In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation…even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.            Great Law of the Iroquois

This morning a dear friend called me. She was concerned because yesterday I’d e-mailed her in angry, ventful fashion. I’m fine today — well, not fine, but okay, rallying, that kind of thing — but yesterday I was  bummed out but forced to set the emotions aside because of  j.o.b. deadlines.

This post isn’t actually about the rejection I received.

This post is about how funny life is sometimes.

The reason I vented in that particular moment was because my friend had sent me an e-mail first. I might not have vented at all, otherwise. In her e-mail she’d written,

Nice, eh?

xoxo

That’s it. I had no clue what she was referring to, except I noticed the Iroquois quote at the bottom of the message, and having never noticed this quote before, or maybe having noticed but forgotten it so that it was new all over again, I thought she was making a point about the bark of a pine and being a writer.

Seemed logical to me, given my mood.  And apt, the thick-skinned thing, of which I need to grow me some, and what with the perfect timing of the message, reading it right after the rejection…You can see why I replied back in a verbal purge.

Okay, that was that. I went back to work. Then, this morning my friend called partially to check on me, partially to verify: Hadn’t I received a royalty check for my Elizabeth George anthology story? (My friend also wrote a story for the anthology.)

OH!!!

I was so preoccupied, I’d forgotten to fetch the mail! And indeed, the check awaited me. Yesterday, receiving the check might have balanced out my mood. Receiving the check today, I laughed.