My Shoe Calendar on Friday the 13th

I figured I’d squeeze in this post before the end of the first Friday the 13th of 2012 (the first of three such days this year separated by 13 weeks). Perhaps it’s my empathetic spirit, but 13 is actually my favorite number. It is partly because it has such a bad rep that I thought to make it a favorite number a long time ago. But while this is how it started, adopting 13 as a favorite number has grown to shade my perspective beyond this numeric empathy.

If I look back on my day today and my Friday the 13ths in the past, the good and bad of that history is probably mixed. Today in particular, I had a few bad things – woke up late, troublesome clients to contend with, worked even later when I got home – but there were also plenty of good things to appreciate of the day. I have great and supportive co-workers who made the day enjoyable, connected with a few friends about things going on in their lives, and one of my co-workers even helped me get a lovely (but large) floral arrangement I received the other day home.

My take on the number 13 is that while I believe superstition isn’t unwarranted, I also think it’s healthier to adopt an attitude that recognizes that bad (and not-so-great) things happen…they happen all the time. And fully recognizing that, fully embracing it, allows you to appreciate and look out equally (if not more so) for the good.

One of my New Year’s resolutions (#7 actually!) states:

Live every day focused on balance and maintain an outlook toward beauty even when things aren’t quite beautiful.

I think embracing the good and bad of 13 helps me do that. Now – the number 4 on the other hand – don’t EVEN get me started…!

-cct

I bought these earrings myself.  $25.  Church silent auction.  They’re butterflies – something anyone who keeps up-to-date with on this blog realizes is a favorite symbol of mine.

But despite the lack of cost (and let’s face it, almost lack of diamond), there’s something about being able to tell myself that I bought my first diamond earrings all by myself.  There’s something in that message that I’ve always found empowering.

I find many jewels beautiful, but the diamond has this reputation that’s hard to shake as being a gemstone of worth in society.  My earrings are certainly not like the baubles on the fingers of celebrities that roam this town.  And that’s fine.  I grasp not at the diamond as this visual object since obviously most people would likely not see them in my earrings without squinting (maybe), but rather how much this fraction of something could hold more worth than even the largest diamond.

Don’t get me wrong.  If someone wanted to give me the Cullinan diamond I wouldn’t necessarily say no, but my desire for that would be monetary.  I don’t love these earrings because they’re $25.  I love them because they remind me that no matter where I am in life and the future, achievements don’t have to be grand; they don’t even have to glimmer like diamonds in the sun to be worth more than even the largest diamond in the world.

Ultimately you define for your own self what it means to be successful and happy.  If it’s about getting the largest diamond in the world (or heck – the universe!), by all means go ahead, but remember the steps that took you there and enjoy every minute of the journey as if they were tiny diamonds you bought all by yourself.

-cct

The other night I stayed up watching documentaries on Netflix and working.  When I’m up late I know better than to watch paranormal anything (though I make an exception for anything with cryptozoology because I don’t think Big Foot exists in urban Los Angeles and Nessie is obviously not going to attack me).  Not that my documentary choices weren’t a little spooky – The Miracle at Fatima and one about English castles (did you know there’s something called Wood Henge and that castles used to be made wood?).  But they weren’t anything to make my hair stand up on end.

I got settled into bed and then I heard a strange noise in my apartment.

I tried to wave it off, but the problem with independent living is you have to tackle strange noises in your apartment…independently.

After about five minutes of laying in the dark and kind of freaked out, I thought I heard the strange sound again – possibly coming from my kitchen or my dressing room.

I sat up and turned back on my lights and didn’t hear the sound again.

Still, it worried me.  So of course, I did the next logical thing – I grabbed my red katana from Little Tokyo and prepared to make an inspection.

Red katana in tow, I moved toward the kitchen and turned on the light.  Peeking inside, I didn’t see anything suspect.

I moved toward the dressing room, opened the door wide, and turned on the light.  Peeking inside, I didn’t see anything odd there either.  Walking slowly through the room toward the bathroom, I turned on the bathroom light and there was nothing.  The blinds weren’t even moving.

Turning off the bathroom light, I closed the door.  Then looked around my dressing room again and closed that door.

I walked into the kitchen toward the dining area and saw nothing and then looked at my filled dish rack.

Could that be the culprit?  Was my fear seated in a bunch of clean dishes overflowing in a blue two-dollar dish rack from the bargain store?

I began to unload the dish rack – I was up and paranoid after all.  Dishes unloaded, I turned off the kitchen light and went back into living area.

I wasn’t going to pull a Ziva (from NCIS who sleeps with her gun underneath a pillow), but I carefully propped my katana near me.  With a sigh, I closed my eyes and then proceeded to hear noises outside (I live in the city!) and something shifting in my apartment, which might have been my steamer pot attachment that I had a difficult time putting in my cabinet.

I then proceeded to turn my desk light on as a night light and open up my computer to do some work and to troll around the internet.  If anyone was in my apartment, I would SEE and then whack them with an expensive piece of computer equipment (yes, these are the preparations of a paranoid mind.  And yes, I have thought about how I would parry an armed person with my katana to disarm them).

At around 3 am, I saw something pop up on the LA Times twitter regarding Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis collaborating on a screenplay.  They were going to write a screenplay about the Vanity Fair article on the Golden Suicides.  I emailed my friend Jon about the partnership since I knew he liked their work, and hey, what else was I going to do trolling the internet and paranoid at 3 am?

But in emailing the article, I ended up finding the original The Golden Suicides Vanity Fair article (linked previously), which was ironically about – paranoid people who meet an untimely demise in their own hands (it’s a Van Sant and Ellis project, what do you expect?).

Luckily, I am just an overly imaginative girl with a red katana who eventually fell asleep with her desk lamp on.

-cct

Rejecting w/ Style (or Something)

If you followed my twitter the other day, you would know that I had back-to-back (practically!) rejection letters from two publications (technically it was three rejections – two poems, 1 prose piece).  For the most part, they were good rejection letters (yes, there is such a thing as a good rejection).  But having received a double dose of it today in the great game of “getting published”, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about the art of rejection.

If the bitterness of rejection is like cups of coffee, most of us drink cup after cup without seeing much sugar.  To use the coffee analogy further: the act of rejection presumes that you will get a cup of coffee, the art of rejection is in how that cup of coffee is prepared.  While every person takes their coffee differently, there is a certain amount of general ground rules that can probably fit most people’s taste buds.

“5 packets of Raw Cane Sugar to 1 cup of coffee…”

Dear Jane Doe,
We loved your story and it had great character development.  We think it rocks.  We’re writing to let you know that we don’t want it…

Sorry folks, a lot of sugar ruins a cup of coffee.  I think it’s the sugar that has made a lot of negative children of today – coddled, expectant, and demanding.  You might as well have published the unpublishable story because you gave them that much sugar.  You’re trying to serve a cup of coffee, not a cup of sugar with coffee.

“Venti drip coffee, no room for milk.”

Bad Example:
Dear Jane Doe,
We don’t want you.  Your submission “Cougars R B Rockers” stinks.  Get a job.

Coffee is often served black with the option of creme and sugar, but sometimes it’s best to just serve it black – some prefer it that way.  In the art of rejection like black coffee, the success is in simplicity.

The above – very exaggerated example – is like putting in 4 more tablespoons of coffee in the filter to say what you need to say.  You probably also don’t want anyone to never drink a beverage again – er, write a story.

Better Example:
Dear Jane Doe,
Thank you for submitting your story.  We regret to inform you that we won’t be able to use it in our publication.

While the writer might ask, “why not?”, no room for creme or sugar means the message is very clear.  The “Thank you” and “regret” aren’t necessarily sugar.  Politeness is just a good sign of fine coffee.

“Creme and sugar, please.”

The masters of rejection – I guess in this post, they’re almost baristas – however, learn how to use just the right amount of all possible ingredients.  A great rejection is actually one that provides critical feedback, but this is often hard.  I think the trick here is understanding the difference between conveying your point versus conveying your reaction.

“Cheesy lines” doesn’t really describe what the writer can do to improve themselves; as opposed to “the language is one-dimensional in some parts, you should focus on cleaning up some of the text and providing more depth to what you are trying to say.”  It doesn’t mean the language isn’t cheesy, you are providing the suggestion on what they need to focus on: why you think the language should be changed from the present state and how.

“What coffee?”

This is probably my worst rejection experience (in writing, anyway…).  I submitted my story to a publication that had me use an online system for submittal.  I knew there was a date when they’d make their decision.  So I kept on checking in the system.  Eventually I found out I wasn’t accepted, which was fine.  What was not fine?  I never received anything on an email of any kind.  All I know from this publication are the words “not accepted” in an online submission form.

No coffee?  That’s just rude.

Beyond Writing

Finally, the art of rejection can apply to other life scenarios.  Rejection – like acceptance and compliments – are all about how you communicate.  You don’t want too much of one extreme or another.  If you’re gonna lean to one extreme, I’d say black coffee is always best.  Just like in life, it keeps you wide awake.  Too much sugar can leave you too caught up in the stuff that dreams are made on.  (Like how I’m gonna ding myself now for referencing Shakespeare in my closing…)