I'm Different

I was surprised by the title of this post. I went through my previous posts and noticed times where I was posting daily versus other times when I took a leave of absence. I always had a reason or wanted to have reason for doing what I was doing, whether it was posting or not posting. Daily posting was impossible and still is. That's the same. What's different is me and in more ways than one.

In some ways, I have always been different from what makes the majority similar to each other. Nevertheless, I try to spend time with those few people who are more similar to me than different, but that doesn't explain why I haven't posted for so long nor why I am posting now. I was expecting a title along the lines of "I'm back" or something like that, but the person who wrote those previous posts isn't back. I have grown a lot spiritually and know I have a lot more growing to do, but I don't know how that next stage of growth is going to happen. However, I will try to work backwards to explain and understand how this last stage of growth occurred to see if that points me in the direction I need to go from here.

First, I read a lot, as in a book a week. That started somewhere within the last 12 years as a teacher. Expectations for students, from respected authorities, suggest that students should be reading more than 2 books a month. I would have rounded that up to three books a month at their reading level. I sometimes read books below my reading level, so I put a goal of one book a week upon myself.

I start with books that are recommended to me by friends and have added award-winning books that I want to read. There are less than 52 award-winning books that I add to the list myself, so I will eventually read every book on my list, depending on the number of books friends may recommend to me. I'll just go back to the Bible at time, but that will be several years from now.

One book that was recommended by my friend Nate, an entrepreneur, was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That lead to reading the Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. From the three of those, I try to spend 30 minutes each day thinking about the person I want to be and using repetition 10 minutes a day to build myself up to that goal. I can do that on my drive to and from work.

My drive to work is over 30 minutes, so I use that time to talk to those people who are most influential in my life or who I want to be most influential in my life. Napoleon Hill described the people he held conferences with in his imagination like Abraham Lincoln (dead) to Henry Ford (alive). He started with about 9 people and worked his way up to fifty, which eventually included the one person I have in my conferences, Jesus. For a period of time, I included others like Mary and St. Francis of Assisi, but all of the others I picked pointed me back to Jesus, so I don't have a need for any more at this time and don't expect that I'll ever need more than Jesus.

Doing this to and from work doesn't take any additional time out of my schedule. On days that I don't go to work, I may do a mind map to collect my thoughts. The idea of mind maps came from Mind Mapping by Tony Buzan, a book recommendation from a professor I had at graduate school. I am still working on my dissertation, so I don't often take time away from working on that, but occasionally I need that time away to collect my thoughts and work more efficiently afterwards. Father Dan once told me that the days when he doesn't feel he has time to spend an hour in prayer and the days he needs to spend two hours in prayer. To be efficient, this post will serve as my mind map for the day (and it won't take me even an hour).

These three authors and four books have lead me to spiritual ends instead of the materialistic ends that I feel many of the other readers are pursuing. When I go to Confession, Father John always asks if I pray daily. Since I learned about the Secular Franciscan Order, I have been praying a version of the Liturgy of the Hours. Someone in my fraternity gave me a prayer book that I also use daily to pray to Saint Michael and Saint Gertrude. The other thing I try to do daily is praise at least one person (in writing). I added the "in writing" myself, based on the goal set by Dale Carnegie, because my verbal praise is often too casual like "good job" or something like that.

However, giving written praise to people is often awkward because people just don't give each other notes like that often. If someone does something special, then I have an excuse to write a thank-you and give them a compliment in the context of the thank-you, but something special like that doesn't happen every day. On days like that, I go to my blog and click "Next Blog" until I find a post that I can give someone a compliment on. It is usually the first post I come to because commenting on a blog post is socially appropriate.

Between reading those blogs, the weekly Time magazine - which my wife got for free somehow, and the journal articles I am reading for my dissertation, I got to thinking about my blog. What if someone chanced upon my blog? I had given up posting because it wasn't doing anything for me anymore. The posts were about me, of course, but they were also for me. They didn't have to be every day. They could be weekly, but that wasn't the biggest change. The biggest change was that they should be for others or at least one other person, even if I don't get anything in return from it.

For a time, I was used to not getting anything in return from my prayer life. I felt I couldn't hear God. I took consolation from knowing that the less consolation one gets here on Earth, the greater consolation awaits in Heaven. However, this past year, I was able to go on a silent weekend retreat and receive spiritual direction. We were allowed to talk during the 15 minutes of spiritual direction. That is when I explained that I can't hear what God is trying to tell me, so I just do what I think he wants me to do. The priest told me there is no reason that God can't use my thoughts to talk to me. I was told the Holy Spirit was clearly with me and I could trust that my thoughts were not just my own, but also from God - like all good things are. I didn't ask, but that probably doesn't mean that everyone's thoughts are from God. Although, if your thoughts are good, then there is no reason to think they aren't.

So if my thoughts are from God, then my daily conferences with Jesus may be just that, not just my imagination as Napoleon Hill emphasizes with his conferences with various people. Therefore, my posts may not be daily. They may not be from the Liturgy of the Hours, which I had based them on for a time. They may not be based on what's happening to me outside of my thoughts necessarily, unless the thoughts in my head, which I now consciously try to avoid describing as "my" thoughts, relate to the things in my life. They will most likely reflect my conferences with Jesus since my last post.

In conclusion, it is still the Easter season, a time to look forward to what awaits us -- and we must wait, as much as we may want to quit fighting for glimpses of it as if in a mirror to finally see Jesus as he is. I haven't gotten out of Jesus how long the wait will be for me (or anyone else). However, I feel confident that it will be longer than the time you have to wait for another post from this blog. Thank you for being you. May God's peace be with you.