Skip to main content

The Slow Road


A few months ago, I made a massive, terrifying, trajectory-changing decision about my life. Bolstered by the confidence of family and friends and buoyed by the promise from God that He would provide...

I quit my job, just before leaving for Kenya.

I quit it, and after I returned I made the dive into full-on freelance worker-ness. If worker-ness is even a word.

I'm starting nearly from scratch, and duh-ude, is it hard to start there. Slow. Completely uncertain. Faith building, yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't want to look at my bank account balance right now. Or that every proposal rejection doesn't sting. That it's depressing to check my email to see that nothing has come in yet, but I do it anyway.

It's slow.

I want to be busier. I'm used to having little free time in my schedule and many more things to do than I can fit in. My feet want to go, go, go. My hands want to do, do, do. My brain wants to keep planning, plotting, scheming. It's more than I can keep up with emotionally.

Slow it down.

I'm working towards that. More time in the Word. More time praying. More time with my family. Less screen time and new information at the speed of light. More taking things in. More writing things down. Less talking, more listening.

All the things I can do when I slow down.

Life goes by at an increasingly fast pace. What I'm (re)learning right now is how to take the slow road. As frustrating and tiring and incomprehensible as it seems right now, I think it's going to be worth it.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Writer's Toolbox: Thesauruses I Love

I don't know about the rest of you writers in the crowd, but there are times when I struggle to get the right words to come out onto the page. The debate over using thesauruses amongst authors can be fierce. My personal opinion is that there is definitely a place and time to use them (they've saved me from missing deadlines on a few occasions), so long as a writer is careful not to overuse them. Because I do consider them an essential in my writer's toolbox of resources, I thought I would share the ones I make the most use out of and where you can find them. 1. Webster's New World Thesaurus (credit: @catpollockwrites IG, posted 8/24/2017 ) When you were in grade school, did your teachers ever hand out those monthly or bimonthly Scholastic book catalogs with all the age-appropriate books coming out that they wanted you to buy? That, my friends, is how I got a hold of my thesaurus. It's almost like mid-thirties me traveled back in time and whispered int
Post a Comment
Read more

Metaphors: Candles

I've recently fallen in love with candles. Since coming home from the World Race , I've bought at least one a month. My favorite candles are the ones that come in glass jars - because when they burn out, I can clean the remaining wax out and put the jars to other uses. Right now,  that means they get cleaned out and packed away in anticipation of my move to Flagstaff. But as I was lighting one tonight (vanilla spice... Thanksgiving smells? Yes, please!), I saw a metaphor for writing flickering away in the flame licking at the wick and melting the wax. I suppose it could be a metaphor for life in general, but since the theme of this blog is writing... Well, you do the math.
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Make Sure Your Book Review Request Does NOT Get Deleted

I've been hesitant to write this post. That is due, in large part, to how angry I get some days after reading book review requests. I curse, I rant, I snark. My cat will tell you it's not a pretty sight. But I also feel like this is a good opportunity to talk about what it is that makes me feel those feelings AND how to not stir them up. I'm not the only reviewer that gets frustrated when I see certain things in my emails from authors looking for a review. And I know I'm not the only one who gets triggered enough to ignore or delete those messages. I never feel good about doing it. It's just that I'm hitting the proverbial wall here and I want to hit it a little less often. So if you're an author looking for loving advice on how to approach reviewers (especially this one), read on. Review Requests I Always  Delete Before I get into what to do, I wanted to take a minute to look at what not to do (and how I handle it). Want to know what immedi
2 comments
Read more