The Guilt Shelf

     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have notes, maps, and research materials strewn about my office waiting to be punched into a manuscript that may or may not be published, worthy or not.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