Category: Daily Work

Daily Work

Meet God in the Morning – Use this Free eBook to help.

rockyfort

A lot of times, people take stock of where they are spiritually at the beginning of the year. They make resolutions to do different things that will help them draw closer to God throughout the year. Have you ever stopped in the middle of the year to evaluate how well you’re doing in meeting that goal? That’s an easy goal to let go of and forget because there are so many distractions. If you made that kind of goal at the beginning of the year and you’ve fallen behind, take heart. Our God gives second and third and fiftieth and one hundredth chances. If you want to begin to work on that again, let me introduce you to my devotional book series. I’d like to offer you a free eBook where you can spend five to ten minutes a day reading and contemplating God’s presence in your life. This site won’t even collect an email address! If you don’t know how to send a book to your Kindle, I can help you do that. Gain a habit that will enrich your every day life.

Daily Work, personal

C’mon Baby Light My Fire

rockyfort

There is a spark! Over the last few months, while I’ve done some kind of writing or another, it felt like I was going through the motions. I’m in a writing challenge where I have to write four hundred words a day, and I was trying to find ways to get to four hundred. If I was writing part of a story and I hit four hundred, I’d finish my thought and stop rather than letting the writing flow. For those of you who read them, I stopped writing my devotionals. They were losing their freshness and I needed to step away from them for a time. I’ll explain what I’ve learned about myself in this time on the day before I return to writing them.

There was no life, no spark, to my writing. I wasn’t enjoying it and I did it because I had to. That’s not all bad, because there’s something to be said for perseverance in times like that. I have saved everything I’ve done during this dry period because one of my rules about writing is that there’s no such thing as good writing; there’s only good re-writing.

I got a chuckle out of seeing my books on that pirate site because, well, let’s face it – I’m not much of a marketer and my books haven’t sold many copies. That can be a bit discouraging. That’s another reason for the lack of emotion in my writing recently. Not only have sales been non-existant,  I just started this book funnel program and haven’t been able to give my book away. I’ve had two downloads so far – and one of them was me testing the process. The lack of sales can lead to a lot of self-doubt. The only one who seemed to enjoy the devotionals was my mom and, well, she’s my mom. When she died, I had no fans of the writing and no one encouraging me.

This isn’t meant to be a pity party, I’m just telling you where I am, rather where I was, on my writing. Today, though, I found a project that excites me. Someone described a common trope in writing and suggested a twist. I smiled as I thought about it. Then, as I thought more about it, I realized that the twist that got people excited had already been written before – in the Bible. As I enjoyed that revelation, I began thinking about how to revamp the story, it would be the Moses story, in a modern setting. As the ideas fell into place, I began plotting out the story. Let me repeat that: I began plotting out the story! If you’re wondering what makes that such a big deal, let me explain.

There are three approaches to writing novels: the plotter, the pantser, and the plantser. The plotter approach is to outline the story, usually in great detail. Characters ae fleshed out before the writing begins. Plot lines are developed. A good plotter could start writing the story at chapter three, or chapter ten with no problem because they already know the rest of the flow of the story. The pantser on the other hand has a vague idea of what he/she wants to write about. They may have a few character names. They may have a vague idea of how the story will end. The pantser writes things on the fly and will often learn about their characters during the story. This is how I tend to write. The plantser is a combination of the two other approaches. They may have an outline of where they’re going, but a character may surprise them and do something they didn’t expect. Sometimes plantsers make it through their outlines, sometimes they make it through the first chapter of their outline before everything blows up and they either go with the flow of their new story or they stop and re-outline.

The fact that I began plotting today is so out of character for me, but it happened because I fell in love with the concept. I know I haven’t told you much about the story, and I won’t just yet, but if I’m doing research, you have to know I’m excited about the story. I’ll probably share excerpts in days to come as I work on this story, but I finally have a spark to write again!

Daily Work

Random Thoughts About Finality

rockyfort

These last few months have moved too quickly, and too slowly at the same time. A little over a month ago, the four siblings divided up the estate. The hardest part was dealing with the memories attached to items. I mentioned something about that earlier in my post about Grammy’s chair. My parents had lots of nice stuff, but the one thing that I really wanted, I didn’t get. I figure that since I’ve lived these last 45 years without it, though, I can keep living without it, view it in my mind, and still keep the good memories.

As we divided up one set of memorable items, I was number four in a three person round. Later, one of my siblings asked if I really wanted one of those three things. They represented an important part of my childhood, but I honestly couldn’t think of a good way to use or display them. I told her that as cool as that thing might have been, I didn’t really see a way I could use it. She had mentioned a cool plan that I thought would be a much better use for it than anything I could do.

My elder sister is the executor of the estate and she’s worked hard to make sure that everything was distributed as fairly as possible. She’s also had the job of cleaning up the condo, arranging to ship items to my other sister and I. That’s what brought this to mind today: she sent me the bill of lading for the shipment of memories coming in. As we talked about some of the things that were coming, she had mentioned that while some things might look nice, they’ probably wouldn’t be too valuable. I don’t think there’s anything that I’d be willing to sell though. There wasn’t enough furniture to fulfill my grandmother’s comment, but the sentiment is true: “Hemingways don’t buy furniture, they inherit it.”

One of the responsibilities we’ll have is making a list of where this furniture, especially, will go when we die. That will happen! We don’t want there to be any confusion after we leave this earth. We have our wills for a general look at the distribution of the estate, but with this new influx of memories coming in, we’ll have to look at things again.

Another reason these thoughts have come to mind is that a friend asked us to hold a copy of their wills in case anything happens to them. They wanted to make sure that the wills would be readily available in that instance.

So, my question for you is, are you prepared for the end of life? Do you have wills made? Do you have any kind of distribution list for furniture or special items? Have you avoided making your will because you were worried that you might have to use it as soon as you made it? (I’ve heard people say things like, “As soon as I make a will, you know I’m gonna die.”) What are some suggestions you might have to make sure that your wants and wishes are known when the end of this life comes? Let me know in the comments.

Just some random thoughts that have come to mind as I thought about recent events.

Daily Work

Looking Back – The Painted Churches

rockyfort

So, it began with a dress for my wife. She wanted something special as the mother of the bride. The problem is that after her double-mastectomy, she doesn’t have the normal feminine figure. After looking around, she got discouraged because there isn’t a big market for dresses for her figure. I suggested that we work with a friend, Lindsay, who owns a company called “Frippery: Custom Costumes and Whimsical Designs.” (Facebook link) She is the wife of the man who used to be our youth minister. The key phrase here is “used to be.” He’s now the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Halletsville, about a two hour drive from us. (Spoiler alert here: it was worth it.)

Because we knew her work and we trusted her, we made the drive about three times: first for measurements, second for a preliminary fitting, and third for the final fitting and touchups. If you read any of my posts on Facebook about our travels to Houston during Lucy’s cancer treatments, you’ll know that we enjoy the time driving and talking together, so it was a great time together. On the second trip, Lindsay told us about the painted churches in Schulenberg. She suggested that we find a way to check them out. On the third trip, Lucy had her final fitting and Lindsay needed a couple of hours to put the finishing touches on her work. The painted churches were about half an hour away, so we drove up to Schulenbert and looked at as many as we could. The article I linked explains the origins of these churches better than I could, so let me refer you to the article for an explanation. The TL/DR version is that German and Czech immigrants built these churches in the styles they were accustomed to.

While we didn’t get to all seven in the area, we saw enough to know that we’d love to go back sometime to get a full tour. My pictures weren’t all good, but you can get idea of the beauty of the churches from a few of the pictures. The second picture is an extension of the first if you look to the right. The fourth picture is an extension of the third if you look to the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pictures of the stained glass suffered from my eternal problem with the camera: tilt. I don’t know why, but I seem to make my shots tilt, even when I think I’m getting them straight. Here’s an example. When I try to account for that, my impression is that I’m pushing down too far the other way. I need to find a way to put a level in my viewfinder. I try to line things up with the dots, but I’m not very good, I guess. If you have any suggestions on how I can stop doing that, please let me know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we still don’t have the official pictures from the wedding, I do have this picture of the dress as Lucy tried it on. That was in Lindsay’s work area. We were happy with the work. Our only concern was that she didn’t charge us enough. We were going to be sneaky and add a tip to our bill, but PayPal didn’t have that option for this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, that’s a short look at one of the things we did while I was avoiding blogging at all. When I downloaded these pics, they were 2.5 months old. I only had one other set in between this set and the woodpecker pics from yesterday. It’s time to get back into my photography!

Bird Brain Chronicles, Bird pics and story, books, Daily Work

Coming Back

rockyfort

Hey there! Remember me? I haven’t done my daily posts for a while. I think that the major reason is that I’ve been dealing with my mother’s death. Part of the way I dealt with her death was an attitude of “I don’t care” about a lot of things. I’m in a writing challenge and I’ve been struggling to meet my simple goal. As I struggle with doing any writing, I tend to be highly critical of what I’m doing – and part of that is because I don’t really have a plan for my writing and so I keep criticizing everything I write. I’ve given myself a sabbatical from writing my devotionals, but I finally began doing a little work on promoting the book series today. I should point out that if you’d like a free copy of my July – August devotionals, I now have a book funnel account so that I can give it to you freely. If anyone wants to help me out by going through the process of downloading it and making sure that everything works ok, I’d sure appreciate it. The bookfunnel link is here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/4nw47oq9cd If you’d like to leave an Amazon review, that would be cool too, but I’m not expecting you to do so. You are welcome to share that link if you find the book helpful to you.

Another part of my problem has to do with the animal kingdom: we now have a dog. We thought she was a year old when we got her, but the vet said she was about 6 months old. She’s been a hand full! She’s as sweet as can be, but she’s also annoying. This week has had some extra challenges because my daughter is taking her delayed honeymoon and we’re watching her dog. The dog that used to live with us when she did – which is why we wanted a dog. So now we have a 14 year old grumpy lady chihuahua and an 8 month old baby girl chihuahua. Only, the baby gets distracted when we take her outside. Then she comes in and wets the carpet. Or worse. Today’s been extremely tough on that front, with me needing to clean up between five and ten messes.

Perhaps I should mention all that’s gone on since I stopped posting regularly. I stopped after my mom died. Then we had her memorial service. After that, my daughter got married on March 16. Then, we traveled to Florida to celebate my wife’s graduation ceremony as she finished her requirements for an EdD. degree. She now lets me call her “Dr. Wife.” And finally, my wife and I just observed our 40th anniversary. So, I’ve been busy. And I haven’t been writing a lot. But it’s time to get back to the work of writing and photography.

I realized the photography angle today when I had the dogs outside. I heard the familiar thump of a woodpecker. She was on the utility pole thumping away. I ran inside and got my camera so I could take a few pictures. I couldn’t choose which of these two to use, so you got both. This is a golden fronted woodpecker and she’s been in the area for a while. My plan is to get back to more photography in days to come. I’ve missed doing that. I’ve missed sharing my pictures with y’all. So, maybe I’ll take a day or two each week, make some egg salad sandwiches, and spend some time taking pictures and sharing my adventures with you. Tomorrow, I’ll probably share some pictures of the Painted Churches of Schulenberg that we saw while we waited for the final alterations on the dress my wife wore as the mother of the bride. Anything you want to know about South Texas (that I can photograph) just ask in the comments.