Determination

I've been pulling together some stuff to submit to a local parenting magazine. At first I was really excited. I'm a parent and I can write. Then I started putting it off. I realized that it owes to the great Poetry Submission Debacle of 1980.

It's not so much an actual fear of rejection. That goes with the territory. There isn't a writer worth his or her salt that hasn't been rejected. J.K. Rowling springs to mind and she ended up doing ok for herself. No, it's more to do with being rejected cruelly, being told that I did it all wrong. I hate being wrong.

But then, last night, I was inspired by two things. First, The Spouse was talking about some reality show, "On the Lot" I think it's called. There's been a lot of buzz about it in the indie film community, with which he's connected, and his whole thing is that is not how you earn your chops. You get a gig, you do your best and try to be a reasonable person and then you get hired on something else. You have to be willing to be a grunt, you have to be willing to learn and eventually you manage to get somewhere.

As an example he cited our friend Norbert, who works in LA half of the year. Norbert doesn't go down to the union hall to see what's available. He calls the people he knows to see what they're doing and they hire him because he has a good reputation in the industry. That's how it works.

It made me think about how sparse my actual writing cred is but obviously, the only way to get more stuff on the resume is to work it. So there you go.

And then, because I'm still in mourning for "Gilmore girls" and don't yet know what to do with myself of a Tuesday evening, I watched most of the finale of "Dancing with the Stars". It's a really annoying program, btw, but I knew Apolo Ono was in the finals and I ♥ him.

He and his adorable partner Julieanne won, which means that now he has a shiny disco ball trophy to put next to his bronze, silver and gold Olympic medals. That in itself is a little silly, I know. But here's the thing: this is a 25 year old kid (just had his birthday yesterday, in fact) who has already accomplished some significant things. He could probably rest on his endorsements for the rest of his life. But he entered this silly competition, for whatever reasons, and then he put everything he had into it. He listened to and learned from his professional partner. He took the judges critique to heart and every week, from what I understand, he worked hard to be the best he could be. He was consistently described last night, by judges, other competitors and people who know him as "determined".

After winning he was asked how he felt and replied, "I feel amazing! You put your mind to something, you give 100 percent, sacrifice and dedication, anything is possible.”

It's such a basic formula that it seems naive but coming from someone who has proven the formula time and again, it had weight. And I thought, "100%. What would that look like?" Because, people, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that I've even managed 50%.

So there you go. I'm going to ship that stuff off and look for other stuff and keep plugging and who knows? Maybe I'll get a frakkin' disco ball myself someday.