Wednesday, October 26, 2005

I make nice people cry.

This week, I appear to be as charming and amiable as molten hellfire raining down upon schoolchildren. Something happened that put me in a bad mood, and it has lingered and lingered for days now. Both people close to me and people who barely know me are advised to run and run quickly if I head in your direction.

The story critique from my class, perhaps due to the mindset and expectations I carried with me into the room that day, seemed to go badly, and I was upset about it. I tried to be quiet, but the class picked up on my disappointment anyway, because my body language is fairly transparent. One very nice woman, who'd offered up a comment on my story, thought that she personally had upset me, and she started crying - I say, crying - when I left the room because she didn't mean to hurt my feelings.

When I came back into the room, not initially aware that this nice woman had cried because of my mood, the prof lectured me a bit sternly about considering the feelings of others and properly expressing gratitude to my readers.

The whole thing was embarassing, and I fear that I came off as really immature. But, for a while, I wasn't sure I wanted to return to the writing class, but that impulse passed quickly.

God, it was a disappointing critique, though. I mean, I know I shouldn't go to them for validation regarding whether a story's good, but I don't trust a lot of people outside of class who tell me when they like something. (Jenipher right now is probably giggling that the story wasn't liked, which isn't true. The comments I received on the returned mark-ups were uniformly positive, but the critique didn't really reflect those positive feelings.)

Anyway, if you see me coming, stay away from me. If I call you on the phone, it should be safe to answer.

But, in person, as the weather has gotten colder, so have I.

No comments: