My Friend Les

Daily writing prompt

List the people you admire and look to for advice…

The person I most admired has been dead for a number of years. He was my friend, surrogate father, and confessor. He got me through some of the most difficult years of my life. He was also the most interesting person I’ve ever met.

Les had a series of experiences that I could only dream of, and he would let them slip in conversation. “When I was in the Navy,” or “When I was in graduate school in Scotland,” or “When I was a pilot” … there were quite a few of these over the years. He was a combustion expert, and one of his sidelines was building controlled explosions in coal mines to burn off dangerous gases. He also studied religion on the side, and held a concert of his original compositions at age 80.

Les gave me a lot of advice over the years. Everything from grad school advice to life advice. I was going through considerable trauma and bad breakups in the time I knew him, so I know I did a certain amount of crying over the phone. Never did Les judge me.

He always held that, if I found the right person to have a relationship with, I would heal. It was scary, but he was correct. He knew I would marry Richard when I had barely met him, and he was (as always) right. I never got him that bottle of Talisker (Scotch) I owed him for that bet.

He died at 95, which is fitting for someone whose life was that full. His memorial service was filled with all the people whose lives he’d touched over the years. We had lost touch with each other, but we reunited for him. It was a fitting send-off.

The School Year is Almost Over

This school year (do you call it that when it’s teaching college?) went by very fast. There’s a pile of grading standing between me and the end of the year. Some of it I will get done this weekend; the rest during the week while I am giving final exams. I will get through grading, and then on to the summer.

I think I will have 10 interns this summer. That’s not a lot of interns, but it will keep me busy. I will have time to rest and write in between internship supervision. I already have prepped my classes for fall while bored in my office, so I’m ahead of the game.

I need this break. It has been an intense school year.

Direction

Daily writing prompt

What gives you direction in life?

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What gives me direction in life? This is a harder question than it seems, because there isn’t one succinct answer.

On work issues, what gives me direction is what needs to be done. There is a cycle of grading, classes to be taught, topics to cover, research to be done, etc. That determines the direction of my work.

With leisure time, several things influence the sense of direction. One big thing is goals. I have small goals and Big Audacious Goals. I have not had a Big Audacious Goal in a while, which is part of why writing has been so hard. Another is my energy level — if I have little energy, my sense of direction points toward rest above anything. Finally, there’s a tug between established routine and emergent wants — do I go to Starbucks to write or start working in the garden?

I wish I could say some divine force gives me direction. I don’t know if I believe in God, although lately I have been praying. I pray that I get done the things I need to get done. But it still doesn’t help me get to the garden tasks.

Living by The Four Agreements

Daily writing prompt

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

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Be Impeccable With Your Word.
Don’t Take Anything Personally.
Don’t Make Assumptions.
Always Do Your Best.

These are the Four Agreements, from the book written by dom Miguel Ruiz, and I live my life by these.

Being impeccable with one’s word, to me, means not to speak unless one can speak truth. When we lie, we do not speak truth. When we say ‘yes’ when we mean ‘no’, we are not speaking truth. When we say negative things about ourselves or others, we are not speaking the whole truth.

Not taking things personally is exactly that — realizing that when someone says something, whether negative or positive, about you, they are speaking about their view of the world. They are speaking about themselves.

Don’t make assumptions — this, to me, is the easiest one to understand. I teach it in my case management class when we talk about clients, especially cultural diversity. Ask for clarification. Observe the other. Be careful to distinguish between facts and assumptions.

Always do your best. I make it a point to do this, understanding that my best during times of stress and distress is not the same as my best during good times. I can rest knowing that I did my best.

I know that The Four Agreements are considered New Age wisdom, and I reject a lot of that. But these four rules make so much sense in life and have made me a much calmer, more empathetic being.

Summer Vacation is So Close

If I get through the next two weeks, I tell myself, I’ll be scot-free.

It’s that time of the semester. The last week before finals, and I have two major assignments coming in on Friday. And two essay exams the week after. And then summer and internships.

Summer and internships are a lot easier, because my time is more my own. I have paperwork, grading, and internship visits, but I have more freedom to schedule them. And I have time on my own.

Maybe I’ll get something written.

My First Time Camping

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever been camping?

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My first time camping was in college. I had gone with a friend of mine to Illinois Yearly Meeting (an annual meeting of Friends, or Quakers). Lodging at the Meetinghouse was primitive, rustic two-person dorm rooms. My friend Joan and I decided we would camp in the camping space across the road from the Meetinghouse.

Joan and I put up the tent (not a fancy one like we have nowadays) and we spent the day in activities. The tent was still standing by bedtime, which was a good sign. When we settled in, with our belongings tucked around us, it was a crowded time in the tent and we were tired. Not too tired to notice that my head lay on a tree root.

It stormed all night. Illinois thunderstorms are particularly resonant, so I couldn’t sleep very well. I finally fell asleep after the storm quit. Scant hours later, I woke at dawn, and noticed my air mattress was … floating.

“Joan?”

“Mrrph.” Joan was not a morning person.

“Joan? I think the tent flooded.”

Joan jumped up, and we assessed the state of the tent. Yes, it had flooded at one end, as had the entire campground. We were surrounded by dismayed people noticing that they, too, had taken water in their tents.

Joan and I did the only thing we could — we busted up laughing. We sorted out our clothing (mostly dry) and hung our tent and sleeping bags in the tree to dry. Needless to say, we slept in the dorms that night.

That was my first time camping. The fact that I’ve camped more than once is a testimony to my perseverence. Or my short memory. One of those two.

A Morning Person

Daily writing prompt

When do you feel most productive?

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I feel most productive in the mornings. I wake up at 5 in the morning, sit in bed reading for 20 minutes, then get up for the day. Then I eat breakfast, write this blog during coffee, and by seven-thirty am ready for the workday.

My mind is at its sharpest from seven till about 2 PM. By then, I’m not what I’d call productive. I get most of my work done in the morning, and teach classes in the early afternoon. By three PM I’m ready to take a nap, although I’m not done until 5. My productivity is just not very productive in the late afternoon.

In the evening, I rest. I go to bed by eight, because I’m a morning person.

First Post

Hello! I’m Lauren’s husband, Richard. I’m also a writer, having written a smattering of short stories, some poetry, two novels, and multiple screenplays. I also on occasion help with a little bit of story development on Lauren’s two current book series: the Hidden in Plain Sight universe and her Christmas romance series, Kringle Conspiracy, which features several stories set in a fictionalized version of the town we live in here in NW Missouri.

So suffice it to say that while this post IS a bit of blatant marketing (hint, hint) in that I’m writing about Lauren’s writing in hopes of generating sales, it’s also because I think she writes thought-provoking series with interesting characters, and although her Hidden in Plain Sight series touches on some serious topics (yes, there’s a threatened species-wide apocalypse for humanity), you shouldn’t be put off by that, because (spoilers), humanity does survive. As writer Elizabeth Scarborough put it: “Luckily there is a sequel.”

So what I would suggest is reading the books to get to know her characters: the near-immortal Archetypes, the humans gifted with talents from Gaia, the members of the aforementioned Kringle Conspiracy who really do spread the spirit of Christmas(tm) while stumbling through their romances.

Trust me, you’ll find a good read in all of them.

Publishing — A Risk I Don’t Regret

Daily writing prompt

Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

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Indie-publishing a novel was a risk. Writing it was a Big Audacious Goal, but I could have left the book in a file folder forever. Letting it out there for people to read was a big risk.

What is the risk of putting my work out there for others to read? There’s a risk of being ridiculed, of being ignored, of losing one’s confidence in oneself. These bring up a lot of fear, like standing in front of a door, not knowing what is on the other side.

I took the risk by walking through that door. My first book published was a Christmas romance, The Kringle Conspiracy. It was a project whose seeds were planted in a high school short story I’d written. To publish, I had to edit the document, run it across some beta readers, and then the hard part: uploading it onto KDP (Kindle’s publishing arm) and hitting the button to publish.

I could have walked it back. I could have unpublished it before the wheels of KDP released it to the public, but I did not. I took the risk.

My results have been mixed. On one hand, I have not had a lot of readers (except for the 3300 who read it for free in exchange for getting put on my newsletter list.) On the other, the few people who have reviewed it have given it 4.5 stars out of five. It’s a modest success, but that’s not the reason I took the risk. I took it because it was another Big Audacious Goal, one that I could only accomplish through stepping through the door.