The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

I haven’t eaten at a really fancy restaurant before. The most I spend is for a special Christmas Eve dinner for about 90 a person (it’s a special holiday menu so everything is one price). We go to this same restaurant every year and it’s pretty casual overall. No dress code or anything and I don’t think 90 for a starter, drinks, a salad/soup, a main, and a dessert is too bad. Next year we are going to break the tradition and do a Christmas Eve brunch instead of dinner. It’s still relatively spendy, but it’s a massive seafood buffet (with lots of non-seafood items for my husband) so it’s well worth the price if you can manage a few plates. We’ve been there for Easter before and it was fantastic.

I am going to be published in The Ultramarine Review next week. I’ll link it when it comes out. Three of my poems were also accepted to the Starbeck Orion. Again, I’ll link it when they come out. I also submitted to a few other literary journals and am waiting to hear back on them. I got a rejection from one journal recently, but they later contacted me and told me they looked at my website and wanted me to submit some visual artwork, which I did. I’m waiting to hear back on that. I submitted several from my PPE series and two of my asylum paintings. It feels good to be solicited for artwork because generally my paintings don’t get a lot of attention outside of Instagram.

The job hunt is going fairly well. I had another interview today. It was just a phone one, but it’s good practice. It feels hopeful that people are giving me a chance to interview. I didn’t get one of the jobs I interviewed for on Friday, but they suggested I apply for a different open position because they said my qualifications fit it better so I did that yesterday. I will hear back on the second interview I had last week this Friday or Monday at the latest. I felt I did okay with that interview, so I’m crossing my fingers and toes they give me a chance and offer me the position. There’s fierce competition for jobs right now, though, so I’m trying not to get my hopes too high.