Most Recent Posts – Page 12 – Quietly Passing By

January 7, 2020January 10, 2021

21 Days of Posts – Day 3 – Romance

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Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

It’s Day 3 of my 21-day post sequence and I know many of you are wondering “is this just some kind of Internet confessional?” and are about to quit reading from either boredom or horror. Bear with me for this post, as it does have a point.

It is time to play some self-imposed “truth or dare”.

Want to know a big, ugly, weird, juicy, truth about me?

Sure you do…

I’m a heart-fluttering-weepy-falling-over-stupid romantic. Yep, I confess, that’s me. It will never, ever come up unless I bring it up, so here it is. Welcome to my hidden thoughts…

I’m a sucker for a good love song (The Cure’s Love Song or Dave Matthew’s You & Me are good examples), a sad break-up song (Liykke Li’s Possibility* and The Cure’s Apart both prime examples), various Nicholas Cage movies (The Family Man, It Could happen To You, City of Angels), some Nicholas Sparks books/movies, and even crazy stupid romances like Twilight (you are free to laugh hysterically at this point, if you didn’t start laughing at “Nicholas Cage”).

People like me love both the romances that make perfect sense and those that don’t. The real question is why are we drawn to contrivances such as impossible romances? Isn’t love and romance hard enough without fighting social norms, ridiculous twists of fate, and death itself? I would wager we (us romantics) have been fascinated with the impossible romances since even before Romeo and Juliet.

Which is why all kinds of people were drawn to Twilight…all three books and four movies. We’re drawn to stories where it seems impossible any peace or equilibrium can be found in a potential relationship. We’re particularly drawn to stories where a huge sacrifice must be made by one or the other romantic partner, or by both of them, to make the romance work. Twilight has this motif in spades. City of Angels also invokes this theme of ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of love. Sometimes it works out great, a la Twilight, sometimes not, as in City of Angels (oops, mini-spoiler).

We like to see the happy couple stay together forever after overcoming such adversity. Sometimes we get that glimpse, sometimes we don’t. It all depends on what idea the story creator wants us to take away from the story. Does the author want us to believe it is better to love deeply for only a brief moment in time after overcoming all odds, or does he want us to finish the story, or movie, with a perfect sense of “all is well” because the main couple fought and overcame <insert terrible adversity here>? Some would argue one is better than the other. I find them equally satisfying, if the author does their job correctly.

When Harry Met Sally is one of my favorite movies of all time. I tell my wife that is “our” movie. Some couples have “their” song…we have “our” movie. The movie is about friends who eventually become lovers, who eventually marry, but along the way fight with every fiber of their being at various times to reach a different goal. The movie falls into the “leave the viewer happy” category, and not just for the main protagonists.

Other movies, like The Notebook, The Family Man, and City of Angels all show the work and/or sacrifice that went into the relationship, but leave the viewer, if not sad, at least a bit melancholy at the end. We see incredible devotion and love displayed by those in the relationship, and we see them happy, for a bit, then the movie shifts and moves on, just like time moves on.

I have to admit that romance as portrayed in books and movies is usually problematic. That’s part of what draw us to them. My favorite book/movie series to pick on, Twilight, has all kinds of problems and has been lambasted by critics for its glaring relationship issues (but I’ve read the entire series at least three times). Books and movies by Nicholas Sparks are so dependent on outlandish twists of fate that we all usually breathe easier because we don’t have to suffer through what his characters experience. But we still indulge in escaping to those fictional landscapes, if only to shake our heads at the characters as they struggle.

We haven’t even touched on one of the the most difficult aspects of most book and movie relationships, that of the “love triangle”, where gut-wrenching, heart-rending decisions have to be made by the characters involved. Sometimes the author will ease us out of that frightful tension with a unicorn-and-rainbow solution (see the Twilight series, from New Moon to Eclipse to Breaking Dawn), but sometimes they will not (see The Notebook and the decidedly unromantic Hunger Games series), and we have to vicariously experience the heartbreak and fallout from someone’s decision. At least it is vicarious, and not real.

Yes, love, romance and relationships are hard enough without crippling diseases, terrible accidents, and <gasp> vampires. Why do we subject ourselves to the fictional heartache? Don’t we have enough hurt to deal with? Maybe, but we get to experience, and then discard (sometimes with effort) the pain and suffering of another, and maybe, just maybe, experience a taste of unrepentant and wildly ridiculous romance without disrupting our real lives. Catharsis is a powerful tool and running ourselves through the wringer of fictional, impossible romance every now and then is probably healthy (but I’m no expert).

So what is the point, you ask? I remember; you were promised a point. The point is that as much as these crazy, impossible, fictional romances may appeal to (some) of us, the greatest, craziest, most possible of impossible love stories is that of our God desiring to be in communion with us, his children. This REAL love story has it all – a complete lack of equilibrium, an unimaginable sacrifice, even a happily-ever-after. It outshines all other love stories ever written. May the love of God wrap you up in complete contentment, or as complete as it can get on this earth, for the duration of the fast and beyond.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end! I sincerely hope it was worth it to you and that you will continue to read along with my fasting journey.

*This song, I believe, was originally written as a break up song, but the sequence of scenes it is used with in New Moon make it even more wrenchingly impactful. I can’t listen to the song without hearing Bella’s desperate screams of emptiness. Stupid romantic…

Photo Credit – Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

January 6, 2020January 3, 2021

21 Days of Posts – Day 2 – New Year’s To-Do List

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Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes

Welcome to Day 2 of 21 days of posts corresponding to the 21-day fast being observed at our church. Today, I am going to go into more detail about something I mentioned on Day 1 – my 2020 To-Do list.

I gave up on New Year’s resolutions about two decades ago and in the last few years I’ve turned to creating a To-Do list for the year. I admitted on Day 1 that my frustration was that my list never seemed to change much from year to year. In the interest of full transparency, here is my list for 2020. You may chuckle, laugh, and snicker as much as you like, I can’t hear it.

Finish writing a book
Sing more – at the college and at church
Read more (a book a month)
Take more vacation days (and use them effectively)
Continue having daily devotions
Pray even more
Continue to teach my son to drive
Go to even more parties and events
Tell my wife I love her every day
Talk with my mom more (at least once a week)
Regularly communicate with my daughter
Try something new every month
Walk on the beach more (requires vacation – see #4)
Post more blog entries (at least two a month)
Build stuff
Show love more
Lose more weight (~205 would be nice)
Walk/exercise more
Continue to fix the house
Chase the lion…

You see that some are interdependent (#4 and #13, for example), and others are redundant (#1 and #20, as explained on Day 1). Some have been there for four or more years, but there are a couple of new ones.

Item #15 is new. I want to build stuff. Woodworking, crafting, and “making” are all on my radar for this year and I hope to build both useful (having a definite purpose) and useless (having a more subjective purpose) things. I never used to want to create things, at least not since I quit building with Lego pieces. Now I want to make things to help and things to appreciate.

Item #16 is a variant of a previous year’s item. Saying this phrase out loud feels odd, like the words are supposed to be in that order, but that is the order I need them in. I don’t have a problem loving people, but I do have a problem with showing that love, so #16 is huge this year. I’ll explain in a later post, or posts, why #16 is so hard for me and maybe it will sound and feel familiar to you. If so, let me know and we can encourage each other to show love more.

Item #19 is new also, a direct result of buying a house and finding all of the things that need fixed. We knew when we bought it that there would be a long list of updates and repairs, but we’ve been surprised at least three times now. I’m kind of done with surprises with the house…I want to fix what I know is wrong/broken/messed up before discovering anything else.

All I know is that if I can do half of the things on this list, I believe I will feel like I accomplished something come January 2021, and maybe I can add some new items to the list. If I accomplish them all, then I believe I will feel as if I caught that lion…

Before I completely sign off for today, here is a fairly solid, numbered list of topics for each day. This way you can pick and choose which posts you want to read. Just imagine that each numbered entry says “day” in front of it.

Photo credit – Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

January 5, 2020January 6, 2020

21 Days of Posts – Day 1 – Discombobulation

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Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1 (this one does), then you should stop now and go read from Day 1. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

It’s that time of year again, when our church conducts a 21 day fast. Each congregant is asked to pick something or somethings to fast from, whether it is food items, habits, coffee/caffeine, or something else. I struggle each year to pick things, as I greatly dislike the two to three day “head is going to explode” feeling sans caffeine, and I don’t have a ton of bad habits to avoid.

I do have some bad habits, like not posting to this site on a regular basis, or writing at all on a regular basis, so I’m going to flip the script and fast from not doing something. I’m going to post something all twenty-one days of this fast, even if it is just “hi” and “bye”, but I will attempt to do better than that.

Today, I feel the need to express my first days of the year discombobulation, which I’ve had for several years now, but seem to be acute this year. Yes, 2019 was a turbulent year, with buying a house, attending my 25-year college reunion, experiencing my daughter’s wedding, being amazed at marking my 25th wedding anniversary (who knew there was someone out there who would put up with me for 25 years?), my youngest child turning 18, and everything in between those events.

So I find myself discombobulated. That’s an expensive word that just boils down to “confused”. I described it as not being able to put all the pieces into a Perfection game, timer or no timer. I’m having trouble with the fact that my annual “to-do” list (what I do in place of New Year’s resolutions) hasn’t changed much in three years, with “finish a book” still at the top of it. “Read more”, “exercise”, and “stay in touch with family” are also still on there, but I did add a twentieth item to my 2020 list – “chase the lion”.

“Chase the lion” comes from the title of a book by Mark Batterson, the full title being –

“Chase the lion. If your dream doesn’t scare you, it’s too small.”

Mark Batterson is the author of Christian inspirational books, about a dozen of them, and while I have not yet read this book, I look forward to it (#3 on my 2020 to-do list – read more). I may read more of his stuff if I like this one, but just the title of this one is enough to warrant a place on my list.

While this book is focused on dreaming big in relation to doing God’s work and putting our trust in him, regardless of circumstances and resources, my personal lion for now is finishing a book. So the first item and the last item on my list are essentially the same thing – finish a book. We’ll have to see if I can do that in the next three hundred or so days.

Back to discombobulation. The pieces of my life are having difficulty going back into regular places, whether it is work, dealing with our still-new-to-us house, my participation in church activities like worship and life groups, my family (a wide-ranging and many-faceted topic), or other aspects of life that refuse to settle. I like regularity and dislike chaos, so this confusion and unsettling are…unsettling and confusing.

I hope that in the next few days I can get to a stasis point where my mind is reaching some kind of equilibrium. That would make moving into this new year and new decade a bit easier. I suspect some of my uneasiness relates to my rapid approach to the age of fifty, but I’ll deal with that thought in another post.

I also have to accept the fact that God may need me in a state of discombobulation so that I will learn something, or have something pruned from me that I need to discard. Unfortunately, only time will tell, and I’m pretty impatient, too. I guess I’ll have to deal with that in later post, also.

Photo credit – Photo by Gabriel Crismariu on Unsplash

December 3, 2019December 3, 2019

Yet Another NaNoWriMo Win (and another WIP)

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Est. Reading Time: 2 minutes

I did it again! Fifty thousand words in 30 days. Another work in progress to hopefully someday complete. I accomplished the same results this year for NaNoWriMo, but went about it a totally different way.

In previous years, I would get up an hour earlier in the morning to write and would generally accomplish a third to a half of my daily writing before going to work. This year, I did not get up earlier. I wrote at lunch and I wrote in the evenings and and I wrote on the weekends and I simply got it done. Not sure how, because in the past when I’ve gotten up early I’ve had difficulty winning. Not this year. Maybe that means I will finish this book.

To be honest, I don’t have a book, not even a pale facsimile of a book. I have a couple of scenes, probably opening and middle scenes, and a whole lot of character development. I wrote more “flashback” than current story and wrote one scene, a date scene, in far too much detail. Over half of it will be tossed in the final edit, most likely, but it’s there on the page now.

I have a decent grasp of two characters, a really good grasp on one character, a wildcard mystery character that is more “info ex machina” right now than useful character. I have zero character development for the antagonist. How did I get 50,000 words done and have zero antagonist development? I did as I described above.

I mean, I have plenty of second hand conjecture and “info ex machina” information on the antagonist, but he only shows up in one written scene, which is not complete. He actually does show up “off-screen” at another point in the story, but I’m not sure where that scene falls in the storyline.

My plan of attack at this point is as follows:

Finish a couple of the draft scenes I have
Work out a full story outline, from opening scene to climactic final confrontation
Work out a full time line, from earliest point in the lives of the characters to the final confrontation
Start outlining scenes – just a list of scenes
Start writing these scenes
Do lots of editing

I’ll be creating a Kanban board to track my progress for this novel, so that should be interesting. I might post screenshots of it as I move along. I hope against hope that I don’t get bored of this story. Wish me luck!

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019

A NaNoWriMo Update and Other Thoughts

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We’re closing in on halfway through NanoWriMo and my word count is over the 22K mark. I’m a touch ahead of the minimum word count, so that’s OK for now, but I need to get far more ahead, because Thanksgiving is coming…

I found an interesting technology tidbit today. I’m fairly certain that I’ve never mentioned I am a Type I diabetic, at least not in anything published on this site-maybe on a previous site. I’ve been diabetic since I was thirteen years old, so that is creeping up on thirty-five years living with an incurable, but treatable disease.

As with most incurable diseases, especially ones that affect millions of people, there is a sizable support community on the Internet. There are multiple foundations working hard to find a cure, but they are all hampered by the need for any commercial solutions to be approved by the FDA or other regulatory bodies before they are available to the public.

Well, open source technology is trying to make an end-run on this bottleneck. It is succeeding to some degree. Before I dive into how, let me explain the mechanics behind diabetes, particularly Type I diabetes. To simplify this explanation, I will take some shortcuts that medical professionals might feel are inaccurate, but I’m not writing a dissertation, just trying to explain what is broken.

In Type I diabetes, the pancreas, which is responsible for producing insulin (among other things) stops working. This is the root cause of the problem. Without insulin, the body’s cells cannot process sugar, or more accurately, glucose. Levels of glucose build up in the blood, causing a condition called hyperglycemia, or elevated blood sugar. The short-term effects are intense thirst, excessive urination, lethargy, and a craving for sweets or food in general. The long-term effects are damaged organs and bodily systems from dealing with the excessive amount of glucose in the blood.

When a pancreas functions normally, it can react to higher levels of glucose in the blood and produce more insulin to allow the body’s cells to process the glucose. In diabetics, this doesn’t happen. Unless the body gets insulin, a person will eventually slip into a coma and die. There have been dozens of attempts to replace a damaged pancreas – transplants, insulet cell (the part of the pancreas that produces insulin) implantation, and other weirder methods have been tried, all in an attempt to bring the glucose cycle back to normal – a person takes in carbohydrates, the digestive system breaks them down and the pancreas produces insulin to process the resulting glucose.

Insulin therapy, whether shots or pumps, has always been complicated to balance because to properly dose insulin you must know your blood glucose (bg) level. This requires, for most diabetics, pricking their finger and using a test strip and an electronic meter to determine their blood glucose level. They then can use a formula to determine how much insulin to take. Unfortunately, taking insulin after eating, when bg levels are high, has been determined to be less effective at preventing long-term complications of diabetes, which are many, some of which are more dangerous than the disease itself.

It was discovered that the better way to treat with insulin is to determine how much insulin to take prior to eating, to keep bg levels from rising too high. This requires knowing how many carbohydrates are in your current meal, and also knowing how much insulin it takes for your body to process that amount of carbohydrates, which varies from person to person.

The ideal system would eliminate the finger sticking and insulin calculations and coordinate information from a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and feed that directly into a insulin pump, so that the pump can automatically determine how much insulin to deliver. This would essentially create an artificial pancreas. That’s exactly what two open source projects are doing now. Check out the main website for these amazing projects. They do a much better job than I would in explaining what they are doing.

Here is the Looping website and here is the OpenAPS site, both of which are making strides toward creating an artificial pancreas system. Pretty exciting stuff.

I’ll check back in once I top 30,000 words.