and I'll be a "Hallow Herald" in their small community of peeps who promote the application and prayer, and
Tulsa Remote posted a member feature that lasered in on the development of my Catholic faith, and
I'm headed up to a Catholic monastery for an entire week to pray over what God wants me to do next contemplatively... in a few hours!
In a future entry, I’ll tackle what I wanted to say about the first 10,000 minutes of Catholic prayer since I'm already at over 13k minutes from the previous milestone. Perhaps when 15,000, maybe 20,000--it 100% depends on how full my days are when the next one is achieved.
The Hallow opportunity is super rad: The team pulls a small segment of users to join their private community of supporters based on behavioral end-user analysis to help test out features and convert future member sign-ups. Hallow has been such an instrumental part of my foundation building, that is a no-brainer to lean in.
Tulsa Remote, the organization that introduced me to Tulsa and supported my relocationl, drafted a member feature and shared it with their larger audiences. I was honestly surprised that Tulsa Remote focused on the element of faith I submitted for their creative and social team in Draft 1 of the copy. Publicizing anything concerning faith is risky on public, progressive social pages, and it was humbling to read the responses.
The fourth bullet point is the most impactful update. A few weeks ago I firmed up with BSPA attending their monastic experience for a week, and everything that caused a period of silence from my keyboard can be attributed to preparing for this disconnect of contemplative, deep prayer over the coming week. I rarely take vacations that are more than 2-3 days in length, because the avalanche of "catch up" is extremely difficult with my career, university, and clients. To make this trip up to the monastery productive, I needed to work ahead in everything.
At work, all tasks and projects needed to be buttoned up (10) days in advance.
It is midterms at university (right NOW), so I had to work with my advisor and my professor for accommodations, which meant taking the midterm a whole week early, drafting two artistic critiques early, and staying a week ahead of all additional coursework so that I wasn't retroactively submitting (and stressing!) about MODERN ART instead of focusing on prayer.
Lastly, my clients are ramping up for the holiday season, and all communications and design had to be finalized to avoid any disruptions.
One more thing: I'm a stickler for coming home to an immaculate abode after traveling, so all free time over the past week (lol) has been spent deep cleaning and preparing for being away: I'll come home to fresh linens, and spotless-everything-else so that I can decompress before logging back into my work laptop and coming back to the real world.
With several loads of laundry, packing, and cleaning while studying for the midterm, and baking an apple pie to use up the excess fruit hanging around—I'm exhausted. Signing off here so that I can have a good night's sleep before it is time to hit the open road.
Thanks for your prayers of travel mercies in advance.
In Christ,
K