Read Marsha Burdick

I lost a dear friend this week. A close friend who understood me. I will miss her. We shared a love for Jesus and an appreciation of knowledge. We laughed and cried about many things together. We had a desire to translate books into Italian - I was going to do the translating and she would have made sure the Italian was correct and beautiful. She was an English teacher and loved my language, and I enjoyed talking to her about her lovely country over a delicious plate of pasta with home-made sauce. She listened to people and gave good advice if you asked her for it. Praying for others was second nature - she prayed for everyone. She really tried to identify God's will so that she was sure to live according to his plan for her life. Teaching and encouraging others were both her secular job and her normal way of interacting. She lived by both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Anna was 56 and this was her third bout with cancer. The first two rounds had ended over a decad...

Sometimes it happens. You interrupt an activity that you like (blogging) just for a bit, you think. And then months pass before you get into it again. Well, I'm back. In the past year, I've become a grandmother, I've worked a lot, I've learned how to paint (sort of), and I've started working on my novel (again). I want to sound encouraging because it can be frightfully depressing to think about the things that I want to do, but never get around to. Time management is one of the keys. I've started using a site called Toggl to keep track of what I really do during the day. I'm discontinuous and distracted, almost the point of being jumpy if I hit the coffee pot too hard, and from a business angle, I'm tracking the hours I spend on projects and other important activities. I have found that I can, after all, find time to write so please check back in a week or so. I'm putting together a new reading list. Too many interests can also cause errat...