My story “The Ugliest Drowned Man in the World Washes Ashore Lake Michigan” was selected as a storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Story of 2009.  I’m so thrilled! I’d also like to thank the lovely Roxane Gay at PANK, for the nomination.

As Howard Junker likes to say every time he rejects me, onward, upward!

Five months into living in Santa Fe and I couldn’t be happier! I’m so glad we were able to move here. I love the mountains, the sunsets. The people. I put together a book of snapshots taken during our April vacation, when we decided to move here. You can check it out on Blurb: Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I’ve also recently had some good news! My short story, “The Road Home,” was selected as a finalist in the Tennessee Williams Fiction Festival contest, and my story “The Ugliest Drowned Man in the World Washes Ashore Lake Michigan” was nominated for the Million Writers Award by PANK. I’m thankful for both opportunities and would like to thank everyone involved.

There have been some interesting articles lately, about how as a culture we’re trending towards the belief that positive thinking can bear actual results. Many folks think that’s not plausible, and that saying as much does more harm than good, raising hopes where it shouldn’t. I couldn’t disagree more. Positive thinking has made all the difference in my life, though of course you have to couple those thoughts with action.

I like to keep a vision board. Last year, I showed mine to a friend, who immediately told me to get rid of the rejections I’d posted there. They were nice rejections, encouraging, and I’d thought it was nice to have them in view. I realized my friend was right and immediately took them down. In reassessing my board, I realized I had posted a great many pictures of the Pacific Northwest, where we were living. As it was, we kept getting invited on vacations in the PNW, and I wanted to break out, head someplace different, though I wasn’t sure where. I decided those had to come down too, as well as that picture of Lucy looking rebellious.

What had I been thinking?

In place of the sprawling vision board that had literally taken up one wall of our bedroom, I put up a fake acceptance letter from Harper’s (still working on that one!) and a lone picture of Georgia O’Keeffe on back of a motorcycle in the New Mexican desert. Less than two weeks later, we’d rented our house and found one to rent in the enchanted state.

And now, here we are! With the new locale came a new vision board, sans rejections. It’s also smaller. I also keep a wish jar, and every Friday I write new ones on slips of paper, thinking hard about what kind of life I want to live and the people I want to share it with. Whether or not any of this has helped me accomplish my goals is beside the point. The important thing is the singular focus it accomplishes. That, and the chance it affords to take stock and be grateful for what I have already.

Thank you.

Just when I’m feeling good about having dropped out of full-time work to focus on my writing and family, Huffpo reports that Jill Biden will be teaching at the same college where I last worked. In the same department. Teaching the same group of students I taught.

I can just imagine it! Snickering with Jill during department meetings when the dean makes a lame joke, asking for her help when the copier jams and the secretaries are smoking away a half-hour break.

And what about the ladies-only potluck dinner I’d be sure to throw, now that Jill was on board? “Okaaaaaaaay, Jill. Fine. Bring the hubby. But he better make a damn fine mojito.”

What had I been thinking, quitting a stable job with a pension and health insurance when the country was gearing up for complete economic collapse? With Jill Biden just a few short years from sneaking into my office to “borrow” a #2 pencil?

Then came an update: Dr. Biden will acutally be working at a different campus than the one where I’d worked.

Whew.

For now, I can go back to dreaming.