Surprise, surprise…my
character suffers from much the same thing as I do and, in one form or another,
the musings of this post will find their way into PAR’s story. I must apologize
in advance because I don’t see a positive spin to end this with and that
disturbs me here during Christmas Week. Perhaps something will occur to me
during the writing of this post and another, more appropriate Christmas writing,
will make itself evident.
In my heart and mind
there is a shelf upon which I have a variety of guilt and shame; some deserved
and some it merely self-published dribble.
 |
| Just a peek at part of my shelf... |
Around my house are
books from friends and family, books written by friends, recommended by various
folks, and purchased by myself. They are in various stages of being read, or
not, and they are sitting on my Guilt Shelf. Mixed in with the books are
various journals; prayer journals, motorcycle ride journals, writing journals,
and journals that have not yet obtained a designation. Some have fairly recent
entries while others haven’t had a pen scratch their pages in a number of
weeks, maybe even over a year. The journals sit on the Guilt Shelf or are
stacked haphazardly on top of the unread books.
Around and in my house
are a number or projects in various stages of incompleteness or merely being
contemplated. They are good projects, necessary projects, and some of them
would be fun to undertake. They are bookends to the books and journals and are
resting upon my Guilt Shelf.
I have friends to find,
contact, communicate with, pray for, and get together with. (Ah! Prepositional
ending to a sentence, I think I’ll let it stand.) They are good friends with
real prayer needs and they are friends that I really care about and I would just
like to see them smile and warm my heart. They sit on my Guilt Shelf with their
feet dangling and swinging with my guilt – or they are hanging by their hands
like some ‘Hang in there baby’ cat poster.
I have a mail slot at
home with unopened correspondence, some real, most of it junk. I have stacks of
bills to pay and notes to cancel things I’m paying for but don’t need. They are
stuffed between the pages of the books on my Guilt Shelf.
I have notes, maps, and
research materials strewn about my office waiting to be punched into a
manuscript that may or may not be published, worthy or not.
I cannot possibly get
to them all and perhaps the best thing to do is simply pick one up at a time and
get to it instead of saying “When I get around to it” but the thing I do is to pick up my smart phone or the TV remote and dull the pain of it all by letting them
recede into the shadows of time-wasters. There lies the shame of it all. BTW, I
have an actual round ‘To It’ somewhere around here; perhaps I’ll find it some
day and this will all be solved.
The time wasters rarely
help. When I turn them off the Guilt Shelf objects are all there, jumping up
and down and dancing like a happy dog when its owner returns from the store.
What a quandary, what a downer to lay on all ya’ all. But at least
I picked this one off of my Guilt Shelf and got around to it. And, today while
I’m excavating the project space in the backyard with my rent-a-kid friends, I’ll
pray for you, my friends.
In His grip, jerry
