Yesterday was not a day that went according to plan. The first turn was when my 14 year old texted from school because he was having a panic attack. I dropped what I was doing and went to help him. I’ve done it before, but this is the first time I’ve had to this school year. We went through more than half the year with no panic attacks at all. A huge improvement over last year when they averaged about one per week. My son’s current life is not his best life, his choices are still dictated by anxiety management. Yet we’re on the path that leads to a better life. Being able to see progress helps us to use this panic attack as an opportunity to examine triggers and coping strategies. We learn from it, we move on.
The second turn was when my 20 year old called me from the phone in the commons area of his school. He couldn’t call me from his cell phone because it wouldn’t stay on for more than two minutes without crashing. The phone is an essential life tool for him as he’s learning to track his own schedule and set his own alarms. The tech at the store confirmed that once a phone starts a crash loop like that, it is pretty much dead. Fortunately we don’t have any data to grieve, just a new phone to learn how to use.
Two turns doesn’t sound like a lot, but each one took several hours and in between them were a myriad of little tasks and errands. It meant the book was not finished yesterday.
But it was finished today. Random Access Memorabilia is done. I’m letting it rest over night. In the morning I’ll go through it one more time, then I upload it to the printer. It seems like a thing worthy of celebration. I rejoiced by immediately getting to work on the next two Schlock books. We’re ganging these two together in an attempt to optimize the process. We’ll see how that goes.
The day wrapped with a trip up the canyon. My 16 year old needed to count stars for an astronomy assignment. It’s an assignment that has been pending for more than a month because on the nights we remembered, there were clouds, and on the nights that were clear, we forgot.
Stars are counted. Book is done. Phone is replaced. Panic is managed and learned from. That’s a good score for two days.