First Submission

"Shouldn't you be blogging."
"I am. I'm re-designing it."
"Does that really count as blogging?"
"No, not really..."
"You should be blogging."



Hooray for watch dogs. :)

and hooray for new template designs! Since I'm limited on the space that I can obsessively rearrange, I'll continuously work on this blog. And tame my OCD while I'm at it. 

So! Important news: I officially submitted a piece to an online magazine. It seems like a really cool, well done, artsy magazine, and the editor I contacted was super chill. And since an essay/story thing I wrote a few years ago fell right in line with their upcoming issue, I threw caution to the wind and sent it off. Well, I edited the f-ing day lights out of it and then sent it off.

For anyone who's read Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" and for those that haven't, I'll sum it up: first drafts suck. But more often than not, so do second, third and fourth... and sixteenth and seventeenth drafts. Me, I write exceptionally shitty first drafts. The piece I submitted today, I'd worked out 3 or 4 drafts before. I even sent it off as my writing sample for the grad school program that I didn't get into. And after not looking at it for 15 months, and after doing new edits...

sheeeeeeeeit.

It was shitty. No wonder I'm not in grad school. But, I'm pretty damn sure the work I did on it over the last 4 days turned it into a really solid piece. Right? Right.

I hadn't submitted anything before, except for competitions... in elementary school--but I am proud to say that BOTH times I submitted book reviews to our morning announcements, I won. Booyah. I guess I've always made up lame excuses in order to not submit my work. It's part of that "avoiding action without a fixed positive outcome so I won't ever fail" (thank you, random therapist from college years) as well as lingering "ughhhh what are people going to think of this?" anxiety I've had since middle school. It's taken me years and years to feel comfortable with showing other people my writing. I still get nervy and defensive when I show things to Addie, or email samples to my friends. Of course, the people I know are all pretty damn supportive of what I do (they're the best, really).

Blogging, of course, is different. This is just my hodge podge and blither blather, so there's no real need for structure or plot or resolution. A read at your own risk, no deadlines, this won't ever get published deal. And there's a certain comfort, as well as a thrill in that. I know strangers *might* be reading this, and coming back when I update, and that's cool. It's great to watch my view numbers climb, even if a lot of them are my mom accidentally reading each entry individually... (love you mom!) 

Alright, enough narcissism. I'm just crossing my fingers every cross-able appendage that they accept it. It'd be nice. But even if they don't, it's great, because at least I ripped the proverbial band-aid off my submission fears. Now it will be easier to send things off. Hopefully.



and to round things out, here's Bart enjoying the 3 ft long "joy stick" we got from the Three Dog Bakery, which is basically 3 feet of raw hide and beef jerky and cheese dust.

NOM

NOM NOM NOM

He devoured it in about 36.5 minutes. And has been gassy ever since.
Joyful, indeed.