Seeking Advice as a Young-ish Man

[lunarWood]

Dear older and wiser saints,

It dawned on me not long ago that I have crossed the quarter-century mark. I can’t help but think as a single man that “it is not good for man to be alone” to be more and more true for me experimentally. And, perhaps y’all will suggest I find a help-meet, and yes, I am working on that front. May the Lord be gracious.

I often feel spent between regular work, taking care of things in my apartment (cooking, cleaning, laundry), mid-week fellowship/study groups, visiting just one pair of elderly folks in the church, and evangelism (about once a month).
- Cooking and cleaning tend to take up a lot of time. I have lost faith in store-bought bread and seed oils, so I make alternatives myself. And, it’s cheaper to do it myself, but at the expense of time.

As far as spiritual disciplines are concerned, I am committed to doing my daily devotions and catechizing myself as a newly reformed person. I would love to read more, including Scriptures and good books, but this proves especially difficult if my mental energy is gone.

I have had little entertainment as of late. Though I acknowledge that I am very susceptible to scroll through YouTube shorts.

Historically, I have burnt out many times in university. Combination of school work (engineering) and involvement in Christian clubs (evangelism) was my kryptonite. This eventually led me to drop my involvement in Christian clubs in my senior years.

And, I am an introvert. By God’s grace, I have grown to do better in group settings over time.

I’m looking forward to suggestions .

 

[arapahoepark]

I feel for you. A tad older, also introvert. Been burned by groups and work at one point or another. Still single so, take what I say with a grain of salt.
If I could make bread and oil, I join that club and expect some rewards. Or perhaps make your own ..
What is your work?
I admire your church diligence, is there anyone there?

 

[davejonescue]

One small piece of advice, is you are going to have to choose. Every action has a consequence. If it is taking you a considerable amount of time to clean and cook each day, then something has to give. I only say this because it seems like this is burning you out, so that, you cant read as much as you would like.

First, I would say, dont trip about the seed oils, or simply cut out fried foods, or switch to lard. Lard, I believe is animal fats, or see if you can pick up some beef tallow. These are going to be more expensive, and not as flexible as seed oils, but will still get the job done. Also, I do not believe olive oil is a seed oil, and can be used for just about everything cept frying. If you like fried foods, invest in an air fryer. For breads, go to a local bakery and ask if they sell day-old loafs? Or, even ask them if they donate their older bread to some place, then pick it up from there. You can get a few loafs at a time and store them in the freezer until you need to use. Local bakeries are not going to use the same preservatives as name-brand, but even bakeries at stores are not going to either.

With your food, if you are not a stickler for variety, just meal prep. You can go to Dollar General, or even Wal-Mart and buy 3-6 packs of reusable containers, and if you have a little spare cash, get you a small deep-freeze (nothing wrong with putting it in the living-room) and every Sat. (or pick one day out of the week) and bake, cook, or grill your food for the week. Package it, and put it in the deep freezer. Then, before you go to bed, pull-out your meals for the next day, and just microwave them.

But that is the gist I am getting at. Dont get OCD on every fiber out of place in your apartment. Clean up after yourself daily, and pick a day out of the week where you will do your deep-cleaning, and your food prep. 1 day. Then, this frees up the rest of your week to do other things like read more broadly.

I also feel you on the Shorts. I get distracted with them too at times, and it is nothing more then a tool from the enemy to make us less productive. But again, action, consequence. While you are spending time on one thing, you could be spending time on another.

 

[lunarWood]

I feel for you. A tad older, also introvert. Been burned by groups and work at one point or another. Still single so, take what I say with a grain of salt.
If I could make bread and oil, I join that club and expect some rewards. Or perhaps make your own ..
What is your work?
I admire your church diligence, is there anyone there?

I work as a machinist. I landed this job providentially, and I think it suits my abilities well. The downside is I work evening shifts (2pm to midnight), but only four days a week.

There are ladies in the congregation. Since this is a public forum, all I can say is that I am working on befriending one.

 

[lunarWood]

One small piece of advice, is you are going to have to choose. Every action has a consequence. If it is taking you a considerable amount of time to clean and cook each day, then something has to give. I only say this because it seems like this is burning you out, so that, you cant read as much as you would like.

First, I would say, dont trip about the seed oils, or simply cut out fried foods, or switch to lard. Lard, I believe is animal fats, or see if you can pick up some beef tallow. These are going to be more expensive, and not as flexible as seed oils, but will still get the job done. Also, I do not believe olive oil is a seed oil, and can be used for just about everything cept frying. If you like fried foods, invest in an air fryer. For breads, go to a local bakery and ask if they sell day-old loafs? Or, even ask them if they donate their older bread to some place, then pick it up from there. You can get a few loafs at a time and store them in the freezer until you need to use. Local bakeries are not going to use the same preservatives as name-brand, but even bakeries at stores are not going to either.

With your food, if you are not a stickler for variety, just meal prep. You can go to Dollar General, or even Wal-Mart and buy 3-6 packs of reusable containers, and if you have a little spare cash, get you a small deep-freeze (nothing wrong with putting it in the living-room) and every Sat. (or pick one day out of the week) and bake, cook, or grill your food for the week. Package it, and put it in the deep freezer. Then, before you go to bed, pull-out your meals for the next day, and just microwave them.

But that is the gist I am getting at. Dont get OCD on every fiber out of place in your apartment. Clean up after yourself daily, and pick a day out of the week where you will do your deep-cleaning, and your food prep. 1 day. Then, this frees up the rest of your week to do other things like read more broadly.

I also feel you on the Shorts. I get distracted with them too at times, and it is nothing more then a tool from the enemy to make us less productive. But again, action, consequence. While you are spending time on one thing, you could be spending time on another.

Agreed. Every action will have a consequence.

Thanks for the advice on cooking — however I already do meal preps in advance, and I often just eat the same meal for the entire work week. It takes me somewhere between 3-5 hours to make all the food needed for the work week. I don’t know how my mother could manage to do so much cooking everyday when I was growing up and have dishes tidied up like it’s nobody’s business.

I actually already render my own lard/tallow. I can get away with only doing 2 batches a year, so it’s not really a big time stealer, compared to making bread. I guess it’s time to look for a good local bakery and set aside some cash for it to get more free time in return.

With regards to cleaning, I try to do a deep clean monthly — sometimes bimonthly, eek.

It might be a good idea to uninstall YouTube from my phone altogether.

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

My simple advice would be to spend the majority of your time when you are not at work, in serving the church, and look for a wife as well. Having a family to love and serve, and serving the church are the two most important things I could ever have in life.

 

[Redeemed Ronin]

I've been there about ten years ago. It's a struggle no matter how old you get because priorities change, and things get out of sync. With that in mind, I have two thoughts:

• What specifically are your goals and priorities at this stage in life? Five years from now, where do you hope to be, if the Lord allows?
• Check out the resources (and book) from Redeeming Productivity. I've been going through the book and newslettrs, and it's given me a lot of food for thought, which I wish I knew about years ago. Some of it is almost obvious – I've had several "d'uh" moments – but the author organized the concepts in such a way that the are Biblically prinicipled and immensely practical.

Blessings to you.

 

[MyCrows]

I work as a machinist. I landed this job providentially, and I think it suits my abilities well. The downside is I work evening shifts (2pm to midnight), but only four days a week.

There are ladies in the congregation. Since this is a public forum, all I can say is that I am working on befriending one.

Current machinist and husband/father here. Machining is a respectable trade, and the nature of the work can vary within the field. One thing I noticed is that there is a tendency for family guys to try to get out of that nightshift grind, and on to daylight.

You may feel less burnt out if you are able to get a daytime postion where you are, and I'm sure it will be seen by the young women you are in contact with to be a move toward stability, and family-readiness.

May the Lord bless your focus on serving His church, and your devotional time during this busy, and formative time in your life. This is a time for great growth, but comes with great opportunity for distraction. Keep on!

 

[Theoretical]

I often feel spent between regular work, taking care of things in my apartment (cooking, cleaning, laundry), mid-week fellowship/study groups, visiting just one pair of elderly folks in the church, and evangelism (about once a month).
- Cooking and cleaning tend to take up a lot of time. I have lost faith in store-bought bread and seed oils, so I make alternatives myself. And, it’s cheaper to do it myself, but at the expense of time.

As far as spiritual disciplines are concerned, I am committed to doing my daily devotions and catechizing myself as a newly reformed person. I would love to read more, including Scriptures and good books, but this proves especially difficult if my mental energy is gone.

This is actually quite normal. I think we have some survivorship bias happening with some of the near super-hero types who did 10,000 things at once and had very large and expansive lives. We don't hear so much about the candles that literally just melted away and aged 2x as fast. You have a stable trade, describe yourself as maintaining your household, fellowshipping with the brethren multiple times, visiting an elderly couple, and doing evangelizing. Especially if you're resting and worshipping on the Sabbath, that's enough to fill six days.

Even your meal prep time sounds incredibly reasonable for the yield you get. Perhaps the only thing that could boost your energy would be the extent to which you do physical exercise and stay in shape, if you are in shape.

What you're describing is incredibly household-sound and conscientious, especially for a young man of your age. The curse unfortunately means even our good toil wears us out.

Discipline when you are young like this pays enormous dividends later in your life and a lack of it really poisons your efforts later in life in ways I'm really not proud of for my own part as someone almost 15 years removed from you. A shocking amount of life and really thriving at it is showing up day in and day out, over and over and over again and doing the little things consistently.

 

[lunarWood]

I've been there about ten years ago. It's a struggle no matter how old you get because priorities change, and things get out of sync. With that in mind, I have two thoughts:

• What specifically are your goals and priorities at this stage in life? Five years from now, where do you hope to be, if the Lord allows?
• Check out the resources (and book) from Redeeming Productivity. I've been going through the book and newslettrs, and it's given me a lot of food for thought, which I wish I knew about years ago. Some of it is almost obvious – I've had several "d'uh" moments – but the author organized the concepts in such a way that the are Biblically prinicipled and immensely practical.

Blessings to you.

Thank you for the resource on productivity. I will check it out.

My goals and priorities currently are (1) work and save up money, (2) read/memorize/catechize as much as possible. Five years from now, if the Lord wills, I would like to be married and have children.

Current machinist and husband/father here. Machining is a respectable trade, and the nature of the work can vary within the field. One thing I noticed is that there is a tendency for family guys to try to get out of that nightshift grind, and on to daylight.

You may feel less burnt out if you are able to get a daytime postion where you are, and I'm sure it will be seen by the young women you are in contact with to be a move toward stability, and family-readiness.

May the Lord bless your focus on serving His church, and your devotional time during this busy, and formative time in your life. This is a time for great growth, but comes with great opportunity for distraction. Keep on!

Thank you, fellow machinist! Night shift is definitely not ideal. If given the choice, I would jump on the daylight train ASAP.

 

[lunarWood]

This is actually quite normal. I think we have some survivorship bias happening with some of the near super-hero types who did 10,000 things at once and had very large and expansive lives. We don't hear so much about the candles that literally just melted away and aged 2x as fast. You have a stable trade, describe yourself as maintaining your household, fellowshipping with the brethren multiple times, visiting an elderly couple, and doing evangelizing. Especially if you're resting and worshipping on the Sabbath, that's enough to fill six days.

Even your meal prep time sounds incredibly reasonable for the yield you get. Perhaps the only thing that could boost your energy would be the extent to which you do physical exercise and stay in shape, if you are in shape.

What you're describing is incredibly household-sound and conscientious, especially for a young man of your age. The curse unfortunately means even our good toil wears us out.

Discipline when you are young like this pays enormous dividends later in your life and a lack of it really poisons your efforts later in life in ways I'm really not proud of for my own part as someone almost 15 years removed from you. A shocking amount of life and really thriving at it is showing up day in and day out, over and over and over again and doing the little things consistently.

Thank you for this perspective, and I appreciate the exhortation to be disciplined.

My job keeps me in shape for the most part .

 

[pgwolv]

• Check out the resources (and book) from Redeeming Productivity. I've been going through the book and newslettrs, and it's given me a lot of food for thought, which I wish I knew about years ago. Some of it is almost obvious – I've had several "d'uh" moments – but the author organized the concepts in such a way that the are Biblically prinicipled and immensely practical.

I also want to thank you for this resource; I am in great need to rethink how to redeem my time, even just with staying focused on my work as a freelancer.