Working as Usual but with less Stress

It's been six weeks since I had returned home. I handed over my keys to my College's apartment on Friday 28th June 2024 and I had never looked back. My routine back home is about the same as when I was working at the Seminary. In fact, I had culture shock last July in my first Semester because two of my courses were taught at night, and I thought it was a night school, very unlike the time in Singapore where all my classes were in the morning except the diploma level courses for lay Christians that took place at night for 8 weeks. So it was stressful in the Seminary as I could not sleep in and I still woke up quite often before 5am. And then, in the afternoon or early evening I was supposed to rest for my night class, but my mind was usually in over-drive going through the 3-hour lessons I was going to deliver at night. By the time the classes ended just before 10pm I needed a couple more hours to wind down and get my mind off work. It was intense to say the least.

But nowadays I keep up with early rising as early bird catches the worms. I have wonderful time of fellowship with the Lord for at least two hours without rush or lecture preparation or delivering lectures three hours' long. Usually, by 7am I am already at my computer table typing away, writing something. I wrote more than 50,000 words on my Malay "memoirs" but stopped three days ago. 

I remember when I wrote Departure Points in 2014 I also stopped after two months and with 9 chapters written. I wrote the last three chapters 5 years afterwards in late 2019 and published the book by early January 2020. I do not know when I am going to continue writing "Anak Panah" but in the past two days I am occupied with commenting on John's Gospel continuing with ch. 13 since I published my commentary on John's Gospel 1-12. I prepared for writing by reading three chapters of John's Gospel from ch. 10 to ch. 12 just to make sure I get the sense of the flow of the narrative in John's mind in writing his gospel. It's already at page 8 which is really surprising since it was very difficult for me even to start in the past couple of years. So I may publish my proposed commentary on John's Gospel 13-21 before anything else, God willing.