From of the awesome folks at Ninth Moon, I have 3 sets of B.I.C.H.O.K. magnets for today’s prize. If you’re not familiar, that stands for “Butt In Chair, Hands on Keyboard.” This was my mantra earlier this year while writing The Book, and I love these magnets. They crack me up.
So, want a set? Leave a comment and tell us what task you are most proud of accomplishing this year.
Mine is no secret: writing the Bitch Book, when I’d never written a book before and didn’t honestly know if I could, is something I’m ineffably proud of, and I still get all giddy when I think about it.
So what are you most proud of this year that you did? Big, small, I’m curious – I’ll pick three winners in 24 hours.
On May 6 of 2008 I graduated and got my bachelors degree, 41 years after they said it couldn’t be done. That’ll show ‘em!
I finished Bitter Moon II: Triane’s Son Reigning. Nobody will read this book. Nobody read it’s predecessor. But it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written, and it hurt—it hurt so fucking much to finish. One of the kids I based a minor character on—a kid in my class that I’d known and taught for two years—died when I was editing the fucking book. Re-writing his parts ripped my heart out. I had to re-work the entire ending—I’d originally planned for a key character to die in ‘retrospect’, but not during the main action, after spending three years of happiness with her beloved. Thinking about those parts had me weeping in the car as it was, and then a good friend lost her husband a year after she married him—along with her mother and father, who also died in that same year. I couldn’t do it—I’d written this ending that ripped my fucking heart out, but I couldn’t let it stand, so I had to rewrite it—re-work all of the shit that pervaded the fucking book about it—because if you don’t get a happy fucking ending when you’re your own petty little goddess, then when do you get one? And then we were out of money—I went to part time this year so we’re rubbing pennies together—I’m maxing out our last bloody credit card for this thing, because it hurt, and then it ripped my heart out and then it gnawed on my thrashing fucking corpse and by all the fucking gods at once, it needs to see some goddamned daylight. If one person reads this book besides me and is moved by it, then it all will have been worth it.
So that’s what I’m proud of. *sigh* For all that angst, it should have been curing cancer or something.
I am proud of learning about investing- and actually doing so- this year. I feel ahead of the game now.
Ok, well, I’m 23 and I finally found a guy worth having sex with. And damn, we’re pretty good at it. Years of “research” with romance novels vastly improved my first time technique, so much that he teasingly accused me of studying porn.
My reply was something akin to a Diana Gabaldon quote: “I might have been a virgin, but I was never a nun!”
In retrospect of my earlier post, and just as a note of gratitude…
I’m proud of my stint as a TA because I found it in myself to be a good one. I have my flaws, but I liked the person I became during the lab sessions.
And I liked that I was able to give people who didn’t have confidence in their academic ability, a reason to have it. An 86 is a solid grade, especially when you spent an hour freaking out about how you’re going to fail.
So, huzzah to the Smart Bitches for their awesome contests! If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been thinking about that and had that realization.
I tackled the sewing machine and made Christmas gifts for my three godchildren. The finished product looked good and was in time for Christmas. Wow. I’m usually more of a ‘much ado about nothing’ kind of person, but this time I planned the project, executed it with more than satisfactory results and got the gifts wrapped in time to slip into ‘Santa’s’ sack. I also slipped a book into the package, ‘cause I’m a book-giving kind of godmother, and I figured that two and three year olds don’t have their hearts go pitty-pat over aprons, no matter how much sweat and cussing I put into them, or how much they like to help their mothers in the kitchen. I think my ultimate goal was to give them a memory. . . a memory of that cool apron their cool godmother gave them that they wore all through their childhoods and want to save for their own children to use. Humble much?
I also want to point out that the sewing machine is not my friend, and I gave up many weekends to accomplish this ‘miracle’. And if I’ gonna brag, then I might as well BRAG! Ya know?