So, this past Sunday, I took the day off from working/directing tech at the church. Even longer than my once legendary record of running the video switcher the most consecutive times in a row, was my record for not missing/working Sundays in a row.

My last "break" was for a weekend back in March 2008. That's right... over a year ago. That was back when I had pretty much just started this blog. And, if you recall, when I came back, I had found out that the lighting system had pretty much blown up, and it was the week before Easter, and it was a stressful time of my life.

I more or less vowed that it was not worth the time and effort to go on vacation. Every time I left, it was a lot of work in advance and a lot of work upon returning just to even leave in the first place. So, I just stayed in town every weekend (or returned late Saturday night) to be back at Southside for Sunday morning to direct tech.

I suppose it should also be a convincing factoid when I tell people that I don't really get sick... that I was able to make it to church every Sunday so early in the morning for like 60 weeks in a row. I didn't miss a single week.

Matt told me that after the Easter season was over, he wanted me to take a Sunday off. So, I started working toward taking this past Sunday off from working. I worked all week on video spots and documentation and checking/double-checking to make sure everyone was scheduled to be there and that I had pretty much everything ready to go before Sunday morning. I like having everything ready-to-go before Sunday morning anyway, but there have been a good number of Sundays where I just showed up and figured it out as I went along, because I knew it wouldn't be a problem.

Even though it was a lot of work, I really enjoyed my Sunday off. For once, I actually slept on Saturday night. I woke up at 9AM Sunday morning without a single missed call or text message. (Several weeks ago, I started putting my cell phone in another room during the night so that I would not be tempted to wake up and check emails, or answer it while I was sleeping. It helps a lot.)

I got up after sleeping in, got dressed, ate some breakfast, and then went to a service at Brookwood Church. It was great. The nice thing is that it's like a mile from my house... a lot quicker drive than going to Southside. Not that anyone should pick one church over another just because it's close to your house.

I walked in, acted like a regular attender as much as possible, and sat in the middle of a row of chairs smack in the middle of the room. My friend Tory joined me so I wasn't completely by myself. I had never been to a service there, but I liked it. It was different than Southside, but there were several production aspects that I enjoyed (and similarly was disappointed at). It was a nice change of pace.

The main reason I didn't attend a service at Southside on my day off was that, having not been on a break for so long, I wasn't sure that I could sit in a service and not overly critique my team or jump up from my seat the moment something went wrong.

So, after the service was over at Brookwood, I walked around their facility for a while (I had not been there before) and then headed over to Southside to catch the end of the third service. I joined the team in the tech booth and hung out with a few of those guys for a while.

Overall, it was a good morning. I've been working like crazy since Sunday trying to stay caught up on projects though. I've fallen into the "was this worth it" frame of mind a few times already today, but I know the time off was worth it. I was able to relax and refresh and refocus. I've heard many comments already from people saying, "I didn't even know you were gone on Sunday", which I am assuming means, "You trained the team so well to operate without you" instead of, "We never notice if you're there or not." I suppose the latter isn't that bad either, since I'm all about being invisible. Like a ninja.

So, other than that, I've been crazy busy. Working long hours and getting things done. I'd write more about it... but, would you really read it?

Later,

Joe