A Day Off

Monday, June 8, 2020

Hello world! This is my second blog post. I’ve been thinking about it a bit, and I’ve decided I’m going to try to make posts about twice a week about whatever I want. Sometimes It’ll probably be about my day, sometimes something I’ve been thinking about recently or got excited about… I don’t know, we’ll see how this goes. I know having a wide range of topics won’t likely get me a dedicated audience, but I don’t really want to be big or famous. I just want to have fun and be honest. Maybe that alone will get people interested, we’ll see.

Anyway, today’s one of my days off from work, so I thought that might be kinda interesting to talk about what I do on my days off. I know, Monday is a strange day to be off, but it’s because of what my job is. I work at a Walmart, and my official job title is “eCommerce Personal Shopper”, but I like to just tell people that I’m a professional shopper. People place grocery orders online and then come to the store later and pick them up. Me and my co-workers walk through the aisles of the store with these awesome giant carts and put them together. But the best part of the job though is when the customers actually come and we give them their orders. That’s when we get to see and interact with the people we work so hard for, and they’re usually pretty nice and grateful too.

The reason my day off is on Monday though is because of how busy we are. Unlike most 9 to 5 office jobs, people at my store work all day every day, starting from about 4am to midnight (don’t worry, each person only works 8 hours a day). Instead of the weekends being off, they’re actually our busiest times, so a lot of people end up working on the weekends. Currently I get Mondays and Thursdays off.

Part of a professional shopper’s wardrobe is a cloth scarf/mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Whenever I get a day off, I try to make the most out of it that I can, since work can be pretty draining sometimes, and I tend to only get one day off at a time. I’ve been trying to figure out ways to spend my free time recovering the most, while also having other things to do so that my work doesn’t take over my life. I have a few hobbies that I like to do (like playing guitar I mentioned last time), but I’ve also been getting into (attempted) gardening, cooking, even a little photography with my phone.

As far as gardening goes, I started a few projects this spring/summer when everyone was in quarantine. My mom got an Easter lily for Easter, but when I saw it start to wilt within a couple days, I decided to do everything I could to keep it alive. I did a little research and found out that it (probably) was getting too much water and not enough sunlight, so I moved it outside. It did a little better, but by the end of the Octave of Easter (the 8 days after Easter) it had lost all of its flowers, and in the following weeks it turned brown and shriveled. Now my sister likes to call it the “Easter stem”.

I water the Easter stem with a fancy automatic watering system. It’s very expensive. (not really)

Besides gardening, I also find it very important to pray. Praying is a way for me to calm down and remind myself that God is in control. I listen to Him though the scripture, I thank and praise Him for all the good things that have happened to me recently, and I ask forgiveness for any sins I’ve committed recently. I always spend about 20 to 40 minutes each morning praying and reading the Bible, and He usually gives me something to think about for the day. On my days off, I manage to make it to church as well, and that’s always a great experience. I receive so much grace from receiving the Eucharist, and I feel like I could take anything with complete peace… or rather God could take anything while I just sit there and let Him act through me.

Today the reading was the Beatitudes: Matthew 5:1-12. I thought it was kinda cool to read them through. I had taken a class in the fall called Christian Moral Principles, and the professor, Bishop Monforton, always stressed their importance. He called them “The autobiography of Jesus” and said that if the Ten Commandments are instructions on what not to do, the Beatitudes are instructions on what to do.

Today the particular phrase “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” stuck out to me. I wondered what it meant to be pure of heart. It reminded me of something I had read recently, that God is often offended by good deeds that are done with impure intention. He’d rather that you didn’t do them at all.

I can relate to that alot. I often do good things with extra intentions that are not so good. Even in my job. I’ve developed alot of habits of being nice to people, saying “thank you”, “you’re welcome!”, “have a nice day!”, but alot of the time I don’t really mean it. I guess I can’t be expected to feel grateful or generous all the time, but I certainly act like I feel that way. Maybe it would be better to be more honest… although being polite doesn’t exactly strike me as dishonest.

Well, that’s enough for today. I know alot of what I said came kinda out of context, but hopefully over time you’ll start to know me better. Until next time, God bless you!

– Ben