Changing jobs can really mean a lot more than just putting your two weeks in at one establishment and putting in applications around town until you find a new one, as I recently found out. I used to work in the coolest bar in Manhattan, Kansas. We had the best atmosphere, great drinks, awesome food and my coworkers were honestly some of the coolest people I've ever known. The managers and owners treated us extremely well too.

I loved that job, and I love the people I met there. I still hang out there more than I do any other place in Aggieville. Having all of your friends in one place at all times is great, and some of the best nights of my life were spent having a beer with those people. I made some really great friends there, and I'll never regret the nights I spent with those people. There just came a point where I needed a change in my life, and I'm happy with my decision to leave.

The first time that my faith had become a truly important force in my life was near the end of my first semester of college. Things hadn't gone how I had expected them to, and I was honestly unhappy with where I stood in life at the time. I really figured out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to be over Christmas break as a freshman. I'm still really determined to be that person, despite the fact that I screw up sometimes. Nobody is perfect, nor could anybody ever be. That's part of why I decided to leave the best job I have ever had. I want to be somebody who is dedicated in his walk with Christ, and working in such a fun bar just wasn't conducive to that in my life.

I tend to be an introspective person who looks for reasons, patterns and trends in my life, and that often leads me to ask questions like "What am I living for?" Working in a bar seemed to leave me without any decent answer for that question, or it would lead me to answer that I was living for myself, which felt worse than having no answer at all. Too often I felt like the decisions I was making didn't match up with my own aspirations, and too often I felt that those same decisions were not those of the person I set out to be when I accepted Jesus as the lord of my life. They just didn't reflect that I had set out to make Him the center of my life. The moment when I decided to put my faith first in my life was the moment when I decided that my own earthly desires needed to be put aside, and I don't feel like I was able to do that there. I had known how I was supposed to live and chose to ignore it during that time.

I understand that this all sounds corny, crazy and oh-so-sanctimonious, but I can't justify it except by saying that it's important to me that I live my life in a way that corresponds with my own personal values. I think it's important that we all examine our lives and values to discern whether the two are in sync; it needn't be a religious decision. Everyone has values, ideals, and aspirations. We should all look to live them out in an authentic way. We should all work to be like our heroes, even if your hero is yourself in 10 years (side note: Matthew McConaughey is a douche for saying that). Sometimes living out our values requires sacrificing things that mean a lot to us, and that's a decision we all have to make at times. We all have people we look up to because they embody values we cherish, and we all ought to seek to be more like those people and live up to those ideals which so inspire us.