Why 336? Because it feels like It might just go on and on and on and one can’t escape being wicked if it’s a part of their nature.

Riddle me this? Why do I have to spend 40 grand on a masters in fine arts which includes thousands (not exaggerating) of dollars for fees for things I don’t even utilize or know what they are AND then have to pay to print my own copies the thesis document that will be bound and forever kept somewhere. The UNO library I think. It was 60 bucks to print that and after the fact (of course) I notice that for poems that extend past one page, the continuation does not start low enough on the page. So there’s an inconsistent look on those pages. The perfectionist in me hates this. The frugal girl wags her finger and says don’t you dare fix that and pay for a reprint. These two people inside me will continue to argue until the damn document is out of my hands.

Mostly I’m lazy and don’t want to open Word and look at it again. Which is one reason I haven’t sent it to my mom, who asked to read it.

The other reason i have resisted sending it to mom is the poems themselves. One or two in particular that don’t paint her in a very favorable light. Well just one really. Jim said to just take that one out and send it. I have two minds in disagreement about this too.

On one hand all those things are a part of who I am. I want to model my behavior after the lovely Amy Plettner who Published her first book and just gave a copy to her mom, unedited (kind of hard to edit a published book like that). She told me that when she saw the book on her moms bookshelf it was markedly thinner. Her mom actually ripped out the pages with poems she didn’t like, ones about her presumably but also any poem having to do with sex or the word fuck (which is a lot of them).

My stuff is much tamer than that. I think the word fuck only shows up in one poem. And I haven’t included any poems that have anything directly to do with sex. But I did compare my mom to a fax machine / clean freak ….

My mom is sensitive like me (or I’m sensitive like her) and that would hurt her and I don’t want to hurt her. If I was Rachael Mckibbins and my mom was truly a bad person, I might feel differently. But my mom is a good person.

Incidentally, Amy also told me that later, after the page tearing out was long past, her mom asked for another copy. Probably she came to terms of what the book really represents. A piece of Amy’s whole heart and that life is rough, you know. Just gotta be more understanding with people and humanity and all its complications.

Wow. That was quite a tangent.

I suppose I don’t really have to cross any bridges that have to do with really publishing a book because that feels so distant or impossible at this point. The first step I suppose is submitting more. I’ve fallen off that wagon and truly the few things I’ve sent out into the universe have either been rejected or not returned.

Starting from zero is not easy. I mean, I’m not exactly at zero, but I’m at like 0.34. Ha! A few more tick marks in the “win” column and I’ll bump myself to a solid 1!!

I spent my day off yesterday working on the parenting thing and the lit mag thing, until I had another breakdown about being a failure. Jim has been very supportive and a huge shoulder to cry on and a good listener. Thank the universe for him. He literally has a hellish schedule at work this week and here I am crying on my day off. Ugh! 🙄

In the end, I was able to let my Failures go. And then it was pretty much time to go to bed. Go figure. 🤷‍♀️

But I’m up and at it again today and getting ready to make coffee and get to work. Round and round I go.

Cheers to Another Opportunity to Try,
~Miss SugarCookie