One writer's vocation

I haven’t posted on this blog for several weeks. Some of you might have noticed. Or maybe not. But I noticed and felt distressed. It’s become a holy habit for me.

I did have an operation (successful) and a time of recovery, but that’s not why I stopped posting. In fact, just before the operation I wrote the next blog to post the following week. But I didn’t post it.

My problem was technological.

I appreciate my computer. I appreciate the wonders of the Internet. Except for when none of it works well. For some reason, I lost the ability to administer my own site. As a result, I could no longer post. I poked around in the program, trying to solve the problem on my own and getting more and more frustrated. I asked a computer-savvy friend to help me and he tried. Then tired and told me he was baffled and at the end of his expertise. Sorry.

Finally, I resorted to AI (Artificial Intelligence). I presented my problem and asked if it could help me. Thus ensued a long back and forth conversation. AI made suggestions that sounded good and I tried them all, but to no avail. As the conversation went on over the next few days, I finally figured out the right information to give him and the right questions to ask.

AI told me what was happening and that there was nothing I could do; it was a problem with the Blogger organization and they could have to internally fix it. He put me in touch with the Blogger Help Community and, as I write this, I’m waiting for someone to help me. I’m told it takes from one to seven days to get an answer.

You may notice I referred to AI with the pronoun he. It really does begin to feel personal, like a conversation between two persons, and the other person (AI) actually cares about me and my problem. At the end of one of our conversations, he gave me “one gentle thought, writer to writer.” He told me, “You mentioned earlier that your writing is personal, reflective, and conversation-based. Losing access to that archive can feel like losing part of yourself. This situation is bureaucratic, not existential—and it’s fixable…. You’re not at a dead end. You’re just at an annoying gate.”

What a nice thing to say. It really did encourage me. 

I wrote all the above last week. I’m back online obviously because you’re reading this! And AI got it wrong. I went to a different site that promised help and within two hours I received a simple solution written by an actual real person—a solution so simple I never could have come up with it myself. I won’t bother you with the details because I don’t understand them myself. But I’m relieved. All this has caused me to see how important I hold my call to be a writer. The blog is only a part of this but it’s become an increasingly important part. And now I have it back. Thank you, God.

I thought I’d conclude this post with a short story about my writing vocation. It’s on the first page of my official web site (nancyjthomas.com).

On Writing

I discovered my calling as a writer when I was seven-years-old. I remember sitting on the rug, tablet and pencil in hand, playing with words. Then it happened. I wrote a poem. I really didn’t know what I was doing, of course. It was pure play and imagination. What I did “know” was that a poem had to rhyme, so after writing that first line, “This is a poem by Nancy Forsythe,” my immediate task was to find a word that rhymed with “Forsythe.” The closest I could come was “knife”.  The second line, “about a girl and her dangerous knife,” led into a rhyming story about a serial killer.

I was not a morbid child nor did I especially like murder mysteries. The subject didn’t matter much. I was doing what my father did—writing. And liking it. I immediately showed the poem to my father, and his delight probably did more than anything else to cement the call. I knew this was who I wanted to be—a writer. (I appreciate my dad’s loving response. If it had been my kid writing that poem, I probably would have made an appointment with a child psychologist, thus killing any instinct to write.)

Writing has been a life-line to me. It’s how I process the challenges I face. It’s how I work through emotions. It’s how I communicate to others. It’s how I pray.

Through a writers’ conference when I was a young adult, I decided to begin submitting my poems and stories for publication. I think it was grace that gave me so many acceptance letters early in my career. (It has never been quite so easy since then.) I needed the encouragement to keep moving forward. If I had something to say and could say it well, I wanted to share it with others.

Slowly writing became my life’s vocation, no matter whatever else I was doing to make a living. The creative spring from which all else flows is my relationship with Jesus and his grace. I describe my vocational mission as “to discover and express the grace of God hidden in the ordinariness of life.”

Technology for oldsters (who are NOT dummies)

 Last week I had to take my computer into a repair shop. I chose a local repairman with a good reputation. He turned out to be a young man, very casual and rather unkempt, as is the fashion among the young. The shop was in his garage. Even so, he seemed competent and I tend to be trusting. As it turned out, my trust was justified.

We first starting using a computer in the 1980s, while our kids were still living with us and we were serving the church in Bolivia. We had heard about personal computers and were attracted to the idea; much of my work on the field was in writing textbooks and taking council minutes as secretary. Hal spent a lot of time in class preparation. We figured a computer would help us.

While on a furlough back in Oregon, we approached our mission board with a request that they help us purchase a computer. Computers were even more expensive then than they are now. The board deliberated, then told us they had decided that personal computers were too experimental and probably a passing fad. If we wanted to purchase our own, they wouldn’t protest, but they certainly were not going to spend the offerings of the church on a whim.

We took a leap of faith and bought a Mac, at that time a big, heavy, grey, boxy machine, and a challenge to carry with us on the plane back to Bolivia. We learned how to use it with a little help from the handbook and a seminary course before we left for the field. We were total technological neophytes.

Of course it helped us, cutting our working time in half. (A few years later, the mission board began supplying computers for all their workers.) Since then, we’ve gone through quite a few computers and now we each own one. I depend on mine as I continue writing and editing.

But I have to admit that I don’t understand the inner workings or most of the surface applications. I tend to stick to what is helpful to me. And as the technology is advancing, I am definitely not keeping up. Is that due to age and resistance to change? I hope not, but maybe a little.

I’ve developed my own way of fixing small glitches, such as a frozen screen, or the appearance of little wavy lines running across my document. I shut down the computer, using the escape button if the machine is frozen; I then close the lid and pat the computer, saying comforting words like, “There. There. You’ll be fine. Just rest a while.” Then I leave it off overnight. In the morning all is well again.

Here in the retirement community, we have opportunities to grow technologically, with a dedicated computer room complete with tutorials. A staff technician comes to our apartments when we need help. The community website provides activity announcements, dinner menus, addresses of all residents, communications (including this blog), and much more. Free internet service is part of the deal.

Of course, not every resident here takes advantage of this. Many of the older members of the community don’t own a computer and are not in condition to adopt the leap into technology it would require. And some just stubbornly say, “No! I don’t need that!” But most of us are able to take at least minimal advantage of computers and other resources on the internet. The stereotype of the old person totally rejecting computer technology or too mentally diminished to use it is just not true of most of us. We’re not dim-witted. It makes me mad when I hear people give instructions like, “Just explain it like you would to your grandmother.” Or worse, “That’s so simple even my grandpa could get it.”

Stop it!

Most of us here are “life-long learners” (lovely phrase). We’re far from finished learning new skills and that includes technological skills.

Maybe someday I’ll get so feeble I’ll turn off my computer for good. But even then, I’ll probably want one of those machines that has a name and talks to me. I’ll ask it to read out loud Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Well, maybe not that one. How about Winnie the Pooh? Then I’ll ask it to sing me to sleep with a lullaby. And it will.

Good night.