I have been meaning to post the utter happy for a week. It’s spring break, though, so procrastination has ruled ’til now.
I won a thing! A big department thing with money and stuffs! But even better, way better, my brilliant colleagues (brilliant, I tell you) have given me collective warm fuzzies. In what kind of program is the response to winning a thing not “I cut you,” but “hey, congrats!”? I love these people more than conversation hearts, more than spring break, possibly more than alcohol. I’ve won things before (haven’t we all or we wouldn’t be here?), but never when the field included a wall of geniuses. My writing is unrecognizable from itself a year ago, and that is about the caliber of work I’m reading and criticizing–my colleagues’ work. This is how a program is supposed to be, fear and loathing and a commitment to stop sucking and the joy of failure. And then the rare success that is all the sweeter for everything that got cannibalized to get to three paragraphs that work. Surrounded by devious minds, mine struggling to keep up…I couldn’t have conceived this life a year ago.
Girlwonders is a smiling girl. Trying to pay close attention to what that feels like, for some future rainy Clarion day.