1. You won’t find time to write.  You won’t.  You won’t make time, which is a stupid phrase anyway.  How can you make time?  You have the same time everyone else does.  And you won’t get time, either.  If you’re going to write anything this November, you’re going to have to hack time out of your month with a jackhammer.  You’re going to have to put other important things on hold, shed those stupid timewasting activities that you love to indulge, and stick your fingers in your ears when new ones come up.  If you don’t do this in what will be perceived as an irrational and even slightly psychotic manner, you will simply not write.

Why is this?  Well, face it.  If you are a novelist, you don’t have NaNoWriMo.  You have PersonalNoWriLife.  That’s what your life consists of, or at least part of your life does.  But you are not that person.  Your life does not – often painfully not – consist of novel writing.  If you want it to, you’re going to have to delete other stuff that has been part of your life and is probably already in the bowl interacting with the other ingredients, to use a baking analogy.  It can certainly be done.  Absolutely you CAN do it.  But if you underestimate the difficulty of it, even a little, you’ll have NaNoWriDay instead of what you intended.

2. Your writing is going to suck.  I mean, not just that it will be a little unpolished, need a little buffing here and there.  It will be a pit of slime.  Your writing will almost all be garbage of the smelliest variety, and you’ll be able to tell, and you’ll doubt yourself and wonder why you ever embarked on this journey.

Why?  Two reasons, one encouraging and one not so.  Bad news first: because you’re not very good.  If you were, you’d write more.  A writer is someone that writes, and writes compulsively, and studies writing, and practices, and like anyone that practices a lot gets better.  You don’t do this.  If you did, again, you’d be only a peripheral part of NaNoWriMo, because you’d already be writing.  So your writing will suck, because you’re not used to cranking out that much stuff in that short a period, and you don’t have the muscles.  Good News: NOBODY’S stuff is good as it extrudes from the pen, so to speak.  The first draft – and NaNoWriMo is not for anything else – should be so bad that even your family refuses to read it.  It almost has to be.  This shouldn’t bother you, even though it will.  Nobody sees this but you, so your job isn’t to write well, but to write at all.

3. You can’t do this by yourself.  I know, you’re supposed to hole up in a lighthouse on the snowy coast of Maine and write until your fingers fall off, but you won’t, and you can’t.  This is not your fault.  Nobody is invested with an unlimited amount of change mojo, and since this kind of writing is very different from what you are used to, you’re going to need all the mojo you have, and then some, to make it happen.  You must have help.  Get a partner – doesn’t even have to be someone that writes, just someone that will absolutely punish you if you don’t follow through.  Bet someone that hates you $12,000 that you’ll put 50,000 words out from November 1 to November 30, put the money in escrow someplace, and I guarantee you find that you can make the changes you require in order to get it done, because that person will absolutely take your money if you don’t, and you know it.  You need help.  Get it.

4. What you write will not be publishable.  Oh, I know all about Amy Tan and Christopher Paolini.  You are not them.  Your pile of stinking cow dung will not be good enough to get published, and if you send it off breathlessly to Bantam on December 1, you will find out why NaNoWriMo is followed by NaManuscriptRejectMo every year.

Why?  Good writers have good editors.  Some people are good at both, but nobody is good at both at the same time, and rarely is anyone good at both on the same document.  You need a good editor, which you probably don’t have, in order to find the book that is hidden inside the big rock that you carved out of the mountain of possible English words over the 30 days of this experiment.  So if you really want to be published, I recommend making December NaNoReWriMo.

And a bonus: you don’t even really WANT to write a novel.  Look, the world is not crying out for more bad prose.  There are eight people on the planet who will ever know that you wrote anything at all, and most of them will have lives of tragedy and disappointment entirely without your inflicting your attempt at a novel on them.  They’ll smile and tell you that it’s great, that it’s life-altering, that it’s the equal of any of the bestsellers they’re reading now, and they will be lying, and both of you will know it.  Why are you going to subject yourself to this?  You like suffering?  You like it when people run as you approach?  You might want to make this NaNoReadMo instead.  There are a colossal number of really good books you haven’t read yet, and some people that really are good at this novel thing would appreciate it if you’d notice and repair that.

So.  That’s why you shouldn’t even try this.

Really.

That’s it.

But…you’re still here, aren’t you?  Well, then, I have one more question for you:

Who cares what I think about whether you can do this?

You don’t.  If you have something in you that you have to write, a piece of whatever-it-is that your soul will die if it can’t express, then do me just one favor: write it.  Just sit down and start typing and let all the crap and the prose and the poetry and the ache and the pain and the joy of all of it come out through your fingers, and just keep going until you finish it, no matter if that’s this month or this year or even this lifetime.  Go. Do.  Don’t let anyone, least of all me, stop you.  All my inconvenient truths are still true, but you are the God of this place, as a much better writer once wrote.  You cannot be stopped by inconvenience.

If you cannot be stopped, then you cannot be stopped.  So go.

On December 1, stop back in, and share what you’ve done.  I’ll be waiting for you.

Dear Mr. Matheson-

You are my Congressman.  I don’t like it, because I think you’re doing a fairly lousy job, but you are my Congressman at least until they redistrict me into Congressman Chaffetz’s district later this year, so I thought I’d write and give you a suggestion for how to better do the job we elected you to do.

As you might have heard, there’s been some wrangling about the budget recently, and the size of the debt the US has incurred, and also about the deficit the budget is causing.  I know you have some ideas about those things, not that anyone is listening to you, because, let’s face it, you’re essentially invisible up there.  Nancy Pelosi knows she can’t count on you, and the Republicans have your face on a dart board as one of their best takeout targets in 2012.  Still, you seem a decent fellow, and this might be an idea you could use.

The Senate is supposed to pass a budget.  They’re…well, they’re not passing anything.  They haven’t passed a budget in over 820 days.  This is hardly your fault, and I’m not blaming you for it, and I’m even willing to admit the possibility that it’s just a coincidence that this 820 days or so begins about the time President Obama was elected.  This isn’t about pointing fingers at people; it’s about pointing out a direction to go.  So the Senate doesn’t have a budget.  In fact, Paul Ryan’s budget is the only one that’s been passed by EITHER house of Congress in a good long while, and it’s because I see that you voted “No” on that that I wanted to write this.  Clearly you have ideas about what the budget should be, since you said with your vote that Mr. Ryan’s budget isn’t it.

Why not produce a budget of your own?  You’re a “moderate”.  You’re supposed to be a guy that can get us all to sit together and sing Kumbaya, so I would think that if those things were true, your budget ought to be a pretty good one.  Can you show us what it is?

Actually, I have an even better idea.  You love town hall meetings.  I’ve been to them, and in my professional opinion, you’re extremely good at that kind of format.  Personally, I like you.  I don’t want to, but I can’t help it.  I think that’s true of a lot of people in our district, which is why you keep getting elected.  Why not combine your skills at town hall meetings with a “budget session”, and get us all together and craft a budget plan.  Utah Second Congressional District’s Budget Plan.  You can take it to the floor of the House, thump it down on the rostrum and say “l0ok, people, this isn’t that hard.  My district can do it.  We have a plan.  Where’s YOUR plan, distinguished colleagues, excepting Mr. Ryan, who gets a pass because he actually has one?”

I mean, that sounds to me like statesmanship.  I won’t like the plan you put there on that rostrum, because you and I have certain fundamental differences of opinion when it comes to government.  That’s okay.  I have a feeling that you’d listen to what I had to say before rejecting it, which is refreshing all by itself.  You have a fair number of radical elements in your district – they call them “Tea Party” people, as if there was actually such a thing – and this would be a good way to see if they have anything useful to say to you.  My experience is that we as a people tend to be pretty bright about this fiscal stuff.  You might learn something.  And we might, too, hearing your ideas.

Pass out a budget summary.  Have people mark it up.  Talk about what you’d like to see cut, and what you absolutely can’t live with eliminating.  Have a Budget Session, since the Senate seems incapable of it.  Don’t you think that would be a valuable contribution to the debate?  It isn’t like it’s over now that you raised the debt ceiling.  We’re going to hit it again, you know.  As a friend of mine put it the other day, raising the legal limit for blood alcohol level doesn’t make Congress any less drunk.  I thought that was a good metaphor, even in Utah.

So that’s my idea, and I know you’re unlikely to read this or to do anything about it if you did, but I wonder what would happen if a substantial number of Congressmen did this.  Can you imagine the fun of fifty or a hundred different budgets, all available online, all proposed and developed and marked up by the very people that are going to have to pay for them?  Doesn’t that sound like a legislative process with some substance, instead of empty posturing?

Well, it’s just an idea.  I’ll be seeing you, either way.  Thank you for listening, and thank you for doing whatever it is you do, because even though we’re not exactly seeing eye to eye on this stuff, I’m glad it’s you in that seat and not me.

Sincerely,

Chris Jones, one of the Lehi people that can’t figure out why we’re in your district in the first place

They are also bloggers, and my sister Allison’s Wonderland blog has a post about me that I thought I’d call your attention to.  She understands me well.

The post is here.  Comment, and return often.  You’ll be well repaid.

I mean, when you think of it, there isn’t any such thing.  Your life is measured in minutes the number of which you know not, but surely that 118 that just went by while you were playing FarmVille were part of it, weren’t they?  So they weren’t free.  Or maybe they came to you free, but they have intrinsic value, and when you gave them away, did you get as much in return as you might have?  If you’re anything like me, you perform that little calculation all the time, and aren’t always happy with the math.

My job(s) are not confinable to particular hour blocks.  I have a friend that’s a pilot, and when he’s in the pilot seat, he’s working.  When the plane lands, he’s done.  When he’s logged x hours over y days, he’s done.  He goes home, and that’s it.  He has free time, as usually defined.  My job, like it or not, doesn’t have that at all.  Some days I have no specific thing to do.  Some days I have specific tasks that must be performed all day long and off into the evening.  There is, in other words, no pilot seat.  Or maybe better said, I usually have one cheek in the pilot seat at all times.

Recently I’ve become better at not being perpetually on call for work, even during the day.  It’s also true that I’m a lot less constantly working than most of my competition.  I never work Sundays, for any reason, and I’ve worked less than 10 hours of Saturday per quarter ever since I can remember.  I rarely take calls in the evenings, no matter the state of the file, though of course there are exceptions.  But what I discover is that that doesn’t help that much.  I still don’t have free time.

My work life splits into three main channels, mortgage stuff, PerfectHome stuff, and writing (yes, all you that have urged me for years to do more writing, you’re getting your wish.  You have been for a while, you know – I have over 500 posts on here).  Any one of those three things could expand to fill the known universe, and all three threaten to do so practically every day.  It’s only recently that I realized that writing was actually work, and that it had to be treated as such, or I would never do any of it.  Because, see, if I wait to write in my “free time”, I find that free time never comes.  So I have to schedule it like all my work.

So I go “off shift”, and then I don’t do mortgage stuff, unless I have to, or PerfectHome stuff, unless I have to, or writing, unless…well, okay, I’m nearly always writing.  But I can put it aside to read to my kids, or what have you.  So that means when I go off shift I have free time, right?

Sigh.  I’m afraid I know the answer to that question.

I mean, once I’m off shift I can theoretically do whatever I want, so that makes it free time (ignore that that statement is true of every minute, no matter where I am).  But in point of fact, to be a good writer I have to read a lot and research a lot more, so I have a stack of twelve (and counting) books that I need to read (and want to read), four of which I am actually in the middle of right now.  Then there are the fun projects I’m contemplating doing, like writing a sci-fi screenplay, because I think I’d like to learn to do that kind of thing, so I have reading and writing to do for that, too.  And I’m in the process of remembering how to play the piano, so I need to practice.  The garden, which I love and which feeds my soul, needs weeding.  I have eight children, all of whom do better with at least small doses of Dad every day.  And then I married one of the most interesting, vital, and lovely women on earth, with whom I could cheerfully spend every waking moment, making plans, baking bread, just talking.  I do better, I AM better, with a large helping of Jeanette every day.  Being LDS, I know I need to attend the temple and read the scriptures, plus ancillary religious material.  Rapidly, considering all the different roles I play and the person I think I really want to be, it becomes painfully obvious that I have no free time at all.  To not do the things I listed would be to abandon roles and responsibilities that I cannot abandon without becoming someone else.

I thought through this this morning as I chatted with la belle Jeanette, and we were discussing doing something, and I said “I can do that in my free time,” which she giggled at slightly, because she is kind and despite all her perfections, loves me.  All day I’ve thought of it.  All day I’ve added things to and subtracted from my day, and invested the time I have a little more wisely, knowing that there were things I wanted to do that I wouldn’t be able to get to – ever – unless I were tighter with what I did now.  And then a second ago, I remembered something I read from C.S. Lewis (how I love that man), writing as Screwtape, the demon.  It goes like this:

The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift… He is also, in theory, committed to total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, he would not refuse…. he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said “Now you may go and amuse yourself”. Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realise that he is actually in this situation every day. [emphasis mine]

One day, I’ll be strong enough to relate the journey of the last month, as I came to realize for the first time since I achieved sentience that I am possibly not a huge disappointment as a person.  That’s for another day.  For now, suffice it to say that I’m coming ’round to the idea that I don’t have any free time at all, and never will have.  I never really did, if it comes to that, though I didn’t know it.

This is going to have consequences.

Last week I went to scout camp.

I’m not the Scoutmaster, only the Assistant Scoutmaster.  Ordinarily, the Scoutmaster is the one that takes the kids on the weeklong camp (with the Assistant and some parents pinch-hitting for a few days), but this time he couldn’t.  The Scoutmaster’s name is Lynn Sorensen, and he’s dying.

About 16 months ago, Lynn was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and given three months to live.  At about the three month mark last year, he was so far from dead that he took the scouts to Treasure Mountain in the Grand Tetons.  I went for three days, and was swapped out by another leader at that point.  Lynn was not quite his usual self, but pretty close.  He made it the whole week, and his doctor said he was better physically afterward than he was before he went.  This year, though, it became obvious a couple of months back that he wasn’t going to be able to go.  I was given the opportunity to take the job, and I jumped at it.  Yes, things are hard for us, but how often does one get a chance to carry a burden for such a man?

Because one must have two leaders at all times with the boys, I found another leader in my son Alexander, who is 19, and is largely just sitting there consuming resources (and waiting for his mission call – which came while we were at camp – to Buenos Aires).  It was an irreplaceable opportunity for us to interact not so much as father and son, but as peers.  For that alone, I would have been very grateful for the opportunity, but as it was, it came with a whole lot more.  Lynn was on everyone’s mind pretty close to all the time.  We missed him.  The troop voted to rename itself “Lynn’s Boys” in his honor, and we honored our Lynn by bringing home every award there was in camp.

Going as we did with death on our minds, it seems a bit surreal that while we were there, a scout was struck by lightning during one of the most violent thunderstorms I’ve ever seen.  He never regained consciousness and died on that hill, the same hill we were camping on.  One of our scouts was at our campsite with Alexander and they were about 75 yards away from the strike.  I was across the valley with the Camp Director, and we all knew something terrible was possible from that bolt.  We all heard it.  We knew which one it was.

The whole camp knew that something grim was happening, just from the reactions of the normally calm camp staff.  They weren’t freaking out, but they got the same look I remember seeing on the faces of the airport guards in Rome when I was there during a terrorist attack in 1985.  Serious.  Tightly focused.  There is a sort of squaring of the shoulders, a realization that what is coming will likely test them.  That it will be painful, and also that it must be borne.  It was clear long before the Life Flight ‘copter came over that the odds were not good of any happy outcome from the incident, and when the chopper stayed on the ground for almost an hour, we knew.

The unfortunate scout wasn’t screwing around.  He wasn’t off by himself.  He wasn’t playing golf, or even fishing, sticking a metal rod up in the air.  And he wasn’t by any possible stretch the highest point in the area.  Our campsite was higher than his by 75-100 feet, and we had metal pavilion poles sticking up out of it.  So what happened was sheer, raw, uncomplicated bad luck.

We gathered the boys around later that night in the safety of the truck and were quite blunt with them.  People die, we said.  Everyone dies.  It might take a year, or ten years, or a hundred years, but everyone’s jug of milk has an expiration date on it.  You don’t know what that date is.  You can make it fractionally less likely to be soon by doing certain things and avoiding others, but you can’t say for certain one way or the other when it will be, no matter who you are.  Lynn Sorensen, one of the world’s most productive and positive people, is dying of cancer.  David Rayborn, a twelve-year-old kid out at a scout camp doing what he’s supposed to be doing, gets hit by lightning and never goes home.  I don’t think it’s actually random, but the Intelligence that is capable of predicting it is as far beyond ours as the sun is beyond a candle, so to us, it’s a toss of the dice.  Hiding from this fact is a terrible waste.  It has to be faced.

We were in a place to face it.  So we did.  We talked about it.  The kids weren’t afraid – twelve- and thirteen-year-olds think they’re immortal – but they were somber.  They understood that they had a choice, to live the time they had or to die without having lived at all.  To be what they meant to be, all the time, so that they would never exit stage right with their lines unsaid or their part unplayed.  Dedicate yourself to the things that matter.  Kiss your mother and tell her you love her.  Hug your Dad.  Be kind to your brothers and sisters.  Then square your shoulders and go.

The night we returned, my son and I, we went to see Harry Potter 7.2.  We’re Potter fans, if not necessarily Rowling fans, and we had been looking forward to this last movie for quite a while.  I don’t mind confessing that I wept openly at parts of it.  There were, as you might imagine, a few things that seemed to bring the movie uncomfortably close to home.  The theme, it seemed to me, was a familiar one.  In fact, I thought I remembered hearing it (not quite so well said, or as dramatically) at our campfire on Wednesday night, and Thursday night, and Friday.

Now, I know there are parents out there that are not fans of Harry Potter.  On the side of the political spectrum I inhabit, and especially on the religious edge I frequent, there are parents that think that exposing their children to witchcraft is a bad thing.  And so it would be, if there were anything even remotely like real witchcraft in Harry Potter.  The magical universe is a joke.  Anything that creates Bertie Bott’s EveryFlavor Beans and Jumping Chocolate Frogs as an introduction to the culture is not serious.  You could easily substitute ray guns for wands and the stories would make about the same amount of sense.  There isn’t any serious magic ever performed.  I absolutely flat-back guarantee you there are more kids that lost their way religiously because of the weird and silly Jedi cult than ever did because of Harry Potter.

On the contrary, what is actually taught in the Potter Saga is courage, selflessness, resourcefulness, and commitment.  When has there ever been a tale that was more supportive of study and discipline?  More encouraging of education and preparation?  Less dismissive of the consequences of shoddy work and goofing off?

But it’s so much better than that.  Look not at the characters, but what makes the characters.  Draco Malfoy, warped and twisted because of his father’s ambition.  Hermione Granger, who is the focal point of bullying and abuse because…her parents are muggles.  Ron Weasley, who forms the rallying point for Harry and Hermione because…he has a family.  A real one.  And Harry himself, to whom the most important people in the world are his parents and his godfather.  In every major character, Dumbledore, Snape, Sirius Black, even Voldemort himself, there are the potent effects of family and parents, for good and ill.

And in the end, it is the mothers that save the day.  Molly Weasley blasts Bellatrix LeStrange.  Narcissa Malfoy, out of love for her son, saves Harry’s life. And it is Harry’s mother, arguably the most important character in the entire series, that is the crux of the entire final episodal arc, and she’s never been alive for even a second of the entire 4000-page epic.  Her love for Harry is shown to be the most powerful force in all the magical world.  Where, I beg you, where is the message in this you do not want your children to hear?

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce any haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.”  – Of Other Worlds

Soundly killed they may be, and are, and in the meantime the book and the movie look a lot like our lives.  Here we have Sirius Black, killed by…well, we don’t know.  He’s dead mostly because he loves Harry.  Tonks and Remus Lupin, killed defending the children of Hogwarts.  Fred Weasley is dead, too, alone of the Weasley family, and Bill is scarred for life.  Good people that we care about and that didn’t do anything wrong.  One here of this group and one there of that.  No rhyme.  No reason.  But in the greater sense, in the largest possible sense, in the only perspective that works, it doesn’t matter.

Because I heard echoing through the theater the voice of Nevill Longbottom, my personal favorite, telling me and my scouts and those poor parents of that unlucky boy that the good do not die in vain.  They live.  They live because they do that which they came to do, they fight their fight, and they go, as Dumbledore said, “on”.  Only Voldemort, the beast seeking for eternal life, would, even if he found it, have no life at all, for all his works were vanity.  None would remember him, or mourn him, or make a song for him.  His life would mean nothing, and his death less than nothing.

Not so with David Rayborn, and not with Lynn Sorensen.  Not so with you, and not with me, this I swear.

Read the books.  See the movies.  Kiss your mother and hug your Dad.

And then square your shoulders and go.

2011-07-07 02:08:39
CjLehi: #blessing 8,9,10,11,12 and 13: Valter Nassi’s incredible Tuscan
Promenade at the indescribable Cucina Toscana.

2011-07-06 23:52:37
CjLehi: #blessing 7: wisdom enough to give no response under provocation.
More bad news, but I have not compounded it with foolishness. For once.

2011-07-06 23:17:02
CjLehi: #blessing 6: German engineering. My first ride in a Mercedes over
any real distance. Holy. &%(&*$^.

2011-07-06 23:04:02
CjLehi: #blessing 5: Computers.  I write probably 8-10,000 words a week.
Cannot imagine having to do that on my IBM Selectric.

2011-07-06 22:25:02
CjLehi: #blessing 4: The awesome Lehi Rotary Club. Congratulations to Ron
Foggin, new President, and welcome Glen Meigs to the past-president club.

2011-07-06 22:18:02
CjLehi: #blessing 3: Jill Peterson, who is currently juggling my life so I
don’t have to.

2011-07-06 22:00:28
CjLehi: #blessing 2: a father that really believes in me, no matter how
many times I have cried wolf.

2011-07-06 18:30:20
CjLehi: #blessing 1: Ian Darke. It’s so nice to be able to watch a soccer
match in English, where the announcer is worth listening to.

2011-07-06 18:28:06
CjLehi: Day 6 of the #blessing experiment. Lots of positive things to
tweet.

2011-07-06 04:46:44
CjLehi: #blessing 11: a new day to try again. Didn’t finish strong today.
Have to give day 5 a 6. Not really the day’s fault, tho.

2011-07-06 01:27:43
CjLehi: #blessing 10: http://lockerz.com/s/117438298

2011-07-06 01:21:12
CjLehi: #blessing 9: a son that respects the flag of his country enough to
retire it properly.

2011-07-06 01:20:20
CjLehi: #blessing 8: salad from my own garden. Well, mostly from there.

2011-07-05 21:50:25
CjLehi: A continuacion…: Day 5 is underway of the #blessing experiment on
Twitter (I don’t use my phone much on weekends… http://bit.ly/oBKTl2

2011-07-05 21:30:39
CjLehi: #blessing 7: the entire Harmon clan, but today especially Jeff and
Neal, with a shout out to Theron. Great lunch, even better conversation.

2011-07-05 21:23:36
CjLehi: #blessing 6: the hole-in-the-wall Neapolitan restaurant La Dolce
Vita in Provo. Authentic Italian.

2011-07-05 16:51:26
CjLehi: #blessing 5: spare buttons for my shirt. That’s thoughtful design.
And 5a my lovely wife sewing the replacement on.

2011-07-05 15:10:37
CjLehi: #blessing 4: an impossible six green lights in a row through the
busiest part of town.

2011-07-05 14:55:46
CjLehi: #blessing 3: finding that my potential, inhumanly-successful
business partners are human after all. Since I certainly am.

2011-07-05 14:49:42
CjLehi: #blessing 2: a four-hour wide-ranging conversation with Randy
Peterson. Learned a great deal.

2011-07-05 14:48:10
CjLehi: #blessing 1: the lifted ban on aerial fireworks. Made yesterday
evening sound like a WWII movie.

2011-07-05 14:46:59
CjLehi: Back after the excellent weekend to the #blessing experiment, day
5.

2011-07-05 13:59:32
CjLehi: Dan at his best. RT @mortgagereports: When Mortgage Rates Rise 1%,
Your Purchasing Power Falls By 10.75%. http://t.co/DjAxiY4

2011-07-02 07:00:21
CjLehi: #blessing experiment day 4 is a wrap. I give today a 9.5, best day
in months. If the trend continues, tomorrow will be perfect.

2011-07-02 04:16:41
CjLehi: #blessing 10 thru 1476: The Jimmy Rex firework show. I know some
cool people.  http://lockerz.com/s/116137113

2011-07-02 01:30:50
CjLehi: #blessing 9: it’s BYU’s independence day! #BYUDAY

2011-07-02 00:32:42
CjLehi: @thebookmaven Reading Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Levin.
#fridayreads

2011-07-02 00:02:35
CjLehi: #blessing 8: finished the week and did not take the car to work.
Not once. I do love Lehi.

2011-07-01 03:21:51
CjLehi: I’m using @TweetBackup by @backupify to archive my tweets

http://tweetbackup.com

2011-07-01 03:18:59
CjLehi: #blessing 6: my son ALexander has his papers in, at long, long
last.  If you’re LDS, you know what that’s code for.  If not, well, sorry.

2011-07-01 02:26:19
CjLehi: #blessing 5 is a doozy. From White Collar, from “Where There’s a
Will”, the excellent joke of the Ark in the Nazi sub relics. So shiny!

2011-07-01 20:56:50
CjLehi: #blessing 7: I feel good. I’m happy. It’s been a while. The
interesting thing is that my circumstances have not really improved. Even
so.

2011-07-01 20:26:04
CjLehi: #blessing 6: the orange chicken at the Thai House on Main in Lehi.
Oh, doctor. THAT’S lunch!

2011-07-01 20:22:48
CjLehi: #blessing 5: ripe cherries. You get four weeks, max, and then it’s
over. I’ll be sick, but I won’t care.

2011-07-01 15:19:48
CjLehi: Happy Birthday to You!: Last night, I completed my 43rd year on the
planet. I’m disgusted. No, I take that back…. http://bit.ly/mPsKgI

2011-07-01 15:18:28
CjLehi: #blessing 3: Max.  http://lockerz.com/s/115932814

2011-07-01 15:17:35
CjLehi: #blessing 2: HDTV. I know that I used to watch tv before HD, I just
can’t remember why.

2011-07-01 13:13:41
CjLehi: #blessing 1: humility. I love to play basketball, but I played my
age today. Sigh.

2011-07-01 12:05:16
CjLehi: Day 4 of the #blessing experiment. More positive, and often
cryptic, tweets on the way.

Some really fascinating things are happening with this.  It’s true that there has not been much change in the type of things that have been happening to me, but there has definitely been a change in my reaction to them.  Even really negative things, I’m reacting to differently than I have before.  So we’ll be continuing, no doubt about it.  We’re one week of tweets in.

One of the things that has occurred to me about this is that one acquires a certain reputation from doing it.  The rep is that I am a positive guy.  I tweet blessings.  I’m constantly looking for blessings, for positive things to communicate to the world.  I am doing this in what I lovingly call Channel Three, which is the most public of all the ways to communicate.  I am globally declaring that I have blessings and that I notice those blessings.  I am going to do this for two weeks, but the reality is that once I start doing this it is likely that I will continue, unless it absolutely does not work at all, and it’s already a bit late for that to be the case.

I will be encouraged to continue because I have staked out some ground here.  Nobody else that I know is doing anything like this; at least, the #blessing hashtag is not what you’d call overused, and nobody else on earth is numbering them off every day to keep track (at least not on Twitter).   I confess I would like to be known for being a positive person.  Therefore the odds are that this will become my thing, my schtick, my modus operandi.

Today is every bit as good as day 4.  It is officially a trend.  Time will tell if it is a pattern, or possibly even a system.  But I’m hopeful.

I’m disgusted.

No, I take that back.  I’m moderately disappointed.  I thought I’d be more than I am, after this long.  To quote Kathleen Kelly from You’ve Got Mail, “I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

I still can’t watch the scene from that movie where she closes her little store without tears running down my face.  I’ve had to do that, to kill something I loved because to keep it alive was to cause it suffering to no purpose.  I’ve survived almost nine years in the mortgage industry, but our modest and occasional successes have not really filled in the holes left by the much more frequent times things were bad.  We’ve done okay.  I call it “moderately unsuccessful”.  We have done good, quality work and helped a lot of people that wouldn’t otherwise have been served, but we’ve never managed to make a real success of it.  Very recently, the good work I thought I was doing, in an area I thought I was good at, turned out not to be valued by people I consider my friends.  That hurt a good deal, and still does.

Most everything else in my life is better than that, but again, I’m so far short of excellence in so many areas.  The fact is that I haven’t even reached for excellence.  I treat my wife well, and we love each other, but couldn’t I be better?  I’m a good father to my many children, but every softball season I’m reminded that I haven’t had a catch with any of my kids…ever.  In a thousand little ways, practically every day, I’ve put them second and third and eighteenth.  I pray, but not as hard as I could.  I read the scriptures every day, but they slide past my eyes without impression.  I write, but I don’t dare to try doing it for money.  What if I’m not as good as I think I am?

As I consider this, though, I’m reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis, one of my favorites: The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

Now, I find myself in the presence of God quite a lot.  I invite Him here, and I try to welcome Him when He comes.  My wife and children, and so many of my friends, are among His greatest warriors, and their presence invites His.  So I see myself as a small, dirty object extremely often.  But then, the truth of it is that if we are honest, we all do.  We all know we’re not what we could be.  We all know we could be doing better than we are.

The key for me today and all days is to forget myself altogether.  Since I can’t stop myself from thinking – I’ve tried, and it only works when I’m watching Michael Bay movies – I had better get in the habit of thinking about you instead.

So happy birthday to you!

CjLehi : Calling it a night. #blessing 9 is that it was a beautiful, beautiful day. Wrote some, played some, prayed some. I give it an 8.

CjLehi : #blessing 8: still have not been bitten by a single mosquito this summer.

CjLehi : #blessing 7: fruit season. Eating strawberries like Kaylie on Serenity. Man, I love this season.

2011-07-01 03:18:59	CjLehi: #blessing 6: my son Alexander has his papers in, at long, long last. If you’re LDS, you know what that’s code for. If not, well, sorry.
2011-07-01 02:26:19	CjLehi: #blessing 5 is a doozy. From White Collar, from “Where There’s a Will”, the excellent joke of the Ark in the Nazi sub relics. So shiny!
2011-06-30 21:47:34	CjLehi: #blessing 4: my laptop. Holy cats, I cannot remember what I used to do when I had to write on a typewriter.
2011-06-30 19:39:52	CjLehi: #blessing 2: that I have a temple close, and 3 that I have a beautiful wife that will go with me.
2011-06-30 19:38:57	CjLehi: #blessing 1: that my bike broke down on the way TO the office instead of on the way back home. Not nearly as heavy.
2011-06-30 14:56:10	CjLehi: Agreed. RT @simonsinek: Has Wal-Mart lost touch with its populist roots? I think so. http://t.co/5q5vuc8
2011-06-30 14:45:43	CjLehi: At his best! RT @cspenn: #the5: I got some stunning results using Facebook pre-filled forms in popups. See what I learned: http://ar.gy/ShG
2011-06-30 04:58:10	CjLehi: End of day 2 of the great #blessing experiment. I give this one a 5 out of 10. But I think I should get an 8.
2011-06-30 02:46:58	CjLehi: #blessing 11&12: my beautiful and very interesting daughters, Charlotte and Mira.
2011-06-29 23:56:48	CjLehi: #blessing 10: that I love what I do so much that even when I’m discouraged and defeated, I’m still at my desk working after 6.
2011-06-29 22:44:58	CjLehi: #blessing 9: enough wisdom to know when a “success” book is just flat wrong. This may also be a curse, or at least a scar.
2011-06-29 22:17:44	CjLehi: #blessing 8: www.staceykent.com Melt me down and use me for butter.
2011-06-29 21:42:36	CjLehi: #blessing 7: Sherri Russett’s sense of humor. @City1stMortgSvc is in good hands there.
2011-06-29 21:17:43	CjLehi: #blessing 6: or #miracle 1, Josh and Jenna Gubler had their baby today, 2 months after Josh’s mother’s death. And today is her birthday.
2011-06-29 21:09:00	CjLehi: #blessing 5: air conditioning. Actually two units thereof in my office.
2011-06-29 19:10:09	CjLehi: #blessing 4: a really excellent lunch from Anne Made. Custard to die for.
2011-06-29 18:03:14	CjLehi: #blessing 3: such a fantastically beautiful day. And a terrible speaker to get me to leave the conference room so I can enjoy it.
2011-06-29 16:29:00	CjLehi: #blessing 2: old friends like Jeremiah Maughan. Just showed up at a conference together.
2011-06-29 16:02:45	CjLehi: Numbers bleak but not quite pitch black at the UCAR housing summit. #UCARhs
2011-06-29 13:38:49	CjLehi: #blessing 1: I’m 43, and I can still play basketball three times a week. Occasionally without embarrassment.
2011-06-29 13:37:18	CjLehi: Day 2 of the #blessing experiment. Those unimpressed by positive tweets, beware.
2011-06-29 04:23:48	CjLehi: Day 1 down, and I give it a 4 out if 10. Very bad news late in the day. Inexplicable, pointless bad news.
2011-06-29 04:22:35	CjLehi: #blessing 12: saving the best for last, I’m grateful for my beautiful wife Jeanette.
2011-06-28 22:45:17	CjLehi: #blessing 11: two City Councilwomen that care enough to listen and think about how to help their city. From Provo, unbelievably.
2011-06-28 20:33:11	CjLehi: #blessing 10: a hard trial to see if I’m committed to this project. I am. But hard it is.
2011-06-28 20:27:14	CjLehi: #blessing 9: the DVR. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that, do I?
2011-06-28 17:59:21	CjLehi: #blessing 7: that little cloud that just passed in front of the sun.
2011-06-28 17:58:35	CjLehi: #blessing 6: a processor that can cover for me when I make an elementary, rookie mistake on a loan.
2011-06-28 17:30:12	CjLehi: #blessing 5: the inimitable @hawkpete, who doubles my effectiveness at networking events.
2011-06-28 16:58:54	CjLehi: #blessing 4: I have a son that is willing to watch soccer with me, and likes it as much as I do.
2011-06-28 16:27:23	CjLehi: Thought I’d Try Something: I’ve posted before on being positive, on being cheerful, even (although my tag cloud … http://bit.ly/mCodOw
2011-06-28 16:08:23	CjLehi: #blessing 3: my 5-year-old is vacuuming the tv room. Perhaps that should be #miracle instead.
2011-06-28 16:06:03	CjLehi: #blessing 2: I can ride my bike to work. And 2b, the weather is ridiculously great.
2011-06-28 15:41:11	CjLehi: #blessing 1: tack on my floor, right in front of my closet, for two weeks. Never saw it. Never stepped on it.
2011-06-28 15:40:10	CjLehi: Expect the volume of tweets to rise a bit over the next two weeks. In the interest of experimenting: http://t.co/yCF1tTT

The gaps are where I tweeted about something else non-germane.

Couple things are immediately obvious to me about the last three days.  First, my average tweet volume is up about 400%.  Really.  I love Twitter, but I’m more of a consumer than a producer, so I tweet about .4 times per day.  That’s up to 16x a day in the last three days.  The vast majority of those tweets are hashtagged #blessing, and are part of the project.  But my interaction with others increased as well, because…well, because.

Second, there is no correlation between the project and the things that happen to me.  Those are pretty randomly scattered and all over the map as to whether I wanted them or not.  Day 1 featured the death of a loan – the third consecutive loan that was approved and ready that was killed by events beyond any possibility of my control – and in our current financial situation that is really a nasty thing to have happen (blessing 10 from 6-28).  It threw me, but didn’t stop me, and there is the chance that part of the reason is that I was involved in this project.

Today there were a couple more things that didn’t go the way I’d want them to, but today I can definitely confirm that this project has had a positive effect on my thinking.  When my bike broke down as I was riding to work, I immediately reframed the event as a blessing.  I mean, it was hot, and I had to carry the bike three blocks in the summer sunshine to my office before I could fix it.  Not on my “want-to” list.  But I was already reframing the event as a good thing, as a blessing, before I got there (blessing 1, 6-30).  Under no circumstances would that have happened if I hadn’t been doing this.

My good friend Enoch (@dellojoio, and www.getenoch.com) has a system he calls Padiush, in which you measure your gratitude every day.  He swears it works.  I find it curious that the backbone of that system is 10 things every day that you’re grateful for, and I have averaged a bit over that, without having specific target, every day so far.

Noticing blessings, and reframing events so that they are seen as blessings, has not changed the bottom line of my bank account so far.  But it certainly hasn’t worsened it, and as you see from my end-of-day tweets, there has been a steady improvement in how I rate each day.  That might be a pattern, and it might be luck.  The sample size is small.  But it hasn’t hurt, and that’s not nothing.

One other thing.  I know that some people are actively following those tweets every day, and more are waiting for the Facebook/blog recap.  That also has a positive impact on my attitude.  Having to do this in public, because I said I would, has been reinforcing.  It’s increased the intensity of the project and made a difference for the better in my life.  If you don’t care, that doesn’t happen.  So thank you, all of you, for being today’s #blessing #10.