There are plenty of ways I could talk about how this week has been off to a bit of a tumultuous start, which would be putting things in fairly mild terms to say the least, but I’m choosing to now focus on that. I’m instead choosing to focus on victories.

Here’s a big for-instance regarding victories:

Seen above: not the best track record, but it’s still something

I’ve not done a lot of writing lately, and I know there’s still a very deep, ingrained fear of failure and rejection playing a decent-sized role in my stagnation. I logged onto Submittable to remind myself of a couple key things regarding creative writing.

For one thing, there will always be more rejections than acceptances (at the very least, that will be the case at this stage in the game). There’s nothing wrong with that so long as those rejections continue to act as motivators and stepping stones to the next accepted piece. To that end, I need to stop letting the Declined pieces bog me down and instead feel a sense of tremendous victory over the accepted story. Hard work paid off.

Secondly, I need to remind myself from time to time I’m doing this for the enjoyment of writing and not for some tremendous pay-off in terms of success or money or whatever. Anything along those lines would be a tremendous bonus on top of everything else. No matter how bad my mood is, or how dour life seems, I still have a love of writing that lends to a desire to continue creating.

Thirdly, but far from finally, I need to harness these difficult times and use them to my advantage while reminding myself I am still doing quite well in the grand scheme of things. This sounds very “don’t worry, be happy”, and it’s easy to say while still being quite difficult to achieve (especially as a person with the kaleidoscope of neuroses I seem to be blessed with on a daily basis). It’s a goal, and like all other goals I will strive towards this in hopes of bettering myself.

I’ve got a piece brewing about how I hope to never grow jaded about writing. And, of course, my standard “keep your Christmas shenanigans away from my Thanksgiving celebration” rant which will no doubt feature at least some mention of Turkeyzilla.

However, this much introspection on top of a rough week is actually quite exhausting and so those posts will wait. I’m okay with that being the case.

In light of this being a surprisingly heavy post, topic-wise, and a rather stark absence of my usual snark and humor, here’s something completely ridiculous and unrelated:

Found via the magic of Google, on Pinterest, with credit to sango2000.deviantart.com – Delightful