I am not a natural entrepreneur

October 13, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

But my father is. Which may be why I am not one. Or, rather, why I never wanted to be one.

Do you know how long and how hard entrepreneurs work? My dad was still pulling all-nighters well into his fifties.

Do you know how much entrepreneurs carry on their shoulders? For a year after high school, I worked for my dad’s fledgling company, and since I was daughter, as well as employee, I knew those times he was one day away from not making payroll. He always worked it out and found backers, but that’s a lot of stress for one person who’s simultaneously building a product, managing the people making and selling the product, finding new markets, taking care of current customers, pushing innovation, coming up with new ideas so there will be more products in the future, traveling to spread the word, wondering whether they’re making money fast enough to keep the investors happy, making sure that the deals made are solid enough for both the near and the far future, all while doing things like spending time with family and friends (who add their own stresses, as well as joys). Entrepreneurs are superheroes. Seriously.

Their ability to maintain hope and determination in the face of rejection and long odds is amazing.

I like to have a job I can complete. I like to have work I don’t have to worry about after I leave the office. I like clear expectations and reachable goals. I like to have my evenings free. If I can swing it, I like to have my late-afternoons free.

But, alas. I am too much like my father: I have ideas that inspire and delight and confound me, and in pursuing them, I’ve become a writer who is independently publishing her work.

In other words: I’ve become an entrepreneur.

This year, I’ve started two companies and brought two writing projects to ever-nearing fruition. I’ve got this Kickstarter thing happening for As Real As It Gets (a picture book about an adopted or foster child who yells, “You’re not my real mother!”) (less than two weeks to see whether we’ll make it!), which is a constant dance of pitching, rejection, acceptance, and learning. So, so much learning. And the thing about mistakes is that you can only see them after you’ve made a decision and acted on it, not before. I am constantly anxious, yet still a little hopeful. Committed to moving forward, mistakes and all.

Given that there are 11 days to go and we aren’t even a third of the way funded, it feels like there is a good chance we won’t make our goal for the Kickstarter, which means that we don’t get any of that money, which means that we have to find other methods for getting this book published. Because we will get this book published.

If every person who told us they think the book is amazing and asked us to let them know when it’s published (not to mention the organizations that do the same), contributed to the crowd funding campaign, we’d be set. But they don’t. Is it because you have to be a little entrepreneurial to contribute to a Kickstarter campaign? I don’t know, but we’re working as hard as we can to get the word out to anyone who might be just that little bit of entrepreneurial. Or to any adoptive or foster parents who might be just a little bit desperate for books that address their kids’ experiences.

Speaking of which, Amanda and I will be interviewed by Grand Rapids community powerhouse Shelley Irwin on the WGVU Morning Show on Friday (I’ll post a link once it’s on the web).

So check us out, if you haven’t already. Spread the link around if you haven’t already.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1367769515/as-real-as-it-gets-a-picture-book-for-older-adopte?ref=nav_search

And pray for me. I’m not a natural entrepreneur and I hate asking people to do things for me … but I’m learning.

The timing is almost always wrong

October 6, 2015October 6, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

Today marks Day 12 of the Kickstarter campaign for As Real As It Gets, a picture book about how an adoptive family handles the words, “You’re not my real mother,” with love, humor, and a T Rex. If you haven’t done so already, I’ll give you a moment to click on the links above and check it out and, hopefully, contribute. And, just for fun, here’s the last sneak peek of an illustration sketch, when the monster slinks away after the mother defeats it.

* * * *

I’ve been thinking today about that old chestnut, “I’ll do X when the timing is right,” X being a wide variety of things: have children, get married, look for a new job, go to counseling, write that book, start yoga, give up sugar, etc.

To that, let’s add “Open a Kickstarter campaign.”

Now is not the right time for me. It’s been 42 days since my world was turned upside down in the worst way (I apologize for the vagueness, but I’m not prepared to speak about it here yet). I’m still lost and overwhelmed, fielding way too many phone calls, not sleeping well, ferrying people and myself to appointments, reimagining a whole new life, looking for a job. This is not the time to begin an intense campaign to gather enough contributors to fund a picture book project.

Now is not the right time for our series editor/visionary. She and her husband have expanded their family by one more kid, which means their household includes two twenty-somethings, three teenagers, and one tween, all of whom live at home. They’re also getting themselves relicensed for fostering so they can explore a relationship with a recently discovered full sibling to one of their adopted children.

Now is not the right time for our illustrator. He was out of town for a week when the campaign went live (the first miscommunication in our partnership). He’s got a painting up at Art Prize.

And there are always other things going on, other tensions that we don’t know about each other.

But we’re doing it anyway.

If we waited for everything to be just right, we’d be waiting forever. It’s never going to be just right. There will always be challenges. Always be surprises both horrible and wonderful. Always be that terrified voice in your head that tells you it’ll never work and you can never do it.

Do your X anyway.

It may not turn out “well.” We may not make our funding goal, in which case we don’t see a dime of the money and we have to figure out a new way to make As Real As It Gets happen. But it won’t be for lack of trying.

I really do hope that you, my lovely readers, will consider contributing. But whether you can contribute or not, I’m guessing you know some adoptive or foster families, or some grandparents of adoptive families; please send them the Kickstarter link. If you need a little more incentive, here are two endorsements by social workers:

As an adoption professional and trauma specialist working in the field of foster care adoption, the concepts of the monster of doubt, of “I’m not good enough”, “No one will want me”, “Let me leave you, before you can leave me” are VERY real to our children, of ALL ages…toddler-teen. As Real as it Gets! Is a groundbreaking children’s book, for children who have experienced fragile early attachments and tough starts. It acknowledges the monster, the dinosaur, that lurks, and can come and go, but that the steadfastness of the parent’s love, through all circumstances, ultimately vanquishes the foe. As a foster and adoptive mother, I can attest to the need for such a book. It will open conversations in a non-threatening way, and the idea that the child and even parent, are not alone in their struggle against the monster. I am very excited for both the excellent text as well as exciting illustration bringing alive the idea that we as parent’s ARE as real as it gets, and our love is NOT afraid of that monster, which WILL get littler and littler with time.

Sara Blomeling DeRoo LMSW
Trauma Specialist
Operation Forever Family
Intensive Child Specific Recruitment
Bethany Christian Services Of Michigan

“As Real As It Gets” addresses the intersection of our universal need for belonging with the challenges born out of merging families through foster care and adoption. Written out of Amanda’s own experience as a foster and adoptive mom, the book normalizes one of the difficulties foster and adoptive children (and some days all of us) face-the messy truth that sometimes love and forever are hard concepts to grasp. I’m thankful for Amanda’s heart for these children and as a child welfare worker I am confident this book will be a strong resource for foster and adoptive children and families.”

Shelby Van Kooten
Bethany Christian Services Of Michigan

No matter what, I encourage you to do your “X” anyway, whether all the stars are aligned or not. (I write this as much for myself and my book partners as for you.) Let’s put the “courage” in “encouragement” (this is probably one of the cheesiest things I’ve ever said)!

As Real As It Gets: new illustration

September 29, 2015September 28, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

Today marks Day 6 of the Kickstarter campaign for As Real As It Gets, a picture book about how an adoptive family handles the words, “You’re not my real mother,” with love, humor, and a T Rex. If you haven’t done so already, I’ll give you a moment to head over and check it out and, hopefully, contribute.

Welcome back.

Do you feel like you need to see more? Okay. Here’s a sneak peek of a drawing that Joel Schoon-Tanis did in preparation for a painting.

The little boy has just yelled, “You’re not my real mother.”

Everything stretches and slows down like I fell in a black hole.

This is the brilliance of Joel. The monster is clearly saying, “Whatcha gonna do about that?” It thinks it has won. The boy is dizzy and overwhelmed.

To me, this drawing encapsulates our goals with this project: reflect a child’s perspective with frankness, but also humor and care.

And the mother is unfazed. This is when she delivers her line, but she doesn’t always say it the same way.

The monster always thinks this will be the time it shocks my mother, but she always says the same thing.

Sometimes she yells it in her “Go to your room!” voice.
“I’m as real as it gets and I’m not giving up. I’m your mother in truth. Your mother. Forever.”

What are some other tones of voice a mother might use when saying these words for, say, the twentieth time?

In all seriousness, please support As Real As It Gets, either with a pledge or by sending the link to someone you know who might like it. Not just for the kids who will be able to see themselves in a story (maybe even your own kids or grandkids), but, honestly and vulnerably, also for me — due to some major life setbacks, this has become needed income.

Sometimes you look on in awe

September 22, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

There was a brief timespan in college when I was going to go into Medieval literature. I’d taken a one-month class, taught by the now very distinguished H. Evan Runner Chair in the History of Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Bob Sweetman. At the time, his children were still toddlers, which lends dignity to noone; back then, he drank out of a Spiderman mug and students made fun of his ties. Anyway, it was a one-month class entitled Women in Medieval Society, and we read Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, and Hildegard of Bingen.

I have a very clear memory of Prof. Sweetman quoting one of the women (maybe Teresa of Avila?) to us, “Open Thy mouth wider, God, that I may taste Thee.” But I can’t find reference to it anywhere.

This was a group of passionate, fascinating, deep thinking women. We read them, we learned about their lives; Hildegard’s music even became my favorite study music.

But I somehow missed that Hildegard illuminated her own visions, in bright, trippy paintings. I was going to take one and unpack it, but it’s rather like uncoding some of the biblical visions in the Old Testament and in Revelation: they reveal as much about the assumptions of the time as they do matters of spiritual import. So instead of wrestling with that, I just want to gather some of my favorite illuminations for our mutual awe and enjoyment.

Thank you so much to my good friend Christina Van Dyke for showing these to me. I’m pretty sure they’ll still be as astonishing while I’m sitting here at my dining room table, as they were yesterday in the blazing sunshine over a beer.

God Enthroned Shows Himself to Hildegard

Hildegard von Bingen, receiving a vision (that is the holy fire of inspiration coming to her head from above)

Talk about scope for imagination!

As Real As It Gets: A Picture Book Announcement

August 25, 2015September 5, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 8 Comments

I met Amanda Barton in New York City in the mid-1990s. She stood up at a gathering at All Angels Episcopal Church and claimed that nobody there would’ve heard of where she was from in Michigan. Challenge accepted. My husband and I totally knew her hometown, although it was, indeed, super-tiny. Together with two other couples who were, like us, under 30 and married (and therefore felt like exotic zoo animals), we became fast friends. Amanda and I and our husbands even moved back to Michigan within a month of each other in 1998.

So when she said, “I’m looking for someone to help me achieve this dream I’ve had,” I wanted to help her. Her dream was that kids who’d been adopted when they were older might have picture books that reflected their reality — their reality of remembering their previous lives, previous families, of the not-so-smooth parts of adjusting to a new family.

I remembered when she and her husband welcomed a sibling group of three from the foster care system. Now I really wanted to help her.

Out of our discussions came a story about a young boy who feels something monstrous growing inside him (like a cobra, a T Rex, a gas bubble), growing until it comes slithering, roaring, exploding out: “You’re not my real mother!” His mother reassures him: “I’m as real as it gets and I’m not giving up. I’m your mother in truth. Your mother. Forever.” A warm glow spreads inside him (like a flower in June, a cookie out of the oven, a hug). But the feeling doesn’t last. The monster is soon lurking again. One day, the T Rex is only as fierce as a 2-inch tall rubber toy, and it taunts him, “How long is forever, anyway?” The story ends on an “okay for now” moment of love and silliness: “Well, T Rex. Here’s the bad news. Forever for you means that you’ll always have those silly short arms, too short to pick your nose and too short to tickle your son.”

We loved this story. It’s vibrant and silly, frank and loving. So we tried to find agents and publishers who might be interested. None were. But we were not ready to give up on it. We decided to find ourselves an illustrator and publish it ourselves (the story of my life). Because Amanda will ask anything of anyone, she contacted an illustrator who is well-known in our area: Joel Schoon-Tanis.

He said yes. We started West Olive Press.

And here are his first illustrations.

I think Joel totally nailed it. The monster is monstrous but not overly scary. In the top one with the son saying, “You’re not my real mother,” the boy looks angry, but the monster doesn’t. And then in the one with the mother delivering her “I’m as real as it gets” line, the monster looks like he wants to believe it more than the boy does. I can’t wait to see what else Joel comes up with.

Right around Labor Day weekend, we will be opening the Kickstarter campaign. You may become weary of me talking about this in September. But I believe in this project, both because I think it will be beautiful and fun to read, and because there is an underserved group of kids out there, and seeing yourself in a story is a powerful, powerful thing.

I’ll announce here and on Facebook and on Twitter when the Kickstarter goes live, but if you’re concerned that you won’t get the message, let me know via my Contact Me page, and I’ll make sure you are notified.

Big City Sidewalk

July 24, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got a fun guest post up today at the always interesting You Are Here Stories — a site for stories centered around Place, around those places that have been important to us, to our communities. Please click on the last words of the excerpt to join me over there, even if all you want to see is a photo of me at age 12 (sweetly earnest and awkward).

In my forty-seven years, I’ve been all over the world, but all it takes are a few cues to haul me back to my childhood.

A certain sharp and damp and lumber-ish smell brings me to my grandparents’ farmhouse in Michigan (a smell it retains years after their deaths and despite my cousin’s attempts to eradicate it). Outcrops of red, grey, and black veins of Great Canadian Shield rock bring me back to camping trips and weeks at the cottage.

But the capital-P Place where I feel the instant settling of my spirit that says “home” is the big city sidewalk.

Settling the spirit might be an odd response to a place that’s loud and busy and can be crowded and chaotic, but that’s where I grew up: in the middle of the great city of Toronto, Canada. Truly in the middle: one block from the main north-south thoroughfare of Yonge Street, and two-thirds of the way up our subway line.

I was taking the subway by myself…

This is my punishment

July 22, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

A skilled and generous writer and teacher, John Vorhaus, sent me his soon-to-be-published book (How to Live Life) for me to read and spread the word about. I’d really been looking forward to this book, because he’s funny, and in his more recent essays for Writer Unboxed, he’s brought some moving truths, not just about writing but about life. Which is my favorite way to receive truth: wrapped up in something that makes me smile. I’m all disarmed from the smiling and then WHAMMO. Truth.

Vorhaus was a workshop leader at the Writer Unboxed UnConference I went to last November. He led the session on Failing Big (my notes for it are 1/3 of the way down the page here) and what he said there finally kicked me out of the disappointment spiral I’d been wallowing in for a couple of years. He also taught me how to play poker (a kind of poker I can’t remember the name of anymore, which is rather par for the course — in our first conversation he teased me for not knowing the make of car I’d just driven halfway across the country). He’s funny in person and he’s funny in writing and I knew that this life advice book would make me smile. And it did.

But even before breaking into Hollywood, I knew that teaching something was a great way to learn it. I’ve used this strategy many times in my life to increase my understanding of songwriting, poker, comedy, creativity, sailing (that was dangerous), archery (that was worse) and more. I have come to believe that an inspired learner makes a good teacher. So that’s the real source of my authority, such as it is: my gape-mouthed wonder at the fact of my existence, and my desire to know it more fully.

This book, then, is an intensely selfish exercise.

But I don’t think it’s all that pretentious, not really. No more than life itself is pretentious. I mean, here we are in the midst of this incredible, unbelievable experience, and something tells us that it should be even more incredible and more unbelievable. We should be… I don’t know… painting pictures, writing poems, staring at the stars, communing with God, digging life’s mysteries, getting down to the isness of it all.

I love that attitude (particularly because this is a non-religiously-affiliated book, but there’s room in here for people, like me, who are communers with God). But then he did something that made me feel crabby and rebellious: he left spaces for me to write my responses to the questions he was asking. Many spaces. Many questions.

Make a list.

You’ll hear me say that a lot, make a list. I’m a huge fan of lists because lists…

Let us create without consequence
Give us hard data we can use right away
Are emotionally neutral; they don’t judge
Yield much information for little effort
Put things where we can see them

This was not going to be a book that was both funny and deep and that I could enjoy reading and adding to the general thoughts in my mind. This book was going to make me actually do the work. I know myself. I know my process. I know that I have to write things down to truly work through them. Which is why I didn’t want to.

So, as punishment, I’m going to do it here, in public.

[Just so you know, I did absolutely everything else possible before doing this: the laundry, the household filing and bill paying, the dinner making, the nagging of children, the ferrying of children, the buying of toner, the returning of the video (yes, we are pleasantly old fashioned enough to still rent DVDs sometimes). I did filing, people.]

1. What wouldn’t I do if I had six months to live:

clean my house
cut down on beer or cookies
play so much online Boggle
go to “mandatory” mass parent meetings at school

2. There was a question about externalizing motivation to help one overcome inertia. I’ve tried some — I like Jerry Seinfeld’s method of X-ing off each day he’s written, and seeing the line of Xs motivates him to keep the line going. That works okay. For awhile. I think I need another person to hold me to a timeline. I’ve been working on a collaborative project and we have meetings, and I need to have things done for our meetings, and I do them. I don’t get stuck in freak-out mode or find other things to do. Like filing.

At this point, Vorhaus brings out some big guns: the centrality of acceptance to this process of growth.

Acceptance is called for here, the sense that whatever emotions we experience are fine, completely allowable, totally cool, no matter what they are. Without acceptance, we are afraid to approach ourselves. With it, we can appraise ourselves openly and honestly, without freaking out. …

I see me, and it’s all okay.

Just to be clear, acceptance doesn’t mean surrender. To accept means to process information with emotional neutrality. Acceptance provides an objective perspective where nothing is made worse by the editorial judgment that this really sucks.

How wonderful to be free from the feeling of this really sucks. You can be. It’s a choice you get to make. Simply seek to acquire the habit of saying, and thinking, “I accept.”

3. Pick something on your list above and dive deeper — if you tell yourself nasty things about yourself because of that thing, try to push past them with acceptance.

I wouldn’t play so much online Boggle because it doesn’t add anything to my life — it doesn’t add connection or knowledge or feed my imagination. I’m hiding and anesthetizing. If I had 6 mos to live, I’d dive in, I wouldn’t space out so much. I like the word games, I really do. There is a real satisfaction to them. But I go for the easy rush and choose it way too often and then don’t do things I actually like better.

4. “Got any questions you’d like to ask yourself? Just ask. Just answer. Explore. Don’t judge.”

Why do I keep falling into mindless activity? I used to be a horrible slob. Impressively messy. Every fall, when one mouse would come into our house, it would come to my teenage bedroom because there were so many piles of things for it to hide into. As I got older, I liked it when I made things clean and neat, but didn’t care to do the daily practices to keep things that way. And then I had children. There was so much chaos and overwhelm in my mind and in my life that I couldn’t stand a chaotic home environment, and presto: I am now very neat. So I know I can go from non-effort to regular-effort. Why won’t I do so for the practices I care so much about (writing, prayer, dance)? It’s like I’m still in teenage-mode: occasional and impressive outbursts followed by accidental ignoring followed by guilty ignoring. That is a question I imagine it’ll take me this entire book to figure out. So I’m not going to try now.

5. Name some things you know you want, but rarely dare to say out loud.

I never, ever, ever say this out loud, but I’d like to drop a little weight to make dancing easier.
I want people to read my books.
I want to be a better mother.

THERE. That’s chapter one. I’m not saying I’m going to blog my way through every chapter of the book. In fact, I won’t. But I will finish the book and I’ll make my lists and I’ll report back to you. I’d thought that declaring my word of the year to be PRACTICE meant that I’d improve my practices. Instead, it’s shaping up to be about exploring why I resist doing just that. Which may be more helpful in the long run.

A family legacy of words

June 24, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

At my recent family reunion, my second-oldest uncle talked about the work he’d been doing to clear out his house in anticipation of downsizing. He said he had all his father’s letters and poems. And then he said the most glorious words:

Would you like them?

I don’t know what made him think of me for such a treasure, but I am so grateful that he did.

the poetry files — Opa’s poems, both original and translations

These are the files of poems and songs, both his own and his many, many translations of other Dutch poets and songwriters. And in the middle, a chapbook of his poems from the 1920s — all in Dutch.

There are some materials in English, though. So far, I’ve found benedictions, poems written for friends’ wedding anniversaries, a limerick, a rewriting of a hymn so it’s about a man watching hockey, a very silly poem (half in English and half in Dutch) written for his young daughter, and his copy of one of my favorite things: a poem he wrote for me when I was a baby.

He had stayed in our house in Toronto some night when we were all gone, and this was the gift he’d left. His poems often had elements of what was in the news, hence the reference to David Lewis, who was a politician at the time. The “cardboard cellar” was where I was sleeping at the time: in a refrigerator box with a mattress in the bottom. My dad had used it as a prototype for the beautiful mahogany crib he’d later build me, so the cardboard had stylish curved cutouts, but I rather love that my box bed is immortalized in verse.

But wait, there’s more.

Opa's letters and assorted documents — Opa’s letters and assorted documents

There are liturgies for church services, articles for religious publications, notes on Synod meetings. And letters. Oh, the letters! They start from before the war, and I’m sure there are some from during the war, when he worked in the Resistance, and was often separated from his young family. All in Dutch. Which I don’t understand. I’m hoping either to hit it big enough some day to pay for someone to translate them all, or to entice a Dutch professor to turn translating some of them into a class project. (Any leads, send them my way!)

Tucked way in the back was a file labeled 1953. The year they emigrated to Canada.

This is my father’s ticket to his new life.

I don’t know whether I have any more words to describe the gift my uncle has given me.

Okay, I do have more words. Does anyone out there know how anything about how to archivally store a two-foot-high stack of papers? I want these to be around for a good long time, so I can root around and see what all there is to discover.

A new metaphor for this stage

June 9, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

For years, when people have asked me how this writing/publishing thing was going, I’ve described it this way:

I’m doing everything I can to get hit by lightning. I’m out there in an open field carrying golf clubs and flying a kite with keys on it and anything else that might help me get published.

That was back in the day when I was still pursuing traditional publishing. I really liked that metaphor. It communicated both that I was working hard and that success was not guaranteed — after all, getting hit by lightning is fairly rare. Just as it’s fairly rare to get a traditional publishing deal, even with a well-written, engaging story.

But now that I’ve decided to become an indie publisher, I need a new metaphor. It took a friend asking me about my garden to get me there. My garden is usually a bit slower than other gardens in my neighborhood, so while everyone else’s peonies are in full and blowsy bloom, mine are like this.

Fat buds.

That’s the stage I’m at in my publishing journey: the fat bud stage. Everything is there, ready to burst forth, but not just yet. The Giant Slayer is still with my Old Testament expert, but as soon as she’s done with it, I’m only three steps away from publishing it (edits, proofreader, book designer).* At the same time, I’ve got a picture book project brewing that we’re independently publishing through a Kickstarter campaign that will be live in mid-August. My words are all done, but I’m setting up the campaign and waiting for our illustrator for get me some art so I can get the website going and let everyone know about it. (There’s more information on my Books page.)

I’m SO CLOSE.

It could be driving me crazy, how close I am, but I spent too long wallowing in disappointment not to enjoy this stage of being on the verge. Fat buds aren’t as showy as full blooms, but they’ve got their own beauty.

Do you have a metaphor for an endeavor you’re in the midst of?

Edited to add: my expert is done! My bud just got fatter 🙂

What Time Is It?

June 2, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

My husband and I recently went to Detroit, and toured a powerful art installation called The Heidelberg Project.

In 1967, 12-year-old Tyree Guyton watched his city burn. In the aftermath of the Detroit riots, thriving communities rapidly became segregated urban ghettos characterized by poverty, neglect and despair.

In 1986, Guyton took a stand against the decay, crime and apathy in the neighborhood where he was raised. Using discarded objects from everyday life, he created a festival of color and meaning that has been described as a “Ghetto Guggenheim.” Using vacant lots and abandoned houses as his canvas, he transformed an entire block into a world-famous outdoor art environment and a thought-provoking statement on the plight of inner city communities.

As we walked around the couple of blocks, my attention kept being drawn by all the painted clock faces: different shapes and sizes, each with a different time painted on it, some alone, some in groups, nailed up to and painted on and leaning against every kind of surface, right-side-up and sideways and upside-down.

clocks against a wall at The Heidelberg Project

My husband walked up to the artist and asked him about it. Being an artist, Guyton answered in more questions.

What time is it? Where are you in time?

Guyton has been studying Plato and Albert Einstein and their writing about time.

Time is energy. It’s all about energy. What has time done to you?

As we walked, the same phrases played over and over in my mind:

It’s always time.

The time is now.

The time is now to do whatever it is that you so want to do. The time is now to seek change, whether personal or societal. It’s always time to do something that needs to be done.

And on a more personal level, the time is now to put in the work to realize my writing dreams. I need to put in the time.

And this one. This one cuts me to the quick.

O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever?
    How long will you look the other way?
How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul,
    with sorrow in my heart every day?
    How long will my enemy have the upper hand?
(Psalm 13:1-2, NLT)

Because this is/was a forgotten neighborhood, and represents all the other neighborhoods abandoned by the powers that be. When will it be their time?

So, for me, the clock faces were rallying cry and lamentation, plea and accusation.

What is it time to do in your life? In your corner of the world?

Natalie Hart

my thoughts about life, the Bible, and the books I'm writing

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