Faith Restored

My faith in humanity was restored (at least a little) over the weekend.

My youngest niece spent Saturday night. We stayed up late watching Veronica Mars. I tried out a new recipe. She painted my nails. She is amazing, and we had a blast.

Have I mentioned I belong to a critique group now? We met Sunday night, and the only piece up for discussion was mine. A short story I almost didn’t submit because — even though I first wrote it years ago and I usually can’t wait to tear my work apart — I’m still so close to it.

Presenting something you love so much for potential gutting can be one of the hardest things you ever do. I don’t do this because it’s fun (though most of the rest of it is).

But my critique group is awesome, and I am beyond lucky to have them. Now I have a better idea of what I maybe didn’t communicate so well, and ideas on how I might fix that. And really, at the end of the day, I’m just happy they didn’t hate it.

So the weekend restored my faith in humanity. Or at least faith that there is humanity out there somewhere. I expect the feeling to vanish by the end of the week, but I’m enjoying it in the meantime.