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Journal Entry

Friday, July 13th
Fridays are always slow days at work. Half the office is out on Regular Day Off on any given Friday, and those who aren’t are often on leave. Or comp time, from travel. For whatever reason, there’s rarely more than a handful of people in the office, and those who are there don’t usually expect too get much work done.

Today was no exception. I still have a long-running project to work on, and I made some real progress on my section today, but the hours seemed to drag by. I had a couple hours comp time of my own, so I spent one of them to leave early, when I just couldn’t take it anymore.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Over my lunch break I worked on King Jason’s War, for the first time in over a year, and I got a significant portion written. I had trouble, though. Every time I went to reference the main character by name, I typed “Josh” out of habit. And when I went back to correct it, “Ja” became “James” before I could finally get around to “Jason.” I probably spent as much time hitting backspace as I did actually typing.

It felt good to make progress, though. I have a very rigorous outline for that novel (it was an experiment), and it’s easy to finish a piece and see just how much progress I’ve made toward the end. I’ve got a dozen pieces left to do, and the book will be done. That’s probably two weeks’ worth of work, if I worked hard at it, but I’m making no promises.

I did spend my whole walk thinking about that story, though. I worked mostly on the ending (since the beginning and middle are written). There’s a devastating development in the last third of the book, and in the story I wrote today I set the stage for that. While I was walking tonight, I figured out how to develop it, how to make that scene build from here to the end of the book, and it ought to be heartbreaking. I’ve never tried to write heartbreaking, so I don’t know if I can do it, but it’s in the outline. We’ll have to see what happens.

We had big plans for tonight. After work we were supposed to go downtown for dinner at Abuelo’s, and then to the biggest movie screen in the state (Cine Capre at the Harkins in Bricktown) to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dinner was delicious (it always is there), and K– and N– joined us for it. Then we went to wait in line for the movie (for over an hour) and B– and E– showed up in time to chat with us a little before the movie started, but after that AB had other plans for us.

Really, the movie was just way too loud for her. T– had thought she would sleep through it, late as the movie was, but we had no such luck. T– couldn’t focus on the movie, and she was fighting AB the whole time, so we ended up walking out an hour in and heading home. It was frustrating, but no big deal in the long run. We got refunds for our tickets (the lady at the counter was very nice about it), and we’ll just have to see the movie another time. I hated leaving our friends there, though.

It was 11:30 when we got home, and I’ve already told you about my walk. I’m going to finish my water now, and then it’s off to bed. I have this feeling, this energy like I could finish King Jason’s War before dawn, but I’ve done that once before, on a different novel, and it turned out awful. I’m going to get some sleep, and pace myself.

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Journal Entry: Thursday, July 12th

Wow. It’s been a long day, and I’ve got an early morning tomorrow.

We were supposed to have a big goodbye lunch for our departing Branch Manager today, at Steak and Ale. I can’t really justify a steak lunch these days, financially, but I was looking forward to giving in to social pressure. Unfortunately, the guest of honor got stuck in an airport last night, so the lunch was postponed until some other convenient time. So I had mediocre Arby’s and wished it was a sirloin.

That was really the day’s only disappointment, though. I did have an abominably boring meeting this morning concerning the contract transition, but I’d brought a pad and pen with me, so I spent the whole two hours working on a short story. Then I spent lunch working on it, too. Then, at the end of the day, I came home and worked on it while T– made dinner.

Then I went to Transformers with D– and K–. We invited B–, but he couldn’t come. Work demands, or something lame like that. When the movie ended, I turned to the other two and said, “I think that was the best movie I’ve ever seen.”

So there you have my review. I don’t need to go into a lot of details. They talked me down from that analysis, but at the very least I’ll finally be forced to divide “best movie ever” into categories by genre, now, and this one definitely wins “action/adventure.” It does what an adventure movie is supposed to do. Fun. Awesome.

I’d heard that it was not a disappointment, from the type of people who expected to be really disappointed by it. So I went in without that expectation. I went in expecting it to be good. I did not expect it to be flippin’ fantastic! But it was. Good movie. Go see it. I’ll be glad to come along.

Anyway, that was from 8:00 to 10:45, and then as D– was dropping me off at the house, he asked if I was planning to go for a walk. In all honesty, I wasn’t, but I had the right shoes on so I said yes. He and I went the full route, and I spent most of the time thinking about the short story I’d started in today’s meeting.

And then I got home from the walk, and finished it. It was a terrible idea. I should have gone to bed. I really should not be up this late. But it was so strong on my mind, there’s no way I could have fallen to sleep. And now it’s done, and I’ve got my favorite story so far. It does so many things, for the larger story, and yet I think it’s also compelling on its own. Maybe not in its current form — it’s just the rough draft — but I think it has the potential to be awesome.

That’s three stories in two days. That’s a pretty big deal. I’m excited. I’m also wondering if I’ll write another one before the weekend’s done. I would like to, but I’ve got kind of a lot of recreational activities planned. We’ll just have to see what happens.

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Journal Entry: July 10, 2007

I left one thing out of Saturday’s account: by the time I was done working in the yard Saturday, I had over 70 fresh mosquito bites. I counted them as I treated them. It was bad.

Sunday, July 8th
On Sunday, I had a headache. The crippling sort, that rather stops you doing anything else. The sort that interrupts your thinking. As a result, T– and I didn’t do much on Sunday. We went to church, and stayed for the fellowship with K– and N– and N–‘s mom (who went home on Sunday). After that, we stopped by B– and E–‘s to get some speaker wire so I could finish up the work K– and I had done on Saturday. We also hit Blockbuster while we were out and picked up three movies: Breach, which was surprisingly good, but pretty slow, as well as Happily N’Ever After from the makers of Shrek, and Gray Matters which has Heather Graham in it. So far, we’ve only watched Breach.

Anyway, we got home and T– ran some errands while I watched AB. Then her friend Rebecca came over to crop. While they did that, I finished fixing the TV, and then vegged on the couch all afternoon. I played some Civ, but not much. Mostly I sat still with my eyes closed, because of the headache.

Then that evening was when we watched Breach. It ended at 9:45. I usually go for a walk at 9:00 so I can be in bed by 10:00, since I have to wake up at 6:00 on weekdays. It was late enough, and I felt awful enough, that I decided to skip my walk Sunday night. I didn’t post on my blog here, either, so that’s two resolutions broken Sunday.

Monday, July 9th
And both again on Monday. Really, my headache persisted through the day Monday. T– got a lot done during the day, while I was at work. I, on the other hand, accomplished almost nothing at work, and then almost nothing when I got home. I’m pretty sure I have nothing to report for yesterday, except that I didn’t walk, and I didn’t do a blog post.

Tuesday, July 10th
This morning, I finally felt better. I had to wake up early, too, to finish an urgent project for work that I should have completed yesterday, except for the headache. That was also part of my excuse for not walking last night — the importance of my being on time to work today. Anyway, I showed up early and worked hard, and finished a special project well before lunch. It ended up…creeping, so that the same project ended up taking my whole day, but I’d finished the part I was assigned by early in the morning.

I went to lunch with D– and got to check out his new iPhone, which is really pretty cool. Then back to work and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on this project (which has nothing to do with my long-term responsibilities). It’s the sort of project that has lots of little gaps throughout the day as I hand it off to other people to collaborate, so during those breaks I worked on Josh’s story.

First I wrote up the Post Mortem discussion I’d been toying with since last week. Then I pulled out my Word document of the novel and cleaned up all the section breaks between blog posts, to make it look like an actual novel in structure. I thought that would be a week-long process, but I was able to finish it all this afternoon, which means my brief rewrite in the month of July is a lot more likely to actually make deadline.

Then I came home in time to watch T– give away one of our kittens. That’s a big deal. We’ve been advertising them for a while now without any takers. Now we just have two more to get rid of (and one to keep). We owe this one to Craigslist. Glad we thought to post there.

I also made chili for dinner, and helped T– out by doing the day’s dishes and taking out the trash. After that, I went for a walk with D– (so, yes, I’m back on track), and then came home to write a blog post (so there’s that, too). Overall, it was a really good day.

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Journal Entry: July 6, 2007

Just back from my walk. It was invigorating.

Today was slow, and mostly uneventful. We had a meeting at work, and I’m relinquishing some of the authority I’d been given last fall (with no pay to supplement it), so that I can resume control of the IETM project that had been canceled in the spring.

Things are in flux, it is safe to say.

When I got home from work, I spent some time playing with AB. T– made some delicious spaghetti for dinner, then I played some Civ (I’m close to a win, on the game I started Tuesday) while she started watching The Dead Zone. I’ve got the first four episodes, and over the course of the night she’s watched three of them.

At nine she reminded me to go for a walk. I spent the whole time working on a short story for my project with D–. I’m having some trouble with it (as I knew I would), but at the very least I have a pair of scenes that I think are pretty involving. I’m just not convinced that, between them, they make up a whole story. I certainly have a beginning and middle, but I’m not sure about an end.

We’ll see what happens when I get into it. I’m tempted to start on it now, but I’d be up for hours. I’ve had enough late nights this week. Besides, sitting on a story for a little while is always more likely to help it than hurt. I think I’ll head to bed.

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Journal Entry: Thursday, June 28th

Heh, this is getting very confusing. Every day this week, I’ve written a post on alexpoet about yesterday, and a post for SleepingKings that’ll go up tomorrow. It’s wiggin’ me out.

I guess that can end early next week, though. Teehee.

All I’ve got left is the action sequence, and the epilogue (also known as the “denouement,” which is French for when we finish off the bad guys). There was a lot of setup that had to go in before I could get to the action sequence, and I was pretty concerned about getting through that, but as of today (tomorrow, in terms of public viewing) it’s done. And, actually, the scene I wrote today was another of those few scenes I’ve had in my mind since day one. In my opinion, anyway, it went as well as I could have hoped. Feel free to judge it harshly, though, and say so in the comments, when you read it tomorrow.

Yesterday was another muggy day. Seventeenth day in a row that it’s rained (and today makes the eighteenth). That has been wild. I found out yesterday I’m on the list to get green-badged (which is our way of saying “moved from contractor to Federal employee”), which has several long-term benefits for me. So that’s pretty cool. Otherwise, the changes at my work are still in flux.

T– went to Tulsa for work yesterday, and left AB (I’m just gonna call her “AB” — it’s an unGoogleable nickname, so I’ll use it without the dashes) with E–. After work, I picked her up and chatted with B– and E– for a while (catching them up on my work situation), and then headed over to K– and N–‘s place to drop off a printout of the most recent SleepingKings posts, for them to read on their trip this weekend. While I was there, I learned (erroneously, it turned out) that I didn’t have any bottles for AB, so I had to rush home to feed her when she got fussy. Not before I made a delicious mini-pizza, though. Hooray for leftovers.

So, by that point it’s already 7:15. The only milk we had was frozen, so I went ahead and gave AB her cereal while the milk was thawing (we usually do those two in the opposite order), which is a horrific mess. Possibly the most unpleasant thing I do with my baby (she hasn’t started making the really awful diapers yet).

Usually, T– does the feeding (and the diapers, for that matter), but she didn’t even get out of Tulsa until 7:00, and the baby was hungry. So I fed her cereal, and then changed an explosively dirty diaper, and then gave her a bottle, and then changed another explosively dirty diaper. It was a wild night. Then I put her in her bed, went out to the garage to feed the kittens and change the litter box, and by the time I came back into the house, AB was sound asleep.

Ten minutes later (which is to say, 8:45), T– got home. We talked a little bit about her day, and then I went out for my walk.

Remember what I said about it raining? I was out for about fifteen minutes before it started to sprinkle. It got progressively stronger, and by half an hour it was really seriously raining. I decided to keep at it, though. Every single block on my route has a turn that will basically lead me straight back home, in a shortcut. The night before last, though, I only half did my walk, because D– was with me, and he was wearing flip-flops. So I decided, rain or no, to do it right.

By the time I got home, an hour after I left, I was drenched. Sodden. Quite inundated. Still, there was a little bit of satisfaction knowing I stuck it out. So there’s that. I’m at five days in a row, now. It’d be easy to skip tonight, because I’m hanging out with B–, but I’ll bet I can talk him into going with me. We’re planning on getting drunk, anyway, so he should be quite suggestible.

Have a good weekend. Enjoy tomorrow’s Sleeping Kings. It’s a good one.

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Journal Entry: Wednesday, June 27th

Okay, no meeting yesterday, but by casual email it was officially announced that my boss, our Team Lead, is going to be Acting Branch Manager (that is, he’s stepping into the shoes of his previous boss) until a permanent replacement is found. In addition, he’s going to be interviewing for the position.

Admittedly, I haven’t worked for that many bosses in my time, but from what I have seen, I’m just amazed by this guy’s style. I would love to see him in the permanent position (not least because he fully supports what I do, and some of my grand long-term ambitions). So, that’s definitely good news.

Are some people super sensitive to cumin? That’s my only explanation. I did use a lot more cumin than usual in the latest batch of chili, but it was still nowhere near “so spicy that you can only taste the spice, not the meat or other flavors.” That’s how T– put it. I had the leftovers yesterday, and I still don’t get it.

I also, yesterday, wrote out today’s scene for SK, which ended up over three times longer than my normal target for a daily post. That’s okay. I expect it’ll happen a lot between now and the end of the story. I’ve decided to write entire scenes in one sitting, instead of breaking them up in manageable blocks. It’s the sort of burst-productivity that you can only get over short periods, but I’m close to the end.

On that note, I keep thinking (and even saying), “I’m about ten pages from the end of the book.” Thing is, though…yesterday’s post alone was 10 pages. And I’ve got at least six more like that. So I guess there’s more to it than I realize. Maybe after editing it’ll be 10 pages total, but that’s still a long way off.

I’ve been listening almost exclusively to hip hop music as I’ve been writing Josh’s story (the first book of Sleeping Kings). Also, incidentally, Josh’s character has already claimed to be a hip-hop fan. We’ll learn tomorrow that he’s got a Luda Kris ring tone. It works well with his character.

Sarah’s character (the focus of the next book), isn’t likely to be a big hip-hop fan. I’m thinking more country, and on that note, I’m considering switching all my stations to country music until I finish the second book. It’ll be a little bit brutal at first, but it’ll help me get thinking in the right direction (her approach to the world is radically different from Josh’s), and I’ll probably get accustomed to it pretty quickly. I listened to a lot of country back in high school….

In case you’re wondering, I’m thinking rat packers for Dave (I’ve actually already shown that in the story, with the whole crew singing along to “My Way” in his car), and probably classical music for Nate. Possibly contemporary christian stuff, like B– listens to. I’ll have to get him to play me some and see if it makes any sense to me.

Last night we met D– and K– and N– at Jason’s Deli for dinner, then the guys went for snowcones while the girls went to church. I got to keep the baby. After snowcones, I dropped off a couple movies at Blockbuster, and then D– and I went back to the house. The baby ate her cereal, then sorta flipped out. She went from perfectly happy (giggling and cooing) to just all out screaming in less than a minute, and we couldn’t get her to calm down for the rest of the night (until T– got her to fall asleep). That was pretty brutal.

I did go for a walk at 9:00, and D– tagged along. We spent the walk talking about story ideas for our project, and then got back to the house and kept talking about it for another hour and a half. I’m thinking it’ll take longer to get off the ground than he expects, so don’t let me get your expectations up for anything cool in the near future, but it will definitely be an exciting product when we get it going.

I firmly believe I can finish Josh’s story in the next week. I’ve got a plan. I just have to put in a couple hours a day. If I do that…what next? I talked to D– about that on my walk last night. I could roll straight into Sarah’s story, and keep SK going, but that’s going from the burst energy of finishing off a three year old novel, to starting from scratch at page one.

Alternately, I could finish up King Jason’s War. I’ve got…I dunno, 80% of it done. Maybe a little less in prose form, but I have such a detailed outline that that’s got to count for extra. There’s a chance I could keep up my pretense of self-control and get it finished by the end of the summer (before we’re scheduled to go into actual production mode on the project D– and I are working on). There would be a real psychological advantage to knowing I had three novels completed (even if just in rough draft form). On the other hand, KJW is no good as a first novel. I’m confident it will sell well once my world is established, and I’m in love with the story, but I wouldn’t want to try to pitch it anytime soon, and it seems like I should be focusing on more saleable stuff.

One of the things D– wanted to do, to try to build up the saleability (in the form of market interest) in our novel was to develop a lot of satellite short stories, involving interesting characters and events only loosely related to the plot of the main novel (or trilogy, or trilogies), but emphasizing the unique aspects of our setting. He’d intended all along for that to be a form of prewriting, for us to get to know the characters before starting on the real deal, so it would make a lot of sense to go ahead and invest myself in that, once Josh’s story is done.

On the other hand…it’s sort of a short window before I get actively involved in our joint project, and it sometimes feels like I should be closing out open projects, or maybe cranking out the easy opener stuff for Sarah’s story, so I’ll have a base to work on when I come back to it in a year or two….

This is the sort of stuff I spend my day thinking about. This, and rotary joints breaking down, and air conditioners that will fix corrosion problems, and doubling all my workload in order to maintain an Interactive Electronic Technical Manual parallel to extensive paper documentation…but all that stuff is boring. That’s my job. Count yourself lucky I mostly keep that stuff to myself.

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Journal Entry: Tuesday, June 26th

Yes, I went for my walk last night. I did the longer route that I’d come up with, too. It still only took 45 minutes. I’m hoping to find a convenient route that’s right at an hour.

Hmmm…. I just read that Denise Richards is having a luau at the Playboy Mansion. That sounds like fun.

Yesterday I stopped on my way home from work to pick up D–, who’d lost his car key, only to discover when I got there that he’d found it. No big deal, I’d only been waiting five minutes or so, and I’d spent that writing the next scene of SK in my scribble book. But then when I went to leave, I discovered just how many people work there. It was fifteen minutes to get out of the parking lot.

T– made some delicious chicken fried rice for dinner. I’m glad she decided to experiment with that. I’m really enjoying it. Also, it’s another dish that makes for tasty leftovers.

We ran to Blockbuster while D– watched the baby, then I played some Civ while T– watched “According to Jim.” Or possibly According to Jim. I’m not sure about TV shows….

Then I went for my walk, like I said. I spent half of it praying, and covered a lot of ground. Then I spent the second half planning out the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge Massacre. Err…for Sleeping Kings, that is. It should be exciting. It is in my head, anyway.

Then I was in bed by ten. Good for me. This morning at work we’re supposed to have a Branch Meeting to cover the rumors I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I’ll let you know if I learn anything that I can legally reveal on the internet….

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Journal Entry: Tuesday, June 19th

See how I’m doing that? Posting every morning concerning the day before? It looks funny with the headlines, but I think it’s a better way to do things than trying to remember to post something just before bed.

Yesterday ended up with kind of a rough evening, but up until then it was a pretty cool day. As most of you will have noticed, I got Sleeping Kings updated during the day yesterday. I have one more scene (roughly 3 posts’ worth) before going into the big montage, followed by the climactic Great Battle, followed by the You-Have-to-See-it-to-Believe-It season-ending cliff-hanger. I’ve decided to go ahead and post this next scene, in spite of what I’d said before. It’s got clean breaks, and should make for good posts, and it’s a better stopping spot to tide people over while I take a month or two to write the end. Yeah, yeah, I should’ve thought about better stopping spots for any of my previous several-month hiati, too. But none of those was intentional….

Anyway, got some major huge news at work (regarding organizational structure above me, not me personally), but it’s too early to guess exactly what impact it’ll have. I suppose it could still turn out to be a false rumor, too, but that doesn’t seem likely.

Then I got home, and we ran to Blockbuster for some movies (I got Reno 911 against my better judgment — I’ll let you know how it turns out), and dropped by B– and E–‘s place, too. The new house is a lot cooler with their stuff in it. I can’t wait until they’ve had a chance to settle in. Should be a lot of fun.

When we got back home, A–b– was having trouble eating and that generates a lot of frustration (in her and us), so there was that to deal with. Kind of a long evening, really, but everything’s good now. It’s lunch time, now, and I’m going to see about getting a couple pages written for SK.

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Journal Entry: Monday, June 18th

A long day at work yesterday. Mondays always are. I’m working on the Air Conditioner mod Technical Issuance (TI, which is a maintenance manual, really), and will be at least until the middle of July. It’s really a lot of work. I’ve been spending all my time in Section 3, so far, and it’s well over 100 pages. Most of the others won’t be that long.

I think what I want to do on Sleeping Kings is post up the last scene I have written out longhand, and then stop trying to do the daily, 1000-word posts. Instead, I want to just get the novel finished, in a traditional style. I’m sick of it being this close to the end, and unfinished. Still, as any writer will tell you, ending a book is the hardest part. Have you ever read The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny? If not, you should. But writing a book or story is a lot like the way he describes walking the Pattern. With each page you finish, it gets harder to write the next one, until the ending is just a monumental task to put down each paragraph. There’s Great Arcs, too, but I don’t want to belabor this too long.

I think I’ve decided not to kill off Carlos. I’m not making any promises for the finished version, but I’m going to leave it out of the rough draft, and see how it goes. Before I killed Adrian, I didn’t intend for that to be an emotionally significant death, but it became one within the narrative, so maybe that’ll serve the purpose Carlos’s death was supposed to. We’ll see.

Last night I got home and mostly crashed. T– made tacos, I played with A–b– on the floor (and watched her scoot, which is almost like a crawl, except lamer), and then N– invited us over for Texas Yumyum, which is a sort of dessert. And while we were there, we Guitar Heroed on K–‘s new XBox. Apparently, I did pretty well for my first time. I can see how it would be very challenging at harder difficulty levels, though.

All in all, a really fun evening. We got home at ten, and I went to bed as soon as I was done feeding the kittens.

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Greatness: Heart’s Desire

There’s a verse in the Psalms that took me by surprise, first time I read it.

“Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

That’s Psalm 37:4. It’s in a familiar vein, “Ask and you shall receive,” and the kid asking his father for a loaf of bread, and even the insistent widow. That’s all Jesus, though, right? I mean, he was a generous guy. It struck me, though, reading the psalmist saying the same sort of thing….

Prayer is a serious thing, in the Bible. It’s a powerful thing. We are encouraged and ordered to use it. And not just for meditation, not just as an opportunity to spread our lives before God, and hopefully gain a new perspective. We are directly instructed to ask for what we want, because God wants to be our provider. He makes that clear, again and again. Look what he was trying to do in Eden.

That Psalm caught my attention when I was a boy, back when I was about sixteen, and I put it to the test. I felt confident in that time, because I did delight in the Lord, I was certain of that, and more importantly, I knew without a doubt the desire of my heart. And I didn’t have it.

So I prayed. I prayed, and in the night I had a dream, a glimpse of the life I wanted to have, years off, and that was enough for me. I took confidence from that moment, and I received what I asked for then.

That was a powerful experience for me.

A prayer isn’t a birthday cake wish, y’know? I don’t think it needs to be a secret. Sitting in church last Sunday, the man was saying this or that about relying on God, about letting him exercise his power within your life. That’s something I believe in, as all of you know. I believe the world is a malleable thing, that reality can be bent for the purposes of God or man. I nodded, understanding and encouraged, even, and suddenly I remembered high school, and that desperate prayer….

I have a heart’s desire, in my life today. I have lots of things to ask for (and hope that they will be given). We have a baby on the way, and I want her to be healthy. I want Trish to be healthy through it all, and I worry about that. I want lots of little things, the comforts that require wealth beyond what I already have. I pray a lot. I ask for a lot. But those are just things. Somehow, in my head at least, I’ve separated such prayers, such petitions, from the sort of desire the psalmist was talking about.

My heart’s desire, today and now, is to be a best-selling writer. I want to publish a work, and have it read by the world. I want to write, stories and lessons and snapshots, to show readers what the world was and is and could be. I want my name to be remembered, for the words that I said. I have a message that I want heard, I have talents, gifts, that I want to use. I want the money. Not that — I want the opportunity. I want my writing to be my life.

I was an A student in elementary school. I was good at everything except multiplication. I could teach myself, given the right books, and I usually managed to get them. I had a lot of plans for the future. For most of my childhood, they had nothing to do with writing.

A lot of you have known me for a long time, but if you haven’t heard me tell this story, you don’t know this story. That is to say, most of you know me as a writer, but none of you were there, at the crucial moment, when I discovered why I was a writer. Maybe Josh, but no one else.

I was maybe twelve. Probably eleven. We’d had a handful of writing projects over the last year, and I’d done well enough on them (but, then, I did well on all of my projects, as long as they weren’t based on multiplication). One day I was thinking through the writing process, though. The actual job description, of the sort of person who writes stories, and I realized it would be a home job. Maybe a nice office, maybe just a pad of paper on the kitchen table, but it would be a home job.

I wanted that, because I wanted to be home for my kids. I wanted to be home with my family, even when I was working. That picture stuck in my head, and I’ve never shaken it. Even times when I was certain I didn’t want kids, it was mostly because of some variation of the disappointment at realizing I wouldn’t be able to realize that picture.

I was twelve. That’s how I thought when I was twelve. Yeesh.

That’s my heart’s desire. I have a great job now, a fantastic one, that pays well and demands nothing of me but those things at which I excel, those things I can do easily and quickly and well. Given some of the things that have been discussed recently, it could get even better. And it’s a better job than I deserve, considering the effort I’ve put into it. I chalk that up to a blessing, a gift. I’m in no position to complain, and I realize that.

But my heart’s desire is to be a writer, just a writer, completely a writer, for my family. That last bit matters, too. I could have been a starving artist. I could have refused to take a job, and chased after every avenue available to me to get a book sold (in a market that is incredibly difficult to get a foot in the door), but it’s about more than that to me. That’s why I described my picture, my goal when I was twelve. I want it for my family, not in spite of my family. I want something better than I deserve to have, something I maybe had a shot at in the past, but I’ve squandered my opportunities. I want something that would completely change my life. I want it as a gift, served up on a silver platter.

Why not? It’s happened before.

I do delight in the Lord. Maybe not as loudly as I did back then. Certainly not as dogmatically. But I do. And I crave this, looking through the few short days between now and then, I want this very much. Please, let it be so. Amen.