I have began the book, Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story yesterday and am really excited about going through it. Part of what it was talking about as I read yesterday was the importance of consistent, disciplined writing and one of the first exercises is to set aside 10 minutes a day just to write. That writing does not have to be structured and perfect, but it just needs to be you taking what is in your head and transferring it to paper. I can be what you are hearing and seeing, or what you are thinking, or whatever else is in there that you want to practice getting out.
So where am I now? I am sitting in the front office of where I work, Walker Technical Company. We are located is what would appear to be a rural area, but is really just minutes from the city. Our shop is under Bob Walker's house in what used to be his basement. His house is on the very top of a classic Pennsylvania hill which he hollowed out underneath his house to make a shop about 100' by 30', a little less than 1/3 of a football field. The walls of most of the shop are concrete painted gray or white, but the offices have drywall put up, painted a burnt red color. The entire floor is painted with epoxy conductive paint to reduce the static caused by walking around. There are two levels to the shop, the lower level which has a garage door which opens to our parking lot, and the upper level which has a staircase up to Bob and Sandy's kitchen.
We all share one small restroom down here. The restroom has a small, old toilet, a big utility sink that has been turned from white to a dirty creamy brown color over time. The ceiling is supposed to be a drop ceiling but it missing one of the two or so panels, which exposes random unconnected wires and hoses. You can also see daylight through it if you are at the right angle. On the wall next to the toilet here is a makeshift toilet paper dispense made of wood by someone here that does not fit quite right. There is a rather disgusting mirror hanging over the sink which is looks terribly dirty, but no matter how much you wipe it, nothing goes away. The dirt is somewhere behind the glass. The floor it covered with linoleum that was kind of thrown in by my boss and never properly attached, so it comes up along the edges and the runner at the bottom of the wall was not cut or attached right, so at the corners of the room it has a rounded curve rather than a 90 degree angle, which leaves a dark, empty area behind it. But that area does get used though. Multiple spiders since its installation have moved in and out from there. I kill them when they venture out, but there is always a new one to take his place. Once I was sitting on the toilet just taking care of business, when one of the spiders came running across the floor toward me. There was about 8 inches between the wall and me and he was coming fast. Before I knew it he was almost crawling up my shoe! I lifted my foot and BAM! tried to smash him. But when my foot came up, he was not there. He was not on the floor either or on my pants form what I could see. I still wonder today what happened to the spider, but at least for that day, I was quite freaked out thinking that there was an ugly black spider running around somehwere inside my pants.
But what is done here just blows my mind. You would not think that the best electronics church organs in the world are made here in this humble basement. But whether it is the President who needs an organ to listen to on Sunday, or a huge church wanting a flashy organ, or Carnegie Hall wanting a concert organ, we are the ones they contact. Just over the last year we have sold organs to the Washington National Cathedral and the U.S. Naval Academy. Right now we are building one for the 10th Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia (a big media church) and if you watch the movie "Get Smart" you will see our organ (though not physically built by us, all the electronics that make the sounds are ours) in the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
God surely has blessed this company, and for good reason too. They have the biggest heart for missions of maybe any small company around, whether it is through evangelism to people while installing the organs, or giving discounts to needy churches, or supporting my parents to help tribal missions all over the world.
I am very proud to work here, even though the close atmosphere with co-workers is sometimes hard, even though it floods every time it rains, and even though they did not have enough money to give us raises this year.
So that makes 28 minutes and 53 seconds of writing for today.
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