Author Appleton

Writing. Fantasy. Sci-fi. Mystery

goals

Wildfires and Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving is the start of the holiday season for me. A reminder of closeness in dependable friends and dear family. This year the wildfires raging in the mountains of North Carolina and South Carolina have given my family new perspective on gratitude as the clean air we take for granted filled with smoke.

Is it not incredible how delicate the balance of God’s creation is? After a severe drought the land combusted like a match, while the coast was hit with some of the worst flooding in decades. Two extremes. One point to make:

We humans are not as powerful or in-control as we believe ourselves to be.

A structure that took a lifetime to build will collapse in a moment when its foundation suffers from an earthquake. A people can be at the peak of power but a famine will put them at the mercy of their enemies. And anyone who has suffered through a home fire can attest to nature’s humbling might.

During times of prosperity we forget to thank God that we are not suffering. In times of blessing it is easy to rise in pride, forgetting Who brings the rain.

This holiday season is a time of reset. Thanksgiving reminds us of God’s physical provision for us. Christmas remembers the love of the Father. And when the New Year comes I remember God’s hope for my future.

Too many times I have been dragged out of spiritual focus by the world around me. But God reaches out with continual grace, forgiving and drawing me to Himself. Each new year the commitment to be more faithful must be renewed, for it is only in walking humbly in light of our flesh’s weaknesses that we gain victory.

Wildfires. They rage without and within.

Eyes to the future, the new year. What do we want our lives to look like in a year? I hope we can say that we lived out of humility and gratitude. My own sins and shortcomings are the Devil’s sharpest darts.  This year has seen its share. Fortunately God is faithful even when we are not.

What have you placed confidence in for the New Year?

The Challenge of Writing Part-time

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There have been a few seasons in my writing life when I could devote one hundred percent of my working time to writing. The challenge for me now has been that I have various commitments that vastly limit my creative and writing time. Here is a glimpse into the challenge I face.

This is not a challenge that I take lightly. Time to devote to writing equals greater productivity because my mind is not under the same pressure that it is now. When I get up in the morning I want to give attention to my three wonderful children and to my wife. I want to sit down with them for breakfast, read the Bible with them, pray with them, go over the kids letters, help teach the kids to read. Then I head off to my day job. I work full-time in sales for one of the largest furniture store chains in the country. It is a good job. It pays well. I work under a good management team, and with some great colleagues. This job requires different disciplines than my home life. I must maintain a working list of potential and past clients, and generate new business. This job puts food on the table and the roof over our heads, and more. But it also requires working every weekend and most holidays and is straight commission, which equals higher stress because every week I must put the same drive into it that I have done in the weeks previous.

When I get home I am usually a bit tired. Not physically, for the most part, but mentally. I want to devote evening time again to family (though a few evenings per week I don’t get home until late).

I do not say this to complain, but rather to show you the challenge of being a writer. It requires commitment and vision. For now I chip away at big writing projects that before would have taken me a mere matter of months to complete. Often my writing time is after everyone is in bed. I should be sleeping now because I am tired, but if I don’t write, the books will never be written… and I love to write them. The stories are always building in my mind, urging me to share them.

For now I write part-time, out of necessity. But I am scheming to return to writing fulltime. It will happen again. I have faith that God has given me this drive for a reason and when the time is right He will open the necessary doors. For now my energies are divided in several directions… and it slows the process. The primary thing is to not lose sight of the dream, never give up on the goal, and always take the writing commitment seriously.

Question: What are your challenges in pursuing your dream?