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My “desk” at onething.
This CD display took 6 hours to build and is over 5 feet tall and contains 4000 CDs.
That is some good crowd control.
Multitasking or pretending to look important… you decide.
Just part of the technological miracles
We’re serious about customer service.
we’re serious about our break time.
we’re serious about our water bottles.
This is me… pleased with myself (and still looking pasty).
This is not pretty people.
Oh the delirium of exhaustion mixed with excitement.
After two grueling days of setup, we finally started selling things today, it has been such a satisfying experience I have found myself close to tears at least three times today. The bookstore looks exactly how I dreamed it would and the crowd control precautions we have taken are working marvelously.
We have double everything from last year, double the product, double the cashiers, double the management and triple the space; 90,000 square feet (not enough gel insoles in the world). I also have three wireless communication devices attached to me at all times, two different walkies and a cell phone, I have been talking on them separately and all at once. Can anyone say “over connected”?
I’ll post some pictures tomorrow, at this point most of the staff is a comedy of errors, I have bandages all over by hands and one ink stain on my rear end due to an incident with a open pen and I am hobbling around like a Nostradamus.
It may not be pretty, but it’s so beautiful to me.
We’re winding down now, the days are coming faster and faster to the onething, which for everyone out there wondering involves many many things, thousands and thousands of things. There is no onething here people, it’s everything all at once and right now, please.
Every year things go really well, I mean sure there are gut wrenching moments teeny tiny bumps but those things always seem to pale in comparison to the great successes.
Pulling off a conference for 15-20,000 people is incredibly daunting. I work in the bookstore so I only get a small piece of the daunting, when you put it all together it could give you night sweats.
The thing I marvel at every year, is this huge conference isn’t just for young adults, it’s run by young adults. The things we accomplish are amazing by any standard, but if people knew how we accomplished them I think some might fall over.
Some days when I’m bogged down in the details (there are thousands), I forget the “onething”, the Psalm 27:4 thing.
I love what we do here, I love that I’m a microcosm of serving for the sake of love. I am one of many who are giving the strength of their youth to an unseen kingdom.
Clearly it’s late and I’m getting emotional, so let’s end with the bookstore theme this year – go big or go home.
Every year before onething, we give each cashier a onething handbook, it includes schedules, maps, instructions, procedures and my top 10 list of things I don’t want to hear anyone say at onething.
Now I know I will hear some of the things, some are impossible to avoid, I just want everyone to anticipate Kristen’s facial expressions and subsequent breathing into paper bags.
20. I have scarlet fever
19. A freak snowstorm hit and I missed my flight
18. Did I tell you that I volunteered to work for (insert name here) this year?
17. The apparel rack just fell on an elderly person
16. I heard only 7 people are registered for onething
15. The Internet just went down
14. You look tired
13. I have the avian bird flu
12. (insert name here) is looking for you and he seems kind of angry
11. I forgot I’m lead guitarist for the evening session
10. We forgot to bring (insert name of popular product here)
9. David is sleeping in the tent
8. Don’t look now but (insert name here) just backed the u-haul a cement pillar
7. None of the barcodes are working
6. (insert name here)’s drawer is jammed and his hand is stuck in it
5. Ummm, that customer just vomited in line.
4. Everything seems to be ringing up at cost
3. My cell phone was swallowed by a wild boar
2. I quit/I resign/I’m taking a sabbatical/This is my two weeks
1. I don’t know
Sam’s club is one of life’s greatest mysteries. Why do people go to Sam’s club, why do people seem to enjoy it?
I go and have gone and will go regularly. It’s a bookstore thing, buying candy and notebooks in bulk requires several trips a month.
Here’s the thing that astounds me; every time we go we fill up like two carts and people stare. They just stop and stare as we cart ourselves by. I stare back and wonder why are they staring at me. Until they ask they inevitable, “guess you must like chocolate”, “wow you must have quite a sweet tooth”, “don’t eat that all at once”.
These comments of course require the courtesy chuckle. The this-really-isn’t-funny-but-now-you-feel-awkward-better-just-chuckle chuckle. I hate that chuckle. Literally this happens to me a least once a trip, more often then not at least three times (once in the aisles, once in line, and once in the parking lot).
That’s pretty bad, but even the employees regularly comment. I think that’s odd because surely I’m not the only person in Sam’s club who ever buys in bulk, I mean come on, surely this cashier has had one other bulk transaction today.
And then I look around, the store is full of people with a rotisserie chicken and a thing of Tide, or the man with the slab of ribs and the toilet paper, or woman with the air fresheners and toothpaste.
No one buys in bulk here. No one. I wish I had a cheese ball and the latest Michael Crichton novel. You don’t even need a cart for that crap.
Instead I have a pallet of water, 12 cases of gum, 10 things of ring pops, all the sharpies I could find on the shelves, two cases of starburst, two cases of skittles, 4 cases of Hershey’s, 6 cases of Snickers, 3 cases of Dark Chocolate M&Ms, 2 cases of Peanut Butter M&Ms, 3 cases of Peanut M&Ms, 1 case of Kit Kats and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I lost it on the last trip (the onething trip of candy death). The people were staring, the traffic was slowing as I exited with my order and I just lost it, I just began to call out, “nothing to see here people, nothing to see, just buying in bulk. Look at me, I’m buying in bulk. People, this is buying in bulk.”
I mean really it’s Sam’s Club, put down your chicken and at least grab a sheet cake.
Last night I was watching a Beautiful Mind on TV. The movie, if you haven’t seen it tell the story of a brilliant man (John Nash) who suffered with schizophrenia.
There comes a point in his life where he must decided how he will move forward. How will he live with his disease? It is in this moment where he actually looks at the delusional characters following him around and tells these imaginary friends (who he has “lived with” for years) goodbye.
At this point I’m bawling, now I’ve seen this movie before, and it is quite sad, but I never cried this hard, sure it’s sad, but it’s a movie.
But something rang true inside my heart on this one. I empathized with Nash’s loneliness, the feeling like you’re talking and in relationship with someone only to have them be a figment of your own imagination, the feeling of thinking you know someone only to have them turn out to be a different someone. Not because they suddenly changed, but more because you were living in your head, living in an imaginary world of human relationship. It can make you feel crazy, it can make you feel schizophrenic.
Nash still continues to see these delusions, they in fact haunt him wherever he goes, but for years he makes the difficult decision to ignore them, he decides to acknowledge that they are in fact delusions. At one point he tells his wife, that he misses talking with them he misses their friendship. She encourages him to find real friends.
I guess I am on that path as well, I’m trying to say goodbye to my life’s delusions and I’m trying harder to live in reality. I’m trying hard not to live in my head, imagining a better life. I don’t want to miss out on the real things around me, the people, the places, the experiences.
