Anna at Borders

With all the griping and whining I’ve done about the living situation lately, I think years from now what I’ll remember most is what Miss Hazel said to me on the phone after I had filled her in, in probably way too much detail.

“You know what’s funny about things like this? It’s that none of it ever matters ten years later.”

Point. Set. Match. Miss Hazel. As usual.

My horoscope says August will be full of fluctuations. It couldn’t be more accurate so far, because this is just the 5th and I’ve already had ridiculous ups and downs. Just Thursday, I had a great conversation with an interesting, inspiring woman at work and a nice lunch with another tech writer (even though this one asks me sometimes if I need some work to do and means it), then got home to a humunGus IRS bill from 2005 that I’ll have to spend even more time and money investigating and fixing.

The highlight of the week happened on a lunchtime trip to the Borders in downtown Indy when I asked a girl named Anna to point me in the direction of the recent release of The Portable Writer's Conference.

She walked to the section where it should have been with me and asked, “What do you write?”

I hung my head and stammered: “Oh, nothing. Nothing, really. I don’t have anything published or anything. I just play around with things.”

“I think that’s so cool.”
“Writing is the hardest part.”
“Writers are my rock stars.”
“Like what types of things are you working on?”
“What’s your genre?”

She kept pressing me. And thank God!! I left the store feeling like a real writer, and, since I don't believe in chance encounters and coincidences, I'm going to go back to the store when the book I ordered arrives and thank her some more.