Know Jack #501 Expect the Unexpected

I’m what some people in the writing community call a Pantser. That is, I write by the seat of my pants, no plotting, no planning, just take a flicker of an idea and start writing. I was an Air Force aircraft crew chief, pastor, and registered nurse before becoming a writer. A thread of unpredictability seems to run through them all. Just when I thought I’d seen it all…surprise!

I can’t say all those surprises were pleasant. Every one of them was building material for my life and certainly kept it from being boring. While I still maintain that I’m as plain as dirt, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a Welcome mat out for the unexpected. Occasionally, I even go out looking for surprises. I’ve been Bigfoot hunting and ghost hunting. Haunted places tend to draw me like a moth to a front porch light.

The Lord took a hand to sort of drive the message of the unexpected home. While I was writing the last paragraph and planning a quiet evening at home, I got a call asking if I’d unload all the gear from the book signing from the back of my Jeep and drive halfway across town to load up the car with boxes potato chips. Of course, loading them meant unloading them the next day and helping at the Race to Space Marathon the next day.

It’s now four days later. That’s the way life ought to be. I can get irritated when plans go awry just like anyone else. I do just that at times, but the way I see it, life is not out of control, my plans are. I don’t consider that fatalist thinking or a thief of my free will. I think it’s a growing sense of awareness that I am meant to experience more things than I can imagine.

With that thought playing on my mind, I took the opportunity to put myself up for election to an office at my American Legion Post and enroll in another online course. When I was younger, I justified taking courses and writing while working full-time as a nurse by saying that sleep was overrated. That doesn’t work now that I’m an old man. These days, I have to lean more toward a sense of urgency.

Meanwhile, there are more books to write, more hills that need their far side explored, and more twists in this tale.