Half Baked

My 2012 MacBook Pro slowed to a crawl this week.  I’ve been contemplating replacing it for some time.  But it seemed too much like ditching a good friend.  Besides, it would be expensive — like $1500.  So, I called a few repair shops and asked them what they could

do. A technician from The Computer Hospital of Houston answered the phone and told me that he could make it run faster than ever for a fraction of the replacement.

cost, and that he could do it in less than 24 hours.   I know that P. T. Barnum said “there’s a sucker born every minute,” but I at least wanted to try to resuscitate my old friend.

So, I brought it in, and less than a day later, I tested it out with the technician.  True to his word, it now runs much faster than it ever has!  He was able to clone the old hard drive, and send me on my way.

Even to put “Old Sparky” in the shop for 24 hours, I had to move my schedule around.  I thought “this is crazy!”  I got along for half my life without any kind of computer, and it seemed I did just fine.

I bought my first computer 27 years ago in 1992, as a brand new church planter. It was a desktop PC that I got pretty cheaply.  I connected with a high school kid who told me he could build me one out of parts.  I can’t remember what he charged me, but it was alot less than they were going for back then.   I needed a machine to do church bulletins, promotional materials, keep the books, and other basic functions.  However, I don’t think I used a computer for sermon or lesson preparation until 1998 or 1999.  I started using email about the same time, but wasn’t really dependent on it as a communications medium until 2004 or so.

Previously, I had made it through two graduate programs with a manual typewriter. Not only did I not have a computer, I didn’t even have a home phone for some time!  Writing was either pen and paper, or pounding it out on the old Olivetti.  I actually real letters and put them in an envelope with a stamp!  I paid my bills by check!  During this period, I did some work as a bookkeeper, and we used a double-entry ledger.

So, I thought, “wow, the world sure has changed, and I sure have changed!”  I can prepare lessons and sermons much faster.  Searching online and cutting and pasting really saves alot of time. Having practically all the information in the world at your fingertips can be helpful.  Being able to publish my writings online and let them find an audience is a benefit.

Is it better?  I’m not sure.  I miss those days when all that I had to do to get away was to get away from a landline.  I wasn’t always connected.  It seemed like as a family, we played more board games before Netflix.

We can still do those things, but it takes being more deliberate, and not giving into the inertia of watching Netflix.  It takes real creativity to do the fun things that we did naturally.  Hiking, riding bikes, reading books, baking, just hanging out.  But it’s worth the extra effort1

I’ve decided to try to resurrect Half-Baked.  It’s been some time since I’ve posted, and I never quite got into a regular posting rhythm.  My desire is to encourage our church family, and perhaps a broader audience, with a potpourri of content that will never make it into sermons, classes, or small group discussions, but that still may be worth sharing.  As I’ve shared in the “about” section, none of the views expressed are necessarily those of Covenant Presbyterian Church or her session.

I’ve never been disciplined about revising and rewriting.  Ever. Not in any genre or for any audience.  Almost all the papers that I submitted in college, graduate school, and seminary were first drafts.  Even when I write my sermons today, two drafts seems like a luxury.

While I’ve been blessed with the ability to exceed the standards of others in the first draft, I don’t see this as a virtue anymore.  I’m almost 55 years old, and as an outgrowth of editing and helping my students revise their papers, I’m learning how important revision is and beginning to discipline myself to engage in this labor.  In my garage sits a container full of old journals.  Today, I began to reread them, wondering if there is material that could be rewritten or revised to share with others.  So far, I have not discovered the great American novel, or much that would interest even my family members.

Today, I skimmed through about half of my journals from 2010.  These journals consist chiefly of thinking through daily living.  Dilemmas at work, in the church, within our family, and my own heart, mind, and soul pervade these pages.  Efforts to think through blessings, questions, problems, and uncertainties fill these pages.  The most striking quality is the sameness of my mental deliberations today, almost seven years later.  Surprisingly, there hasn’t been much movement of my interior furniture.  Children have graduated, gone to college, and found employment.  Throughout the rest of our lives however, we’ve experienced great stability and continuity.  My wife and I will soon celebrate our 29th anniversary.  We’re going on eight years of serving together in the same place of employment, and nine years of living in the same home.

While continuity may not make for the most interesting reading,  it does give great reward and satisfaction.  I’m grateful to God that He has allowed us to experience this degree of stability.  May He grant us wisdom in how to profit from it.

After five days of the 500 Word Challenge by Jeff Goins,  I’ve already learned much more than I had planned.  Here are a few things:

Writing begets writing.  Progress in the number of words that I’m able to write has increased exponentially.  In other words, it’s not five times harder to write 500 words than it is to write 100 words.  In fact, it might even be easier once you get used to it.

Showing up is 90 percent of the battle.  Once you get started, the words and sentences start to flow.

Pen and paper work just fine.  Whatever I’m going to put out there for others to read needs to be edited anyway.  I know that people do it, but it seems like writing straight to your blog is like posting nude pictures of yourself on the internet — I can think of a million reasons not to do it and not a single reason to do it.

I’ve written at least 3000 words this week.  Multiplied by 50 weeks (I’m sure I’ll miss at least two somewhere in there), that’s 150,000 words for a year.  So in terms of the number of words, there is a book in me somewhere.

There are some days when a good percentage of my 500 words will actually be usable.  There are other days when very little of it will be usable.

You have to persevere through the days when writing is laborious and very little is useful to get to the high yield days.

The 30-40 minutes that it has been taking me to write the 500 words often seems like 2-3 minutes.  

If I want to average 500 usable words each day, I’ll probably need to aim higher.  On the other hand, if you have the words on paper (or in cyberspace) you can probably find some use for the words that you have written if you are willing to do some serious editing.