I started the research for an article to commemorate and remember a family heirloom.
Specifically… a single shot, exposed hammer, break action 20 gauge shotgun. It was my grandfathers, on my moms side.
Do you remember why you started something? I did. I remembered, or so I thought, that I researched the gun before and made some notes to keep, to commemorate it’s 100th birthday.
I couldn’t find those notes, not yet at least. I remembered the gun was a ‘hardware gun,’ and so I started to re-research it, to make fresh notes for the new article.
The ‘new’ information was not lining up with what I thought my old notes would tell me.
I thought to myself, “Why can’t I remember where I put those notes? I know I wrote them down… why can’t I remember?”
Then my mind shifted gears to the word… remember. Remember – to bring a certain thought of a person, place or thing… back to mind again.
The last few days I’ve been gathering info on the gun, really being focused, and I’m getting close to having the info I want and need to do the article that I want to do, and hopefully do it justice.
Then another thought came to mind, taking form slowly, like an early morning patchy fog, settling into the low spots, on a quiet, back country road. The remembrance thought of, “Why did you start writing?”
Why? Well, I always had the urge to, “Write a book.” And when God placed a man in my life willing to teach me how to do that I started writing. Looking for the notes I had on the old shotgun I realized I had been writing for some time already.
The notebooks I keep my studies in… started in 2009. I met my writing coach in 2016. A good seven years after I started keeping notes. Those notes are, and were, mostly about my bible studies and my relationship with Jesus. Looking back now they are also the starting point in helping me to learn how to organize my thoughts. I’ve found journaling is a manly endeavor that helps to heal the soul, and I’ve been writing articles here on davebosquez.com since November 2016.
A quick aside… it’s funny… in one of the first notebooks I started I found a note. My wife asked me in 2009/2010, “Are you studying to be a minister?” My note to myself… “Maybe I am.” The funny thing is… I forgot that. But in 2017 I got my ministers license! Ha!
In 2009 I started out looking into what makes a man a man, and what is success, and along the way I learned that I was an emerging man and successful at being dad.
The original goals were to…
- write a book,
- post one 500 word article a week to the website,
- and learn, learn, learn what it would take to become a professional author, emulating Jack London.
Looking to assess my past ‘why’ has me looking at my past goals…
- write a book = 4 books completed to date,
- post one article a week = 249 posted articles to date (and reassessing my current writing schedule)
- become a professional author = I’ve sold a few books, and a few individuals have said those books helped them, and I was published in one magazine, so I would consider myself a ‘rookie author’ as far as my trade level and skill set
- which has me contemplating ‘the next step’ and ‘why,’ and ‘if,’ I need to take it as far as progressing professionally.
The question/comment I get from other professionals I ask for advice is, “Can you treat it like a business?”
Remembering my past hobbies that I turned into service businesses and how they turned out, especially my attempt at fixing and selling cars, has matured me, made me wiser, and punched me in my face.
I’ll be taking this writing thing a lot slower. Mainly due to the fact that I have a clearer picture of who I am. I have learned…
I am The Emerging Man and The Definite Dad and I love talking to people about God.
“Two roads diverged…” as Mr Frost said, or is it one road, with two lanes? I can’t quite see it for the patchy fog.
A friend of mine reads my articles, and I value his opinion, in my writing he also see’s “Two roads…” but neither of us can tell which one is to be, “less traveled.”
I am stuck. I have found a resource that is helping me to figure out “how to treat it like a business.”
It asked, “What are the three things you offer, write down three words that can tell a person what that is.”
The three words are, “Author, Coach & Minister.”
“long I stood, And looked down one as far as I could…” sitting with idling thoughts, like an old 49′ Buick, with my thoughts rumbling lowly, foot on the brake for now, checking the dash gauges, checking the fuel level, do I have what it takes to go down another road? I have a little ways to go before I’m over the hill, and those old Buick’s always seem to have one more ride in them, and that old shotgun… just killed a grouse last year at somewhere around a hundred years old, so…
God’s word tells us to ‘remember’ what he has done for us in the past, it tells the Israelite’s to ‘remember’ coming out of Egypt, it tells us to ‘remember Him always’ in all that we do.
Then I guess to ‘remember’ is Biblical.
I remember hearing Him say, “No” and taking a road anyway, I learned the hard way, now…
that Buick can run out of gas, that old shotgun can stay in it’s case, and both of those roads can become overgrown with weeds until I hear from God on which direction to take. I just hope when I hear Him this time I can act boldly and bravely, trusting that he has me prepared to take the next step, being confident in Him… regardless if I feel ready or not.
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