Category: Personal

Broken Music, originally uploaded by shaycam.

As you may have already noticed, I changed shaycam’s look a little bit. I felt that I really wanted it to be a little more “reader friendly” and as well have a little more space to showcase some of my photography. I guess you could say I’m trying to keep the “cam” in Shaycam. In doing so, I have learned a few things. Let’s consider this retrospective. If you scroll down the page a bit you will see a menu on the right that says “Archives.” If you click on that you will notice that this blog goes back all the way too 2001. The truth is, the blog actually went back farther than that, but I have since lost some of my original postings. Unfortunately, blogs weren’t blogs until later and the course of time has allowed me to lose some of my original work as a junior higher. Needless to say, it’s all here now. That’s where I started thinking…

As I was reading back through some of my thoughts as a high schooler, I realized how immature I was. I guess that’s part of being a young man, but it’s hard for me to see that in myself. As you grow older you can do two things: 1. Hide your immaturity a little better and 2. get more mature. Hopefully I am doing the latter. Yet it has been interesting for me to journey back into memories and thoughts I had as a young person. It has sort of consumed my mind this past weekend. I have a semi regular update on my life for the past 6 years and what do I do with that? I ask myself one major question: How have I grown?

The truth is. I’ve grown a ton. I was able to experience college and all the memories, friendships, and new learning that comes with that. Four years of intense training and work to hopefully be not only a smarter and better citizen, but a more more mature and knowledgeable person. I have seen growth in my relationships, in my learning, and in my Christian walk. And now I have been able to experience the joys of marriage. To know what it means to have “my other half.” There is a sense of completeness now that never was. Someone else I have to take care of, in the same way I have to take care of myself. This is not something I have finished learning, but continually learn more about every day. And on and on it goes… Needless to say it has been a joy for me to look back and a joy for me to see where the Lord has brought me in the past 6 years.

Finally, I want to end by sharing something with you that I wrote to myself just a year ago. On March 17th, 2006 I went to a website called “FutureMe.org” and told it to send me an email to myself a year from that date. So last week I received this email from myself:

Dear FutureMe,

You’re writing this to yourself because you don’t have anything else to do today. Did you start a company?, or what did you do? Do you have any plans for kids? Are you going into ministry?

Do you love God more today than you did last year?

Let me know,
 Shay

The key is the last question: Do you love God more today than you did last year? If I can answer that question with a yes, then I know I’m on the right track. So here’s to a look back and many memories as I look to the future.

we got to get our play on.

The Big Boy, originally uploaded by shaycam.

In the past week and days I have been overwhelmed by friends and family who have responded to my last blog. Whether it be a phone calls, emails, or comments everyone has felt the need to contact my wife because they just wanted to make sure I am doing OK. First, thanks everyone who has talked to me or just encouraged me in the past few weeks, it’s a huge blessing. Secondly, I feel the need to be clear with those of you who read my blog and either know me or don’t know me.

As a Christian, I am called to trust the Lord in any circumstance. For now, the circumstance that I am needing to trust the Lord in is my job. I have been without full-time work for a few months now and it’s starting to wear on me a bit. But please understand that though sometimes I write (blogs) because I feel the need to share what’s on my mind, it doesn’t mean that I am not trusting my Savior for my strength. I guess you can say that I am a pessimist. I don’t always see the the greener grass on the other side of the hill. Thankfully, I married someone who is the biggest optimist I think I’ve ever met. My wife sees the best in circumstances and people, and I believe that the Lord has designed us with such a balance for a reason. God knew that I would probably be down all the time if I didn’t have an encouraging and loving wife. So for that, I am blessed.

At the end of the day, I am still learning. I’m still learning how to trust the Lord for everything in my life, especially my job. My conclusion is that we are always in a state of learning. No graduation from any schooling is the end of learning by any means. As one of my professors said at college “.. I know you are probably going to learn more in those dorms than you will in any of these classrooms for the time you are here at college..” I agree. And now that has translated into my life outside of traditional schooling. I am continuing to learn more about how I am to live this life each and every day.

Thanks again to everyone who has encouraged both Bethany and I. We would encourage you to continue to pray that the Lord will grow us to be more like Himself. That we would trust him in all circumstances. And that, maybe, just maybe… I would be able to find a job soon… in His timing.

Today I realized how much of my dad I don’t have in me and wish I did. I had an interview for a sales job today in which I had to take an evaluation type test. It’s not a real test where there are right and wrong answers, but an evaluation of who I am and what I’m like. Basically it’s supposed to allow the employer to know if would be able to do a sales type job or not. The results were interesting. Now back to the point about my dad.

My dad was a hard worker. At one point he was commuting to Los Angeles for over 3 hours round trip to his full time job, and as well, had his own business at home fixing appliances. I don’t really remember him complaining much about it, he just worked hard and that was it. My evaluation today told me that I am not like him. It showed that I am not a hard worker. It showed that though I don’t like hard work, I am a people person and people like being around me. But unfortunately, that’s not going to pay the bills. No amount of my personality will make a paycheck come in every few weeks. During this interview/evaluation the guy working with me was an older gentleman. He asked me about how I did in high school and college and my grades, etc. After responding to his questions he told me it didn’t surprise him because it matched up exactly with what the evaluation in his hand was telling him. Soon after we finished talking he showed me around their office and pointed out another guy, who happend to be from Sri Lanka, India. He then proceeded to tell me how that guy was making six figures doing sales and was a hard worker. He added that knowing that would allow me to understand the work ethic in India, to which I agreed.

Apparently I didn’t learn much from my dad. Though I went to work with him on occasion and saw how he did things day in and day out, I didn’t learn. I wish I would’ve. I wish I could go back and learn what it means to be a hard worker, because right now it’s killing me. Honestly, I’m not sure what to do. I know that the only way to learn how to work hard is to work hard, but I really don’t know what that looks like. You could say I’m a little down about this today. Well, it’s true; am. I can’t believe I missed the boat on this one. I feel stuck, or even wedged. Can’t seem to move my arms and my legs to get free of this one. Maybe I’ll never learn.

Ready To Eat, originally uploaded by shaycam.

It’s not everyday you get to attend a black tie affair, but fortunately (or unfortunately) for me I did.

This past Friday I assisted a photographer at very expensive event at the Ritz Carlton Pasadena. We were going around snapping candid photos of people and things, but really I was simply taken away by the amount of money that was blown in one night. I have probably told 15 people about this in person because I am still confused about it all. When I actually got to the event in my sweet ‘98 Jetta, they promptly valet parked that baby in with the Mercedes, BMW’s, and even Bentley’s. Of course my little Jetta stood out quite nice with her “shaycam.com” sticker on the back. So this event was the 75th anniversary for a very expensive, private high school in Pasadena. During it they held a live auction and I thought I was going to flip. Let me explain. One of the auction items was a parking space for the 07-08 school year for one of the students. So whoever won that item would be able to give that parking space to their child or grandchild for the next school year. You wanna guess how much that went for? $20,000. That’s right, that’s 3 zero’s after the number 20. That’s a lot of zero’s. In fact, I’d really rather not talk about this right now, I think I’m feeling sick. Seriously though, I saw a puppy go for $9000 and a diamond broach went for like $18,000. Maybe I’m not supposed to be telling anyone about all this, but there was 950 people at this event and every one of them was wearing clothes that were more expensive than my car. The chances of any of them reading shaycam.com are not likely. I have a better chance of the parking attendant reading this (by the way.. I tipped that guy a sweet $3 for taking care of my Jetta).

Nevermind all that. It’s one of those things you just have to shake your head at. All in all I think the night was fine… well except the part where old, white people were dancing. I could’ve really done without that image in my mind the rest of my life.