FINALIST ANNOUNCEMENT | While I have hesitated to post about this here (it felt premature), it seems now is finally the time to tell you that I have just been announced as a finalist for a Whistler Independent Book Award (WIBA) for my poetry collection, Landmarks & Beacons.

I think I was in a fugue state when I entered this contest at all. It cost more than I felt comfortable paying to enter, I don’t think there’s even a cash prize (what was I THINKING?) and I am not sure how much prestige the award even has.

Possibly not very much based on the vibes I’ve been getting as this process of getting to the finalist list has indicated, but trad CanLit people are notorious snobs and writers in general can be jealous and bitter and catty to one another, so it’s hard to say.

For whatever reason and whatever fugue I was in, I entered anyway and now here we are. I’m told my book was chosen and advanced from more than 300 entries. It hit the longlist back on May 13, then the shortlist on June 17, and now here we are and I am an official Finalist, which means I am in the top three contenders to win the actual prize (which again, seems to consist of … feedback? I don’t even know!)

The ultimate winner is to be announced at the Whistler Writer’s Festival in British Columbia in November.

Can I even go to BC? It’s SO far away from where I live now, quite literally all the way across the country. I’ve never left Smeetch before and I am not sure the kid is ready for me not to be here, let alone for so many nights in a row. (I know that sounds nuts as the child is 10 years old, but it is what it is. You live your life, with your easy carefree children, and I’ll live mine, ‘kay? You don’t get it.)

Another salient question: Can I even afford a trip all the way to Vancouver/Whistler? It’ll require me to take four flights and to stay in a hotel. So … not really, or yes maybe but should I spend that money if I have it? On this? There might be a travel grant I can apply for via ArtsNB. Should I try for that? Ahh!

As you may or may not know, I am mentally unwell and traumatized (lolsob, but like, it’s true) so it’s hard for me to feel happy of confident about anything “good” that happens to me. I am always left with a million questions and worries and a pervasive sense of ‘But what if I do the wrong thing and this ostensibly good thing gets taken away or I ruin it somehow?’ or worse, ‘What if it’s all a trick?’

I am forever plagued by what-if questions. This is partly my neurotype, I know, but it’s also experience. It’s not an uneducated or imaginary fear. It’s based on real evidence.

So I don’t know. What do you think? IS this a good thing? Should I go to Whistler in the fall? I haven’t been out to BC since 2008, for the wedding of my friends Kathryn and MJ. They are very much of my Vancouver-Life, which is to say my past life. And past lives should stay in the past, I think.

Especially mine. For years, the idea of ever traveling to BC again felt very fraught. So much so that I had a recurring nightmare about it for years and years. Like, more than a decade. That dream is now a thing of the past, but will it return if I start truly contemplating a trip out west?

There’s lots to think about.

Congratulate me so it feels real and reassure me that this is indeed a good thing. Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.