Day 5 (of 63) 2021 Transition Season: Supplemental on Diet & Schedule

Posted on by sirbunch

Welcome Back

I’m coming to you with a Friday bonus. I’m dropping new content on Tues/Thurs. Those will be updates on the journey, plus some additional details as they arise. I’ll publish bonus times periodically. I have a few types of bonus planned. I’ll be launching a line of PDF’s that are my own version of spark notes, or cliff notes, on the nonfiction books I read. I call them Indie Andy Guides. They’re free to subscribers as a bonus and I’ll be drafting them directly to the blog as I go through each book.

Today’s bonus is a clarification and recent revelation about this seasons journey. Earlier this summer I heard God say that He was making me whole as I’m faithful to show up as me. Today I really caught some new understanding about what that means and it relates to the season I’m in. So this is a good opportunity to go into a little more detail on my long term projects/goals: Health and Schedule.

Personal Revival

If we are to partner with God in national revival, the foundation must be personal revival. That’s one big reason why I’m declaring a journey and unifying both my business growth goals and my personal life goals (including spiritual goals) into one fluid project. I’m igniting personal revival through declaring who the Lord is being for me in this season and who He says I am in this season.

It’s important to realize a few key elements in my statement about personal revival.

One is that we need to show up authentically. The closer we grow to God the better we understand and appreciate our design and destiny. God isn’t asking us to change into someone else in order to lay hold of our destiny, He’s refining the flesh-weakness out of us so we can inherit what He set aside for us. So seeking intimacy with God is step one.

Receiving what He says and does is step two. its going to take faith. It takes declaring God is right even when our feelings get cloudy or fear rises up. He is good and it will work out.

Side Note: If this new season seems 80% the same as the last season (it’s really more like 70% the same) it’s because I’m the same person as and it’s only been a few months. To me this feels so much more clear in many areas than last time. I was going for a ready, fire, aim strategy last time, because I have a tendency to over plan. It did get me moving and though I have more clarity this season, I’m still pushing my comfort zone to blog this while it’s happening.

Another aspect of the personal revival statement that’s important is that it incorporates business, spiritual, and personal goals. It’s been said by many entrepreneurs, business is personal and personal is business. If they take the time to think about it, no one believes that a person who makes a million dollars and loses their marriage is successful. As Christians we have verse about it. What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul. Perhaps that’s why so many of us struggle with the idea that God is heavily involved in every aspect of our lives–including our money.

Oh now I opened a can of worms! I said it, I meant it. I could, and might, write an entire post about God and money, but for now I’ll reference Jim Baker (the other Jim Baker). There is a difference between building wealth and mammon. Or as another of my mentors, Pedro Adao, puts it, “money isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing either.”

Christ lost everything on the Cross. He withheld nothing, even his dignity. To me that indicates that everything of mine belongs to him…even my money. Now, I could try to make this more palatable by saying income. It’s true that way too, but I want to confront what many people quietly believe, that money is evil therefore poverty is holy. That’s false, as is the belief that have a lot of money means you’re spiritually healthy.

Having a lot of money means this–God has blessed you somewhere and you are stewarding it well.

Most people don’t struggle with this concept when it comes to health. These days we don’t look down on someone who gets cancer and think, the must have angered God. But when Jesus walked the earth they did.

So if God takes an interest in your income, and showing up authentically is a key to personal revival then it’s a quick leap to say that God wants to be a part of every area of your life. He’s revealing who you are, uniquely, in each area of your life. Therefore I make my journey plans holistically. I intentionally touch every area since each area touches each other.

Creating My Journeys

As I mentioned before, God’s idea of good for us uniquely can be found by asking two questions (which I shamelessly stole from Graham Cooke):
1) who is God being for me in this season?
2) Who does God say that I am (now and historically)?

If you struggle with those questions a great way to expose limiting beliefs is to asking:
3) who do I say God is?

Sitting with these questions, periodically, never fails to reveal what season I’m in and often where I’m at in the season. Lets dig into more about my long projects this season (it’s really exciting).

This Season’s Long Projects: Health & Schedule

Schedule is one component of my ORGSys that is foundational to all other areas. It’s hard to eat consistently when you don’t get up or go to bed consistently. I need to choose a time that allows me to accomplish my work and my personal projects (like this blog), so I try to get up early.

Mornings are a good time to focus with limited interruptions in my experience. That’s it. I’m not a morning person, I just find that afternoons are chaos and evenings are made for winding down if I’m to get good sleep.

I decided to create a block of time called “Cleric” for all my worship/Organizing/journaling etc. I also needed to get ready for the day (shower and such) and I had to get a handle on what I would try to accomplish that day. All that seemed to be in one bucket so I made it happen first thing. I also needed to start work at a reasonable time, but I did decide I would put boundaries on my work life, so I do my best to keep it within a 6 hour window. But that’s straight up work. Very focused. I don’t have a water cooler so I still get more done most days than a typical worker doing an 8 hour day.

So I did a lot of math and decided to get up at 5 AM. Which didn’t work at all. I used to get up at 5 when my wife had a job in Portland, but I got out of the habit and it’s never fully come back. I do have some success getting up at 5:30 and that’s what I’m working my way back to.

Diet?!

Given the theme at the start of this post, I must admit that Cleric is me being authentic to me. I believe we all have a superhero identity. We have the broken way we used to live and we have our superhero identity in the future. I will do a whole post on this eventually (or perhaps a book).

A Cleric, to me, is a Writer, a Priest, and a Warrior. I’m more effective if I view my activities through an epic lens. I’ve been aware of this for quite a while, but I only recently realized that I need to up my imagination use in my life journeys.

It came about because my wife actually hates the idea of a diet. She can wake up one day and decide I’m not eating carbs for a month. That’s her super power. She is more authentic when she doesn’t tell anyone she’s, “on a diet.” She and I need to change our eating habits together to be successful, but we need a little different approach. I have to plan. I have to prep. Changing my eating is a campaign. A war waged for my health and family.

So I’m not doing a diet either. I’m declaring it a fast for the Lord. I’m not going to bed on time I’m resting in the Lord. I’ll do things for God I won’t do for me. That will improve as I learn to see me through God’s eyes.

I’m Auditioning Optivia

One of my goals with this blog is to audition different health and wellness products and review them for my audience. Full disclosure I’ve tried Optivia before for 5 weeks. It wasn’t easy, but it worked.

I chose Optivia deliberately. There were some rivals. I do Thrive by Level sometimes. It’s really good at a narrow bit of healthy eating, but it’s overpriced. I end up dropping it whenever I want to get serious about weight loss.

I’m not a fan of long term starving myself. A new eating plan should be sustainable. However, I do believe in seasons of feast and fast. My birthday was a massive season of feasting and it’s time for a fast. I’m excited to take on a fast and as I said before, I’m more successful at not eating when I dedicate it to God. So if I’m going to fast, Optivia is a good one. I don’t know that I could do there sustainable thing, I’ve not tried, but when I get done eating less than a thousand calories a day for a month or two I don’t want a bunch of restrictions. We shall see how this one turns out.

So far…well the 1st two days on the plan I lost 6 pounds. So It’s working so far. Any side effects. I’m hangry a lot! More updates to come.

Day 4 (of 63) 2021 Transition Season: The Restart!

Posted on by sirbunch

Welcome Back

Tuesday 8/3 I posted Day #1 but my actual 1st day was Monday. I’ve corrected my
numbering and from now on new posts come Tuesday & Thursday.

Link to Day 1 of this season, Link to Last Post in Last Season

I’m excited to jump right into some details of what I’m committing to do in and for the next 60 days. I’ll include a recap of my 1st somewhat successful attempt to blog my life journeys toward the end, or you can follow the link above for more explanation of what’s going on in this blog.

The New Season:

The Transition Season: On the Topic of July. When I got to the end of May and still hadn’t completed the renovation, I started getting depressed. It felt like it would never end. I pushed hard, but there was always another 3 days of solid work no matter how long or fast I worked. After a few arguments with my wife I went to God and he said that I was in a transition season. I needed to take my foot off the striving pedal and rest/recover/recreate for awhile. So that’s exactly what I did for June and July. Now I sense it’s time to start getting back to work.

Goals for 2021 Transition Season

To start, it’s worth a quick note that I build my journey plans around four quadrants that reflect my values/priorities b/c part of the goal of doing these is to not neglect important areas of my life. One goal is to avoid overwhelm another is to avoid chronic survival mode syndrome. My quadrants change and clarify over the years but right now they’re Relationship (God/Family/Friends), Health, Wealth, Wisdom (Organization).

My goals/priorities last season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
* Losing weight (Using Optivia to kick start things – more info to come).
* Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5:30 AM weekdays, time with God (which includes writing this blog).
* Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business.
* Finish work on new home without losing my peace.

I’m adding two more goals, which is dangerous and tough but I believe if I stagger the start of these I can do it, because the work on our new home is at a place where I can do a little here and there.

My new goals are…
* Write book two of my science fiction book, Saber and Science.
* Complete two elements of my Organization System (ORGSys)

The reason I need to complete my ORGSys is…
it will speed up everything else I’m trying to do,
I’ve been wanting to work on it for ages,
I believe it’s foundational to elements of the business I’m launching.

The reason I’m committing to write a sequel to my scifi is that I haven’t written fiction since I’ve become a father. It’s time to get back to it and that particular book ends too incomplete for me. (Also, I’ve had a couple of readers ask for it.)

So let’s talk schedule for a moment.

I call this a 63 day season because some goals (diet & sleep schedule) I’m doing for that long in the hopes of burning them into my lifestyle. Other goals (book drafting & house reno) are shorter, and if I do them in series, I can reallocate the time from one to the next as they’re completed.

Long projects and medium projects have different ways they go wrong. My long term projects require self control. My medium projects will often take more time or get rescheduled because of other peoples availability. So the plans are a little fluid.

I’ve already started both long projects. The diet is going well–not counting that I’m grumpy from hunger. (I’ve lost 3 lbs so far.) I’m still trying to retrain myself to get up at 5:30.

I’ve already had to shift and pivot some on my medium projects, which is just how it goes. God is good and working things out. My plan was to transfer my cell phone notes to the program Workflowy, and finish the shed this week. Then go on a camping with the guys this weekend. Instead I finished unpacking my office restarted this blog, my contractor had a medical emergency delaying the shed and the guys camp out was postponed to next week. Which reminds me, I probably won’t have a post next Tuesday.

I may still get to my workflowy project (which is one of the elements of my ORGSys I mentioned before) this week. All things considered, my week has gone well.

Note: There is more details to come on each of these projects in the coming weeks.

How Last Season Ended:

So How did Spring 2021 Cleric Journey Go?

…I abandoned updating you about day…34. I feel bad about that. I intended to blog my way through what I knew would be a tough season. I meant for the blog to help me remember that my life is bigger than the giant, difficult, “thing” that looms at me. I stopped blogging because I got way too busy and as I thought might happen, my life quickly became all about the big thing.

Spring 2021 Cleric Journey had a lot of success. I notice most seasons are a mix of wins and losses. Either way I glean more wisdom from them now that I track them better, which is the short version of why started blogging them last Spring. My hope is that you could learn from my experiences and get inspired to have you’re own. Quite selfishly, I also hoped that by publicly committing to it I’d follow through more. Did it work, enough to try it again.

What is a Journey? When I see big changes coming, or a big project, I like to create a focused plan for it that combines the less tangible things I find important–so they don’t get lost. The main reason is I can’t live a prolonged season under the tyranny of the urgent.

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy). It takes a certain amount of focus and time to write a book, or say…renovating a house my wife and I bought with my mom. So the challenge, and I do enjoy the process, is to discern a plan that allocates resources more evenly.

Another link that might help if you’re new is this one which I wrote before starting the last season I tried to blog through. It explains what I was trying to do in blogging out my seasons: Christian Influence Peddling.

Last Season Goals Recap:

A major inspiration for “Spring 2021 Cleric Journey” was turning 50. You’ll be glad to know that I did in fact turn 50. My wife through a huge party–I really felt loved the whole month. I knew I had some head junk to work on, so I started blogging the journey. I also created a “Fit by 50” plan which was a good plan. With a few tweaks it forms the basis of many of my plans in my new season. I even took a grief recovery class to officially mourn the things that didn’t go as planned in the first half of my life, which I strongly encourage everyone mourning a loss or facing a change to do.

I thought I was prepared. I was NOT. I know it’s just a number, but this one pounded me. I’m glad I prepared as much as I did. Combined with letting the house renovation really take over my focus I felt in a tale spin the last half of April to the end of June. Praise God, July I got my footing back.

Day 1 (of 63) 2021 Transition Season: The Restart!

Posted on by sirbunch

Welcome Back

Full disclosure, I call this day one, but it’s actually post #1. I wrote it day one,
but I’m going to post Tuesday & Thursday.

For those who followed my previous crazy journey’s, you know I abandoned updating you about day…34. I feel bad about that. I intended to blog my way through what I knew would be a tough season. I meant for the blog to help me remember that my life is bigger than the giant, difficult, “thing” that looms at me. I stopped blogging because I got way too busy and as I thought might happen, my life quickly became all about the big thing.

Side Note: I feel like this is a common challenge for creatives. Christian creatives, like me, must find ways to keep God in our planning & doing. God is always doing a work in us, and through us. It’s easy to get distracted by either one and end up off kilter. I believe the key to Roman’s 8:28 is understanding what God’s idea of good is. In general, God’s goal is to build intimacy with us, and to build our character (so we can receive/contain/disperse more kingdom.)

Specifically God’s idea of good for us individually can be found by asking two questions (which I shamelessly stole from Graham Cooke): 1) who is God being for me in this season? 2) Who does God say that I am (now and historically)?

If you struggle with those questions a great way to expose limiting beliefs is to ask yourself (prayerfully of course):
3) who do I say God is?

Sitting with these questions, periodically, never fails to reveal what season I’m in and often where I’m at in the season. I’ll go into more about this season later in this post (it’s really exciting), but first I want to close out the last season.

How Last Season Ended + Links:

Feel free to skip down to the update section if you’re all caught up on this blog.

It’s probably easy to assume that I stopped blogging because I utterly failed at my goals. Actually, Spring 2021 Cleric Journey had a lot of success. Something I notice since I’ve been tracking my journeys is that most seasons are a mix of wins and losses. Either way I glean more wisdom from them now that I track them better, which is the short version of why started blogging them last Spring. My hope is that you could learn from my experiences and get inspired to have you’re own.

A rough season is unavoidable, the loss happens when you don’t learn anything from it. It’s like paying to go to a concert and then not going. You’re still out the money. The blog is my way of sharing the souvenirs. Quite selfishly, I also hoped that by publicly committing to it I’d follow through more. I’m on the fence about how well that worked, but I’m still willing to try it again.

For those of you confused by the way I use the term Journey here’s a quick recap. When I see big changes coming, or a big project I like to create a focused plan for it. The main reason is that I have several things that are important to me, and sometimes its okay to scale back something important to make room for a life priority. However, as a Christian creative, I quickly dry out and get grumpy. I can’t live a prolonged season under the tyranny of the urgent.

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy). It takes a certain amount of focus and time to write a book. I can get just as lost in a creative project as I can in say…renovating a house my wife and I bought with my mom. So the challenge, and I do enjoy the process, is to discern a plan that allocates resources to the big project of my current season without drawing things like health, family, and my spiritual life down to zero.

So How did Spring 2021 Cleric Journey Go? You can read for yourself at the links below or skip down to the recap/update.

Link to Day 1 in Last Season, Link to Last Post in Last Season

Another link that might help if you’re new is this one which I wrote before starting the last season I tried to blog through. It explains what I was trying to do in blogging out my seasons: Christian Influence Peddling.

Last Season Goals Recap:

A major inspiration for “Spring 2021 Cleric Journey” was turning 50. You’ll be glad to know that I did in fact turn 50 last June. My wife through a huge party for me (she’s awesome like that) and I really felt loved that whole month. I knew I had some head junk to work on going into it. I created a “Fit by 50” plan which with a few tweaks continues to be relevant. I even took a grief recovery class to officially mourn the things that didn’t go as planned in the first half of my life. I thought I was prepared.

I was NOT. I know it’s just a number, but this one pounded me. I can’t explain, it just did a number on me. I’m so glad I prepared as much as I did. Combined with letting the house renovation really take over my focus I felt in a tale spin the last half of April to the end of June. Praise God July I got my feet back under me. I’m excited to give details about the next big season that’s starting now (later in this post).

Goal Recap

The Transition Season: On the Topic of July. When I got to the end of May and still hadn’t completed the renovation, I started getting depressed. It felt like it would never end. I pushed hard, but there was always another 3 days of solid work no matter how long or fast I worked. After a few arguments with my wife I went to God and he said that I was in a transition season. I needed to take my foot off the striving pedal and rest/recover/recreate for awhile. So that’s exactly what I did for June and July.

My goals/priorities last season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God (which includes writing this blog).
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

I maintained my weight loss through the end of May. Even though my birthday month was awesome I still hardly gained much, maybe 3 lbs. Then in July I gained another 4 lbs and I knew it was time to start a new season.

My sleeping schedule mirrored my weigh management except that I started oversleeping in June and could shake it for most of July. I have about a week of getting up earlier, if not quite 5 AM. So a running start on this new season for sure. I never stopped spending time each morning with God although there were some pretty dry sessions. I’m glad to get back to a more normal regimen with sleeping and connecting with God.

I’ve been settling in with the opportunities at my church. Its slow progress but I’m at peace with it. I haven’t launched my coaching side of things, however, God promised to increase my copy-writing business through no effort of my own, purely as a gift. He did that like crazy in July so I feel super blessed. Coaching launch is not forgotten, simply delayed for another season.

The House Remodel Recap:

We got mom’s main-floor master conversion done. As well as moving laundry room, building a closet, moving the HVAC, and building mom a purgola for her porch area. We discovered that some of our plans did’t quite work, like sharing an office with my wife. That meant moving her office out to the laundry room, then moving it back and moving mine downstairs to the family room. Yeah, these were frustrating developments.

What kills you is often the thousand little things like hanging house numbers and painting the new doors…we replaced 7 doors and put in 2 new ones. Every time I hear about the one we reused in a different spot I almost lose my mind. But I’m praying for peace. Here’s a couple more pictures. Like I say I stopped tracking it all and just worked sun up to sun set.

The clean up also took a long time. But we are pretty close to finished. We’re building a small storage shed on the property but that should be done in a week or so. I’ve got some fun adventures coming in this next season so I can’t wait to fill you in on what comes next.

The New Season:

Ok I don’t have all this new season set yet, but I have some exciting things worth announcing, so I’ll start typing what I know and, who knows, I might get more clarity before I’m done. (That’s part of the fun of being a creative.)

To start, it’s worth a quick note that I build my journey plans around four quadrants that reflect my values/priorities b/c part of the goal of doing these is to not neglect important areas of my life. One goal is to avoid overwhelm another is to avoid chronic survival mode syndrome. My quadrants change and clarify over the years but right now they’re Relationship (God/Family/Friends), Health, Wealth, Wisdom (Organization).

My goals/priorities last season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
* Losing weight (Using Optivia to kick start things – more info to come).
* Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5:30 AM weekdays, time with God (which includes writing this blog).
* Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business.
* Finish work on new home without losing my peace.

Note: There is more details to come on each of these projects throughout this week.

Day 32 – 34 (of 63): Catching Up Again

Posted on by sirbunch

Links:

Link to Day 1, Link to Last Post

For those who followed my previous crazy journey’s, here’s the post the Friday before I started this one, which puts it in the context of this blog as a whole: Christian Influence Peddling.

Welcome Back

Welcome to Saturday. It’s been a exhausting but mostly positive few days.

As anticipated there will be days when I just can’t get something posted (even though I’ve given myself permission to post less than perfect copy b/c it’s a blog after all). I’ll try to give a fast update of the last 3 days, but here’s a little recap of what I’m trying to do with this blog series.

Feel free to skip down to the update section if you’re all caught up on this blog.

Quick Recap of this Blog Series

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy) who’s turning 50 in June. When I have a season of big changes to adapt to and big projects to take on, I like to combine it all into a plan I call a journey. I’m calling this journey Spring 2021: Cleric Journey – (It includes such things as turning 50, remodeling a house, expanding my writing business to include entrepreneur & life purpose coaching). I typically journal me progress, big wins/big flops, but this time I’m blogging it so I can…

  • Inspire or help some folks facing similar life situations.
  • Share tips I’ve learned or that people suggest to me that I decided to try out.
  • Stay committed to progress by stating to all my readers what I’m doing and if it’s working or not.
  • Eventually turn it into a written resource for the Creative Christian Entrepreneurs I coach.

Note: The thinking behind journeys is this. When facing busy seasons in life, we need to impose some routine on life, and be flexible other places. We need to decide what our life is about, that authentic to us, and not lose site of that while taking on those big projects of crazy seasons that happen to all of us in life.

Goal Recap

My goals/priorities this season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God (which includes writing this blog).
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

Update

Let me just say, there are awkward ways in which we notice things in life. For example, I brought a 6 pack of TP over to the new house the day we got the keys. Ironically, my buddy Jeff brought some rolls and some paper towels as an early housewarming gifts (he said its the kind of thing you forget when moving until its too late.)

We’ve had contractors and subs, and we’ve been there a lot working ourselves–it’s time to bring over another 6-pack and it hit me in that odd way life does sometimes–we’ve been working on this place for a long time, AND we ain’t done yet. Holy cow.

I continue to “sleep in” to about 6 AM, weighed in one day at 295.2 lbs. I continue to be blown away by the favor God is showing us with Subs being suddenly available and coming in at or below their estimates. We’re exhausted but still on schedule. Did I mention we’re tired.

The crazy parts aren’t the time at the house crossing things off the list. I mean, yes, we’ve hit some walls there. For my wife, Kristin it was a banister that had to be painted in place (couldn’t remove it) but first had to have the gloss stripped off. It took a total of four coats (including the liquid sandpaper) and since it was all just one 4-foot section of our house over and over for two days Kristin was so frustrated. Normally she might have done part of it each day and then circled back after she got something done, but this had (ideally) to get done before carpets go down tomorrow.

For me it was a set of vertical blinds that I think were installed by the devil himself. I pulled window treatments off every window as we prepped to paint and only the blinds are going back up, so typically it takes a little longer to take it down than put it back. But this particular room was a theater room with a bunch of extra curtains (big holes to putty) and the window is 8 feet wide so it had vertical blinds instead of horizontal. The header was screwed through the valence and you couldn’t get at the support because of the center channel speaker shelf… it was a puzzle. So I had my arms over my head working for 4 hours trying to get this thing unclipped. I finally got a part loose and did a pull-up with my finger tips to tear it out–mostly. If you weigh almost 300lbs I recommend against fingertip pull-ups.

But as a I mentioned the thing that has been most challenging this week is the stuff that pulls us away from the work site. It’s my daughters spring break so we didn’t have to work around school trips and we all could sleep in a bit. But we also had scheduled her dentist (two visits b/c we went back for a seal coat?) And we established care with a new pediatrician. That guy is great but all the way out in Washougal. Then there was an appointment with the bookkeeper for my writing business (two of those as well). And I took on another writing client–for which I’m super excited because she’s in my target market/ideal client type. I can’t wait to do more writing for her agency. The timing was just crazy, LOL.

So that’s about it for catching you up. More next time… oh wait. First here’s the plan going forward. We’re down to just the thousand little things in the main house and my friend comes back from AZ at the end of this week so we can get to work on the ADU in earnest. And the carpets go down tomorrow–the vinyl is already in the new laundry room. It’s fun to finish each room one at a time. (I carried 8 loads of construction trash down the stairs yesterday–ugh. More next time.

Day 28 – 31 (of 63): Recharged!

Posted on by sirbunch
Recharged

Links:

Link to Day 1, Link to Last Post

For those who followed my previous crazy journey’s, here’s the post the Friday before I started this one, which puts it in the context of this blog as a whole: Christian Influence Peddling.

Welcome Back

Welcome to Wednesday. I just got back from a the coast with my family. We really needed that recharge. My daughter mentioned that EVERYONE else in her class is going somewhere on Spring break and both my wife and I have been to the coast on retreats with friends…and the idea of the family trip was in our heads. There was nothing to do but go. I’m so glad we did.

Miraculously, we had a small break in our schedules both at the day jobs and the remodel. So we ended up at Long Beach. I’ve been there before and so has Kristin, but I don’t think we’ve been there as a family. It was my Mom’s first time at the coast since my father passed, 17.5 years ago, and she got to set her feet in the sand and watch the surf from my van. We got recharged and had fun–some really good restaurants out there. We had kitchen in the hotel room and Kristin packed food, but we ate out a couple times and it felt like old times, you know, Pre-Covid.

Last Wednesday I started the Grief Recovery Class. I’m finding it challenging. I’ll try to update on that as I process it. My wife and most of my friends have been through it, so I know a lot of what to expect, but it’s still very odd to do it myself. We shall see how it goes.

Here are some photos of our time at the coast.

Quick Recap of this Blog Series

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy) who’s turning 50 in June. When I have a season of big changes to adapt to and big projects to take on, I like to combine it all into a plan I call a journey. I’m calling this journey Spring 2021: Cleric Journey – (It includes such things as turning 50, remodeling a house, expanding my writing business to include entrepreneur & life purpose coaching). I typically journal me progress, big wins/big flops, but this time I’m blogging it so I can…

  • Inspire or help some folks facing similar life situations.
  • Share tips I’ve learned or that people suggest to me that I decided to try out.
  • Stay committed to progress by stating to all my readers what I’m doing and if it’s working or not.
  • Eventually turn it into a written resource for the Creative Christian Entrepreneurs I coach.

Note: The thinking behind journeys is this. When facing busy seasons in life, we need to impose some routine on life, and be flexible other places. We need to decide what our life is about, that authentic to us, and not lose site of that while taking on those big projects of crazy seasons that happen to all of us in life.

Goal Recap

My goals/priorities this season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God
– Revive my blog and start blogging one to two times a week.
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

House Update

I continue to hover between 299 lbs and 296 lbs and I continue to “over-sleep” until 6 AM.

We got a lot done, including the texture on the drywall. Now we’re waiting for the flooring for upstairs to come in (the installers are lined up). I’m still demoing some of the wood floor upstairs and I need to buy another sheet of plywood for the closet in the new laundry room so the flooring guy can help me get the smooth surface prepped for vinyl.

Kristin has been painting like crazy trying to get areas done before the floor goes in. There are still many spots to paint after those are done, but they are what’s urgent–including a banister which is super hard to paint. But I feel like we’ll be ready. I also need to design my work space in the storage shed so I know how much of the old counter top to move there. Then I need to lug out the counter top from the office so it can be painted. I’ve got blinds coming down before painting and blinds going up after painting and the list goes on and on.

We are not alone though. I give mad props to my friends and their wives who have come to help us paint and repair time and again. Also, God has showed up in timing so much. We’ve had so many times when one thing had to be done before someone could move ahead on their next thing (subcontractors) and it’s all jut worked out. God is so good and deserves all the glory.

Here are some pictures which may or may not show the tremendous progress we’re making.

Today…as soon as I finish up writing a LinkedIn profile for a client, I’m heading over to start work on the house. I need to grab supplies from storage and from the store, then get back to removing the floor upstairs. Then prep for more painting by getting the counter out of one room and window treatments out of the other. It sounds nuts to say it, and it probably is.

More tomorrow…

Day 20 – 27 (of 63): Sooo Busy, Toooo Busy

Posted on by sirbunch

Links:

Link to Day 1, Link to Last Entry

For those who followed my previous crazy journey’s, here’s the post the Friday before I started this one, which puts it in the context of this blog as a whole: Christian Influence Peddling.

Welcome Back

Welcome to Saturday morning. It’s getting longer and longer between posts. AM Pgs, my stream of thought morning journal writing, has been one of my longtime habits for a couple years. It really works to quickly clear my mind of noise and capture all the things I feel like I should be thinking about that day. At the end of each session I quickly underline the actionable items and write a little number in a circle next to them to put them in the order that reflects their priority to me. It’s simple, effective, and relaxing. I meant to start using this blog as a sort of AM Pgs that also added in an accountability piece and kept track of my progress toward my goals.

I’m noticing that it hasn’t worked–which is totally fine. I create a lot of positive habits for myself but sometimes I need to audition some different ways of accomplishing the same effects. I don’t want to live in fear, or basically get to some place where the routine becomes the point. The routines are there to help me not enslave me if that makes sense. So I try things out once in a while. I challenge my sacred cows, even if those habits were hard to find and create.

So here’s what I learned trying to change my AM Pages routine. I’ve done it old school, paper and pen, mostly because it was how the person did it who’s routine (Morning Pages / Julia Cameron) I based my routine on. It also made the habit highly portable as sometimes I go off grid and don’t take a laptop with me. Julia stresses doing it with pen/paper because typing is less effective for her–I had my doubts. Truth is I’ve been typing a long time and I discover a lot when I’m processing through typing into a laptop too so I didn’t think that was a crucial a part of it all–I was wrong. The ability to create my own shorthand, sometimes drawing a picture or diagram to reflect a concept, not to mention feeling the repeated theme of things I write, it’s a very tactile thing.

Another aspect of morning pages (& it turns out my AM Pgs too) is that it’s for my eyes only. The stream of conscious nature, is something that gets quickly stuck when you know someone else might read it. I’ve accomplished a lot more writing this last year, by doing the informal, direct to internet, sort of writing that doesn’t get double checked by several people. I successfully adapted a take-massive-action, done-beats-perfect, attitude and it works. So I figured I could recapture a little time by combining my AM Pgs with my need to blog out my progress/accountability on this season of transition. I was wrong.

My AM Pgs can take as little as five minutes some days and keeps my brain feeling de-fragged and my attitude de-stressed. I have enjoyed blogging more. However, this is a rough season to start so many new habits at once and my failure to blog as much as I wanted blowing up isn’t that shocking. When it sank it took my morning journal habit with it and that’s put me in a world of hurt.

So conclusion #1 for this season was that I likely will never blog more than once a week, which I’m okay with. Conclusion #2 for this season is that I can’t blog out my AM Pgs. I will return to my daily routine as it worked prior to this.

Goals Update:

You’ll note that my goals for this season as listed below, include going to bed at 9:30 PM and getting up at 5 AM. That was something I didn’t anticipate struggling with. I’ve maintained that schedule before, although I’d faltered on it during the holidays. However, its taken two weeks for my body to adjust to the new level of physical exertion. I’m beat. I’ve done well at going to bed on time but I sleep in a to 6 most mornings. I did this partly so I could stay in a life rhythm but that’s been hit and miss.

The real goal behind the consistent schedule is to draw a circle around my life outside the house remodel and I haven’t totally done that either. I catch myself staying at the house longer and longer, not getting the time with my daughter I want. Some days hardly seeing my wife at all and when we do it’s only in the context of working on the house project.

Thursday night we went over and worked until 11 PM. We got up Friday and worked their all day. I’m not really getting my day job (writing done either). So I called a halt things and we booked a place at the cost for a couple days this week. We’re getting away entirely. We don’t have time for it, but it needs to happen. Our lives are more than the house remodel.

That’s my recap right now. I’ve got some amazing progress to show on the house, but I’m going to cover it in the next post this week. Right now this is enough.

God bless…

Quick Recap of this Blog Series

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy) who’s turning 50 in June. When I have a season of big changes to adapt to and big projects to take on, I like to combine it all into a plan I call a journey. I’m calling this journey Spring 2021: Cleric Journey – (It includes such things as turning 50, remodeling a house, expanding my writing business to include entrepreneur & life purpose coaching). I typically journal me progress, big wins/big flops, but this time I’m blogging it so I can…

  • Inspire or help some folks facing similar life situations.
  • Share tips I’ve learned or that people suggest to me that I decided to try out.
  • Stay committed to progress by stating to all my readers what I’m doing and if it’s working or not.
  • Eventually turn it into a written resource for the Creative Christian Entrepreneurs I coach.

Note: The thinking behind journeys is this. When facing busy seasons in life, we need to impose some routine on life, and be flexible other places. We need to decide what our life is about, that authentic to us, and not lose site of that while taking on those big projects of crazy seasons that happen to all of us in life.

Goal Recap

My goals/priorities this season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God (which includes writing this blog).
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

Day 17/18/19 (of 63): Phase 1 Ending

Posted on by sirbunch

Links:

Link to Day 1, Link to Last Post, To the Explanation at the Beginning, Christian Influence Peddling.

Welcome Back/ Update

Welcome to Wednesday, Woke at 7:25 late but better rested. Got up at 7:35 AM weighed in at 296.2 lbs. Tried to go to bed early because I’ve been so physically exhausted–In bed by 8 PM. Slept horribly last night–woke up every 45 minutes until midnight. Lay in bed until 1 am and got up. Wrote a LinkedIn profile I’ve been needing to do for a client. Kristin got up and we talked until 2:30 trying to get back to sleep. Ended up getting few decent hours after that.

Also welcome to Thursday. Woke at 5:38 slept a little better, only woke up 3 times in the night. I think it’s leg pain when I roll over in my sleep that’s waking me up. Finally got up at 6 AM weighed in at 295.4 lbs.

Friday, Woke at 5:40, Rose at 6 am, Weighed 295.2 lbs. Only woke a couple times last night. Another switch place morning with Kristin, so I get Olivia ready for school and take her. I love getting to take Olivia to school but it’s hard to get her ready and fit in the other things I try to do each morning to de-frag my brain and get ready for the day.

Yesterday I hit my wall. The main reason I’m blogging this season/remodel is so that the remodel portion of it doesn’t take over my life. I have other things in life that are important to me and can’t fall off my plate. Well, last night I wanted to leave the project by 5 PM so I could build my daughter a blanket fort (something I promised her when we needed to barrow her bed for reasons I won’t get into right now). Well I stayed late to get an estimate from a sub I’d like to higher and pay another sub for work he’d done. I ended up coming home after 6 PM again and exhausted.

Kristin made a great dinner and then went to do our daughters bath, I decided to watch Jeopardy, my one guilty pleasure that I have about 150 unwatched episodes on DVR (which should tell you how often I get to watch TV by myself). It takes 18 minutes if I fast forward commercials. Well Kristin decided to make the fort during Olivia’s bath which needed my help for a few things–roughly every time I sat down to unpause Jeopardy. Then we ran into a box of cleaning supplies I’d knocked over on the garage couch. There was a small soap spot on the couch and Kristin got really upset with me about it. Then I let her barrow a box of my books to hold down a blanket on the fort and she spilled them over the banister to the bottom of the stairwell.

So I went to clean up the books, fuming because it was the 6th time I’d paused Jeopardy and gotten up to help with something I didn’t want to take on at that moment. It was not my finest hour. I had to say sorry and it was still frosty for the rest of the night.

My point in relaying that story is that I’m not holding it all together the way I wanted to. I’m fried out, and need to take some remedial actions. Tomorrow I’m taking off the project and all other work. I usually try to take Saturdays off no matter what, but I really need it tomorrow. I get to eat brunch with family and dinner with friends. I look forward to recharging.

Step 2 will be that this phase is winding down today. More on that below, but essentially for the next two weeks I anticipate a slower pace.

Step 3 is that I don’t think I can hold myself accountable for blogging everyday. I think I will try to shift to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday AM blog with Tuesday’s and Thursdays doing something else. That’s a better pace for me and it shouldn’t impact the blog much.

Reno project Update is …

Phase 1 is complete. Walls upstairs are moved, furnace moved to new mechanical room and tankless H2O heater is replaced. Door to garage is moved plumbing is installed for ADU prep. So much drywall and dust…insanity.

Our helper is flying back south and Kristin and I are left to clean up, dump runs, more painting, hang doors, and get the texture and flooring into the upstairs. That’s phase 2. Phase 3 finishing the ADU begins April 1st. Sometime around the 2nd week of April we hope to begin moving into the main space. Then we’ll finish Phase 3 in week 3 and move mom into the ADU by end of April.

Quick Recap of this Blog Series

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy) who’s turning 50 in June. When I have a season of big changes to adapt to and big projects to take on, I like to combine it all into a plan I call a journey. I’m calling this journey Spring 2021: Cleric Journey – (It includes such things as turning 50, remodeling a house, expanding my writing business to include entrepreneur & life purpose coaching). I typically journal me progress, big wins/big flops, but this time I’m blogging it so I can…

  • Inspire or help some folks facing similar life situations.
  • Share tips I’ve learned or that people suggest to me that I decided to try out.
  • Stay committed to progress by stating to all my readers what I’m doing and if it’s working or not.
  • Eventually turn it into a written resource for the Creative Christian Entrepreneurs I coach.

Note: The thinking behind journeys is this. When facing busy seasons in life, we need to impose some routine on life, and be flexible other places. We need to decide what our life is about, that authentic to us, and not lose site of that while taking on those big projects of crazy seasons that happen to all of us in life.

Goal Recap

My goals/priorities this season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God (which includes writing this blog).
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

Day 15/16 (of 63): Inside Out

Posted on by sirbunch

Links:

Link to Day 1, Link to Last Post, To the Explanation at the Beginning, Christian Influence Peddling.

Welcome Back/ Update

Welcome to Monday, Woke at 5:38 late but better rested. Got up at 5:55 AM weighed in at 297.8 lbs. That’s the right direction at least.

Also welcome to Tuesday. Woke at 5:20 late but better rested. Got up at 5:39 AM weighed in at 298.4 lbs. I need to spend more time with my daughter. So Kristin and I are switching places this morning for a bit. She’s going to the job site to paint before work and I’m getting my daughter ready for school and drive her there. I’m excited.

On the way back I can sneak into a referral group that I enjoy being a part of. (Power Referral Partners)

Reno project Update is great. I had snags with getting an electrician, but that’s finally working out thanks to a couple buddies who are electricians being willing to work some nights and weekends. Right now the trades are all super busy and if I didn’t have the friends I do I’d be completely hung up on this project. HVAC and Plumbing should be done today (well all the trades have to come back again to do their final install work when walls are up.) We’re putting up more drywall today. My carpenter friend is leaving next Sunday so Kristin and I will be on our own for a couple weeks. I think we’re in a good spot to continue work while they’re gone.

Jeff, John, Jon, Rick

Friendship

I have leaned on my friends so many times in the past, but this last 5 days I’ve made some big asks and they’ve really come through for me. I owe all of them a debt of gratitude and I can’t express it enough. Thanks to my friend Bruce, Rick, Jeff, John, Jon, and Mark. I’m craxy blessed to know you and so thankful to have you in my life.

Quick Recap of this Blog Series

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy) who’s turning 50 in June. When I have a season of big changes to adapt to and big projects to take on, I like to combine it all into a plan I call a journey. I’m calling this journey Spring 2021: Cleric Journey – (It includes such things as turning 50, remodeling a house, expanding my writing business to include entrepreneur & life purpose coaching). I typically journal me progress, big wins/big flops, but this time I’m blogging it so I can…

  • Inspire or help some folks facing similar life situations.
  • Share tips I’ve learned or that people suggest to me that I decided to try out.
  • Stay committed to progress by stating to all my readers what I’m doing and if it’s working or not.
  • Eventually turn it into a written resource for the Creative Christian Entrepreneurs I coach.

Note: The thinking behind journeys is this. When facing busy seasons in life, we need to impose some routine on life, and be flexible other places. We need to decide what our life is about, that authentic to us, and not lose site of that while taking on those big projects of crazy seasons that happen to all of us in life.

Goal Recap

My goals/priorities this season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God (which includes writing this blog).
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

Reno Pics This Week

Day 12 (of 63): The Wilderness of the Soul

Posted on by sirbunch

Links:

Link to Day 1, Link to day 8 thru 11

For those who followed my previous crazy journey’s, here’s the post the Friday before I started this one, which puts it in the context of this blog as a whole: Christian Influence Peddling.

Welcome Back

It’s Saturday. Skip down to the Recap of this Blog Series if you’re lost on where we are–I want to dive right in. It’s no coincidence that I announce week 2 theme is the Spiritual core behind the things I’m doing in this season and then get so busy I can’t post for 3 days at a time. Anything “deep Kingdom” will be opposed. It doesn’t matter though, because God wins in the end.

Update

So day 12! I was up late last night trying to unwind from the week. I didn’t actually finish my writing project until 7pm, then I finally got to join my family for pizza movie night. Woke up at 5:38 AM anyway, but lay in bed drifiting in and out till about 7am. Sorry if this is the boring part, but weighted 299lbs yesterday, and 298.2 lbs today.

We finally hit some snags that will cost delays at the house remodel. Having trouble nailing down an electrician, they’re just all busy. I got someone to pitch-in a bit to get us unstuck but they don’t have time to do the next phase in the ADU, which is okay, it will buy me some time. My wife is coming to grips with the fact that we won’t be done and moved in before April 1 so we’re paying for two places for at least the month of April. I have figured this all along because if ANYTHING went wrong we were going to blow through the early deadline.

We may also blow through deadline #2, April 17th (my little girls birthday). Which means we’re going to have to get creative in where we put relatives who are coming to visit. But in the grand scheme of things we’re taking on in this crazy (63 day) season it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay…

The Spiritual Journey

Ever here people say, “trust the process?”

I’ve always hated that. I don’t trust your process. LOL! A better way to say it might be, “trust that you are in a process.”

Now that, I can get behind. Trusting a process is religion, but the truth is we are on a journey (a process). The destination will be glorious, but so is the journey. Imagine for a second that God has a vision for your life, and He’ll tell it to you if you ask, but he doesn’t reveal the process because you might not go for it if you knew what you were biting off.

Say God tells you something you’ll have. A big something. Or maybe He reveals a giant calling on your life–like saving a nation. Ask yourself who you might have to become in order to inherit that giant calling. The chances are that God will take you through a process of becoming so that He can hand you what you and He want you to have.

The process, or journey, is one that you can stumble blindly through or one that you intentionally seek out. Usually, if you try really hard, your going to get a bit of both, and that’s okay. We live in a fallen world and we have an enemy to constantly throw in our faces just how far we’ve fallen. The truth is that God is bigger. Nothing we do takes us out of his process, so long as we’re not actively shutting God out of our lives.

So in every life circumstance God has two goals: draw us into closer intimacy with Him or to grow our character so that we can handle more journey and more inheritance. That’s been a huge comfort to me over the last couple years.

This might be easier to understand if I describe the process I see most often. (The process is unique for everyone, but there is a pattern.)

The Wilderness of the Soul

The process compares to the journey the Children of Israel took out of Egypt to the Promised Land. Step one is leaving slavery. God accomplishes that through a bit of a journey in it’s own right, but when it’s all said and done you end up crossing the Red Sea.

It actually doesn’t take a ton of faith to leave slavery. I mean you just have to hit rock bottom and realize that a loving God wants to be your father. It’s a lot but compared to what’s coming it’ll feel like child’s play. The Red Sea represents the baptism of water in the individuals journey. It’s a decision to die to sin, come alive in Christ and pursue New Life as a Spirit Filled individual. It’s typically an evangelist who leads you out of Egypt, and then they sort of turn you over to a local church in the hopes that you’ll continue to grow up in the Lord.

In reality…well I’m just going to say it. The spirit of religion is all over the local church. They love the new tithe-paying members and they’re happy to propagate the myth that God ceded the sanctification process to them. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be meeting with other Christians, or that it’s not super helpful in learning the ropes, it’s just that the church as an institution finds it handy to be officially in the path of your next steps as a Christian. Whether they know it or not they often stand between new Christians and the process God is trying to take them through.

The same God who sent your Jesus to save you, because you couldn’t do it yourself, sent you the Holy Spirit because you can’t sanctify yourself either. Let’s return to the Children of Israel. They walk across the wilderness in probably about 4 weeks and then utterly fail to lay hold of the Promised Land because they didn’t trust God of ten plagues to help them defeat the giants that lived in their Promised Land. The hadn’t put on the robs of sonship (daughtership), and who could really blame them.

It’s hard for a former slave to give up that mentality. We’re so used to the way the world thinks we have a hard time leaving it. It’s process Paul calls mortification. We have to die to the way we think. That’s what the Israel did. They wandered the wilderness until that generation died off.

See the typical Christian is saved from slavery to sin by an evangelist only to be stranded in the wilderness until they die. The church will tell you that your job is to try really hard not to sin too much until you go to heaven–your ultimate home. The Truth is you home is not in heaven. You’ll go to heaven when you die, but it’s a pit stop, then you return with Christ to a remade Earth. There is so much scripture behind this I don’t have time to play proof text poker, if you can’t buy that we come back to Earth after the enemy is driven from it just study. Probably when I say it it will sound right. God formed Adam from Earth and gave him dominion over it (I say Adam but I mean to include Eve).

I’m not trying to be anti-organized religion but we really have to be wary of some pits we can fall into or we’ll end up like the children of Israel, wandering the wilderness until we die.

So back to our journey…The key to getting out of the wilderness of the soul is beating four spirits/mentalities–Orphan, Religion, Poverty, and Political. These are battles we must fight but we win not in our own strength. It’s something that we win when our the Holy Spirit builds faith in us so that our Identity changes.

Baptism

When you leave the waters of the Red Sea you are spiritually reborn. There is an infant in your heart being nurtured by the Holy Spirit. While on Earth, the inner child will always be a part of you, but as you heal from slavery scars your spirit will grow and mature. This is according to God’s plan. As you grow up you get adopted into a royal family, aka the Kingdom, and the way God interacts with you will also mature.

I have so much more to share on this topic but I’m out of time. Love you all. More soon.

Quick Recap of this Blog Series

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy) who’s turning 50 in June. When I have a season of big changes to adapt to and big projects to take on, I like to combine it all into a plan I call a journey. I’m calling this journey Spring 2021: Cleric Journey – (It includes such things as turning 50, remodeling a house, expanding my writing business to include entrepreneur & life purpose coaching). I typically journal me progress, big wins/big flops, but this time I’m blogging it so I can…

  • Inspire or help some folks facing similar life situations.
  • Share tips I’ve learned or that people suggest to me that I decided to try out.
  • Stay committed to progress by stating to all my readers what I’m doing and if it’s working or not.
  • Eventually turn it into a written resource for the Creative Christian Entrepreneurs I coach.

Note: The thinking behind journeys is this. When facing busy seasons in life, we need to impose some routine on life, and be flexible other places. We need to decide what our life is about, that authentic to us, and not lose site of that while taking on those big projects of crazy seasons that happen to all of us in life.

Goal Recap

My goals/priorities this season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God (which includes writing this blog).
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

Day 11 (of 63): Inside Out

Posted on by sirbunch

Links:

Link to Day 1, Link to Day 8 -10, To the Explanation at the Beginning, Christian Influence Peddling.

Welcome Back/ Update

Welcome to Thursday, Woke at 5:48 late but better rested. Got up at 6AM weighed in at 299 lbs. Yes that’s concerting. I have had to grab lunch out the last couple days to save time and talk over the project with stake holders (family) and my contractor (friend who knows what he’s doing.) From the moment I woke I was thinking about things I need to accomplish today, but it was God prompting so I didn’t feel disconnected or distractred. I love working with God, especially when He’s “on topic.” Have you ever had those times when God seemed to be pulling you in an entirely different direction? That drives me nuts, which is why I try to really make time for God each morning before diving into the day–less whiplash when He is suddenly taking me in a new direction.

Reno project Update is simply that things are on pace. Don’t get me wrong–that’s a miracle. I love my subs. The HVAC guys at Precision Mechanical are amazing (prompt, courteous, & easy to work with). Summit plumbing is also fanstastic. They’re working easily around the HVAC crew. I just need to get an electrician started. That’s one of the things God put in my mind first thing.

The weather has been amazing. I hope it stays.

Today I need to shift gears around noon. I promised a friend/colleague I’d jump on her writing challenge and help out on the fiction side. And I’ve been neglecting the writing business a little. I need to catch up on that and other laptop work. Kristin is taking today and tomorrow off the day job to focus on the house so…this is a good day to start splitting my days. I want to hopefully do the house reno in the mornings and my day job in the afternoons–at least today and tomorrow. We’ll see what happens.

About the Spirit

Imagine an archery target. (I love Archery BTW). Each color represents a different level to your being. Gold in the middle is your Heart/thrown room of your life. It’s inhabited by your God’s Holy Spirit and your spirit and it’s where your true character lives. The red ring represents your soul where your mind, will, and emotions live. It’s the level of your personality.

The blue ring is you physical body. It’s how you interact with the world. And the Black ring is your immediate environment. The white ring is the world outside your control. Things can happen out in the white ring that impact you but most of what impacts you is in the black and blue ring, (color pun intended) and that’s most of what you can impact.

Now imagine it with lines coming out from the center dividing it like pizza slices. The tip of the slice is in the gold and the crust is out in the black. If you make a change, say you trim off a bit along the side of the pizza slice to cut it in half, the further you travel from the tip, the larger the impact. Changes made at a deep level will have a more profound effect on you than changes made at the surface.

As a spiritually dead person there is a lump of scar tissue between your heart and your soul. The way the world works, change happens at the surface and travels in. Before you were reborn, stimuli traveled in through the soul and hits the wall of flesh around your heart and then the response comes back from the scar tissue of your experience. Now that you’re alive, you’re able to have the Spirit of God respond to what’s happening in your life.

Better yet, you can live from inside out and unleash the wisdom and Kingdom of God on whatever circumstances you encounter. This is some of the realization I’ve been walking in for the last couple years. I recommend studying Dr. Miles Monroe about the Kingdom of God for more info. But the gist of my coaching is life purpose, which flows out of understanding the Kingdom your in and who you are in it.

I look forward being moved into my new house and ready to launch coaching full swing.

Quick Recap of this Blog Series

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy) who’s turning 50 in June. When I have a season of big changes to adapt to and big projects to take on, I like to combine it all into a plan I call a journey. I’m calling this journey Spring 2021: Cleric Journey – (It includes such things as turning 50, remodeling a house, expanding my writing business to include entrepreneur & life purpose coaching). I typically journal me progress, big wins/big flops, but this time I’m blogging it so I can…

  • Inspire or help some folks facing similar life situations.
  • Share tips I’ve learned or that people suggest to me that I decided to try out.
  • Stay committed to progress by stating to all my readers what I’m doing and if it’s working or not.
  • Eventually turn it into a written resource for the Creative Christian Entrepreneurs I coach.

Note: The thinking behind journeys is this. When facing busy seasons in life, we need to impose some routine on life, and be flexible other places. We need to decide what our life is about, that authentic to us, and not lose site of that while taking on those big projects of crazy seasons that happen to all of us in life.

Goal Recap

My goals/priorities this season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
– Losing weight & getting younger, (soon auditioning new diet/exercise plans).
– Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5 AM every weekday and spending time with God (which includes writing this blog).
– Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business, and faithfully stewarding opportunities with my church.
– Remodeling a new home so that we can start living multi-generational with my mom.

Reno Pics This Week