seems like for the past year my means of personal advancement has been to throw a bunch of lines out all at once and wait for one of them to come in. if at least one of them does then i feel fine. so far i'm two for two, in a sense. at the beginning of 2012 i submitted to soliloquies, the scrivener creative review and the irving layton award. and i somehow got published in both and took home the award. so that was weirdly insane and insanely gratifying. this fall it was headlight, the johnnies, and the gazette and globe internships. i whiffed on the globe and headlight. i assume nothing's going to come of the johnnies even though i'm imagining it a lot. just cause the end of the bookstore cat somehow got a nomination made it feel like, 'who knows, anything could get a nomination' so i submitted in every category. but i'm sure it'll be a bunch of random crap and who knows. it's gonna feel weird this year cause every link piece that gets nominated i'll have copy edited. and for every piece that should have gotten a nom that doesn't, i'll be like, 'but.' i wonder what it'll be like next year. a bit less of that cause there might be content from after my tenure. anyway but the gazette is giving me an interview for the summer internship. so there's my validation. now i just need to set up the next row of pins. irving layton again i guess and then i have to pick some other publications. carte blanche seems obvious but it's not due til march so it'll be further down the road. i need some instant verification. i want to step it up a bit though. emma was telling me i had to quit kicking it small-time and not getting headlight was like, 'ok, why bother anyway. time to ante up.' which is scary cause it feels like it'll lead to more rejection. but if i'm still getting rejections from concordia then i might as well be getting rejections from places that pay or whatever. i'm still feeling kind of salty about headlight. i wish matrix did open calls so at least i could whiff on that. i wrote a french piece that i feel like submitting to the void for their spring issue but who knows what the theme will be. i need to start writing this band story. it's been kicking around in my head for forever. feels like it could be the irving layton submission this year instead of 'on the road' which is still super unfinished probably. i wish i knew where to submit 'you run with the devil' or whatever i'll call it. i'd love to get that published somewhere but all the places that take non-fiction are looking for like 3,500 and under and i don't know if i have the energy/wherewithal to cut it in half and not add anything. this feels like it probably sounds very self-involved and it is. there's a reason i wrote this in furs.