Day: May 3, 2009

Success and criticism

“I did it myself!” Patch announced.
I looked down at him. He was wearing his Sunday dress shirt and the buttons were already buttoned. Maneuvering those tiny buttons into the tiny holes is a major accomplishment for six-year-old fingers. Another major accomplishment is making sure that the buttons and holes are aligned correctly. Patch had managed the first, but not the second. His shirt hung crookedly on his front. I looked down into his bright blue eyes. He was so pleased with his accomplishment. I had no heart to criticize, to steal the joy of his triumph and replace it with embarrassment. I hugged him tight and told him what a great job he had done. Then I let him wear his crooked shirt to church. He never noticed the mistake. Next Sunday when I hand him his shirt, I’ll casually drop the hint that buttons and holes are easier to line up if he starts from the bottom instead of the top. He’ll be set up to succeed again, rather than doubting his capabilities because of the prior week’s failure. Sometimes it is far more important to let people bask in the joy of a difficult task accomplished, than to tell them how to do it better next time.

Retrospective

One of the interesting things about keeping a regular blog is that I can play the “one year ago today” game. It gives me a fragmentary look at how my life has changed over the year. Today I decided to take things a little further and I year hopped all the way back to the beginning. Five years ago this month I started this blog. That was back before most people knew what the word “blog” meant. In internet terms my blog is ancient. My life has changed drastically since then.

One year ago today, I was enjoying a visit from my younger sister and her two kids. I was preparing Hold on to Your Horses for print, and frequently terrified that I was going to do something wrong. I was also sorting out how to manage working from home without compromising on the amount of attention I gave to my kids. (I ended up compromising the amount of attention I gave to household chores and resource management instead.) I also stopped writing fiction for a year.

Two years ago today, I had not yet taken on the layout and design work for books. I was helping two kids with a particularly rough school year, one child with difficult learning challenges, and the fourth child with potty training. I’d just sold my first story and recently written Hold on to Your Horses. I was very focused on house and kids.

Three years ago today, we were in the midst of preparing for our first ever Schlock book shipping. I was trying to wrap my head around the logistics of shipping thousands of books at once. I was also chasing a toddler and preschooler constantly. Keeping them safely occupied was a daily challenge. But I didn’t mind the chaos, because we’d just had the first evidence that Howard being a cartoonist could actually pay our bills.

Four years ago today, I was very much focused on making do with very few resources. We were living month to month. We never had more than three months’ worth of bills stashed away, and frequently it was far less than that. Howard was scrambling to take corporate cartooning contracts to make ends meet. I spent lots of time gardening, canning, and figuring out how to entertain/educate the kids without spending any money. I spent most Saturday mornings combing through garage sales trying to find bargains on things that we needed and things that could be stashed away for Christmas.

Five years ago today, I had not even started this blog yet. I started it about a week later. Howard was still working long hours for Novell, then coming home to work even more hours on Schlock Mercenary. He was also traveling for Novell once or twice each month. I managed the kids and the house solo much of the time. I had an infant, a preschooler, a kindergartener, and a third-grader. I did not know that we only had four months before Howard would leave Novell forever.

Five years can make quite a difference.