I love getting snowed in. I love power outages. I love things that are out of the ordinary. It breaks up our dependence on technology and forces us to slow down. It puts people closer together. Perfect strangers help each other dig their cars out of snowbanks; they part, wishing each other the best of safe travels. Family sit around in the dark with candles, telling stories or playing acoustic instruments. For a moment, time stands still and you have to think about everything that you do on a daily basis. Ordinary is even better when interrupted occasionally. I like it.
It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning. I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that. And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send." Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story. And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it. I wrote them. And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....
Welcome, Joy! I am so glad you have you as a follower!
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