torn
erik and i had dinner with the amazing scott and sarah last night. they have got to be my favorite friends out of all the friends i've ever had. as soon as we sat down at the table, we started talking about simplifying our lives (again). we talk about this all the time. but this time around, we were very proactive about making our lives better.

scott and i are both on our church's "vestry" together. i've mentioned vestry before; it's a council/leadership body/board of directors sort of dealy. we were the ones who debated and debated and debated that whole cell tower brouhaha last year. (and this year, too.) two weeks ago, we all went up to the glorious mountains of Julian, CA for our vestry retreat. one of the first things we did was to take a Personal Values Inventory test. it basically helped you define how you handle situations a) when things are going well for you, and b) when things are NOT going well for you. you'd tally your results and graph a bunch of lines on a little triangular grid thing. ultimately, you'd come up with your baseline point (how you react to things when you're happy), and you'd connect that dot to your "how you react to things when you're not happy" dot. the triangle grid had three points: red, green, and blue.

my baseline was at the blue end of the blue-green area. blueness indicates you frequently consider the impact of your actions on other people. this can mean one of two things: that you're always looking out for the other guy, or that you're constantly concerned with what people will think of you. greenness indicates that you have an analytical nature. you're always wanting to gather facts and information, and you question everything until you know for sure what's going on. a blue-green person combines these two traits, and ultimately ends up being very equality-driven. sounds pretty accurate to me.

my "when things aren't going well for me" point was VERY green. when i'm upset, angered, or frustrated, i tend to step back and make sure everyone's being respectful and i have all the information about the decision or action that needs to take place.

i had one of the longest lines (connecting the happy point to the unhappy point) of the group, which meant i drastically change the way i react, depending on if i'm having a good day or not.

scott, interestingly, had the EXACT SAME LINE as me. this surprised us all. he's totally a results-oriented go-getter. it's sort of why he is called to have a great, successful business career, and i'm totally excited about the prospect of hanging out with campground guests in wyoming. the third zone of the triangle is the red zone. danger, danger, will robinson! a red person is all about results, and somewhat all about getting their way.

last night was a very red night for us. we sat down and made the following lists:

1. what are the two things about our lives that make us the happiest?
2. what are the two activities that we do that we enjoy the most?
3. what things get in the way of those things - the things and activities that make us the happiest?
4. seriously, what the heck do you mean by "we need to get stuff done?" what is this elusive "stuff," and why is it more important than sitting on the porch with friends on a sunny saturday afternoon?
5. what is it going to take to see more of each other but not get burnt out? (our answers to #1 were unanimously spending time with our spouses/baby, and spending quality time with our friends.)

i'm telling you, it was the red-est i've ever been.

each of us are really involved with church crap, to the point of being over-committed. it's at the point now that church is slightly more spiritually draining than it is uplifting. it's time to stop being so blue-green about making our lives simpler and better, and be red.

however, now that between the two of us, erik and i have applied for about a dozen jobs in various national parks and forests, i'm totally torn. i am so smitten with this sort of joint effort of our favorite friends and us to be even better friends, to help each other make our lives happier. and what? we're just going to run away from that?