Every year, in November, tens of thousands of writers, at the start of November, sign pledges, set goals, and sit their rear ends in seats in front of computers and begin a novel. Yes, it’s National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Internet groups have formed for it. Some in-person meet-ups are probably happening. The goal is 50,000 words for the month. That’s not quite a novel for most genres, but it’s more than just a good start. It’s well on it’s way to writing a novel.
But I am not participating. I never participate in NaNoWriMo. The main reason is the busyness of November. Our main annual family celebration is at Thanksgiving. Preparations for this normally consume much time and energy, leaving little for writing and certainly not enough to complete a novel or even 50,000 words of one. I am working on a novel, and today hope to carve out enough time to add 1,000 words to it. But I can’t commit to NaNoWriMo goals.
This year the time crunch is made worse because of decluttering. Two bedrooms have been in use as decluttering staging areas. They are cluttered. The dining room and our large dining table has also been a site of staging. Boxes and piles, boxes and piles, seemingly everywhere. They grow a little and shrink a little, depending on whether we are finishing with something or starting something new.
Saturday we made some good progress, so naturally the dining room looks much worse than it did on Friday. I said progress because we finally, after nine months, dug into boxes of linens left behind in our house when my mother-in-law died three years ago. We sorted. Somethings we discarded (which means put them aside to go to Goodwill, which takes odd cloths and makes things out of them). Today, Monday, with a little extra effort, might have all this sorted out and put either in the garage for storage/donation or in smaller boxes for storage. I hope.
Writing will continue, even as I work on both physical and digital decluttering. But I have no real goals for output until after Thanksgiving. Then, maybe by the end of December, the first draft of that novel will be done. Meanwhile, I will say with Emerson, there is time enough…for all that I must do.
What would you do if you were reading a book and came across this in it:
bowing at the altar of individualism, including individualist spirituality
I encountered it in a book I recently read. I won’t say what the book is, nor why I was reading it.
Let’s just say that I’ve run across this concept time and time again recently. Individualism is bad. Rugged individualism is a sin. We need to expunge individualism from society and the church. You can’t do discipleship solo. I don’t understand this concept. But perhaps we need to take a moment and define what individualism is. A modern dictionary definition is:
1. the habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant.
2. a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control.
Wikipedia has the following “executive summary” for their article on individualism:
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one’s goals and desires and to value independence and self-reliance and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group while opposing external interference upon one’s own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism and more corporate social forms.
Individualism makes the individual its focus and so starts “with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation”. Anarchism, existentialism, liberalism and libertarianism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis. Individualism involves “the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization”.
Individualism has been used as a term denoting “[t]he quality of being an individual; individuality”, related to possessing “[a]n individual characteristic; a quirk”. Individualism is also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors such as with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.
I’m really having trouble finding anything wrong with individualism, based on these definitions. I don’t find the necessity of such extreme manifestations of individualism as anarchism or bohemianism. For all conditions in society, you will find extreme examples, be that for individualism or the opposite. And, what is the opposite of individualism? Is it collectivism? Is it tribalism? Is it state-ism? Enquiring minds want to know.
The concept of self-reliance seems good to me. Don’t burden family or society any more than you have to. Can someone explain to me what’s wrong with doing for yourself to the greatest extent possible rather than burdening society?
Sometimes I think the war on people wanting to be unique individuals is an extrovert vs. introvert thing. Neither one fully understands the other, but I think extroverts tend to be more aggressive in trying to make the introvert be more extroverted than the other way around. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but as one who leans more to the introverted end of the spectrum, that’s what it seems to me. Sometimes people just want to be left alone, to do for themselves—to be an individual rather than one of the herd.
When I encountered “bowing to the altar of individualism” in that book, a clear case of over-the-top rhetoric in my not so humble opinion, I came close to throwing it in the trash. But I never throw any book in the trash, not even those I disagree strongly with. I have thrown out a couple that were cheaply made and had fallen apart, but not for disagreement.
Complete self-reliance is, or course, impossible unless one can live in a remote cabin somewhere and have the skills necessary to live alone. If someone can do that and maintain their Christian faith, God bless them, let them do that. But the world’s population is too large to allow many people to do that. Mankind has to mix in society nowadays and has had to for a long time. But why not live as self-reliantly as possible? Why not, when encountered with a task that needs to be done, say “How can I accomplish this on my own?” rather than to say “Who can I get to do this with me?” Why burden society if I can do it myself?
I’m no hermit. I’m not fully self-sufficient, nor do I want to be. But I don’t bow at any altar of individualism and I resent that statement. I see the moral worth of the individual. I believe each individual needs to do his best to take care of himself first before seeking help from society. And I don’t see that changing.
One more book like the last one coming being suggested for me and…I won’t be buying any more from it.
My new landing page. I hope you’ll check it out before leaving today.
Those who read this blog regularly know that it has been a goal of mine for a long time to do some updates on the site. What specifically? A writer friend said having my bio on the landing page wasn’t best. It should be on a page by itself and have the landing page for notices. After thinking about it, and seeing what some other writers did, I decided she was right. Also, my works-in-progress page is forever behind times. I looked at it on Thursday and saw I hadn’t updated it in a year.
As I say, it has been a goal to do some updates, but I kept putting it off. Why? The short answer is: technophobia. Yep, I’m scared that I will mess up and will see my website go poof into the ether. My security program supposedly backs up my site, so in theory I could restore it, but that’s something I wouldn’t look forward to or have confidence in. So, for months, I’ve had updates as a goal but have put off working on it.
Last Wednesday I finished a certain milestone on a different project, and had to decide what to do next. I have my novel-in-progress to work on, but before I got back on that I took a look at my writing goals for the month. And there it was: Begin the process of revamping my website.
That’s a good thing to do today, I thought. So I did it. With WordPress, everything is menu driven. You don’t really need to know html for the simple things. It took me a little while to orient myself to the menu system, as it’s been that year since I last looked at it. But I finally did. I created a bio page, moved the bio from the landing page to the bio page, and saved. Then I put some new text and photos on the landing page. I saved and…I couldn’t find the bio page. What happened?
The top part of my new bio page. I probably should re-read it for typos. You can find it through the Menu.
I discovered that you have to manually change the menu to have a new page show up on it. I’d done that twice before, at least eight years ago. So I dug into the menu on menus and got that changed. I hit save, and there was the Bio listed in the revised menu. That was enough change for a day.
On Friday, I looked at everything again. I realized that the Bio page needed some photos. So I searched my photos, selected a few (including the embarrassing 4th grade photo with the lock of hair sticking up), loaded them to the Bio page, saved. I think it looks fairly good. For good measure I added a couple of photos to other pages.
No, my website isn’t splashy like many peoples’. It never will be unless I learn html and grow an artistic bone. The best I can hope for is to do no harm with it, and I think I’m about there. This week I’ll update my works-in-progress page. I’ll also put a reminder on my calendar to update that page monthly
A book that covers the years 1935-1947 in JFK’s life.
It’s no secret that I like to read about the life of President Kennedy. I’ve posted several reviews about him. My JFK collection is around twenty volumes. In my closet, on a book pile that I dig into from time to time and found The Search for JFK, a 1976 book by Joan and Clay Blair, Jr. At 671 pages, my copy of this is a good quality hardback bought at a thrift store. When I found it, it was, I believe, the only JFK book in the house I hadn’t read.
This book covers JFK’s years in prep school, university, pre-war, World War 2, and the start of his political career, the years of 1935 to about 1947. While these years had been covered in other biographies and histories, the authors felt that something was missing, that the true facts about this period in the president’s life had not been adequately documented.
So they poured over what was available at the (then temporary) Kennedy Library in Waltham MA. They interviewed over 150 people in the years 1973-74. Just a decade after the assassination and three to four decades after the years covered, many people were alive and willing to tell the story of how they intersected with JFK’s life. This included classmates, military comrades, fellow politicians, relatives, and the many women he chased/dated. Not everyone would talk with the authors. Some refused to answer certain questions. Some gave interviews only by phone or in writing. But the authors doggedly persisted, and a story emerged.
The authors have dispelled three myths about Kennedy—successfully dispelled, in my opinion. Those are:
that Jack was a robust young man. Not true. His health was perhaps the worst of any president ever elected. Born with a bad back (forget the lies about football or PT boat injuries), frequently given to infections, requiring numerous and lengthy hospitalizations before he ever got to Congress, and finally beset with Addison’s Disease, Kennedy was a basket case, health-wise. His health should have disqualified him from serving in the armed forces, but his daddy pulled some strings.
that Jack was a dedicated and brilliant scholar. That JFK had a superior mind is beyond doubt. But he was no scholar. He lost a couple of years of studies to illness. He never attended two schools that most biographers said he did. His writings were primarily done by others. His “cum laude” Harvard years were anything but stellar.
that Jack was a war hero. I want to be careful here. As one who never served in the armed forces, I tend to think that all who did so should be considered heroes and deserve our respect and support. But what the authors have done is document the carefully crafted PR campaign that attributed to Jack things he never did, that glossed over the fact that the ramming of PT109 was likely due to Kennedy’s negligence—it was the only PT boat rammed in the entire war. His hero status got him elected to Congress, which was never what JFK wanted. His father wanted it more than he did, and since the oldest son died in WW2, it fell to Jack to pick up the family’s political ambitions whether he wanted to or not.
Note that, while the book discusses the many women in Kennedy’s life, it does so in a discrete manner. Many other authors have covered his womanizing in great detail. I guess the Blairs decided they didn’t have to. The names of many are included; the reader has to guess at the nature of the relationships, or find another book to give the full story.
The book is well written and well worth the read. It is refreshing to read a JFK book that isn’t about the assassination. I’ve poured through enough of those. I do have one fault to pick, which is the authors used quotes a little more than I would have liked. I thought some of their selections didn’t actually add to the story. A little shortening of those and I’d be giving it 5 stars. As it is, only four.
But, is this a keeper? Will I ever re-read it? I’ve thought long and hard about this. I have a shelf full of JFK books. I’ve enjoyed reading them. While they all are history, a lot of that history happened during my lifetime, making it all the more interesting. But, in the spirit of dis-accumulation/decluttering/preparing to downsize, and given my age, the number of years I have left and the huge number of other books I want to read, I am unlikely to ever read these again and thus they have to go. Now that I’ve finished this one, I will list the collection on Facebook Marketplace and see if I have any takers.
And, I’m also not likely to buy any more. Well, maybe one I saw today on Amazon, if I ever find it used. Then no more.
Start of a new month. Time to report on what progress I made in October, and to establish some goals for November. First, the progress.
Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. I have a couple of conflicts coming up, so maybe those pre-written and to-be-scheduled posts will come in handy. I almost achieved this. I looked back over the month and realized I missed one day. I’m not sure how that happened. I thought I had one scheduled for that day. I suppose I hit a wrong key and the post disappeared.
Work on my work-in-progress, The Forest Throne. I did get back to this. I worked on it a couple of times at a writer on-line event (more on that another time), then worked on it three or four days in a row. I’m liking where it is and how far I’m into it.
Link the four novels in my Church History novels series. Why do I keep putting this off? This month I didn’t put this off. Got it done.
Begin formatting the church Centennial book. I received one of three outside contributions and pasted it in. I have a promise of receiving the other two very soon. I’m happy to report I accomplished this. I now of two of the three outside contributions; I have the book formatted for book size; I’ve been adding photographs. I suspect I have another five hours of work for the book to be ready for someone to make a cover and begin the printing process. Well, first finding a printer.
Attend writers groups this month. I’m not sure how many it will be. I may have conflicts with the meeting dates of two of my regular groups. Maybe I’ll be able to get in on the new group a couple of times. I did this. I missed two meetings while traveling, but attended three meetings of a new group, an on-line group. A productive month in this category.
Publish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, once I get critiques back from the Scribblers & Scribes. I have one back already. Publishing will mean cover creation, but I’m already pulling ideas together. Did not get this done. Just too busy on other things.
Take a look at, but don’t necessarily write more on, the Bible study I was working on during the spring and early summer. No, didn’t get this done.
Ok, what do I want to accomplish in November? This is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). But November, with our family Thanksgiving celebration, is always too busy for me to participate. Plus, we still have decluttering/disaccumulation activities. Still, I want to establish some goals. Here they are.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
Attend my writers groups this month. That will be about six meetings if I make all of them.
Continue formatting work on the church Centennial book. With luck, and a few good hours, it will be finished when Dec 1 rolls around.
More work on The Forest Throne. I’ll even set a word goal on this: 10,000 words more than I have now.
Begin the process of revamping my website. I don’t really have that much to do on it, mainly have a new landing page and move my bio to it’s own page. I ought to be able to achieve that.
I think that’s all I’ll establish as official goals. An unofficial goal is to continue to go through my writing papers and see what I need to keep, what I can get rid of.
I’ll check back in either late November or early December with a progress report and new goals.
Rain came in Wednesday late. At least I think it did. I was asleep and didn’t hear it. When I woke up Thursday morning, I heard the plink-plink on the skylights. While waiting for the coffee to brew, I went into the darkness of the sunroom and listened. The wind was easy, the rain light, and the sounds wonderful.
As for my “work” day, after the coffee was done, I went to The Dungeon. Light was just barely visible between the blinds slats, darker than normal due to the rain. I had my devotions and read morning newsletters, then planned my trading day. Thursday is a busy day for my trading system. I did some analysis and laid out some trades. I then made them slowly as the day unfolded.
For writing, I pulled off The Forest Throne to get back on the church Centennial book. As I’ve said before, the writing work is done. I had also begun formatting it for print a week ago. My main task was to add photos. Some of those were on a shared Google drive. Some were in church archives I had at the house, and some were loose or in envelopes. I worked with them all morning. By the time lunch came around I had approximately ten pages of photos added. It’s not done, but it’s now close. Another morning of work and I’ll have added all that are available to me. Today I plan on doing that work.
After lunch, I fell asleep reading C.S. Lewis’s essay “De Futilitate”. So I got up and went out to the sunroom and went back to reading it. I was able to finish the essay, but didn’t really understand it. I think it’s a three or four reading just to get a basic understanding but that wouldn’t be enough to be able to discuss it intelligently.
Pizza and salad for supper, then an evening of…what? I could write, edit, read, chill out watching TV, wash the dishes, declutter. Hmmm. I’m actually writing this Thursday evening, around 7 p.m. Well, I worked on decluttering and disaccumulation last night; I’m not sure I’m up for it tonight. The dishes really need washing, so I’m sure I’ll do that. I may then mess around with e-mail archiving. That’s easy to do in distracted conditions.
The rain is about over, but the winds have risen. I hear the roaring through the closed window. This is blowing-down-trees strength wind. I enjoy listening to it, but won’t appreciate the clean-up afterwards.
This is the last post for October. I’ll be back on Monday with a writing progress report.
In my last post, I made some comments on C.S. Lewis’s essay “Christianity and Culture”. I decided to re-read it, finishing it on Saturday. I’m now in the process of reading the train of criticism it provoked and Lewis’s response to the criticism. Last night I went looking for the criticism, and found it on-line. Alas, it was all behind a paywall. In the next few days I may spend a little more time to see if it exists somewhere else on the internet that doesn’t require a financial outlay.
But Lewis got me to thinking, and I journaled about it Saturday night and may journal about it again. Lewis wondered, several years after his conversion, if the cultured, educated life he was living and earning his living from was compatible with Christianity. He said that he had come to the conclusion that the end/goal of the Christian’s life must be to glorify God and see His kingdom increased. Did the cultured life, a.ka. the literary life wherein literature is pursued as an end in itself, contribute to these two aims of the Christian life?
Lewis concluded the cultured life was not incompatible with Christianity. To do so he searched the scriptures, the early Christian writers, and many later Christian writers from Catholic and Protestant sources.
All of which led me to wonder whether my vocation and leisure was compatible with the aims of Christianity. Of course, I left my vocation behind for retirement. For 44 years I spent my time engineering public infrastructure and private developments. I did this in five states and three countries. I earned a good living at it. I think I helped the world, and in some cases changed the world, by practicing that profession. While doing so, I believe I did it as a faithful and devout Christian. When asked to pay a bribe while in Saudi Arabia—a request made by a fellow American expat—I refused. When some Bible extract booklets were shipped to be by mistake, I distributed them in-country, including to a Lebanese Muslim expat.
I could go on blowing my own horn, but that’s not a good thing to do. I only do so to show why I come to the conclusion that the decades I spent in my chosen profession were compatible with Christian discipleship, a conclusion arrived at with considerably less searching than Lewis did.
What about now? I actually have two new professions. One, of course, is writing. My books and stories are a mix of overtly Christian and secular underpinned by a Christian worldview. I don’t have a lot of sales and no notoriety, but it’s difficult to see how that would be incompatible with Christian discipleship.
My other “occupation” in “retirement” is stock trading, or securities trading as defined by the IRS: buying and selling stocks and options for the ake of generating income and building wealth. On the surface that looks a little more iffy. Again, taking a somewhat superficial look at it, securities trading is not inherently evil. It could be looked at the same as buying and selling paintings, or buying and selling baseball cards, hoping to have a gain. With securities, it’s all done in an account, you don’t have an inventory of goods to deal with.
It would seem to be acceptable so long as you do it right. No insider trading (as if I had access to such). No risky speculation. Tithe the gain and give offerings on top of that. Pay taxes on the gain according to the law. It would seem to me that with those stipulations this second retirement vocation is not incompatible to Christian discipleship.
One other thing to consider is if following these retirement occupations is causing me to shirk other responsibilities. My answer to that is no. As I look at the things I do around the house, in the family, in church and community, I think I’m doing okay with what I do.
This little bit of thought has taxed my brain. I’ve given all this a cursory, perhaps shallow, analysis and concluded I’m not wrong in my retirement pursuits. I hope I’m right.
‘Twas in this book that I found the essay “Christianity and Culture”. I will need to read it another time or two to fully understand it.
A few posts back I mentioned C.S. Lewis and trying to find the source of a quote attributed to him. I found it in my personal library. That caused me to keep that book in hand and read some in it. ‘Twas not so long ago that I finished a book, had one other one to work on, and wanted a second in my active reading pile. Perfect, I thought. Two thirds of this book is a compilation some of of his essays and lectures. Perfect, I thought. I can read it for a day or two and lay it aside.
The first I read was “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”, a Lewis magazine article anthologized in God In The Dock. The second was “Christianity and Culture”, an earlier magazine article anthologized in Christian Reflections. A bookmark showed that I had started reading this back in 2019 and got halfway through it. Perfect, I thought, I’ll finish this essay and go on to the next one.
And finish it I did, reading it slowly and closely, even rereading it, trying to absorb what Lewis was saying. After all, if I am a Christian and want to impact the culture around me, surely Lewis would give me helpful instructions, or at least suggestions and hints.
Alas, that’s not at all what this essay was about. By “culture” Lewis doesn’t mean it in a dictionary sense: “the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group”. Nor does he mean it as a verb in a scientific sense: “maintain (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) in conditions suitable for growth”. No, by “culture” he means what I would call “cultured”: “characterized by refined taste and manners and good education”.
The gist of the essay was whether a cultured person could be a Christian.
First off, I dislike that term, cultured. It implies a type of refinement, a type of “better-than-others” implication. Maybe Lewis didn’t mean it in that way. Maybe it’s just another way to describe a segment of humanity to differentiate them from that part of humanity that has not had the best of education, and whose manners and tastes are not so refined. You know, to differentiate the hot dog eaters from the caviar eaters.
But my question is: Why is this even up for debate? Why take up a whole essay on this, Mr. Lewis? Surely we can find Christians in all walks of life, in all degrees of refinement.
Upon reflection, however, I think Lewis has a valid reason for asking this. Maybe in England there was a greater class distinction between the life of culture and the life of commonness. When Lewis was a schoolboy, all those charged with educating and guiding him saw he had an exceptional intellect. They steered him into the cultured life—a life of education, where he would then teach others. He ought to work with him mind, not his hands. He was a very willing participant in this, as he saw that he wanted to live this kind of life. He lived and breathed learning, hoping to become an Oxford don, and maybe even a professor.
World War 1 caused a delay in the education, but eventually Lewis was exactly where he wanted to be, at Oxford University, tutoring students and lecturing to attentive audiences. While he wasn’t wealthy (a condition usually associated with cultured people), he was living a life of culture, as he called it.
Then came Christianity, as from 1929 to 1931 Lewis moved from his atheism to belief in Jesus as the only begotten Son of God. His outlook changed along with his beliefs. But what didn’t change was his occupation or expectations of life. He was still living as a cultured person, still lecturing, still tutoring, still enjoying happy times with friends at the pub or on holiday walking tours. While his outlook on sin and holiness had changed, not much else had.
Fast forward to the end of the 1930s. Lewis began to wonder if this was right. If he made a radical change in his life by becoming a Christian, shouldn’t everything change? He asked the question: Can I live a life of culture now that I’m a Christian? If not, he would have to give up a lot: his way of making a living and his cherished activities of leisure.
According to Lewis’s article, he went through extensive studies to make a decision about this. He read major Christian writers from the past, the distant and then recent past, and concluded that nothing about being a Christian would require him to change his profession or give up those things he found enjoyment in. He continued to teach, continued to write books and essays and articles and lectures. Along the way, he added defending the Christian faith. And millions of people through the decades are glad that he did.
I think what Lewis went through is worthwhile for everyone to go through when they make a commitment to Jesus. Does my way of life—my work, my recreation, my habits, my friendships—need to change, either marginally or drastically, to live the life God wants me to live? Perhaps I’ll explore this some more in future posts. For now, I think I’ll re-read “Christianity and Culture” again to make sure I fully understand Lewis’s conundrum.
We just got back from visiting in West Texas late on Friday. Company came on Saturday and leaves this morning. I have two blog posts started in draft, but neither is close to being finished. So, I won’t have a real post today.
See you all on Friday, when I should be able to write something more meaningful.
Elijah enjoyed the bowling and wouldn’t use the launching rack.
The wife and I have been on grandparent duty for the last week. The parents have been around. We had relatively few times where we had to babysit. We came to celebrate birthdays. Youngest grandchild Elijah turned 5 on Oct 3, and his dad, Richard, had a birthday on the 6th. The celebrations were delayed due to a conflict with church activities last weekend. On Saturday they did a bowling party for Elijah. I guess 5 years old is a milestone if not a breakthrough.
Ezra is in the middle of the photo, in scout shirt with hands in pockets.
On Monday I did parent duty at Ezra’s cub scout pack meeting. He had missed the week before so didn’t have his toolbox put together. The cubmaster told him to have it next week. Grandpa remedied that with him this afternoon at Ace Hardware. I only got him only the box and a few tools, telling him I had some surplus tools at home which, had I known he needed them, I would have brought them. At the pack meeting they learned a little about car maintenance. Checking the tire air pressure (and where to find the right pressure) and checking oil level are now part of the scouts’ knowledge base. And we got to use his tools this afternoon on a home repair.
Ephraim approaching the finish line. The boy is second can just be seen in the trees over Ephraim’s left shoulder.
Tuesday, oldest grandson Ephraim ran his final cross-country race of the year, the District finals. It was held in Big Spring, where they live. That may have given the Big Spring kids a bit of home course advantage. Ephraim had missed the last race, as he was recovering from an ingrown toenail and the coach rested him. Last year, in 7th grade, he finished 13th, which wasn’t too bad for his first year. Now in 8th grade, he is best on his team (a small team at this particular race). How would he do? His female counterpart won the girls race by a big margin. Then came the boys race. At the first viewing place, right after the start, Ephraim was 2nd or 3rd in a bunch. At the second viewing point he was 2nd but was passed and in 3rd as they went out of sight and started to spread out. Two minutes later, at a very brief view, it looked as if he was 4th, but they were far away and it was hard to tell.
Big Spring took 1st place in both girls and boys races.
Then came the viewing place on a good straightaway, and he was in 1st! And seeming like he was pulling away. He went up the hill and looked strong. At the final straightway leading to the finish line, he was still first with no one else in view. He cross the line a full 25 or 30 seconds ahead of the nearest competitor. I consider this a breakthrough because now he knows he can win, and how hard he has to race in order to win.
Useless and Nitwit are allowed on the kitchen table to escape the torments of Nuisance.
The week has been made a little more exciting because of the three new pets in the household, a kitten who is almost a cat, a full blown kitten, and a rambunctious lab-mix puppy. They are new to the household after older pets expired earlier this year. Their names are Nuisance, Useless, and Worthless, though the latter name was replaced by Nitwit while we were there. No, that’s not their real names; that’s just what Grandpa calls them. Nuisance (the dog) is very powerful. I walked her 1 3/4 miles almost every day, and she had as much energy at the end as at the beginning. I won’t say that I will miss them when we go, though Useless was starting to cuddle up with me the last few days.
You can tell when I started to advertise it.
And, the last breakthrough, again more of a milestone, was me posting my 1000th book sale. Actually, as of 10 p.m. today (Thursday), I’m still at 999 sales. I should have another sale soon, perhaps by the time we get back home on Friday. While it’s a milestone, it’s still less than 30 sales per item for sale. I still work, publish, and sell in obscurity. Maybe someday I’ll be able to report sales that are more of a breakthrough rather than a milestone.
