What I Learned From Doing Inktober

On what seemed a last minute whim, I decided to do Inktober this year. I had to complete an inked drawing every day for the month of October. I jumped in with Chesterton’s advice marching before me: “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

You can view all my drawings here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/W2wduJVopW2i5rDF3

In order to get to the good stuff, you have to slog through the bad stuff, and this is true in learning any endeavor. I’ve been teaching myself to draw for months now, with the intended goal to eventually illustrate my own children’s books, to get to a high standard I would be proud of.

Continue reading What I Learned From Doing Inktober

New Dads Who Love Kids Movies Podcast

So I’ve launched a podcast, something I’ve been bouncing around in my head for a while. These are conversations dedicated to the overanalysis of films made for children. So far, they are a lot of fun to record, and I hope they are a lot of fun to listen to.

I’ve launched with two episodes.

I want to ask you for a favor. Please listen to one or both episodes, and then leave an honest review on iTunes. I’ll take feedback very seriously.

I plan do release a new one every 2 weeks. You can visit the podcast website for more details and to subscribe, plus some shows notes about each episode.

Embracing the Reality of “Thinking Slow”

I’m a discovery writer, and I just have to live with it. This comes from me being a “thinking slow” person, which might also be related to me being an introvert. It comes out in many different ways. Let me explain.

I don’t feel comfortable speaking on a subject until I’ve thought about it. And thought about it. And then thought about it some more. And then I want to work out exactly how I want to say it.

In fact, I don’t even know what I think until I’ve gone through the process of writing it down. This blog post, for instance, started with a seed. I think I know what I want to say on this topic, but I’m not really convinced, and by the time I’ve gotten to the end, I might have changed my mind. My thoughts, anything beyond “I’m hungry” or “I like that,” don’t coalesce or get ordered until they have been written down.

If I am doing a new speech in public, like a sermon or presentation, I have to write down everything single word that I think I’m going to say. The process is required.

If I am writing a story, I can’t plan out things in advance. It never works. I either get frustrated or distracted, or frustrated that I’m distracted. I have some seeds, typically the beginning and the end, but I have no idea how I am going to connect those dots until I start writing.

Take Princess Hiccup, for example. I knew there would be a princess cursed with hiccups by a dragon, and that a boy would need to defeat that dragon. I honestly had no idea how the lad would actually accomplish the feat, and my mind was blank all the way to the point where I began writing those scenes. It just hit me in the flow of the moment. There are moments in the book that probably surprised me just as much as they surprised you.

If I speak quickly about something that sounds deep and thoughtful and off the cuff…worry not. It’s just an illusion. You can be sure that somewhere, at some time, I’ve taken the time to write down something about it. My memory is pretty good, but it takes a while to build it up so it’s as accessible as a computer’s RAM.

It seems daily journaling would be a beneficial habit for me…but alas, it never catches on. Because while I don’t know exactly what I think until I write it down, I’ don’t get motivated to write anything down until I’ve sat on it, chewed on it, and perhaps even had the chance to dream on it. Maybe I need to think about a bunch of other related (or seemingly unrelated) things first.

It’s sort of annoying. Notice the sporadic posting schedule of this blog? My grand total of two movie reviews over on Medium?

Anyway, I’ve come to accept that this is how I work, and more importantly, its how I put out my best work. I don’t think I will ever be prolific. And that’s OK.

If this has resonated with you in any way, what does that mean? It means you should write. Think you have writers block? It means you should write.

Have a problem you can’t solve? Write it out. Ever had a moment when you were articulating a problem to someone with the written word, and the solution suddenly came upon you as if it plummeted from several thousand feet in the sky and nailed you right between the eyes?

I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

In summary, outlining is for chumps, and everything I learned about writing in public school was a waste of time.

Bible Reading Plan for the New Year

Towards the end of last year, I gave Grant Horner’s Bible Reading System a spin. It’s main assumption is that Christians don’t read enough Scripture (true enough), and we are especially unfamiliar with the Old Testament (ditto again). Professor Horner’s prescription is a reading of 10 chapters a day. It seems like a lot, because it is. That’s the whole point. His intention is not that this will replace normal, in-depth Bible study, but provide readers with better context, giving their more in-depth studies greater value.

Basically, every book of the Bible is bucketed into one of 10 lists, and every day you read a chapter from each list. The Pentateuch is a list, the Gospels are a list, and the book of Psalms is its own list. When you get to the end of the list, you just start over. You end up reading all of Gospels every 89 days, for example. View a complete rundown here.

So I gave it a shot. I got into a rhythm. It took me a total time of 40-50 minutes per day, and I would read half in the morning and half at night before going to bed. Eventually, I took Sunday’s “off,” and made Saturday a “catchup” day. This made the whole thing less intimidating and more enjoyable, but it still ended up being fragile.

In November I went to my company retreat, and with the change of my daily routine for the week, my daily reading habit of almost two months was shattered. Even after the trip, I couldn’t get back in the rhythm. It seemed too much. The good news is that I still read 2 chapters a day, and after spending so much time reading 10 chapters per day, 2 chapters felt like nothing at all.

New Plan for 2015

At the start of the new year, I wanted to start reading more again, but I knew that it would be just as fragile, and I travel enough that it was a worry. So I tweaked the plan. In the original, both Proverbs and Acts were their own single-book lists. I understand why. These are important books, and Proverbs in particular rewards repeated, constant reading. But they also tend to have the longest chapters and were part of the reason why my readings were taking so long. It made things that much more daunting.

So I shuffled some things around. Proverbs is now grouped in with the rest of the Wisdom literature, and Acts is now grouped in with the Gospels. Here are my version of the lists:

  1. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts (117 days)
  2. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (187 days)
  3. Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Hebrews (78 days)
  4. 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2 & 3 John, Jude, Revelation (65 days)
  5. Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon (93 days)
  6. Psalms (150 days)
  7. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (249 days)
  8. Major and Minor Prophets (250 days)

So now I try to read 8 chapters per day. This is still a large amount of Scripture, but I feel its much more sustainable, and much less fragile. It now rarely takes me longer than 35 minutes to finish my reading. I might end up moving Acts to the beginning of list 4 after trying this for a while, but we’ll see.

If you’re looking for something challenging, and a bit more interesting than your typical yearly Bible reading plan, I’d encourage you to try it out.