On Friday, I decided that I wouldn’t consider myself officially unemployed until Monday. Practically everyone is unemployed over the weekend. That was my reasoning. That’s how I found myself eating dry ramen on the couch at 12:34 on Monday morning while I stare at the cover letters and thank you notes that I started to compose last week.
But I think I produced my best work during the Summer Publishing Institute’s closing luncheon on Friday. After three glasses of Chilean chardonnay, I started pulling old receipts out of my wallet and scribbling thoughts down on the back. When I woke up from my wine-induced nap hours later, I pulled them out of my bag and read my personal manifesto, loosely based on whatever inspiring words our program director was rambling off at the time, for what might as well have been the first time. It’s pretty moving, or at least, the room seemed to be while I was writing.
I seem to appreciate myself quite a bit after a little wine. I must have used the word ‘brave’ at least five times. I may tend to repeat myself, but my punctuation is on point. At times, the following is pretty sassy. On the other hand, it’s certainly not untrue.
Emily,
You have made passages that you have chosen on your own. You have made your own brave choices. You have made your own brave leaps and you are courageous enough to make more.
Love, Emily
1. Transition: you are in a transition during which you will learn, and decide and change. You are transitioning, but you will always be you.
2. Change: You have made changes. You have made changes that no one else has understood or believed in and you made them anyway because you decided – you chose – what was best for you and you went after it, caught it, and it was brave. You could have stayed put, but you took action. You learned to stop settling and start reaching, start demanding, start insisting that you knew – and you do know – what is right for you. You are a strong, creative and capable woman and you can achieve whatever you choose to chase.
Look at yourself. The people you allow to see you love, trust and admire what they see. It is normal to doubt yourself. It is healthy to temper that doubt with faith and confidence, because that is what people will see in you – yes, you – when you enter a room, complete a project, or walk out with everyone checking out your adorable ass.
Why don’t you believe in your own staggering presence…well, I guess I can’t say that I don’t understand that because I am you; I have lived through everything with you that has left you that way. I hope that now, you – and I – will be able to look at the future and what we mean in the world ahead of us. We are capable, beautiful, smart, and brave.
Some years ago, you worked at a dance store where you got the job because your Girl Scout leader owned the place. But one evening, your mom came to pick you up and while you clocked out, she told the manager who she was and the manager said, “Oh, Emily, of course! She’s going to take on the world.” Dance accessories, Emily, you could change the world with dance accessories.
You can change the world with words or passion or hard work, or with love. You love hard.
I’m trying to choose a favorite part. It’s either the line about my adorable ass or the part where I realize that I’m writing to myself and using first-person plural pronouns.
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