Adventures in the new economy

 I graduated from college in 1993. With the exception of a few months (including a stint as a boxboy at Storehouse Market in Provo, after I graduated) I've always been someone else's employee. I figured that would probably be true for most of my working life.

But as of the first of May, 2010, I became Scott, Incorporated. VP Ginger is the first co-worker I've ever kissed at work. Everyday has become an adventure (and not just because of the kissing.)

One week things will just be singing along swell. I get some good personal writing done, have enough time to complete assigned projects (the ones that pay actually money, not "future" money) and I even get a honey-do or two done.

Then an email comes telling me my hours are being reduced for at least a little while, and it's back to "okay, how are we gonna bounce with this one this time?"

I'm reminded of the wonderful parable Hugh B. Brown shared many years ago about pruning his currant bush:

"You sometimes wonder whether the Lord really knows what He ought to do with you. You sometimes wonder if you know better than He does about what you ought to do and ought to become. I am wondering if I may tell you a story. It has to do with an incident in my life when God showed me that He knew best.

I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet (two meters) high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and clipped it back until there was nothing left but stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it and smiled and said, “What are you crying about?”

You know, I thought I heard that currant bush say this:
“How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.”

That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’ ”

The rest of the story is just a click on the link above away. Pruning hurts something fierce, but it appears to be the best way for me to grow. Snip snip.