A Compilation of Busy Thoughts

It’s no secret that fall is the busiest season of the year. It “starts” in August and takes a slow dive into the middle of winter. When January sets in, the world calms down. There is time to sit and stare at a crackling fire and listen to … oh, you know, whatever gets the heart pounding again (but, yes, it’s probably going to have accordion and/or brass). What is it the Bible says in Ezekiel? He will replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. That seems to be an ongoing process in life — chipping away at the heart of stone to reveal the flesh hidden inside.

Because I have extra busy-ness going on in my life right now, I can’t focus on blogging. That’s why I decided to write a post with my varied thoughts. I almost wrote “random thoughts,” but I refuse to misuse the term “random” as so many youngsters do. Is there anything that occurs in the universe that is truly random? That’s a philosophical question. For believers in God, the answer is most likely no. My thoughts are especially not random, as they are brought on by personal circumstances, plus the input of news and books. They might be unfocused and scattered (monkey mind), but random they are not. Even subconscious thoughts in the form of dreaming are not precisely random.

So, what are these thoughts, apart from being thoughts about minds and feelings about hearts? First of all, I’ve been thinking and even dreaming about the shed I’ve cleared out in the backyard. The shed came with this house we purchased a couple of years ago, and it’s a decent-sized space, already wired for electricity and containing a window and two skylights. I should’ve said, “It’s a decent-sized space now that I’ve gutted it of junk.” For the last two years, it has housed odds and ends we don’t use, such as castaway furniture. It also contained a number of items when we moved in that we left there — a few “random” drawers and shelves and a pile of lumber. This space will soon be my office. It will only require a space heater for the winter. In its current position, it’s in near-constant shade from overhanging trees and thus maintains a reasonable temperature in the summer. I doubt I will do much to it but sweep and mop really well, maybe hang some twinkly lights to make it cheery. I’m not interested in decorating. Joanna Gaines I am not. Thank the good Lord above, as I’m stunned that anyone with such bad taste in home decor gets TV shows and advertising gigs. But being the snob that I am, I don’t understand the love of blandness and mediocrity. I’d prefer to live in a nun’s cell and listen to only Gregorian chants echoing around its bare chamber than…. Sorry, but even these thoughts are not random, albeit I had no intention of discussing Hobby Lobby styling.

Now, to get down to brass tacks where the rubber meets the road (which is one of my favorite mixed metaphors), I had set out to write an eminently quotable quote on how a society that upholds justice becomes steadily more just, while a society that tries to enforce equality by demanding a lack of justice for all becomes, well, less just. But I just couldn’t find a snappy way of expressing it. Maybe I need to work on it a little more. That was obviously brought on by current events.

Ay, current events. Some of you know that in about 2017, I started to write my Roswell alien story, which comes complete with a peaceful apocalypse and forced inoculations for an alien virus that had ravaged the population of the world. But, see, my imagination of an apocalypse could never have imagined the current reality, in which we are continuing to shut down economies and borders over Covid variants. Let’s put this in layman’s terms: Covid viruses are cold viruses. That is what we’re shutting down over. Cold viruses. It’s become almost laughable now that the choosers of such things are using idiotic terms like “omicron.” Everything the media and official government and international entities are saying is so ludicrous it’s laughable. They are satirizing themselves. I used to consider myself, if not a comedian, at least a humorous person. But if I can’t even compete with Yahoo News, I don’t stand much chance at winning this gig.

However, my writing does not rely on humor, per se. And that’s where I think I’ll leave this post: with a review of Order of the PenTriagon from Jay DiNitto. This is what he has to say about my youthful heroes, Talat and Robert. You can read the rest of the review here.

Jill got the aforementioned two protagonists right: YA writers, or folks who write books with young adults as protagonists, add too many adult qualities to them, or give them abilities that only specially trained adults would have, in an otherwise semi-realistic situation. Talat and Robert spend most of the story length running from danger (the frequency of that scenario is actually mentioned late in the book), and untying and retying the information they get. …this is how young adults act, not like millionaire Navy SEALS. This is probably the book’s strongest element, and I hope it continues into the second part.

Eminently readable!

Jay DiNitto