Some Editing and Formatting Help

     As some readers know, my son Ben spent from July 2011 through June 2012 traveling around the world on a mission trip through a program called The World Race.  An avid writer, during his trip Ben posted more than 85 blog entries, sharing his thoughts, observations, and inspirations throughout the year.  He's now been compiling all of these posts into one document as part of an independent study project through school.  Believe it or not, the document totals over 100,000 words and roughly 180 pages of single-spaced writing!

     I suggested to Ben today that it might be easier to upload the document to FedexOffice for printing, after the editing is done.  Since I'm pretty familiar with editing and formatting in Microsoft Word from my book-writing experience, I offered to "clean up" the document for him and get it prepared for printing.  Of course, this is never as quick and easy as one expects.  If you've ever tried it, you know that you can spend a ridiculous amount to time trying to get one simple formatting issue (like pagination) to be the way you want it.  Anyway, after some considerable time, I was able to get it looking "right" and ready to print tomorrow.  By the way, if anyone is interested in getting an electronic version of the PDF, just let me know.  I'm sure Ben would be happy to share it.

     While I've purposely tried to focus the majority of my kindness attention outside of my circle of family and close friends this year, I never want to lose sight of the fact that charity (and kindness) does start at home.  Sometimes the best chances to be kind are right in front of us.