Family: January 2020 Archives
BillHendricks.net: Is It a Calling Or a Whim?
Bill Hendricks of the Giftedness Center in Dallas lists and elaborates on five signs a path you're considering may be your calling:
"It fits your giftedness. ... You feel drawn to it again and again over time. ... It meets with encouragement and confirmation from those who know you well and who have your best interests at heart. ... You conclude you cannot do otherwise. ... You've made it a regular item in your prayers and you have received either (a) a strong indication from God that you should pursue it, and/or (b) no good indication that you should not pursue it. ... "
He also lists seven signs that it likely is more of a whim than a calling:
"Your envisioned future keeps changing. ... It's a recent idea and you have not given it much serious thought over time. ... You have not explored what it really entails, what it would really cost, and what you would really have to do to to make it happen. ... It involves grandiosity. ... It requires strengths and motivations you simply don't have. ... Those who know you well do not affirm it. ... It's a difficult path for which you are neither talented nor motivated. ..."
The Giftedness Center offers an online step-by-step guide to discovering your giftedness. I have some more links on giftedness and vocation on a blog entry from 2008.
Tulsa is getting a fancy new park that residents can feel smug about - The Lost Ogle
OKC blog rates OKC's new Scissortail Park uninspiring compared to Tulsa's The Gathering Place, but also shares a bit of childhood park nostalgia.
"I grew up in Midwest City, and the coolest thing we had at Regional Park back then was a metal rocketship that baked you like an oven and had filthy graffiti scrawled all over the inside."
I remember that rocketship fondly. It was across the street from my aunt's apartment, and it resembled the USS Enterprise, with the main saucer and two engine pods. The biggest problem with it was that it was too popular and crowded, so you couldn't really reenact Star Trek episodes in it.
New South Wales Rural Fire Service: Fires Near Me
This is an interactive map showing the extent of the burned area and the status of fires in New South Wales and neighboring parts of Victoria and Queensland. Here is the fire map for Victoria, the road closure map for Victoria, and the road closure map for NSW. There are a few contained bushfires and grass fires in Queensland at the moment.
I'm sad to see roads I drove and towns I visited under threat. Three years ago, in October 2016 during the Australian spring, I took a four-day drive that included the beautiful Australian Alps and Murray River Valley. The town of Corryong, Victoria, home to a museum about the times depicted in the poem "The Man from Snowy River," is surrounded by burned areas, and roads out of town are closed to traffic. Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales, home to the highest peak on the continent, has been evacuated and the Alpine Way scenic highway is closed through the entire park, from Bullocks Flat to the Murray River on the border with Victoria. The Falls Creek ski resort is under mandatory evacuation. Residents of Bright, a pretty resort town in the foothills of the mountains, are being advised to leave.
