It's been a week.
Let's start backward. I was thinking this morning about the Resurrection, in particular about that first breath. The first breath. Whether you believe it happened or not, the world has not been the same since.
I'm a little off my axis these days, overwhelmed with this and that, trying to keep all the balls in the air. I used to have a pretty set pattern when I threw myself into a project, ignoring my health, eschewing shaving and showering in the name of focus, and setting aside personal connection as a distraction. Everyone would be there when I rowed the boat back to shore. We could rekindle and reconnect. That was my thinking.
But I've been doing books a long time now. If anything, my focus on the story has increased. But it's only lately that I got tired of letting myself go in the name of creativity and putting stories about the past take precedence over people here right now. So that's the juggling. Those are the balls in the air. I am trying to be in the here and now, shave and shower and sweat a little, and love the one I'm with.
People do this all the time. It's not that hard. It's called balance. This is a trait that I have never, not once, possessed. I am completely unbalanced.
But it's new to me and my introvert ways. So it's a struggle. Focus on the writing. Focus on the fitness (at some point in life, with good friends literally dropping dead from sudden physical issues, this is a real thing). Focus, above all, on loving the one I'm with.
And our wonderful sons.
But Calene had a little mammogram scare this week. One extra band of mutant cells, of a whole new variety than were used to dealing with, were all the shock we needed to turn the week sideways. But that turned out to be a false positive, which is amazing news anytime you receive it.
I mean, way more amazing than you can ever know. Takes your breath away. Tears of happiness in my eyes walking out of that doctor's office.
Then I woke up Friday morning — Good Friday — which has traumatized me ever since working on Killing Jesus. Once you really dig into the amazing pain someone endures during crucifixion, it will forever leave you scarred. This is not a religious observation. Crucifixion was the most heinous form of murder in the world for a thousand years. Reliving that in my head this weekend each year stops me short.
So I woke up Friday morning delighted in having a full day to do nothing but write. No practice with my runners. No pressing obligations. Just me and my laptop, laying down a few thousand words on a project I've been researching for a year.
I go in my office, sit down at my desk, place my venti Starbucks far to the right. Someplace where I can't knock it over.
But in the process of placing that large paper cup of coffee on a very nice leather coaster that I pinched from the Four Seasons in Budapest, I faltered. My mind is in a million different places. The entire scalding hot contents of that black dark roast no room coffee floods my desk. The tsunami rolls over the laptop keyboard and then keeps going, dripping like a waterfall onto the carpet.
I did an immediate cleanup and a Google search of how to deal with spilling coffee on a laptop. Unplugged the power, turned off the laptop, threw a big terry cloth towel over the whole mess to soak up every last drop. Then, heeding instructions to turn the laptop upside down and let it dry for at least two days, I leaned way back in my chair and tried to breathe.
I was wrecked. Three-fourths of a new book were gone. A year of work. A completed edit of another book, also gone. Kindle research library, gone. Photos and scraps of ideas and a whole bunch of other stuff in that big file folder I call "Filing Cabinet," gone.
I hadn't backed up anything in a month.
I have a small secondary computer for travel. Have not used it for months because I actually preferred the larger one. Calene now uses the smaller one. It's hers.
But I powered it up. Watched my user screen. One by one, that blessed iCloud restored every document. The books live.
I still need to buy a new laptop. This one is far too small for daily use. But in a week of confusion, that was a nice moment.
Good Friday, indeed.