Time, time, time

See what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please

While avoiding the work of writing, I decided to google this guy I e-mailed with briefly several years ago, when I first became aware of the net during my year of imprisonment from 1999-2000. At that time, I'd sold one short story but hadn't seen it published yet, I'd never completed a novel and I'd never had an article published other than by school magazines. Oh, I had novels in my head, and incomplete novels waiting (and some still waiting) for me to grow up enough to do them justice, but otherwise I had no idea how to "pitch" either my work or myself. And frankly, I had nothing to pitch.

In such a state, I went to the World Fantasy Convention in November of 1999. I was barely six months out of college with not a credit to my name, without a friend in Massachusetts, and with absolutely no idea what the wide world of Fantasy Folk was like. I soon found out. It was full of liberal agenda, Wiccanism, and lots and lots of neo-Goths. That didn't really surprise me. What did surprise me was the sound of people sitting around pitching incomplete novels to other would-be authors who had just as little clout to do anything to further either their own or another's career. I was surprised that they were pitching essentially nothing - since they hadn't even begun to write, or had written impossible tomes, still unfinished. I was surprised at the apathy of many of the participants - or rather the "ennui chic" that so many affected. I was surprised that there was such a dichotomy between the "in crowd" of writers actually writing and publishing and...the rest of us. There wasn't a really a separation of class as the complete ignorance of the former from the latter, and an utter devotion from the latter to the former (under all the carefully applied ennui, of course). I was surprised, naively, that the big publishers weren't wining and dining the authors who had all eagerly gathered to prostrate their works at the publisher's feet - until I realized who were the obnoxious folk ready to pounce on the unwary publisher; then I wasn't surprised at their reticence at all. I was surprised at the BIGNESS of it all.

While I was at the WFC, I met with the fellow I had e-mailed with. To me, he seemed rather impressive - or at least, he seemed to be headed in the savvy direction. He had finished several novels. He had just bought a website (owning a website! Unheard of!). He knew folk at the convention. He was speaking on one of the panels. He knew which floors the parties were on (the weird, Gothic parties, but the parties nonetheless). Now, I wasn't totally taken with this guy - but I did have to bow to him in regard to simple experience.

So, for lack of inspiration for some short stories I'm writing for Arx, I surfed the web. Among my usual sites, I decided to browse the forums over at sff.net, when I remembered this guy. Curious at not finding him on sff.net anymore, I decided to google him (amazing what lengths one goes to when avoiding the dreaded blank page - or at least the dreaded "what exactly does Brigglekin do next?!?!?!?") and discovered that...well, things are different for him now than they were for him a mere four and a half years ago.

Which got me thinking: Time changes a lot of things. Who might look to my small contributions and bow to them, merely because they're currently "more"? Who might google me in the future to discover my corner of the web all but extinct? Who do I admire now? Where am I going to? When next I go to the WFC, to which class will I belong?

Which leads in turn to this consolation: I simply cannot know, but God already does. If I rely upon myself to be my own transcendence, I will stumble and fall. But if I put my faith in God and His plan then I need not fear the passage of time.

Mood: Odd. I had more, but certain conversations changed my thoughts. Ugh for having the wrong words and wrong emotions!
Music: Barber's Adaggio. Fitting.
Thought: Lord, please keep safe all of us, amen.
Edit: All I can say is, Thank God For Mom.