Good Things Come to Those Who Sit On Hold For Two Hours Straight

          Those of you who follow me on Twitter might've seen a recent tweet where I hinted good things were coming and it wasn't just one of those vague positive-outlook posts our timelines always seemed to be clogged with; there actually was news on the way, and it's finally here! Of course, those of you who follow me on Twitter might have seen the initial excited spasms of tweets I sent out about it the other day, too, but for those of you who haven't, I'm giddy and proud to announce my poem, "The 5 Stages of Being on Hold," earned third place in this year's Winning Writers Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest!

          Yes, that's right, somebody (or a group of somebodies, actually—thank you, judges) read something I wrote and decided to give it an award. This award, to be precise: 

           (As a side note, I'd also like to thank Winning Writers for how promptly they sent me my award—after the long, horrible, disappointing slog I went through with those bastards Eber & Wein, any company or publication that actually responds to their writers and seems to care about fulfilling promises made to them is a blessing from the gods.)

          I wrote the poem November 20th of last year, on a day when I spent a couple...frustrating, to say the least, hours on the phone on hold with my physical therapy office, waiting for someone to check when my next appointment was and at what time. Not long a wait, you would think, right? That's what I thought, anyway, for the first few minutes, at least, so I kept waiting...and waiting...and waiting, and came dangerously close to falling under the same hypnotic sway of Muzak as the narrator of my poem does in the final stage, although I managed to fight my way free (being pissed helped a lot, let me tell you) after a while and hang up. For those of you who'd like some closure to that story, I was able to get through to the office the next day, it turned out they'd been having phone troubles the day before, they told me when my appointment was, and I thanked them and hung up. The whole exchange took a minute, maybe. And, of course, there's the silver lining that the poem that poured forth from me that night earned me the first major writing award of my career.

          So I'd also like to thank the shitty phone system at the physical therapy office (second side note: the crew there has never been anything but wonderful and helpful, so this rant is in no way to be considered an indictment of them personally) for inspiring the poem, as well as Abby, who when I decided to submit again to Winning Writers helped me pick this poem out of a couple I was considering; again, the judges who decided my poem had earned this award; and my left hand, which, despite all its issues, held out long enough for me to scrawl this whole poem out in a couple of hours that night. Thanks to all of you; maybe one day we'll do this all again. 

          For those of you excited enough to read the contest's press release, with its list of winners and links to our works, you can find it here. For those of you who want to skip that and go right to the poem itself, that's cool, and that's here, and clicking on my name will bring you to my profile and author bio as well. Whatever you check out, if anything, I hope you enjoy it, and even if you don't, I'll be over here dancing with my check and my award, laughing maniacally at seeing my name on the website header as one of the winners, completely ignoring you. 

          Ain't it wonderful when dreams come true?