You read that right, I was just terminated. I spent four years busting my butt to outperform all of my fellow classmates. I got straight A’s, achieved a 4.0 in the classes within my major fields, and won the Outstanding Academic Performance Award in my Senior year.
Applying to jobs was easy and exciting. With a double major in Biology and Chemistry, who wouldn’t want to hire me? I was hired a month after graduation into a job that paid more than 99% of my peers and a majority of those who had been working 10+ years more than me. I was killing the game, living the dream.
Or so I thought. The cracks started to show shortly after I started. My job conducting research and development on explosives for US Department of War quickly started to weigh on my conscience. Wasn’t I created by God to build, not facilitate destruction? No one around me seemed proud of their work. Lethargy and complacency were the status quo. The discussions I had with my managers, few as they were, were hollow and brief. I realized they weren’t invested in me, my performance, or my results. And, in return, neither was I. Didn’t God want me to do everything to his glory?
Two years in, sinning became easier and easier. Leaving an hour early, charging time at lunch as time worked, taking the computer to “work from home” and leaving it unattended at my desk – my apathy was informing my action. And nobody cared. My managers said they were satisfied with my work and to “keep it up.” How could they be satisfied when I felt so DISSATISFIED. But somebody cared. The company was large enough to have a department dedicated to tracking log-ins to computers and sign-ins to buildings in order to root out fraud, and root it out they did. I had an ethics complaint launched against me, and five months later the consequence of my sin was brought to bear. In a two minute conversation, my perfect career of two and a half years had come to a close.
Nothing happens outside of God’s plan.
Over the past eleven days, my prayer has been that the Lord would lead me into a new direction. I desire to be brought to a place of total dependance on Him. And I can’t shake the idea of ScratchMRKT.
ScratchMRKT was an idea my wife and I had a year and a half ago, when the dissatisfaction in my previous career started to ramp up. I was obsessed with entrepreneurship, reading the bios of founders like Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber, and Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky of AirBnB. Fundamentally, these founders and those like them have been able to turn an idea into a community. I thought that I could do the same – create an online marketplace that blends the natural beauty, innate quality, and warm community found at your neighborhood farmers market with the ease and convenience of an online store. I thought I could connect communities with their crafters.
And I still do.
However, this idea had some glaring holes. Working a full time job with a young baby, I had very little free time, not to mention I had no idea how to build a website (especially one as complex as a two-sided marketplace), how to operate a business, how to attract vendors or buyers, and basically every other skill required to make this work. But, as is usual to those who trust Him, God has stepped in and provided. Firstly, I now have all the time in the world and the ability to take a real crack at this. Secondly, he has given me a new heart and a clear mind. I still have no idea how to run this business, but that is a GOOD THING. The Lord is calling into a place of complete dependance on Him. If I am honest, I attributed my success in school and in getting that job to my intellectual prowess, but if this works, it will work only because of His providence. It will be His power being made perfect in my weakness.
A year and a half ago, ScratchMRKT was just an idea, one that was far too big and scary to take on. Now, doing anything else feels like dishonoring the Lord that handcrafted me a specific work. Kind of like our local crafters, makers, and artisans… Welcome to ScratchMRKT.