Week of April 30-May 6

One rejection.

Chapters yet to draft: 12, 14

Number of fiddly bits to retrofit: none!

I am not going to spend the rest of the day writing this book and trying to get it finished. I could finish it in the next two days, if I wanted to. But my life has other things in it. I'm going to work moderately on Chapter 12, and then I'm going to give my back a break and do some useful things around here and have an early dinner with markgritter and go to my first Minn-StF meeting.

Still: book. Book good.

And it's a good thing I like the feeling of finishing books, because it's overcoming all the apprehension that goes with it: when I finish this, I realio trulio have to dig in and finish the revisions on Sampo, and otherwise I might be spooked by that. But -- book! New book! So soon done!

Letting go

Earlier in this week, one of the people on my friendslist (locked post) asked about letting go of people if you realize that your feelings are not reciprocated. How do you do it? she asked. At the time, I said you don't so much do it as realize that you have done it sometime in the past; you live through it until you aren't thinking of it as much, and then eventually when you think of it, it doesn't hurt any more, however long that takes.

I found my lost Wilburys CD this week, and with it I had the realization that this has happened for me: not with a romantic relationship, as the locked post implied, but with a friendship. One person and I had different ideas of what trust and friendship meant, and I was very hurt to find that out. But it was years ago now, and the song on this CD that very specifically associates with this person isn't bittersweet any more. I smile at the memory, and the smile doesn't twist, and my heart doesn't twist, either. I've always been friendly with this person -- so different from being friends! -- so it's never an issue of knowing I could be civil. And I still wouldn't confide anything of any depth in this person without significant time rebuilding a friendship, if then. But when I think of him doing something fun, silly, funny, I can smile. I can value the things that made us friends to begin with, without being blinkered about the things that ended the friendship.

This is a good thing.

First Minn-StF

I was mostly convinced that I would show up for my first Minn-StF meeting and find that dd_b and lydy were not yet there, that I knew no one but cakmpls, and that she would be too busy being hostly to chat with me.

I was wrong on all counts. We seem to have skipped directly to the, "Ack, I'll never get to talk to half the people here I'd like to talk to before my cat allergies kick in!" problem. Well, it's a good kind of wrong and a good kind of problem.