picture me rollin.

when you google "girl reading email"...the images are lame

So by now, this news is semi-old, and some of you in my life may have already heard it, but you may not have. Intrigued? [Tangent: I am telling you all, my friends and readers, the following story so next time I am whining about wanting to be a tortured writer/permanent talk show fixture, you can light a fire under my ass and tell me to reach for the stars and buck up and get on the ball...or any cliche for being proactive.]

After a green beer or two on St. Patty's Day, I left the bar early because it was just a blah day in general. Instead of being social, I decided to be the coolest girl alive and clean out my gmail box and watch some 30 Rock. As I sifted through about 700 spam messages from Victoria's Secret and Amazon.com, I found the following saved email from my lovely sister:

After the initial bout of laughing at my sister who is forever suggesting that I date either fetishists or other disabled people [Tangent: Neither is out of the question given my rockin' dating life.], I became slightly fascinated with this Kevin Connolly person [Tangent: No...not E from Entourage. That's someone altogether less interesting and more douchey.] Anytime I hear of a cool disabled person who doesn't really pigeon-hole themselves as such or isn't trying to be a sob story, but just rather living life in full badassery, [Tangent: Without some weird "wind beneath my wings" undercurrent of inspiration. Hurl.] , I feel like we are immediately in some kind of club. [Tangent: It's kinda like Jeep drivers wave to other people in Jeeps, but when those people have really awesome Jeeps with maybe a jaunty wheel cover, they warrant a honk. Kevin Connolly warranted a honk.]

Jeep wave in effect.

I had actually heard of his photography work, The Rolling Exhibition,  before, and if you haven't, look into it NOW- an interesting idea and striking images. Frankly, I wish I had thought of it, but I wouldn't have done the theme justice. It's all based around capturing people staring at him rolling around legless on a skateboard.

After getting caught in that dastardly interweb, I learned all about Kevin's writing projects and blog [Tangent: I even ordered his book, Double Take,  and can't wait to read it!] and as I saw his contact info jumping off my macbook's screen, I thought, "What the hell? If anyone can show me the ways of gimps being published 101- it's this guy. I mean, he seems chill. C'mon..he's in the X-games.  Let's give this a go."

Hastily, I assembled a decidedly non-generic message telling him about my blog, the essays I have been compiling and my dream to one day have it published, and what I got back was unprecedented and amazing.  Within a few days, he replied saying that he had checked out my blog, and he then went on to give me roughly 7 paragraphs worth of valuable guidance and steps to getting my foot (errr...wheel) in the door with publishing houses; basically, he gave me the golden ticket. I could have easily been swimming in his spam folder with other undesired emails from internet creepers, but instead via email,  he gave me the matches to light that fire under my ass that I so desperately needed.

Thanks, Kev...you kick ass...or at least punch it and then run over it repeatedly.

Now go buy his book.