The Results Are In

I made it into the writing workshop! Last night was the first of twelve classes, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. I got the email on Sunday morning that I was selected for the class. I felt a flood of emotions as I read it – relief, excitement, hope. I think it’s going to be great.

I spent some time yesterday poking around on the school’s website and looking at their MFA in creative writing program. It would take at least two years to complete and would cost a decent amount of money, but every time I think about applying, I feel giddy. I think we’ll see how this workshop goes first. Applications aren’t due until February.

I can’t remember exactly what I was doing yesterday, but I started thinking about things happening and opportunities arising. Some time ago I wrote about why things happen and how we go about choosing our paths in life. I reread those posts and was reminded how relevant they still are. I was thinking about the recent job interview, inflated hope, and devastation when I didn’t get the job. I was ready to move. I was ready to start over.  I was so desperate for these things that I thought I was ready to sell my soul to the legal profession for a pittance of 2000 billable hours a year…forever.

I now know that getting offered the job is not what was best for me. While my husband and I want to move to a city with more opportunity, diversity and culture, I don’t want to do it if the cost is being a lawyer for the rest of my life. I also recognize that had I gotten the job, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be in this writing workshop. I would have read that tweet and scrolled on right past it. But I didn’t. I stopped, I looked up the information, and then I wrote. And I’m still writing. And, I have never been so grateful to receive a rejection letter.

So, do I still think things happen for a reason? Yes, and now I’m even more convinced that is true.

15 Years Later

Last night I went to my fifteen-year high school class reunion. This was the first reunion my class has had. I think that in and of itself should have been a sign that the turnout would be less than stellar. My graduating class was about 225 people. Twelve showed up. Yep, a whopping 5% of our class. Even worse, most of them still all live in my hometown, and (if Facebook statuses can be believed) were in town.

Granted, this was thrown together at the last minute. I think we had maybe eight weeks notice. After some argument  discussion about location, one of my classmates offered to have it at her house in conjunction with her husband’s birthday party. RSVPs totaled about twenty, but I was sure others would show up. We arrived at 6:30 – what I had hoped was fashionably late. Wrong. We were the first reunion-goes there (perhaps I forgot to mention that yes, I forced my husband to go with me). Luckily it wasn’t too long before other quasi-familiar faces showed up. However, when it got to be 7:30, then 8:00, and we were still hovering around ten people, I was pretty certain it was a bust.

As my husband and I stood there having our own conversations, I felt like I had been transported back to high school. I felt like I was at a party that I hadn’t actually been invited to, but had tagged along with a friend who had been invited. There I stood, knowing everyone there but not fitting in. I was disappointed at how quickly I allowed that feeling to come back to me.

High school was strange for me. I’m sure I am not unique in this respect. I knew a lot of people, but I didn’t have a lot of close friends. Those I was close with cycled through every year or so. Friendships only seemed to last as long as I had classes with those people or we were on sports teams together. It was as if there was never really anything more substantive in common to prompt me to make the effort afterwards.

Most everyone who was at the reunion last night seemed to have a “friend” there – either someone they were actually close with or someone they were still connected to. There was another woman there who looked as if she felt the same way I did. I had been looking forward to having a class reunion for a long time. I truly wanted to see how everyone had grown up (and, I’ll admit, to have the stereotypical “look at me now” moment). But it seemed like most everyone else has moved on.

Every so often I feel a bit sad that I don’t have a life-long friend. I don’t have someone who I have known since I was five, or someone I’ve been friends with for twenty years. As I was listening to people talk last night and watching everyone interact, I realized that is not a reflection on me. It just so happened that I grew up with people who I just didn’t have things in common with. That’s not a judgment of them or of me. It’s just what is. And it’s time to stop beating myself up because I don’t have a best girl friend who I have shared secrets with my whole life. I’m not the same person I was fifteen years ago (thank goodness!), and I’m pretty happy with how the way things turned out.

All that being said, should someone organize a twentieth reunion…yeah, I’ll probably go.

Pins and Needles

I have really never been a very patient person, and I have been doing a lot of waiting lately. I’m not handling it all that well. I become obsessed with thinking about it, check my email incessantly, and grab my phone as soon as I get back to my office to see if anyone called. It’s unhealthy. I know. But I’m not likely to change.

The thing that has me the most nervous right now is the writing workshop I applied for. Yes, I finally made myself sit down and write a short story (this is why I have been MIA for so long – that and a mini-vacation). It was an insightful process. Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever written a work of fiction that was that long. I’m sure that I had creative writing assignments in my high school English classes, but I’m sure they weren’t almost 300o words (2,918 to be precise). I am fairly certain that I wrote no works of fiction when I was in college. As a business major I think I had to take freshman English and that was it. It never occurred to me to take a class outside of my major just because I might enjoy it (at least, one that all my friends weren’t taking also, like bass fishing…yeah, true story). So, to actually finish a story of such length is an accomplishment for me, and I am patting myself on the back.

Accomplishment that it may be, I still really want to get into the workshop! I keep wondering how many people applied. Did he get a flood of writing samples at the last minute? The application deadline was yesterday, and the professor emailed me and said he would get back to me in a day or so. I have been trying to define what constitutes “or so” since I got the email (see paragraph 1). But the course starts next Wednesday, so I don’t have that much longer to wait.

I’ve decided, though, that I’ll be OK if I don’t get in. Writing the story lit a fire under me. I wasn’t 100% in love with what I wrote, but as a first attempt, I’m pretty proud of it. The writing process itself was kind of a rush. I don’t want to stop. I’ve already started thinking about other ideas for short stories. I’ll keep you posted on how it all turns out!