Nerves

Tomorrow (for another 75 minutes it's tomorrow) is the day the Machine of Death 2 people will be announcing their selections, and I wish I wasn't nervous about it.  That's how it is, though--I'm jittery about the probability of my first post-college writing rejection as if there were something I could do about it now.  It's not much good to try to explain the odds to myself: positing for a moment that my story is in the top 10 percent of submissions, that makes it one of 200 stories.  So, inasmuch as I am a logical being, I expect a rejection.  But, inasmuch as I am a fantasist, I of course know that my story is destined for publication and glory.  That part of me is setting itself up for disappointment and I don't know what to do about it.

I wish I were already used to this.  I don't look forward to the process of getting used to it.  So here I am talking to the internet.

I had hoped to finish a short story by tonight as a sort of ego armor, but I wasn't able to.  (What a strange phrase, and really a lie.  I know I was able to.  I just didn't, and the fact is that now I can't have done it and I'm not able to do it by the time I should be in bed tonight, which is now.)  I did make progress, though, and I should probably put more work into it Halloween night as a warmup for NaNoWriMo.

This year I have a lot of things I want to do in November, it being my last full month in Seattle.  I want to keep going to jujutsu close to twice a week, and one or two evenings I want to stop by the Pathfinder Society at The Dreaming.  This is something like my last semester of college, and I'm probably going to have too much on my plate.  Of course the novel will take precedence.

I hope to keep posting here once a week as well, though I'm sure you'll forgive me if a few posts are very brief.

Do I want luck?  I don't think I believe in it.