Moving Time
Life update time - I’m moving!
Last month, I accepted a new position at the University of Iowa as the Event and Communication Project Specialist on the Communications & Relations team in the International Programs Office! While I am sad to be leaving Mankato, I am very excited for this new adventure that is bringing me closer to family and friends back in Iowa.
I have greatly enjoyed and appreciated the opportunities to grow and develop as a professional at Minnesota State University, Mankato over the past 4.5 years. I often joke that throughout grad school, I had zero desire to work in Residential Life but after my time at Stadium Heights, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I have learned a lot serving in this role, all of which I will take with me throughout my career.
It’s a quick update - time to get back to packing!
Putting 2 and 2 together - the path to my next 22
Before you begin reading this, I need you to understand that this blog might not make a whole lot of sense as you read it, but I’m going to be walking you through my day today and 3 separate events that have led me to writing this.
— — —
This morning, I was aimlessly scrolling through Instagram and came upon a series of stories posted by a friend. He was sharing about the text messages he has saved from people since moving to a new city and the lessons he’s learned about himself over the past few years. I fired off a quick response to one of his stories and we followed that up with a few messages back and forth ourselves.
Him: thanks dude, in my feels for sure lol
Me: Need to be though- our feels are our truest
selves. Good to be connected with who you are
Him: absolutely. totally agree with that, just
takes time and patience sometimes to sort
through it and build up that relationship with
yourself
Me: Agree too- can’t say I’m necessarily good at
it myself. I’m good at recognizing paths forward
but executing them for myself is where I can
come up short
I fired off that last message and moved forward with my day. Between 11 am and 3 pm, here's roughly what I did.
Played a golf game on my phone
Made mac n’ cheese for lunch
Cleaned out my inbox and unsubscribed from marketing e-mails I’ve started receiving since holiday shopping
Scrolled through Instagram
Set my Fantasy Football line up for the day
Showered
Played more golf on my phone
Played with Riley
Watched a little bit of football
Scrolled through Instagram and Facebook again
What I had hoped to accomplish looked vastly different today, though. I had considered going grocery shopping and knew I needed to do some laundry, empty the dishwasher, and vacuum the house, but my day consisted mostly of lounging around the house and passively avoiding things on my to do list.
— — —
Around 3 pm, I got a boost of energy from who knows where, and decided to make myself another coffee and read a book. I picked up one I’ve been reading off and on for a few months now, 25 Lies Twenty Somethings Need to Stop Believing, by Paul Angone, flipped it to where I last left off, and started reading Lie #11 - I need to stay constantly connected.
For several pages, the author came at my life, consistently calling me and my habits out as it outlined why we should stop trying to be constantly connected with our phones and live more of our life offline and in the present with the people around us. One part in particular hit me, “Yet here’s the problem: our escape into our phone does not decrease our loneliness - it heightens it. We are all escaping into a disconnecting connection.” Dang.
I started my day off talking to a friend about connections and how an understanding of who you are matters more than anything else - we must be committed to a healthy relationship with ourself if we hope to be able to connect well with others too.
The problem with our ever connected world is that loneliness runs rampant. 6 of the 10 things I did in the early afternoon were on my phone or computer, an escape from the responsibilities I set for myself today and a desire to feel connected to others while sitting alone in my apartment.
— — —
After reading, I fed Riley and got to work on some chores for the day. I did the dishes, cleaned and vacuumed my apartment, and started a load of laundry.
I then took some of what I read and put it into practice, deleting the 2 golf game apps I’ve been playing for the past couple of weeks and purging through my phone, deleting apps I didn’t need anymore and cleaning up photos and notes I have saved. That led me to discovering a note I wrote back on September 5, 2021.
That day, I must have been feeling pretty productive and made a to do list 22 items long. Of those 22 items, 5 I accomplished that day and had marked off as complete, including deciding on a week to go on vacation and go hunting as well as adding photos from my phone and computer to Facebook. That left 17 things I didn’t get to that day. From planning out my meals for the next week to changing the names of friends in my phone who had recently gotten married, there just wasn’t enough time in my day to accomplish everything I set out to the morning I made that note.
Or was there?
Being that it’s 3 months since that day, I can only assume what happened that led me to not accomplish my list. I probably chose to be on my phone more than I should have and flipped between time spent on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat instead of using my time more wisely and crossing off more from my to do list. At the top of my list that day was to start writing a new blog to post and I wanted to write something about lethargy and motivation. It wasn’t one of the items I tackled that day, go figure given that topic.
— — —
Reading through that list from a few months ago and realizing that I had only even accomplished a handful more of the tasks since that day, didn’t feel great. Then I remembered the last thing I sent to my friend earlier this morning, “I’m good at recognizing paths forward but executing them for myself is where I can come up short.”
I don’t know if it’s lethargy, my personality, my desire for perfection that sometimes hinders my ability to start given I might fail, or a combination of these and a whole lot of other things in my life, but it was so simple to write that line to my friend this morning yet has been hard to own in my “real life” offline.
That’s changing.
In 2019, I created my 19 for 19, a year long set of 19 goals I wanted to accomplish. In 2022, I’m going to revisit this concept and work toward 22 changes I want to see in my life this coming year. In the next month, I’ll be putting together a list and I’ll be sure to share it here too. I found years ago that my best bet in working toward my goals was sharing them with you, friends, family, and random followers online, so that you can help hold me accountable to them and check in to see how I’m doing.
I can’t promise success, but I’ll promise to bring authentic honesty as I work to better myself and live a life day by day that I’m proud of. I promise to work toward choosing the paths forward working toward the things I want in life instead of failing to even start because that seems easier and safer than failing once I begin.
Stay tuned, more to come.
- DV
How I Got Here and What's Up Next...
In graduate school, we often had guest speakers join our classes. From Vice Presidents to Directors, they all came to our classroom to share some of their wisdom and help us on our way to a fulfilling career in higher education. Inevitably, our instructor would ask each of us students to introduce ourselves to our guest speaker and share what functional area we were interested in working in after graduating. For me, it often went something like this, “Hi, my name’s Daniel Vorwerk and I don’t know what functional area I’d like to be in yet, I just know I don’t want to do Res Life.”
Fast forward to July 2017, 2 months after graduation and I was still without a job heading in to the next academic year. I was living out of boxes as I sublet from a couple different people that summer with the hopes of landing a job soon. As my search progressed, I broadened my considerations in July to include jobs in functional areas I was less interested in, including jobs in student housing. This spreadsheet is what I used to track where I was at with my search, what jobs I still needed to apply for, and the subsequent interviews/offers I received.
I applied to a social media specialist position, a lead position at Target, and an admissions counselor to name a few. None of which I was overly excited about but hey, they were untapped potential at that point at least. On Monday morning, July 10, 2017, I found myself scrolling through old e-mails I had received from a variety of people with different job opportunities. One of them caught my eye and seemed like something I might enjoy, even if I wasn’t gung-ho about being in housing. I quickly fired off an e-mail to the individual who the e-mail originated from and asked if they were still accepting applications for the job since a couple of weeks had passed since it was sent out. Within hours, I received a response stating that no, the original position had been filled but as luck would have it, someone else submitted their resignation that same morning so there was in fact a vacancy.
Holy dang how lucky did I get.
I sent out my resume and cover letter that afternoon, received an offer to do a phone screening interview Tuesday, did my interview Wednesday, was offered an on campus interview Thursday, interviewed all day the following Monday, and accepted an offer to be in my current job as an interim appointment on Tuesday the 18th, all within 8 days.
8 days is all it took to change my trajectory and land me in a role I had been reluctant to even consider during my graduate school experience.
On August 1, 2017, I made the drive from Cedar Falls, IA to Mankato, MN to move in to my new apartment, a 3 bedroom unit at Stadium Heights Apartments. On August 3, I started my job, and 3 days later on the 6th, I started training my new staff into their role as Community Advisors.
That 1 year interim appointment was all it took to convince me of how big of a role Residential Life plays in the lives of students at a college/university. I applied for my job again in January 2018, and after a 3 month process, accepted it again in April 2018.
Now I find myself in a similar spot as I did in grad school. My Hall Director position was a 4 year assignment with an option for a 5th year if both the University and I exercised it, which we did. So now in my 5th year in the role, I’m still excited about where I’m at and the work I get to do to help students build connections, get involved, and achieve success at the University, but also excited for what’s ahead and the new opportunities that are out there. I started soft searching for my next opportunity in October 2020, and really ramped up my job search in May 2021.
What’s next though? Who’s to say. I’m actively looking to stay in higher education and looking to make a move into academic advising, student success/enrollment management, or the operations side of housing. If there’s anything I have learned from my last job search, though, it’s that I shouldn’t limit myself to the opportunities that are out there and where I might find myself.
What I do know, though, is that I have 9 months left in this job. Sure, I might get an offer from somewhere else and leave the role sooner, but that’s never a guarantee. What is guaranteed, right now, is my ability to love the work I am doing and continue to help students be successful living at Stadium Heights.
I’m excited for what’s up next and to continue to help students be successful in whatever new role I find myself in. And if you find yourself reading this and are looking to hire, hit me up - I’m always down to chat about new opportunities. :)
going light - part 2
Before I get too far into this, if you haven’t read Going Light - Part 1 yet, I’d recommend reading through that before you continue here.
Alright - now we are ready for part 2. A lot has changed in my life since I wrote part 1 back in the beginning of August. Part 1 was all about the lead up to going light and I ended the post by stating, “Next week, I’ll be posting again but with my thoughts on what it’s been like going light since July 21. Stay tuned.” Well here I am, three months late on “next week” but still excited to share my thoughts nonetheless.
For me, “going light” was about recognizing how much I used my smart phone and taking a step away from the smart aspects so I could get back to the root purpose of phones - to be used for communication. In July 2019, I took a break from social media all together and saw just how much I decreased my phone usage. Going light helped me do much of the same. I found myself using my phone less altogether and more focused and present when I had my Light Phone with me. I used my iPhone at home as if it were a iPod Touch and left it at home when I was at work, going out to eat, or simply out and about.
However, I brought an end to my Light Phone in mid-September due to 3 factors.
The Light Phone was tough to use. While it was nice having a phone that was only for communication, communicating on it was tough at times. I couldn’t get picture messages which only became frustrating when I had to tell people to e-mail them to me instead. Additionally, texting on the smaller device got to be annoying when I had a lot to say. While this is kind of the purpose of the smaller phone in hopes that the user picks up the phone and calls someone instead of texting, that wasn’t always possible when the other user was unavailable to talk.
I found myself choosing to use my iPhone A LOT at home, and after about a month, my screen time mirrored what it did before I started using my Light Phone, the time was just all spent on my iPhone at home instead of spread out throughout my day.
My job changed. I started supervising a 2nd staff team in a different location than my first. With this change came a 2nd office and a different type of mobile app that the new team was already using to communicate. During the first two weeks of splitting my time between two locations, I found myself missing messages from both teams and struggling to keep up with communication channels. Eventually, I found myself bringing my iPhone along with to work so I could continue to communicate with both teams on their respective applications.
After a while, these 3 factors added up enough that it was time to say goodbye to going light. While my Light Phone was something I enjoyed having for the time being, it’s okay that it wasn’t my forever. It taught me a lot about how I use my phone and I’m thankful for the time I had it to learn those lessons. I’m more aware of how I use my smart phone and how I can best utilize it as the tool that it is rather than the distraction that it has been.
I’m not perfect with using my smart phone, and that’s okay. At the end of the day, I’m happy I made the decision to go light for a couple of months.
I donated my hair
“Today’s the day.
After 1 year and 11 months, I’m cutting all of my hair off.
I assumed things would feel different, but it wasn’t until today that I have actually felt different.
My anxiety surrounding it has grown. I have questioned if today should be the day. I’ve debated if I should keep going a couple of months longer in order to have even just 1 more inch to donate or selfishly, more time to enjoy having long hair.
Through all of these feelings, my excitement has grown too. I haven’t told anyone that today was the day. As people have asked me over the summer when I’ll be cutting it, I’ve told them ‘Yea, I’ll do it sometime this fall,’ but it wasn’t until 3 weeks ago that I actually made the decision and booked the appointment to cut it.”
Back on October 9, 2018, I got a hair cut. There was no purpose to that cut, just a regular day and a normal hair cut. As 2018 grew to a close, I set a goal for 2019 to grow my hair out a bit. I had no intentions at that point to grow it out a ton; I just wanted a “mini flow” to see what it would be like. As 2019 progressed, I decided more and more that I wanted to have a purpose for growing out my hair rather than just doing it for the heck of it.
That’s when I made the decision to keep growing it out until it was long enough to donate.
If you’ve known me for a while, you know I was involved in Dance Marathon in college and working to improve the lives of kiddos being treated for life threatening illnesses is something I still care a heck of a lot about to this day. Outside of donating money to support these kiddos, though, I saw donating my hair as another avenue to help out kiddos like the ones I know through Dance Marathon.
A few months ago, I made the decision to donate through the organization, Children with Hair Loss, a non-profit that provides human hair replacements at no cost to children and young adults facing medically-related hair loss. Whether the child’s hair is lost due to cancer treatments, Alopecia, Trichotillomania, burns, etc., they can apply for hair through this organization.
Things I love about this organization:
The donation is specifically for children
Recipients don’t have to pay for their hair
The minimum to donate was only 8 inches
In total, I was able to donate 9.5 inches to Children with Hair Loss!
A question I’ve gotten in the past few days since I cut it is, “Will I do it again?” and I’ll be honest, if you would’ve asked me that question a month ago I probably would have told you absolutely not. But as my donation day approached, and now that I’ve had some time to process what donating hair actually means, I’m realizing that it is such a small gesture for any of us to forgo several haircuts over a 2 year period in order to have an impact on a child who had no control over the circumstances that led to their hair loss.
So, will I do it again?
Yes - someday.