Hamster Brain

The book of my heart is out in the world, awaiting judgment from agents and an editor. In the past, I have valiantly tried to manage my expectations, to shield myself from the terrible low that comes with rejection. This time, though, I decided, no, I will not pretend to not be hopeful. I'm going to hope. I'm going to imagine the best happening. There is every reason to be optimistic, and I'm going to enjoy this beautiful time of believing dreams come true. 

This week, I've noticed an unexpected side effect. I call it Hamster Brain. Here is a perfect demonstration of what it's like in my head while I wait. And wait. And wait.: 

And wait.

You can imagine how hard it is to do anything--like write or create syllabi or even clean the flippin' bathroom--with such energetic hamsters trampling all over my synapses. Seriously, I have the attention span of a second grader, a fact I can state with confidence because I used to teach second grade and used to play The Hamster Dance song for my students. It was always a big hit. There'd be dancing and laughing and a general reluctance to sit back down and practice multiplication tables.

I am in the general reluctance phase. A general reluctance to do anything that requires more than a twenty minute commitment. Even a movie seems like too much right now. Writing this blog post is hard, people, and I've had to take several breaks to watch various versions of the Hamster Dance on YouTube to make it this far.

Whatever it is, this Hamster Brain time of my life, I'm grateful for it. It's a whole lot better than my usual anticipate-with-dread approach to the publishing world, that gloomy layering on of protective coating over my much too sensitive skin in preparation for the worst. If the worst does happen, it's going to suck and pretending like I didn't expect it to happen anyway won't make it suck less.

So, my writing life advice is: enjoy the waiting. Enjoy the anticipation. There's nothing you can do to circumvent it, so you might as well have fun while you're in it.