I will never deny that finaling in the Golden Heart® and two other contests has been awesome. Never. However, it has added an unexpected level of stress and distraction to my life this past week.

The email from all of my new loops could be a full-time job in itself. And now I’m freaking out because I need to get my updated partial back to one of the contests by Friday. I also need to jump on this and get my queries out there while my final status is still hot, while preparing my full manuscript just in case I get a request.

But most stressful of all, someone reminded me that when I got to Nationals this summer, my picture will be flashed up on the big screen for at least a thousand authors, agents, and editors to see during the awards ceremony. Ack! Sufficiently frightened, I scrambled to get a photographer because said photo is due—you guessed it—Friday.

My photo session is tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that I manage not to open the cabinet door into my face before tomorrow morning.

But the final straw in my basket of stress was the dry cleaners. You know that pile of professional wear that has been sitting in my closet gathering mold for months? Oops, the tops I wanted to wear for my photo shoot were in there. I dropped off my stuff early yesterday and was assured it could be ready by this evening.

W-e-l-l. We had a nasty storm overnight and the power went out and the dry cleaning wasn’t done. She told me I could pick it up tomorrow at ten. One. Hour. Before. My. Shoot. Dubious and afraid to not have a backup plan, I skipped Kung Fu and went the to mall where I found something that is not really what I wanted, but close.

So if my new, not-so-cheap, professional photo sucks, I can blame it on the weather. But in the end, I have nothing to complain about. I just have to remember the reason I’m going through all this in the first place.

And the smile is back.