Virtue Quest

The past couple months have been a difficult, but fruitful I think, stretch. I’ve been working a full-time temp job, struggling with some family and some personal issues, and scrambling to make progress on a few other writing projects. As I said before, I had too many plates a-spinning, and this blog fell by the wayside.

I promised some new features, and they’re not quite ready for prime time yet. I have an ebook almost ready, essentially a rewrite of my master’s thesis on the nature of love. And I’m planning a series of pamphlets/booklets that I’m calling “Outlines of Aquinas” which will translate some of the major pieces of Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy into contemporary and practical terms, and I hope they’ll be useful for teaching as well as personal edification.

I’m also working on some concrete member benefits. If you’ve already joined the quest, then I have your name and info. You won’t need to re-submit.

Thanks for sticking with me! My progress in virtue is slow, probably slower than most of yours. So thank you for your patience and perseverance!

Welcome to anyone who read my article on the virtue of diligence in the WWCCR newsletter! Please take a look around the site, and feel free to drop me a line to leave a comment or ask a question.

For my regular readers who aren’t familiar with WWCCR, it’s a fantastic Catholic ministry that was instrumental in my overcoming both self-indulgence and depression as a youth, and has continued to be a great support throughout my life. You can read my article (pdf) on their website.

I have to apologize for the lack of recent content. I’ve been trying to set a number of things in my life in better order, and have had to take a break from blogging for a little while.

However, the plan is to get back to the blog (with a couple new features, even!) in a couple weeks, around mid-September.

Till then, do good and avoid evil!

I’m not trying to avoid the blog. In fact, I have half a dozen posts half-written. But I’m trying to keep too many plates spinning at once, and the blog is one that’s fallen and crashed.

But the blog is important, to me at least. So if you enjoy reading my ramblings, I apologize for my absence and ask your patience. I’ll finish a real post one of these days. Soon. I promise!

Or even writers interested in the Catholic faith as a theme? Lo, and Behold:

I won’t make it to the conference myself, unfortunately. But I attended the on-line version a couple months ago, to my great benefit.

Here’s a bit from their media release:

This year’s conference will feature presentations on such topics as market tips and time management for busy writers, poetry, creating evil characters, working with an editor, creating winning proposals, journaling and much more. Speakers include Catholic publishing representatives Claudia Volkman – General Manager of Circle Press, Regina Doman – acquisitions editor for Sophia Institute Press, and Tom Wehner – Managing Editor of the National Catholic Register, all of whom will also hear pitches from writers.

Among the other speakers are Mark Shea (Mother of the Son), Michelle Buckman (My Beautiful Disaster), Donna-Marie Cooper-O’Boyle (Mother Teresa and Me), Susie Lloyd (Please Don’t Drink the Holy Water), and Publicist Lisa Wheeler from the Maximus Group.

Mark Shea is a good friend of mine, and an excellent speaker. Regina Doman was incredibly helpful to me in the on-line conference. And I’m sure the rest of these peeps are just as good!

So if you can make it to Pennsylvania, it’s definitely worth your time!

Just want to roll out the welcome mat to everyone who’s popped over from Mark Shea’s blog! Hope you like what you see here!

I’m usually such a typo snob, that I considered it inconceivable to have typos in my own posts. Yet, glancing over this post, I discovered not one, but three typos! Lord have mercy! It’s a sign of the end times!

So, to all my other typo-snobby readers, I offer my most sincere and humble apologies. You’ll notice that I have corrected the errors.

And to the normal human beings who read, I point out that the offending post has direct relevance to the conversation I’m having with bob, and is well worth re-reading – if only to disagree with what I say there!

Just a quick note: I’m working my way through the Lost series finale on the DVR. I’ll be watching it during breaks in the day. Such is life. I just don’t have a three-hour chunk of time to devote to it. And besides, I’m not that fanatical. Really. I’m not. Really.

But rest assured, I’ll have opinions – indeed, already have opinions! – about how it’s ending and what’s gone on in the whole series.

UPDATE
I’ve finished watching it, but my thoughts are all over the place. I’ll write something about Lost when things settle down in my head a bit.

My dad asked me what I thought of it, and I told him, “I’m not satisfied.” (This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me. It came as no surprise to me, even.) But my dad challenged me: why aren’t you satisfied? The actors and producers and everybody did their job! They confused you, and got you to watch the whole series! The advertisers who bet on the show got their money’s worth!

So I told my dad to shut up.

True, I’m very much a romantic. But just because romanticism is a kind of distortion doesn’t mean that a story can be reduced to its fiscal bottom line or its Nielson ratings. That kind of … cynicism? reductionism? materialism? I’m not sure what the right term is, but it also is a distortion of reality.

The best I can put it is, stories are important because they give us vicarious experiences, ways of living and thinking and relating that we do not or cannot have in our own lives. They draw us out of ourselves and help us to live with and in and through other people. They form community and relationship. And, despite the business aspects of story telling these days, it’s a dehumanizing lie that a story can be reduced to mere business concerns.

Lost did a great deal of that very well. And I loved most of the finale. But there were a few aspects that just, well, missed the mark. And I’ll need to think about it a bit to figure out exactly what I was missing from the finale and (therefore) from the show as a whole.

Hi ho! Hi ho! It's off to work I go!

As you know, time management has been a constant problem for me. I’ve tried all sorts of things, and nothing has really worked very well.

Till now!

Yes, I think I’ve found a tool that keeps me focused on my work, so that every day is fairly productive. That tool is … (drum roll please!) … a log book!

Once again, paper and pen triumphs over the advances of technology.

Getting ready to log my hours

Now, remember when I was commuting an hour each way to work. Thank God, that job was only seasonal. Now I’m at home, and making a go as a freelance writer. So my schedule is entirely my own.

In the past, I’ve tried scheduling some activity or other for a three hour stretch, or even an eight hour stretch at a time. I figured it would be more “professional” to look like I’m working a full day. But it’s not more efficient. It gives me way too much latitude to A) get overwhelmed, and slack off; or B) pretend I still have plenty of time to get stuff done, and slack off; or C) spin my wheels wondering where to start on some project or other, and give up, then slack off.

You see the pattern.

So, now, I’ve scheduled my day in one-hour blocks. And I’m keeping a daily log of how I spend my day, hour by hour.

This is satisfying in a way that a mere to-do list never has been for me. A to-do list just wasn’t concrete enough, I guess. Here, I write down: “4:45 – Write a post on Virtue Quest.” Then I sit down at the computer and start typing. And when I’m done, I’ll write down how many words went into this post, and move on to the next item on my schedule.

Why it works – I think

There’s something about writing down what I’m doing right as I start and right when I finish that gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

And even better is the feeling at the end of the day, when I realize that I’ve actually made real progress on all my projects that day.

I don’t know if it would work for everybody, but for the past week or so it’s been working for me. It’s just a great relief to know that I’m not incurably lazy or incompetent. Heck, if I can get stuff done every day, then anybody can!

Ducks have been aligning, and I’ve managed to secure a steady source of income. But it’s kept me too busy to post for a few days. And then, just as I was coming out of the busy-ness, my computer decides to crash on me.

But things should be much better now, I hope.