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real life vs expectation and the evil of hope.
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"Winter kept us warm"
T.S. Eliot
Recentely my life has taken a turn for the strange. Things have turned around. Everything is going my way. School, work, art, all of it. My home life has always been pretty great; these days, with the advent of potty training, it's even better.
This turn around is now in it's second year. Things just keep going right.
It creeps me out.
It all started when my employer offered to pay for me to go to college. They told me I could take any class I wanted, get any degree I wanted.
Two years, a new manager, and more than $20k later. They're still paying with no complaints or conditions.
I'll graduate next may...
At work we had a hiring/promotion freeze, and a wage increase freeze. I got promoted and given two raises inside of six months during this period. I was moved from a menial support job into a technicle position, and given an entire lab of my own to run. I have a boss, but I am completey unsupervised.
Why? Beats me.
starting in 1998 and ending, at last in 2001, I worked closely with an editor at a major publishing house. I came fairly close to selling a book. In the end, though, the whole thing fell apart. I wont go into the details but the rejection had everything to do with office politics and nothing to do with my book. I was not even afforded the respect of a rejection letter. I was so angry. I ceased writing.
For about a year.
In time I came to view this debacle as a positive thing, hell, my book was really pretty crappy, anyway. I started to write fiction again. About a month ago, I got a rejection letter from a magazine, hardly my first; but this one was different, the editor requested a revision of the story and more of my work. Among other things, it the most complementary letter I have ever received.
I can't really explain the emotioanl rollercoaster of that day. Overcome by hope and dread and an emotion too strong to be called joy, I simultaneously laughed and cried on the drive home from work.
So next week I'll send out another story.
After that, I'll sit and wait for something to go wrong.
Hope is such a wonderful, evil thing.
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