Dear Applicant

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your interest in this position, but QuietQueen, Inc. is no longer accepting applications for a muse, sidepiece, fling, or any other superficial and superfluous position. We also would normally tell you to check back in a few months when QuietQueen is hurting, feeling vulnerable, or just all around feeling depressed and wanting attention and entertainment, but we don't anticipate that someone of your pedigree will be able to fulfill those needs in a satisfactory manner as QuietQueen is currently growing and maturing.

Wishing you the best in your future endeavors,

HR

Transitional phase

This is the phase that no one talks about in speeches and biographies. And if they do, it’s often romanticized, and by the end of the book, it’s a distant memory while basking in the glory of your accomplishments, after you’ve “arrived.”

This is the phase when the things that happened in the past don’t matter as much anymore because you need something good to happen in the here and now.

This is the phase when you see glimmers of light and pray that you didn’t misread the signs, that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t an oncoming train about to crush you.

This is the phase when I remember why I don’t write anything during phases like these, why there are big gaps in my diary. I don’t really want to remember this feeling and relive the pain. I know it will hurt a little to read a few months/years from now, whether because it was as bad as I thought it was, or because in the big scheme of things it was trivial and realizing that I wasted time worrying about it when I could’ve been doing other productive things.