The first step in Un-Slumping myself came from this comment:

Becky,

You were so kind when I posted a tweet about my mother’s cancer diagnosis shortly before Thanksgiving, I wanted to say thanks and share this with you.

Mom had a checkup yesterday after her first round of treatments. The checkup showed no cancer cells. YEAH MOM!

The shirts brought a smile to her face when there really wasn’t much to smile about. Today she broke it out and sent me this pic.

http://twitpic.com/431wrr

The smile is back; you helped with that.

Thanks again for your kind words and shirts!

So, YAY PRANKSTER’S MOM! Congrats!

Seriously, that made my heart smile. Thank you.

(Now I feel like I should post MORE pictures of you guys in your shirts. You got ‘em? Send ‘em to me. I’ve been meaning to start a page for you guys getting up to wacky adventures in your shirts. May as well be today, right? RIGHT)

(I give 10% of the profits of the shirts to a rotating charity. I’m thinking the American Cancer Society will be the next beneficiary. I have to pull a Nancy Drew to check their numbers.)

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So, the next thing on the Un-Slumping Agenda, was Self-Publishing. Now, if you don’t know, Pranksters, I am not actually a Literary Genius. I know, I know, you’d NEVER know it by my flagrant misuse of commas, the way I overuse the word “also” and how I occasionally invent words. Also: dangling participles.

You may be shocked and appalled to know that I did not major in literature. In fact, I did not take literary classes in college at all.

O!

No!

I was a Science-y Person who mocked Artsy People (I like my humble pie warm, with a side of shut your whore mouth ice cream, please) and their lax schedules, their twenty-page essays on “Bong versus Pipe, Which is the Better Pot Delivery Method?” and their Ultimate Frisbee Championship Tournaments.

That said, I had several friends (like my co-blogger from my first blog, Mushroom Printing, Pashmina) who were English Majors. She’d saunter in as I was frantically trying to cram the reaction of the enzyme 2′,3′-Cyclic-nucleotide 3′-phosphodiesterase into my oligodendrocytes and casually say something like, “Oh, HAI there. I’m going to the BAR. I just finished my homework – reading a three page essay on basket weaving – and it’s three dollar Long-Island night. Can I have three bucks and a pack of smokes?”

Eyes red with exhaustion and stress, I’d catalyze her reaction right out the door.

(snort)

(that was funny to about three of you)

ANYWAY.

So, it makes it that much more full of the ironic, if that’s the proper term (Alanis Morisette has TOTALLY fucked “ironic” for me. Is “rain on your wedding day” ironic or bad luck? I JUST DON’T KNOW) for me to be sitting here moaning about Being a Writer.

Pashmina is actually working in a hospital, having now completed her MFA in, you guessed it, WRITING. Also: my brother, who got his undergrad in creative writing/poetry – thus becoming the punchline to every familial joke for the past fifteen years – is now an engineer.

The moral of this tangent? DRINK MORE LONG ISLAND’S.

Also: LIFE IS UNEXPECTED.

Anyway, I think about self-publishing, and I cannot get over this story about self publishing, which was lovingly coaxed out of Pashmina, many years ago. The Story of Hester Lester, the Crazy Cat Lady Poet, the previous occupant of Pashmina’s apartment.

So, once I get over that, I will look into self-publishing. But please, tell me that image isn’t seared into YOUR brain as well, Pranksters. (also: I may do a video for you reading Hester’s poetry yet).

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Next on my Un-Slumping Tour of the Suburbs is this, an Interview I did with Modern Bird Studios. Interviews = full of the win. Especially when I am asked about my love of Rod “The Bod” Stewart and his wispy, angelic hairs.

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It was clear that I had not seen this picture when I was feeling Slumpy:

Because tell me that’s not the funniest thing you’ve ever seen.

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Lastly, this comment was full of the awesome. Actually, ALL of them were. But this one made me do a lot of the pondery-type of thinking that I normally avoid because it makes me feel like I need a Jauntier Thinking Cap.

AB, I know you have a far reach on your own accord. That goes without saying.

But I have to admit I have trouble actually identifying what, precisely, is your goal? If it’s to keep this blog up and running and stay on that path, then you’re doing just fine. If you want to make this into more of an enterprising effort, despite your volume of readers, you might want to consider attaching yourself to a larger program. Now, know that I recommend that without knowing what larger program you could attach to, I can make suggestions but I don’t really know what direction you want to get into, or if you’d be willing to make the compromises necessary to do so. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

If you’re thinking “book” and publishers aren’t responding during this recession/saturated market, have you looked into self-publishing? You have an established market here.

Let us know how we can help.

So, Prankster, I’m going to spend some time looking for a Jaunty Thinking Cap and trying to figure out what exactly my goals are. Clearly, they’ll have to pry my blogs out of my cold, dead hands, so I’m not giving those up. But I’d like to do something else, too. Something bigger. Traveling. Meeting you guys. Writing. Making a real name for myself. Doing something Epic.

But how? I don’t know. That’s what I need help figuring out.