Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Why I Do What I Do

It is with some regret that I have decided to forego NaNoWriMo this year, again. With all that is looming on my horizon, there is no way that I can take on another project. I will just have to come up with my own novel writing month after the first of the year, when I actually have a month to myself. Coz, yea, that will happen, said this woman never.

So these are my goals for the next few weeks, as I can only take life a few weeks at a time.

  • Blog about my trip to Africa. I have started and have two posted already. I have an outline for the next seven posts, so that takes me to November 8.
  • Finish posting pictures from the trip on Facebook and other social media.
  • Write a summary of my trip and financial prospectus (is that the word I want?)
  • Work on a power point presentation of the trip.
  • I have one date for a talk – December 11. I need to try to line up some more, I suppose.
  • Decide on this year’s Christmas program for church. Yikes! If we are going to do it, I really need it together within a week or so. It is almost November! And those kids need time to practice. Man, I don’t know if I can pull that off this year.
  • And because I have all kinds of spare time:
    • Edit my third devotional
    • Edit my novel about Kenya now that it is fresh in my mind again
    • Start pulling together notes for a potential second memoir
 Ok, maybe all of that should take me until the end of the year. This is why people need a vacation after they come home from vacation. Not that the trip to Kenya was a vacation, but if I would have worked harder while I was there, I would have a few less things to do now. Oh, well.

I did this week update my website and had a sale of Kenya goods at my work, so I have been doing a little bit. That above list is just pretty big though.


Enough. Here are a few pictures of why I do what I do. And now you can see why I do it. 





Sunday, October 25, 2015

Getting Back in the Saddle

I arrived home a week ago from my trip to Kenya. It was an amazing two weeks, and you will have to follow those stories on my other blog.

As you can imagine, I am having a hard time getting back in the swing of things. Plus I have a monstrous mess in my office and on my dining room table. Things from the trip and things already accumulated for the next trip. Tomorrow at work, I am having a sale of my Kenyan purchases and need to get my inventory inventoried before that. I have my expense report from the trip written up and managed to even make my outgo match up with the money I took from the ATM throughout the trip. I do need to write up a report though with what I accomplished over those two weeks and what my recommendations are – raising $4,000 to implement the chicken project at the school at the SIDP (previously the IDP camp or internally displaced persons camp, but now that they are settled in this community, they are now, just since I got to Kenya, Settled Internally Displaced Persons, kind of an oxymoron, if you ask me, but whatever).

Ok, so what of my writing goals this Round? I was going to jump into NaNoWriMo and write my second novel, but having just returned from Kenya, I can see all the changes I need to make in my first novel. Also, I had mentioned to my publisher back in August that maybe another memoir would come from this trip, and it may have, so perhaps I should write that. Or finish that final edit on my third devotional and get it published early next year.


I don’t know. I need to figure this out soon. Or not. As they say in Kenya, hakuna matata.
Warthog!
Meerkats!
Simba!