Packing for the Last Time

In five days we'll be in Vestal, New York.

We got a POD instead of doing a UHaul, and the guy just left with it.

I hope nothing's destroyed, but that's the thing about just being married: You usually don't have the best stuff. Therefore, it's not hard to replace something like a lamp.

That said, I'm not looking forward to doing this again (yes, I know: Who is?), most likely in a year. We're married. I'll have at least three years left at Binghamton University after this year, so it may be time to get some equity. We're thinking a condo instead of a house. That would be easy to do in Richmond, but we haven't researched it yet in New York.

It's just so easy these days to become complacent and pay rent, especially when you keep gathering and more and more stuff fills your apartment. So I understand. That's why, in our apartment that we'll be living in together in five days, I still don't feel the need to replace a lot of the stuff we're taking with us.

We have money and gift cards from the wedding, but shouldn't that really be used for necessity? AKA: future nicer furniture for a condo living room instead of the hand-me-downs, and things like that.

Plus we have to get acclimated to much within the next year.

As always, we'll see.

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I'm cleaning out the desk that we got from a friend a few years ago. The thing is massive. We're either going to take a sledgehammer to it or try to get someone to saw it into a bunch of pieces so we can get it in the trashcans. It's way too heavy to deal with and travel with.

I usually keep my rejections and acceptances in a pile, however, and it was interesting to see those places who haven't taken poems but have been encouraging. It's good to make that "Remember to send here in the fall" list.

Also, I decided I'm going to be a little bit more judicious in my journals I submit too. There are places that have rejected me, sans any semblance of ink, for years now, sometimes in the double digit range. Not a big deal, of course, but these are all snail-mailed submissions. A 44-cent stamp and usually around $1 to send the submission is around $1.50. Multiply it by ten over the last four years or so, and that's $15 I could've had in my pocket.

Right: I didn't know that would happen. Sometimes it takes once to send to a place to get an acceptance. Sometimes it takes six. Sometimes it takes sixteen.

But I'd rather spend the money, at this point, on past ink: encouraging editors, the "send again" or even "thanks for trying us" notes. And I found many of those I'd forgotten about. No guarantees, but it'll make me feel better to send to places where I have a more legitimate shot. Hopefully.

There's nothing like workshops and being back around writers and taking classes and whatnot that makes me want to start sending out work again. Maybe that's weird, but it's how it works.

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Got an acceptance from Portland Review the other day, but the two poems they wanted were accepted by two different journals months ago.

I felt bad at first because apparently the email address I was using for them, when I let them know the poems were taken, was an old address. So clearly they didn't get the email.

That said, they took almost nine months to get back to me. It's fine, don't get me wrong, but that's maybe the second-longest acceptance response time I've ever had, so that seems to diminish your chances of publishing someone's poems the longer you wait.

I'll be sending again in the fall, though, and this time they have an online submissions system in the works I believe.

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Also funny was another rejection from Controlled Burn.

They took two days to get back to me, and I noticed that the normal "Dear Writer" response that I've always received from them was not only in bold, but it was in maybe 18-point font. It seemed like it was on purpose. And I laughed more than I was taken aback, as that's the first time I think an editor has seemingly hated my work so much.

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Back to cleaning out the desk. Soon enough I'm going to compiled my What I'll Miss About Richmond / What I Won't Miss in Richmond list.

Should be fun.