I Lost On Jeopardy!...No, Seriously, I Did

One of the obvious drawbacks to my freelance existence is that I don't always check the calendar to see what the date is. This can create myriad issues--from allowing deadlines to creep dangerously close, all the way to letting anniversaries and special days pass by unnoticed.

And when I looked at my BlackBerry and noticed that today was the 19th of January I realized that it has been about a year since my taped episode of Jeopardy! was on television. I was home in Minnesota when it aired so I was able to watch with my parents which was exciting. The entire odyssey had started on a whim with an online test I took the day after I was laid off--literally. From there I went to a casting session in Boston in May and then Jeopardy! called in October of 2008 and invited me to LA for a taping in November of 2008. And by the way, there's no preparing you for how you'll look on television, or how annoying your little nervous habits can be--putting your hair behind your ear or pushing up your glasses--over the course of 22 or 23 stressful minutes. VERY stressful minutes.

Everyone at home who yells out answers to Jeopardy! questions from their davenports knows that some days the category gods are with you and other days they are just plain cruel. In the days leading up to my flying to LA to tape the show I was practicing, as they suggest you do, with a clicky ball-point pen and answering questions along with the TV show. (Yeah, that's how I roll...MANY nights spent in front of the TV watching Jeopardy!, religious devotion to the NYT and WSJ crosswords, and friends emailing pop-quizzes.) More often than not there were categories I liked and felt confident about--and that should have been the first clue, the first little pebble from the universe that things might not go my way. (Come on, I'm Catholic, Scandinavian, German and Irish, what in that mix prepares you to think positively?!) In the theatre a rotten dress-rehearsal means a good opening night...and in Jeopardy! (in my experience, at any rate) good practice sessions did not mean a good show performance.

During those "practice games" at home, though, there was SO much possibility. Maybe I'd become a long running Jeopardy! champion a la Ken Jennings (okay, that was NEVER a serious possibility, but it was a fun fantasy to entertain) or I'd win enough money to buy part of a racehorse or the world's largest collection of Hermes scarves, custom riding boots, and Barbour jackets. Maybe I'd win enough to buy an old ChrisCraft or Garwood run-a-bout (think the Thayer IV boat in On Golden Pond.) And if I had won oodles and scads of money, I'd have started my own publishing company--one comprised of all the great and talented friends who had been laid off with me--and we'd bring together our favorite authors to have fun and do great work. All fun and frivolous things to contemplate, all still fantastically possible.

I think it was that pie-in-the-sky level of possibility, the realization of what today was, that got me thinking. How easy it was to see possibility then and how much harder it is today--with the incredible devastation of Haiti and the disappointing election in Massachusetts, possibilities are more difficult to focus on.

And that's the trick, I suppose. To find a way to see beyond the fog of disappointment and sadness to the myriad options, choices, and opportunities waiting off in the distance. I know all the possibilities are still there, even if I can't reach out and touch them at the moment, or even see them through the muddiness of my brain today. The extravagant monetary windfall surely didn't materialize, but the possibilities of those dreams--both silly and serious--live on as things to strive for, opportunities to continue to work for, Quixotic quests worth embarking upon.

Oh...so how DID my Jeopardy! day go? Well, not as well as I'd have liked--it was the first time the returning champion was too sick to return for the next game so I went on in her stead. It was all a bit frazzled and last minute, but it was great fun. The categories were not really up my alley and I never did really get the hang of the buzzer. I did, however, correctly answer a Daily Double and I did very well in the Potent Potables category (no shock there) and in a word category and I answered Final Jeopardy correctly. And happily, the young man who did win my game went on to win several more games, deservedly so.

Six Words: Write More, Fear Less, Love Deeper

As the year winds down and I am confronted by the reality of just how severely I've neglected my blog (no doubt leaving countless reader(s) bereft) I offer my hopes, thoughts, resolutions, and wishes for 2010. Everyone else is doing "Best of" lists and the like, but I've decided I'm very ready to be done with 2009 and look ahead to the as yet untarnished promise of 2010.

The six words in the header came from a twitter hashtag...#6wordresolution. I thought it was a fun idea and as the words gradually came to me, I realized that most of what I really wanted to envision and/or achieve for the New Year was encompassed in those few words. So here goes...

1.  Write More. That should probably be in BOLD and all caps...WRITE MORE. Whether it's here or in a journal or a favorite old Moleskine is immaterial. I want to write more and I need to write more. 'Nuff said. (And if you catch me slacking, don't hesitate to send on any sort of virtual nudge. I'll more than likely be grateful!)

2. Fear Less. Again, FEAR LESS. As someone who had a nice editorial job in publishing, preceded by fulfilling museum curatorial work, this "freelance" status is difficult. Constantly putting oneself out there, as a possible writer or editor, is difficult and can be rather daunting. It's not the putting oneself out there that's tough, it's risking the rejection of your peers or possible clients. I want to work and "participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world," but the whole "courting process" of finding work can definitely be humbling. But rejection is as much part of all our lives as is breathing or laughing, so there we are. As the quote goes..."Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." So this coming year is about being more fearless or less fearful--either way, it's about reaching and stretching and leaving my comfort zone in the dust. And come on, there are SO many things out there that are more important than silly little insecurities and fears. So like my predecessor, Roald Amundsen, I'm heading for the Poles, gang...

3. Love Deeper. It's easy to make both love and life difficult. And the good lord above (or wherever he or she abides) surely knows that this reigning queen, this empress, this high monarch of the over-thinkers can make anything difficult. (Me and Bette Davis, apparently. And if you've read any earlier posts, you'll know of my undying admiration for Ms. Davis and her many cinematic personas.) At any rate...this is about forgiving and letting go so as to love the good people and good things more. For me it's about not sweating the small stuff and moving beyond the trivialities and detritus of daily crappiness. I think this goes hand-in-hand with No. 2 above. When you're less fearful, you're more open to deep love and the vulnerability needed for it.

This is just my take for the coming year, and I can tell you, it won't be easy. But the great thing? It's going to be worth it. As I explore new horizons in the kitchen and at the paddock; as I fall harder for my now beloved Montreal Canadiens (Go Habs Go!!!);  as I cut The Snow Monkey some slack; as I spend more time writing....it's going to be more than worth the mostly small adjustments I need to make.

So here's to the next 100 years of "Les Habitants" and the success and failure that will no doubt exist therein. And to my expanding my cooking horizons...Julia Child you are definitely one of my heroines, right up there with Scarlett O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Bell, Coco Chanel and of course, Velvet Brown. No horsey girl is without a whisper of Velvet Brown about her, trust me.

So let's consider this my ramping up post to the end of the year...I will do a little retrospective because hey, I'm a nostalgia fanatic, what I do best is look back. But that's TK in the next day or so. And there will be horses (why Rachel Alexandra is the ONLY choice for HoY); hounds (hmmm...); and definitely hockey (stay tuned for my photos from the big centennial celebrations for the Canadiens held in early December in Montreal.


Stay warm out there...