A vacation ends

Princess Dejah, age 5 months, learns the joy of vacationing.

And so attention begins to turn back to those tasks that I perform in exchange for enough income to feed the pets and keep us all under this roof. It has been a week of cooking meals and dog treats, cleaning and fussing about, reading and writing, reflecting and occasionally acting, planning and thinking about plans.

At this time last year I made goals to reduce/eliminate my personal debt, increase the quantity (and sales) of my books and stories, exercise more and lose some weight, read more, and produce more of my own food through gardening and the like.

As with all assessment of goals, I have had mixed success, and any lack of progress can be attributed to the fact that I did not exactly follow good advice about how to set goals.

Procrastination and a lack of persistence seem to be my biggest personal foes. For the second year in a row, I set a goal of producing a monthly, 10,000-word adventure about the superheroic Myke Phoenix. The goal was met not at all in 2012 but accomplished for the first two months of 2013. I have reset that goal for the third time, which means the true test of success may be when I release the third new story in March. Ultimately, of course, that 12th tale in December will be the moment of complete success on that front.

The week away from the quotidian did serve its purpose; the mind is cleared and more or less ready to return to the grind, and some good thoughts have been thought. Sometimes all of the order in my mind is undone before noon on the first day back on routine duty; let’s hope this time around I can fend off the disorder a while longer.

One of my foremost goals is not to neglect this little corner of my universe as much as I have been wont to. Here, I hope to wax on life in these interesting times, my various personal projects, and pop culture in general – the stuff I expose my fragile mind to for recreational purposes (TV, music, movies …) – and I do value your thoughts, too, so please let me know in the comments when I’ve piqued your interest, made you think, and/or bored you to tears.

For now I see I have a few emails to answer, some meetings to plan, and some issues to address as the day job resumes – once more unto the breach, dear friends – and so it goes.

The Rest of Me

Sleepiness has overcome the house. 7:23 a.m. And no one stirs. Even the dog lifts her head and struggles to keep her eyes open.

Quiet. Blessed quiet. The tick of the clock is the loudest sound in the room. I can hear the scratch of the pen against paper.

No electronic drone of conversation from miles away. No motors or engines. A smattering of bird calls.

The sigh of the dog, suddenly impatient, awaiting – what? attention? food?

To one who sits and waits all of the time, the joy of sitting and waiting is lost.

‘Creative processes are like stew’

Sara Groves

I have a book-sized, faux-leather-bound journal that I write in while sitting in the easy chair four feet away from the computer screen. I write in it with a quaint little device called a pen.

Our computers and smartphones are the most amazing tools that have emerged in my lifetime, but I think there’s a downside to staying plugged into them constantly.

Around the time that I launched into what became my novel The Imaginary Revolution, I began taking regular time to sit with the book full of blank pages, using it to think and create without electronic assistance. Some of my better ideas, essays and stories have flowed from the pen and into the paper journal before being translated into electronic bits and bytes.

One of my favorite creators, Christian singer-songwriter Sara Groves, addressed the need to unplug in an interview about her album Invisible Empires, and specifically the song “Obsolete,” where she writes in part, “Are you and I an apparition/Flickering up on the screen/Sending out our best transmissions/Waiting in our velveteen?/Tell me you can really see me.”

“I was trying to process my own feelings about technology – which stresses me out. It makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. In a way you're aware of what everyone is doing on their best day. Everyone is putting themselves out there, everyone is advertising, everyone is Madison Avenue for themselves. I have a hard time with that. I have a hard time doing it for myself – Troy [her husband and business partner] does it for me.

“I’m not on Facebook. When it came out I felt a divine message - I very clearly felt the Lord say, ‘You’re not going to get to do that. Right off the bat I’ll set you free.’ Part of me wants to do it, but there’s a bigger part that feels relieved.

“‘Obsolete’ is a reflection on ‘what are we doing?’ Not to say that the Internet is of the devil, but I hear people say things like ‘I couldn't live without my phone or the Internet.’ I don't want to demonize everything, but I do believe that we worship the things that we made with our own hands … Eugene Peterson talks about doing slower things, which are actually the way that your brain is made. I’ve been reading articles about the rapid-fire influx of information – that just the ding on your phone tells your brain that new information is coming and you literally lose your train of thought the moment that bell rings. Your brain is hungry for the new information, but the way your brain works the creative process are interrupted.

“Creative processes are like stew; they have to come to a boil. It’d be like trying to cook something but turning the oven on and off. I’ve been feeling that recently – having difficulty writing and feeling peace. I feel frenetic. A lot of this record started with the idea of ‘Obsolete’ and it's a very precious song to me – my favorite song on the record.”

Give yourself permission to walk away from the screen and turn off your phone. It doesn’t have to be for a long time – just long enough to think things through and reacquaint yourself with yourself.

Free yourself from the electronic web for a while, and dream.