The art of staying positive

I'm trying to be very positive today, but probably failing miserably.

On Friday, I attended the local/regional teacher-librarians' professional learning seminar. We forfeited our usual half-day meeting last term to enable us to take a full day in Term Four, and it was a great idea. Term Three is always busy with Book Week and related activities. (Shades of TV's "The Librarians", who are having their's now, according to the ABC.)

Anyway, several people were recognising me from my author picture in the latest "Scan" journal - an article about Circle Time in our school library - but, as some colleagues and I were gravitating towards the morning tea urn, one woman introduced herself and said, "Oh, I know your name! You're the one who writes all those posts to the teacher-librarians' listservs."

I sort of froze for a moment. "All those posts..."??? If I counted up "all" my posts for this, my first year back in a school library for a decade, there have probably only been only ten. Some teacher-librarians post ten or more comments per week. Some would post several times every day. (Kind of like me with my posts to the "Star Trek" and action figures listservs and online bulletin boards.)

"There haven't been that many, have there?" I asked, a bit bewildered.

"Well, not really, but they are always so positive. When I read them, I always think to myself, now there is a person with a positive attitude."

Wow. Okay. Yep, that'd me. Wow!

Hopefully, such ego-boo will get me through the next week, after today's big disappointment. I started a new Meetup group, you see, for people interesting in pursuing an improvement in their skills in life drawing and painting, plus an eclectic range of other art projects (such as building on my work with theatrical makeup, plaster casting, mould-making and sculpture, latex appliance work and, I suppose, photography, too). In just six weeks or so the group had grown to twelve people, and today was looking very promising: six people had RSVPed to meet for coffee, but the only one who turned up was the guy I'd already been chatting to by telephone. He seemed very enthusiastic, which is great, but we'd both really been looking forward to meeting all the other artists, models and potential models.

Gee, he and I had kept today free of other appointments for over six weeks, turning down various invitations to do other things so we'd be there for the inaugural meeting today. Now we're at exactly the same point we were six weeks ago, with no one else's input. Or, at least, it seems that way.

So how come no one else kept today free? I fear for this new mobile phone era; more and more I notice people becoming more spontaneous about their leisure time. They often seem to prioritise differently now that their phones bring them new, more interesting distractions. (So why couldn't they just ring us re their new plans? Yeah, us - the two guys taking up a huge table for eight at the coffee shop.)

I guess some of them were suddenly shy. I hope they hadn't gone walking past the coffee shop, checking us out to see if we seemed safe/cool enough to be seen with?

Let's stay positive, though, shall we? At least, even with a group of two, one of us is an artist and the other is the prospective model.

Sunday's magic number: 92.3 - slightly better than last week, thank goodness, but it's looking like I'm going to have to do something drastic. I'm getting in well over an hour of brisk walking every day, and my nightly meals are miniscule. I can't remember the taste of my last Big Mac; yesterday was the annual McHappy Day and it was a case of "Not happy, Ronald!", listening to all those radio ads about supporting the McDonald's charities simply by buying a Big Mac burger. Friday was a catered lunch, prepaid via my attendance at the conference, so those yummy pastries etc had to become the contents of my one Junk Food Day meal for the week.

Walking the dog on weekend early evenings is a killer, of recent times: everyone is in their yards BBQing, and both of us are driven crazy by the delectable smells. I really don't want to have to take out gym membership; I'm really non-sporty and walking is my only sporting pleasure. But obviously the diet is not enough when you've reached stalemate. Sigh. I know, I know; I must burn off more kilojoules than I'm consuming. But I'm really not eating that much. (Let's stay positive: I'm positive that the sneaky midnight candy-snacking has to be next to go, eh?)

My Sassy friends

In November 1993, I was invited by Selwa Anthony, literary agent extraordinaire, to attend an all-day seminar and gala dinner for her little band of authors, and soon-to-be-published authors, at the Novatel Hotel in Brighton-le-Sands. It was called "Succeed Some More in '94" (and was a follow-up to a very successful dinner the previous year, "Succeed With Me in '93", named for a book she'd just written with Jimmy Thomson).

At the time, I was deep into my proposal-and-sample-chapters for a book on the social history of the Aussie soap opera, Number 96, and the wonderfully encouraging Selwa was going to agent it for me. While that project did the rounds of the publishers - twice - and gathered a lovely collection of encouraging rejection slips, it was eventually seemingly accepted by Allen & Uwin (for two weeks) in 1995, who then declined to offer a contract on it after all. Sigh.

So, rather than try to self-publish the thing instead, I launched the briefest of details as a website and started working on some other book ideas. Despite the fact that, so far, I haven't earned Selwa any percentages, she keeps inviting me back. Yesterday was "Succeed, it's Heaven in 2007".

Selwa has faith in me that I'll eventually get my act together and complete something both literate and commercial! I did get an article published in a "Starlog" magazine for Star Trek: The Next Generation (an interview with actor Leonard John Crofoot, who played Data's little gold android offspring). Mind you, I have incorporated a lot of skills learned at "Succeed with Me" seminars into my daily life, and it's paid off in so many other ways than just financial and literary ones. There has been advice I've used to tighten my book reviews for Scan, improve my mental health and feng shui, lose many kilograms, and how to use visual clues to tell when people are telling the truth. I've also been part of Selwa's unique brand of networking, helping out numerous other authors with their various writing projects. And I knew all the right answers when being interviewed for my editing position at Scan.

From November 1995, when Selwa added her annual Sassy Awards to the night's entertainment, it really added some glitz and glamour to the nighttime activities. Ten or so trophies are given out each year, to Selwa's most successful authors or editors. (Feeling a bit like the ultimate phony, as Selwa's longest-attending "author" who's never actually earnt her any $$$$, I even received a Sassy myself, in 2000, for my "Positive Attitude", from that year's Sassy presenter, Harry M Miller.) Last night, Toni Lamond was back, along with Maria Venuti (this year's Sassy presenter), Jeanne Little, science fantasy author Ian Irvine, Jennifer Green, Barb Angell, Tara Moss... And so many more.

The most amazing thing about this year's seminar was the first sentence uttered in the first presentation. Helen Hope, an astrologer who has written 2007's twelve "Daily Horoscope" guides for Hinkler Books, asked for a show of hands as to who were the Sagittarians. Had we noticed that we Sagittarians seemed to have lost some of our magic in recent years? We all nodded "Yes".

It seems that yesterday, 25th November 2006, marked the return of Jupiter into the sign of Sagittarius! Pluto has been in Sagittarius since 1995, coincidentally(?) the year my "Number 96" book was rejected. Now, thanks to Jupiter, "a big year" is coming my way: one that "may forever see as crucial". My ruling planet of Jupiter returning is cause for great celebration - and Pluto's exit from Sagittarius makes 2007 "crunch time". (Notice how it ties in to my news a few days ago that I'm back in the school library next year?) Thanks Helen!

Time to kick in my "Positive Attitude" again - and finally redeem myself and earn that Sassy!

Ah, well, back to the manuscript...