Today is Friday the 13th. Typically this day is the day when bad things happen or you have bad luck. I can't really say I've had that type of luck with Friday the 13ths, but maybe I've just forced past ones out of my memory.
The day started simple enough, nothing out of the ordinary. I woke up entirely too early and realized I had an hour left to sleep. Maybe this is when Friday the 13th kicked in. This would be one of those moments where, if I was on that Bahamas episode of Scrubs, I'd lift up my Brady Bunch Tiki Man and say "wanana!" Of course I'm not. Not that it's going to stop me. Wanana!
Long story short, why in the world don't I wake up earlier and give myself time to actually relish my mornings instead of racing through them? I had a perfectly lovely morning of sitting on the patio with my book and sipping a cup of tea. It was awesome and quiet and perfectly pleasant. (BTW, if you're into slightly darker fantasy historical type books, I would highly recommend the Gemma Doyle books. Just finished the first in the series, "A Great and Terrible Beauty" and omg...)
One of the first phone calls I received this morning at work was from a client who is having an event on Monday. She just wanted to verify everything. (Note: when working with an event planner or caterer, CALL TO CHECK IN PRIOR TO YOUR EVENT!!!! We really like this, I promise) Somehow the woman segwayed onto the dreaded "What did you go to college for" question. Normally, if you go to college and have a degree, it's not really that bad of a question. When you're a glorified receptionist who basically takes cookie orders (yes, I know I'm being overly harsh about my job... I really do a lot more), explaining to people what you hold your degreeS (note: plural) is slightly embarrassing. I explained I have my bachelor's in RHM and my master's in HES and then braced myself for the "What?! Wow!" response... usually this isn't said in a "Hey, that's totally awesome!" kind of way. It's more in the "WTF are you doing in THIS job?" kind of way... but I digress.
Let's just say I got a little teary-eyed from her praise of me. There really was no mention of my degrees but instead of how great I was at my job and how she knew that I would be successful and go far. And I BARELY ever work with this woman! Man, what do clients I work with on a weekly basis think of me? I could probably be the next president in their opinion! Maaaaaaaaybe that's pushing it...
I'm sure this whole "my day was so super great" thing is making me sound like a conceited you know what, but who cares?! After the week I've had I needed someone to throw me a bone and remind me that my journey is still far.
As a recent Twitter-er I started following my college (from which I hold both my degrees). The other day there was a "tweet" about an HES grad that was going to be on Regis and Kathy Lee.. I mean... Kelly? Yes, Kelly. She was launching her new line or something. There was a link, so I ended up on her website and ended up as a giant ball of this strange mixture of pride, inadequacy and motivation. I mean, kudos to this girl for realizing her dream and making it happen. She not only had a new line coming out for Fall 11, but had already put out TWO OTHER ONES! And they weren't crappy clothes either! So after I finished my "Good for her! What a great feeling to have such a successful HES alumna!" I started feeling very inadequate. I have yet to realize my dream, much less begin pursuing it. It was a big hit to the ego to see this girl who is several years younger than me already more successful than I wonder if I'll ever be. After that wave of inadequacy simmered down, I got super motivated. I mean, damnit why can't I be successful? What's stopping me? My boss? My co-workers? NO, just me.
So that brings me to what motivated me this week and why my day got even awesomer. I've been hedging about my book, hem-hawing that it's not very good, avoiding facing the truth that maybe it sucks and flat out avoiding what I really want it to be. So today, after completing my 15 minutes of work, I dove in head first.
I've written great things in the past... things that made ME happy. I didn't worry about what others thought; I wrote what I wanted to read and it worked and people enjoyed it. Why am I steering away from this formula? The formula works.
I feel like today's editing really got me back on track and really expanded the depth. I really hope it steered away from being too cheery/saccharin/cutesy and started being a little darker. Not scary dark, just not so cutesy.
I'll also be spending the weekend in the library working on the book... there will probably be several more entries over the weekend.
Finally, in case you noticed, I added some Doogie Howser background music to the blog. I sometimes feel like him as I'm entering these things. You know, minus the teenage doctor genius thing...
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