Bits #118

I have a novel coming out from Cowboy Jamboree Press soon. I'll post more about that as it goes along. Folks say it's a good one. I wrote it fast - like really fast - so it kind of blurred by me. I know it came easiest of my books, even the shorter flash fiction and prose poetry collections. But I'll be talking more about it over the next several weeks.

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Had a strange week at work. I'm the sports director at a media company and just took the job about a month ago. That was during our district and regional high school basketball tournaments and it went by like a flash; our engagement numbers, money made from our social media, all that went through the roof. And I stayed busy. Now it's baseball season and things have slowed down. I can't adjust to being in the office with not as much to do. But I guess as problems go, that's a good one to have.

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My stress levels have improved as my faith in God has grown stronger. Two or three events in my life in which it's undeniable that God came to me with help over the past two years has boosted my faith to new levels. It's a lot to explain, and I have testified to this a lot lately, but it's maybe enough to say that I now, for the first time in my life, truly have 100 percent faith that as long as I live my life as a Christian to the best of my abilities every day whatever happens - good, bad, or otherwise - is part of the path I'm supposed to be on according to God's plan for me. I don't dread things anymore. I don't start to break down every time it seems like my life is unraveling. It's strange but beautiful, and a complete 180 from how I lived the first 50 years of my life. If only I could have had the courage and conviction to come to this sooner in life. Ahh, but that, too, is how this is supposed to work for me. Like I said, no worries, no stress. I wish this for everybody.

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I've been making a massive attempt to read the books I own. I own a lot of them. All of us writers do. I buy books like some people buy loaves of bread and so I've accumulated so many I'm beginning to think I won't get the chance to read them. Which is alright and everything, but I'd really like to, right? I wouldn't have bought them otherwise. So instead of doing what I planned, which was my year of reading only Big Books (think Vollmann), I'm instead starting to read as many of my shorter books in order to take as big of a chunk out as I can over the rest of the year. Wish me luck, because it's hard to stay away from those big max-style novels; they're from another planet. One that tickles a part of my reading brain like nothing else. But to get very many in, I'll have to devote an entire year (maybe two) only to those books. I'm a horribly slow reader, no matter what techniques I use. I can't scan as in speed-reading. I want to read all the story, not just the high points or whatever people do when they speed through like that.