Publishing: JustWhen
Today's Publishing Story, the thirty-eighth installment in this series, finds me watching an opportunity slip by. I call these events JustWhens, for they tend to happen just when I was finally ready to move ahead and into something new.
Thank you for following along. A Weekly Writing Summary also follows.
"Life most often proceeds by other means than planned."
It might be an immutable law of this universe that JustWhen something seems lined up and ready to go, something else intrudes to blow up whatever best-laid plan was guiding the move. This presence justifies all the encouragement anyone can ever attract. But, regardless of how it feels, these intrusions are never about you. They're just this unsettling property of the universe breaking through at the invariably least convenient times. I know that it seems you get more of these than anybody, but that's a perspective illusion created by you having the only seat situated to see what happens to you but not to anybody else. Ninety percent of these JustWhens are invisible to everyone but the victim.
The occurrence of another JustWhen, no matter how common they seem, does not necessarily render the recipient a victim. Much depends upon how the recipient reacts; even an initially extreme reaction can be followed by more circumspect ones. If a JustWhen sprouts a grudge, it can become big trouble, which might require professional counseling to recover from. A run-of-the-mill JustWhen should not necessitate a wholesale abandonment of an original objective, just a reassessment. I know, I just heard myself say, "just," too, and I didn't mean by employing that term to play down the effect your latest JustWhen certainly had. These typically seem tragic at the point of impact, a frustrating turn of fortune, the end of something. Not wanting to sound too awfully reassuring, these endings also tend to mark the start of something, often something completely surprising!
I know, the last thing anybody wanted after carefully planning an initiative was to receive a surprise plot twist the morning they're leaving. Well, they're not leaving as planned, so it was the morning they'd planned on leaving. Now, they might never be leaving again. They might lose heart and contend that they must not have been meant to be departing and that they might stay closer to home thereafter. Stumbling out of the starting blocks convinces nobody that they're likely to win any race.
The Muse tested positive for Covid yesterday. My test showed nothing. She was just planning to announce her campaign to run for office this week. She had interviews lined up and looked forward to sitting with the newspaper's editor to discuss her perspectives. She will continue to pursue this objective, just not by previously planned means. Her planning was not wasted; she thought through the steps she'd have to take anyway, even if not in the same order and timeframe she initially expected. My careers, like everybody's, have been liberally spotted by JustWhen experiences. The missed meeting that was supposed to result in that big contract. The chance encounters that couldn't quite get followed up on—the opportunities passing close by but not quite close enough. I, too, have felt beset.
I can say that as a result of serial JustWhens, my story turned out differently than I'd planned. The stories that survived, though, seem richer for the JustWhen intrusions. The twists rendered them more interesting than they ever could have otherwise become. Life most often proceeds by other means than planned. If that's not a given, then it certainly should be.
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Nobody Needs Gripey Neighbors
My absentee neighbor rang my doorbell yesterday. He'd returned to perform his semi-annual yard maintenance and to, I guess, accuse me of sabotaging his property. He'd found branches from his nearly dead maple tree littering his yard. Those branches have been falling all winter, every time the wind blew through the neighborhood. I admitted that I'd lovingly placed those that had fallen into the street into his yard so that he could take care of them as he pleased, not wanting to intrude into his crude and bewildering caretaking practice. He has a short fuse and one he seems to light himself. He began a litany of accusations, but I cut him off. Who did he think he was stepping up onto my porch to accuse me of sabotage? He ran a litany of grudges past me in under five minutes, but I'd lost my patience. I suggested that he sell that place if its care overwhelmed him so. Once he left, I texted a friend who had mentioned some interest in the property to report that he might finally be near enough to his wits end to agree to part with it on somewhat reasonable terms. Nobody needs gripey neighbors.