Administrative Professionals' Day

Today is Administrative Professionals' Day. Apparently. It states as much on my desk calendar. I overlooked it because I was too busy focusing on the 8 telling me I only have 8 days until I'll be in New York City.

I talked to Amanda in Practicum and it was she that informed me of today. "You're going to get so spoiled!!" she said. I won't. Norma isn't that kind of boss. Instead she's the kind of boss that lets you leave early on Fridays and writes you as many letters of recommendations at it takes for you to achieve your dreams. But Rebecca did bring me a cupcake. It was really good.

After people started wishing me a Happy Administrative Professionals' Day, which I still consider Secretarys' Day, I realized I was an administrative professional. I ate the cupcake and thought to myself This is who I am. This is my life now.

I immediately pulled my thumb drive out of my purse and started writing chapter 4 of my memoir. I do not plan to be an administrative professional/secretary my whole life.

That's right people. Chapter 4. Yeah (read that decisively). I've got 21,645 words on this sucker. I wrote chapter 2 in two days. Then I wrote chapter 3 in two days. Today I wrote most of chapter 4. It seems I'm a fast writer.

My cousin/soul friend Carly is my (alpha) reader. [side note: the term "alpha reader", or "beta reader", is generally used for fiction, not non-fiction. But I don't know a better term] I send her the rough drafts of my chapters and she tells me whether or not they're awful. She loved the first chapter. She even quoted it in her email back to me. I would say "glowing" is appropriate to describe her review. I'm hoping the rest of my chapters follow suit because when I'm writing any part of any chapter, I think to myself, Why would anyone ever want to read this????????? and I definitely think it with that many questions marks.

It's part of my self-deprecating charm.

After I got rejected from The Course, I applied for a position at a place I was once quoted as saying "I would rather be a waitress for the rest of my life than work at [company name hidden]". I was feeling rather desperate. I got a 'no' from them too.

It seems my best option for achieving anything is going to come from writing. The overwhelming response to the "Hey Now, The Dream is Over" post pointed to that. Maybe everyone read it because it was in future tense, and that was prettycool. Or maybe it was because everyone can empathize with broken dreams.

And thank you, by the way, to all of you who sent notes of encouragement. A text from Elysa saying she was "upset all day on my behalf", an really nice email from a guy I don't really know but think is kind of great, another email from my soul friend, comments and texts and videos, all helped pull me away from my penultimate self.

Onward and upward. Happy Administrative Professionals' Day. It's time to work on a new dream and a new world for myself.