Alright, I am back for real now! haha When you are in the habit of doing something, it is definitely a lot easier to keep up than when you’ve gone out of it. In any case, here I am.<\/p>\n

When you lose your way, it can hard to know where to propel yourself. Well, that seems an obvious statement. Anyhow, something I have struggled with with this book series I have just begun and am trying to bring to completion is the idea that that series will be my crowning achievement, the end-all be-all of my title as authoress. My opus magnum. Flash back to several days ago:<\/p>\n

I was watching Bernadette Banner’s interview on YouTube with Cathy Hay about Cathy’s great work-in-progress, The Peacock Dress. (I like to watch historic sewing\/costume videos just because they are beautiful and share the same artistic struggles as me.) Cathy has been working on this dress since at least 2006 and had at least two false starts. The videos on her channel, Cathy Hay, are mainly motivational\/inspirational ones about persevering as an artist but mainly as a historic seamstress . . . a lot like this WordPress blog, I might add, except the focus here is on writing. While the interview on this fantastic project brings to light the nobility of her project, what I came away with was that, with no disrespect at all, I do not want to be like her.<\/p>\n

When The Peacock Dress recreation is complete, who will know? Will the world know, or the entire historic sewing community? And of the people who realize the accomplishment and praise Cathy for it, who will remember? And the work itself, can’t it not fade over a short time like the original Worth dress, or be destroyed at any time? (Lord forbid!) It’s very easy, at least for me, to feel tremendous pressure in making my works on earth as big and lasting and glorious as possible. Not that there’s anything wrong with those adjectives–perhaps, making my works the substance of my life, is the better way of putting it, the glory of my life.<\/p>\n

It’s a lesson we continually have to tell ourselves who wrestle with it. If creating awesome things like stories and music and art and stuff isn’t where our hearts should lie, where can they go? Nothing in this world will last, and time is short. The answer? There is another world. God has set eternity in our hearts, each one of us, and He wants you to know Him. He sent His Son to die for you so that your sins may be forgiven and you can live in and with Him forever. When we live on earth, walking with God, nothing we do is vain and all we do glorifies Him, a hard thing to swallow when we want to glorify ourselves. Forgiven people often still do not obey God, even though we have the power to. We are still human, after all. Even so, there is only one way to strive for what will last eternally.<\/p>\n

The other day, my cousin and his family came over for a late lunch. He and his wife were surprised and enthusiastic to learn that I self-published a book,\u00a0Fish Out of Water.<\/em> My cousin immediately bought a copy. As I related my slight disappointment in what I had created, I also remembered that this is not meant to be the greatest work I’ve ever done. Lord willing, it is just the beginning. My cousin agreed and assured me, “It’s the first step.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alright, I am back for real now! haha When you are in the habit of doing something, it is definitely a lot easier to keep up than when you’ve gone out of it. In any case, here I am. When you lose your way, it can hard to know where to propel yourself. Well, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[44,130,213,215],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing","tag-art","tag-inspiration","tag-writing","tag-writing-process","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"\n