Tuesday Ten: Truly Random

Another installment of a Tuesday Ten and I have to tell you that this is the first time I'm going into it completely blind. There was no thought given to this post at all until just about 10 seconds ago.

Ever want to know how a person's brain really works? This might give you some insight into mine.

Maybe. It might just prove once and for all that I have no thought process at all in regards to anything. Totally empty up there in the old noggin.

Sometimes it feels like nothing is going on up there. Especially when I sit down to write. I really do like writing, but I spend so much time using my brain for other things that writing becomes hard. It's an outlet for creativity but I have nothing left to give it.

I thought about that some on my drive home from work on Monday. I had a hair appointment Monday afternoon (rescheduled from Friday). So I had to leave work, go to the appointment, and then go back into work. I was half hoping that I'd have a little extra time and be able to stop at the grocery store after the appointment, grab a few things, run them by the house, and still make it back to work by 3:00 or so. But I've been going to the same hair dresser for like 6 or 7 years now, so my appointments are never short and sweet. We chat about our kids mostly and before I knew it, it was almost 3 when I walked out of there.

So I get back to work (and luckily found a parking spot--one of the dangers of leaving campus in the middle of the day with the plan to actually come back ... crazy, I know!) and it's about 3:15. I immediately dived into some tasks I was helping another librarian with. These are things I am not used to doing. I'm filling in on an as needed basis for a librarian who is on sabbatical (remember that sabbatical I took, yep, payback time!). So I'm working on her stuff and I was kind of getting into it. Plus emails still come in and other things pop up that I have to handle, but mostly it was this one task.

And here's the thing about that one task ... it was something different. I enjoyed it! I get kind of bogged down in doing the same thing in my job all the time, as much as I like my job, it is nice to do something I'm not used to doing.

But that wasn't the point (sorry, randomness ensuing), I got so into what I was doing that before I knew it, it was after 5. By the time I packed up and headed out the door it was 5:20. Get to the car, get to the daycare, get the boys into the car (that's always a task!!), get home, immediately start helping hubby with dinner, change a diaper, eat dinner and try to get the boys to eat their dinner, and then suddenly, because of the lateness that I left work which caused our arrival home and dinner to be late, it is now bath time and bedtime. Phew!! I felt like I did nothing but run, run, run from 3 o'clock on.

But that wasn't all. I felt the need to also do a load of laundry (okay, it actually did need to be done) and go to the grocery store.

And somehow I still decided to write a ten minute post for Tuesday before going to bed. Which, of course, took loner than ten minutes. Maybe I should change these posts to Friday Fifteen. Ha!

A Tuesday Ten Book Review

I finished my first book of the year!! Most years (in recent memory) I read one maybe two books the whole year. I'm on a mission to read more this year. My first book was Matthew Kelly's The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic.

I was hesitant about this book because I find Matthew Kelly very repetitive. I'm sure it's a technique in his speaking that helps to drive home a point but I find it hard to read his writing when he is constantly repeating the same thing. I found this book to be much less repetitive than my previous experiences with him. Not that it didn't still have some repetitiveness, it was just less so.

This book was given away at my parish on Christmas weekend. We weren't around then, but I was able to pick it up the next weekend when we were back in town. I started reading it out of curiosity (since I was a bit hesitant at first) and ended up being drawn in. And I ended up liking the book a lot and I believe I got something out of it.

I was surprised to find out that his research showed that only about 7% of Catholics are the ones that are the most likely to be the volunteers, primary financial contributors, and most dedicated Catholics in a parish. Only 7%! He was expecting to find that number to be 20% to correlate with the 80/20 principle (80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the people--usually a business principle, but I've seen it applied in many other areas as well). Instead only 7% of the people do about 80% of the work in a Catholic Church.

As I continued reading I realized that I probably do not fall into that 7%. Few of us do. That was a bit eye-opening, to say the least! With this book Kelly was trying to make the case that we as Catholics could change the world just by increasing that number by 1%. But how?? That's where the four signs came in.

In short, he broke down the four signs to prayer, study, generosity, and evangelization. Anyone who has ever  done a Cursillo retreat will recognize three of these signs and honestly I think generosity can be folded into evangelization. But what I like is that he broke these four signs down and made them seem simple.

I'm almost out of time (wow ten minutes isn't very long!), but I wanted to say that I sort of disagree with him on one small point (and I'm out of time, but I'm going to finish this one thought anyway). In his last chapter he summarizes the points of the book and speaks a little to the erosion of the Church in our modern time. He is pushing for a revival of sorts and mentions that the Church could crumble without it. I understand what he is getting at and why he goes this direction, but we shouldn't forget that Jesus Himself told us that His Church would never fall. Yes, it may deteriorate a lot due to negligence on the part of the people and outside forces trying to break us apart, but I think there will always be a Church until the day Jesus comes back and there is no longer need for a human Church. What I think Kelly was trying to emphasize here was that we need to work on building the Church up and being unapologetic in our Catholic faith. I can agree with that. But I was just struck by his mention that the Church could disappear.

And that's all I got. Overall, a very good book and I recommend it. Sorry I ran over my ten minutes! If you're interested in this book you can find out more about it at www.dynamiccatholic.com.

Tuesday Ten: Jumping on Board

My stop watch is going and here I am. This is totally off the top of my head, no planning, no nothing. I had to do this in graduate school, although I don't know that I was quite as rigorous about it. In other words, I didn't use a stopwatch. But I really wanted to try this and so I'm finally doing it.

I also wanted to do it because I have two blog posts I have to write {this NOT being on of them} and I'm feeling blank. A frustrating place for someone who wants to call herself a writer and is facing two deadlines. But hey, writing for ten minutes like this means I'm writing something and maybe I'll have a few brainstorms in the process.

So let me tell you what I am trying to write. Why not, I have nothing better to do anyway. Hahaha!

First there is the series of posts I started last week which I know left some readers hanging. I don't want anyone to forget and so I really do need to write a second post in the series and get it up this week. So this is a self-imposed deadline. Still, I don't like to keep people hanging. I know what my topic is, I just have to sit down and do it.

But more importantly, I have a post due for Catholic Sistas. Due to publish on Friday morning, which means I technically have to have it set up and ready to go by Wednesday afternoon. I know my topic here as well and this is where I need a little brainstorming. I want to explore the spiritual world from the perspective of children. In 1200 words or less. So I'm not going to go very deep, but I want to present a few things.

I got this idea from a couple different places. First of all around the time of the Feast of the Guardian Angels friends were sharing stories about their guardian angels. If they had seen them, if they knew their name, ways in which they are aware of their guardian angels, etc. The most fascinating stories were those from their children or from when they were children. Then the Gospel reading from a few weeks back from the Gospel of Mark when Jesus tells the apostles to let the children come to him got me thinking too. I struck me in a different way than it usually does. Both of those things combined along with a few other stories friends of mine had shared with me put this idea in my head.

I guess what I'm really looking to do is present these ideas and stories and ask readers for their own experiences. Now I just have to get that written in a coherent way.

And with that it looks like I've used up my ten minutes. Great exercise!

This post is being done under the inspiration of Rachel Balducci at testosterhome.net. I will link up her Tuesday Ten post here once she has it up. But go visit her awesome blog anyway!
Post is up: Tuesday Ten at testosterhome.net