A Little Ink Blot

Mountain Rain a biography of J.O. Fraser, missionary to China, written by his daughter, Eileen Crossman.

We are living in really tough times right now. Local news is grim; national news is serious; world news is scary. How do you cope?

We are all stressed in different ways. Relationships. Business. Finances. Where do you find relief?

All around us are people hurting people and people hurting themselves. Does it bother you?

What can you do about it?

What if you were incredibly concerned for someone living next door to you that has been a good neighbor but who is now seeking to destroy their life with drugs and violence against their family? Oh, you've been there? Or you've been concerned for someone you can't seem to reach, or to help?

J.O. Fraser watched a whole rural area of small communities destroying themselves and hurting each other. And he found THE answer.

Get the book, sometime soon, and find out what to do when you are feeling hopeless and powerless but really, really burdened.

Remember, it is a biography. So it won't "spell out the answer" in a top ten list, or a self-help program. It will show you the answer with an entire life of memories put together.

Looking at my current life schedule, I write all the time. Well, ok, not all my writing qualifies since so much of it is still stuck in my head. Then there is that whole genre of production that has almost no creativity to it but which takes us a couple of my hours every day -- small business accounting and taxes. Some of the projects I am working on are seeing their twentieth trip to my own editing desk -- business plan, marketing plan, financial projection, etc. Then there are the daily teaching plans, lessons and tests to go along with the time it takes to do the teaching.

But my current favorite creative expressions are the stories I tell my girls whenever they request a "brand new Land of Winkin-Blinkin-Andnod story." They generally talk me into two or three new stories a week. The requests always come when they are in a strange location (like the bathroom), or when they are delaying and distracting (like at bedtime), or when I am really accomplishing some necessary task (like dishes). These are the items that don't get recorded properly.

I don't have time to tell them the first time. Though I usually remember them well enough to repeat them upon request, I definitely don't have time to hide somewhere and get them down just the way I spoke them to that enraptured audience.

So a hundred and ten short stories, novellas and mutilated fairy tales are festering away just inside my writers skin. They saw the light of day once. Now they are writhing together in a darkened room, clamoring for release and permanent recording.

Maybe I need to get tough on myself. You know, stop frittering away real opportunities. Straighten my back and get through the grueling paperwork so I can find the time to express the creative stuff. Find a useful means of keeping a recording method always at hand (even when my hands are full of toilet paper or dish soap).

Last week I spent 20 some hours looking for computerized writing tools: a multimedia publishing journal, a customer relations and project managing program, a scheduling and organizing template, a type of mind-mapping software, and a program that pulls them all together to output them for me. They all have to work on not the latest MacOS X. Oh, and they have to be free.

I was counting on the idea that if I had a better tool it would be easier to organize, generate and accomplish. Instead, I found three free tools to find new things with which to waste even more time. And, though I did find both open source and shareware programs that will do all that I desire, every one of them requires some form of payment in order to keep using them after you take the time to make them useful for you (ugh!).

Do you know what it really comes down to? I just have to be tougher on myself. I really can write on anything (blank paper, note paper, computer programs--even Word as a last resort--tape recorders, email drafts, phone messages to myself, digital camera recordings). I just need to do it, and not wimp out and waste these precious creatives simmering just below my daily routine.

Paper and pen are all I need, really. There are reams of ink covered, spiral bound and 3-ringed sheets stashed in boxes in the back of closets to prove it. College ruled binders from 3rd through 9th grade. Blank books and theme notebooks from Hi-school on. Little 3x5 spiral pads from shipyard labor days.

My Dad introduced me to Apple's talking Moose on a little MacPlus that ran the office at his work some 20+ years ago, and I was smitten. Keyboard beats Pilot BP-s Fine point almost any day. And a single-person's wages can actually purchase nice hardware and software, and reams and reams of blank paper in all weights and colors and moods.

Now, with 5 mouths in the house and less income than even those single days, I still drool over office supplies catalogs and writing utilities that are compatible with my old computers. But, alas, I can only afford open-source, freeware and shareware type stuff. Which is why I blog, its cheaper than pinter ink on paper.

So, I've been looking for a Content Management System that would let me write, edit, design and publish easily and in just the look and feel that I want. It took 4 years, but I think I finally found the perfect "CMS" for me. Campware.org's Campsite. It is "free" -- as in, "open source." It has all the things I want in a publishing CMS. So, I spent 2 months trying to install it, run it, configure it, to no avail. I learned what "Linux Bash Shell Commands" are, spent hours trying to upload, reload, download, operwrite from a 56K connection. After about 6 weeks of foiled attempts, I ran across a little line in a forum. "Campsite does not work with cPanel."
Guess what, my web-hosting service uses cPanel.

I went right out and bought a new 5 subject theme notebook and a box of medium point black, blue and red imitation Pilot pens.

Our donut mix manufacturing business doesn't run itself. Every week I set aside several hours to contact all the customers of a given area. Those customers order products that we manufacture and then deliver to them. So, while making calls, I am also tracking inventory, placing orders for ingredients, making sure the mixing gets done and the deliveries get loaded. And I have the joy of doing these things at a home office about 150 miles from our warehouse (we call the company The Hol'N One, and the warehouse is affectionately labeled "The Donut Warehouse").

It does require careful planning. For instance, maximizing a delivery requires that we load enough product to fill enough orders so that our excessive gas bills don't exceed 12% of our sales $$ for that delivery run. The previous owners had some good advice to give us on that score, and we are applying it. So, our customers are used to a once a month visit from us, and we have our delivery routes organized in 4 week segments. Very clever!

That means, oh joy, oh surprise, that when a fifth week occurs in our scheduling, we get a vacation!

This Memorial Day weekend was such a fifth week. None of our customers needed anything after Wednesday evening. And none of them called until the following Tuesday morning. So, we had the break we needed.

I got caught up on sleep. We did some necessary car chores (shocks, struts, new tires, carburetor repair). We spent a day visiting living and dead relatives. We had our first restful Sunday in a long time. My folks hosted the Monday bar-b-q picnic.

I feel fully recovered from that hectic schedule of 10 days ago, and it all starts over tomorrow!

It has been 16 years since I pulled this stunt, but it came back to haunt me this week. All-nighters aren't as exciting at age 37 as they were at age 19. The rewards and bragging rights just don't pay off as well either, and there was a definite lack of cameraderie in my lonely persuit.

A bank officer from whom we are asking for monetary consideration finally returned a phone call. No, she was not aware of the fax I had sent, she had not seen the financial papers I dropped off, she did not remember that particular conversation, so could I get the information to her by tomorrow afternoon, and could I revise the business plan to reflect the changes I mentioned?

18 pages of previous work was now obsolete. All my pages of notes and analysis and day-to-day business planning had to be in final form in just 20 hours. I tried to start at 7pm. Baths, bedtimes, one-more-story hours later and 2 more hours were used up. Somehow, it all worked. I didn't get that rush of nausea and unreality that I remembered. I didn't have to snack and nibble to stay awake. I did complete 21 pages of new material in just 8 hours. By noon the next day, I was very pleased with myself, and I even delivered the printed copy on-time.

Two days later, I loaded 2300 lbs of product into the van in preparation for a two-state delivery Ted needed to make. That took me until 10:30 pm at the Donut Warehouse in Seattle. I had to stop and nap on the way home, and didn't get in until 3:30 am.

Two days later found me anxiously praying my man home from that delivery trip. He hadn't been able to call either evening he was gone to let me know all was well. But he pulled in to the parking space at 12:45, and he was asleep by 1:30.

On a regular basis, I am doing my accounting/bookkeeping work for the Hol'N One Donut Company after everyone else is asleep. Last night it took me until 2 am to finish. Tonight I was done at midnight.

Long ago, I thrived on a schedule similar to this, and pulled a 3.8 gpa half-way through a master's degree (I could have done better, if I could have managed to agree with all my professors pet opinions). Also, that long ago, I recovered in a matter of hours from that same sleep deprivation. Though I remember falling asleep while driving and taking out a few neighborhood mailboxes, there were no serious consequences to consider.

Now, my sleeplessness makes my days foggy, and my driving dangerous. Whole pots of coffee are necessary menu items. I scoff at 6 ounce cups. 32 ounces is a bare minimum for survival. I long for afternoon quiet times. Maybe my girls won't notice that Mommy is the only one really napping. It has been 7 days since that all-nighter. I still haven't slept a full 6 hours in one night. There has been no "catching up" to speak of. And I still don't know if the bank officer approved of my revision. Maybe, I should just sleep on it.