This Blog

This blog will be a place where Heidi and I can chronicle the happenings of our lives which, at the moment, are pretty detached from the mundane, standard homogeny in which most of us live at any given time (and in which we will undoubtedly live again in the future). Hence, it should be good blogging material. Our lives are actually rather interesting right now. I know, it seems a bit presumptuous to have a blog for the sole purpose of telling everyone about your life, but we’ve actually been encouraged to do this by a lot of people as we’re getting set to embark on some serious life change.

I started a blog once before, but abandoned it after a short time when I began to feel like I was simply adding my useless opinion on politics, religion, etc. to the already existing sea of useless opinions that existed in countless other blogsites. The reality is that, now that everyone and anyone can have a blog, there are far more people commenting on weighty issues than are actually worth reading on such subjects. Many such bloggers are enamored with the idea it's beneficial to society to have something such as the Internet to allow the "little guy's" voice to come through. It just kind of feels right - something about the democratic-ness and the entrepreneurial-ness and the challenge-the-status-quo-ness of it all. Alas, however, it doesn't change the fact that there are simply a relative few people who are educated, informed and lucid enough to present worthwhile thoughts on those big things. But as you can probably already detect, I like to fancy myself a writer and thinker, so I can't promise that some of those opinion-type posts won't come through occasionally...

But the primary purpose of this blog is for us to stay in contact with the community we've developed here in Colorado, as we journey to Chicago, and to keep friends and family updated on our lives. All that to say, I think we'll actually stick with this blog and have fun with it, as the motivation is to keep up with people and stay in contact, versus the delusional notion that I'm writing as authority on anything.

So, the transition, in summary, is this. After 6+ years since college, I (Josh) have worked as a waiter, musician, financial salesman, and mostly as a music director at a church and a senior debt underwriter for a regional commercial bank. I've finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up (which has been heavily influenced by what I can be when I grow up, a.k.a., not a rockstar), which is a professional investor (either in I-Banking or Investment Management), so I'm headed off to the University of Chicago to get an MBA. God has blessed me immensely with the opportunity to go to a top five business school (#1 in BusinessWeek, http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/06/, and #5 in U.S. News, http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/mba/brief/mbarank_brief.php) and I’m really excited. Heidi has been working in nursing since college and has really done well in her career. She’s just finishing her masters in nursing at the University of Colorado, and she’ll be a nurse practitioner in a few short months. She’s already got a great job in Chicago working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital downtown as an advanced practice nurse. We’ve also got an apartment that’s 20 blocks south of downtown in the South Loop. It’s a pretty nice place, close to downtown, restaurants, the lake, and good for public transportation, especially for Heidi to get downtown.

This transition is, of course, bittersweet. It’s amazing the kind of community we found in Colorado in just a few years – mostly due to our involvement at Pinecrest Community Church in Parker. I was the music/worship guy there from 2001 through 2007, and Heidi was involved in lots of different ways, but primarily as a singer on the worship team. The church went through some very intense times, as well as strong growth, during that period. Pinecrest had a beautiful goodbye event for me a few weeks back and Heidi and I were truly touched by that. God gets all the glory, and it was so powerful to hear people’s sentiments to me about how their lives had been affected by God’s work through the music ministry. It’s those types of events that really dispel the feelings of futility and frustration one has when working in the thick of some kind of endeavor over a period of time. Pinecrest: thank you so much!!! It was truly my pleasure and benefit.

Leaving Vectra Bank will also be somewhat sad. Everyone there has been so supportive to me – from supporting me as I took a nine-month sabbatical to work full-time at the church to being tremendously helpful as I was applying to business schools. They’ve put up with more from me than most employers probably would. Plus, I’ve got some great friends there as well.

So, that’s enough for the first post. Heidi will be also be checking in soon, I’m sure. Drop me a line and keep me updated on your lives as well. Let me know that it’s not just our moms reading this thing.

Josh