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While I focus on indie publishing for my longer work, I have a handful of short stories that I submit to magazines.
“Tomorrow Is a Difficult Proposition” is actually my first pro short fiction acceptance, so I’m still riding on the excitement of having it out there, and especially at such a cool magazine as Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores!
CRES decided to release it as a Valentine’s Day story. Because nothing says Valentine’s Day like an omnipotent cosmic being who loses their mortal lover because space is too damn big, and patience is hard.
Right?
It’s a little funny to me that I ended up with a story featured on Valentine’s Day. My partner and I aren’t big Valentine’s Day people, and we mostly celebrate the holiday because it falls close to our anniversary, and in our younger and more unemployed days, this meant we could have a multi-day bacchanalia of adventures and food.
But while my story involves love, it’s not actually a romance.
In fact, it’s mostly about being bad at time.
My main character in the story is an ageless, sexless, genderless omnipotent (but definitely not omniscient) cosmic being who has trouble with concepts like “later” and “tomorrow.” Travel to any location in space and time is no trouble, but reaching a specific time and place? That’s tougher.
I didn’t realize it while I drafted the story, but that came straight from my own life.
I’m incorrigibly bad at time.
I’m the person who forgets to eat lunch and annoys their spouse by referring to food eaten at 5:30 p.m. as “lunch.”
I’m always exactly seven minutes late for my weekly therapy appointment, which begs the question of why I can’t just move my entire leaving-for-therapy routine seven minutes earlier. (Somehow, this never works.)
In high school, I probably missed the bus more often than I got on it, and constantly landed in in-school suspension. (Sidenote: In-school suspension involved being taken out of classes for the day and stuck in a room with all the other ne’er do-wells, where you had to do self-directed work, read, and write. I loved in-school suspension.)
Finally working at a job where I mostly make my own schedule was like having a vise unclamped from my lungs: I could finally breathe during the fifteen minutes before work.
Starting fifteen minutes late now means ending fifteen minutes late. That’s it. No anxiety about filling in my late-person timesheet for the federal government.
Even now, I have in my file cabinet a Lifehacker article I printed eight years about how to stop being this way. I kept it all this time because I still haven’t adequately absorbed its lessons.
Two years ago, I posted the following on my blog and Facebook page:
At age 35, it would be nice if I finally understood how time works. Instead, this is what it looks like when I try to take a late afternoon hike:
90 minutes before sunset: Intend to go hiking.
50 minutes before sunset: Actually leave to go hiking.
40 minutes before sunset: Arrive at destination and proceed to walk original intended distance, due to inflexibility.
10 minutes before sunset: Run to cover more ground until darkness makes this an unwise course of action.
Sometime after sunset on the line between dusk and night: Arrive back at car with no dire consequences having befallen me, thus reinforcing that I can get away with this, whether or not I actually like it.
One of my aunts replied with something like, “You know it isn’t about learning how time works. It’s how your mind works.”
And that’s the problem. Because if it were just a matter of learning a new skill, I would’ve done it by now. I love learning new skills, and it’s not like I haven’t tried.
How about you guys? Anyone else incorrigibly bad at time? (If you want to reply and commiserate, I’ll keep your dark secret!)
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