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| mememe |
last year i decided 2012 was to be my breakout year.
some may call it a "make-it or break-it' type thing, and those some are completely in err.
the notion of getting broken in the process never entered my mind.
some may call it a "make-it or break-it' type thing, and those some are completely in err.
the notion of getting broken in the process never entered my mind.
i was committed to achieving my personal idea of success in the year of our whatever, 2012.
and that's that.
i made a promise to myself, that i will do absolutely everything within my power to create my future, letting not one opportunity to ensure success pass me by.
and that's that.
i made a promise to myself, that i will do absolutely everything within my power to create my future, letting not one opportunity to ensure success pass me by.
an aspect of my career goals involves public speaking, name recognition, and some schmoozing.
now, i consider timing to be everything. and when certain events occur at precisely the same moment in time, i consider that a message from the universe akin to being punched in the face with a wrecking ball.
i guess it is here i must be completely open about my proclivity to rely somewhat on astrology, to believe there is some thing out there that pays attention to stuff we do (good and bad), and a slightly elevated grasp of human nature.
the "or break-it") crowd might call this, weird.
fine. that makes complete sense to me.
you're either open to this or you are not, and if you aren't, that is cool, too.
you're probably going to hell anyway.
so timing, opportunity, and two free tickets to the michael smerconish bookclub all collided like an orchestrated car wreck on the schuylkill. i could win tickets, get publicity, name recognition, and meet my favorite bald person http://www.smerconish.com/ in one fell swoop! all i had to do was a 5 minute stand-up comedy audition, at a bar, in a casino, in front of drinking people and hookahs.
jesus h. chris christie!
i have difficulty speaking on the phone because my voice is a marriage of eddie vedder and marge simpson's cigarette-eating sisters. however, i made the damned promise to not allow anything that could propel me toward achieving my goal pass me by.
and i did it.
and i lost.
but i wasn't horrible, and i didn't faint, and there are some very important movers and shakers at wpht1210 that don't mind that i say the cunt word.
success!
you may think because i lost the comedy competition (to a rather fantastic local guy, chris smith, a cuspy pisces-aries typed ) i failed. but i laugh, hahaha, because one week after my comedy "fail", i received an email from an aforementioned mover and shaker, informing me of 2 comped tickets waiting for me at the scottish rites auditorium in collingswood, nj!
had i not decided to live this year unabashedly out of my box (oh stop it) i would never had stood on a stage pretending to talk funny, ending up with exactly what i had set my mind to on january 1, 2012 in the most roundabout way possible.
'roundabout' also being an excellent yessong.
and bonus! i met an awesome guy, a local dj, whom i remain in contact with to this very day.
chris smith http://comedianchrissmith.com/about-comedian-chris-smith.html and i stay in touch through gmail.
a total win win and then some.
from there, i decided to join a group.
i do not have a great deal of success in groups, and i totally understand i am partially responsible.
i admit it- i'm a group snob.
my clique-ability was made very obvious by jerri simmons, a neighbor of mine and 3rd grade class mate. and as cliques go, a third grade clique is like making it to first base. not a huge accomplishment. however, just as i was entering middle school, who shows up at camp lejeune north carolina?
yes!. her. jerri.
and i'm fucked again by my 3rd grader past; a past i was hoping to put behind me as if i was in a dod witness protection program for wayward girls.
i shake off thoughts of rejections past and cannonball into the meetup pool. with an expected amount of tech communication difficulty on my part, i secured a spot in a writer's "meetup" in downtown philadelphia.
i have discovered i can only drive into the city on wednesdays and park for free. i have another proclivity for parking violations, but seriously, in philly everyone with a car has the same proclivity.
i made certain to board a non-quiet car so as not to disturbed my fellow non- quiet passengers on a quiet car with my ipod, again. nothing like a 51 year old woman getting called out by the train conductor for owning ineffective ear buds, spilling bittersweet symphony onto a speeding septa train.
i got off at suburban and made my way to the meetup - in a highrise, even! movin' on up.
i was right on time, and the meetup commenced.
i was completely ill-prepared in that i brought my laptop rather than printed out copies of my work, and i totally missed the part that said, "we charge for this". all on me; unless i am researching, recommending, or quoting, i notoriously peruse stuff, get the gist, and move on.
i will try and commit to improving this, too.
i also immediately noticed, i was probably the only one in the room who would use the word vaginarific! to describe barrack obama's catholic church/birth control/insurance debate.
i also discovered without a doubt,i am an editors worst freaking nightmare.
we went round the table reading each meetup member's work. we offered up thoughts on what we liked about the piece, then what we disliked, culminating with the uncapping of a heavenly scented, hallucinogen-inducing sharpie marker. a red one!
i am kinda glad huffing was not "in" when i was young.
it was at this moment i knew i was not going to be a good fit for the group. i am horrific with grammar, and punctuation. my long term memory is as efficient as my ovaries have been ever since, well, neverthehellyoumind; there was no way i could or would fit improving my grammar into a "2012 is my year" plan.
still, i really enjoyed being around writers, and thinkers, and i had a pretty fantastic time hanging out with a bunch of people i had no clue even existed one hour earlier.
the sharing came full circle and it was my turn to share my work. i described an essay or two i'd written, described my blogging, and ended with the ultimate writer's sin. i actually said,
"i can't write like everyone else. i cannot pay attention to grammar because i write exactly as i speak (and i mean pretty much exactly) and it is crucial to me personally, that people hear my voice first."
i saw the mika brzenzski style eyeballs roll. i did. rollin' like a river they were!
every newbie writer says this shit.
E V E R Y O N E.
then the they say, "no. i really mean it. i'm the one that will break the strunk and white glass ceiling that holds we, the grammar-challenged creators of stories, down!"
i won't say that.
but i will prove it.
anyway, to wrap up my evening i was pretty much voted off meetup island.
i was indeed not a good fit.
but i am totally cool with that because they're right. i would never be able to say cunt in front of any of these people, ever. so this ends well, and as it should.
it was also wonderful because it was one more thing that i have done all by my big girl self, to secure a life i have previously only dreamed of.
one cannot sit back letting life happen all around you, and ask yourself, "why does my life suck so much?"
the answer is simple: "what are you doing about it to make it not suck?"
i am going to look for a free meetup group. maybe a group of writers who really like lewis black, have similar whack minds, and talk with their hands like chimps on crack.
i'm lookin' for that group next!
cmk
i guess it is here i must be completely open about my proclivity to rely somewhat on astrology, to believe there is some thing out there that pays attention to stuff we do (good and bad), and a slightly elevated grasp of human nature.
the "or break-it") crowd might call this, weird.
fine. that makes complete sense to me.
you're either open to this or you are not, and if you aren't, that is cool, too.
you're probably going to hell anyway.
so timing, opportunity, and two free tickets to the michael smerconish bookclub all collided like an orchestrated car wreck on the schuylkill. i could win tickets, get publicity, name recognition, and meet my favorite bald person http://www.smerconish.com/ in one fell swoop! all i had to do was a 5 minute stand-up comedy audition, at a bar, in a casino, in front of drinking people and hookahs.
jesus h. chris christie!
i have difficulty speaking on the phone because my voice is a marriage of eddie vedder and marge simpson's cigarette-eating sisters. however, i made the damned promise to not allow anything that could propel me toward achieving my goal pass me by.
and i did it.
and i lost.
but i wasn't horrible, and i didn't faint, and there are some very important movers and shakers at wpht1210 that don't mind that i say the cunt word.
success!
you may think because i lost the comedy competition (to a rather fantastic local guy, chris smith, a cuspy pisces-aries typed ) i failed. but i laugh, hahaha, because one week after my comedy "fail", i received an email from an aforementioned mover and shaker, informing me of 2 comped tickets waiting for me at the scottish rites auditorium in collingswood, nj!
had i not decided to live this year unabashedly out of my box (oh stop it) i would never had stood on a stage pretending to talk funny, ending up with exactly what i had set my mind to on january 1, 2012 in the most roundabout way possible.
'roundabout' also being an excellent yessong.
and bonus! i met an awesome guy, a local dj, whom i remain in contact with to this very day.
chris smith http://comedianchrissmith.com/about-comedian-chris-smith.html and i stay in touch through gmail.
a total win win and then some.
from there, i decided to join a group.
i do not have a great deal of success in groups, and i totally understand i am partially responsible.
i admit it- i'm a group snob.
my clique-ability was made very obvious by jerri simmons, a neighbor of mine and 3rd grade class mate. and as cliques go, a third grade clique is like making it to first base. not a huge accomplishment. however, just as i was entering middle school, who shows up at camp lejeune north carolina?
yes!. her. jerri.
and i'm fucked again by my 3rd grader past; a past i was hoping to put behind me as if i was in a dod witness protection program for wayward girls.
i shake off thoughts of rejections past and cannonball into the meetup pool. with an expected amount of tech communication difficulty on my part, i secured a spot in a writer's "meetup" in downtown philadelphia.
i have discovered i can only drive into the city on wednesdays and park for free. i have another proclivity for parking violations, but seriously, in philly everyone with a car has the same proclivity.
i made certain to board a non-quiet car so as not to disturbed my fellow non- quiet passengers on a quiet car with my ipod, again. nothing like a 51 year old woman getting called out by the train conductor for owning ineffective ear buds, spilling bittersweet symphony onto a speeding septa train.
i got off at suburban and made my way to the meetup - in a highrise, even! movin' on up.
i was right on time, and the meetup commenced.
i was completely ill-prepared in that i brought my laptop rather than printed out copies of my work, and i totally missed the part that said, "we charge for this". all on me; unless i am researching, recommending, or quoting, i notoriously peruse stuff, get the gist, and move on.
i will try and commit to improving this, too.
i also immediately noticed, i was probably the only one in the room who would use the word vaginarific! to describe barrack obama's catholic church/birth control/insurance debate.
i also discovered without a doubt,i am an editors worst freaking nightmare.
we went round the table reading each meetup member's work. we offered up thoughts on what we liked about the piece, then what we disliked, culminating with the uncapping of a heavenly scented, hallucinogen-inducing sharpie marker. a red one!
i am kinda glad huffing was not "in" when i was young.
it was at this moment i knew i was not going to be a good fit for the group. i am horrific with grammar, and punctuation. my long term memory is as efficient as my ovaries have been ever since, well, neverthehellyoumind; there was no way i could or would fit improving my grammar into a "2012 is my year" plan.
still, i really enjoyed being around writers, and thinkers, and i had a pretty fantastic time hanging out with a bunch of people i had no clue even existed one hour earlier.
the sharing came full circle and it was my turn to share my work. i described an essay or two i'd written, described my blogging, and ended with the ultimate writer's sin. i actually said,
"i can't write like everyone else. i cannot pay attention to grammar because i write exactly as i speak (and i mean pretty much exactly) and it is crucial to me personally, that people hear my voice first."
i saw the mika brzenzski style eyeballs roll. i did. rollin' like a river they were!
every newbie writer says this shit.
E V E R Y O N E.
then the they say, "no. i really mean it. i'm the one that will break the strunk and white glass ceiling that holds we, the grammar-challenged creators of stories, down!"
i won't say that.
but i will prove it.
anyway, to wrap up my evening i was pretty much voted off meetup island.
i was indeed not a good fit.
but i am totally cool with that because they're right. i would never be able to say cunt in front of any of these people, ever. so this ends well, and as it should.
it was also wonderful because it was one more thing that i have done all by my big girl self, to secure a life i have previously only dreamed of.
one cannot sit back letting life happen all around you, and ask yourself, "why does my life suck so much?"
the answer is simple: "what are you doing about it to make it not suck?"
i am going to look for a free meetup group. maybe a group of writers who really like lewis black, have similar whack minds, and talk with their hands like chimps on crack.
i'm lookin' for that group next!
cmk
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