This morning I am feeling humble. Outside of a religious context this is a rare emotion for me, insofar as I generally enjoy feeling arrogant and egocentric.
I am also right now feeling like a meth-munching meerkat, since I just downed two cups of coffee from a mug so large you could use it to drown a regular cat.
Not that I would ever drown a cat. I love cats. And, weirdly, cats love me. They follow me around. It's bizarre. I think they sense I'm anti-drowning them.
What was I talking about?
Right. Coffee. No wait: Humility. I'm experiencing it!
The reason I'm feeling humble today is because yesterday I spent all day at the San Diego Christian Writers Guild's annual conference, where my "Faculty Member: Author" badge officially sanctioned me to go around dispensing advice like Solomon the Wiseacre.
Dispensing advice is by far my favorite pastime. I often do it when no one's listening at all. I'm also not above chasing people down and eventually tackling them, if that what it takes to get them to grasp the depth of my sagacity.
But yesterday, people were actually seeking my advice. It's like I was the Oracle of Delphi, and they were truth-seeking Delphinians. Delphidites. Delphineos. Whatever. The point is, I had what they wanted.
But instead of that making me feel even more superior and awe-inspiring than I usually feel, it ended up humbling me.
All day long I sat at a table, and in 15-minute intervals talked to people who had signed up to talk to me about how they could move their writing career or project from wherever it was to wherever they wanted it to be. I also spent an hour or so in a classroom addressing the 40 or so people who, of the various talks then available to them, had chosen to hear me be Maximally Intense about "Overcoming The Harsh Realities of Publishing."
I just can't believe what an Actual Honor it is to have in any way helped so many new writers acheive their dream. I don't know what I thought I was going to be doing yesterday---but in the main I think I was unprepared for how serious the attendees at the conference would be about becoming published authors. But doi. They each paid $150 to be there. Of course they were serious about what they were doing.
I'll talk a little bit more tomorrow about some of the people I met and the projects they felt moved by God to write. For now, I just wanted to share how deeply uplifting I found meeting and interacting with so many good, earnest people who are taking so seriously the idea that they should heed God's call to them to create.
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Related post: Wanna Commune with God? Create! and How To Make a Living Writing.