Yesterday was a good day.   It was the first day I felt peace about doing this sabbatical thingy, and it was the first day I felt like I did it mostly right.

I got up later in the morning, free from obligations, and while my friends collected at church, I was able to slowly collect myself and my thoughts, and I made myself do the hour writing exercise- and to my delight, what was created out of it was a decent little essay.  Nothing too deep or analytic, but a nice bit of production where thoughts actually left my head and gathered in a post.   I appreciated that.

Once my scheduled writing time was over, I actually also got some things done during the day.  I didn’t sit and watch any TV.  I didn’t run off to see a movie.  I didn’t even watch the historic San Diego State/Kansas basketball game (which was historic because San Diego State beat Kansas in Kansas’s own gymnasium- a feat not accomplished by a non-conference team in over 7 years).  Okay- I did track that game for while on my phone and online, burning some time.  But I didn’t do my usual non-productive checking out.  And I got a small workout in at the gym, a little growth reading completed, a dozen eggs hard boiled, and even a nasty toilet cleaned and pumiced. I got to meet a friend for coffee and a good conversation on spirituality and the significance of sin and salvation in the modern world and one’s daily living- a topic I think about a lot.

For the likes of myself, struggling with personal productivity, it was a banner day.

Naturally, after yesterday, I wanted to wake up this morning and write something else well-crafted and meaningful.  When the alarm went off and I sat up, knowing it was writing time, according to the laws of nature, my mind went blank.  No topics presented themselves for discussion.  So I was left to resort to this ol’ journal entry.  I guess that’s okay.   The important thing is to just write.

I did re-read yesterday’s post before I started typing this morning, and I notice a few things about my writing that I could pay better attention to.  Maybe it’s simply because I sit down and try to just pull ideas out of my head and get them down, but much of my writing has a very generic feel to it.  I don’t use many illustrations to preface or expand on the topics I try to cover.

I also tend to write longer sentences that contain longer words.   I know that concision is important in giving your writing muscle.  As an example, take that last sentence there.  Concision?  Who even uses words like that.  I could have said “writing tersely” or “using simple phrases” in place of that word and been a whole lot more reader friendly. So I know I want to try and pay more attention to how I write what I write.  But addressing the hows of one’s writing is usually the product of editing, and that also is a practice I tend to ignore.  I rarely go back over what I throw down on a blog entry and evaluate it for grammatical and syntactical errors.  Editing is a maintenance function in writing- something that needs to be done on a developed project to correct a whole range of possible errors in style and articulation so that the final piece is tight, flowing, cogent and all of the barbs and splinters have been sanded down on it.  As I am not a maintenance-focused person in my daily life, editing is a task that, like cleaning the bathroom or pulling weeds in the yard, I rarely let have a seat in my list of life priorities.

Balance is hard to come by.  Especially in this modern day when text messages, emails, friend requests, and breaking news yell at us perpetually for attention.  For me, being able to unplug and to stay away from electronic devices is itself a big challenge.   I am conditioned to have to respond immediately to any text message I receive, and I spend a lot of time pulling my phone out simply looking to see if someone has messaged me.  And yet, what I am doing here, writing these words, is done on the computer for archiving and access on the internet.  Ahh, the pulls of the information age and life online.

My sister says I need to make a list of topics so I have things to write about over the upcoming days.  She’s right.  Hopefully I will get time to do that sometime today.

But, it now being 7:15 in the morning, my exercise for the day is done.  I may not have said much here, but words have been laid out and assembled into this visage.  My writing work for the day is done.  I’m glad I don’t have to go back and re-read and edit this entry.