This is the first installment of news about our soon to be published book. We have overcome numerous obstacles in its creation. I first felt the push from God, over twenty years ago. At the time I had numerous excuses. Just curious…have you ever had excuses when you felt like God asked you to do something?
One of my first and best excuses was, ‘but I don’t type.’ Let’s go back a few years. We all had to take typing in seventh grade. I was terrible. My ten fingers just didn’t know what they were doing. To make matters worse, I was using my mom’s old typewriter. It was from her youth in Germany. I believe the bulky black instrument was made from a recycled WW1 Tank. While lugging it back and forth to school was great exercise, pushing its keys down wasn’t much better. It gave me new respect for my mom. At first, I had to use a second finger to help my little finger. It was too hard for just one. Mom could fly on it, with her years of practice.
Another problem was that, being a German typewriter, some of the letters were in different positions than the American versions. So, when the book told me to repeat the sequence of letters, I had to change them. Unfortunately, my slight case of dyslexia didn’t help. By the time I finished my class I was totally frustrated, and swore I would never type again.
My plan seemed to be working in High School, as there was no in class typing, and my mom could type any required reports. Somehow, I even managed to make it through college. I didn’t even have to pay to get typists. There was always some nice girl (my friends or friends of friends) who felt sorry for me. Eventually, Crystal (also known as Flying Fingers) took over. Years later, she went on to type hundreds of pages for my MBA classes and RN classes.
My first job out of college, they bought me a rather expensive micro tape recorder (around $270 – a lot of money back then). I could record my reports and hand them to a secretary for typing. Yes, they had secretaries back then. Years later, I finally had to do some, very slow typing, on my own. Ahh the computer age.
However, I did very little outside of what was absolutely required. More or less, my plan was working. Then came God. Now I know how Noah must have felt. What’s a cubit (inside joke)? I guess I could have hand written the rough draft, but that seemed like extra work. And of course, after my very rough first draft, Crystal helped a lot. Then she rewrote her sections.
As I look back, typing was only one of many obstacles. We will save those for the future. At least I now know what our next book will be: Four Finger Typing or maybe Typing Therapy (What’s the Rush, You’ll Get There).
