McSweeney's

The following is something that is important to me. It is not so important because someone named Chris in California responded within a couple of weeks of receiving my submission and told me that it made him laugh and that he was going to run it within the following couple of weeks. I know that it's important to be published if you want to be a writer, you should gain ex-po-sure if you want to be a capital W Writer, you should aim for the big name lit mags if you want to live in the stratosphere of the professional writers. Wahmwahmwahhmwahh. This piece is important to me because the idea came to me when I was freezing my tochis off in my sister's girlhood bed over Christmas break. I had just paid my student loan bill that day and felt all sorts of depressed about how many more years of this indentured relationship I had with the feds, and how hilarious that the feds now knew my social security number AND ALSO the name of the first buoy with whom I ever mashed faces. Oh katzen. Struck me as funny.

So, in my frigid, sleepless state, I grabbed my laptop and started typing out a little ode to the feds. I just had that feeling that I would rue the night that I refused to capture this inspiration, allowing it rather to float out into the ether where all the memories of loan repayments and first smooches and the ideas of how to negotiate things once and for all with your boss just go and vaporize. The following week, Loverpants took the kids out for an afternoon and I finished this piece and sent it off and felt good, ya know??

All in all, just celebrating the almighty process which is equal parts torture and triumph to a writer. The process as well as the publication. Thanks, McSweeney's.