Julie and I knew back in February of this year that our time in Cardiff, Wales was coming to an end and that we needed to move back to the US. In March of this year I came to Portland to decide if this was the city for us. It was, and we started planning towards the big move. I started searching for a job in earnest in May — and it has finally culminated in a new job as an Education Consultant with Ochin.

I start my new career on Monday, December 5th, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

Matt and I were talking and I was putting money in the parking meter. Very suddenly, without any forewarning, I pooped my pants. That is the truth.

“Hey Matt, I gotta go. I just pooped my pants.”

I think I remember Matt saying OK.

★

My family and I moved to Portland 2.5 weeks ago. We have embraced the city and have fallen in love with her already. We live in the Sellwood neighborhood and are now expert antiquers. We have toured the city. We have eaten its’ food, and drank its’ coffee. I’m already shopping for a commuter bike. The boy already has a Portland Timbers jersey. We think we’re going to like it here.

And I have things I want to write about. For the first time in quite a while there I things I feel like saying. I don’t pretend to think that they will be profound, but it will be me…all me.

So stay tuned. And if you’re in Portland let me know. I’d love to meet you.

Cheers.

We’ve got more coming, and will update the list as we add things to Gumtree.

UPDATE

UPDATE 2

Chaucer said, in 1394, that “all things come to an end.” Sometime later someone added the word “good”. In either case, so it is with our time living in Cardiff, Wales. I have resigned my position as Director of CommunityOne and at the end of July we will be moving back to the US.

We’ve enjoyed our time here. It’s been a wonderful experience learning & attempting to understand a culture and a people that are not our own. We hope that our efforts to befriend those around us and show them Jesus has made an impact but only God knows for sure. We are confident in knowing that God has had us here for a season and yet are also confident in knowing that it is time to move on.

We have already started telling our friends here, and those I was helping through CommunityOne. And, we have started the process of selling the things we can’t bring back with us and prioritizing the things that will be crated up and shipped back to the States.

If you’re curious, we will be flying back to San Antonio to use Julie’s parents home as a base. But we will most likely be moving from Texas to Portland, Oregon in August. We feel it’s time for a new adventure and Portland is the setting for our next chapter. Currently I have the opportunity to do some contract work for an organization I have been a part of the past couple of years called the Upstream Collective. It’s a part-time position so I will looking for other opportunities as well.
…

With Love,
Brad, Julie, & the kids

I’ve enjoyed setting up and running CommunityOne. The charity itself and the services it provided will end in July. I am looking to turn Cardiff Connect over to someone that shares the vision of what it was attempting to do. If you’re interested get in touch. I’ll keep you updated with how that’s going.

And if you know of anyone in the Portland area that is hiring let me know. And send them to my HireMePortland site.

Cheers.

MAKING IDEAS HAPPEN {COMMUNALLY}

• Share Ideas Liberally
• Share Ownership of Ideas
• Seek Competition
• Fight Your Way to Breakthrough
• Don’t become burdened by consensus // find sacred extremes – compromise on rest
• Overcome the Stigma of Self Marketing. Make sure others know what you’re good at.

MAKING IDEAS HAPPEN {LEADERSHIP}

• Leaders talk last (silence the visionary)
• Develop Others through appreciation
• Reduce your amount of ‘Insecurity Work’
• Seek Restraint
• Judge based on Initiative (Not experience)
• Value Chemistry Over People
• Unique is Opportune. Defy the status-quo. Shunned before celebrated.

“Nothing Extraordinary is achieved through Ordinary Means.”

I thought I would share with you the books I’ve read. I recommend all of them, otherwise I probably wouldn’t share them with you. But obviously I recommend some more than others, so I’m including the official 128 Star (★) Rating. One ★ means you might not want to read it unless you’re just really bored. Five ★’s means “Don’t miss this. Go buy it right now.”

In no particular order:

• A Million Miles in a Thousand Years — Donald Miller. ★★★★
• Outliers: The Story of Success — Malcolm Gladwell. ★★★★★
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference — Malcolm Gladwell. ★★★
• Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit — Francis Chan. ★★★
• Counterfeit Gods — Tim Keller. ★★★★
• The Prodigal God — Tim Keller. ★★★
• Seeing God in the Ordinary — Michael Frost. ★★★
• HTML5 for Web Designers — Jeremy Keith. ★★★

Outliers is a game changer. It will cause you to look at the world around you very differently. The HTML5 book has a limited audience, but the others are suitable to anyone really and can be found on Amazon.

Social media has changed the way we view and interact with the world around us. From Twitter to Facebook to micro-blogs we have shaped tools that allow us to get information more quickly, more succinctly, and more frequently. Unfortunately, these tools that we have shaped to “help” us are now shaping us…with consequences we have yet to fully know and understand.

There are those vices, those addictions, whose consequences are easy to recognize…especially after years of observation. The smoker faces any number of cancers and/or respiratory illnesses. The gambler faces loss of career, possessions, and even family in some cases. The drug addict faces…well, you get the point. But what about the person who, in a quest to know more, read more, and learn more through the tools that power social media, is spending copious amounts of time in front of his/her computer? What happens to, and in, the person that is addicted to Facebook, Twitter, etc.? Even now psychologists do not how to label this type of addiction, much less how to treat it. With smokers you take away the cigarettes, with gamblers you take away the ability to gamble, and with drug addicts you take away the drugs. But what do you do with social media/computer addicts? Can you take away the computer? What will the person do to communicate (email), to book travel reservations, to do research? I’m being a little facetious, but I think you understand where I’m going with this. The computer has become such an integral part of our lives that it is almost inconceivable to contemplate a life without one.

Several weeks ago I came to the conclusion that it was time to honestly evaluate my use of the computer, and more specifically my use of social media. I loved Twitter and the 500+ people I “followed”. I found it extremely useful to find out more about the city I live in, to track releases of software, to understand more about web design. I loved Facebook…the perfect tool for keeping in touch with friends and family around the world. Flickr, Gowalla, blogs, they all had their use and I was engaged with all of them. I knew that these “tools” were impacting me more than they should when I began to feel that I was going to miss something important if I wasn’t monitoring them. When I worked from home I had Tweetie (my Twitter client) up and running the whole time. I checked email and Facebook from my iPhone right before turning out the lights at night and as soon as I awoke in the morning. It all became too much. Honest evaluation led me to realize that my marriage was suffering, my parenting was suffering, my friendships (now that’s ironic) were suffering. A change had to be made.

Here is a sampling of the changes I’ve made:

• No computer before the kids leave for school, except to check the weather forecast.
• No computer from 3PM to 8PM (kids get home at 3PM, go to bed at 8PM).
• No computer on Sundays (it’s a day of rest and family).
• I check Facebook no more than 3 times a day (morning, lunch, and bedtime).
• I dropped the amount of people I’m following on Twitter from 570 (2 months ago) to 182 today. I will probably drop another 80 or so within the next couple of weeks.
• Dropped my RSS subscriptions (blogs, etc.) down to 68, from well over 100.
• I only sit down in front of the computer when I have a task to accomplish. Editing a photo, replying to email, filing an expense report, etc. No more pointless browsing and fiddling.

Is social media evil? No. Are these tools evil? No. I think great benefits can come from the use of these tools. But have we as a society jumped head first into something with little consideration for the long term consequences? Yes, I think so. And while my solutions for handling my time on the computer may be a bit extreme for some of you, I would still ask you to consider, honestly, are the tools shaping you, or are you using them effectively?

From the time I graduated from university (1997) to early 2006 I worked for a major telecommunications company in America. It was a good job, especially if you wanted to take the opportunities to climb the corporate ladder and make a name for yourself. I taught courses for our internal training department. If you were a software engineer and were looking to move jobs, or gain new skills, you came to us. I traveled a little (in the States) and taught a lot. And like I said, it was a good job.

But I wasn’t fulfilled. I had no interest in climbing the corporate ladder. I didn’t see how that would have any sort of impact on the world around me. So my wife and I started asking questions, to ourselves, to the God we follow, to friends, etc. We wanted to get to the end of our lives and not feel as though we had wasted the opportunities we had been given. And with that, we sold our home, our two cars, and some of our stuff, packed up the rest, and moved to Cardiff. I am unapologetically a follower of Jesus. My relationship with him motivates me to do the things I do and say the things I say. I’m not the guy that’s going to cram my beliefs down someone’s throat, but in order to be true to my beliefs it’s important that you know that our main motivation for coming to a place and culture not our own was that we felt like this is where God wanted us. And I’m here doing what I do because of my love for others…not to save them, not to convert them…but because I’ve been loved, I’m to love others.

Once here I established a charity (non-profit) called CommunityOne. I won’t go into all the details about CommunityOne, you can check the website for those. Essentially we offer services (teaching, business training, web/online assistance) to people that need them. No strings attached. No “you need Jesus” speech. Just assistance where we can provide it. I truly do believe that communities can be transformed through the simple act of helping others. As an initiative of CommunityOne we launched Cardiff Connect in the middle of last year. Cardiff Connect was established to promote individuals and organisations in Cardiff that are doing good for the community. We put up two organisations last year and have a couple lined up for the next couple of weeks.

CommunityOne will be getting a makeover in the coming weeks. We just got back from a six month break in the US and a new start means a new look. Here’s a teaser:

That’s me…and that’s how I got to Cardiff. If you’re curious about anything let me know.

And if you’d like to support CommunityOne you can shop at Amazon.