Praise Be to the GPO

I love living in New York for a million reasons, and today's reason is that the GPO (General Post Office) is open 24/7.

Let me explain.

See, there's this essay contest.

And entries had to be postmarked by today.

And, well, in pretty much any other city on earth, that would mean that entries actually had to be postmarked by yesterday. Because where else can you find a post office open on Sunday?

And in all of those other cities, the post offices probably close no later than 5PM on Saturdays. And in many of those cities, they probably close much earlier. In Phoenicia, for example, the post office closes at noon on Saturdays.

So if I lived anywhere else, I'd have to have finished my entry in time to get to the post office and get it postmarked by, let's say, 5PM yesterday.

And, well, that was just not going to happen.

I've known about the essay contest for several weeks, and I was planning to devote all of this week to writing my entry. I knew somewhere in the back of my head that it was Week 1, but I still counted on having the whole week to come up with a subject and write the requisite 2,500-3,500 words. Completely do-able, I thought. In fact, so do-able that I was counting on writing multiple drafts. And getting feedback from some of my classmates and from my Magazine Writing professor. Not to mention from Zach.

Except that I was so totally steamrolled this week that I was not physically capable of writing anything until Friday. I was so totally steamrolled that I was not capable of speaking, to anyone other than Zach, until Thursday. One day, earlier in the week, we took a walk to a cool coffeehouse in our neighborhood, and I had to have Zach order for me. Because the prospect of asking for a bagel with butter and a blueberry-peach-mango-banana smoothie made with apple juice was so far beyond my ken as to exhaust me just to contemplate it.

So, yeah, things were not looking good for the essay. I couldn't figure out what to write about. Even if I knew what to write about, I didn't have the stamina to write it. And even if I found the stamina to write it, I was already so short on time that I knew I couldn't get it done before the postmark deadline.

And then we found out that I could get a postmark up until midnight on Sunday. (Thanks, Glen!) And suddenly I had at least 24 extra hours to work with.

Things still weren't looking good, but they were looking less impossible. By Friday, I had written my lede. It was under 200 words, but it was a start.

By yesterday, I was up to something like 1,500 words. I wasn't happy with most of them, but suddenly 2,500 was within striking distance.

And then today I blew by 2,500 and ultimately hit something like 3,800. I finally had a completed first draft around 5PM. I still wasn't sure I was going to end up with something that I'd want to send in—something that I could attach my name to without cringing—but at least I was in the ballpark.

I took a break and then read the draft. And then I let Zach read the draft. And then I cleaned it up and got it down to about 3,700 words.

And then, very, very slowly, I got it down to within the word limit. To be precise, I got it down to 3,499 words. (Maybe I could have gotten it down further. I don't know. I didn't try.)

And then I rode with Zach across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan to the GPO.

And I got myself a May 14 postmark.

Only cost me 95 cents.

I [heart] NY!