God Speaks

I have a lot to do. Really. There is a long, long list of things that need to be done, but I have this disease. I guess you could call it a disease, I tell myself it's a disease. It might be more accurately described as an idiosyncrasy.

I'm not a finisher.

Years ago in my learning Renaissance I read some articles on handwriting analysis and found that you can tell a lot about a person by their signature. Mine gave a clear cut synopsis of me in that I write every letter carefully until the end where I leave a long tail and no letter. I don't finish the letters. It takes a conscious effort to shape the "a" and the "n". I was not surprised to learn this about myself, but alarmed to realize how telling this small thing was about me.

I can do twelve loads of laundry in a day. I can because I generally home in a single day long enough to get it done, and yes, if I do a bedroom overhaul, I can easily come up with that much all at once. The problem isn't the starting because I am a pretty good starter, it's that last load that sits in the dryer waiting to be retrieved and folded that trips me up every time. And if it's not that, I'll get it folded and sit there on the couch with the stacks of clean clothes all around me glued to my seat for who knows how long. It takes just as much effort to get a move on as it does to shape those last few letters. It can be done, I just have to work at it. Isn't that weird?

Lately I've been in kind of a funk that makes it difficult to even start anything so to fill my days I find myself piddling away the hours on things that don't matter. It's a drudgery and I know I would feel better if I was getting the work on that long, long list done, but it's- it's- it's easy just to dodge it, and that is what I do.

However, thanks to my recent rediscovery of the joy of reading I save a precious snippet at the end of my day to read. Guess what I read last night? Something profound but so simple. It's in chapter 23 of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. If you haven't read this book I highly recommend it, especially if you need a reason not to take your real life for granted.

To give you a tiny bit of background, the author is a University lecturer, an analytical thinker in the last months of his life sharing every last piece of wisdom valuable enough to make the cut. These words very well could change the course of my life.

Time must be explicitly managed, like money.
You can always change your plan, but only if you have a plan.
Ask yourself, Are you spending your time on the right things?
Develop a good filing system.
Rethink the telephone.

So good, so simple, so brilliant. Maybe it's not a "right on" for you because you kind of have your game together. But, I find myself bemoaning things about my life that could easily be corrected if only I had it in the plan, and if I had managed my time more deliberately. This is something I've been rolling around in the recesses of my mind for weeks and weeks, and only now when these points come to the forefront do I realize that inspiration requires action to produce a good return. Thankfully, God knows my life and how it rolls; He always manages to send things my way right on time.