I was filing through some rejections yesterday (always a fun way to spend your time) and noticed that in the letter from the Crab Orchard Open Competition it mentioned that my manuscript (the one based on Japanese folk tales and anime) was a semifinalist. I hadn’t seen that on the first cursory glance through the letter. So that just teaches me to read my rejections more closely.

I sent a batch of poems out electronically. I tinkered with my newest MS too. Then I tried to comment on my student’s work a little. My cat is very needy when I’m sick for some reason, and constantly jumps on my computer and reading material.

I was thinking about life trajectories after reading Victoria Chang’s blog post this morning. If I didn’t have any health problems, I would never have gone to get a low-res MFA, would probably never have finished writing my first book, never tried seriously to publish it. It doesn’t mean I love and embrace my health problems with zen-like patience, but they have affected what I’ve done and what I haven’t done – no kids, for instance, no corporate 80-hour-a-week job with accompanying paycheck, but lots and lots of time for things like writing and reading poetry and blogging. It threw a bit of a wrench into my life plan, and still does, I’m not thankful for having been in the hospital for several days, for not being able to breathe in a very scary way last week. But sometimes the things we don’t plan for, the things we can’t control, are the things that have the biggest impact on our lives.