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Sometimes people do horrible things.  Terrible things.  Things you can’t imagine a person would ever do, certainly not someone you know.
Certainly not someone who goes to church, or gives to charity, or both.
Certainly not the person who helped you fix your car, and didn’t expect anything in return.
Certainly not the person who smiles at you every time you see them.

Except that sometimes, otherwise good people do horrible things, like abuse other people.

We all want to believe that abusers are bad through and through–that you could recognize them just by looking at them, or that you could eliminate abuse as a possibility just by seeing someone do nice things.  Believing this makes the world feel safer, because it means no one you know could possibly be an abuser.

Except that’s not how it is.  Most abusers are nice people.  They go to church; they give to charity; they help you fix your car.
They love their children; they love their spouse.
And because of all these things, you close your eyes to the warnings.  You assume the best.  Because that’s what’s reasonable to do.

Except that abuse is an unreasonable circumstance which makes the reasonable thing the dead wrong thing.
Except when you turn that blind eye–when you assume a person with good qualities cannot be an abuser–you give them the shelter they need to just keep on abusing.
Because abusers surround themselves with communities that accept abuse.  That’s what abusers do.

The best thing we can do to make sure we aren’t creating those communities is to educate ourselves about what abuse really looks like (and what it doesn’t look like) and make sure we listen when other people are crying out for help.

There’s this Rembrants song I used to listen to during finals week in college.  It goes like this:

I’ve got these feelings I’m trying to deal with
I’m not sure you understand
If I seem like I’m too preoccupied
To fit into your plans
It’s just that it’s one thing on top of another
And now it’s one too many high
I wonder how many piles of things it takes
To bury me alive

For the first time since graduating, I have the urge to break out that song.  The trouble is, in college, no matter how stressful finals are they are always over in a week.

This mountain of things I have to do?  Is not going to be over in a week.

And when I’m done, I’m going to be buried under MORE responsibility, not less.

And if I fail the class, I can’t just repeat it.

I do not for one moment want to go back to school.  But sometimes being an adult just sucks.

[As a side note, last week I took down all my lj icons that had other people’s intellectual property on them.  It was time.  But now, I find myself with a shortage of ranty icons.  Thank goodness for the two Mandy made me.  Thank you Mandy!  I guess I need to take some angrier photos, instead of all the pretty flower ones.  Some days are just not pretty flower days.]

Today I actually wrote a respectable chunk of new words.  I feel like I’ve gotten actual work done for the first time in a while.  (Because all that stuff I’ve been doing is not work?  I don’t know how that works.) 

But suddenly my endless list of tasks to accomplish is clear.  I’m actually working on a manuscript again.  And it’s actually going well.

Happy, happy.

A friend linked me to her sister’s entry in Mormon Times’ Blogger Brawl today.  I went over to read.  Rachel’s blog sums up my last relationship before I got married so well, I read it twice.  Thanks, Rachel.  Your writing is beautiful.

Did you hear that?  It’s the sound of my long-stalled rewrite getting unstuck.

I have this issue with beginnings.  In the first chapter, I’m trying so hard to establish everything that I have to write it three or four (or seven or ten) times over before I get it right.

In the second chapter, I tend to stall out and lose tension.  I can tell this is boring because the words flow like dried ketchup, and are about as attractive.  Even I am bored.  There’s too much sitting around, too much thinking, not enough character interaction.  I’m well aware that locking my character in a closet by herself for hours is not interesting.  But I haven’t figured out what else to do, so I just keep writing that closet.

In fact, I have spent several weeks not writing that closet.

 But today I found what else to do besides the closet.    That means this rewrite might actually get done sometime this century.    If I can get through chapter three, and the inevitable awkward transition from story setup to full-swing action, which invariably needs to be cut to just swing all the way through.

By chapter four, we’ll be sailing smooth.

Had celebratory ice cream at Denny’s at 1 AM with Drew.
Stressed over the amount of work on Drew’s table.
Gotten in a fight over the amount of work on Drew’s table.
Basecoated most of the minis on Drew’s table.
Got email from my agent saying he’s announcing my deal on twitter. 
Called what feels like everyone I know.
Felt guilty about the people I did not call because I could not stand the thought of the phone any longer.
Announced on lj and facebook.
Sent emails to writing mentors from school.
Wrote half a page.  (An improvement over the nothing I was writing while stressing about the submission.)
Looked at the number of comments on my facebook and lj and wished I could find the energy and time to respond to everyone personally.  (Clearly hasn’t happened yet.)
Wished I had a better story to tell people about how the book sold.  (Here’s the real story: my agent is awesome.  He sold it.  I said yay.  Drew and I were both pretty sure it was going to happen, so our reactions were both something along the lines of "huh!  look at that!")
Went grocery shopping.
Cooked food.
Ate food.
Dealt with a seriously annoying stranger.
Played video games (but not many.  Too much other stuff to do.)
Critiqued Drew’s sculpting.
Mailed commissions off to clients.
Wondered how it is that while things have changed, everything is the same.
Stayed up way to late writing this.
Gone to sleep.  Twice.

Last night we accepted an offer from Christy Ottaviano at Henry Holt to publish SKIPPED.

I want to write more about that, but I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the reality of it.

I’m kind of speechless. 

I’ve been silent this month.  It hasn’t been an unhappy silence, more of a thinky one.

I’ve been thinking about these two contradictory things that I believe.  One is that it’s important to be prudent with resources.  That decisions need to be made with wisdom and care.  That self denial is imperative to personal growth, to accomplishing ones goals.  That we should be conservative in our decisions–especially financial ones.

The other is this: nothing in this world gets handed to you.  So if you want something, sometimes you just have to reach for it, even if you’re not sure how things are going to work out yet.  Achieving worthwhile goals almost always requires risk, sometimes big, terrifying risk. 

I have a wise friend who, in trying financial times, is still spending money as needed instead of folding in on herself, because she believes that if she has confidence that things will be okay, they will be.  I also recently read an essay by John Scalzi, about taking risk and reaching for what you want.  I agree with them both.  But I also spent last year with a tight leash on our spending, being as conservative as I could be with our resources, so that our business could continue to grow. 

And so the war of risk vs responsibility wages on in my head.

This is what I believe: successful risk is tempered by wisdom, and appropriate prudence is seasoned with risk.

Over the years, I’ve taken some big risks.  I made writing a priority at the expense of other opportunities that could have made me more employable.  I turned down opportunities for internships and other experiences, because of the quiet voice in the back of my mind, whispering to me that it was more important for me to write.  I saw many, many friends make the opposite choice, putting their writing aside for a more stable lifestyle.  There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they’re happy.  But for me, the right choice was the risk.

And after the risk, always, came the time for prudence.  I’ve always had to live on a very small budget.  I’ve always had to set aside some things I’d like to do because they would take up too many resources.  There was only room for so much risk in my life.  In order to make that one risk successfully, I had to sacrifice others.

When we started our business, Drew and I took a big risk together.  We didn’t know what was going to happen.  But Drew worked, first part time while he was in school, and then full time when he graduated.  And as the business grew, we tempered that huge risk with conservative choices.  For the first two years we did a lot of saying no.  There were events we didn’t attend because we couldn’t afford the costs.  We watched every penny, because if we didn’t, we’d run out of money and fail.  Our season of risk necessitated a season of conservative choices.   And so we did what we had to do.

These thoughts are arriving because I sense that we are leaving the season of conservative choices and entering another season of risk.  We’ve been talking a lot over the last few weeks about goals and actions, processes and choices.  These next two years are going to be big ones.  There are so many opportunities waiting right in front of us.   So much to do, to get right.  It’s utterly overwhelming.

And yet, I’ve learned some things over the last few years.  I can have the confidence to take the risks, knowing that I can increase our chances of success by following that risk with prudence, with conservative choice.  By being selective about the risks we take.  By moving forward slowly, but deliberately and with faith.

Risk and wisdom.  Confidence and security.

I think the life I want is somewhere in the middle of it all.

For the first year and three quarters of Garden Ninja Studios, we didn’t take a dime out of the business.  We put up a very small amount of startup capital, and then just let the business pay for itself, and begin to accumulate.  We lived off my teaching income for the first year, and then our savings and my some-time shipping assistant gig for the next eight months. 

And then, six months ago, we ran out of money in the family accounts.  We needed to start drawing from the business, and so we did.  April marks the sixth month of our lives paid for entirely through funds from Garden Ninja.

But the amount we needed to pull in order to pay taxes and maintain our lives was larger than the amount that Garden Ninja was bringing in each month.   This was scary, because it meant our business was now shrinking, rather than growing.  So we bit our nails and watched as each month the amount of increase from the business crept closer to the amount of money we needed to live.  Either that gap was going to close, or we would eventually run out of money and have to rearrange our lives.

I did the March accounting today, and discovered that last month we pulled from the business exactly the same amount of money that the business brought in.  That’s AFTER business expenses. 

Which means for the first month ever, we held even. 

I don’t expect we’re going to be there every month, because these things fluctuate.  But this means it’s possible.

And that is cause for celebration.

Today was a good day.  It’s the kind of good day that makes the badness of last week feel better.

I got safety and emissions done on the car, and it took neither four months nor four hundred dollars to pass.  (That would be the numbers from last year and the year before.  I was nervous.)  Also, the brakes no longer squeak.

I thought camping reservation thoughts.  We’re thinking of doing three weekend trips this year.  I need that kind of a break so, so badly right now–the kind that gets me out of my house and away from my email.  I just had to wait to see if the car ate up all the wiggle room in the budget.  And surprise!  It did not!

While waiting for the car, I discovered that Many Lands (the local hole-in-the-wall imported foods store) carries the Indian food spice packets my mother-in-law has been sending us.  Those are heaven.

The IRS discovered that I made a mistake on our taxes and expressed this to me by sending me a big fat check.  Those are the kinds of mistakes I’m glad to hear about.  This also means they’ve been over my taxes and didn’t find any errors besides the one credit I didn’t know we qualified for.  Maybe I know what I’m doing after all. 

(Also, I now have even MORE wiggle room in the budget.  Perhaps I will use it to get new glasses, finally.  Mine are broken and five years old.)

I also received in the mail metal masters for our next mini project, which means the caster I sent it to can meet a deadline (I cannot, in public, express the kind of joy and relief this brings me) and also does very fine work.  That means this project is moving forward.  I like forward motion.

DVDs that I ordered with Amazon gift certificates arrived.

I really, really needed this kind of a good day.  

The end.