Monday, May 07, 2007

My Mighty Heart is Breaking

I don't even know if I can write this blog without suffering some kind of emotional breakdown. Just thinking about this is already making me a little teary...

After years and years and years of entering just about every kind of contest out there, today was the day I got the call from a local radio station, telling me that I had won.

And I had to turn them down.

Now, how big of an idiot am I? You tell me: I won a two-week trip for two to the Cannes Film Festival. Why did I turn them down? I'm going to Greece on Saturday, and the trip would require me to leave from here next Wednesday. No alternatives, no substitutes. It was an on-the-spot, take-it-or-leave-it call.

If you're like my coworkers (who, by the way, witnessed me screaming into the phone in the middle of the office), you're probably telling me that I should have dumped my Greece trip and gone on the Cannes trip. There are a lot of reasons why I couldn't do it. Cost, surprisingly, really wasn't the first thing that came to my mind. Even though I would have lost the entire value of two sets of plane tickets, not to mention a lot of hotel cancellation fees, it probably wouldn't have added up to the cost of the prize. I couldn't abandon my friend. It's not that I wouldn't have asked her to come with me (that would be REALLY mean!). There was really no way to adjust her schedule in order fit the prize dates. Otherwise, I probably would have been going on my Greece trip starting next Wednesday anyway.

They say there's a reason for everything. I believe that. Even though there are probably very few people in the world who would have wanted this trip more than I did, I'm sure that everything is playing out in a way that will lead me to where I'm eventually supposed to go. I'm taking the long way, but so be it. I've already entered the next contest in the series, but once again I'm flirting with disaster, because the prize draw date will occur while I'm still out of the country. Maybe that's the trick - entering contests with wild abandon will increase your chances of winning. It could explain why my friend's brother always wins. Anyway, no matter what I say now, the moment is gone and I won't get it back. I'll just have to wait for the next moment.

Until then, I'll be in the humvee.

"My heart is numb, has no feeling, so while I'm still healing, just try to have a little patience"

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