Yeah. That’s been me for the past few days.

I move so fast, and do so much, that doing practically nothing but rest and drink fluids and take medicine leaves me feeling weirder than probably the germs did. I’m feeling better physically today (although still not 100%), but my brain feels like Rip Van Winkle. Like I took a nap and missed 20 years. Or maybe Sleeping Beauty, since I’d look weird with a beard.

What happened while I was out?

Some work stuff happened. And except for one thing that really required my attention, it all went okay without me. Maybe not as smoothly as it would’ve if I could’ve helped, but the building didn’t set on fire without my presence.

I got the cover for Once Upon a Clockwork Tale. Which filled me with squee, even in my sick and addled state. Then a couple days later, I got the galleys and a new release date (June 1, 2013). More squee.

Mothers Day happened, and I mostly missed the actual day, being mostly unconscious for it.

I did go to Kings Island, which was a probably mistake in hindsight, but worth it for the bonding time I got with Maddy. We are at about the same level of “thrill preparedness” so we were ride buddies for the whole day. This is the first year she’s tall enough to ride basically anything in the park. We both rode Flight of Fear together for the first time. I think she screamed through the entire ride—and it’s a pretty long ride. But she told the teens in the car behind us she loved it after it was all over. And Josh got to bring the Girlfriend, which made him ecstatically happy. It was a wonderful day, despite the chilly temps and longer lines than we expected. 

So, the walking pneumonia or whatever I ended up with was worth it.

The thing is, I missed a big chunk of my life before, in my twenties, because I was caught up in Drama. Not the theatrical arts (that would’ve at least been fun). Drama in the relational/emotional/psychological sense. Here’s the secret they don’t tell you on the soap operas and tv shows, kiddos: when you’re caught up in Drama, you’re missing your real life.

I mostly don’t do that anymore, and for that I’m immensely grateful. I’m still tempted to court Drama from time to time, but honestly? My real life has gotten so rich and interesting, it’s not really that appealing anymore.

Perhaps this is what growing up is like.

I recently read a tweet that described Feng Shui as “The practice of creating a deeper spiritual connection between your furniture and your OCD.” Still, if the room is supposed to be where you rest and rejuvenate at the end of the day, and enjoy sexytimes with your spouse, and it’s about as welcoming as one of those Flash “welcome” pages circa 2001, then you have a problem. If aligning your OCD and your furniture fixes that, well, call it what you will.

Just like with a web redesign, things usually get worse for a short period before they get better. Also like a web redesign, you usually find stuff you wish you hadn’t. Really, is the crud you invariably behind your bed or dresser better or worse than some of the code you’ve discovered over the years?

Sometimes, you break things. Almost always, you toss a lot of stuff that you didn’t really need. But there’s something very satisfying about a freshly cleaned and properly arranged room layout. Not satisfying enough to make me want to dive into a website redesign to recapture the feeling, but still.

What are you putting off because you’re scared of the scary stuff you’ll uncover? What overwhelming project will be worth the work, if you can just find the motivation to get started?

Hoping you find a path through the clutter this week.

There have been a couple different situations at work and in my personal life where I have been avoiding tough conversations and tough decisions. The thing about avoiding hard things is, those things you’re avoiding are almost always tangled up in things you actually want to do. So you end up finding yourself buried under an avoidance avalanche made up of the stuff you’re intentionally avoiding, and the increasingly sizable pile of “stuff I have to avoid in order to continue avoiding other things.”

It gets kind of crazy in short order.

Blowing yourself free of an avoidance avalanche is a tricky business. The fastest way is usually to just do the original stuff you set out to avoid. Just suck it up, and do it despite your misgivings. Have the hard conversation with your spouse or boss. Answer the tough question you’ve been dodging. Make the difficult decision you’ve been putting off too long.

The immediate results are often chaotic. But chaos can be a source of energy, if focused properly. And if nothing else, it frees you up from those secondary avoidance items. It frees you to do the things you would do, and could do, if not for [THING I AM AVOIDING LIKE THE PLAGUE].

So, I blew up some avoidance avalanches in the last week or two, and things have gone tumbling. I’ve been trying to roll with the momentum, and not get crushed. It’s been fairly exhausting, especially the “doing the hard stuff” part. But I also don’t think I realized how much stress I was experiencing from just the pressure of trying to hold back things that were, in retrospect, inevitable. That stress is gone, and with it the slow, painful sapping of my energy as I had to divert increasing amounts to the monumental task of trying to hold back time.

If you’ve been avoiding something, ask yourself if you’ve reached that point where the cost of avoidance is greater than the cost of just doing it. It’s a point that sneaks up on you. I know it did me.

Today was one of those days when it feels like every hour is a row of crochet that I realize just as I finish it, I’m going to have to pull it out and redo because of some stupid careless mistake. It’s my third day in a row of feeling like I’ve been crocheting for 12 hours and the damn blanket isn’t any longer.

I am not in a good mood.

But my daughter did read me not one, but two stories she’s written, because she wants to be just like her mom. And my surly teenage son was uncharacteristically sweet. Chris made soup and epic grilled cheeses for dinner.

And then there’s that open window, silently reminding me that winter is finally over. Quietly announcing my favorite time of year is here. The frogs and crickets are singing, singing of spring and campfires and dew-wet grass at dawn instead of crunchy frost.

We’ll try again tomorrow.

I don’t pretend to understand what goes through that kind of mind. I don’t particularly care whodunnit. My immediate reaction was to find out if the two people I personally knew were running were okay (they were). And then to get across the Ohio to my husband and kids as expediently as possible.

It would not be appropriate for me to discuss some of the crazy stuff going on in my work life right this moment. But let me just say that in the last week, I have had more than sufficient cause to understand why a just God would think just washing the planet clean of us all would be for the best. We are fallen. Deeply, fallen creatures.

But we are also made in the image of a loving and courageous God. When you hear that runners, already spent from 26 grueling miles, pushed further on to donate their own blood at hospitals? I think you have to acknowledge that we are both. We have both the potential for miraculous, brave good and the potential for unspeakable evil.

We are both.

Maybe it’s wrong that I think back to a silly television show about fairy tales in the real world. Maybe that’s as much an indictment of our society, or my own spiritual poverty, as anything else. But I keep thinking of local-kid-made-good Josh Dallas, “Prince Charming” on Once Upon a Time, speaking regretfully about the mistakes of his “real world” persona while holding fast to another, nobler identity that is equally real to him.

We are both.

I have to believe that this world is not all there is. I have to believe that there is more even to this world than meets the eye. I have to believe that something bigger than me, better than random chance, is guiding things.

I spent the evening hugging my kids as much as they’d let me, and just sitting on my deck. The weather was glorious. The sun took forever to set, as if the earth itself knew we needed a longer-than-usual respite from the dark. As if Creation knew we needed a little more light today to combat the darkness. The frogs and cicadas were near-deafening in their song. The stars were clear and bright, sprinkled around a luminous crescent moon in a velvet sky.

The few times I glanced at Facebook and Twitter, I saw a mix of reactions. Anger, sarcasm, compassion, bravery, cynicism. The whole spectrum was on display. I mostly stayed in the real world.

I thought briefly about retreat. About homeschooling the kids, planting a garden, working from home and building the obligatory bomb shelter. With what I do for a living, it would be easy to telecommute. I have a good professional reputation. I live in a rural area. I come from sturdy redneck stock. I could do it.

But when we picked up the Boy, he was flush with excitement from getting accepted to the local vocational school program. He’s not worried about the Big Bad Out There. And I don’t want to be the one who makes him afraid. Because for every awful thing I’ve encountered on my own adventures away from our small hometown, there have been ten wondrous things. I won’t be Aunt Beru, keeping him stuck on the moisture farm out of fear. We are both, and he deserves to find that out for himself.

We are both, and that is terrifying and encouraging. We are both, so it’s really up to us to decide which side of our nature we nurture. Do we feed fear and anger and hate, or do we reach for the light? Do we lean on love?

I want to be in the light. I know I’m both, but I want to push towards the better angels of my nature. I may be both, but I know which side I want to win, in the end.

Peace be with you.

Also, I’m most decidedly not good at everything. I’m terrible at making French toast, which given my last name, is embarrassing. I also can’t roller skate backwards, despite numerous attempts to learn and to my unending aggravation.

RULES:

1. Display the award logo on your blog. (See sidebar.)
2. State SEVEN facts about yourself. (See below.)
3. Link back to the person who had already nominated you. (See above.)
4. Nominate seven other bloggers who deserve this award. (This one is kinda tough. I don’t follow as many blogs as I used to do.)
5. Notify each of the bloggers of your nomination. (Alrighty. Will do.)

Seven facts about me:

1. My first job out of high school was working at a 250 watt AM radio station in Corydon, Indiana. A half-dozen sixty watt light bulbs had more power than we did. And probably a bigger audience. 
2. I played the Wicked Witch of the West in the sixth grade production of The Wizard of Oz. I make an amazing 12-year-old, green-skinned, hydrophobic villain.
3. I moved to Japan three months pregnant, and flew across the Pacific “space available” with a toddler (the aviation equivalent of hitchhiking). Don’t attempt this without 200 Marines to help you carry your gear. When sober, Marines are exceptionally polite and helpful people who call even a dorky twentysomething “Ma’am.”
4. If I were ever in the Witness Protection Program, and I got to pick where they sent me, I’d choose New Orleans. Of course, this means that now if I ever am in the WPP, I can’t go to New Orleans, because that’s the first place the villains would look. DAMMIT. They’ll probably send me to freaking Florida.
5. I won my school’s science fair, despite fundamentally sucking at science and having no interest in the subject whatsoever. My project was a scale model of a space station, which my dad, a union sheet metal worker, fabricated out of stainless steel. I did contribute the impressive black backdrop dotted with white Christmas lights.
6. I would founder myself on 7 Day Chocolate Croissants from Dollar General, given the opportunity. OMG. Light, flaky croissants filled with chocolate pudding should not be available that cheap.
7. For a period of three or four years, I refused to buy shoes with tied laces in an effort to save time. I had velcro, zippers and elastic as alternate options.

I am passing along the award to the following worthy bloggers:

1. Marian Allen – There’s no rule saying I can’t re-award the person who sent it to me in the first place. So there. I hereby absolve her from having to do this all over again. LLAP, my fellow Trekker friend.
2. Carol Preflatish – Another Quills & Quibbler who writes romantic suspense. Sweet, warm person.
3. Alison Hector – Christian, blogger, and tough cookie with a beautifully tenacious worldview.
4. ML Barnes – Another Indy-indie author, Christian and fellow houseplant assassin.
5. Charles Robinson – Carolinian code poet, fellow introvert, and aspiring chef.
6. Leesa Cross Smith – Fellow Sojourner, scribbler of delightfully gritty short stories, editor of WhiskeyPaper.
7. Jessica Nunemaker – Writer, editor-in-chief and maid-of-all-work at Little Indiana, an awesome blog highlighting the joys of small town Hoosiertopia.

Apparently, I just fundamentally don’t get the whole “relax and go with the flow” thing.

It really was a relaxing trip, aside from my speedy completion. The weather was gorgeous. The water depth was ideal. There were no bugs to be seen, although I did spot two wild turkeys, a couple of Canadian geese, a red-headed woodpecker, one saucy duck and about 5,000 sunning turtles. However, this morning I woke up feeling like I’d been in an arm wrestling match with The Rock. OWWWWW…

My right shoulder, in particular, is killing me. (I’m left-handed, so my right side always gets the worst of it whenever I let myself get really out of shape and then attempt to do something strenuous.)

So I guess this means I need to get back on the fitness wagon. Otherwise, the next beautiful day, I’m not going to think “how fast can I get a boat on the water?” I’m going to be thinking “How badly am I going to regret putting a boat on the water?”

And that just sucks.

As a parent, I struggle with seeing my kids wrestling with that same dynamic tension.

Back in the middle of January, I changed web hosting companies. I’ve done that a number of times. I am, in fact, a web professional. For a few years, I built websites from the ground up. So it’s not like I’m a total noob when it comes to hosting and domains. In the process of moving this site and getting www.katinafrench.com set up on the new host, I forgot one small, yet-ever-so-crucial detail.

I forgot to re-forward the only email address I’d provided my publisher.

In an attempt to seem more professional a few years ago, I’d created an @thatdarnkat.com email account, which I’d forwarded to my usual Gmail account. To be fair, I had at least actually recreated that email account on the new host. I just hadn’t remembered to set up the forward.

So as the previously-planned launch date for Once Upon a Clockwork Tale neared, I got increasingly nervous as I heard nothing whatsoever from my publisher.

I sent out an email, full of pride and excitement, to my beta readers for Bitter Cold, announcing that I was publishing a short story prequel, and offering them a free copy. When none of them responded, I assumed they were bored with the project, and tired of hearing from me about it.

When February came and went and I still hadn’t heard anything from Echelon, I sent a couple of emails. When I didn’t get any response to those, I started to get angry.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Jay Kelly at Social Media Explorer, asking if something was up. He’d sent an email to my @thatdarnkat.com address and hadn’t heard back. It wasn’t the first email he’d sent to that address that had gone unanswered, but since he knew I’d just started a pretty challenging new job, he assumed I was just swamped.

Suddenly, light dawned.

I went to my hosting account. There, in the webmail I’d never checked, were all the emails sent to that address for the last six weeks. Including excited responses from my beta readers, and an email from my publisher explaining that she’d had a serious health situation, and was pushing back the release.

I felt like the worst person on Earth.

The takeaway? Give people a little more credit. Don’t assume that just because you have a lot of experience doing something, that you can’t still make a dopey mistake. When you make a dopey mistake, brush yourself off, forgive yourself, and move on.

So… in short:

• Yes, Once Upon a Clockwork Tale has been delayed, for reasons that aren’t anyone’s fault.
• It should be released VERY SOON.
• As soon as I know an exact date, I’ll tell everyone.
• Beta readers: I suck. You rock. If you don’t have a free copy of Big Teeth, let me know. I’ll send you one in the appropriate format for your eReader.

Pinocchio is a story about the search for soul in which the soul is born of your own good deeds. It posits a child who is a moral and spiritual tabula rasa, a blank slate. And Pinocchio is a very blank slate, as easily influenced by total strangers as he is his maker and provider. Bad deeds lead to physical destruction. Selfless ones eventually trigger a metamorphosis, wherein a wooden puppet becomes a real boy.

The Velveteen Rabbit is a profoundly different tale of the search for the soul. The rabbit gains a soul, not by doing anything–in fact, it lacks any kind of agency–but rather, by being loved.

What would it mean to be a soul formed by love, rather than your own actions? My actions form my character, and character is important. But it’s not identity. It’s not core. It’s not what is most real, although it is real, and it is my most vital interface with others.

My soul has been formed by love. It’s been deformed by indifference.