So, What Am I Living For?

Here I am on November 26, 2024, the eve of Thanksgiving Break. It's 10:00 p.m. and at this hour I used to watch the 10:00 movie on TV, not during the week, but on weekends. I used to make a pot of tea and watch a movie late at night in my room by myself. I did that all the time. Now, of course, movies are available 24/7. I had thought about watching the 1983 film of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" that has been remade and playing now in theaters.I feel like singing that old drinking song that goes, "Show me the way to go home; I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went straight to my head." I don't know if they even have drinking songs anymore. Today I was remembering "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow." Something like that. This is not a time to be looking things up and studying them. It is time to be settling in. I think routine is a very good thing for people. I know it has been good for me to have some structure in my life, which I have had now for quite a long time. I don't always appreciate it, but I think it's good for people. Our natural tendency is to be unstructured and chaotic and disorderly, and so we naturally rebel against that sort of thing, especially if we happen to be a little bit creative or musical or artistic or anything like that. We like the wide open spaces of time and of our minds to drift around at will, without a care in the world. There are more important things to do in life than watch TV and even read books. If we are reading merely to escape the humdrum of our daily lives, I don't think that's the best way to occupy our time on Earth. I like to read because I like to learn things. I like to connect with good writing and good storytelling. I lament my lack of creative ability that I had as a child. I don't know where it went. It revived for a short time in the late 1990s, miraculusly. Well, maybe it wasn't really miraculous. Maybe it was because I was part of a creative writing group offered by a storyteller in Kentucky when I was living there. There is not a lot of humdrum involved in working in a school. Actually, I think it's the best place a person could work. I didn't appreciate it when I was young and just starting out in life, but I appreciate it now. If I had appreciated it then, I would probably be retired by now, like most people my age. I like working in a school because I'm always teaching and learning and discovering new things. There was a time when I really would have been happy if there was some way to be a "professional student." That's when I was going to graduate school. I just loved taking classes, reading and studying and writing papers. That's what I liked doing. I still like doing that. Not necessarily writing "papers," but writing--like I'm doing now. I enjoyed writing articles for weekly newspapers like I did for almost the entirety, not quite, of three years, and then another year writing stories for my local paper once a month. Until they decided I had offended someone because I said experienced realtors might be more effective than beginning realtors or something like that. The publisher told me someone said they were going to pull their advertising because I wrote that. I just got it from something I read online,for crying out loud. The more I think about it the more I think they lied to me. And why didn't the editor catch that if it had the potential to offend someon? The idea of "wokism" had not hit in our neck of the woods yet, but, thinkng back, I think that was what it was about.Oh, well, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He gave me that job and he took it away. So, that's the way it goes sometimes. I have never fit in anywhere really. I think I fit in doing what I'm doing now more than any other job I have ever had. I never knew such a thing existed until I was doing it, and now this is my tenth year. I never had a job this long in my life. And, you know, it's perfect if you love teaching and learning. It's better than being a professional student, because you don't have to go into student loan debt like I did, and you don't have to do all the things the teachers have to do, and it can be a lot of fun most of the time. I think they are still having a teacher shortage in Kansas, and if I wanted to make more money I could go back into teaching, but I don't think I'd last very long. It's way too much to worry about. I admire these people I work with so much,and I learn so much from them every day. I was one of those kids who played being a teacher. It came naturally to me, but the rigors of it went against my free-spirited approach to life as an artist. My mother was an artist, my dad was a lawyer, so I have had struggles all my life navigating those two extremes. I think a lot of people decide what to do based on how much money they think they will make. Kids today decide what they're going to study in college depending on what they think they can make more money at. Probably a lot of people would not choose to do what I am doing now over something that paid a lot more money, but I've learned that making more money is not the healthiest of reasons for pursuing any profession or occupation. I think about when I was an undergraduate in Lawrence. But very time I think about that I think about Joe's Bakery. Not any of my teachers or any of my classes. No. Joe's Bakery. And about how I wish I could get a cookie from Joe's Bakery, but Joe's Bakery does not even exist anymore. Actually, if I wanted to remember Joe's Bakery, I could probably go get a frosted sugar cookie at Casey's and close my eyes and that would do the trick. I am not sure I want to stay up this late writing. I should have started earlier. But I'm just getting started! That's a conundrum, isn't it? I want to get ready for bed and read a little bit and go to sleep but here I sit trying to stir up the muse. But the muse is tired, I think. I believe that true happiness is not about making a lot of money, but how would I know that, never having made a lot of money? I wish I was entrepreneurial, but I'm not. I guess I'm really just an aging hippie that got saved and decided to live like other people--not having any particular ambitions or big dreams or anything, just making a living and being content living in God's provision. I didn't sign up for any of this, let's get that one thing straight. I just decided to follow Jesus, and now all I know is I am living for Him. The world is going to hell, literally, going to hell, and I'm here to be a witness for Christ. That is a huge assignment I never know how to do. God has to lead me every day, every minute, every hour. It's kind of crazy to think about. If God wants me to write fiction again, he will have to give me the ideas of what to write about, because all I can write is news stories or personal experience essays, if that's what you could call this. Well I wrote a memoir and a whole bunch of devotions, but I don't think I am a devotionalist, or if there even is such a thing. As I said, this is not a time for doing research, this is a time for free writing. That's what I'm doing. Free-writing. I hope something comes of it some day.I used to write hoping I could figure out what someone might be interested in buying, but I can't do that anymore. I just have to write for self-awareness and maybe develop some skill in communicating useful thoughts to other people. That's what I hope I can do with this writing experiment or experience or journey or whatever you want to call it. I like typing thoughts down like this. I like it as a tactile experience. I love the feel of the keyboard, the sounds the keys make as my fingers make contact with them. The best class I took in high school was typing. I paid a lot of bills being able to type, but that's not something I was cut out to do. I admire so much people who have become successful without going to college, but me, I didn't have a clue. It took most of my life to find something to do for a living that I actually enjoyed. Playing music was one of those things, but I only got to do it for a few years, until I got saved. Now it's a whole different scenario. God leads, not me.And being with him and learning to listen and hear him is what life is all about now. Knowing that I'm only here for a little while and then eternity, and everyone walking around in my life is only here for a little while and then eternity, and how can I help anyone find this God that gives me life, a reason to wake up in the mornin? Not just to go to work but to live at all, to want to live at all. Jesus came into the world when he came into the world. He came into my life 45 years ago. That made all the difference. What is the "abundant life?" The abundant life is life knowing God personally through a relationship with Jesus Christ. And that is the bottom line, really. There is nothing else.