How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar. -Trina PaulusIt hit me this week: I’m already almost 1/3 of the way done with my MBA. I have one more week of assignments to complete for this class, and I get my first real break since Christmas. It’s done some to add to my giddiness, but my real happiness comes from being very close to releasing my first novelette.

I completed the majority of my revisions this week, and shipped it to another reviewer, who’s looking for copy errors for me, too. That means it’s just down to blurbing and cover creation. Since the story quotes a song my grandma made up with a friend when she was in college, I’d really like to release it on her birthday, in her honor, on June 15. We’ll see whether that happens, since I have a 20-page paper due on the 16th to close out this class; I’m still maintaining an A average (which still blows my mind!) so I don’t want to derail either for the other, either.

I also got to meet one of my long-time social media buddies yesterday, at the Printers Row Literature Festival in Chicago. (HI JUSTIN!) It was a shock to my system to see so many authors and readers collected in one place, and be reminded of just how many people think about the power and importance of words. So I enjoyed myself immensely, and began considering a plot to make that an annual pilgrimage. Maybe someday I’ll have earned acclaim enough to merit a spot at one of those tables, too. Meantime, at some point in the not-so-distant future, you can look forward to a more fulsome recounting of things I learned there.

This round of ROW80 runs to June 20th, so my goal of at least 3 walks for at least 5 miles is still in place, too. For the exercise walks where I actually ran my app, I only managed 4.6 miles over those 3 outings. But I don’t feel too badly, either, because yesterday’s excursion had me running across Chicago in a futile attempt to make my train on time. Although I made it to the platform before they began boarding passengers, Union Station locks out access to the trains somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes before the train is scheduled to leave… leaving me pounding on the doors and stuck in the area for an extra 3 hours… During which I discovered that restaurants in that neighborhood close at 5pm on Saturdays, so my only real option (after another 45 minutes of wandering around) was to enjoy the train station ambiance and convenience food. It was a good lesson learned for future trips.

Finally, I survived the first round of fillings, with the numbing agent hangover I expected, so the Really Kewl Excursion to Chicago had a headache overlay I could have done without, and I have a bigger pile of work to face tomorrow than I would prefer, but I also know those teeth will remain healthy now. In that line of thinking, I’d like to share an article I keep returning to: 9 Lies to Unlearn Before It’s Too Late. I think every one of those injunctions has crossed my mind at any given time, so I’d like my readers, too, to consider that success doesn’t always look like what you think it will; being busy does not equate to being productive; bravery only comes in facing fear; or that it’s too late to do anything other than what you’re currently doing. The whole article is worth the reminders, so I’d urge you to read it too.

In the meantime, here’s what everyone else did this week.

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One thought on “Eyes on the Prize

  1. What a wonderful post!

    When we’d been married about a year, and were driving two vehicles cross-country from Wyoming to New York, my husband and I lost one another in Chicago rush-hour traffic. 36 hours, we reconnected in Erie, Pennsylvania.

    Another time, i took the kidsto Philadelphia. We enjoyed touring Independence Hall, and getting a good look at the Liberty Bell, and then walking back up Market Street, past Ben Franklin’s print shop – to find ourcar was not where we had left it, and we were stranded.

    We finally found it at the impound yard, which meant a taxi drive, seeing a huge ship at the port we wouldn’t have been near, otherwise, and a first-hand exploration of how impounding works…an education of a different sort!

    I’m saving your article link for later reading.

    Congratulations on all those things that are going so well! =)

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