Glimpses of light

Woke up this morning to color and light, a reprieve, however temporary, from the rain. Such a relief, for a day or two at least from the driving wet, from the swollen wood and wet shoes, wet hair and people on the roads.

I am at the point where I'd pay someone to come do my laundry. I hate that we have to take it to the laundromat now. I'm too tired when I get home to tackle this challenge. Last night, getting home at 9, I convinced M. to take my ballet clothes in his laundry and wash them. He did so, relatively cheerfully, then brought them home and informed me that it didn't add to his reputation as not gay and not a pervert to be folding women's clothing without a woman around. I just took my tights and leotard and said thank you.

He's trying and I'm trying, and dishes have been done, and so we're working on making 2005 a better year.

I'm craving change, continuing to crave it I guess, and getting caught in the same traps - exhaustion, inertia, the need to take care of the immediate over the long term. But I am determined to finish these applications, to put together my portfolio. Even if none of the MFA programs will have me - and I'm not even going to process the payment aspect - applying will signal my willingness to seek out change, to actively look at what I want, what I can do, what I should do.

I can feel the need to fight through it right now, lethargic and riffing on depressed - the mild malaise of depression, that need to hide out to run away - writing teasing at me and feeling so far away at the same time, looking at all of the things I want to do and being pressed down by them. Gotta just swim through, push and pull and make some peace with myself. Find balance, find my zen state, the place where words meet the page and were I can look up with bright eyes, not feeling hollowed out.

So many of you out there that I'm proud of - for embracing change, for taking risks, exploring new things, new dreams and new fandoms and new words, new places. I feel like I'm watching and learning, taking a little - sometimes a sentence, sometimes a sense of momentum and I just want to say thank you.

Minor League Freakout and the last of the Not Sex

The problems of deciding late in the game to apply to grad school.

* Deadlines, and my lack of ability to meet them. I need transcripts and letters of recommendation. Those things don't appear over night.

* And speaking of letters of rec, I'm running into a realization that I fear is going to gum up the works. I have people who know my academic work, I have people who know my professional work, but outside of the lot of you, I don't have anyone who knows my creative work.

UC Irvine - the school with the deadline I just can't make, wants two short stories, or a short story and the first chapter of a novel. So, I'm guessing that they also want recs from someone who has read these mythical pieces, and who I've worked with on my fictional output. I have work, but much of it is from college, and my advisor is no longer at Macalester. I'm at a loss, not to mention freaking out that no one has read my creative work, that I have no one who can offer up a testimony to why these schools should admit me, how I could bring recognition and continued respectability to their drive to produce published writers.

Okay, stomach fluttering in panic and I'm now trapped in nonactionville. This sounded like a much better idea this morning.

Thank god I don't have to take the GRE, but at the same time, the GRE is proof of my academic prowess, the things I know and can do. It's measurable numbers that prove I'm academically capable. My portfolio, well, what if it isn't such a representation.

So, Baby, Can I Drive Your Car? Part V. Last section folks, before the whole thing goes to beta and they tell me to stop being such a sap. Oh, and obviously, recognizable dialogue isn't mine.

( Back Seat of the Plymouth )