Bible study, home improvements

Not A Normal Week

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The damaged area in the living room, after the built-ins were removed.

Last weekend, the closer it got to Monday, I knew it wasn’t going to be a normal week.

First of all, it was a week with no appointments outside the house. Lately it seems that every week has something: one of my writing groups meetings, a doctor appointment, something. No, wait, I did have one appointment. Monday night was supposed to be a dinner meeting for Life Group teachers at church. But the weekend forecasts for Monday said the day would start out icy. Sunday evening I was pretty sure it would be cancelled. Sure enough, it was. So a week with no appointments.

But I knew it would be a busy week, because, after much delay, contractors were scheduled to be at our house. One contractor was to replace our gutters. The other was to do remediation work on places on the house that have water damage. The house is about 38 years old. We’ve lived here for 22 of those years. We have done nothing much to it.

Great precautions taken to contain any mold or other contamination.

Last October we had a contractor replace the flooring and railings of our upper deck. That revealed some damage to the doors to the deck, more on the doorframes. We got to looking around and saw damage at another place, inside the house wall adjacent the deck. I also knew that some damage had occurred on the other side of the house, in a void space off the master bathroom.

I called out a mold detection specialist. He found a little mold, and a little moisture where there shouldn’t be any, but not any big problems. Still, it was enough things found that he recommended we get a remediation contractor to address three areas.

First, I checked with my homeowner’s insurance company. They sent a man out and he assessed it. A couple of days later I got the answer: long-term damage, not an insurable loss. Whatever this cost, I was going to have to pay for it myself. Off to find a contractor.

I had a little trouble finding a contractor who could do the work. One came by and assessed it, but I didn’t hear from him for another week. I finally reached out to him. He said he didn’t think he would be able to fit me in with his workload. I resisted saying, “It would have been nice if you’d called me a few days ago.”

Meanwhile, the guttering contractor was having trouble with his equipment. After many calls and texts to him, he pushed the schedule for his work out into January.

I found another remediation contractor, who came out to assess. I actually liked him better than the first. He saw things the first hadn’t, and was able to explain things to me in a way I understood. I told him he had the job. But it was now just a week or two before Christmas. He told me he should be able to start mid-January.

Let me fast forward through Christmas, our week-long trip to Lake Jackson, Texas, and two modest snow storms in the midst of a week of single digit temperatures. The guttering man gave me a date, had to move it a little due to weather. Now he is scheduled to be here Tuesday the 24th (I’m writing this on the 23rd).

Meanwhile, the remediation arrived here Monday the 22nd, a little late in the day due to morning icing. The three-man crew got to work on the damage area in the living room. The removed the build-in bookcase, removed obviously damaged sheetrock, and built a containment area. The next day they did the same in the master bathroom. In both cases, it appears they found the source of the water, and have a plan to stop it plus repair the areas. One will be fairly easy, the other difficult.

I’m not happy about the money I’m spending. But when a house approaches four decades old, I suppose you have to expect to spend some money to keep it in good repair. Yes, I hate to spend the money, but am happy to finally have answers and a good start on corrective measures. A good part of this is the plumber (who needs to repair one area), and a roofing inspector (to check out two areas) have been coordinated by the remediation contractor.

But the week has also been not normal was because of the writing I got done. On Monday the 22nd, I began work on Part 8 of my Bible study, A Walk Through Holy Week. My co-teacher and me will begin teaching this on Feb 4, and I wanted to get ahead of this. Each chapter is divided into seven sections. On a normal day for previous volumes, I have been completing an average of 1 1/2 sections per day.

But Monday, I wrote three sections in just my normal amount of writing time. Tuesday I completed another three sections. This is an amazing production. They need editing, of course, but that is a great start—even as I got the contractor started, occasionally interacted with him, and listened to his sawing and other activities. At the end of Tuesday, I was amazed at the progress. That will allow me to finish the chapter on Wednesday as well as get back to publishing the first volume in the series.

It’s now Tuesday evening, and I’m writing this for Friday posting. Hopefully I’ll find time to edit this before then to fill in what happened on Wednesday and Thursday. But even without that, I can confidently say it has not been a normal week.

And I guess that’s a good thing.

Update, Thursday evening: Work inside on the damaged areas has taken place every day. Our master bathroom is closed off from us, the counter removed, some of the cabinetry removed, and more holes cut in the diagonal wall. The good news is that the water damage appears mostly confined to the dead air space behind the diagonal wall. The floorboards there are rotted and will need to be replaced. They don’t yet know about the framing—some of the bottom framing may need to be replaced. But the lateral extent of the water damage is contained, and that’s a good thing.

So things are progressing, a little slowly perhaps, but progressing. I hope the plumber comes tomorrow to check out the leak source. The repair man is supposed to be here Monday to review everything and give an estimate for all the putting-it-back-together costs.

Is it money well-spent? Darned if I know. No, I suppose I do know it’s well spent. When we sell our house in our future downsizing, we will have an easier time of it.

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: The Confessions of Saint Augustine

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Someone will think me sacrilegious, but I couldn’t get into this one.

As I’ve said many times on this blog, a time of downsizing from our living circumstances is coming. As part of that, we need to get rid of about half of our 3,000 to 4,000 books. That number is after we have sold or donated many already. I figure well over 1,000 books are already gone. So in choosing books to read, I scan our shelves and try to choose something that looks interesting but is something I most likely won’t want to keep.

A number of our books are what could be called Christian classics. So a couple of months ago, when it was time to start a new book, my eyes fell on The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Written over 1,600 years ago, this meets the definition of Christian classic. I thought, it’s probably something every Christian should read. I started it in early 2023, read it on four days, put it aside, and picked it up again in late November last year.

Why did I lay it down after four days? Because I found it hard to read and understand. The book I read it in was translated by John K. Ryan. The original, of course, is in Latin. I suppose the readability will depend on the translation. Or is it possible that all translations can’t do more with the English construction than the original language gives you? I suppose I would need to read a different translation to find out.

Why didn’t I like it? Perhaps it’s due to passages like this one.

In truth, I should have wished, had I then been Moses—for we all come from the same clay, and what is man, unless because you are mindful of him?—I should have wished, if I had been what he was, and had been enjoined by you to write the book of Genesis, that such power of eloquence had been given to me, and such ways to fashion words that not even they that cannot yet understand how God creates things would reject my words as beyond my powers; while they who can already understand, no matter what true interpretation they have arrived at in their thought, would not find it passed over in your servant’s few words; and if some other man by the light of truth had perceived a further meaning, it should not fail to be understood from those same words.

And that’s just one sentence! The whole book is like that.

I found myself reading and not comprehending at all. The Confessions consists of thirteen books, each book broken down into multiple short chapters. I started each book with renewed determination to understand what I was reading. Alas, by the second chapter I would once again be reading the words but not comprehending.

When I was about halfway through I thought about giving up. But I pressed on. Sometimes the paragraphs put me to sleep; sometimes they were just incomprehensible. The main reading took me from Nov 29 to Jan 18. Rarely could I read as many ten pages at a sitting.

Well, this is quite a downer of a review. As you can tell, this book is not a keeper. But no worries: I have two more copies of it. Maybe, in a few years, I’ll pull out one of the others and see if another translation will be easier. But this mass-market paperback is going in the donation pile.

On to something else.

book reviews

Book Review: Darwin’s Life and Letters, Vol 2

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Mine was an e-book, downloaded for free. This wasn’t the cover available to me when I put the ebook together.

Twas not so long ago that I posted a review of the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 1. At the time, I said I was going to look and see if I had downloaded Vol. 2 and formatted it for Word. In fact, I had. I used the “Send to Kindle” app from Amazon and soon began reading it.

This volume covered the years from after the publication of Origin Of Species in 1859 to Darwin’s death in 1882. It includes a couple of appendixes, one listing Darwin’s publications: books, pamphlets, scientific papers, etc. In the same manner as Volume 1, the book is a mix of biography and letters. Darwin’s son Francis provides much commentary from personal experience. The letters, while extensive, are not more important than the biographical entries.

As this volume begins, Origin has just been published. The early part of the book concerns the next three years or so, when Darwin was being alternately praised and lambasted. Many people, including men or science, rejected Darwin’s findings. Some went partway, but others more or less said Darwin was a kook. Many of the letters are to two of Darwin’s best friends, Hooker and Huxley, both of whom took the lead in promoting evolution as a scientific reality. Another correspondent in this category was Asa Gray, an American.

As the years increased since the Origin was published, other subjects began to enter into the correspondence. Darwin had other books on totally different subjects that he published between 1859 and 1882. Many letters went out about these as he was conducting research, writing the books, dealing with the publisher, promoting the book, and discussing it with friends and colleagues. When it wasn’t bogged down with scientific names, this correspondence was quite captivating to me.

Occasionally, well, more than occasionally, the letters went beyond my comprehension. Here’s an example, from an 1860 letter.

The effect which the carbonate of ammonia produces is the segregation of the homogenous fluid in the cells into a cloud of granules and colourless fluid; and subsequently the granules coalescing, dividing, coalescing ad infinitum.

One thing that stood out to me was the almost religious nature of some of the letters, where evolution was the religions. Darwin frequently said things like, “Thank you for spreading our doctrine,” or “our doctrine has certainly caused reactions from many.”  Those aren’t quotes from the book, but represent how Darwin wrote to several people.

Reviews of Darwin’s books, especially the Origin, was a frequent topic. Some of his correspondents were those not favorable to his “doctrine”. He was always patient with them in his letters, as if hoping to convert them by persuasion.

So, after having read both these volumes, what do I conclude? I’m glad I read them. It helped to flesh out some understanding of Darwin beyond what they say in science books. I don’t imagine I’ll ever re-read these, however. I give a combined rating of 3.5 stars. It would be 5 stars except for organization, and the sacrificing of letter space in favor of biography.

Bible study, Documenting America, expatriate life, family, goals, holidays, Writing

A Roaring Start to 2024

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Dateline: Monday, January 15, 2024, Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I was about ready to leave The Dungeon and go upstairs, grab my sledgehammer, and fix the modem that way. Fortunately, our internet came up before such drastic repairs were needed.

It’s my regular blogging day. But I woke up this morning to find we have no internet. Thus, I can’t get to the blog to type in a post. I’m writing this on my computer, and will post it whenever the internet comes back to us.

Actually, it has been a horrible weekend for technology. Friday evening our cable kept going haywire. Picture breaking up, sound breaking up, occasional total loss of signal. We suffered through and saw a few things. Wound up streaming something via Amazon Prime, which worked. Or was that Saturday? The days are running together.

Anyhow, called Cox. They said they would have a technician out between 3 and 5 yesterday, and said it might involve a $75 charge. We had internet all day yesterday, but no cable.

The Cox tech was a no-show. But it snowed yesterday, a little over 2 inches, and the temperature never got above 1°, so I kind of understand why the tech didn’t make it. A call telling us that would have been nice. Alas, service providers of every type have ceased being proactive in communicating with their customers in this age of easy communication. Will it do any good to call the office today, on the holiday?

My post today was to be about January being off to a good start. I am one or two days away from the last editing pass through A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. Granddaughter Elise got the cover art done. So either tomorrow or Wednesday I’ll begin publishing tasks.

The first week of the year, while in Lake Jackson, I had a conversation with Elise about the next book in The Forest Throne series, and she read the prologue I wrote based on our prior conversations. She loved it, reading it aloud while our daughter was in the room and putting much drama into the reading. So a good start there on a project just a little down the road. Also, youngest grandson Elijah wanted to have a conversation about the fourth book in the series, which will be about the youngest child in the Wagner family. That book is planned for about four years from now. But we had the conversation and I got some ideas on paper. I may type them up and see what that future book will look like.

Sven months of letters from the Saudi years. The ones on the left are transcribed. The ones on the right to be done. It’s a big project.

I began transcribing the letters from our Saudi Arabia years. This was one of my realistic goals. On Fri-Sat-Sun, I typed five letters each day. I’m going to limit myself to five a day so as to keep the project from overwhelming me as the letters from the Kuwait years did. I have no idea how many total letters there are. As I look at the piles, it appears to be about 300, which is close to double the number in the previous project. But as we had no typewriter (or computer in 1981-83), the letters will likely average a little shorter.

I did a little reading for research for the next book in the Documenting America series. Not much, but a little. What I read, however, makes me wonder if I’m on the right track with this volume. I’ll discuss that more in a future blog post.

I also have made a good start on an author interview for a future blog post. Possibly today I’ll be able to pull my interview questions together and send them to him.

Well, our internet just came up, so I will wrap this up and post this. I’ll have to leave The Dungeon to go upstairs to see if the cable TV is up. I’m not optimistic. But I’m still optimistic in general about 2024. I still expect to see those realistic goals met. But we will see.

family

A Wonderful Week

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From vantage points such as this (a photo from around three years ago), Elise has had many opportunities to study my “cauliflower hair.”

By the title of this blog post, I don’t mean the week we’re currently in (though it’s been a good week), but rather last week, January 1 through January 8. During that time we made a trip to Lake Jackson, Texas to be with our daughter’s family.

The trip came about as a suggestion by our oldest grandson, Ephraim. He said since they moved into their house the first of November, because of his parents’ work schedules, they hadn’t been able to spend much time getting things into place in all the rooms. The garage was jam-packed with boxes, bookshelves, and who knows what. Could we please make a trip to Lake Jackson and help them?

I thought about it and decided sure we could. I’m not as young as I used to be and might not be able to carry furniture upstairs, but I could sure sort through boxes and arrange them better.

I thought at first we would make the trip between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but that didn’t work out. But it turned out they didn’t go back to school after Christmas break until Jan 4. So we drove there on New Year’s Day.  The trip itself was easy. We went the fastest, not the shortest, way. That evening we mainly spent time with the grandkids.

The next day I got to work. As Ephraim had said, the garage was full of stuff. First, I found the broken down utility shelf units and assembled them. That gave me space to put some boxes and create a better pathway through the garage. I tried to interest a couple of the grandkids in the assembly and shelving of boxes, though that didn’t work out too well. I was able to clear paths to several bookshelves that needed to go inside into the kids’ rooms. Ephraim and Ezra, our no. 2 grandson, helped carry them into the house and upstairs to the bedrooms. They then spent a lot of time in the bedrooms arranging things. I continued to work in the garage alone.

The next day, I found boxes of books, carefully marked with the name of the grandchild or as adult books. I put them in a staging area and the kids carried them into the house and upstairs. I found a lot of granddaughter Elise’s art supplies, and got them inside. Once the books were on the shelves, the rooms started to look pretty good. The kids were all excited to find things not seen since late May when they moved into temporary housing in Lake Jackson.

Slowly, I labeled boxes that were unlabeled. That allowed me to put like things together. Cleaning products to the shelf unit on the west. Mary Kay stuff on shelf units on the east. I found a big box marked “boys’ stuffed animals”. I thought maybe they were too old for them now, but Ezra said, “No!”, and carried the box upstairs. I found such things as a plastic bin marked “anniversary clock”. Our daughter said they hadn’t had that displayed for over five years. I found the perfect place in the house for it and displayed it.

Adult books went on built-in shelves in the living room. They are very high, so you will only get them occasionally. Richard, our son-in-law, had to get pegs for one of the bookshelves, and I freed up a stuck shelf in another. By the end of the day Saturday, I declared the garage “organized” if not fully emptied. There was plenty of room for the four grandkids’ bikes. with walkways to spare.

I found time to interact with all four grandkids, including school drop-off and pickup runs. Reading the Bible with Ezra (12). A conversation or two with Ephraim (15). Elise (10) working on the artwork for my book covers, and Elijah (7) to play and read. I also found a little time each day to do some editing of my finished book, and some stock trading.

So I declare this to be a successful trip. On Monday we drove home through the rain but had nary a problem—other than it taking an hour longer than normal.

Oh, and Elise came up with something new. One day she came up behind me and said I had “cauliflower” hair. I suppose I resemble that remark.

Bible study, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, letters

Writing Goals for 2024

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If you’ve been reading my last few posts, you know I’ve been hesitant to set goals for 2024. My problem is having too many projects in different stages to work on all of them. So I laid out all the projects I’d like to work on if I had infinite time. This is just projects that have taken up some of my brain power in the last two years, not things that are in my writing ideas folder, actually folders, both paper and computer folders.

I’m still not sure of this, but I need to set goals. So here they are. I’m dividing them into two sections: Realistic Goals, and Wouldn’t-It-Be-Wonderful Goals.

Realistic Goals

  • Finish editing A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1 and publish it. I’m targeting the end of January for completing this.
  • Pull Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution from Kindle Vella, and publish it as a print book and e-book. This will not be a large project. I’m targeting February for completing this.
  • Write A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 8, simultaneously with teaching it. That should be February through April. Publishing will be delayed until the rest of the series is published.
  • Write A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 2 and publish it. This, I hope, is a four-month project, or maybe a little more. This should be a fairly easy project to complete, because I’ve thought much about it and done a fair amount of planning.
  • Get to work on A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 3. I’d like to say “and finish and publish it,” but I’m not yet sure if my other projects will be completed on schedule.
  • Make final edits to my short story, “To Laugh Again”, and publish it. I suspect this will happen in odd moments during other projects. This should be in the first half of the year.
  • Write and publish the next book in the Documenting America series. I hope to decide what the subject of the book will be by the end of March, and to write the book the second half of the year.
  • Begin transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I’m hoping to start this in February, though more realistic is in the second half of the year. Part of the problem is I don’t really know how many letters there are, so I don’t know how big the project is. That’s why I can’t plan on when I will finish it.

So those are the Realistic Goals. Now for the Wouldn’t-It-Be-Wonderful Goals.

  • Update The Candy Store Generation for the last several election cycles, and re-publish. I’d like to do this by July.
  • Work on the John Cheney book. By the end of2024, I’d like to have the full structure of the book known, and several chapters written. If I do work on this, it will be in odd moments, multi-tasking while watching TV. I have no goal for when to publish it.
  • Work on the Thomas Carlyle bibliography. As with the John Cheney book, this is for off hours, multi-tasking. Again, I have no goal regarding publishing.
  • Work on One Of My Wishes, a new poetry book. Since at present I have no inspiration for writing new poetry, I’m not sure if this will ever happen.
  • Outline the next book in my Church History Novels series. I won’t say any more about that right now.

So that’s it. Lots of plans, lots of hopes, lots of effort and efficiency needed to come close to all of this.

Bible study, Carlyle, Church History Novels, Documenting America, Genealogy, goals, poetry, The Candy Store Generation

2024: Possible Writing Projects

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In my last post, recapping my 2023 writing work, I said that my next post would be goals for 2024. But before I set those goals, I want to take a moment to think through all the writing projects I have going. Some are actually in progress, some are close to the surface, others were started and buried in the past. Still others are nascent, just starting to come together in my mind. They may never get beyond the idea stage, but they are there. I need to talk through this, think about what I can accomplish given life constraints. Bear with me though this thinking-out-loud post.

So here are the projects worth putting in the mix for actual goals for 2024.

  • Finish editing A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. I’m almost there right now.
  • Write Parts 2, 3, and 8 of A Walk Through Holy Week. Publish Part 2.
  • Pull Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution into book form and publish it as a stand-alone book.
  • Reasearch (and possibly write) the next book in the Documenting America series. I have two possibilities for what the next one will be. Both need reading for research.
  • The next book in the Church History Novels series. I’ve identified what it will be and have brainstormed the plot. But nothing is yet on paper.
  • Transcribe the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia—maybe just half of them this year.
  • Next book in The Forest Throne series. I have made a minor start on it and discussed the plot with my granddaughter, who is my consultant on this volume. But this is unlikely to happen in 2024, unless it’s late in the year and after much other work is completed.
  • Begin the Alfred Cottage mysteries. I have made a minor start on the first volume and have planned out the series.
  • Update The Candy Store Generation for recent data and republish. I think this is about a two-week project.
  • Flesh out One Of My Wishes, a hoped-for poetry book. I made a start on this and have it half done. But the hard part remains.
  • A genealogy book. I’m torn between two books in the Cheney family. One has much research done and is mainly writing left. The other requires research from scratch.
  • One of the two books about Thomas Carlyle I’ve started. One I think I could have done with a month of intense work. The other I started and laid aside so many years ago, I’m not sure where I was on it, though possibly 60 percent done.
  • And last, take some time to decide what to do about a tentative project, Nature, The Artwork Of God. I’ve been thinking about this for a few months. It seems like it would be a good book. In some ways it’s a bit scary to think I could write a book that blends science and religion, so I’m going to take a long time to ponder this. I think that at most this year I’ll complete some reading research and flesh out a table of contents.

I’m not saying all of these are things I’ll work on in 2024. I’m just trying to figure out what are real prospects for this year. For sure I’ll be pondering these projects over the next few days, as I have been for nearly two weeks, and will have some firm goals for the year set in my next post.

American Colonial History, Bible study, family, Health, home improvements, non-fiction, self-publishing, Writing

2023 Recap

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It may not be selling, but at least my grandkids are reading it and seem to like it.

2023 was a strange year for writing. In some ways my output doesn’t seem very significant. But, then, the year brought many other things that pried me away from writing. We made six trips for family matters, Lynda had her heart irregularities leading to a pacemaker implant, home improvements led to the discovery of water damage that is taking much time to arrange for contractors to begin repairs.

Yet, I think I made some progress. Let’s see how it stacks up against the goals I published on January 6, 2023.

  • Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel. Yes, I got this done. Publication was in June.
  • Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books. I completed this, sometime in late spring. I settled on eight volumes rather than six or seven. All volumes are planned out and all chapters named.
  • Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW. Finished this, and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW. Finished this (didn’t actually have much left to do on it), and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it. I’m pleased to say I finished this. It actually became Part 7 in the restructured series. It was done a couple of weeks before the last class.
  • Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course. Not only did I start it, but I finished it and made one editing pass through it. Two more passes and it will be ready to publish.
  • Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study. I decided to hold off publishing volumes out of sequence, so all the complete volumes are waiting for Volumes 1, 2, and 3 to be published.
  • So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. All 32 episodes have been published.

    Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution. Yes, I finished this. I decided to publish it to Kindle Vella, chapter by chapter. In hindsight that was not a good decision, as it has not attracted a readership.

  • One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to do, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done. No, I didn’t do this. The work of disaccumulation proved to be more time-consuming than expected. I made major progress on it, but I’m still a long way from done.

So all in all, I published only two items: one book, one book in serial format. Given the distractions, maybe that’s not too bad. And I did get a lot of writing done, even though it’s not yet published.

Time now to set some goals for 2024. That will be in my next post.

Bible study, Documenting America, Genealogy, goals, self-publishing

December Progress, January Goals

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Time to post about my progress in December and set some goals for January. I know, I know, December isn’t over yet. Maybe I should wait until January 1st to post this. But I’m doing it now, and will either edit it or provide updates in a comment.

  • Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. I did this, though at least once I was a day late, and another time I didn’t write it until late in the day.
  • Attend three writers meetings. I’m not sure the third one will be held, as it will be getting close to Christmas. We cancelled the third one, a combination of sickness, travel, and Christmas. I attended the other two.
  • Finish the first draft and much of the editing of A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1: To Jerusalem. …If I can maintain my writing schedule, I should finish the writing by December 10. That gives me two weeks to edit, enough time to go through the whole thing once. I finished the writing Dec 13 and the edits to the Introduction on Dec 14. Editing commenced Dec 15 and…I completed it around Dec 21.
  • Type up some of the ideas for book 3 in The Forest Throne series. I don’t intend to begin actually writing this for perhaps a year, but I want to lock in the ideas generated so far. I did this, after having contacted my granddaughter for some clarifications of ideas we considered during Thanksgiving week.
  • Work some on Nature: The Artwork of God. This may be the next book I write (still trying to decide), so I need to expand the notes I’ve already taken. As of today, I did nothing on this in December.
  • Finish the new Danny Tompkins short story and decide what to do with it. I finished it and sent it to two beta readers. Still waiting to hear back from them.
  • Read for research for the next book in the Documenting America series. Actually, until I do my research, I don’t know what the next one will be.  I did a little reading on this beginning Dec 26. I’m not very far along, however.
  • Oh, one more: Finish and submit my article on a genealogical brick wall to the NWA Genealogical Society. The contest deadline is Dec 31. The article has been done for almost two months. Time to dust it off and do a final edit. I did this and submitted it on Dec 8, though I had to submit an extra couple of reference documents later. Now, I wait.

What about goals for January? I’m going to hold off on them until I post goals for the year 2024, which I’ll do on January 1. I’ll probably post specific goals for January on January 5.

Author | Engineer