I’ve never been big on making resolutions and probably worse at rehashing what has been … but I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on where we go from here.

To put it mildly, 2021 threw a few curve balls and caught me off balance. The biggest were to do with my health and having the chemo from end of 2020 / beginning of 2021 spectacularly fail. Fast forward to the end of 2021 and the new chemo plus radiation I had to undergo dragged me down so much I wound up in the hospital for a week with bilateral pneumonia caused by the chemo. I am incredibly sensitive to the chemo drugs and the treatments have been robbing me slowly of the ability to breathe due to inflammation in the lungs over the past few months. I still have two more treatments to go through, although at this point, we’re not sure whether I will be able to do them. We will give it a month and then try again. The health issues and fatigue played havoc with my writing schedule, so I’m well behind on what needs to get done.

But 2021 is now in the past. What did or did not get accomplished is also in the past, and it is time to look forward. And there is so much to look forward to. More than ever, I am certain of my purpose in life … and that is to write books for kids to connect with and enjoy. And, honestly, that is the only thing that is important to me. So while not completely ignoring all other aspects of life, the thing that I will put first is my writing. It is time for me to finish up some of the projects I’ve had on a slow boil and get them finished. No more back burner.

First up is finishing the self edits on Rain Falling on Embers (release date: October 3, 2023), which is book 1 in the Katie McCabe series. Next will be to get it to the editor who will rip it apart and help me make it what it is supposed to be. Rain Falling on Embers explores the question: How do you survive the worst thing that can ever happen? Especially in the past couple of years, kids are facing more upheaval than ever before — where things like school, which has been more of a constant than anything, has also changed dramatically. While circumstances will vary from person to person, Katie McCabe goes through coming to terms with her entire life being turned upside down. She struggles with accepting the changes and it is important for kids to know they don’t have to be perfect through all changes. That it is okay to thrash about trying to make sense of things that simply do not make sense.

The next project that will have my attention is book 1 in the Homeless Myths series, The Secret of the Red Key. I am so excited about this particular series because the storyline speaks to me so clearly. Five homeless kids struggle to survive the streets of Los Angeles and wind up as key players in a battle against mythological creatures to break a curse that will restore a fallen star and give humanity a second chance. It should be an adventure story for the ages.

At the end of 2020, during my reflective period, I came to a decision about my future … and that decision was that in order for me to pursue more completely what I need to do with my life, the day job had to go. It’s a decision years in the making, but the time has come and despite all of the upheaval of 2021, I have kept that goal firmly in mind. While I have not accomplished everything I have wanted toward this goal, it remains in place and I will see it through. The driving force? A few lyrics from Flashdance – What a Feeling spell it out for me. Take your passion and make it happen. In order to do that effectively, I need to simplify life a bit, which means letting go of something I have always looked at as stability and taking a leap of faith.

The picture at the top of this post has a great deal of meaning for me. 2022 is still all glittery and shiny and though we cannot see into the future (or down the path) the bright yellow haze beckons. One of my favorite flowers is the yellow rose, so I love that they are lining the path to the future. The color yellow is primarily associated with spreading happiness and joy, and it symbolizes moving forward with the joy of working on my purpose in life. And I hope to spread happiness and joy to those I meet. And purple has always been my favorite color and purple flowers are said to symbolize success. In this case, the flowers being campanula or bellflowers, the additional meaning of gratitude, constancy, support, and romance are present. Success for me isn’t defined in monetary terms, but whether or not I have achieved what I set out to do. Would I love to have a runaway bestseller? Absolutely. But if the book falls short of my personal mark, the number of sales don’t make it better. Success for me is crafting the book in my head as close as I possibly can. Success is reaching the small goals along the way to the big ones. And joy comes from achieving those things.

So 2022, here you are in all of your shining newness. I have identified my passion and all that is left is to make it happen. Let’s do this thing.

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Up until that point, I either wore Mary Janes with a buckle, or my mom tied my shoes with laces. So I sat down, absolutely certain I would know how to tie my shoes without any assistance, and couldn’t. The shoelace wouldn’t behave. All the times I had watched my shoes being tied, and I couldn’t make my fingers do the right thing at the right time. FRUSTRATING.

I asked my mom, whose patience is legendary, for help and she showed me (loop, swoop, and pull) more times than I can count. I put shoes on my bed and practiced. Dad taught me a different way — two bunny ears. Stupid shoelaces. More than one way to tie them and I failed at both. I despaired. I’d NEVER get to go to school.

I sought out our next door neighbor — she’d be able to teach me — and learned to put my thumbs in the loop and pull. Except when I did that, I pulled the laces straight through and had a knot, but no bow. I experienced a gamut of emotions from despair and frustration to anger and self-loathing because I couldn’t figure out how to do what every other person in my life appeared to do with ease. Once in a while, I’d have a moment of hope dashed by subsequent failure. I’m sure I must have cried more than once, and I know I yelled several times, “I CAN’T DO IT!!!” and a shoe or two might have taken flight.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, there were several factors making this an exceptionally trying lesson to learn. I am dyslexic, though it has rarely impacted my ability to read, it shows up in other forms. I also have control issues fine motor skills which is due to arthritis. The combination perhaps made learning to tie my shoes a more difficult endeavor. BUT no matter how frustrated I became, or how many times I “gave up,” I kept trying. Why? Because my desire for success (the right to go to school) was bigger than my frustration.

Achievement of a goal is attainable only if you are willing to keep failing until you succeed. Succinctly put, failure is critical to success. My ability to tie my shoes is founded on failure after failure that I eventually conquered.

So what is the conundrum surrounding my arch enemy, the shoelace? Time marches on and with it improvements and conveniences have been created. We have shoes with velcro and bungee laces that don’t require tying. Parents (and teachers) everywhere gave a huge sigh of relief. No more do they need to have the patience of a saint while waiting on a kid (or several) to tie their own shoes. No more frustration in attempting to teach a child to tie their own shoes. HOW can this be a bad thing?

Learning to tie your own shoe is a child-level rite of passage. And while it may appear trivial on the surface, it is an important part of our development. Without spelling it out, it teaches us the value of perseverance. It teaches us the value of failure. It teaches us about gut-level determination. And it teaches us about the joy and pride of achievement.

Alternatives to shoelaces are a great boon for parents, but we’re robbing our kids of one of the first critical lessons they might remember. If we clear the path for kids so there are no obstacles that must be overcome to achieve a goal, then what happens when later in life obstacles have them boxed in? They have no experience with failure and learning how to cope with it and turn it into success. We have lost the ability to make an assessment of how much we value the success that we’re striving for and put a price on what it is worth to us to achieve.

Learning to tie your shoes when you are 4-years-old has a MUCH BIGGER pride factor that comes with it because you know you have achieved something great … you have proven you are no longer a baby, but a big kid. Learning to tie your shoes at 7 or 8 is not the same thing because there is the feeling that you should have been able to do it earlier. No one else thinks it is such a great feat either.

I am a fighter. When I see an obstacle in my path, my thoughts are on how to get under, around, or over the obstacle to achieve my goal. I don’t give up. Just as we need to exercise our muscles to keep our body healthy, and exercise our brain to keep our mind sharp, we need to exercise our determination. It’s the Tubthumping concept. If we don’t practice getting up when we get knocked down, we won’t achieve our goals.

It seems a bit contradictory, but we need adversity to achieve success. We need to practice failing to learn how to do things right.

What method finally worked for me? I closed my eyes and made up a story. A bunny running around a tree and diving into a hole (loop, swoop, and pull) to escape a fox, and then closed the door, by pulling the laces tight, so the fox couldn’t get in. Stories reign supreme.

The post The Shoelace Conundrum appeared first on Be the Cat.

I immediately stopped focusing on how poor I felt, and instead focused on how much better I feel compared to 4 years ago. Four years ago I was still facing the fact that while I had a relatively benign form of leukemia and lymphoma, my particular case had just the month before been diagnosed as exceptionally aggressive due to some abnormalities and life no longer lay in front of me like a big ol’ highway. All of a sudden I was on a twisting, turning road where I could only see as far as the next bend.

I am a “Spoonie” now. Even though my cancer is realtively under control with a new treatment protocol, I have been isolated for the past year and a half because the leukemia has attacked my immune system and I now struggle to fight off illness. So last night when the universe stripped away all my remaining spoons, I got a little down. It’s the holiday season, and I do love the holidays. Reading the post from 4 years ago, however, changed my perspective immediately. While yesterday and today it has hurt to move, it is nowhere near as painful as moving was then. Four years ago, I would not have been able to concentrate enough to string a sentence on the page, let alone write a chapter. I felt as if my creativity had been stripped away. Today, I am working on my next Middle Grade project and my excitement is growing. I have recently launched 7th Grade Revolution which has been very positive so far. And my creativity is staying with me. I have a top Middle Grade editor, a former Editorial Director of 20 years for one of the Big Five, excited to work with me on this project, and an agent who is kicking my tail to get enough of the book written we can appropriately forecast when it will be ready for editing. And I am going to do it. The details are flooding in, so I may be in a position where it is difficult to keep up, versus having to pull every scene through like a recalcitrant tooth.

Why am I talking about this on my author blog instead of my cancer blog? Because 4 years later, my dreams are as big as ever, and I’m closer to achieving them now than I ever have been in the past. I realized that The Secret of the Red Key is a huge stepping stone along the path to success.

But the biggest reason is that I want to make sure all kids know never to give up on their dreams. No matter the obstacle, as long as you have a passion for something, follow your passion. Yes, I am still living life beyond normal, where daily naps are essential, and sometimes the bad days frankly suck. But those bad days are temporary, and they aren’t as frequent, and I’m stronger than I was before, and I have already achieved so much, how can I stop now when the dream is firmly in reach?

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Success for some is the number of books they sell. For others it may be how deeply their words touch their readers, or the fanaticism their work invokes. Still others may look at the number of reviews they obtain. We all strive toward this idea of success, but what is it? We each have to decide what success is for us.

For me, success has an element of accomplishment. Did I accomplish what I set out to with the book? First with writing it … did I convey the story I wanted? (Yes!) And once released, is it hitting the readers in the way I thought it would? The sense of accomplishment has a great deal to do with my feelings of success. And the measure of irony to add into the equation, the greater the obstacles overcome on the road, the greater the sense of accomplishment.

Why is that? Why do we feel a greater sense of pride in accomplishing a task that had greater obstacles? In part I think it is because we have proven to ourselves how much we wanted the success. If you fall at the first hurdle and give up, then the desire for the end result must not be so great. But if you’re willing to put everything on the line, and willing to take a tumble, get up, brush yourself off, and strive toward your goal again, then when you do reach your goal it is all the sweeter — though you may still have a few bruises. And so it was in 7th Grade Revolution. A simple moment where the desire to succeed causes James to take measures where he is willing to fall.

     “Let me give it a try. The door must be stuck.” James pulled his blue-green sweater over his head, revealing a pristine, white T-shirt below. He tied his sweater around his waist, did a few arm circles to limber up, then planted his foot on the wall, grabbed the handle and yanked.
     The door budged, but didn’t open.
     Danielle clapped and hooted. “Good job, James.”
     Rhonda raised a finger to her lips. “Remember who might be listening.”
     Danielle covered her mouth with both hands. “Sorry.”
     Rhonda put a hand on Danielle’s shoulder as James readied himself for another try. He put both feet on the wall before pushing the handle down.
     Oh dear, goodness. If the door swung free, he’d end up cracking his head on the concrete. Rhonda hurried closer. James’s muscles bulged and he grunted as he strained to open it.
     Bit by bit the door moved. James kept pulling, and used his legs to give him more power. Then it happened.
     The corner came free and the door swung open. Rhonda put her hands against James’s back to keep him from falling, but the force of his push sent both crashing to the ground.

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