On Feeling Good And Wow-worthy About One’s Gift

I don’t know what led me to do a Google search on my name—it seems like such a douchey thing to do.

A while ago, I was deciding on whether or not I should spend today trying to update my personal website, maybe collate some of my old works and put it up there for the world to see.  In between deciding to post a resort review I wrote for a magazine recently and finding out a way of creating a slideshow video of photos J took that I don’t want stolen, I got on Google and searched for my name to see if that particular review has already been posted somewhere by mentioned magazine.

Instead I found an old Xanga blog entry someone wrote wherein she copied an old interview I did (and credited me, praise you).  And let me tell you: I am one of those writers who secretly put in things into their work that are distinctly them—I once was able to prove that a classmate in high school photocopied my entire book report and tried to pass it off as his own because I mentioned a line that I knew nobody else in my class would ever think of using to describe the story’s setting—and it is thanks to that attention to detail that I was able to prove that this person either got my article from me or the people I had interviewed.  Back when I wrote it, online publications weren’t the in thing yet and the only proof I had of it ever being published was the magazine itself.

Anyway, that’s not what prompted me to type this entry.  What made me grin like a buffoon was a lone comment left on that blog entry that simply said “Wow.”  That’s it.  Three letters that summarize someone’s amazement at how well I was able to put strings of words together to make it seem like the reader was right there with me when I conducted the interview.  Three letters that made me want to get off my ass and back into writing about stuff I am passionate about.  Three letters that encapsulate my feeling about the timeliness of this discovery—I’ve been needing a morale boost, and I certainly got it.

Now I am even more motivated to do whatever I can to deserve that ovation.