Serving Two Masters Isn’t …

byrevansca

167 followers

Updated 3 years ago

If you’ve ever been put in the position of having to undertake two challenges that have overlapping timeframe components; challenges such as two projects that involve different and non-complementary tasks, and are both challenges that need to be actively progressed simultaneously, then you probably added a word to the title of this post…

About five weeks ago I was confronted with the dilemma of how to prioritize three challenges, and then for the past five weeks having to decide day-to-day where to prioritize my time.

Challenge #1

Challenge #1 was to move a manuscript for publishing a book forward following a setback that I’d describe as significant, perhaps even substantial. I really wanted to publish before Christmas and not just by Christmas Eve but as early in December as possible.

Challenge #2

Challenge #2 was that I was scheduled to travel from Los Angeles to the UK to arrive in the UK exactly one week before the end of November. But there was another challenge too; another project that I needed to keep moving along. One that for almost six months had been taking up anywhere from 20 hours each week to double or more.

Challenge #3

Challenge #3 was keeping up with the training that I need in order to get my Wealthy Affiliate (WA) website built further, and that involves developing more content and potentially responding to comments and reviews related to my website posts.

The only thing from what I’ve listed that wasn’t actually pressing or pressuring me was having to respond to comments and reviews related to my website posts. Having to respond to comments and reviews related to my website posts is something that I want because to have comments and reviews pressing and pressuring me would mean that my websites are generating traffic and real activity, but as yet that is not yet happening.

For personal reasons driven by putting family first, I couldn’t put off or change in any way the dates for travelling to the UK – which is where I am right now –endeavoring to collect my thoughts, set my next priorities, and plan my next actions. So other than where am I geographically, where am I with my three competing and conflicting challenges? #2 was, or is being accomplished by my decision not to change my travel dates even though it might have been easy to use the coronavirus pandemic as a primary excuse. I’m fairly certain that no one would have blamed me for not wanting to risk traveling which could have exposed me to fellow travelers, airport staff, airline staff, or others that I might encounter in public places. As it turned out, I rode an near empty bus to the airport, encountered maybe five or six airport staff, and boarded a plane that was so empty that I had the opportunity to move forward a row and so had no one within six feet of me. The closest I got to other travelers was in the line for being scanned, but everyone was wearing face masks – and appeared to be wearing them properly so that both their mouth and nostrils were fully covered. Passport control at London’s Heathrow airport was 99% automated so when I removed my mask for a face scanning, it was for a machine not a person, and then the only person I came into close proximity from walking through customs to arriving at my UK location of residence was my wife, who I admit to getting so close to her that we hugged.

As I arrived, the UK was in the final week of a lock down, and the newspapers reporting on what was happening in the USA were spelling out the details of the enforced lockdown just being put into effect in Los Angeles.

Challenge #1 was uppermost on my mind and to cut what could be a long story down to a short one, the e-reader version of my book was submitted and accepted for pre-ordering on December 8thand today, December 10th became orderable for immediate download. So that brings me to Challenge #2, my WA website.

Not Really Related

First, I need to mention that the book project and the website are not really related to each other at all. The book is a Bible Study – or as I have chosen to call it –a Bible Study Companion publication. The book’s title is ‘The Compiled Gospels of the New Testament’. The entire contents of all of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been compiled into a serial and parallel format so that one can immediately locate parallel accounts of any event. Without rewriting any part of the text of any of the Gospels, the activities and teachings of Jesus and all of the events of His life that are recorded in the Gospels are laid out in chronological order. Typically, Bible students and study groups choose to study a selected Gospel, but now, with ‘The Compiled Gospels of the New Testament’, especially the ‘electronic version’ that can be displayed on a PC, laptop, tablet or ‘phone, it’s now much easier to see how an event or a teaching is reported by the other Gospels without having to have multiple fingers or bookmarks in use. ‘The Compiled Gospels of the New Testament’ does not replace one’s Bible, in fact, the translation I’ve chosen to publish in, is one that very few people will be using as it’s an older version Bible translation. This gives almost everyone a second Bible version which will enhance their study, and potentially their understanding, even further.

So now, at least for the next few weeks I can get back to focusing on my WA website, Safety-At-Home.org, resuming my training, creating more content and building it as seems appropriate, plus I now have a new website project – one that will focus on the next step, developing further Bible Study Companions and getting them published.

As a final comment, I’ll add that, depending on how one wants to look at it, the ‘Compiled Gospels of the New Testament’ project was started either several years or several months before I decided to learn how to build a website and selected WA as my host and tutor.

So, what is the takeaway here?

Well, you may have completed the title of this blog post ‘Serving Two Masters Isn’t …’ with words such as easy, practical, profitably, smart, or wise, or perhaps, instead of a single word, with a phrase such as ‘a smart thing to do’, ‘the wisest thing to do’, and so on. But notice that all of these – and maybe whatever word or words popped into your head – are warnings or cautions. They are negative, albeit probably well intentioned, rather than positive and encouraging.

Yes, there’s a Bible teaching of Jesus about serving two masters, but the context of my competing and conflicting challenges was quite different from the situation that Jesus was addressing. So, my determination of what would be a fitting complete title for this post is ‘Serving Two Masters Isn’t Necessarily Counterproductive’.

At least that is how I hope things will work out. As the long-standing idiom goes, “You pays your money, and you makes your choice.”