On Beagles, Pain, Ego and Business
On Beagles…
My beautiful beagles, Andy and Nelly, are gone. Belinda came for them and they’ll now be residing in a new home, along with one other dog and two cats. I’m sure they’ll be loving life. I cried when they left. Coming home now means entering a completely empty house. There are no beagles who need to be fed or scratched behind the ears.
On Pain…
Some have left comments stating that I’ve been ignoring the pain of others and focusing on my own pain. That’s not true. I write about my own pain because it helps heal it. But don’t think that means I’m not constantly thinking about the pain I’ve caused to others. One commenter mentioned my ex-wife and what I must have put her through. Believe me, Mister or Missus Anonymous Commenter, I do consider this quite a bit more than you might imagine. In fact I apologize to her all the time about it. I can never apologize enough.
Some of the things I’ve been experience parallel some of the things she experienced when I tore her life apart all those years ago. I believe God can use all things for his purposes, and although it is my own sin that has resulted in what I’m now experiencing, God uses these experiences to educate. I’ve been gaining a deeper understanding of what I put Wendy through, and I’ve been able to empathize with her because some of those same experiences are now happening to me. In fact, I have been making a habit of telling her, “I did ________ to you. I now understand a little better what you must have felt like. I am SO sorry.” Slowly but surely, I think she is beginning to believe I actually do understand. Even so, there is a long way to go before I have a complete grasp on Wendy’s pain. I just hope I don’t have to experience all of it. It’s definitely not pleasant.
More On Ego…
Many things led to the point in time where I surrendered my life to God. One of those things was the breaking down of my ego. Don’t get me wrong, quite a bit of it remains, but a good chunk was chipped out of it as a result of the sex game I mentioned in the blog entry posted on December 29th. I’m not really sure why I mention this.
Someday, when I can wrap my mind around what happened enough to express the lessons learned, I intend to blog a bit about it. It’s rather odd what God can use to work on someone’s mind. The crushing of my ego during that game allowed me to see what a useless, meaningless life I’d been living. It allowed me to better recognize the Christian example being shown by so many people in my life, including the pastors of xxxchurch. My ego had to be greatly lessened before I was able to see things more clearly. It had to be crushed to allow truth to enter my life. Even so, it took more than 7 months of realization before I finally reached the point of surrender.
My lifestyle placed a large barrier between me and what is truly important in life, and I’m not speaking of a relationship with God at the moment. We all know that is important. I am talking about family and friends.
Most of those I referred to as “friends” before were not friends at all. My family loved me regardless of what I did, but I never realized the wall that my life as a porn producer put up between us. Another of the things that softened me up to surrender my life to God was a visit to my father’s house. I was still producing at that point, and my step-mom reminded me that I’d made a promise to them to be finished with porn production by the time my son was in school. I’d completely forgotten about it until that moment. I saw the hurt on her face that I hadn’t kept my promise, and realized how much my actions must continuously hurt my dad as well. They never gave me much crap for it. They just loved me in spite of myself. But they must have been torn up inside the entire time I produced.
On Business…
I haven’t spoken a whole lot on my new business. It’s something that blows my mind every time I think about it. I was in the middle of fasting, and on day 4 I had a brainstorm. I called the owner of a Chevrolet franchise and asked his opinion on my idea. He strongly encouraged me to get things rolling as soon as possible and promised he’d be a client right away.
And that’s the way it’s been going!
Every dealership I’ve spoken with likes my idea. I have yet to hear a “no” once I’m speaking with a decision maker.
Are you curious yet? Okay, I’ll tell you what I’m doing.
As you may recall, a local dealership hired me to develop an internet sales and marketing department for them. I wanted to do the best job possible so I began researching what was working and what was not working for other dealers who already have internet departments. Overwhelmingly I was told that one major problem dealerships had was in finding the time to photograph their inventory for their websites. Another problem was handling technical aspects relating to their websites. Yet another problem was properly marketing their websites online.
Dear God, tell me I’m hearing these dealers correctly.
They need someone to:
photograph their vehicles,
manage their websites,
and market said websites.
Hmmm…. this may be a big jump here, but it seems to me that I know how to properly operated a camera (and have some pretty nice photo equipment sitting here doing nothing), I’ve run porn sites for quite a few years, and while I owned those porn sites they were marketed well enough that my internet traffic exceeded 12 million unique visitors each month.
Can you guess what I’m doing now? If not, let me spell it out for you. I’m managing auto dealer websites, from design (or redesign) to photographing inventory to marketing. And dealers are signing up like crazy. So much so that this month I have to hire two people to help me, and I anticipate needing more help in just a few short months.
Any idea who deserves the credit for this success?
Why are you making things so easy on me, God? Don’t get me wrong, I love it! Thank you, thank you, thank you for your blessings. Feel free to keep sending them.
