I graduated 7 months ago. I’m employed, my non-profit work has been going well, and mostly importantly, I’ve been making huge strides in my goals to a) spread and b) make money from my writing. Not as much as I’d like but that’s because I underestimated the process:

I anticipated the hustle but I did not anticipate the TIME.

As both an Aries and an asshole with anxiety, I am an impatient motherfucker. Most of the promising writing leads I found in January didn’t come to fruition until the end of June. After 6 months, my approved poems were finally published in a magazine. In the same amount of time, I finally received feedback on the first draft I sent for my first paid online article. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful – I’m excited and thankful for both of these opportunities – I just honestly didn’t expect the process to take this long.

As someone who used to work as a managing editor of a literary journal, I should have seen this coming. Because of that same experience, I hold no resentment – I know how time-consuming that work is! Really, this has helped with my optimism and incentive to keep at it, because once these pieces get published, I want to have at least a few others out there going through the same process!

What has this taught me other than to try to be less of an impatient asshole? Well, the most significant lesson I’ve taken from these experiences is that I need to keep submitting, submitting, submitting and pitching, pitching, and pitching. I need to do this even when I’m still waiting to hear back from the dozens of other places I’ve reached out to.

In semi-related news, I am the featured poet for a show this weekend and for a show in August! I’m spending what free time I currently have on creating handmade merch. I’m also still writing Kyuranger reviews for Geek Volcano and have a couple new reviews and articles planned for this blog this month.

• Current drink: Lancaster Strawberry Wheat
• Current book: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
• Current audio book: We Eat Our Own by Kea Wilson
• Current music: a mix about cats, love, breakfast, and being tired