Saturday, December 15, 2018

Journal Exercise

The written word, whether reading or writing it myself, has been important to me since I first learned about it in grade school.

Teachers thankfully chose good material to read to us, Harriet the Spy, Charlotte’s Web, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH stand out as memorable. As soon as I learned to write I was keeping a journal. On a couple of occasions it was found and read by people who shouldn’t have read it, but such are the risks of early literary efforts.
Extracurricular books and notebooks during class time were later an unauthorized pleasure I engaged in, much to the chagrin of my teachers. Nothing they were teaching was half as important as what I was reading. I remember Stephen King’s original edition of The Stand being one of my constant companions during this time.

In my teen years, I branched further into writing my own stuff, mostly embarrassing poetry. I also remember a class where we were reading The Ox-Bow Incident, the semester ending with a showing of the movie, which was a disappointment even though it starred Harry Morgan and Henry Fonda.

During these years, my writing got fairly decent, and I gave myself enough practice to really enjoy it, even if I don’t always have time any more.

Monday, October 29, 2018

Smells Like Extreme Teen Spirit

So, here's an interesting feature of Open Library, probably one of my favorite websites of all time.




Oh, the possibilities...

Friday, January 12, 2018

My Current Quiet Time Routine

As soon as I get up (usually, let's be honest here):


  1. Go to Bible Gateway and get the latest verse of the day. Write it down, add my prayerful response to this verse. (This takes roughly seven to ten minutes. If I'm pressed for time, have to hustle to work, I save the next steps for when I'm on the bus...)
  2. Ask God for wisdom, and read the day 's section in whatever Bible reading plan I'm going through. As I read, the Holy Spirit will prompt me to pay special attention and linger over various passages. These I write down. 
  3. When I finish the day's section, I will sometimes get prompted to look up a specific topic in my Thompson Chain bible, and read the related verses.
  4. I reread and pray back to God the verses He gave me that day, then I spend some time praying for the day, problems, needs of family and friends.
This process takes roughly 45 minutes to an hour. As I said, sometimes I'm doing the second part of this plan while on the bus, or I'm praying while walking to and from the bus.

This is one reason I like taking the bus, it's pretty much guaranteed alone time. If I'm praying under my breath, no one seems to take notice of another weirdo chattering to themselves on the bus, which there are usually one or two on every bus in my area anyway.