GUESS WHAT I AM . . .

I'm a freelancer.

Oh yeah. I always thought it was sort of glamorous when people said they were "freelancing." It sounds so ... independent. Adventurous. Mysterious. Beautiful. Free and clear with the wind blowing through your hair.

Of course, all those people I read and heard of were freelance PHOTOGRAPHERS, or freelance WRITERS, or freelance JOURNALISTS, or freelance SPIES. Still, the allure of the word still holds for me ... even if all I'm doing is helping a friend out with some legal stuff.

Oh yeah. I'm a FREELANCE ATTORNEY. Love it.

***

BRAINPOWER . . .

It is nice, thought, to use my brain in this way again. Not that I didn't enjoy coordinating large events and parties, or co-leading a Missions/Outreach Team at church all year, or helping Mabel lead the women's Bible study this summer, or any of the myriad random other things I have been doing with my time. But it's just different. This is, for better or worse, what I was created and trained to do. It's wonderful to feel that I'm fulfilling my destiny.

Of course, I'm plagued by self-doubt, as always. (What is it in me, or in any of us, that so prevents us from being satisfied with our skills and intelligence and training, and confident in how we use them?) It has been so long since I've researched, analyzed, critiqued, written, persuaded. I don't want to let my friend down with my FREELANCE WORK ... and God knows, I don't want to wake up the day after I hand it in realizing I'm not as sharp as I thought I was.

***

CLEANING HOUSE . . .

I can't clean my heart out, so I cleaned my house instead.

Well, not my whole house. The living room is still a shambles, and the kitchen ... I just don't know how I accumulate so much stuff in the kitchen. But my office ... it's getting there. It's only slightly neater than it was yesterday, only a tiny bit more organized, but I sincerely believe that every little bit counts.

I did have a moment, though, where I opened up my office closet, looked at the collection of stuff inside and thought, "it's going to take me a lifetime to go through this." So ... I closed the door and left it for another day. Basically, I need a dumpster outside my office window, into which I can just chuck things willy-nilly. I can be so lazy that the mere thought of having to CARRY garbage to the garbage can outside can deter me from cleaning.

For now, it's enough that my files are filed, and my papers are in their rightful place.

(Incidentally ... my heart is still not clean. I wish the Container Store had something for that which I am enduring ...)

***

FAST FORWARD . . .

You'll never hear me say this again, I'm sure ... but with Sunday seemingly impossible to handle ... I wish it was Monday already.