omigodwhatifi...

i entered the short film fest’s annual screenplay competition this year.

i entered last year, too, but didn’t win. last year, i really really wanted to win, and thought i’d written a pretty kick-ass short film script that was bound to impress the judges.

it did not. and i was pretty disappointed when the awards were announced last june and my name was not among them.

so, i put the script away.

this year, i decided i wasn’t going to bother entering... until the deadline day, when i figured “what the hell...” and submitted my screenplay again. the same one as last year.

to be honest, i really really didn’t want to win this year. i’d lost most, if not all, of my filmmaking momentum and i actually feared winning. as in, what would i do if i won? the prize is a production package (studio time, film stock, etc.) to assist in the making of the winning screenplay... and i felt like me winning would probably be some kind of huge mistake. but i also felt like i needed to do something, however feeble, to feel like i was still making an effort to get my writing out there... and maybe this would suffice.

then, over the past few weeks, i kind of forgot about it.

until today.

because today the winner was announced.

i was over at YB’s redoing her laminate flooring – which was a long, exhausting, frustrating endeavour – and we were on a snack break, so i decided to check my email. i opened my inbox and there were FOUR new messages. on a sunday afternoon. that NEVER happens. i rarely get any email at all on a weekend, and certainly not on a sunday, so i suddenly thought, “i wonder if it’s the screenplay-competition results???”

i opened my inbox and found two emails from the festival organizers, with the subject line “festival winners announced,” and another from the PR company handling the fest, with its similarly titled press release attached.

and, in that instant, i felt a surge of anticipation and excitement. for a second, my heart started to beat hard and i thought, “OMG, maybe i actually won.”

i hesitated for a second. what if it happened? what if my horoscope from yesterday was right and “professional accolades” were arriving? what if this might be an unexpected turning point in my year and in my life?

before i could be carried away in a tornado of what ifs, i clicked open the message from the festival and scanned its huge chunks of text in search of my name.

but it wasn’t there.

because i didn’t win.

ah well.

i closed the web browser, went back downstairs, had a couple of rice krispie treats and carried on pushing laminate planks back where they belong.