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Guess Who Is in the Wheelchair Today?
Happy Monday! I am celebrating, indeed! Today is the first time I have been in the wheelchair for anything other than going to the emergency room in about 10 billion years. Okay, it was only mid-January or late January. It just feels like a reprieve from a horizontal prison.
Maybe I could pretend it was my transport to Mars colony? Outside my window, I don’t see the grass from our new house… Maybe I’m really seeing Olympus Mons.
This makes me want to re-examine my New Year’s resolutions and call today “RESET” day. It is time to get back to writing…
I Have Been Missing in Action
I haven’t been in this blog since early January. Part of that is because I was just goofing around, avoiding writing and writing blogs.
Six weeks of that time, I was in the hospital. READ THIS for more gory details. Catching up from being in the hospital is taking more time than I planned, to
o. Just catching up with email has been a career move!
Tomorrow, I am planning to sit in the wheelchair for the first time since mid-January. Let the celebration began! After that, I am planning to go back to SNOWFLAKE OUTLINING the novel that has been in hiatus.
I haven’t been to church in about 1 billion years, either. I don’t think I will be making it to any services this week. I don’t have the stamina.
Maybe next year!
Trying to Let a Snowflake Fractal into My Life
I have been hearing about “the Snowflake Method” of plotting a novel for years. Once I even dedicated a whole five minutes to trying a snowflake outline, but it didn’t work for me. (Five minutes is not what it takes to do this process! It takes that long to think about thinking about taking step one!)
I wanted to think that I could make up the novel as I was going along. I had heard that Isaac Asimov was a “seat-of-the-pants” outliner, so I assumed that that would work for me.
It didn’t. I go full speed for a little while, and then run out of story to tell. I didn’t know where I wanted to go.
I’m slowly working through this process to see if it works for me.
Review: Spirituality of the Cross Revised Edition
Spirituality of the Cross Revised Edition by Gene Edward Veith Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I tend to reread this every few years. It’s worth my time to do so this regularly.
For starters, it is encouraging. It is so refreshing to reread how much effort GOD HIMSELF has put into our salvation, since the “to do list version of Christianity” is so popular.
It reminds me that “my neighbor” needs my help.
It invites me to revel in the treasures dispensed in GOD’S WORD preached and the Sacraments (God’s Word means visible).
My RESOLUTIONS for the year…
Writing and Reading still go hand in hand, at least in my head. Reading is easier for me, unless I’m doing it with a specific purpose. That makes it easier for me to simplify things, I’m combining my multilayered lists into one simple one. It will combine reading and writing goals.
That doesn’t mean that making healthy life changes is an important. That doesn’t mean attitude adjustments are trivial. That doesn’t mean that focusing on how I relate to people doesn’t need my attention.
It simply means that I need the simplest and shortest list possible. Sometimes, I have the attention span of a squirrel on crack cocaine. These items will distract me enough!
- 8 Minutes daily (except Sunday) on the snowflake outline of the science fiction novel that I’ve been threatening to write since I was 10.
- MASTER Level: 3 sets
- ACCEPTABLE Level: 1 set
- STRUGGLING Level: try to figure out why I’m struggling
- 250 words daily (except Sunday) on other projects. Facebook, twitter, and email do not count. Blogging only counts one third of the time.
- MASTER Level: 3 sets
- ACCEPTABLE Level: 1 set
- Twitter and Facebook account, figure out why you’re struggling.
- My GOODREADS 2016 Reading Challenge (10 books for now, I can increase it)
Writers and Teachers = READERS
Two old sayings need to be combined:
All writers are readers.
All teachers are readers.
Ever so often, I may let you into part of my current reading lists. Maybe, I think.
Here I Am
Happy Thursday, I think! I hope everything is going well in your world. My own has a few bumps, and I will discuss those another day.
My writing… Is at a standstill for a while. I had to take some time to juggle stuff, and I will go back to it. Of course, I’m always doodling with words in my head. It just doesn’t count until they hit the screen and get edited. Beginning tomorrow, I went to doodle 100 words a day, three days a week.
I got to go to Bible study last night, though. I really enjoyed it! It is still on PRAYER, and is incredibly rich. It also points out where I am free to make changes.
Then today, I found a nifty resource in my Bible study software. It compares the different ways of enumerating the 10 Commandments:
Counting the Ten Commandments. (2014). Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.
I will have to talk about those one day, but not today.
Two Days until Church
I am eagerly awaiting the day after tomorrow. My frustration level is high and I suspect that the situation (the one that I don’t want to talk about) will not be easily resolved.
I need to repent and be absolved. I need forgiveness placed in my ears and on my tongue.
Past, Present, and Future… We Are Still Tied to Them All
Most of you know that I get books from the TEXAS TALKING BOOK PROGRAM. While I get to do most of my reading via Kindle-apps, this is a great program for when I’m not connected to one of my digital devices. (Yes, it happens!) A cartridge comes with a book on it. I look at the title and author, and either listen or send it back.
Usually I listen.
It is sort of the closest thing to the way I used to go to the library when I was 10. Meandering stacks of books, randomly picking topics I didn’t know anything about by people I had never heard of. It’s hard to do that digitally. There is just too much stuff to randomly browse like that. You used to be able to go a few feet and get something totally different. Now, I don’t know…
Somehow we’re missing the past, present, and future because we are so tied to our devices. Don’t get me wrong, digital tools are blessings to me! I’m no Luddite!
I just miss the time when the words and ideas mattered. I miss savoring a book slowly.
Anyhow…
I just finished a real treasure. It was a surprise, I didn’t really think that I would like it. I did!
TJ Stiles is a fun biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Don’t get me wrong, it is well researched and well written. I don’t know what I expected, maybe something as interesting as listening to the phone book being read.
It was a real roller-coaster ride alongside the man who went from brawling sailor to transportation tycoon. Cornelius Vanderbilt may not have created modern America, but he sure contributed DNA.
The whole way through, I kept thinking, “NOTHING has changed in 200 years. The past, present, and future are still tied together.