Conserve water now while you have a choice

 It happens nearly every summer. Chesterfield County issued the following statement today:

Chesterfield County Asks Customers to Conserve Water in Response to Regional Request

Date: June 25, 2012
Department: Utilities

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, VA—In response to a request by the Appomattox River Water Authority, the Chesterfield County Department of Utilities is asking its customers to voluntarily conserve water by: 

  • Avoiding lawn watering on Mondays, and then following a lawn-watering schedule of alternating days based on street address. For example, addresses ending with even numbers and locations with no street numbers water on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, and addresses ending with odd numbers water on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 
  • Limiting the filling and replenishing of swimming pools to levels needed to maintain health and safety. 
  • Limiting noncommercial vehicle washing to two days per week. 
  • Irrigating golf courses between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m.

Chesterfield County is a member of the Appomattox River Water Authority, which provides water from Lake Chesdin. The water level in Lake Chesdin has now decreased to an established level to trigger voluntary water restrictions. If significant rainfall occurs, further water-conservation measures may not be necessary.

A complete list of voluntary water-conservation measures is available online atwww.chesterfield.gov/utilities.For more information, contact the Department of Utilities at 804-748-1291.  

So, pay attention. Don’t think this doesn’t apply to you, because it does. And before long, the restrictions may be mandatory.

Don’t waste water. Or any other natural resource for that matter. Use it responsibly.

 

This book just may have rocked my writing world

I’ve been following Jeff Goins for some time. He’s a writer, helping other writers to realize they are also writers.

This past weekend he offered his book You Are a Writer for free on Amazon Kindle. So I downloaded it to my Kindle app on my Droid. I’d been meaning to get the book anyway, so I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.

What I like about this is that when Goins talks about being a writer, it’s not about becoming a writer, it’s about a declarative statement that “I am a writer.”

Indeed. I am a writer.

Sunday morning at my parents’ house with limited access to the Internet and not having actually packed another book to read, I started reading Goins’ book.

What did I learn? First of all, I learned that I need to write for myself. And if I do so, I’ll find that others can identify with that. I forget who he was quoting but it went something like this…if you’re one in a million, recognize that there are seven billion people in the world. That means there are 700,000 other people exactly like you.

It’s a math equation, and even I got it.

But Goins says, “You have to be yourself, to speak in a way that is true to you.”

So I stopped to think. What are the things that are important to me?

Family, faith, and yes, while I’ve often hoped I didn’t care so much, politics.

And what are the things I like to do? Write, act, paint, and I’ll throw exercise in there because I’m determined to make it so.

But the big money quote is coming. My last ten years in the blogging arena have largely been spent in political endeavors. And in this context I have often been reacting to what has happened rather than creating something of my own.

Goins says “I can’t react and create at the same time.”

Simple, but profound.

When I sit at my computer and have a window open for Facebook, TweetDeck, Pinterest, my own blog and a couple of other blogs, and my phone keeps giving me notices for Words with Friends, and my favorite playlist from Spotify, I am in no position to be able to create.

Don’t get me wrong. In the context of my community those are all important. And yes, there are times I get writing inspiration from each of those.

But the reality is, with all of those distractions a simple four sentence paragraph can take an hour.

So, I’m going to have to take some time and unplug.

But beyond that, I need to create, rather than react. Even in the arena of politics I need to be focusing more on giving solutions and ideas than reacting to what others are saying or doing. Boy, I could go off on a tangent about a recent campaign cycle, but I won’t.

Reality is I’m already off on enough of a tangent.

I am a writer. I put words together and hope you’ll want to read them.

And I need to do that in the context of who I am and what I believe.

That means I need to talk about my faith, I need to talk about my family, and yes I need to talk about politics.

And it also means that some 700,000 of you should be reading.

To be continued…