A collage of this time in my life

Wednesday I got a rejection notice for finished piece that I'm most proud of. A rejection is always a disappointment. However, this was about the most encouraging rejection a writer could ever receive.

"We thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, we will not be publishing your story, "The Light at Grandmas," as we felt it did not quite fit the theme and tone of our magazine.

We would love to read more of your work, and we invite you to submit to us again in the future!

Thank you for your time and your submission. We wish you and your loved ones good health, and we hope to hear from you again!

Victoria Elghasen & Michelle Baleka

Editors
Déraciné Magazine"

A shoutout to Victoria and Michelle for the rarest gift of encouragement from a publication editor(s). I won't forget them, and I will submit more writing to them.

I had thought the story was perfect for they're magazine, but they know what they want. I'd like to think what really doomed the story is that the protagonist is a child, and they had a story in their current issue that involved a teenager at his grandmother's house. That was probably was too close to the same song for the same gig.   

I just woke up. I'm missing my neice's wedding, but it looks like I'm out of it today anyway. Fact is, she's already married. They were supposed to have the ceremony in late March. And you know what happened then. In the meantime, they held a Zoom wedding. I managed to miss that by having the time wrong. This is the "contractual obligation" ceremony because they can't get their deposit refunded. 

The rest of the family is there, while I'm at home recovering from upper and lower GI's yesterday. The anesthetic has left me reeling, trying to find all the pieces to the rest of my consciousness. It doesn't matter. I don't want to catch COVID at the wedding and then spread it to every voter and worker at the precinct, if I actually get called. And I need to buy a suit that actually fits my current body configuration. I'm hoping to do that with the stimulus funds, if they ever come. 

I spent a lot of time this last week asleep, finally kicking my insomnia, then sleeping off the anesthetic. The insomnia is caused by my stomach troubles. What they found was my stomach is inflamed for some reason. Whatever chronic bug it is, I know I'll have to see a gastro specialist, and it will probably require a round or two of antibiotics, because a gut infection is the only thing I could think of that causes such local inflammation. If it lives in stomach acid, it's a tough bug. 

I haven't had any time for fiction writing since I began working for this election. I know I've been writing this, so why not fiction? Creativity requires a lot of time and focus. I know there are prolific authors like Stephen King, but he realized early that he loved to write. He wrote his first story when he was eight, and was writing since. I didn't know I wanted to write until I was twice that age, and by that time my basic skills in grammar and style were already poor. A poor grade and high school, ADHD and its social, emotional, and intellectual complications doomed any effort. Now, I'm setting an ironclad deadline to complete the novel: May 1st for the draft, August 1st for the final. If I don't meet the first one, it's time to pull the plug.  

When I realized writing was my vocation, the one thing I emphatically didn't want was to the stereotyped unstable artistic type. It doesn't matter because that's where I am now. I took a wrong turn somewhere.  

After today, I'm going to be textbanking for the Democratic Party six hours a day until November 2nd. Anyway, I have to take the online poll worker quiz by tomorrow. So, I have to go through the material today. By November 4th, I hope this 4 year nightmare will be over. But this election will hardly be the end of our country's troubles. Biden and Harris and the other people elected will have their work cut out for them fixing all the things Trump has broken.  

I'm afraid that they will try to return things to what they were before. If they do that, we'll get another authoritarian, one smarter and more ruthless than Trump in ten years. I hope they realize with the rest of the country that the only way to fix the system is to turn left. The reason why I'm supporting them is that the only viable way Left is through the center. Under most circumstances, that's an unsafe and illegal turn. We could only hope we don't crash in the process.