Priming the Pump

"You have to kind of prime the pump sometimes." -Bob Day

Yesterday I heard how in springtime (with its warmth and brightness and freshness) the temptation is to sit back and enjoy it, to go fishing or walking or biking, to simply do things that are fun.  But springtime is also a time where work needs to be done, where seeds need to be sown so there is a harvest in the fall.  So all play and no work at this time of year would be a most unwise route to take (as enticing as it may be after a grey, wet winter).

Too often I swing into the ‘play first, work later’ mentality that I was warned about.  I want all the easy stuff to come right now (or yesterday), to have the fruit of my labours without any labour.  And it’s not like I was raised that way; it is a bad habit I have gotten into and am working on getting out of. 

Part of the problem, I think, is too often we (because I can’t be the only one) look at work like this:  

 

We would prefer for it to look like this: 

 

I fell into the ‘American Gothic’ vision of work last week while longing for a ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ party when I got up early one morning to put in some work on a writing project or two.  Not much was accomplished.  As I wrote on a message board I’m a member of “. . . my brain was so confused by this action . . . [but] it was only the first day I’ve done this . . .”  Wah, wah, cue sad trumpet sound (even with the moment of clarity at the end).  Then a friend posted a response that I’ve been chewing on ever since:

You’ll get in a writing groove . . .  You’ll have to work that pump for awhile before the water will gush out.

In other words, I’m going to have to keep working at developing better work habits.  I’m going to have to see the opportunities, dressed as they are in overalls and looking like work (to loosely quote Thomas Edison), and, well, work to take advantage of them, even when it’s not all fun times full of happy tunes.  I have to not only sow seeds, but also tend to them so they can grow and produce a harvest.  In other words, I need to keep getting up early to work on writing projects so I can also clean my house before going to my job and spending time working on growing solid relationships with God, my husband, family and friends. 

Time to go work a pump or two (or three) some more.  ツ

Bazinga

There's nothing like a good 'bazinga' (or three -- it's getting late and I have to hustle!) to get the morning going.  ;-)  Enjoy your Friday and the weekend everyone!

Musing of an Uncaffeinated Mind

It’s 6:11 a.m. as I begin to type this, and I point it out for no great reason, other than to illustrate it really is on the early side and I really have not yet had any time for a cup of coffee.  I need to be at work in less than two hours, I still need to get ready for said work, and it would really be swell to eat a proper breakfast before tackling another day.

So why up so early when I can barely string a coherent sentence together and I had to look up how to spell ‘uncaffeinated’?

Because in order for me to get what I want, where I want, I need to become someone other than a snooze-button pusher who barely leaves myself the necessary time some mornings to get out the door in good time.

I need to learn the secret to being selfish . 

5:30 a.m., may we meet for real tomorrow (with some coffee).  

La-la-la! I Can't Hear You!

I know a man who once was told God wanted to heal him of his hurts.  “The Holy Spirit,” said the prophet visiting our church that day, “says you are a candidate for healing.”  And I remember being very excited for that man when I heard those words spoken to him.  But I later learned that is not what that man heard.  What he heard was this:

“You are bad.”  As in ‘stuff is wrong with you and it needs to be fixed, you bad person, you’. 

One person heard words of hope and help.  The other heard words of guilt and condemnation. 

Funny, eh?

Now before anyone (myself included) is tempted to run off and say how silly that is and possibly sad and how they would never do anything like that, I would caution you (and me) to plant the feet and zip the lips.  Then take an honest inventory of any time when you know the words you heard and the words that were actually said or truly implied by those words did not match up.

I was struggling with such words recently.  I heard good, honest words about how it’s better to read the Bible than fictional novels not as ‘God’s Word is life and health and good for you, so read it often!’ but as ‘you wanting to write fiction is stupid and a waste of time.’

Then, oh-so-self-centeredly, I heard words meant to encourage another as a discouragement to me.  “You’re not really smart,” I heard, “you only think you are, you show-off.”  (A bit of time and a chat with my husband helped me see I was really just being silly with that one.  And oh yeah – it’s not all about me, either.  Whew!)

The thing is it’s easy to say something to a room full of people and have each one hear something different.  As I’m learning and seeing, our respective circumstances, our experiences, our baggage, colours how we see and hear things.  It’s like the kid who had an ‘okay’ or a terrible or absolutely no relationship with his or her dad trying to understand exactly what God looks like as a good Father.  He or she may keep trying to approach God as the Father whose love they have to earn, not as the Father who stands, watching and waiting day after day for His wayward child to return home so He can hug him and kiss him and forgive him before having an amazing party (Luke 15:11-32).

We’re all thinking different things in our hearts (Proverbs 23:7, NKJ).  That we’re winners who are capable of much . . . or that we’re losers who will never amount to much.  Or maybe we think about how we’re loved by an amazing God . . . or we think we’ve disappointed Him too many times.   It could be we’re thinking our dreams are good and right and doable . . . or that they’re selfish and wrong and not worth much of anything. 

Come again, Chief?

And people can say all the best things, the most encouraging and right and true things, but we’re not hearing them.  Not really.  There’s too much static coming over the line.  But (thankfully, mercifully) God is patient, His Word is sure and true and He does not lie. I keep coming back to Jeremiah 29:11-15a, and with each reading it is etched deeper into my heart and gains more volume over the static of the noise that would try to convince me otherwise:

I know what I’m doing.  I have it all planned out – plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. 

When you call on Me, when you come and pray to Me, I’ll listen.

When you come looking for Me, you’ll find Me.

Yes, when you get serious about finding Me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.”  GOD’s Decree.

I’ll turn things around for you.

~ The Message (emphasis added)

Amen and amen.

Ob-La-Di

Happy Friday y'all!

One Step!

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~ Confucius

As has become the custom at the office I have worked at for the past few years (I’ve worked with the same company for almost 6 years, but switched offices), I have worked full days between Christmas and New Year’s as opposed to my normal 1-5 PM shift.  And as is the custom for offices where many co-workers and customers are otherwise engaged, things were quiet.  Last year was no exception.

So I did what I could to keep busy.  I straightened/cleaned my desk in-between the work-related tasks I did have to do. I drank coffee.  I may have exchanged an e-mail or two with a co-worker from yet another office within the company.  And I thought about a blog post I had read from one of my favourite bloggers – Jon Acuff.  He was asking for help with his next book.  You can read the original post here:  I need your help with my next book.

I don’t remember exactly when I read the above post, but on Thursday, December 30, 2010, when the phones were quiet and my work for the moment was done, I sent an e-mail.  (And I realized just now I never did include my phone number.  Hey, I live in Canada and Jon lives in the States.  I was being conscientious of long distance charges.  Yeah, that’s it.)

Anyhow, here is most of what I wrote:

. . . my husband and I are both in a “I’m _____ but _____” time of our lives . . .

I presently work as an administrative assistant, but would like to be a stay-at-home mom who writes devotional-type pieces and fiction . . . And as I get closer to 40 (I just turned 39) I wonder if it’s even fair [to have kids now] considering the statistics that stick in my head about older women having children.  Couple that with too may reminders that our parents are getting older and my sisters’ kids are getting closer to being adults themselves and . . . yeah.  I wonder if our time is past for such things.  I also wonder if there is validity and real worth in regards to writing fiction.  It would be easy right now for me to blame my questions and doubts in that regards on what other people have said about it, but that feels like a cop-out.  It’s easier than dealing with my own lack of discipline.

So in a nutshell, that’s it.  I do remind myself God has His perfect timing and can use all things for good. It’s just really hard to wait sometimes and to let go of my own flubs and failures and questions as to whether I have basically messed things up too many times.

With a degree of trepidation, I hit the ‘send’ button and wondered if anything would ever come of it.  Jon’s blog has a wide readership, and lots of people have infinitely more interesting “I’m ____ but ____” stories.  (That’s not to be down on myself – it’s just the truth.  There are some amazing stories out there!)  So I more or less put it out of my mind.  Well, the forefront of it.  Hence I was surprised and excited to receive an e-mail on Monday, February 28, 2011 penned by Jon asking people to fill out an online form to help them (them being he and the people he works with at Dave Ramsey’s company) get to know my story a little better.  I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I do remember allowing myself to hope I’d be one of the ‘select group of people’ who would get ‘the entire manuscript’ of the new book to read in advance and then offer feedback on it.  Once again, the ‘send’ button was hit with a degree of trepidation. 

One week and one day later, I almost squealed out loud with excitement at work upon making a quick check of my home e-mail account.  I WAS GOING TO ‘BETA-TEST’ JON ACUFF’S NEW BOOK!!

Then came the longest week of waiting for said manuscript to arrive.  It was harder than the countdown to Christmas when I was kid.  But then I pulled into the driveway at home after work on Wednesday, March 16 and there in the mailbox on our fence was the best present ever left by the UPS delivery driver:  the manuscript!  As soon as I was able, I sat down and began to read.  I had until Friday to read the entire thing and offer my feedback via an online form. 

I finished the book – Quitter: Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job – and the form at approximately 8:30 PM, MST the next day.

And it is a great book.  Seriously.  I’m not just being kind or trying to get good comments or anything.  It is a challenging, insightful, honest book and if you can in fill in the “I’m ___ but ____” statement, you should read it.  In fact, it is available for preorder on Amazon with a release date of May 10^th.

Naturally, I thought that was it.  The manuscript was read and the form was filled out – finito, right?  Well, besides having to return the manuscript as per the nondisclosure agreement I read and signed off on.  (Because I was worried lawyers from The Lampo Company would come after me like the dudes in that one Stride gum commercial if I didn’t return it ASAP.)

But it wasn’t.  That one, seemingly small step I took back in December still has some more to follow it.  In the form of a conference call with Jon Acuff and other beta-testers of the book next week!  As I posted as my Facebook status update on Monday: “. . . "Über-excited" about covers it.”

 

シ

 

Star Gazing

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

--Vincent van Gogh

It’s easy, I think, to dream things for one’s life, to make a list of things to do and things to pursue and such.  But as I’m sure many can attest to, it’s quite another thing to get out there and realize one’s dreams, to help bring them to fruition in the here and now.

I look at where I actually am with certain things compared to where I thought I could be at one time or another, and I realize I’d like to move directly from ‘dreams’ to ‘reality’ in a transport of some sort (Beam me up, Scotty).  Lets just bypass the drudgery, the dips and the hard work to get from A to B, shall we?  Wouldn’t that be more fun?  (Now, I’ve never said that is what I’d like to do in so many words.  But my actions (or lack thereof) certainly do indicate that is a desire of mine on some level.)

But life and even fiction rarely work that way.  More often than not, there are countless hours of work logged in by an ‘overnight success’, hours of practice put by the ‘musical prodigy’, many sketches and rough drafts preceding the finished work of an artist and a writer.  Van Gogh didn’t just look at the stars and dream – he painted them in swirls of colour and feeling.  Charles Dickens didn’t merely think it would someday make a neat story to write about an old miser whose worldview is changed courtesy of three spirits who visit him one cold Christmas Eve – he wrote A Christmas Carol.  Nor did Beethoven think a handful of notes would one day make a nice ditty – he wrote his Fifth Symphony.

So I don’t want to leave tales of Plot Ninjas, high school teachers, or time travellers to languish on hard drives, in binders, and on various scraps of paper.  Nor do I want to keep dwelling in the past or ‘playing it safe’ and end up missing out on what God is doing now and what He’s got planned for the future.  It’s time to move past a simple recitation of Philippians 4:13 and get to putting it into practice.  I don’t know it all, and it may very well be there are dreams I will need to let go of and others that need to be tweaked or completely overhauled.  But that’s okay.  God promises in Psalm 32:8 that He will guide us along the best pathway for our lives, that He will advise and watch over us.  It’s up to me to either go where He leads or to fight Him like a stubborn mule (v. 9).  But if I go His way, it’s going to be wild, it’s going to be great, and it’s going to be full of Him. Ü