Kings, Fools and Princes

A range of puzzle pieces came together for me this morning. A few things O said, conversations I've had with otterdancing, the language of Tarot and some discussions I've had about Element Money have formed a pattern that's brought useful insights to my mind. At first I thought this was all about Element Money, and then I thought, no, it's about adulthood. But a little more reflection has shown me that it all connects to sex, love, and being in right relationship for me.

If I can just hold on to it until I can find enough time to write it all down! Gods, I love being able to untangle the threads that hold me back and step out of them, mostly by myself.

Ok, that's not fair: I've had a whole lot of help over the last year or three.

Outrageous thing

Still not writing about the new model. But...

...over the weekend one of my friends proposed that I do something truly outrageous. He has been reading my book, you see, and he is the kind of person who makes outrageous plans (clearly). While we were sitting around eating hummus and waiting for ritual, he suggested that I submit my book for a really big book prize.

Not, you see, one of those regular, quite excellent book prizes, but a really big book prize.

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I was pretty much floored, and I explained that I couldn't submit for this prize, since I am an anthropologist and this is an ethnographic book.

But no, he explained, this really big contest has multiple submission categories that most people don't know about, and actually, my book fits one of them. He also pointed out that anyone can submit for this thing, not just a publisher. In fact, he said, he was thinking of doing it for me himself, but it requires a bio and a photo.

So I sat there for a minute and thought about it.

There really is no downside that I can think of. There are no adverse consequences for submitting it and not making it through to jury review. In fact, as near as I can tell, failure would simply mean that four copies of my book would be floating around to random people, some of whom might like it.

All I have to do is send in the copies, a small check, a bio and a photo.

Of course, I tend to get paralyzed when I am confronted with big, intimidating things like this. But I have lived with this for a long time and I know how it works from the inside, so here's how I'm gonna do this.

1. I'm not going to say the name. As long as I don't think about it as anything but "that thing I'm going to submit,' I am much less likely to get intimidated about it.

2. I am going to break it down into small steps. All I have to do today is print out the URLs he sent me and read them. He has already determined the category under which I should submit.

3. All I have to do tomorrow is tweak an existing bio for this thing. That's *all* I have to do on the project tomorrow.

4. The day after, I will put the four volumes in a package with a one-paragraph cover letter, a hard copy of the bio, a check and whatever else they want and send this thing off. Then I am going to forget all about it.

5. I have asked my friend to text me regularly and ask me if I have kept my commitments to myself.

Because the very worst case scenario would be to end up like this:





And I am someone very different.