a colorful wheel of disappointment. Mechanical failure that forced me to wrestle with the heavier kind of personal failures and flaws that I'd rather not get into and just blame on an aging Mac.
Today the spinning wheel of death killed my hopes of submitting to a show I actually wanted to be in.
Today was the submission deadline, so after taking care of morning things like eating, prepping dinner, laundry, household chores, returning emails etc., I sat down to digitally submit my work to this exhibit.
Upon reading the prospectus and labeling my image files in the required format, I noticed that the deadline was exactly 20 minutes away. I smiled and thought,
"Wow, I'm a lucky girl today! Good thing I came to submit right now. I might've missed it had I sat down at the easel to work on that commission for an hour or two." (Because that was on my "to-do" list, too.)
That's when I went to compose part 2 and the final email of the submission process. That's also when the colorful spinning wheel appeared. At first, I just gave it a roll of the eyes. It happens, the computer I work on is close to 6 years old. Then, with every word I typed, the spin grew longer. The orb danced for me with every file I tried to attach.
Waiting while watching is a funny thing. Usually, I would tout the wonders of emptying the mind, being in the present moment, simple breath, blah, blah, blah.
I didn't do that this time.
That waiting wheel kept spinning as the clock pushed closer and closer to the deadline and along with it, my mind.
My frustration grew and quickly turned to anger. I became angry with myself for not submitting earlier, which led me to be angry about a perceived lack of time vs. a feeble time management performance this month. I was, of course, also angry at my lack of funds to get a new computer, which led to an assessment of all the things I need to buy. Crap.
Then, it crept up on me that I might be a little irked that I work in a field that demands vulnerability and makes me constantly submit myself for approval, but really disappointed at myself for allowing that process to affect how I feel about myself.
Most of all, I was just really furious that Mac used a color spectrum icon to try to placate me while my chances of being in this show slipped away with the minutes.
The rainbow ball skipped here and there, then swirled and spun into the next hour. It left me long enough to type a word or two and contemplate restarting the machine, but the thought of a long reboot was too much of a gamble. As I was almost ready to send, the dancing color wheel came back for an encore. I offered no applause until it left the screen for good at 11:15 am.
I sighed with relief when my arrow and cursor returned. I felt it was still close enough and clicked send on a much shorter submission cover letter than normal, but the submission images were there!
An email that should've taken 5 minutes (at absolute most!) to compose, was finally sent 20 minutes after the deadline.
At 11:21 am, exactly one minute later, I got a response stating that submissions were closed, no extensions, no exceptions.
Bugger.
Maybe next time.
That was the point where I shifted my "to-do" list around a bit. Online listings and Etsy shop chores were replaced with
- Go Run
One more thing, the wheel hasn't shown its spinning face a single time during this blog post.
So, instead of beating myself up with should'ves and could'ves,
I'll just take it as a sign that I wasn't meant to be in that show.
Maybe something even better will happen. I got a decent split PR on today's 5k. That's a start. ;-)
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