Time To Start Marking The Bench but Not Marking Time On The Bench Because I Could Fall Off And Get Hurt

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22249 – 774:

Here’s the haps:

It’s that time of year again, folks. Time to dust off the old promises you made to yourself. It’s interesting to me the different ways people mark the new year and what they plan to accomplish. For some it’s resolutions, others call it goal-setting. I know several people who opt out of doing either of those but choose rather to have one word or phrase that will be their guiding principle for the whole year. This last is, in my estimation, the easiest, depending on definitions. I didn’t do any of that this last year or the year before but I have in the past. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this. Well, yes, actually, I do. I’ve got an itch. On August 9, 2019, I made myself happy. I started streaking. What‽‽ Good heavens, no! Not the Seventies kind. You’re just being silly with me. You know what I mean. I started a streak where I posted something every single day. And even though I really felt under pressure, even stressed out about it, I still did it. And I was happy with myself.

I was being too hard on myself and I needed to relax and take it easier and not stress out about getting something down every single day. But my problem is that if I don’t have any set parameters stuff just kind of spirals away out of control and I wind up going weeks at a time, then eventually months at a time, and finally, years have gone by and my poor blog has floundered into nothingness with only the very most loyal followers still with me. I got to thinking about this again after reading the erroneously named “Dumbest Blog Ever” and realizing he posted something every single day. Now he does do a very different kind of blog than I do and some of his posts last year were just junk, howbeit quite witty and clever junk, but he did it. I had gone for over a year posting every day, also, but when I slacked off you can see my lack of consistency.

Another thing that got me thinking about setting a benchmark on some goals was reading a post on the Brother’s Campfire blog that my son does. his post called Faith First Fully and Goals Glorifying God really set me to thinking along these lines as well.

But yet, in the same breath, I have to sort of agree with the people who said I was pushing too hard. What I really need to do is make a commitment that is realistic, but firm. I have a couple of things cooking in the works which will make me have to buckle down, at least somewhat. One is that I may have a deal cooking to edit someone’s book. The person is a professional person and a creative and she feels confident that, even though I don’t have a formal degree, I know about writing. This is true, but a bit humbling because she does have a few degrees. I do talk about offering proofreading services in my Curriculum Vitae page on the main site(if you go there and get a security warning from Chrome it’s because I only have an HTTP on that site and not an HTTPS) but I really appreciate the opportunity. Honestly, I don’t know what to charge. Do I charge by the word? By the page? By the mistake? I have been proofreading stuff for scholars of all ages and levels of academia for a long time now. I have fixed and enhanced and helped a lot of college-level work in my time but nothing as big as this. All that work was pro-bono for family and friends and because I can’t stand to read misspelled words and glaring punctuation errors. I am not sure if it will be a work of fiction or a professional work but if it’s the latter then my course on medical terminology will pay off. I have found a couple of articles online that I think will help me with pricing but I know there are also professionals in my audience(another humbling thought) who may know these things better than I do.

The other project I have decided on is the writing of a memoir. A memoir is (or should be) not an autobiography but rather a creatively told story from your life. It can be about a certain time period or about a specific subject. I’m thinking of writing about how I came to be Born Again and what that meant and means. It’s very emotional and just thinking about doing it is making my palms sweat and my ears turn red. It will, I think, as far as I can tell at the time of this posting, be the hardest project I will ever have undertaken. I have no intention of quitting blogging and as this blog continues to grow I realize I need to make a commitment to other parts of my writing life as well. I also have my personal journal which I have shared here in part from time to time and just write with good old paper and ink. Plus proofreading. What I’m thinking is posting here three times a week and working on my other reading/writing projects as well.

I have kind of put the Patreon idea on the back burner for now. I really am considering doing some sort of vlog or podcast of Sunday School stories and will continue to write them up here as I feel like it but the more I thought about turning a profit on it the less enthused I became. I know that my talent for telling stories to kids is from God. He gave it to me freely and I have never tried to bury it but have always tried to grow it. I just don’t feel like I should charge money for something I got for free. One of my projects for this year, lockdowns or no, is to start making recordings but I can’t see myself charging for it. Depending on how that idea goes I might try my hand at freelancing some audiobooks. I would charge for that.

Here’s my plan, thus far. And while I know that if you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans for your life, I also see how His plan has worked out a lot better for me than anything I could dream up. I will use this post as a sort of benchmark and see where I have wound up by this time next year if the Lord wills and delays His coming or I should live that long. I will post on the blog at least three times a week, I will write in my paper & ink journal, and I will work on proofreading and vlogging/recording on the other days.