Darrell stared blankly, at the stack of paperwork on his desk. Spinning his pencil between middle and pointer finger, he took intermediate sips of his cold black coffee. Barely awake, he regretted the decision to go out with the boys last night. Was it worth it? It was one hell of a night he thought, setting down his pencil to grab the bottle of aspirin on his desk. Darrell had a feeling that he was out of aspirin, but he hoped he was wrong on this one. He grabbed the bottle only to have his suspicions confirmed. “This is gonna be a god-awful day” he said in a hushed voice to appease his aching head. Annoyed he slammed the empty bottle onto his desk.

The last case he had worked on had just been resolved, and now someone had to do the paperwork for it. Last night had been crazy. For some reason he agreed to do all the paperwork for the case. “But who cares anyways, it is Monday, and I have all the way till Friday to finish this,” he thought as he pulled out his lighter and lite his cigarette.

Darrell’s smoke was interrupted by the sound of commotion outside as several uniforms ran past his door. There was many a time that the uniforms knew his name but he didn’t know theirs. One of these guys, the one that Darrell referred to as “transfer” due to him being a recent transfer from another department, rushed into his room. This of course was unacceptable as Darrell had clearly told all the uniforms never to interrupt him while he was working. However, Darrell decided to cut the guy some slack due to the look of terror on the guys face. It was pretty obvious that “transfer” immediately realized that he wasn’t supposed to interrupt Darrell, and said, before rushing out the door, that a bus had crashed on highway 4.

Highway 4 was more of a glorified road than a highway. It was the only 4 lane road in a hundred miles and therefore got the name of Highway 4. “Well,” he thought,while grabbing his jacket and hat, “this paperwork might not get done by Friday.” He gave a quick smile and left his office.

I am still having fun reading through my kids writings. The above, like my previous post, is one of the quick writes my son would do as a warm up for his day. For in middle school he enjoyed writing over everything else, and being able to do it first thing would always get him going. He would lolly gag and dilly dally over his other subjects, so I learned to never hold it out as a reward, because he rarely finished, and thus be able to claim it. Also as I suspected might happen, as he got older he lost the passion for it, and focused more on all those previously “boring” lesson. So it all worked out in the end. Someday though, I hope he finds the desire again and finishes some of his beginnings……

There is something quite satisfying about paper shredders. The feeding in of all those mounds of junk mail, and old bank statements, and such. Mine also sounds like one of those cash counting gadgets as it is grinding away. Perhaps that is part of it’s attraction…..hum 🤔 No its gotta be the destruction I’m sure.

Well anyway, as I was working towards eliminating all the paper that sneaks in and tries to reside with me if I am not vigilant, I came across some folders of school work from our homeschool days. How fun it has been to read through the poetry, stories, and those paragraphs I had my son write each day.

No I did not shred them. Even though I am guessing that perhaps they wish I would. For as my son would say, “below is a prime example of teenage angst.”

“The world has fallen into a false daydream” Michael thought to himself, as he kicked a tin can down the street. Life had become boring to him. It was like a clock that hung over his head, and all he could do was wait to hear it stop. He laughed, thinking about the people who rushed past him. They had clocks too, everyone did, but all the clocks were out of sync. Some ran faster than others, and some creaked, like they where about to snap. His clock however ran perfectly, not too fast, and not to slow. He chuckled, some people were cherishing their clocks, oiling and polishing them; trying to get a few extra minutes, clinging desperately to anything that would help their clocks to tick that one extra second. Amidst those hurrying to do whatever they could to fix their clocks, where the ones like him. Who would watch and laugh at the ones with fast clocks. The clocks didn’t matter, all of the clocks would eventually break, and why should they worry about the inevitable.

Sigh….would not it have been nice if I hadn’t been rushing around with such a tightly wound clock when this was written; perhaps I would have noticed how depressed he was 😔 Oh well, water under the bridge and all that, or all’s well that ends well is better said I guess. Yikes! Starting to babble.

❤️ In Christ, now and evermore, Belinda

“Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it most ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as a by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run – in the long run, I say! – success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it”

~Viktor Frankl~