Shipping a Grant Proposal

My own acts of courage are so minor that they're not even recognizable as such. I think the same is true for a lot of us who aren't living in poverty or war zones or currently raising kids.

Still the small daily triumphs do matter.

Take for, example, the hell I went through yesterday sending off a grant proposal to the proper government agency, using no stamps at all and no paper, using nothing but my computer.

Notices of Error, Notices of Corrupted Files flew at me. Hours passed. Hours! Still, I fought on. Clicking and clicking and calling 800 numbers and clicking.

My office partner congratulated me late in the afternoon for holding back on shouted obscenities during the half an hour that our upstairs neighbor Sarah had a small child in her office.

I kept thinking of Winston Churchill's phlegm-y voice saying, "Never give up. Never give up." And then at a little after 7 p.m. It went through! Received! Verified! And I dragged on home from the battlefield, weary but triumphant.

Now, transcending computing difficulties may not be like carrying people out of burning buildings. However, it's major in my world. Or was yesterday. (I was in a meditation group some time ago, and the leader asked others what their major current stresses were. One woman said, "This group and my computer.") So I'm celebrating--soon as I figure out how I want to do that.