So, yesterday I was discouraged because of the cancellation of a project I was really excited about and invested in. It was a surprise cancellation, the worst kind.
But then other things happened that put it in perspective. I literally took a day off from everything, reminding myself that not only had I just finished the difficult project (that got cancelled after months of hard work,) I’d moved into a new apartment in a new city in a new state, started a new job, and have been working very hard to stay, well, fundamentally healthy and also able to pay our power bill (higher in CA than WA, surprise surprise.) Everyone, in poetry, in life, experiences rejections, set-backs, money-crunches, health challenges. If we all just closed up shop every time a door was shut in our face, well, there would be a lot fewer successful writers. You can’t succeed if you stop trying. Right? Right. So it’s back into the saddle for me. Also, bad things happen to everyone, all the time, without warning. Rebecca Loudon had a really good interview online and talked about the nature of life and suffering. Her poetry is all about a kind of defiance. One of the powerful things about poetry is the ability to share with another human being and say “Hey, you’re not the only one who has ever gone through something like this. Hey, those dark nights of the soul may not be endless.”
And also thank you to all the kind folks who sent me encouraging e-mails and comments. More than a few of you brought tears to my eyes. No joke. So, thanks.

In an unrelated note: No Half Price Books stores in southern California. Not one! How do people survive without Half Price Books? Ohio, Virginia, and Seattle were crawling with them. This is the first hard evidence that there really is very little reading going on here in SoCal compared to other places.