My 20-Minute Experiment

I’ve been up for four hours. I’ve gotten a lot done this morning. Wrote an article, working on another one that I started yesterday. I’ve got another one half-finished from yesterday, and I just had a thought.

It has to do with a kitchen timer I’ve got around my neck. It’s there because I tend to forget things I’ve got going on in the kitchen. See, I really don’t like standing there waiting for things to finish. Like I was boiling up some potatoes. They were sprouting, and I figured I’d best do something with them. I also don’t like throwing food out. So, the plan is for me to make some potato salad for dinner tonight. I had the timer on for 20 minutes. When the dinger dinged, three potatoes were finished, but a larger one was still on the hard side, so I left it in the water with the burner off to sit for a while.

While I was waiting, I decided to sit down and watch a little bit more of the television show I’d been watching (The Closer on Netflix). I love that show to bits, and I knew if I didn’t get up in time, I’d find myself still there at 3:30 this afternoon. So, I set the timer for 20 minutes.

That’s where I got the idea to conduct an experiment today.

I’m going to keep the kitchen timer around my neck, and I’m going to keep setting it for 20 minutes at a time. Now, in the grand scheme of things, I will typically spend an hour or so on an article. However, as the day moves forward, I will spend longer and longer with each successive article. Why that is, I’m not sure. Another experiment, for another day, I suppose.

At the end of the day, like yesterday, I will have a couple of unfinished pieces on my computer desktop. Seems a little unorganized. I mean, yes, I can understand having a book not finished. A book could be 120,000 words, and nobody is going to finish one in a single day. However, you could work on getting a chapter done in a day’s time. Depending on how long you want your chapters to be, on average. None of them will end up being exactly the same, but I tend to like mine to be between 4,000 and 5,000 words. Give or take. If they get to be more than that? I break them in two and have another chapter.

Maybe that’s what people who make podcasts do. They get hold of something they just can’t shake enough. Picture a dog with a bone.

Productivity is my name. Most days.

Plus, I don’t have all the time in the world anymore. When you turn 70, too, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I’d say this piece is about halfway done. I’m going to switch off to one of my other partially finished pieces to complete it (I hope) and will come back to this one about an hour or so from now to let you know how the next twenty minutes goes….

Okay, I’m not sure what time it was when I cut away from this piece, but I’m back again. Maybe this 20-minute thing isn’t something that I want to go on all day. Remember, back when we were in school? I can’t remember how long classes went, but I’m thinking they were probably 45 minutes each. Then, you’d have ten minutes to get to your next class. Maybe four classes in the morning, lunch, and then three or four classes in the afternoon. Since I went to school in the 1970s, I’m sure things have changed with short days and more days off, which, I think, would have been nice. Still, the day was packed for me in those days.

It Can Start With Sharing

Our parents, for the most part, taught us at an early age to share with others. In those days, it was probably our toys, but that was what was important to us. The immediate things. Of course, as we grow older and respond to whatever our early life experiences are, sharing can sometimes be difficult.

For instance, if stability, or a lack of it, was something that you had to contend with as a young person, then it might be likely that fearing a lack of stability becomes an issue that means a lot to you as an adult. This person might be very uncomfortable moving from house to house, or even from one geographical area to another. Just supposing.

Or, if a person was uncomfortable exposing their innermost dreams to others because, at an early age, they were forced to live with other people’s ideas of suitable dreams, well, I could see where they might have trouble opening up to others. In protecting their dreams from criticism, they are protecting their heart from harm.

As an adult, it took me a good many years to get to the point where I felt confident enough to say things to other people that I felt might help them. It’s not like going up to an obese person and saying, “You know, if you were to walk for ten minutes a day, you would feel better.” I mean, come on. They know that. And, you want to know what else? They can’t wait to get away from you and likely will remind themselves to run the next time they see you. That’s human nature, and forcing your opinions, helpful or otherwise, just isn’t all that productive.

However, there’s no rule against dropping a hint. I suppose this is what the old parables were about.

As a writer, this is where you can have free rein in your stories. Share all you want to.

Okay, here’s an idea. What if you had an old maid sort of character? Others might see her as a lonely old woman with not much to do in her day, but she has other ideas. She is the Johnny Appleseed of Helpful Advice. JaHa for short. In fact, that could be her name. A play on words. Jasmine Hastle. Only you, as the writer, know this inside secret, and you never reveal it. Her nickname is JaHa, and nobody knows where it comes from. Except you.

Her quirk is that she is psychic, but she doesn’t realize it. To my way of thinking, everyone is psychic, but it usually gets learned out of us at an early age. Nobody likes to hear a four-year-old kid saying that her great-grandfather, gone all these years, has been visiting her. Especially, if she says to her mother, “Mommy, Hugh is standing right behind you.” This little girl does not know her grandfather's name was Hugh. But you do.

So, what happens in the story is that JaHa will go to the bakery, or the park, or wherever, and talk to the people she meets. She might know them, or they could be total strangers. She says something to them, and a day later (while they can still remember the conversation), something happens to them that was exactly what JaHa had said. I don’t know…like maybe JaHa said, talking in the roundabout way she has, that it’s a bear when an insurance company raises your rates. The next day, a letter arrives in the mail either to the person she was talking to or for her. That’s the funny thing about psychic stuff. It could apply to anybody in the audience.

Oh, here’s a funny twist. What if JaHa says that bit about the insurance company raising their rates, and the reader is the one who gets the letter the day after she read it in the book? Oh, actually, this sounds more like it. I’m going to have to think about that, but hey, stranger things have happened.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that as a writer, you are telling a story, but you are not telling about each and every thought that went through JaHa’s head, or anybody else’s head, in the book. Just the high points. Just the ones that you think are important and that drive your story. Hey, if the story doesn’t seem finished, make it into a series.

You can share insights in your books. That’s okay. In fact, maybe it’s like getting a toddler to eat her peas if you hide them in a spoonful of mashed potatoes.

You know what I think is interesting? When you take the lessons you learned, the ones that did not happen as a two-second ah-ha. One comes to mind about a hot stove. It will only happen once, and you can bet you will be careful around hot stoves the rest of your life, unless, of course, you become a chef. But I’m talking about the lessons that took you 57 years to learn. Those are good lessons. And they are never about one thing. It’s like the veins that run through your body. You’ve got the big veins, and then you’ve got all the tiny capillaries that run off to every part of your body. That was the lesson, but each of those smaller capillaries? Those were the associated lessons.

So, just some thoughts about writing and sharing the things that have happened to you in your life, especially if you consider them simple and yet difficult lessons at the same time.

Thanks for reading. I write on a bunch of other platforms. The links are below.

🌺 Pauline Evanosky 

🌺My Links:

Talking To Spirit — my website since 2001
Pauline Evanosky on Medium
Talking To Spirit on Substack

Pauline on Vocal.Media

Pauline Evanosky — my author’s website

My Table of Contents for Medium — Updated Monthly
My Table of Contents for Substack — Also Updated Monthly

Facebook for shorter pieces

Resources for psychic development from my website, TalkingtoSpirit.com