Shrinking the Camel

Robert Pagliari over at CBS Money Watch has recently released a book called The Other Eight Hours. His schtick is that you work eight hours, you sleep eight, and then the other eight hours are available for you to build wealth and purpose for your life. So when you come home from work, instead of watching TV, eating, playing with your children or communicating with your wife, Pagliari says you should be investing that energy into developing your lifelong dreams because it will payoff bigtime in the future. Otherwise, you are just wasting precious time.

Pagliari may be overstating his case, but I can definitely relate to his advice. For the past 18 months, I have devoted a significant amount of my free time to writing this blog. Certainly not eight hours a day – more like one or two hours a day, or sometimes as little as twenty minutes. Eight hours would be nuts, because I want to do other things during those free hours. Like having dinner with my wife, or watching American Idol, or just hanging out with my teenage daughters once in a while. Even so, I somehow managed to sneak time in here and there to write, wedged in between the busy calendar of a demanding work and home life.

Keeping up with all this blogging stuff isn’t easy, but I enjoy the creative outlet of writing, not to mention this strange delusion that I am contributing a fresh voice to the stodgy subject of Faith in the Workplace. Plus I am meeting some interesting, smart and, oddly enough, normal people online. Blogging has turned into a fun hobby, so three cheers to Paglioni and his work-hard/work-hard philosophy.

Then, lo and behold, my writing suddenly took a small turn from hobby to professional status last month when I was officially knighted as Content Editor at the High Calling Blogs, where I will oversee a weekly posting on the subject of work and faith. A Real Writing Job! With real editorial responsibilities! I am thrilled, because The High Calling Blogs is a tremendous community of intelligent, thoughtful, and caring people, where the emphasis is on living out your Christianity as part of your every-day life, rather than as dogmatic regulations. 

Of course I still have my executive day job, and I will continue to post regularly here at Shrinking the Camel. There are still six hours of my day left wasting away, after all. Might as well use ‘em all up.

To celebrate, I would like to introduce you to the talented team of editorial folks that I am working with, those creative talents who are also working it out in their own “other-few-hours” capacity, no-doubt juggling multiple roles of jobs, parenthood, freelancing, etc. while filling the various essential editorial roles over at The High Calling Blogs.

First, say hello to L.L. Barkat, who is the Managing Editor at High Calling Blogs. Ms. Barkat is a wonderful author and poet, with two books to her credit: Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places, and her most recent poetry book, Inside Out. She also authors a few blogs, which I can’t imagine doing since I can barely keep up with one. Seedlings in Stone focuses on writing, art, life, and poetry; Green Inventions Central centers around creativity, social media, life management and healthy living; Love Notes to Yahweh is all about spiritual practice. To top it all off, she is also a Staff Writer for International Art Movement’s Curator Magazine. Whew! Stop by and visit one (or more) of her Blogs for a taste of her culture, art, poetry and simply excellent writing. 

Larua Boggess is also a Content Editor at High Calling Blogs, who works on special online community projects and book discussions. Larua is author of  Brody’s Story, a young adult fiction book. Her blog is called The Wellspring, where you will find beatifully-written reflections on spirituality in daily living.

Gordon Atkinson is the Founding Editor at High Calling Blogs, and he made a name for himself as an early blogger (starting way back in 2002!) over at Salon.com, with his blog called Real Live Preacher. His essays were eventually parlayed into a couple of book collections. As you might guess from his blog name, Gordon is a real live pastor, as well as a writer and blogger, and also a part-time web-designer. I would call that a multi-vocational sort of guy. Sounds like he’s completely using up his other eight hours.

Ann Kroeker is another fellow Content Editor, whose focus at High Calling Blogs is on parenting and family life. She also blogs at her own place www.annkroeker.com where she writes about creativity, simplicity, family, lifelong learning, and slowing down. Anne too has a couple of books to her credit, Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families (2009) and The Contemplative Mom: Restoring Rich Relationship with God in the Midst of Motherhood (2000). Sounds like the type of thing most of us mad-rushing business-types could use to stop for a refresher once in a while. I wonder what she would tell Mr. Pagliani about how best to use those other eight hours?

And then there is Sam Van Eman, the Content Editor for the subject of Culture. Sam has a keen eye for this, since he is a critic and fan of advertising, as you can see in his blog, A New Breed of Advertisers. He has also recently published a book, “On Earth as it is in Advertising?” Cool title, right? That’s Sam.  He’ll make you think. Twice.    

Chris Cree is the Senior Community Manager at High Calling Blogs, which basically means he puts all the technology together to keep our site up and running.  Chris is owner of SuccessCREEations, Inc. which is a new media consulting firm. I think that Chris meshes all the hours of his day together, so he probably can’t even tell you which are the other eight.

Dan King is the Social Media Editor at HighCallingBlogs.com. His job is to keep us all on top of the social media scene, because God knows that I can’t keep up with it on my own. Dan, also known as the Bible Dude, is another full-time corporate dude like me, and works as a corporate training manager. During his other eight hours he is a great writer and blogger, too. Check out his awesome blog here.

And last but not least, my good friend Marcus Goodyear, who got me in to this whole mess. Marcus is the Senior Editor at High Calling Blogs, and our overall fearless leader with a Vision to build an online empire (my word, not his) of intelligent, creative Christians who want to live out their faith in meaningful, ordinary ways, both online and off. Marcus also runs a pretty mean blog over at Good Word Editing.

I hope you get a chance to visit The High Calling Blogs and join in on some of the conversation you will find there. Oh, and make sure to drop by on Tuesdays for the work and faith topic. You see, there’s this really great new Content Editor…

Photo by nAncY, used with permission.