Author: Mitchell McLean

Last Week

The past week I have spent in Brownwood with my grandparents at their ranch. I fixed some fence and took out some old fence. The fence I fixed was because of fallen trees or where animals such as wild pigs have run through the fence, and the wires are tangled or cut. Periodically we have to drive the perimeter of the fence to make sure there are not any major issues and fix the small ones. We also have to remove old fences at times to keep the cows from getting tangled or cut by the old fences and causing more problems.

Also, yesterday I had a great birthday! Thank you for all the Facebook messages, emails, and texts wishing me a happy birthday! It was great hearing from a lot of people from work and friends throughout yesterday.

This weekend

It is around lunchtime Friday and we are about to head to Dallas. Erika has some Speech Therapy training that is supposed to take 3 hours this afternoon; then we are going to go to dinner. Then tomorrow is Ben’s wedding! Other than that we plan on doing some shopping and something fun such as TopGolf or some other fun evening activity tonight or tomorrow night.

Last Few Days of Sabbatical (Monday and Tuesday)

My sabbatical ends Tuesday evening, and I will return to work Wednesday. Surprisingly I look forward to a lot of the projects I left off and the people I work with. I feel blessed to work at a company where I miss the people and type of work we are doing when I am away.

On Monday, I plan to help Emily Beeksma move into her new house! It was good timing that she closes on her house today (Friday) and needed help Monday moving in while I was on sabbatical.

My service project is coming along slowly. I continue to help Children’s Grief Connection with their website, but their hosting/provider, Neon, is moving slow. They designed the homepage, and we provided our feedback. Once they get it set up where I can help build out the rest of the pages and make tweaks to the site, I will hope in there and help them finish the rest of the pages and some other ideas they have. I hope they finish soon so I can hop in and make a bigger impact on my sabbatical, but told CGC that I would help after my sabbatical was over as well.

The last week has been an amazing week and challenging week as well. It was amazing because I got to spend the weekend at the ranch with grandparents and extended family and my wife shot her first deer with her bow. It was very relaxing as well as fun working on things around there which included taking a bone out of cows mouth (meant to get a picture of this).

Cows often chew on anything from bones, turtle shells and sticks. Sometimes they can get them stuck in their mouth, and we have to put them in the pens and squeeze shoot to take the bone out. We also had to mow the roads and areas around the house. As it rains a lot, the grass grows tall; then we have a few weeks of no rain, the grass dies which it makes vulnerable to grass fires. It was great to get outdoors and spend time with family.

The beginning of this week I spent moving my grandmother into Wesley Court Retirement Center. This is something that was not planned as part of my sabbatical, but I spend three solid days packing, organizing, and moving. I know my first post I discussed I wanted to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. While being at the ranch, I spend a lot of time with my dad’s side; this gave me almost a full week with my mom’s mom who lately has been lonely and health declining. Being on sabbatical has allowed me to be there to help her move, keep her stress down and make the process as enjoyable as possible.

This weekend I am heading to the ranch again. Next week my plans are not solid yet, but I will spend time hopefully back at the ranch. I’ll be updating again shortly!!

Week 2

Last weekend I spent the weekend with a few guys from work, Ben and Steven (Kiki) from MIS. We went to Austin to celebrate Ben’s bachelor party. I typically spend most of my weekends either at the lake, ranch or with family. Austin was a whole new world to me. It also didn’t help that it was the “Pecan Festival” I think what they called it which was an art festival downtown. We can just sum up most of the people/environment – weird. Maybe I should stick to small town Abilene.  I had a great weekend with the guys, met some of Ben’s friends from Dallas/Hardin Simmons and got to relax with the guys.

This week has been a change of pace. While the first week I got tons of things done on my todo list, this week I had a sinus infection so I have been moving around the house slower. The weather also has had me stuck indoors so I’ve had a hard time with resting, but it has forced me to do it which I think is God’s plan. He knows if the weather is nice, I can find something to work on, I’d do it.

My service project is moving but moving slow. The company Children’s Grief Connection decide to go with signed the contract early this week (Neon), which means we have the ball moving, but now it is time to organize photos and content for the site. I created a sitemap for Coral and the team at Children’s Grief Connection to show them the current number of pages they have. On the first call, they thought they had 6-8 pages. After running the sitemap, they have 138 pages. You always forget about those pages that are 2 or 3 levels deep. They’ve talked about combining and removing some pages. Neon is going to set up the site with the first 4-6 pages, then I am going to convert as many as I can from their current layout to the new site.

This weekend

This weekend is opening deer season! Wahoo! As I get older, I enjoy deer hunting more and more. I enjoy relaxing with nature and having no outside world distractions. I also have enjoyed listening to audiobooks while I hunt to relax more and pass the time. I also enjoy hunting season because I get to see my dad side of the family, grandparents, uncle and aunt and cousins. During most of the year I might see them once or twice, but during hunting season I will most likely see them every other weekend.

Next week

I still am trying to figure out my plans for next week. One thing that came up last week unplanned is my grandmother will be moving into an assisted living center (Wesley Court) on Tuesday. She currently lives in Fairway and has been widowed for about 5 years and is having trouble take care of the house and herself the last year or so. Being on sabbatical, I can help pack and move something with my mom during the day Tuesday, then when the rest of the family gets off work Tuesday evening we can move furniture.

Wednesday, if all goes as planned, I hope to get back to the ranch to spend some time hunting and relaxing with family. I also have a few projects around the ranch I’d like to work on such as fixing some fence, taking some cows to auction/vet, and other things to help my grandparents out.

Kickoff Sunday Sermon

At church, we are currently going through the Ten Commandments. If I paid more attention, I would notice that the 4th week (this last Sunday), would be the Sunday of my first week of my sabbatical. The 4th commandment is “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” It was the perfect setup and what I needed to hear to get my sabbatical off to the right start. Before my sabbatical started, I had something planned every weekend, a todo list of over 12 things I wanted to get done around the house or on our cars and other odds and ends. Jarred, the preach at Southern Hills, talked about how in today’s culture, people have a hard time taking a break and resting. It was very convicting because I am the type of person that has a hard time sitting still and always wants to be working on and improving things.

Plans

Like I said, before Sunday I had many plans. Every weekend was full of Weddings, guys trips, trips with my wife, and of course – opening deer season weekend. My weekdays consisted of getting done the todo list which consisted of cleaning the garage, kitchen cabinets, helping my dad do some marketing for one of his houses that’s on the market, work on Childen’s Grief Connection website and am taking two grad school classes. I also plan to spend time with my grandparents.

I also plan to spend time with my grandparents. My dad’s side lives on the ranch and is getting older, so they need help with managing the land which consists of feeding cows/horses, checking fences and many other odd and end things. I plan on heading out there when the weather cools down a bit. Also, spending time with my mom’s mom which has been widowed about five years ago, but lately has had small heath issues and is getting lonelier as her friends get older and not able to spend as much time with her. Both of my grandparents mean so much to me as they taught me many life lessons and both gave me life-changing job opportunities growing up. The ranch I learned to weld, drive tractors, 4-wheelers, and jeeps around the age of 7 (probably not legal), build fences and enjoy the outdoors. My mom’s side owned an oil and gas company which my grandfather (that passed away 5 years ago) taught me so much about business and the oil industry.

How It Has Gone So Far

Children’s Grief Connection

The first few days have been amazing! We started the website discussions with Childen’s Grief Connection. They are hiring a third party to host their website and adding a CRM (Client Relationship Managment) software into the website and their business. This will allow them to track campers/donors/volunteer information easier. They are also adding an e-commerce part to the website. I’m also helping build part of the website for a fundraiser. They have been using another third party software to collect donations, but taht software as raised their rates from $30 per month to over $250. We are hoping to have the new software up and going which should get their fees back down to a more manageable place for a non-profit.

Homework, Book Study and Trying to Relax

I have begun part of my todo list but have also decided to take off a few things and try to relax more. I’ve also decided to do all the thing I want to get done-such things on the todo list and class work during the day, then spend the evenings relaxing and giving more attention to my wife. With grad school, most evenings we get home, eat dinner, then I do homework 2-3 hours per evening and have not been able to spend the time in our relationship that I wish to. Being able to complete my coursework during the day has been amazing for our relationship! We are beginning the book “The Five Love Languages” this week and look forward to spending more time with each other. I’ve also decided to combine a couple of my trips and have a couple weekends of relaxing or not scheduled and see what happens.

As weird as it may sound, I do miss work – especially the people, but also the challenging projects, working with sales managers, talking funeral homes, and that busy feeling. I enjoy challenging myself to see what I can get done in a day and that high of success – when I complete a project, have a successful campaign or sign up another funeral home with Social Media Management.

I hope to have another post soon with the more information on the website for Children’s Grief Connection and update on how everything else is going!