sigh

Today was strange. When I showed up at the hotel, I thought I was going to be working with AR and perhaps a couple of other people on script revisions and planning for future writing. Instead, it turned out to be a small conference of eighteen people flown in from various parts of the country and they were all there to critique and review my scripts. It's a good thing I didn't know this in advance or I would have been terrified.

As it was, I sauntered in ten minutes late and stopped to pour myself coffee before squeezing into a seat in the corner, thinking I'd be inconspicuous there and able to read Shawn's flow of text messages without being noticed. No luck.

I spent the rest of the day being the centre of attention and it was exhausting. I had to answer a million questions about things I'd written ages ago and could no longer remember. I had to defend things I'd written that I hadn't researched very well and didn't exactly know what I meant by. Gods, if I'd realised what this meeting was about, I would have read my own writing beforehand so at least I would know what I had written. Better yet, I would have tried to get out of it.

Funny, last night I'd thought I was pretty slick, collecting a day's pay for sitting in a conference, thinking I wouldn't be expected to speak, and enjoying free croissants. Sometimes things don't turn out the way you expect. I cried in the car on the way home, which is just standard for me now. The car has become my crying place. I need to stock it better with tissue because today I was using my sleeves, and they were immediately freezing. So were my eyelashes. This province isn't built for bawl babies. That could be our motto, kind of like Don't Mess With Texas, Canadian-style.

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