Travel with no baggage

This week I'll join more than 12,000 other writers and editors, professors, agents and students at an extravaganza called AWP. It's my first one.

I'll bring a small rolling bag and a black daypack to carry snacks, my itinerary, aspirin, some old sweaters, and empty journals. But that's my toolkit, not baggage.

The things I will NOT be lugging around (and I was certain that I would):

• I thought I might have a corporate job. The interviewers kindly released me last week. First I felt relief, then hurt pride, sadness, a little chagrin at all the energy I put into thinking about all this, and then more relief.
• Jumping right back onto the horse, I proposed two new book ideas to my editor at Chronicle. Yesterday she rejected the first one, and today she rejected the second one. In the most gracious manner you can imagine.
  
• I stopped going to school in order to be ready for the job. So there is no schoolwork.

There is, in fact, very little on the horizon. As though the Universe is sweeping everything from my path, with Infinite Love, and telling me to get to work on the art right under my nose.

I feel so untethered. Tomorrow I head north, and plan to go in a state of quiescent listening!