Well, this month--or whole year really--has been a rollercoaster. Up, down, up, down. Sometimes you wonder when you might catch a break or just decide to get off. I do have a shining ray of hope though. I contacted my director again about wanting Blas for my thesis director, and she told me that they are asking him back for the summer, so, if he agrees, I'll have him, and I can go straight through with my degree and enter my thesis semester in July. Intense, but it feels like the right thing. I can't keep second-guessing myself forever.
I've also submitted to six or seven contests now, most of which I should know an answer to by March--end of March at the latest, so at least that waiting game is winding down. Then I do have a few other things to really look forward to and get myself through the semester.
First week of March, I'm meeting two of my friends in Clarksville to hear Blas read, which will be a nice little overnight event. Mid-March, my whole workshop group from Murray (minus Mick) will be spending a whole weekend in a cabin outside of Carbondale to write and bond and get away from things, which I am immensely looking forward to. Counting down the days, really. I wish it was longer than a weekend, but it sounds like fun. We are all bringing writing prompts to share with each other, and we are planning to cook dinner every night together for like a bonding, relaxing sort of thing, since we'll mostly be keeping to ourselves during the day to write. The cabin looks really nice though, and it has a big porch to sit out on, so I'm hoping it won't be freezing cold when we go.
Other than that, I'm just trying to keep up with the semester. I'm on the staff for the New Madrid now, so I have to go through a lot of submissions and pick my top three every couple of weeks. It's a lot of reading, and not all of it is that great, but it's teaching me a thing or two about my own process of submitting. I think I might just start screaming if I don't hear back from the places I submitted to soon. One in particular that I've been waiting months for. MONTHS. Though if I do get in, I might die of a heart attack, so I guess that wouldn't be good either.
Still, I could really use the confidence booster right now. I'm starting to feel like fifty shades of Anne Sexton. Or I'm already there. I think I'm past the starting point. Writing is intense and emotional, and it makes you think about things that could easily drive you crazy. I do really like my current mentor though. She's very thorough, and I need that, because I have a hard time looking at my stuff objectively and trimming away the fat. I get really talky and try to write a whole story. Despite that, she's told me, so far, to hang on to the poems I've written, that there's something in them to go back to in revision, so that's always good.
Other than that, work is the same as always, but it looks like I'll be taking a solo trip to Louisville in April for a family literacy conference. I'm okay with that. I'd like to travel more. It's really easy to get stir crazy thinking about all the things I want to do and then reminding myself that I don't have the money. But Louisville will be paid for, and I've only ever been there once. I was probably like thirteen, and I went for a karate tournament. It's where I got my first place sparring trophy, but I didn't have time to see any of Louisville, and it was so long ago now, I barely remember it. I'll take any place. I'm still thinking about seeing if there are any study abroad programs for graduate students, but I am not entirely sure where to look. Or if it would even be possible, fund-wise.
I have a lot of plans. I'm just not sure where they're going, or if they're ever going to pan out. So it would be great, poetry gods, if I could get at least one acceptance out of my submissions in the next month. Particularly if it was that one. You know the one.
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