It's 1AM and I just finished catching up on about 20% of the back logged emails I have on work-related lists that I should be staying up on top of. In fact, it is my job, but so is managing a team of technologists, speaking and writing to advance my organization, and be the key member of a multi-million dollar project seeking a lot of money in a grant. That project will both increase my team and take up 50% or more of my time by the new year, which will make keeping up on this backlog of emails that much harder. At the same time, it will make it that much more important because that project will make history in our niche of technology, and I need to be aware of what else is making history.

So that's my story of the past 2 months. I've been writing like crazy, reading even more, and preparing for 4 presentations in the next 4 months. What I haven't been doing is anything here on this blog, or even for my supposed-monthly column for the Burnside Writers, which has a new website that you should check out. I promise, I will get back to writing monthly for BWC.

So I mentioned story, and I'm just flabbergasted just how much the notion of story is all around us in more than a subversive way. Donald Miller has a new book out that has become a best seller and is touring with Susan Isaacs, who wrote a great book that I've reviewed a few times. I know that I should be reading Robert McKee's Story very soon, but have you seen my list of book to-read at Good Reads? It's getting too long, and it isn't even that long.

But back to story - remember it's after 1AM - it's almost everywhere I look, listen, or read these days. And that's AWESOME! For me, it's awesome because I can live into that. There's so much conflict, but it doesn't feel threatening in the way that I feel attacked. It's saddening sometimes because there are days that I just go through routine of waking up, helping A* with the kids, go to work, come home, do stuff with the kids and A*, watch some TV and then go to bed. Then there are days like today where I stayed home because A* was sick, I got some max time with the kids, went into the office when a friend came over to watch the kids, did some important work, came home, had a wonderful, though short, play time with Amelia, good interaction with Tayte, and then treated the family to a DQ night of pumpkin pie blizzard. The DQ element was spontaneous, something in my gut that I felt was good for us. And it was. And just as importantly, it was our story tonight as a family. And that is cool.

My story has been a lot of work: good work, hard work, busy work, but it has taken away a lot of attention I need to be giving to my spirit. The family story, I hope, hasn't been affected too much. I try to keep work at work except for nights I can catch up like tonight when everyone else is asleep. But tomorrow I'll pay for that. We'll see I guess. The point is that I recognize the story, and as long as I try to live through the story rather than watching it go by passively, I think I'm going the right way.

I see an orange battery light flashing at me, which means I need sleep, I think...