My Social Media-less Life

After what seemed like the longest summer ever, I only have two more trips planned– that are NOT working trips!– and then I will be in Kansas City from the beginning of November until the end of January at the very least.

I gotta be honest… I love traveling, but I am 100% traveled out. And I never thought I could be traveled out…

I think the biggest thing was, I expected to have more time to see more things while doing the traveling, but when you’re stuck in a building with no windows for 8-12 hours a day trying to sell a super niche product to people who didn’t even know the product existed, the only thing you want to do is go back to wherever you’re sleeping and well… sleep.

This is through no fault of anybody’s but my own for setting such high expectations on something I’ve really never done before.

I mean, sure, I’ve sold fireworks in fireworks tents, but that was outdoors and we usually did fairly well because anybody who walks into a fireworks tent does not need to be sold on the idea. Plus, we always had at least 4 of us working throughout the selling days and could take shifts.

When it’s just Rachel and me selling books… we don’t really get a lot of breaks. Even when I walk away from the table for a few minutes, there’s always a timer going off in the back of my head telling me I’ve been gone from the table for too long and need to go back.

Let the reader understand: I DO NOT dislike the traveling and the selling. In fact, I like both very much. I’m not the best at selling, but I do love to talk to people. And more than once that has counted for something.

On that note…

In the attached photo is someone that connected with Rachel very quickly and was pretty much drawn to the “Christian” on her banner. His name is Joe and he’s a Believer who made a whole role-playing game that he debuted over the weekend! Joe broke all my preconceived notions about geeks and Jesus, and I didn’t even realize I still had any until I met him.

Joe loved talking to Rachel, and he was so excited about the launch of his game that he made sure to come back and tell us how it went afterward and even bought Rachel’s entire series because he said he would be taking this week off and knew he would need something to do.

Rachel bought a copy of Joe’s game as well and is very excited to have a game night that we can actually play said game… that will probably happen in January at this point, but at least we have something to look forward to in the month following Christmas. 😉

There was another lady too, that came up to the table as I was coming back with the cart to start teardown on Sunday, and she was very excited about Rachel being another Christian geek. She just moved from Texas and is still looking to start another “group” of people that are passionate about Jesus and love to talk geek with people at comic-cons. She also bought an entire set of books.

Come to find out, she has a podcast and might even have Rachel on at some point!

Although in the moment, Rachel and I were feeling a little let-down by the numbers that we sold (or didn’t sell), after over 24 hours of ruminating on the weekend… those two people at the event made it worth the entire weekend.

It also helped that it was only a 3-hour car ride, even when a wrong turn is accidentally taken.

The Kingdom of God is not and should never be about the numbers. Yes, obviously we are to make disciples and we should be telling people about the Good News of Jesus every chance we get. But if we are not also connecting with people and actually attempting to “make disciples”– especially of those that are already in our camp– then we are ultimately failing at the Great Commission.

This year was a hard year for me because I had unfortunately made unrealistic expectations about what “traveling” would look like and how “sales” would go.

Now that I’m at the end of my year of helping with out-of-town sales (every event Rachel has between now and the end of the year, she has someone else helping or it’s in town and we can split with our other friend and Rachel’s husband if need be), I’m realizing I just had the wrong expectations.

Every person I legitimately remember from this year was someone that took the time to come over to the table and connect with us, or they were someone that was passionate about the “Christian” part of the banner and were so excited to see Christians represented so openly at an event.

Now that we’ve gone through a year of “trying things out”… and maybe slightly forgetting to include the Lord in all the decision-making, we can get down to what the Lord really wants. And I think if we’re doing that, it doesn’t matter how far we travel… the Lord will give us the grace to do all the things HE wants us to do.

Why am I putting all this in a blog post?

Because I needed to write something for people to see and this is the only thing I’ve been thinking about for the last 24 hours. Hopefully some of it was helpful for you too. 🙂