Five Reasons I Love Friday

These are my five reasons I love Fridays:

1. Library Time: I get to spend three uninterrupted and non-distractable hours writing in my local library quiet room where no children can yell that the bathroom is out of toilet paper or that the new carton of orange juice just slipped out of their hands and is now all over the kitchen floor and spreading precariously close to the stairs (and yes, my four year old would use a word like precariously!)

2. My Entertainment Weekly is waiting in my mailbox: A little fluff never hurt anyone. And since I got the subscription free, it's a guiltless pleasure. Besides, I only read it for the book reviews anyway!

3. I get to stay up late: I am by nature a night owl, which I've come to discover is quite handy during those college years but not so much when you have young kids that need to be up at the crack of dawn for school ( and expect lunches and breakfasts and packed backpacks and a ride to school!). Friday, I get to stay up and watch all my favorite TiVo-ed shows without dreading the alarm clock!

4. Wine! This falls under the same reasoning as #3.

5. It's Pizza Night: This is the only day of the week I actually know what is for dinner before dinner time. I make our dinners every night, and it is the bane of my existance. I love cooking. I just don't like trying to figure out what I can cook that four very picky people will eat without too much aggravation. But Friday, for the last many, many years, is pizza night. And while I'm at the library, typing diligently on my book, the dough is already at home rising. In the words of Forrest Gump, That's one less thing!

Happy Friday!

“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.” -H. L. Menken.

I am tired of cynicism. It seems like every time I turn around someone is saying how impossible something is. Life is hard, no doubt. Nothing is easy and perfect, but how about focusing on all the possibilities rather than the difficulties?

I use to be a positive person. I could do anything. I could be successful at whatever I put my mind to. It wasn't conceit. It's that confidence that every modern mother wants to implant in her daughter. The world is her oyster.

That was then. This is now. Now, my greatest fear is that I am not good enough; that no matter how hard I try, I will be part of the masses stumbling over their own feet in the dark, beating my head against a brick wall that I can't break through.

Every (reliable) website I read about publishing makes it appear that being published is beyond realism. I have been so pulled in by this cynicism that I thought I'd keep this blog as a way to document every rejection letter... I bought three bottles of champagne: one for when I finish my revision, one for when I send out my first query, and one for my first rejection. I have steeled myself for it, psyched myself up for it, tried to look forward to it until I realized today that I have not allowed myself to think of the possibility of getting a request for more pages. After all, I can't control that, so why look forward to something that may never happen?

I hate cynicism. I hate that I have become a cynic, because that is not who I am.

Because sometimes looking forward to something that may or may not happen is what life is all about. I choose to see the flowers and look around for my camera.