I saw the most amazing thing just now. I was at Rittenhouse Square Park, where I go every Saturday to pick up my box of veggies from Spiral Path Farm. J and I were chillin’ on a bench, drinking large cups of apple cider and enjoying the unusually warm late-October day, when all of a sudden a huge bird flew right over our heads and up into the tree behind us.

I was amazed by how unafraid of people the bird was — a true city dweller, s/he was obviously used to activity and noise. It stayed perched in a branch of that tree for a good five minutes, and let J and I come up right underneath it. He tried to get some pictures on his camera phone, but you couldn’t really see the bird on them. We knew that it was some kind of raptor, because it had the hooked beak and it was so big. (We also saw it going for a squirrel, later on.) We decided it was either a falcon or a hawk. (Neither J nor I is incredibly good at plant and animal identification, although I’m trying to get better.)

After I got home and did some research, we decided it was probably a Red-Tailed Hawk. How exciting! There are several known groups of Red-Tails living in NYC, including the famous Central Park clan, but I couldn’t find any mentions of Red-Tails in Philadelphia. Perhaps they are starting to move in to my city? I hope so, that would be awesome. (We certainly have plenty of pigeons for them to eat.)

So today I got to stare at a Red-Tailed Hawk in the middle of the city. That totally made my day.

I got my first rejection letter of the current batch of story submissions today. I wasn’t surprised; I knew when I submitted that that particular magazine was a bit out of my league. As soon as I came home and saw the envelope lying on the table, I knew what it was.

Despite the fact that I know this is necessary, that every writer gets their stack of 10 rejection letters before they publish their first story, that it’s a commonplace part of the writing business… I still didn’t want to open the letter. I knew what it was, and I just didn’t want to see it in black and white, on paper.

The letter itself was pretty standard — probably the same form they send out to everyone. “Your story didn’t grab my interest, but thanks for sending it along.”

The “why am I doing this, I should just give up” phase lasted only about 15 minutes, I think. That’s pretty good. And now I will review the story again, and try to make it better, and send it along to someone else that will perhaps be a more appropriate market.

Rejection’s never fun. On a personal level, on an artistic level — anytime something you care about is involved. But if I’m going to play this game and try to be a writer, I know that I need to get used to it.

Gonna keep working on that stack of 10…

Other stuff that’s important but a little further away:

1. Pay off the student loans. I would really like to get this done as soon as possible. It would totally rock to be completely out of debt, even if just for a little while.

I’m still scheming on how quick I can actually get this done, but my ideal is to have it done by the time I finish the training program I’m currently in. So by July 2008. If I want to do that, I will have to put a lot of money into it starting next month, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that yet.

2. I’ve been tossing around the thought lately of buying a house after I get my loans paid off. There’s so many “if”s in front of that one that it’s almost ridiculous to think about — like maybe I won’t want to still be living here then, or maybe I’ll be in a relationship which could impact living arrangements, or maybe I’ll decide to go back to school, or maybe I’ll want to move closer to work, or to get a job closer to where I live. So many “if”s. But it’s something I’ve been pondering.

Right now I really like this neighborhood, and I think it would be possible for me to eventually buy a house around here. (Heck, I’m paying enough in rent, I might as well be getting something out of it.)

Or maybe it’s just that, with my little sister getting married, I feel compelled to do something equally adult and stable. If only to prove to myself that I can.

3. I would really really like to do the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University in the UK. (This would be a “while working fulltime” type thing, I think.)

4. Eventually I would really really really like to do the PhD in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Not because I particularly want to move to Atlanta, but because it sounds like such a friggin’ awesome program otherwise. (This would be a “quit my job and go back to school” type thing.)

So there. I think that’s everything I’ve been thinking about lately. Who knows if any of it will ever come true? But I’m pretty confident in my ability to pursue things that I decide I want, so I guess we’ll just have to see what I decide I want…

Most music, to me, has a particular season with it. Some songs are inherently wintery, others belong to summer, and others to fall.

(Most music to me also is linked to weather — for example, there is rain music and sun music — and sometimes a particular time of day as well. For example, I only listen to electronica at night. Perhaps this is somewhat akin to synaesthesia? Only experienced by many more people, I’d guess.)

Anyways, every year I make a mix of good autumn music, from the stuff that I’m currently listening to. I got around to it a little bit late this year, but I finally made one today and I thought I’d share my playlist here.

1. Cobra Starship - “Snakes on a Plane”
   (Because it’s good to begin with something that makes you smile.)
2. Sleater-Kinney - “Light Rail Coyote”
3. The Long Winters - “Fire Island, AK”
4. Dropkick Murphys - “Worker’s Song”
5. Ani DiFranco - “Shroud”
6. Radiohead - “The Gloaming”
7. Greg Graffin - “Cease”
8. Amadou et Mariam - “M’Bife”
9. Indigo Girls - “All That We Let In”
10. Green and Root - “Not So Thick”
11. U2 - “The Unforgettable Fire”
12. Greg Laswell - “Sing, Theresa Says”
13. The Bees - “Imaginary Girl”
14. Indigo Girls - “Dirt and Dead Ends”
15. Lindsay Mac - “Turn Me Away”
16. Danielle Rosa - “Unseen Ways”
17. Mano Negra - “Noir Desir”
18. U2 - “Miss Sarajevo”
19. Indigo Girls - “Pendulum Swinger”

It may be a little bit heavy on the Indigo Girls, but I’ve always found them to be very autumnal. I’ve really been listening to them a lot, especially after seeing them in concert last week. (It was a good show. I didn’t really like their new album before that.)

Looking at the playlist, I realize that it starts out happy and energetic, and becomes more and more dreamy and melancholy as it goes on, finally ending with another energetic rock song. That tends to mirror the pattern of my days lately, I think. I start out each new day optimistic and ready to take on whatever comes up, but by the train ride home I’m generally off in my own little world. Then I get another burst of energy from my walk home, after which I scurry around and clean and want to change everything. Unfortunately, this doesn’t usually stretch as far as making dinner.

I’ve been thinking a lot about goals lately, and my own personal goals in particular. (”Lately”, in this case, meaning “roughly since I started this whole post-college / real job / Philadelphia adventure”.)

You know, it seems like while you’re in school your goals are basically predefined for you, or at least heavily influenced by the structure of the system. While I was in high school in Alabama, my goals were all about going to college and getting out of there, getting to a better place both personally and geographically. In college, my goals were twofold — both to study and develop in topics that interested me, and to build the necessary skills to get a good job immediately (as required by student loan debt, which I knew I was accepting when I chose Cornell). I managed to do plenty for myself in that time, that wasn’t related to getting a job — like living in Australia and doing my honors thesis — but I knew there was a time limit built in, and money pressures, and something that it all built toward.

Now, for possibly the first time ever, I’m in a place where I could stay a long time. Probably the rest of my life, if I really wanted to. And so for the first time, I’m faced with the task of really setting my own goals and deciding what’s most important to me, what’s the purpose of my life. (Not to sound too metaphysical or anything. I mean purpose in a very concrete sense, as in: What is my work? What is my vocation? What is it that I’m meant to contribute to the world in the time that I am here?)

Right after I started on at the LFC, I set some tangible goals for myself, things I wanted to complete before the end of 2006. One was to get out of credit card debt, which I’ve basically been able to do. (I didn’t have as much as a lot of people, but “too much” means “any” in my opinion.) Another was to go through all of my old half-written, drafted, or incomplete stories that I’ve accumulated, stretching back to my high school days, decide which ones were worthwhile and edit them into publishable shape, and discard the rest. The third was to submit two good stories for publication by the end of this year. (That one I’ve met, as of last Wednesday.)

The themes that come out to me here are a) financial stability, and b) writing. I’ve come to realize that, at least for right now, writing is what I “really do”. I may never do it fulltime, I may never be the next Neil Gaiman, but from my thesis project onward I’ve known that that was it. That is what I have to contribute to the world. Financial stability, of course, is the other, and that’s just part of being an adult and being able to take care of myself and help people.

More thoughts on this will probably come, especially as it re: my “day job”.

I.

i told my illusions
we needed to see other people,
and then i stopped returning their phone calls.

II.

the Word was the Universe,
and god said:
Listen.

III.

ask,
and trust that the question will hold you.

my answer is not
what will make you stand or fall.

today i just want to settle into the Earth,
tuck the grey sky around me,
and sleep.

scatter leaves in my hair,
red, yellow, orange
and call me a child maybe of rain,

but today i am sticking to what’s real.
concrete, and my feet pressed hard against the cold.

Score! There’s a fish in California named after me.

Jessica Eastman is a chick I went to high school with. She’s now with Teach for America, teaching science in the Bay Area. I funded her fish ecosystem project this year through Donors Choose, a really kickass website where you can give money to fund specific projects at schools across the country. I urge you all to check it out and, if you have some change to spare, find a cool-sounding project and contribute some cash.

Sometimes a very brief discussion can totally change your view of a person. I was reminded of this again today…

I’ve been working on a side project at work lately, doing presentations to high school kids about why the IT field makes a good career choice. The project has been rapid, and somewhat stressful — one week to create an hourlong presentation, gather all the materials, and coordinate everything among 6 people. One person in particular — we’ll call her Q — has been instrumental in getting things organized: setting up meetings, creating the agendas, and facilitating.

I had never worked with Q before, but something about her just rubbed me the wrong way. I felt like we had a serious clash of personalities and styles.

Today Q gave me a ride back to my building. We got to talking, and she shared with me some of her background. And the story that she told just absolutely floored me.

She came to the States from another country by herself, and worked her way through college by waiting tables. This made it impossible for her to get internships or job experience, so she had trouble getting a job in IT after graduation. She ended up coming to the LFC where I work (that’s Large Financial Company, for those following along at home) and getting a job as a Phone Associate in one of the contact centers.

After she’d been there for a year, she applied to the IT training program that I’m a part of right now, and got in as an internal applicant — the only one in the 2 years the program has existed. Now she’s working on her MBA, and has been very successful within the program.

All of a sudden, I don’t feel so self-conscious about my “different” background anymore. In fact, my “different” background doesn’t seem all that “different” anymore. So I went to a crappy high school — big deal. So I’m not “from” here, or really anywhere — at least I don’t have to battle self-consciousness about my accent and the way I speak English. (This was another thing she expressed to me, which left me totally flabbergasted.)

Anyways, the whole experience was really powerful to me; in fact, I’ve been thinking about it all day. What an amazing story; what an amazing reality check to my own assumptions and prejudices.

I wish I could just not make snap judgments about people. Unfortunately, it seems to be part of human nature, and something that we all do. I can only hope for more moments like this, that remind me that there’s a real human in there with a real story, and not just my own projections.

Damn, Google is fast. I’ve had this site up for literally three days, and the About already comes up on the first results page when you Google “Bri Lance”. (I also love their “Did you mean” suggestion for my name…)

It’ll take a lot of linking to get it up above all the random Cornell-related stuff, though. My goal is to get it as the top result for my name.

It can be useful at times, not having an incredibly common name.

(And no, I don’t Google myself on a regular basis. I just wanted to check if it had found this site yet. )