Wednesday Fun...

My wife does this Friday Fun thing on her amazing health and wellness blog: Your World Natural every week and it inspired me to do the same. I won't do it every week, but every once in a while I'll include some personal updates on what's going on in my life and things I'm thinking about and doing....just for fun. It's not Friday today...so I guess I could call it "Wednesday Fun" this week...

 Here goes:

In my life this week... (or maybe I should say this month...since it's been so long since I've written!)
Crazy busy at work. I started a new schedule in the beginning of May as I am training under a new guy. I meet him at a parking lot 30 minutes or so from our house, depending on traffic. He has to be at the first jobsite by 7am, which means we meet at 6:15 Am, which means if I want to work on my book in the nice quiet hours of morning I need to get up early...like 4:30 or 5am at the latest. That's been a challenge. Then we've been working past the normal end of shift which is 5 pm....so I don't get home until 6, 7, 8pm at night on a normal shift. This has been taking a toll on my writing and my health and our family. Just this week I caught some kind of cold...with a nasty sore throat.
On my day off I tried to dig up our garden and ended up cutting the line to our cable service ...fortunately I was able to patch the line together so we still got internet, phone and TV...the cable guy is coming out today to fix it for us. Always something crazy right?

 I am inspired by...
My wife and my kids. My wife is absolutely amazing. These long shifts have been tough on her and the kids. I hate being away from them for such long stretches of time. It's been affecting her health too as she does an amazing job every day mothering 3 kids, writing on her blog, and teaching fitness classes and personal training at the local fitness center. She's also been dealing with some strange symptoms from stress. Yikes! She's still so amazing and sweet to me despite the crazy schedule.

 My favorite thing this week was...
 Any time I got to spend with my awesome wife and my cute, silly kids.

What's working/not working for me...
Working- switching to the 1st person present tense in my book...its helping revive some of my passion for the project and it is an interesting more vivid way of writing. Previously I was working in the 1st person past tense.

Not working - being away from my family for large chunks of time, only being able to work on my book for an hour or less each morning, getting up early and staying up late is still taking a toll...

Questions/thoughts I have...How do I reach my writing goals with such limited time each day for my writing? When is this schedule going to ease up? How on earth does my wife go through so much stress and still love me like crazy???


Things I'm working on...Still doing a lot of research for my book so that I know the culture, time period and setting thoroughly. Of course...writing every morning and trying to craft interesting, unique and vivid prose. Being a better husband and father...always. Learning as much as I can each day on the job. Trying to deal with this new schedule.


I'm reading...Still plugging away at the second book in the Gods and Kings series, just finished Doctor Dobson's Bringing up Girls on audio book in the car. The Way it Was in Bible Times and several Samuel commentaries for my writing project.


I'm grateful for... A good job that pays the bills, not everyone has one. Amazing projects God has given me to do in my life. A family that is so full of love and support. A house over our heads during all this rain we've been having lately. My amazing, talented, hard-working, positive wife! Looking forward to a long weekend off of work this week and going to my parent's house in Wisconsin.