What To Do

“Again!” you proclaim. “Haven’t we heard enough of your tortured decision making processes Phillip?”

I hate the way those Canadians pronounce ‘process’ on YouTube. It makes me want to rip my ears out, …or off. But the workings are on the inside, so out is more accurate.

And there is the rub. What to write, or publish in regards to what I have completed, and what not to write? That is the question.

Is some of my stuff too dark? Does it serve any value towards a greater society? Are we progressing into a brave new world of virtue and goodness so quickly that my writings, rather than enlightening, would hold people back from a brighter future?

Much can be learned from tragedy or the deconstruction of evil doers and their ways, but is it time to leave that all behind?

I hope so… but I have these stories, that personally, I think are really good.

Under a more optimistic vision of the future, the one story I would truly like to publish is far from complete; maybe 20%.

A bright new future.

The Holy Marriage Blessing, the breaking of all man’s ties to an evil lineage and history is now freely given to people of virtue.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s wife will be holding a 5,000 couple Holy Marriage Blessing ceremony at a mega church in Los Angeles on April 6th.

I personally have recently returned from Las Vegas. No gambling for me, strictly spiritual pursuits and a trip to an amazingly beautiful “Valley of Fire” state park.

I have been spending a lot of time in study since my return as well as in preparing the garden for planting. Already being a member of Master Class, the service www.optimize.me has caught my attention as it claims to cover the highlights of great philosophers. About half the price of Master Class, focused on self betterment. They also have a single lifetime membership fee.

I think Master Class made a mistake when by not grandfathering your entry price as set for perpetuity. They having so many writing classes and the classes are actually very extensive when dealing with the work books and links that I can see myself staying on for years. And then who knows what else they will have to offer.

My interest in philosophers comes from Reverend Moon’s teachings (The Divine Principle) on how the world divided into two the camps of communism, atheism representing Satan’s side, and democracy, centered on England and the United States, as representing God’s side.

Philosophers and their trains of thought in one direction or the other are mentioned in the teaching and I always wanted to personally dig deeper into those philosophers. I looked into some of their works, but finding English or abridged versions has not been easy.

I did take a bit of ancient philosophy, those Greeks and the like, in high school and college. I am unclear how direct Optimize is in its coverage of specific philosophers, and their thought, or if they take a more general overall life improvement kind of approach.

Don’t like to be preached to you say. Well, you must not like to create interesting characters, if you are a fellow writer. You need an all encompassing approach to life and people.

Or maybe you embrace only mankind’s more base qualities, and outright reject the work of God and his angels.

You are what you eat, so the saying goes.

I better not get into food here. This post may never end.

Thanks for reading.

Doubt Not

Lord was I born a rambling man? I don’t think so.

Maybe?… No?… Yes?…

Just trying to make a living, doing the best I can, but I can always do better.

How many things have I tried?

Schedules. What day is it?

Joining websites. What was that password?

Now I am taking some Master Classes on Writing, as well as Space Exploration, and Poker. Do you know which I am farthest along in?

Yes, you most likely guessed right.

Word count goals; didn’t do too bad, but then you fall behind and the weight of catching up crushes you.

Yes, just start again but when one is pulled in so many various directions any excuse to shift focus comes easy.

I had a discussion with some others about the young people in our church, and why they are not too inspired to commit to activities.

The multi faceted demands of modern life leave one many outs to escape uncertainty and take the simple, or rather sinful, acceptable path of pursuing money and the trappings of popular culture.

In this conversation at church I said something along these lines.

People, our young people, all of us, want to know that we are doing what God wants us to do. At least in terms of committing to a spiritual discipline, ranging from attending Sunday service and tithing, to intensive training or study, to working outright for the church as a career path in a variety of capacities.

Of course they need to believe in God, but I know, no doubt here, that belief in God is an underlying current in the life of all men and women.

Character study: Is not an individual driven by trying to pursue a virtuous life, a life God can grace, or on the contrary driven by a desire to contradict a God they see as doing them, humanity or any particular loved one wrong?

When it all hits the fan does not the atheist turn to prayer?

Let us continue the character study. What of one who seeks out God’s grace in his life and nothing ever works out. How should they react? Perhaps to chose a singular focus of all one’s energies and just go for it, no matter the outcome, willing to go down with the ship. Damn the torpedoes!

Well, I have several directions I could go. I could consume myself in any one of them, or try to juggle two or three endeavors at the same time. (I actually feel like I am juggling ten things.) That should be all consuming, three major endeavors somewhat related at least philosophically, but if any doubt exists…

It would be better to chose a singular focus.

I have been healing spiritually and physically for two decades now, if not my entire life. Everything finally worked its way out as my parents’ lives were fading.

God I hope that was everything.

Staying attentive to my parents as they walked the final legs of their lives was consuming in itself. It distracted from many endeavors. I concluded that to “honor thy father and thy mother” is an absolute. It defines you in the same way as how you honor or dishonor God defines a person.

You have life. It is a miracle. It came from them and you wont make it a beautiful one by dishonoring them.

You say your parent or parents were…

Hey. I can’t print that here.

It doesn’t matter. It is how God made things to be, and though it may seem counterintuitive, will lead to happiness.

The trend to reject those who have come before, by recent generations, has troubled my mind for some time now. I just have to write. I have been writing quite a bit on the topic on my various blogs.

Now I have to decide what does God want me to do.

The last few years with my parents, and a new health issue of my own, have kept me from writing, but I have several works complete in draft form and several others substantially developed.

The refinement of those works is an immense task in itself.

So I am well back into my blogs, catching up to my renewed goals for 2019 with the publishing of this post before February ends.

Accomplishing one’s goals always empowers. I have my space to write, I simply need to dedicate my time, no matter how small on a consistent basis.

I need to get back to some serious writing, as well as developing an agro-business to fuel my design ambitions.

Oh. And the house needs to be completely remodeled.

And I have a wife.

Then there is that other business.

And…

It never gets easier.

Maybe I should just focus on writing?

No, spiritual pursuits.

No, an agro-forest food based industrial complex interconnected highways of tasty goodness, that’s the singular cause!

Or not?

Thanks for reading.

Check out my latest poker blog post for some diet tips and fixes.

And where are all the parents in those sci-fi movies, books and fantasies? You know, to pop out all those children to fill the vastness of space. And who is producing all their food?

Good thing I am taking a Master Class on space exploration from a real astronaut. He can tell me how we are going to populate the universe.

Am I done?

My New Office Space; Sort Of

Overlapping work spaces support neither productivity nor my creative juices. So I made some changes.

For the longest time I had wanted to move our desk top computer with associated desk from what has grown to be our prayer room. So I finally got to it.

I took a utilitarian space that is used for multiple daily tasks, the small kitchen in our upper unit (we have not had tenants, or even fiveants in our duplex for some twenty year). The upper unit is our personal space and the lower unit is where we cook, eat, entertain and do business; our public space.

So I created two computer stations in this upper unit kitchen space, one for the desk top and another at a small table for my lap top on which I do my writing. Left plenty of room for my wife’s ironing board and plenty of space in front of the sink which we use regularly.

My drafting table is clear, covered only in trace paper. I have been doing a bit of design regularly over the months and it has kept me from writing as the repurposing of a space back and forth I find tedious. Honestly, I find it somehow disturbing.

So, upstairs, a bit close but comfortable.

Now the writing is taking off. I set a plan for my blogs, resolved to stick to the schedule, giving each blog a monthly or quarterly goal. And then…

So my wife has a lap top on which see does work for our church. Every couple of weeks she spends an afternoon working on the lap top. Once in a while she goes to church and spends most of the day working her work.

So… there she is, my wife, set up at my new writing station working her work, my lap top pushed aside into obscurity. I am elated that she is enjoying the space. Particularly in the Winter since it is uncomfortably cold, drafty, downstairs at the kitchen table. And I have plenty of other tasks I need to do, far too many in fact, so I happily go about my way.

The next day, there she is again. No problem, she doesn’t have a whole lot to do. I am certain she won’t be long. I hold back on my excited anticipation to get back to my writing in full vigor.

Then the next day; there she is.

“Do you like this space?” I ask.

“Yes, it is so warm.” she smiles delighted.

I’m still happy. I even have both our printers in the same space, everything we need consolidated. She really likes that. She needs a printer.

Then the next day.

Then the next day.

I wake up late on Saturday, after working the night before, anxious to get on my lap top to write and take care of neglected business.

There she is working away.

I stare in disbelief.

“What are you doing?” I plead.

“What??”

“You never have this much work to do. You only work on your lap top maybe every two weeks! What are you doing?” I am pleading, almost crying because I know she really likes this space and I am upsetting her, but I created the space for ME!

“I made this space to write.”

So we are watch the TV show “Monk”: “Mr. Monk and the Airplane.”

The dialogue goes something like this.

Wine is spilled on Mr. Monk and he jumps back and says to his assistant, “Hurry, it’s going to stain.”

His assistant responds, “Here is your stain remover.” handing the applicator to him.

He stares at the applicator stunned and asks, “Can you do it?”

To which the assistant scoffs, “Why can’t you do it?”

“Because if you do it, then I don’t have to.”

I laugh and ask my wife, “Does that remind you of anyone?”

“Yes, you.” she answers and we both laugh.

You single guys don’t know what your missing.

So look for my blog posts, at least three a month amongst my various blogs, hopefully not all on the final day of the month.

I consolidated my Create Space account with my KDP account. Shooting for four books published this year.

Thank you for reading.

Here We Go Again

Just squeezing in my post for the month. Writing is a great expenditure of time and energy. Yes, people may claim I am taking it easy, or doing something that should only be enjoyed in retirement, but I beg to differ.

Yesterday, two days ago, was “to do list day”? They have a day for everything now. I am waiting for the “gossips cut your tongues out day”. You know the type, preaching self extinction cause we are all so evil; the ‘what do you mean I need to repent!?’ type.

Have you made your resolutions?

Indignation is all the rage, but it wont get us to outer space, or to Heaven. So if you want to write a great science fiction novel put your indignation aside and envision a future of achievers, willing to sacrifice, suffer and give their lives simply because they must to get it done.

That is the problem with the world today, they do not appreciate what it took to get us here, where we are, sitting idly before screens of various size and function.

I blame the baby boomers for this lack of generational adoration. Of course I do. I blame baby boomers for everything, especially the millenials.

My novels are, will be, life, not technology driven. Except that they will be written on a computer. Those typewriters were too difficult to maintain.

One story at a time on my weekly to do list. One short story a week, to pop off or edit. Extended periods designated solely for the novels, unless we can streamline our schedules, namely making the same or better money with lessening expenditures of time and effort, giving me more time to write. Then I can split the day between short stories and novels; and I keep meaning to write more Haiku.

More time to write; it is a dream I have; as we start even another business and lunge full bore into the home remodel.

So my blogs have suffered this past year. I failed to post even once on the blog that started it all.

If I knew then what I know now, I most likely would not have named my second blog as I did; “It’s a Dog’s Life”. Or perhaps the title is appropriate.

Discipline is what I need to expand upon, and creating a time table for my blogs may be the framework to achieve the goal. I will designate each blog as a monthly or quarterly. I will try to create each planned post the first week of each month, to give me plenty of time to edit before publishing.

I looked up and referenced a post I made five years ago. Wow! What was I trying to say? I may go back and edit all my work at some point, though that has grown to a humungous task.

The to do list has been growing huge, over the course of this past year, as I never take anything off the list until it is done. I am clearing away the old tasks quickly as the year comes to an end, the warm weather being highly beneficial to the work at hand.

The list, my writing goals just a few among so many others, has previously kept my writing from progressing at a healthy pace.

Prioritization, or lack thereof, may be something I need to master if my plans for world domination are truly to come to pass. Mastering prioritization that is, not the lacking. I already have that down pat.

Dost I jest?…

A real Magic-8-Ball moment.

Thank you for reading.

Happy New Year!

Lifestyle, or, I Got No Abs

I have been known to procrastinate. So I made a new determination to alter my schedule to facilitate productivity and healing.

“Healing?” you ask.

Yes, with my recent medical issues and some worthwhile advice from that font of wisdom YouTube, I have discovered through my own trial and error that sleep is very very important in healing your body. As is fasting.

I wake up earlier, get the weight of my prayers in, they keep me up late when I procrastinate over them, and then head to the gym.

Physical fitness and activity are my strategy to drive my productivity throughout the day, as well as being awake more during daylight hours. It is just hard to get things done after dark; except writing. But if I start writing after dark then it will be nearly morning before I realize what time it is.

Yes, as I attempt to cement down this routine, my body is thriving, and the creative juices are flowing ever greater. With this weather soon I will have only writing to do, as work on the house pretty much ceases with the cold.

Yes, the gym. It has been possibly ten years since I have gone. Muscle memory has failed me, or perhaps it is just that I got no abs. Couldn’t do a single sit up. My only defense is that it was an inclined bench. A bit embarrassing but the back is strong (probably why my back has been so tight this last year: the difference in strength of abs vs. back) and everything else is in good to fair condition. I have always had trouble with exercising the abs, and you need those abs in the bench press.

The Chuck Hammer sagas are front and center though I can get those short stories, and drafts of a couple other novels, out quick if I set my mind to it.

Almost failed to meet post this month.

Thanks for reading.

Have to once again recommend a high school classmate of mine’s autobiography. It is a truly valuable read. Will make a great Christmas gift for a young up and comer.

Here is another valuable read. It must be valuable or people would not be warning you