Unabashed

The number 8 is my special number. It always has been. I started calling it “Vertical Infinity” a long time ago, just because I thought that sounded cool.

I wrote this little list in 1996 (and yes, I know now, as I did then, that some of these are contrived):

• My social security number has 5 eights in it, including both the middle numbers.
• The eighth letter of my name is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and the same letter appears eight letters later.
• In boot camp, my company designation was 088.
• My football jersey number was 88
• I was born in April, which passes and leaves 8 months till New Year.
• I was born in 1969, which doesn’t give much to the 8 theory, until you add 19+69… which equals 88.

There are countless other examples, many of a mundane, everyday nature, but the point is that the number 8 just keeps showing up in my life. Which was one reason that I’ve been really excited about 2008 for a few years now. It just felt like it was going to be my year. Not that it has been, yet. So far it’s just been more of the same. I sent out a batch of stories early in the year and have collected for almost all of them rejections. But… but. There are things brewing. Exciting things that could put me on the proverbial map. I wish I could spill the beans now, but I can’t, and I promise this is the last post I’ll do for a while in which I tell you that I can’t tell you something. A lot has happened in the last week. If any of it pans out, Matt Mitchell may be remade into Matt ver2.0.