This Crazy Year

A year ago, I was sprinting full speed toward my goal of being a full-time online content creator and influencer. I was doing this because I wanted to spend my days doing what I love and not what a boss tells me to do.

Over the course of about 6 months I uploaded nearly 200 videos to YouTube, gaining 600 subscribers during that time, and became a leading member of an online community that has a reach of millions of people. I was on track to “make it.”

Fast forward a year to today, and I am working full-time as the National Director of Communications for the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada (EMCC). Not a bad job, but definitely not what I had in mind a year ago.

What happened?

In short, if you think of that season as a sprint, I didn’t quite finish far enough ahead to continue as a sprinter. I have no regrets. I had to try, and I’m glad I did. My goals are still the same, but my approach is different.

Learning how to accept a slower process is tough. I want to just move on to the next step toward my goals, but there is something important to learn in this season. For the last 8 months, I have been learning how to lead in a very different way. Everything I do is in service of others, and even though it is tough sometimes, it is good.

Nomads

We weren’t exactly nomads, but it felt like it. We moved a lot, had several different jobs, and none of it was planned. We had no expectations of what the next month would bring.

If you are curious about details, here they are:

• December 2017: left my job as a family pastor at Bergen Missionary Church in Alberta
• January 2018: Moved from our home in Alberta, into Lynn’s parents’ house in Winkler, Manitoba
• February 2018: Moved to a rental house in Winkler, I began working as an Educational Assistant at a middle school
• July 2018: Moved to a different rental house in Winkler, I focused on content creation full time
• September 2018: I started working for EMCC as the Interim Director of Communications, part-time
• December 2018: I was offered the permanent position at EMCC, to start full-time January 1
• January 2019: Moved to Cochrane, Alberta
• April 2019: Moved back to our house in Bergen, Alberta
• Throughout these months, Lynn had several different jobs, our kids went to three different schools, and we/I traveled back and forth to our house in Alberta to check on things

Would we do it again?

Although I do not regret what we did last year, I would not choose to do all of those things over again. It was exhausting, expensive and rough on our kids.

We are looking forward to a more settled life in our beautiful home in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, at least for the time being.