So you filled your hands

Or you are serving as the necessary counterweight to people for whom this is a problem?

(I have to be glad that I don't really have a Zen-themed icon right now.)

I seem to remember that theme was always one of the things in high school English that gave me lots of trouble when we had to identify it. And it's only been very recently -- within the last year, probably -- that I think I've been able to sit down with a theme in mind and write a short story, never mind a longer one. It really does make some things easier, though, to know your guiding principle from the start rather than suddenly realizing you have one at all about three-quarters of the way through.