Behind the Times. Catching up on November of 2023.

At the end of November, the kids were in school, Hui was resting from the chemo, Mom had just returned home, and I was rearranging the my desk in the home office. I took the time to try and catch up on the never-ending podcast backlog (it'll disappear soon, when Google discontinues their podcast app). Anyway, the point is, I (or the Lord) had some amazing episodes queued up.

I meant to document and share this then, but I didn't (go figure). All my followers are missing out.

 

The only record I have of the day are some text messages, in which I was sharing the podcasts with a friend. First up was The Wellness Mama Podcast:

679: Repairing Attachment Wounds, Fixing Relationship Insecurity, and Finding Your Voice With Adam Lane Smith

And to document my excitement, here are the text messages to my friend:

There are SOOOOOO many helpful parenting and relationship tips in this one conversation.

And if you want to follow it up with some lighthearted financial advice. Here's the Bee trying to get Dave Ramsey to use a credit card.

Ooh! They have it on YouTube and they're in Dave's studio (I think)! Really good points around 24-25 minutes about Proverbs "hope deferred makes the heart sick" 

While the early bit was a lot of goofing, this turned into a legitimately meaningful and productive conversation. 

More texts leading to the final podcasts:

Dude! Not trying to bog you down with podcasts, but I listened to this one last night and then again after Dave and the Bee. Man! Another good discussion on suffering, God, redemption, and hope.

That was it for the day.

I'm not sure if I should end this blog here, or keep filling in the gaps. I'm sure none of you mind either way.

A few days later I was reading (listening to) Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Well, I guess I technically started the book on Nov 27 and didn't finish until Dec 6. My thoughts on this book (shared with my zero followers at work) were simply:

This feels like a book I should have on a shelf full of sticky notes and highlights. I love studying Abraham Lincoln!

I am currently listening to another book that I feel should be on my desk full of sticky notes and highlights. I discovered this book through The Habit Podcast and it only took me 6 months or so to rediscover it on my GoodReads. The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind.

And with that terrible summary of non-holiday events around the holidays, I'm going to bed.

Book writing with words

Long ago (more than half my life at this point) I started writing a book. At the time I was maybe 15, and heavily inspired by Christopher Paolini's Eragon. I had planned to write a series about a great war, heavily influenced by the Suikoden games and the concept of the main character recruiting numerous characters and building up a castle/fortress/town with all the characters recruited. Obviously I never finished. I wrote and rewrote six to ten chapters and eventually found myself distracted from the story by the world building. I started creating lore and creatures and eventually stopped writing the story. So the notes and ideas sat dormant for a long while, always in the back of my mind as something I wanted to finish but never got around to. Lately, ideas and inspiration have been flooding my mind at every turn and I find myself longing to write. So I'm here, writing.

I used to keep all my writings in Word documents: poems, songs, my book and notes, copies of AOL IM conversations, text messages, email conversations, backed up MySpace posts and comments. I had documents for all sorts of nonsense and memories. In one late night session of file organizing inspiration back in 2014, I decided I wasn't actively using any of the files, so I could save some hard drive space by compressing everything into a zipped folder. Because securing my files seemed like a good idea, I password protected the file with 256-bit encryption. I remember creating the password and saving it in my KeePass database. It was around 2 in the morning and I looked around the room, merging words from random objects I saw, and because my KeyPass database would keep it safe, I wouldn't have to worry about forgetting it. It wasn't until two or three years later when I went looking for some file that I discovered I did not save the password, or it accidently ended up deleted in a database conflict. I also couldn't remember my late night inspired, random password. So I now have a wonderful zipped file with all my old writings and files sitting on my desktop as a constant reminder that I cannot access it.

Fortunately, the one folder I left out of the zipped file was the book that I always wanted to finish writing but never took time to work on. So all my chapters and notes are still accessible.

In the past couple years, I moved all my notes to OneNote, and that's where I've been throwing all my notes lately. I keep jotting down random ideas and thoughts. When I moved all my notes to OneNote I read through a lot of them trying to remember all of my original ideas and plans (that I thought were impossible to ever forget). I realized I've forgotten almost everything. Even some notes I wrote down don't make sense because I can't remember the context of ideas that inspired them. So I'm almost starting with a clean slate. Sure I have a handful of chapters written and plenty of world building notes, but there are a lot of bits and pieces I have forgotten completely. If I remember my original plans, I start there, but I've allowed myself the freedom to adjust and some characters/ideas I've completely redefined. So I've been thinking up character backstories and plot twists and taking lots of random notes, but I have yet to revisit the previously written chapters.

It's a wonderful feeling of inspiration, but I hate to find myself sitting at the computer at night. I spend all day in front of a computer for work, and I really don't want to come home to another computer, but the inspiration and ideas are overflowing from my head while I'm working, while I'm driving--anywhere and everywhere I'm coming up with new ideas and it's so exciting! So I think I'm willing to sacrifice some more time in front of a computer to get back to writing.

On that note, maybe six or seven years ago I discovered Scrivener, the word processing software for authors, but I wasn't writing at the time and didn't want to spend money on something I might not use. So I filed it away in Evernote for "someday." I've decided someday is finally here. I'm going to buy Scrivener and I'm stoked!

Will it help me write? Nah.

Will it help me organize my notes and thoughts? I certainly expect so.

Will I have to spend a good bit of time figuring out how to use it? I imagine I will.

But I'm stoked nonetheless.

Don't expect a finished book anytime soon, but know that it's on my mind.