No Complaining Allowed - Kerry

I ponder the pitch that I will be making to various agents at the Willamette Writer's Conference as I drive down the road, buy groceries at the store and shuttle my children to and from various locales.

Then I start to feel sorry for myself because I haven't thoroughly covered the entire subject enough. Even though I have a month left to prepare, it's as if being preoccupied with said subjects wasn't a good enough excuse for not having the entire pitch down on paper in detailed outline form.

I sink deeper into moroseness.

Until I go to the Ashland Farmer's Market on Tuesday and notice the blind man buying carrots, his social security card dangling in the sunlight from his wallet while he asks the clerk,
"How much is it?"

I regress to my parents' standard phrase:

"Someone is always worse off than yourself."

Later in the day I am shocked as I notice a clerk at the grocery store as a former business owner who lost her business to bankruptcy.

And then there's the conversation I have that evening with my mother about my godmother, who is lying in a hospital bed after suffering a stroke, still unable to speak.

But finally, there's my fellow writers at Lithia Writer's Collective, who know how to listen to all the moaning and turn it into a smart peice of writing after listening.

So about that pitch, or that b****.

I'm not going to worry about it anymore.

As Nike would say,

"Just do it."

No complaining allowed.