Monday, February 4, 2013

Tentatively Moving Forward.

So. Here I am. Still. And yet, I'm not here in the same way.

It's been so long since I posted that I can't even remember what, exactly, the last post involved. But that's okay. I'll just move on without backtracking. Sort of like life. You can linger and stare longingly at the past, but you can never go  back there (unless the Doctor shows up, and then you're still likely to screw things up if you try and change them in major ways) and so it's better to just move forward. Or sideways. Or in diagonal little squiggles. The point, my dear, is not to stand still while the world is moving around you. Not unless you're  stand still so you can smell a luscious rose, or smile at a child.

I am moving in all sorts of directions at once right now. And I'm not sure that any of them are the way that I ought to be moving. But I'm going in them, just the same. Eventually, out of the chaos, will form a path, and then I'll know which way to head.

I have several queries in the wind. Something I've done far too little of in the last months, and not because I was revising, but because I couldn't handle the rejections, should they come. So for the sake of my emotions, I took a break. Now I find that I am so far into this emotional turmoil that, as Robert Frost observed, The Best Way Out Is Always Through, and so I have begun sending out queries again. Just three, so far. But I'm making a list of other agents and will soon send out more.

Outside the writing world, things are in a constant state of flux. The farm is not the same and never will be. We've placed many of the horses in homes. And once those that will be going to live with various staff members leave, we will be dangerously close to single digit numbers. Which means that in the not so distant future, we will all be looking for new places to work, and new adventures on which to embark.

I do not want to leave. But even if I stayed, I would just end up being the only thing left. That's the way life is. Sometimes you leave a place or time, or group of people. But sometimes they leave you, and no matter how much you don't want them to go, they do, because for whatever reason, things change.

So here I am, hoarding pennies and fearfully exploring the idea of being who I am, in a place that isn't here. I have some leads on work. I do not fear not finding a new job. I fear everything else.

But when the dust settles, I wager you'll still find me sitting here, even if here happens to be someplace else.

3 comments:

  1. You are the best and you'll get through this! Here's a favorite poem of mine that I've always fallen back on when I'm at a crossroads...

    The Road Not Taken
    By Robert Frost

    Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, long I stood
    And looked down one as far as I could
    To where it bent in the undergrowth;

    Then took the other, as just as fair,
    And having perhaps the better claim,
    Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
    Though as for that the passing there
    Had worn them really about the same,

    And both that morning equally lay
    In leaves no step had trodden black.
    Oh, I kept the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
    I doubted if I should ever come back.

    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.

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    Replies
    1. OMG Christi BEST POEM EVER!!! Okay, maybe not THE best, there are SO many good ones. But I utterly UTTERLY adore Frost!!! And this poem. Best poem for the situation!

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