Exploring How My Mind Works

Posted On September 2, 2025

My Unconventional Writing Process

This afternoon I was searching for a genealogy file in my Google docs. I found a document saved as “blog”. Here is the first section of the file.

How my mind works —

Woke up at 5:20 this morning and this is how my thoughts went. 

When I get up, I need to start the day by drinking a bottle of water. Then I should make a banana shake. 

Amy said Kayley has decided she doesn’t really like meat except hamburgers and ribs. They eat a lot of pasta with meat though. I bet she’s not counting that. 

We should quit eating so much bread again. Who came up with sandwiches? I can’t believe the sandwich was invented when record books say it was. Bread existed in Jesus’s time. Surely someone took two pieces of bread and put meat or butter or something in between it and made a sandwich. Was it because they couldn’t really slice bread? When were knives made that could slice bread instead of tearing it off the loaf?

I wonder if other people think like I do?

Gee, I better get up and write these thoughts down or I will forget them by the time I get up. 

So, that is why I am typing such randomness at 5:48 a.m. on Thursday, April 2, 2020.

Next Writing Step

I evidently still couldn’t go back to sleep and went on to type the following.

2019-2020 Florida Trip Part 1

We have been going to Florida for some winter months since 2015. This year’s trip has been the most memorable for many reasons. First of all, we were away from home for a longer period. We were attending a wedding in Alabama on December 21 and thought it made the most sense to proceed on to Florida then instead of a few weeks later. We were pulling a fifth wheel camper. The first night we had to fix a minor water leak. The second night half of our electrical outlets would not work and our pickup blew up!

We had a real dilemma. It was 3:30 on the afternoon of December 20 and we were out of state needing a replacement truck that included a fifth wheel hitch. The alternative was to try to find someone to fix the truck just before Christmas, which would be real iffy and we didn’t even know how long the repairs would take. Also, we didn’t know how long it would take to remove and install our hitch into another truck. 

We actually felt extremely fortunate to find a very nice truck at the first dealership we went to and it had the right hitch included. We spent a total of nine hours at the dealership over two days selecting and financing our new vehicle and made it to the wedding on time. 

I’m the type of person who always looks for the positives in every situation. This can be fairly difficult because my husband is exactly the opposite!! He has very little patience and is very pessimistic. Fortunately we had prayed together asking for a safe trip before we left home. I reminded him that we were indeed safe. While the truck was not in our budget, we had emergency funds we could access. We ended up staying in that town an extra night because of rain. 

Only God knows how he used these circumstances for good but I choose to believe He did. We were safe and now have a much nicer pickup that matches the camper. I can’t help but wonder if things would have been much worse had we not started the trip with prayer. 

2019-2020 Florida Trip Part 2

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the church services we always have. I’ve attended the same church all of my life and never miss these special services. That changed this year because we were out of state for the holiday. 

However, we were fortunate to be able to attend other churches during this time. Since we chose to stay in Alabama an extra day because of rain (see Part 1), we went to Sunday services just a mile down the road from our campground. It was a great service and the folks were so welcoming. We were met across the parking lot with men wielding umbrellas and were served warm cookies inside. The music was beautiful and the message about Mary was very thought provoking. 

Temple Baptist Church | Guest Services

We arrived at our Florida campground on December 24th in time for Christmas Eve services at Leesburg First Baptist. This makes the third winter we’ve attended this church and I absolutely love it. They do a fantastic job of reaching out to the community and also send out missionaries all over the world. The worship leader and lead pastor collaborate well and I always leave convicted and joyfully thanking God for my salvation. 

My home church is Methodist. My winter church is Baptist. All churches should welcome everyone with open arms and these two churches do. 

I honestly can’t fathom not going to church, especially during the Christmas season. I encourage you to find a church wherever you are—even when on vacation. 

2019-2020 Florida Trip – Part 3

Because we were late in making reservations at our Florida campground, we didn’t get our choice of sites just across from friends we always run around with. Instead we were about four rows away from them. We found this to be a welcome change because it allowed us to make many more new friends. 

One of the things we really like about our chosen campground, Holiday RV Resort, a Cove Community, is how friendly and welcoming the residents are. We immediately met a sweet couple next door and she offered to take me in her golf cart to most of the card games I liked. The gentleman across the street from Michigan walked over and visited most every day.

We were invited to a community potluck by a couple from New Hampshire where we met most of the other close neighbors. A couple originally from Missouri, but now living in Kentucky, had us over twice for fish fries. And a couple from Michigan had us over to learn a new peg/card game, called Social Security, and then took us another day on a pontoon boat ride to a lakeside restaurant. 

Probably what made the biggest impression on me was the fact that everywhere we were invited over for dinner, the host offered a Christian prayer before the meal. 

It’s experiences like these that make me thankful to live in these United States. 

2019-2020 Florida Trip. – Part 4

In addition to making new friends, we continued to make memories with “old” friends from Missouri, Virginia, Illinois and Michigan by playing various games, including Catch Phrase, marbles, Mexican Train dominoes, Rummikub, pickle ball, bocce ball, volleyball, hand and foot and samba. We also went out to eat together and on short shopping excursions. 

During this time we also watched our Kansas City Chiefs come from behind to win, time after time, resulting in a Super Bowl championship.  

Very close friends from home joined us in February and we spent a couple of days exploring other places. They wanted to watch a rocket launch from the Florida Space Coast. So, this late riser, got up at 5 am to join the other three for a trek to the east coast. We wanted to be sure to get a parking space for the 10:30 am launch. We made it in time and set up our lawn chairs. The pictures we’d seen taken from this spot were so awesome showing the nearby launch pad. On this morning, however, it was so foggy we had zero visibility of the takeoff and could only hear it. That was very disappointing. 

Curious to see what else was in the federal park, we drove to the end of it where we found Parking Lot 13. We’d heard about it from friends but hadn’t known where it was. It is a nude beach!  Admittedly, we were curious about who would use the beach so tried to find a parking space. Either there were a lot of curiosity seekers or nude people because there were no parking spaces to be found! I can’t say we were very disappointed. 

4 Things To Know About Playalinda Beach – Visit Space Coast

Final Writing Step

Save It and Forget It!

I don’t remember for a fact, but I’m guessing my next step after typing the above was to go back to bed. That is a very common practice for me. I get up for a couple of hours in the morning and then I go back to bed and sleep for another couple of hours.

Until today, I never gave the “blog” document another thought.

After reading it today, I decided to just copy and post it with no editing other than some graphics and links to show my readers my writing process.

Shouldn’t have taken long. But, when looking for graphics, I started searching for the church we had visited in Cullman. After reading about several, I finally found the right one and got to reading about it’s mission and ministries. That was followed by reading all about the Florida Space Coast.

Now it’s a couple of hours after I opened Google Docs. I have not worked on genealogy information at all. Thus is the mind and writing process of this amateur blogger.