Friday, 04.21.2017 - 9:21 pm.
My biggest achievement this week, I thought, would be to print my research poster for a faculty-level poster day next week. It's about my research with trans participants, the one that keeps not going that well. I sent the poster to the editor/author who kindly offered advise on my research, to give her my thanks (she's mentioned in the Acknowledgements section, too), but I'm always scared to be insensitive or that an important trans issue will fly right over head when I talk to her. Such is the cross to bear of the low-prejudiced cis-privileged without organic relationships with trans people: we are very concerned about not coming across as jerks, and inevitably we do. Boo-hoo.
Between this being on the verge of failure on one study, and not getting participants for my other study, I was utterly miserable the whole week. I wrote my supervisors pouring my heart our. Peter, my main supervisor, wrote back and made me feel better. He has a way to soothe my feelings by slapping me in the face. He provides direction and new perspectives and he's just very helpful. So I felt I got back on my feet after his reply. I'm motivated again, which is more important than having participants(?).
Then, today: I learned that my application for a summer research project was accepted. I'll be leading a small project that relates to my PhD, I'll literally be the supervisor. Q, the undergrad that Peter recommended me to help me recruit participants (and it didn't work), will be my student. I actually applied because of her, and then I regretted it and hoped I wouldn't get it. I don't regret it right now, because I am curious about the results of the project, but yeah, it's a lot of work and a lot of responsibility. Q's supposed to run most of the study. Hopefully she will come through. I mean, she's eager to learn and get involved, that's why I applied with her in the first place. Well, yay, I guess.
THEN, less than an hour later after learning that I got the project, I got an e-mail saying that one of my stories was selected for an anthology of female writers from Central America. It isn't as important as it sounds, not a lot of people will care. But hey, yay! And they took one of the two stories I submitted, so I'm sore the other one wasn't good enough but at least it is free and I can submit it to a literary magazine in my home country that requested a couple of stories of mine. Also not as important as it sounds (no offense to the magazine, this is a jab to myself: no one cares but I'm not that good).
I'm getting restless with my AF story. It has to be published. It's almost done, save for two issues I need to make sure I'm approaching correctly. But it's ready, I'm in love with it, I think it's well written. I have my eyes set on an international publishing house's huge novel contest by the end of the year, but I'm scared to submit it because the whole thing strikes me as intellectual. My story's well written but it's not intellectual. I really don't think I have a chance, especially with all that little world of the literary mafia, but my hope is that the story will get noticed anyway and will be picked up by someone who cares.
That's the thing, I want people to care about the story. I don't care for the prize nor the money that comes with it. I just don't want to self-publish this story, and I don't want to give it away to friends and family like I'm forcing them to read it. I want it to cross borders and I'm crossing my fingers that someone, lots of someones, will see the story the way I see it.