The kitten total

I know we all agree that this is not the totalitarian nightmare we signed up for. Personally, I’d hoped to live my whole life without going through… at least 80% of what’s happened in the last year or so.

However, I’ve also had enough therapy to know that we’re supposed to focus on smaller things; things that are within our control. I’m not very good at actually doing that, but I know it can be helpful for some people.

I do a lot of animal rescue work and one of the things I’m in charge of, is helping find intake placement for kittens. We only take orphaned neonatal kittens 6 weeks and under. You’d think that’s such a narrow spectrum that we wouldn’t take in many kittens, but it’s a rather alarming number. I field intake calls every day.

Here’s some good news. So far this month, I’ve helped arrange intake for 52 kittens. That’s so many! I’m so glad I’m able to do this. It helps me focus on something good. Kittens are pure joy and wonderful and better than people pretty much all the time. So yes. I am putting good into the universe in the form of tiny kittens who bring joy to everyone.

Meow

Contest in Review

It was brought to my attention that I never updated ya’ll on the Dream Foundry contest!

I was not selected as winner for the contest. I know, sad panda all around. It was amazing and very affirming to have been selected as a finalist and I am still quite thrilled about that!

Congratulations to the winners! Good luck to all of us on our future endeavors. 🙂

Dream Foundry Finalist

The most shocking and amazing thing has happened.

No, not that.

I have been selected as one of ten finalists in the Dream Foundry writing contest! It’s astonishing! I can’t believe I’m one of ten finalists from a pool of over 300…

It was a struggle to not title this post “Clerical Error.” Instead it just reinforced how strong the impostor syndrome is with me! I had no idea.

I almost didn’t submit. That’s how this works. I wasn’t really happy with my story, I wanted to do another round of edits. I had finished a small rewrite, but wanted to read through it again and clean up the rough edges. I was pushing up against the deadline for the contest but I was exhausted and knew I couldn’t force myself to stay up any longer, and even if I did, that I wouldn’t be doing good work.

I reminded myself of one of my favorite pieces of writing advice: Don’t self reject. You never know if you’ll get into an anthology or a contest, or if an agent will like your pitch, if you don’t ever send it out.

So I sent it.

I was totally blown away to be selected as a finalist. Keeping it to myself was so very hard! Now that it’s out there, I’ve had a wonderful time sharing my joy with others.

Congratulations to everyone who participated, and especially to my fellow finalists. Personally, I think we should all be friends now. hehe

It will be another couple weeks before we know the winners, but quite frankly, I’m so thrilled to be a finalist, and have my work in front of judges I respect, is a prize in and of itself.