A New Start

A few days ago a friend posted a facebook about how hitting a reset button was so simple and yet it was all the difference between darkness and light.  And that describes my life perfectly right now.  For the last six years I was in a job that made me absolutely miserable (not to mention I didn't have any vacations that were more than a long weekend).

Two months ago I resigned from that job, and my last day was June 29th.  I am so very thankful not to be working in politics anymore!!  I took a week completely off and I did not go anywhere, but I rested.. I read, I watched movies, I cooked yummy healthy meals, I worked out, I spent time just letting myself refresh, recharge, rejuvenate, reset.  And it might just have been the loveliest week of my life.  I feel like me again.  I began to feel creative again.  I began to feel free and whole.

Most importantly, I spent a lot of time with the Lord - praying, reading my Bible, reading devotionals, and reading a lovely book called Walking on Water, by Madeline L'Engle.  It is a book about being an artist, her meditations on art and faith. This is a necessary book for me to read right now as I have spent twenty years denying that I am first and foremost, artistic. Way back in college I decided that I needed to be practical and pursuing a creative degree was just not practical. Law was practical and so I went to law school, making the biggest mistake of my life.  You cannot deny your very nature for twenty years and expect to live your life fully.

It is no wonder that by the last couple of years I was truly miserable, depressed, stressed out all the time, not quite fully alive.  I need to pursue a creative life!  And so here I go! Completely reset and ready to embark on a brand new chapter!

Book Review - The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore

I chose to read this book because I love Sherlock Holmes and this was a story about a fellow fan who gets caught up in playing detective in a murder mystery.  The twist is that there are actually two storylines, the primary, set in 2010, and a secondary storyline revolving around Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, set in 1900.  The premise is pretty cool, but the execution was sloppy.  The author chose to float back and forth between the two timelines with alternating chapters and it was very difficult to get into the flow of either one.

I also did not appreciate some of the language - it was quite disrespectful to women (and I know he meant it for shock value to accentuate one of his plotlines), but it was jarring and distracting and distasteful.  But my biggest problem with the book was how the author chose to end the Doyle storyline... and I won't reveal any details but this probably deserves a *spoiler alert* anyway.  So, here goes...  I feel that with historical fiction any author has a delicate line to walk when they choose to write about a real person.  The path Mr. Moore took with Mr. Doyle was difficult to read and I think if I was one of his descendants I might be pretty upset with the light in which his character was painted.

I can't say I would recommend this book to anyone.