Feeling Less Depressed - THANK God

By the grace of God, I am feeling MUCH better.

God has been answering the prayers of many people. 

I am grateful for your support. 

After many days of overcast skies, the sun came out today in the Dallas area. I went for a long walk to bask in the bright sunshine and sat in a porch swing to enjoy more sun.

Lately, my prayers have included MANY more expressions of thanksgiving.

Thankfully, my headaches are GONE.

PROMPTS

Soon after I sent out the recent prayer request I was taking my daily walk. I have always asked God for wisdom and I have asked others to pray for God to grant me wisdom. See James 1: 5 and Proverbs 2, 3 and 4.

During that walk, I felt inspired to notice all the things that are blocking my life. I put those on keywords on index cards. Then I put those cards face up on the dresser so that I see them daily. I have used those cards to remind me to briefly pray over them.  Mostly these are things I have been procrastination about for far too long. 

Please pray for me to make faith-filled prayers as often as needed until these stuck items move and are no longer obstacles. 

JOURNAL

Shortly after I sent out the urgent prayer request earlier I got out a new single subject spiral notebook and Palomino Blackwing pencil. I dumped out all my thoughts and feelings. I kept writing no matter what came up. 

When disturbing thought would occur to me away from the journal I quickly went back to writing in it. I put the dark thought at the top of a new page and asked myself why I felt that way. I kept peeling that onion. 

Gradually the pain behind that impulse dissolved.  The writing was full of uck expressed in different ways. It rarely repeated. Doing that was like taking medicine for sickness. I am ready to continue but the drive to dig into those places has decreased.

MEDITATION

I know that most Christians are not keen on meditation. Yet both prayer and meditation are highly recommended in the 12 step recovery program meetings I have attended. Just stopping to observe the breath can help to calm the mind and emotions. What works for me is to breathe slowly and count my breaths from 1 to 10 and start again counting from 1 to 10. I have done that many times this week and used the recorded guided meditations. 

DRAW

I have not yet begun the Draw-a-Box https://drawabox.com/ lessons. I feel intimidated after scanning the lessons. I believe it will be a great way for me to finally understand and apply the fundamentals of drawing in the long term.

God reminded me of much simpler drawing related books I own. 

Art of Business Communications by Graham Shaw teaches how to make super simple drawings to illustrate business messages. I LOVE to write and when I can include related drawings I made then they would be easier to understand and more appealing. 

Zentangle 1 by Suzanne McNeil is a super simple workbook. I have started and stopped using it many times. A Zentangle is a kid of a doodle on a small unit of paper. There are lots of Youtube videos and websites that offer lessons. But what I have found with those and all other drawing instructions they LEAP from beginner to intermediate and advanced lessons. I need the SIMPLEST lessons that GRADUALLY progress. 

Please pray for me to both begin and continue with any or all these. I put on my calendar to draw on Saturdays. But mostly I have ignored my own guidance. 

NEWS

I have struggled to decrease my news intake. 

Mostly I want to know realistically what are the long term risks of the coronavirus for me, my senior citizen neighbors, and others.

Note that there are about 74 neighbors here in the small apartment complex for seniors. Many of them cannot even walk to the dumpster to take out their trash. So the maintenance man picks it up at their front door on Monday and Thursday mornings.  They could not sit down on the floor or in a bathtub to get up again. They use the walkers with wheels. Many cannot drive. ALL of them watch TV. It is on CONSTANTLY all day and all night. Imagine what it is like for them to get news updates about the coronavirus. 

Please pray for my neighbors and other seniors. Pray for their mental and emotional health amidst all the uncertainty. Most of them are isolated. Family members might make rare contacts. Many of their long term friends may be dead or infirm. A few of them play BINGO weekly and attend the monthly pot luck lunches. 

I know many of them personally. I want to be of service to my neighbors. That service might be to pass along simple and wise recommendations IF the coronavirus reaches our small town. 

TIME

My creative imagination can come up with dozens of appealing projects and hundreds of tiny tasks. So I have been constantly studying time management and productivity. I have used lots of different time management tools. 

Long ago I read the classic time-management book by David Allen titled Getting Things Done https://gettingthingsdone.com/ Here is an infographic that is a summary of the book that has helped many thousands of people https://ideas2followup.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/gtd-workflow.jpg

There are many videos by David Allen about Getting Things Done by others on Youtube.

One part of the system that has helped me the most is to quickly capture new ideas and put them into a system that you trust. So I carry paper and a pen with me all the time. I jot down my fresh ideas. Then I put them on Kanbanflow www.kanbanflow.com where I organize my short term ToDo tasks. These include appointments, purchases, emails, reminders, etc. And for the longer term and Bigi Picture projects, I use Mindmup www.mindmup.com which is an online mind mapping service. 

What David teaches and I have experienced is by doing this I have greater peace of mind. So my brain is not always working to remind me because it knows there is an external record. 

There are so many items online that I use a way to prioritize them. In some areas, I use NOW, NEXT, SOON, LATER and DONE. In other areas, I use High, Medium, and Low priority. 

This has worked well for me for may years. BUT thanks to answered prayers I noticed that this had become far too cluttered. There were lots of duplicates and outdated items. 

I have felt led to review and prune these tools. So it has been like cleaning out a junk drawer, overstuffed closet, and jumbled garage storage area. 

I recall in the old days I had heaps of printed materials in manila file folders. Then every 1 to 3 years I needed to purge and reorder them. 

Just like in the old days this has often felt tedious. But at the end of the day, it was refreshing to look back on nicely ordered areas that had been chaotic. 

This is not busywork. It relates to my recent times of depression. My ToDo lists and projects were far too disorganized. I felt overwhelmed and conflicted. So after some effort, I would quit hide out in some escape activity. 

Little by little, I am getting clarity about both what I need to work on in the short term and how that will contribute to the long terms goals. Please pray for me to have the concentration and strength to complete this digital housecleaning. 

GOALS

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. I like to take several days to reflect and genuinely thank God for my recent and past blessings. 

My second most favorite holiday is New Years. I like to look back on the previous year and forward to the coming year. 

On the one hand, New Years Resolutions have been fruitless for me. I seek to change far too much that never becomes a reality. Yet, on the other hand, I have been using a different approach that others advocate. I pick One Word for the year as a core focus. My One Word for 2020 is FOUNDATIONAL. I intend to focus on doing what it takes to lay a good foundation for my growth and development the future years. 

Several of the teachers I follow on Youtube gave guidelines to orient and prepare for 2020. Some of them emphasized thinking super long term like aspirations for the coming decade due to the change from 2019 to 2020. So many of those inspirations cluttered up my online mind maps. 

Those distant horizon ideas for the coming years serve to inspire and motivate me. But I need to keep them in perspective. Then what I concentrate on thee days will lead to those desirable outcomes. 

VISION

What I feel called by God to do for the next 10 years is just like how I have felt led for the last 20 years. I see myself as an educator and a teacher. 

The notes in my files point to launching and leading an innovative educational enterprise. There I will be one of many teachers. 

It will harness the communication tool and methods used in business and apply those for missional purposes. The target market is still international college students studying in the USA. It will be like the Continuing Education departments of colleges. There will be Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits awarded and certificates. 

Unlike most educational institutions the departments will focus on non-traditional core areas like time management, talent management, academic skills, essentials of Christianity, adulting (basic life skills for young adults), singleness, marriage, and parenting. These are the kinds of lessons that young adults need yet they are rarely taught in a systematic way. 

COURSE and COMMUNITY 

I have been limping along for many years based on what I learned from various teachers online and books. What I have is a patchwork that is better than nothing but very imbalances. 

After many prayed for me I noticed a new online course that is by a teacher I respect and at a price I can afford. Brian Johnson for Optimize https://www.optimize.me/ has begun a new 10-month online mastery course. For only 12.99 a month I have access to the new lessons as they roll out. Plus there is the archive of previous courses. 

And unlike a book, there is an active online community that discusses the lessons. 

What makes Brian Johnson unique is that he has been reading and giving a summary of hundreds of books online for years https://www.youtube.com/user/PhilosophersNotes/playlists 

This course is his way to weave together all he has learned for the last 20 years. This video gives an overview of the course  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoDDsrKUAHo 

I have put taking this online course on my list of projects as a top priority. This aligns with my One Word of FOUNDATIONAL. As I learn and apply the lessons it will pave the way to consistently progress in the future.

You are invited to take the course too. And if you do let me know.

Please pray that I make time to both hear the lessons and do the exercises. Plus what will help me as much or more is engaging with fellow students online. 

CONCLUSION

Studies show that many men die soon after they retire. When there is no meaningful long term pursuit that is linked to short term activities then laziness can set in. Mental, emotional, and physical health can decline. Most of my neighbors are widows because their husbands died long ago. 

The good news is that I can sleep as long as I like and most days that includes a nap. 

I do not need to deal with cranky customers or office politics. 

I do not need to cope with commuting to and from work.

All of those parts are great. 

I have been in Ennis for two and a half years. 

I have dabbled with many projects. 

I have written and shared many units. But they were not part of a long term strategy. 

It is time for me to take responsibility to do what it takes to obey what I believe God has been calling me to do for decades. 

The people who are taking the Optimize mastery course are ready, willing, and able to make radical changes in their lives. They know it will not be easy but it will be worth it in the long term.

I appreciate your prayers. 

I trust that God answers prayers in His way and in His time.

I am grateful that you have read this long message. I wish it was shorter but there are many complicated and inner connected matters in my life. 

Even the act of writing this and the previous message was therapeutic. Always writing means I must translate my various thoughts and feelings into words that make sense. 

Shalom

John