Sonja Foust

“Cat in the Mist” is still #1 at TheWildRosePress.com! I know because I check it like eight times a day. Seriously. Why? Hi, my name is Sonja, and I… am competitive.

In high school, I used to tell people I was not competitive at all. I actually believed it, too. I thought since I didn’t like to play sports, it meant I was not competitive. Years later, I’ve come to realize that it meant I was competitive. The reason I didn’t like to play sports was that I sucked at them and knew I would lose… therefore, I didn’t like to play them.

Now, Scrabble, on the other hand, I love to play, and I will beat you. Unless you are my little brother or my mom. I can never beat them.

The thing about being competitive and also having a major character flaw, though, is that you tend not to do things you think you’ll be bad at. Or try them once, decide you suck, and quit. Examples from my life include crochet, cooking, drawing, poetry, and pretty much every sport in existence.

Strangely, writing was never one of those things, even though the first few stories I wrote in this whole romance novelist schtick were truly, truly horrible. I think it’s just that I didn’t know they were horrible and that let me keep doing it long enough to discover I actually like it. And by the time you actually like something, it doesn’t matter of you’re horrible at it, because you enjoy it anyway.

So I guess the trick is to fool myself into thinking that everything I do is fantastic… at least until I have time to give it a fair shot. Right?

What about you? Are you like me, major character flaw and all? Do you give things a fair chance before you quit, or can you just tell right away what things work for you and what things don’t? Do you avoid doing anything you can’t do better than everyone else? (God, that sounds awful. But I do it sometimes. True confessions today, man, seriously.) How do you get over this fear of losing and just do stuff?

Vote 4 me pls

More on the online Poker Cats Contest

Things I should have done already this week:

1. Laundry
2. Put away the winter decorations to make way for spring stuff
3. Cleaned my office
4. Put our old entertainment center on Craig’s List
5. Chosen a paint color for the downstairs office
6. Created my “vision board” a la Oprah
7. Gone grocery shopping
8. Promoted “Cat in the Mist”
9. Cleaned exploded Coke out of my car

Things I have actually done this week:

1. Stared at laundry piled on bed, crawled on bed and fell asleep for two hours
2. Stared at Christmas tree still fully assembled, decided to do it later
3. Stared at dirty office, eventually shoved armful of papers aside to make space for laptop
4. Stared at entertainment center meaningfully
5. Completely ignored paint color choosing
6. Was filled with good intentions about creating a vision board
7. Bought enough groceries to last for one dinner… and a lot of wine and chocolate
8. Stared at “Cat in the Mist” sitting at #1 at TheWildRosePress.com, decided promotion is over-rated
9. Ignored random sticky parts of car

Things going on right now:

“Cat in the Mist” got its first review, which is a 5-star (or 5-book in this case) from The Long And The Short Of It. The money quote: “… if you enjoyed the romance between Buffy and Angel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), you’ll enjoy this one–only instead of vampires it’s critters.” Ok, that kind of makes it sound furry and creepy, but it’s not, I promise. And anything that links my story to the genius that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer is ok by me.

It snowed last night somewhere, but not at our house. Robbie sent a picture. This is the second Valentine’s Day snow I ever remember, the first taking place in Southern California in about third grade. The fact that it was snowing AT ALL in Southern California was enough to make me remember it.

I like the blonde chick in the red dress who cried on American Idol last night. I hope she wins. She reminds me of Natasha Beddingfield, who kicks much butt, except when she wears weird futuristic feathery space suits in public.

And, as the title of this blog suggests, I am sane, but overwhelmed, and moving more and more into the overwhelmed and away from the sane every day. There is laundry up to my ears, I haven’t paid the bills, my desk at work is a mess, and my mom’s birthday was Monday and I still haven’t gotten her a present. I suck and refuse to be overwhelmed anymore. So there. (Does it work to just declare that you refuse to be overwhelmed, or do you actually have to do something about it? I’ll report back.)