11/9/2024

Hello Blog Readers,

It’s been several weeks since my “October surprise”, and I thought that I would offer this short follow up on how I’m doing in life just in case anyone out there was wondering. After I realized that there was no hope for me to become a priest in my home of Northern California, and that I really had no reason to ever go back to the place, I fell into a pretty deep sadness but also a deep prayer routine in an effort to discern next steps. As I prayed and reflected on the events of the past few years and on life in general, it became clear that this was the end of my discernment of the priesthood. I was really feeling called to serve my home, which is why I was applying to be a diocesan priest and not a member of a religious order. With the ability to serve that home now out of the picture, so too did the calling subside. Some may find that a bit odd, but after praying on it I think that it is the correct outcome. To keep applying to seminaries and trying to be a priest after that rejection would turn the effort into some prideful venture on my part to prove Sacramento wrong rather than a genuine move in service of God. In any event, I can definitely say that I have fulfilled my good Catholic boy duty. I genuinely discerned whether to become a priest.

Of course, with my discernment period over and me now finding myself woefully underemployed with a lot of free time on my hands, I had to figure out what I was doing next in life – where would my career go from here? Where could it go? It’s kind of in shambles at the moment.

Nevertheless, I think that I’ve reached the point of saying what comes next. Ever since I graduated from law school in 2011, I have dedicated my life to serving and living in small towns. I have always loved rural life – the slower pace, the close knit communities with down-to-earth people, the freedom, the open space, and the natural beauty. But, that decision to live away from the cities always came with a great cost: in a small town I could never really work the sort of career that made full use of the greatest gift that God gave me – my affinity for and capability in mathematics and economics. Sometimes I would find a teaching career that made some use of those gifts, but in small town USA I could never just let those gifts be my career.

And so, for the first time ever, now that I have the time and ability to try it, I am dedicating myself to living in a city and making full use of my talents. I have decided to stay here in Omaha close to family, I have broken out my old math books, and I have started studying for my actuarial P exam, which I hope to be taking in January 2025. I am otherwise networking with insurance firms, banks, and financial firms and seeking work here in the city, as either an actuary or possibly as a quantitative analyst or risk analyst – the sort of career that makes full use of my mathematics and economics skills and gives those skills to the world. And of course, if none of that pans out, I am still teaching at Mercy High School. 🙂

Anyways, the studies (which involve the sort of mathematics and statistics that I haven’t really touched since I was a grad student at UC Davis back in 2012) have been encouraging and empowering, pulling me out of my sadness and giving my life purpose once again. I really have a gift for this stuff, and of course my family is happy that I am putting my wanderlust to rest for a change and staying home. So that’s the end of the story of my life for now, a sort of sad, sort of serendipitous ending, almost like a Woody Allen film where the character doesn’t get what they wanted but finds what they needed all along. I know that there are many out there who are uncertain about the future following the election, but for once in my life, after several years of chaotic events and a need to overcome in my heart a dangerous nostalgia for a place that I really had to move on from in life, I feel like there is now hope and like I am figuring out the things about me that will lead to where it is that I am really supposed to be in life. Hope is a beautiful thing, and the glory and joy that it offers I immediately offer back to God in thanksgiving. For just as it is written on the walls of a now sadly closed down Catholic school back in my hometown of Red Bluff, “God is good, all of the time. All of the time, God is good.”

Cheers,

-Rob