Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Blowing Things Up

It's majorly easy to blow things out of proportion. One glance from a super cute guy becomes "oh my gosh, he likes me, he really likes me!" A promotion at work quickly becomes the 500K salary and 17 weeks vacation time. And a nice comment on your book easily turns into an (imaginary) book deal, movie deal, and Chris Hemsworth playing the lead character and then falling in love with you and marrying you and you become rich and happy (and of course you lead him to Jesus first). Not that I've thought about that or anything. Haha.

Anyway, lately I've been blowing things out of proportion. I've told my roommate several times over the past few days that I'm going to die. Reason one was that I have an ulcer in my mouth (yeah I'm sure you wanted to know) cause I can't keep my chompers from chomping on my cheek. Try saying that five times fast. So as it has persisted for days, I finally told my roomie I was gonna die. She didn't believe me. Then, after I washed dishes for 45 minutes, the skin on my finger peeled off (sure you wanted to know that too). Again, I proclaimed that I was gonna die. Again, no sympathy. And then, when I pointed to my 3 week old, still hurting bug bite, and said I was either gonna pass away or turn into Spider-Man, not only did I get no sympathy, but she starts showing me HER bug bites and saying I'm making too much out of this.

So I got to thinking. I'm very bad at making things seem way worse (or way better) than they actually are. Seriously, if I get one nice feedback comment on my novel at a conference or at writer's group or wherever, I'm automatically imagining what life will be like once I get published. Even though there's no concrete proof that's what's going to happen, that's what happens in my mind.

Anyway, as I'm thinking, I'm wondering how this applies to life. In general. I realized, God equips us with what we need to do the tasks He's set before us. He has given us the talent. If His plan is for me to sign a multi-book contract and eventually marry Chris Hemsworth, He will make that happen. (Oh, please, make it happen! Haha) I don't need to imagine things as I wish they would be because, in the end, no doubt my ideas will pale in comparison to His plan.

Unless I die from mouth ulcers or zombie fingers or radioactive bug bites, I'm gonna sit back and stop making my own plans. There's no doubt God's are WAY better than mine could ever be.

Friday, June 22, 2012

The Watched Email Never Comes...

You know the saying, a watched pot never boils? Well, a watched email never comes, either. I have the patience of, like, a goldfish. Seriously. Once I know that I'm waiting on something, I just want it to come. I want to hear the 'ding, you have mail' sound that my email doesn't actually make and see the icon pop up that indicates I have a new message.

Take recently, for example. I finally got my proposals sent out to the agents and editor from Blue Ridge who asked for them. Yay! Only about 4 weeks late but, hey, I'm a busy girl. Then, I get a request for a full the same day I send out the proposal. Yikes! So I consolidate all my random chapters into one document, get my mom to read it and critique it and sent it.

And now I wait. And wait. And wait. And for some reason, I have it in my head that I'm gonna get a quick reply back (probably with a negative response) so I keep checking my email. All the time. On my phone. On my laptop. On the checkout screen at Wal-Mart...well, maybe not that last one.

It's not like I haven't done this before. I've ridden this bull, been in this rodeo, however you want to spin it. You'd think by now my patience would be crazy high and long. But it's not. It's nonexistent. I can give all the sage advice I want - but it's not going to help.

I'm going to keep checking my email. And checking it and checking it and checking it for an email that will probably crush my hopes and dreams. Haha.

But you never know, right? This could be it for me. This could be the dream. Come on, email, come on!

...and you thought this blog post would be inspiring...