I sit at a corner table overlooking the Belfast International Airport tarmac. It seems I do half my general life admin in airports. Soft jazz fills my ears in that closed and cozy way that earbuds can facilitate and the coffee cup I drained peers out the window with me as I write.
Today’s flight returns me to Edinburgh after a week in Northern Ireland exploring a rather unexpected future scenario for my next steps. From an entire school year of prospecting job opportunities, through a spring-time that felt quite scant regarding future options, to halfway through the summer when a couple options sprung unexpectedly onto the table, and now quickly approaching the home stretch of my degree and the point at which the next step will very quickly come into focus by proxy — it’s been an interesting and introspective ride. And I still know laughably little about what’s coming around the corner. Here’s what I do know:
-
A prospective potential opening has come about to coach for a college in the States.
-
A prospective potential arrangement has been presented that would look like me moving to Northern Ireland to do lots of coaching and coaches’ development things. Note the ambiguity. That’s not me being cryptic. That’s about all I know.
The daunting comes in when I contemplate jumping into another unconventional chapter that involves ambiguities like visas, salaries or lack thereof, and lots of creative arrangements. Yet again, the choice seems to be whether I get off at the next platform of this metaphorical train ride and get cozy in a conventional job with a picket fence and discernible career steps, or stay in my seat on this crazy adventure.
I honestly don’t know what comes next. These next couple weeks will be quite telling as we nail down more of the specifics entailed in joining the basketball world of Northern Ireland.
For an update on the immediate future though, here’s what I know is coming up:
-
I essentially have to finish my dissertation over the coming two weeks.
-
The reason for this is because after much deliberation, I’ve agreed to join a sport ministry team that needed a basketball coach for 3+ weeks from the last week of July through the third week of August. I’m excited about this one but hemmed and hawed because it will cost a fair amount of money. I’ll be sending out a request for support for this — if anyone is interested to help me financially with this one, let me know and I’ll send you more information about it. I’ll post again to the blog in a day or two to explain a bit more.
-
Once my dissertation is finished and I return from that coaching trip, I’ll officially be at the end of summer and will *I’m assuming* have a next step. I’m praying for somewhere that feels more permanent and a role that I can dig into, preferably where I can both coach and contribute to a strategy and program for developing new coaches.
Alright, that’s all I have for now. I’m thinking of keeping track of how long a streak I can maintain of life update posts that don’t actually contain any concrete life updates.
Speak soon,
-LS
Leave a Reply