Complete Manuscript from the show:

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Jeff: All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of home row. And on today's show, I finally have Patrick Shriner joining us. Patrick, how are you man?

Patrick: Good. Thanks for having me. It's been awhile.

Jeff: been awhile. We were supposed to record. Oh, good grief. I dunno. Maybe it's gotta be close to two years ago.

Patrick: I think it's like 15 years ago when we were both toddlers.

Jeff: We were, we were both in middle school. How old are you? Oh, me too. 35 when's your birthday?

Patrick: August 26

Jeff: Ooh, you're older. October 23rd

Patrick: your blood type?

Jeff: I have no clue.

Patrick: Either door.

Jeff: must be our generation thing. People are like, I bet my parents and your parents, they know their blood type.

Patrick: That's right. That's right.

Jeff: Like what do I need to know that for? They just tested at the place, whatever that place is.

And they'll tell me what it is, what I need.

Patrick: So we would have been 2015 years ago. There we go.

Jeff: It's when we were 20 we were gonna do it. And where were you when you were 20. Were you at Louisville? Were you in Southern? Where were you?

Patrick: I was in Louisville at that point. I'm trying to exactly what I was doing at that point, but I guess maybe Western Kentucky university.

Jeff: Okay. All right. Nice. Where would I have been? I would have been here in Houston, still at the college of biblical studies, inner city Bible college. And it was a blast. very dispensational, which I learned while I was there. And yeah, so a lot of things have changed in my life.

A lot of things have changed in yours, but the reason we were going to record, I think it was about two years ago, we were scheduled to record  and it all fell apart cause I stopped at Starbucks. 30 minutes before we were going to record, to go pick up, you know, just to, it was probably a salted caramel mocha or who knows when those are in season.  I got to get them. And so I go and I see a guy there and he's wearing a black shirt and, and big bright neon green. It just says, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, three times. And I've seen this guy walking around my town. All the time carrying a huge backpack. I'm like, Oh, that's the Jesus shirt guy. And he's got his Bible open and I say, "Hey man,  what are you reading?"

And he's telling me what he's reading and everything. And then he starts asking me, "He says, do you have a job? "And I said, yeah, I do. He goes, "Do you make money?" I said, yeah, man, I totally, I, of course, I make money.  He goes, "You're sinning." As go, excuse me. He  says it is jobbing, like, what are you, it's jobbing.

He's like, yep, you're jobbing. And that's a sin. And he started confronting me about how I am not obeying Jesus because I have not sold everything I have and given it to the poor.

Patrick: Wow. You like to do a podcast where I don't make any money, so you know, I could do that.

Jeff: Yeah, that's true. I'm, I'm, I'm there and I couldn't believe it. And so I think this ended up being like an hour or two hour. Then his, a friend of his came in that, so these guys have decided to be homeless together. Then they're not together, but they eat, they've each decided to be homeless. They've sold other stuff, left their parents behind.

One of them has a, girlfriend that he got pregnant and have a kid. He left them all because Jesus said, if you love me, you've got to hate father, mother, brother, sister, and sell all that you have and give to the poor. And so these guys have chosen to be homeless and think they're following the true Jesus way.

So that was why we couldn't record.

Patrick: I just remember sitting on the other end. We had like, I must've gotten the wrong time.

Jeff: Well, no, that that was today. That was me today where I messaged you, said, Hey man, I'm on Skype. Oh wait, I'm an idiot. Pacific is two hours behind.

Patrick: Being in the Pacific Northwest, I've always doing math with people though, and many times I do it the opposite way. I, I've canceled many meetings that I don't have to cause I'm like, yeah, I gotta do this other call. And then I'm like, Oh, it's two hours. The other way I always forget though.

Jeff: I told my wife, I was like, Oh, I gotta do this podcast right now. Sorry, I can't. I'm like, Oh wait, nevermind. It's an hour. What do you need? I, I've, I get East and West coast confused. It's just crazy. but, and I don't even know what day it is. This is, this is the life in quarantine.

Patrick: It could be Sunday,

Jeff: Hey, it could be, yeah, it could be.

I'd be in my pajamas still watching the quote live.

Patrick: watching your

Jeff: Yeah. Watching my live

Patrick: You do, you watch your sermon.

Jeff: define, watch.

Patrick: Do you sit down with your family and the service? Yeah.

Jeff: do. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't look at myself. I listened to myself. it's very inception to be watching. Be watching myself and I feel I got to participate. You know, my kids are watching.

Patrick: Oh, for sure.

Jeff: you know, I got them. But yeah, it's brutal. I hate watching myself preach the first week of doing that. I realize, okay, there are a lot of hand motions I don't want to do anymore.

Patrick: That's all right. That's why I don't read my writing, you know? We were going to get to that. I

Jeff: Yeah. Well, yeah. Why are we?

Why? we here? Why are we on Skype? What are we here for? Yeah, man. So here we're here to talk about writing and you have written all kinds of stuff, and you, you sent out a tweet. I mean, you've got books, you, of course, you've got journal articles and blogs and all kinds of stuff that you do.

And, but you put out a tweet the other day about how you have stayed, so productive or trying to stay productive during the pandemic, but before, but before we get into that, let's talk about how you became a writer. How did that happen?

Patrick: Yeah, I mean, my parents, I grew up and they read to me all the  time. So we were a family that loved books. I remember my dad reading Lord of the rings, the Hobbit, Greek mythology, Chronicles of Narnia. I mean, you know, all the classics for any homeschool Christian kid. we did some public school homeschool and Christian school, but so we just really liked literature.

And. So growing up reading, if you, you keep reading. And I, in college I kept doing literature, American lit, British lit, and I just really liked the side of writing that that could be, cause I'm terrible at math and you know, you just kinda gravitate that way. but I really felt like it was in college when I started taking some writing classes, I was getting encouragement that I just realize, I just really love to write, and I ended up majoring actually in journalism at Western Kentucky university. It's a, it's a great program for journalism, and so I ended up doing that just because I thought it was a little more practical. Halfway through. College, I realized I wanted to go towards ministry, but I do remember, just some like creative writing and things that I do that I really enjoyed.

So I think it started very early ...