Patience and Perspective in Zone 3
Fiction writers, celebrate your success and accept the failures.
What you see here is a transformer. It’s made to convert electrical current — in this case, from 120 volts to 24 volts. I can’t explain how it works; I only know what it does and that I needed one. Well — apparently I needed one.
I mean, I thought I did. I thought I would put it to use cleverly, solve my problem, accomplish something, and move on with my life. The transformer had other plans, and by hearing about them it’s possible that some of your suffering around your writing may be relieved.
See, it all started when my son was born. (If you’ve been paying attention to my Instagram for the past 9 months, this is not news to you.) My son’s arrival at my house led to a number of upgrades, taken on by me, also known, occasionally, as Mr. Fix-It. (It is primarily in my mind that I am “known” by this moniker. OK, to be honest it is exclusively in my mind that I am known by this moniker.) One of the jobs I took on was to upgrade the thermostats in our house. They worked OK, but we wanted Wi-Fi enabled thermostats so we could adjust the temperature in rooms with our smartphones. We thought this would be handy for when our boy was napping, and also when we were away, we could save energy by turning the heat down, and things like that. And, yes, we Airbnb our place at the…
