Author Archives: Francesca

Expectations

Well, I think it’s safe to say that my first week as a self-employed (or soon-to-be-self-employed-but-currently-only-getting-my-crap-together-and-trying-to-assemble-a-routine) artist-type person has not gone precisely as I anticipated. I think it’s largely due to the enormous walking boot that has taken up residence on my left foot, and for which I don’t even have a really good story. It’s honestly just that I was walking down a hallway and one step I was fine, and the next was agony.

So instead of getting up every morning and spending a good hour or two chipping away at housekeeping chores and projects before spending the day in the studio, I am struggling to get up and around and bathed and dressed and whatever basic stuff is part of the morning. As a result – and because it’s up a set of spiral stairs – I haven’t spent a lot of time in the studio this week. Instead, I’ve taken up residence in my new office-in-progress (downstair and boot-accessible), where I’ve actually done a fair amount of photo work, administrative minutiae, research, and computer clean-up. At least I’m being somewhat productive. But this boot can’t come off my foot soon enough.

As proof, I offer this:

This is not the actual bug I discovered moseying up the sheers in my living room, but it was identically revolting and skin-crawling-inducing. Had I not been incapacitated by the walking boot, I would immediately have launched into my version of The Dance of HorrorTM worthy of the outtake reel from So You Think You Can Dance? Instead, I was reduced to calling my poor long-suffering husband on the phone and breathlessly relaying to him the horrifying news that there was a BUG on the CURTAINS in the LIVING ROOM! After assuring him that my near hysteria was not, in fact, a request for him to come home to deal with this emergency, I proceeded to give him play by play commentary on the path of the bug up the curtains, my attempts to get the vacuum cleaner into the living room while hampered by both a phone and a walking boot, my trepidation at getting within jumping distance of the bug (its jumping, not mine), and my difficulty in plugging in the vacuum without electrocuting myself because I refused to actually take my eyes off the interloper.

Weapon readied, I sidled closer to the window… at which point the bug fell off the curtain and onto the floor. Screaming (which set off all the dogs), I used my elbow to turn on the vacuum (because I didn’t want to drop the phone – duh) while I brandished the extension wand at the creature. The sound and thump it made traveling up the hose was so disgusting that I dropped the wand and screamed again and jumped up in the air, forgetting I was wearing The Boot. My landing was less than graceful – I staggered, nearly knocking over the entire side table next to the sofa. The resulting adrenaline rush left me nauseous for nearly 10 minutes.

So… The Boot needs to go and I need to get on with my life in the studio. Here’s hoping that’s soon!!

Highly recommended

So, this past weekend, I spent a lot of time (too much time) dealing with this:

Yeah. Again.

Just for the record, I think hackers need to be strung up, or forced to clean my kitchen floor with their tongues, or made to spend the rest of their miserable lives cooking food for homeless people. Or all of the above.

So, thanks to my good friend Daniel Espinoza at Grow Development, I was quickly put in touch with some truly terrific resources that had my site back up (and backed up) and “hardened” and otherwise wrapped in an impenetrable titanium bubble in a matter of hours. In fact, the service I got from these vendors was so stellar that I had to pass them along in case you ever (God forbid) find yourself in a similar situation.

1. Securi Security – $90 gets you a year’s worth of automatic malware scanning at regular intervals and manual scanning whenever you want. In addition, it loads a plug-in for WordPress sites that “hardens” the CMS backend by adding several totally invisible features, all of which make it incredibly difficult for hackers to break in. It keeps an audit log of all the activity on your site, so you’ll know if any attempts are made to hack your site in the future. And finally, if you ever do get malware or funky script on your site in spite of all the security – or “cloaked” pages, which is what this latest hack was in my case – they’ll scan and repair your site in a matter of hours. In my case, it was less than two hours from the time I signed up – on a Friday night. Impressive. And for a rookie techy like me, worth every single penny.
2. BlogVault - The first time my site got hacked, the whole thing went down and it took me nearly a week to rebuild all my posts, re-upload photos, and customize the site theme. It was a significant pain in the neck. And while you would think  that would have been enough to send me running for the nearest site backup plugin, the truth is that my initial research showed a simple, free plugin didn’t exist. And I got busy… and, well, you know. I am so grateful that this time around, the hackers didn’t take the site down – but it was the final warning. I signed up for BlogVault’s monthly service ($9 for a single site) and I got turnkey backup and restore in minutes. As in “minutes.” Again, for a rookie techy, this was a big deal. And because of all the new security features I’d just loaded, the test restore didn’t work properly – so I sent their customer service line an e-mail (on a Friday night). Not only did I have a response in my inbox when I woke up Saturday morning – with the problem fixed and the test restore working perfectly – but the email included a nice, personal compliment on an aspect of my site that meant they’d gone out and actually looked at it. Real people, fast response, and a seamless, nearly instantaneous restore of your entire site if you ever need it.
3. Last but not least, I signed up for LastPass – free, unless you want to use it on your phone too, in which case it’s $12 a year. LastPass will automatically generate totally incomprehensible, complex passwords for every site where you have a user name and password, and then store it for you. But wait! There’s more! You can save each site to your LastPass vault, and create settings that will autofill that information for you next time you visit the site. The only thing you have to remember is the LastPass password. This took the most time of the whole process – visiting every site, generating and changing the passwords, saving the sites to the Vault, lather rinse repeat. As long as it took, it was worth it.

So there you go – I hope you never, ever lose your site down the rabbit hole to a bunch of hackers. If you want to reduce the chances, sign up for these services and rest a little easier.

(Note: Apart from the fact that I am a brand-new customer of all these vendors, they don’t know me from Adam. These are – of course – unpaid endorsements.)

Just breathe

The last few weeks have felt a little frenetic – the run-up to actually tendering my resignation was more stressful than I anticipated. I’d decided to wait until after Holy Week to notify the church, since I didn’t want anything to distract from the week’s celebrations, but since I’d already made the decision it proved to be harder to wait than I expected. Once the word was out, my brain began the process of uncoupling from the work, and I’m struggling to stay focused. I tend to become emotionally invested in everything I do; it seems to be part of my work ethic that I take it all very seriously. So having decided to leave, my brain has begun to withdraw the tendrils it sank into the soil of this particular enterprise and seek out the next place to plant itself. The problem is that I’m not quite done with it in the place that I am – and will be through May 11. I have need of it, and it doesn’t want to cooperate. Like a rebellious teenager, it’s off checking out the next cool thing (and there are cool things coming, to be sure), when what I really need for it to do is focus and clean its room, because there’s a house showing in a few weeks.

Or something. Maybe that’s a bad analogy.

On the other side of things, I’m genuinely exhausted. My health issues – most of which are stress related, or the result of having taken spectacularly bad care of myself for a prolonged period – don’t seem to be resolving themselves easily. I had long and truly wonderful conversations last week with two people who matter to me, and in both instances, we agreed that what I really need is a season of rest. “Rest” is hard for me – that rebellious brain of my mine dislikes downtime in any form, and is constantly picking away at one thing or another – so “rest” will be a relative term. But in addition to being a little selfish, and taking up only those things that feed my spirit, it will include (I hope) more sleep, especially more disciplined sleep. I have not had a good schedule for so long that part of the recovery process I described in my last post will include just re-establishing some important disciplines and routines. Good, fresh, simply prepared food is high on the list – I have gained a frightening amount of weight in two years. Moving, becoming active – I hesitate to write “exercise” because I tend to avoid that like the plague. I just feel too crappy and sore all the time. But if I can just move more – walk a little or garden – it will be a start. More time with God, more quiet, more of simply being still and hearing from him.

Some basic housekeeping, on a regular schedule. My house is appalling right now – it’s embarrassing.

So my temptation is to race from my current stressors straight to a new set – because something must be terribly wrong if I am not busy, busy, busy! I need to take time and make space and go slowly, learn to be present in the moment and not so future-focused. That’s going to be the biggest challenge for me.

I did make some time to work on a few new photos, using the stunning yellow orchid I recently bought for my living room. And I am really looking forward to doing more of that.

Too long… and too much

It’s been too long since I last posted, and – frankly – there’s just been too much going on. By “too much” I literally mean that I overextended myself – too many obligations, not enough time or space for rest, and way too few opportunities to feel good or effective in the things I was setting my hands to. Add to that an increasingly upset doctor who finally, in exasperation, told me that I was in danger of killing myself with stress, and a devastating blow-up conversation with someone very dear to me, and God brought me to a screeching stop, face to face with the unsightly mess that had become my life.

Thankfully, my health issues are not life-threatening, provided I address them. Everything else is slightly more complicated. But after weeks of prayer and conversation with my dear husband and people whose opinions I value, I’m making some drastic and rather immediate changes in my life. (It is very appropriate that our pastor is beginning a new sermon series tomorrow called “The New Normal”!!) I honestly don’t know how it’s all going to come together, but I’m stepping out in faith and trusting God to show me each step when it’s time to take it. Here’s the rundown:

1. I quit my job. Really. Last day is May 11. I don’t have anything else lined up and actually haven’t started looking. I loved the idea of this particular job but it presented some unique challenges that, in the end, I was not able to overcome. Plus, the stress was unhealthy for me. When I felt like I had permission to leave, I tendered my resignation.
2. I am stepping back from some areas of ministry that fall into the category of “things I can do but I’m not necessarily meant to do.” Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I should.
3. I’m cashing out my very tiny 401(k) and using the money to give myself a couple of months to focus on the creative aspects of my life. I felt like a creative focus was something God was leading me to last summer – and in fact had a great conversation about it with a friend – and then promptly allowed myself to get distracted with other things. (See #2 above.) I’m going to take some time to get caught up in that area.
4. I’m also going to use that time to re-establish some important disciplines in my life, things like consistent time with God, eating food that’s good for me, regular exercise, sufficient amounts of sleep, and time with my family and friends. These things are hugely important, and I’ve neglected them in the last two and a half years.

So that’s the plan, at least as it stands right now. I’m looking forward to what God does with the time – it feels like I’ve come through a season of intense pruning, and the pruning is probably not completely finished, either. Though it’s usually painful in the moment, it always results in new fruit, so what’s to come will undoubtedly be about growth and new direction. But honestly, I feel a little bit like someone who’s had a serious illness or major surgery – I am desperate for a time of rest and recovery and pressing in to hear from God, and I am so grateful for a husband who supports me in this. It’s all exciting, sobering, and a little scary. Prayers gratefully welcomed as I step out into this new phase of my life!

Ten Truths

As I’ve mentioned, I’m participating in a year-long creativity exploration called Beyond Layers hosted by the amazing Kim Klassen. It’s primarily about working with photographs, but sometimes she throws out something more personal for us to work with – like this morning. This morning’s challenge is to share ten truths about ourselves. Here are mine:

1. I am married to a man who treats me far better than I deserve. He is a daily example of what an unconditional servant-hearted love looks like. One day, I hope to become the woman he sees me capable of being.
2. I have a daughter who holds my heart in a way that no one else ever will. Our relationship is complicated, and I don’t see as much of her as I would like, but she is moving forward in her life in in ways that give me great hope.
3. I am far more likely to see the glass as half empty instead of half full. I’m working on that.
4. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to finish college when I was able.
5. I used to be a political junkie and had to give it up because it was turning me into a rage junkie. I couldn’t stand being that angry all the time.
6. There are few things I love better than a beautiful, simple meal with a nice glass of wine and a few good friends. I am fortunate that I get to do this fairly often.
7. One of the things I love better than #6 is musical worship with my church family. There is literally nothing like making music for God with people whose hearts are completely focused on him. It’s transformative. Fortunately, I get to do this fairly often too!
8. I’m a woman with a past, and I am deeply grateful I was spared the worst of the many possible consequences of that past. I have to be very intentional about accepting God’s grace and forgiveness every day, because I am far more likely to continue beating myself up over it all than I am to live fully in the freedom he’s given me. (This may have something to do with #3 above.) I’m working on this too. (See this post for my word for 2012.)
9. I believe God created me to be creative, and I spent a huge chunk of my life running away from this fact (for a whole host of complicated reasons). I’m grateful to have found jewelry making and photography as things to be passionate about – in very different ways, those two things feed my creative spirit.
10. I don’t take very good care of myself. This probably has a lot to do with #8 above, and I am trying to be intentional this year about changing that. It’s hard for me not to see it as being selfish, though.

Thanks, Kim, for the opportunity to explore these ten things!