At just about 6:30 this morning, a transformer exploded outside our window. A bright light flashed through our blinds, accompanied by a resounding boom. I'm not sure whether the light or the actual explosion woke me up, but for one whole second--having suffered yet another set of apocalyptic nightmares*--I thought we had just been bombed and we were definitely, in a matter of seconds, going to die. I was frozen, a deer in the headlights, a cornered rabbit, all I could do was wait for what I knew would be painful and horrible and oh, fuck. God, I'm not ready to die yet. Awesome, right? Daniel, not having woken up in the middle of an apocalyptic nightmare and also being a gent of sound reason, said, in a sleepy and relatively unconcerned voice: "A transformer probably blew." At which point, the panic faded into relief/terror/a right cornucopia of other feelings, and I completely lost it for about ten minutes. In summary, I do not like bombs. I do not like to think about bombs. I rather wish bombs had not been invented. Also, why do I keep having awful dreams? Am I stressed about something I haven't realized? Ugh. I'm about ready to put my imagination in a Time Out.
Apart from that little adventure, it's been a productive week. I have no idea where the time is going today, but hopefully I can get something out of it. My goal is to have a short story Lit Mag-ready in a month--we'll see how that works out. Despite feeling up-and-at-'em mood-wise, confidence has not been at a high point lately. I'm falling back into my fear-of-mediocrity routine where I am too afraid to show my work to anyone, and assume that anyone who does read my work is only pretending if they tell me it's "good." Ahhh, the joys of the subjective profession. But! in the wise words of Sugar**, I shall continue to write like a motherfucker, and maybe the sunny days in the spring and summer they keep promising we'll get will take care of the confidence bit.
In other news, it's raining! And cloudy! Again! How nice.
*Just a couple nights ago, I had a horrible dream in which we were being blitzed (mentioned in a footnote--on my last blog post, I think?). Last night I had been having similar dreams. This should give you a hint about where my mind jumped in response to Bright Light, Big Explosion.
**who is, perhaps, the best columnist ever