Just What I Needed!

On Wednesday afternoon K picked up his work external hard drive from the person who takes care of computers for his department. It contained all the files and documents from the HD that had died two weeks ago.

I was staying overnight at new job town, but I emailed him to send me the most recent MS Word document of my CV (I only had it in PDF and cutting and pasting from a pdf messes up the WHOLE formatting) and the article I had translated in May.

I took care of the article first, last night (it's the middle of the night, but it's still Thursday for me). I saved it into a PDF and finished the email draft that I had been writing back when the computer had died, when I had started to work on my job application. It was a long email explaining how I had communicated with the author of the works I analyzed and how she liked my article and thought it could be published in Brazil, etc.

This morning (Th) I woke up and... lo and behold! There was a succinct email from the editor in question saying that my article was very good, that they are very proud of the author I wrote about and that they were going to publish it!!! Woo-hooo!!! Just like that! A few hours of wait only.

Some minutes later, he copied me in an email to another person at the journal with my article as an attachment and the number of the journal where it's going to be published. I wrote back thanking him effusively.

Guys, this is a prestigious publication in Brazil because it represents, quite literally, the literary establishment. That means that with a bit more effort and continued publications about this author, I am (or will be) "someone" in Brazil!! I could potentially very easily publish books about her there. It's just a matter of getting the work done, which isn't hard because she's such a great writer and it's a great pleasure to write about her.  (the article I'm publishing was one of those rare pieces of writing that literally "wrote itself")

This small thing totally renewed my confidence in my ability to be a scholar. In fact, I AM a scholar already, yes I am!!

Revising my CV had the same positive effect. 19 conference presentations or participation in 11 years is not negligible by any means! Several of these were huge national conferences, and two international ones. Only a handful of local (one university) conferences.

I know I can totally do this and I have what it takes. I am aware that it will require LOTS of work and effort and, maybe, it's not meant to be. But I'm ready to "fight!" I will go forward with all my might and write a killer cover letter.

I was so confident that I actually sent out a short query for another possible publication, 'cause, you see, I had NOT been actually submitting anything or even looking, for that matter, if there were calls for papers that fit my work and interests. I was just sitting on my behind doing nothing! I know if I just get to work that I can get a lot done in a short period of time.

Of course there's still the writing to be done and that takes time and much effort. And I'm sure that writing a book or two will be a Herculean task for adhd me, but... it's not totally beyond me!

OK, gabfest officially over now! I can't get over how thrilled I was and am about this publication. It's incredible indeed! And I obviously knew it all along because for six years I've had that "Forthcoming" line in my CV and not it's no longer wishful thinking, it's a reality!!!