Stones from the Jordan.
A year ago this month ... I acquired my very own mortgage, electric bill, gas bill, and association fee as I moved into my very own condo, graced with my very own carpet and paint selections. Home is now also graced by the furniture of many generous folks who love me and some who don't even really know me, by more Willow Tree figures than I started with, by my Very Own Shiny Blue Laptop(!), by geraniums and other lovely flowers which shudder to live on my plant-lethal porch, by a birdfeeder, sparrow upon sparrow, a cardinal couple, and a purple finch.
A year ago this month ... I wrote the first word, sentence, paragraph, chapter of draft one (sort of) of Book One (sort of). Current word count: 77,500. I wanted to be finished by Labor Day, as that would signify an entire draft in a year. We'll see. The final page seems to lurk only across the room now, instead of a continent away. I feel that any morning now I'll awake and reach toward it and my fingers will brush its enigmatic hide. Yes, draft negative eight of Let's Give This A Try Oops Wrong Point Of View only took me five months, but it was only 54,000 words at its most verbose, and I plowed my way through it and dragged my poor characters along behind me by their puppet strings.
Six months ago next week ... I began, with some trepidation, my new job. I understand now why the hospitals at which I applied didn't hire me when my only billing experience was a chiropractic office. Specialty billing is realms more complex! However, it's fun on its best days, as is the receptionist work. Best of all? My managers think I do a good job. They trust me essentially to run the office in [location deleted for security purposes, of course]. My coworkers ... well, let's just say there are no Jennifers in the lot, but I still talk to Jen and meet her for dinner and keep up via email (and even, occasionally, watch a few ten-minute youTube clips of General Hospital so I can nitpick it for her, as she seems to enjoy this).
A home, a book, a job--these three things the Lord gave to me, in a single year. Not the only things, of course. But these three tower and demand recognition, so I pick them up from the center of a river I didn't know was passable--believed often that it wasn't. And now here I stand on the other shore, August again, guided and carried through a self-stretching year of gifts.