Feeling Froggy

Yesterday one of my cousins challenged my sister and another cousin to join the National Novel Writing Month Camp. It is a month-long challenge to write a 50,000 word story in the month of August. To further make the matter interesting, we are picking a random writing prompt and running with it to see how we all take it. While it could be a bad idea to drop my current work in progress (currently growing at the 52k mark) it seems a fun way to spend some time. Especially since I will have time on my hands during the imminent move. In the vein of using a writing prompt I decided to turn the next post I read into a post that fits the theme of my blog. That post happened to be Frog Spotting. In FS, the author tells of running a 5k race and the things that went wrong at the start. Her rhythm was thrown off, her pace was not what it should be, Murphy's Law ruled the day. Then at the turn around point, she met some other runners. One needed encouraging, then the other. As she ran/walked with them the surroundings began to be apparent. Things they had noticed, or more likely saw as "background noise scenery" before became more vibrant and noteworthy. Especially the smallest of details.

This reminded me of a story I read in an email this afternoon. It is more than likely apocryphal, but poignant nonetheless. A man had a pretty good life until he was shipwrecked on a deserted island. After some time he had made a nice, comfortable hut, and had a decent existence all things considered. Until the night his hut burned down. It was a huge fire, consuming the house, all the tools, everything the man had scrounged and created to make life bearable. The next day as he sorted through the ashes he was mad at God asking why he had destroyed the only thing he had. As he looked up, there at the shore was a boat weighing anchor. The man was saved. He rushed to the beach and splashed through the water to meet the skiff coming to investigate and the captain told him that had they not seen his fire they would have kept cruising by.

A broken iPod, non-running stopwatch, and losing our motivation are small things compared to where we lie, but no less important at times. We may not immediately understand why they are taken from us, but the why is less important than the that. Because these comforts are taken from us it slows us down to His pace. It puts us where He wants us. It allows us time to see the beauty of the firmament that He has put here for us. We may not like it, we may be uncomfortable, but in the bosom of His will is the best place for us.

What troubles have you undergone to come out stronger on the other side? Better still, what pains are you experiencing now? Comment below.

Frog Spotting http://bit.ly/brwneyed via (http://brwneyedgrl869.wordpress.com/)

Moving

I often wonder when I write if anyone gets the hidden underlying messages. Sometimes I know they're obvious like the allusion at the end of Freedom, other times not so much like my recent posts talking on Robert's Rules of Order. Even in my non-blog writing I wonder. Not just my fiction works, but emails at work or to friends, are my hidden meanings too hidden. I have previously said that I often mean 2 things with what I speak, but only when I can't mean three. Another thing I often say is that I entertain the heck out of myself because I know sometimes I am the only one who gets it. A technique, a low-tech technique, I sometimes use is to actually spell it out. I wrote perhaps my only literary poem to my wife describing how much I love her. I used ironic metaphors in the first stanza, then explained the metaphors with a single word in the second which in turn was trying to cement the complete circuitous manner that I have of loving her. My Jonah allegory is novella length, and as I wrote I kept track of the major points hidden in it. The main themes were explained in the work, but the little things like naming a hotel after the preacher that baptized me, and several references to my current preacher that was the reason I was so consumed by Jonah in the first place. It also tracks a few of the pop culture references I included, things that did not need to be explicitly mentioned in the work. In my current work in progress there are many more deeply seated (or it could be deeply seeded) ideas underlying the work. So deep that if I don't spell them out they could be missed, yet they are the very point of the work.

A few days ago I "opened" my self-hosted WordPress Blog on this site. It corresponds with a giant personal move as well. One I am not really looking forward to that will involve uprooting my family from the place we've called home for the longest time we've ever had a place we can call home. We're headed to the place I used to call home (or thereabouts). Incredibly to me, I read just this morning another blog on the subject of going home that screams of deeply hidden points to me. One of the most unobvious is the fact that the picture on the header of the blog is a perpendicular shot near the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen in my life.

I have moved, I will be moving, I have been moved. Have you?

Tell me in the comments of a time you have moved, where you are moving, or what has moved you. 

• Home Again, Home Again, Gin, Gin, Gin (Miss Edee)

Grandpa We Will Eat Slowly

Punctuation is a very important thing. It is the difference between a sign saying "Slow, Children at play" and one that says there are slow children playing. Or in the case of today's title, the difference between telling your grandfather to slow down his eating or telling others we are about to take our time-consuming our patriarchal family member.  This morning I am grappling with a major life choice that needs an answer soon (even if that answer is to wait). My mini-epiphany this morning was to cut the grass. For the uninitiated, we can solve the problems of the world while doing yard work, though the solutions disappear once we turn off the equipment. Thinking I might find the answer I went out into the yard. 

The answer was elusive. A nest of yellow jackets proved to be much less elusive. 

I have been stung before and I know that more than 2 had to have gotten me (the second was when I snuck up on the nest an plunked a wooden stake in it to mark it for later). However, two stings are swollen and smarting still an hour later. One is in my knee, the other my right, ring finger making it hard to hold things or to type o, l, or a period. Had this happened to the pinky finger, I would finally have an excuse for not using the semicolon and continuing my long-standing practice of coma splices.

When Life Gets in the Way of Life

I am a writer. This is different then being an author, because an author gets paid. It is also different then someone who writes, because a writer has been published. Now my 2 published works consist of a Master's Thesis, which sits on a shelf in the university library collecting dust because the though of a book on a shelf in a library with my name in the spine is more important than me checking it out and not returning it so I can own a book with my name on the spine, and an article in a Nationally published scientific journal. So in other words, unless you are a geek, researcher or a close friend you won't ever stumble across my published works-yet. I threw the friend in to feel better, they don't want to read them either. Writers write, or they lament about not being able to. It has been a busy time so I have not had much time to write. With a wife, three daughters ranging from 6 months to 14 years, a 38-year-old house on the lake, 3 cars, and a job (or is that being redundant?) there isn't a lot of time left over. Especially if you are into things like regular sleep. I'm not particularly, but often need it anyway.

So this morning I woke up (late) about 5:30 and thought today's the day. It's time. The story is burning a hole in my brain. So after making coffee, reading my Bible and finding where the laptop got put before yesterday's birthday/end of school/swim/aw heck everybody's invited party, I browsed to where my current, active story is and realized that I have not worked on it since 27 Apr.

A lot has happened since that day. First off, I saved the file a half hour before straight line winds blew through downtown and made it look like a hurricane had hit. They were, after all, hurricane force winds. That afternoon was the powerful tornado storms that has knocked the State for a loop. I have replaced the dryer element, twice. I have built a deck, installed a hot tub, changed the spark plugs, EGR valve, rotors and brake pads. We had a birthday/end of school/swim/aw heck everybody's invited party. I started this blog and have made all these posts since then (not a bad activity since I started it to sharpen my writing when I don't have time to continue my story). I have again spoken at a church business meeting and probably angered some older members (not just old people, old members, there is a difference). I joined a new Sunday School Class, comforted friends whose parents have passed, and gone fishing twice. I interviewed for a new job at work wearing blue jeans and without having shaved. I have drunken a lot of coffee. And we have all grown a month older.

The only thing that hasn't progressed in the last month is the story that burns inside my head. The thing I want to work on most is the one thing that has not moved forward. Life gets in the way of life. It moves at the speed of life, and keeps us from our life. But in the end, it's only life. I've forgotten now who said it but for the Christian this life is the closest they will ever get to Hell, but for the non-Christian it is the closest they will ever get to Heaven. Life moves fast, but it is a terminal disease.