Officially Published!

I’ve been pretty absent here, but I’ve been elbow deep in my Creative Writing MFA at Lesley University (not to mention the ever-raging pandemic). I have been doing a lot of writing–just nothing for blog publication.

BUT, I did just recently get published! Last semester I worked on travel writing, and I got to write about one of my very favorite places on Earth–Prince Edward Island. And then Go World Travel decided to publish it!

Here’s the link, and I hope you enjoy reading about PEI!

For Monkey

As most of you know, I am not a band director. I have been molded into, like, a quarter of one by Janet, Matt, and Brian so I could come have fun with them and not totally jack up their programs. As a result, I have met a lot of people in the band directing world over the last 10 years. Now, most people I meet for about five minutes on the sidelines at a football game or as they anxiously wait for me to input their UIL contest results in the spring. As such, I spend a lot of time re-introducing myself to band directors, which is totally legitimate. I’m not really a band director, so there’s no reason for people to remember the name of Janet’s redheaded friend who always seems to be hanging around.

David Martinez, though, was never someone I had to re-introduce myself to. If you were a friend of David’s friend, you were a friend of David’s. Monkey didn’t treat me like I was a quarter of a band director either. He was always by my side at contests ready to help move chairs or to crack a joke (or, really, both). He talked to me like I knew what the hell I was doing in the band world (I don’t), and he figured out a way to get me new lighting and sound in the auditorium, something we’d been trying to do for decades (I could never repay that debt).

I only have one picture of me and David, but it is perhaps my fondest memory. We were at state marching contest, and Janet and I needed transportation from one hotel to another. All we had at our disposal was David’s Tarpley van—blacked out windows, no seats in the back, and no Tarpley wrap on the outside yet. Undeterred, Janet climbed in the back, and David and I giggled in the front, convinced that if anyone was watching it would look like we were kidnapping Janet and taking her to an undisclosed location. She snapped a picture of us in the front seats, laughing, and I snapped one of her, crisscross applesauce in the back between our luggage.

Later, the three of us sat down in the hotel bar and Monkey had the bartender make me and Janet a charcuterie board (after I taught them both to say the word and Janet said it about 18 different ways, none of which were correct). We sat there for several hours, enjoying our cheese and crackers and telling stories. And laughing. Wherever Monkey was, there was always laughter.

I have struggled with how to process David’s death. I feel a lot like Janet’s redheaded friend who doesn’t really have a stake in the grief at his loss. I haven’t known him as long or as well as most people that will miss him. I’m friends with a lot of the K Psi folks, but I’m not one of them. What is my loss in comparison to all of yours? Publicly grieving feels a little like I’m trying to horn in on something that isn’t mine—to put myself in the center of a loss I don’t belong in. Writing these thoughts, even, I feel a little gross, undeserving.

But on Friday at his funeral, his sister forced a red carnation on me (she literally tracked me down and pinned it because I’d already given one away to Charla, who deserved it more). I turned to Janet and said “I don’t feel like I should have one of these. These are for—”

“Close friends?” she interrupted. “Which is what you were. Monkey would have wanted it.”

So I shut up and let Jerri pin a red carnation on my shoulder. Because it didn’t matter to Monkey that I wasn’t from the college days—Janet loved me, he loved Janet, ergo he loved me. That was enough.

I still don’t know how to process David’s death. He would have been 41 in a month. It’s not fair that we won’t ever again get to hear him crack a joke under his breath or feel him wrap us up in a giant, incredible hug. I don’t know how Janet and Matt and I will make it through hosting UIL in March without Monkey standing outside the auditorium doors helping direct bands to their next performance area or moving bass drums around without being asked just to make it easier for us. How will any of us face the Tarpley booth at TMEA without him standing there? I don’t know.

The best conclusion I have come to is this: We didn’t get near enough time with David, but he loved us enough to last all of our lifetimes.

So, have a laugh, have a shot of Hennessy, hug a friend, and in the name of everything that is holy, wear a damn mask—for Monkey.   

Grinning like an idiot

Well, I know I’ve been a little radio silent since December. But there’s been a reason. And for once, it’s not that I got too busy and didn’t find the time to write.

I’ve actually been writing a lot. 

You see, back in December, I was helping a very good friend of mine with his applications for a Master of Fine Arts program, and on a whim, I looked up the creative writing program description at the university to which he was applying.

“You should do it,” he told me.

“But I don’t have a writing sample, and I’d have to do all these personal statements, and I just don’t know. I mean, I need a really good writing sample.”

“You have a month. Start writing.”

Damn if he doesn’t have a way of just speaking truth.

I had a lot more holding me back than just the writing sample, though. 12 years ago I got super discouraged when I applied for a PhD in Creative Writing and got turned down. Over those 12 years, I have built up that one moment of defeat into a pretty big dragon I was not eager to face again. Failure is not something I’m used to. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t want to try again. What if I got rejected? Again?

I knew what my very good friend would say to this: So what?

So I tried. I applied to four MFA creative writing programs. One traditional, and three others that are a mixture of online courses and week long visits to the campus throughout the two year program. For two months, I spent nearly every day writing and editing and rewriting and proofreading and polishing stories and personal statements and resumes and generally doing all the things I’ve been teaching kids to do for the last 8 years.  

I had no expectations, except that I was fairly certain I wouldn’t get in. But I’d made my peace with that. I was willing to try one more time. Why else had I quit my job and turned my life upside down if not for this kind of chance?

I know that some will find it silly — why does someone with two Masters degrees need a third? Do I really want to go into debt? Can’t I just, like, write my novel without having to pay other people to help me write it?

Maybe all of that is true. But I also knew that this is what I needed. I love school, always have. I think that’s why I semi-tricked myself into thinking that I would love teaching. But there is a difference between being the teacher and being the student, and I thrive as a student. Learning is my favorite thing to do. 

I also know that joining an MFA program will give me access to the biggest thing I’m missing — a community of writers. I love all my friends and family dearly, and though they (you) are supportive, I cannot get the feedback and constructive criticism I need to push my writing where it needs to go. 

I kept all this to myself, which is why I didn’t blog for the last few months. The only thing I wanted to write about was my applications, but the only thing I didn’t want to talk about was my applications. If things didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I could just pretend I’d never tried. Maybe it was cowardice, but I couldn’t stand the thought of facing people if I’d announced my intentions and then failed. 

But, I can talk about it now. Because of the four schools I applied to, three accepted me. 

Today, I made it official and accepted an offer (and a $10,000 scholarship) from Lesley University. I will spend a week in June (if coronavirus lets me this year!) and January in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the next two years — and if you know me, you know how exciting the prospect of required time in Boston is for me. 

In between those weeks, I will work one-on-one with professors who will push me to explore and read new things and work on my craft. I will get the chance to learn more about the publishing industry and hopefully do an internship with a publishing agency or literary journal. I will have the opportunity next year to study abroad in Wales if everything works out, which I plan on turning into a month-long tour of the UK (at least).

At the end of this, I will have a book that should be pretty close to publishable.

Over the next several months, I’ll be applying to scholarships like a mad woman, so I might be MIA again. More than anything, though, I’ll simply be reveling in amazement that I’m finally getting to do what I wanted with my life. 

(Also, for the record, I’m not at all sad it’s taken this long to get here — I would not be getting this opportunity had I not met all of the people and had all of the experiences I’ve had over the last 10 years. There are too many of you to name, but just know that if you worked at BISD or at Tal’s Camp and/or are related to me in one way or another, you have a lot to do with this moment. Thank you.)

I’m getting my MFA, folks. I can’t stop grinning like an idiot about it.

For Louisa: A New Year’s Resolution

I just saw Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and I don’t really have the words to describe how I felt about it. I am still feeling about it. I will probably still be feeling about it for many days and weeks to come, and every time I re-watch it (which will be frequent), I will feel some more (and differently) about it then.

There are a million reviews that will tell you how superb the acting, directing, cinematography, and costuming was, so I won’t add on to that bandwagon, except to say that Florence Pugh made me love and understand Amy March in a way that nobody has before and Chris Cooper as Mr. Laurence listening to Beth play the piano was perhaps the most poignant scene. 

Here’s the thing. I knew I would love this film. I have had an obsession with Little Women since I read this book some 20-odd years ago. I mean, I named my pets after Meg and Jo and Teddy and only switched to other literary influences because there was not another suitable male name for the sweet boy who became my Atticus. I can practically recite the book for you. 

And yet, somehow, this movie made me cry at least 10 times. It’s making me cry again just thinking about it. 

I had forgotten what this story was about — the power of a well-told story. It doesn’t matter that it is about the “boring” day to day lives of women who have no great impact on society. In fact, as Amy hypothesizes at one point, that it is about those things makes them important. It is a story in which we can all see ourselves. There is no great drama. It is just life. 

And so it reminded me how much of myself I see in Little Women. I have always been drawn to Jo. She is a girl who tried to be a writer, faced rejection and depression when the world moved in ways she did not accept or understand, and suffered heartbreak and death which led to her turning away from the thing she once considered her soul’s purpose. She wants to be loved but does not know how to accept love. She knows that she is not meant for anything resembling “normal,” and she relishes that, even when that means she is sometimes incredibly lonely and sad. 

But then, she remembers who she is, what she is. She is a writer. And all of those things that happened to her, those normal, wonderful, heartrending things that happen to everyone, they are worth writing about because they are what made her her. It does not make her not lonely or sad sometimes, but it does make those things livable. In fact, knowing that she feels those things and shares them with the world is maybe even important to other people. 

So thank you, Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan and especially Louisa May Alcott for creating such a potent reminder of the importance of telling powerful stories. You have rejuvenated my spirit and accidentally encouraged me to make a New Year’s Resolution: Just tell your story already.

“I want to do something splendid…something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead…I think I shall write books.”
— Louisa May Alcott

Wants and Needs

 

I am incredibly insecure. 

Now, not with everything. I can organize an event better than practically anyone, and I can write a research paper that would make Harold Bloom proud. I am smart, have an aptitude for new things, and I have a memory for intricate details that is pretty ridiculous.

But I also know my own limitations. I am not the world’s best athlete. That is my brother’s arena (literally). I know sports. I love sports. I cannot play sports. 

I am not an overly talented musician. I can read music. I can play and sing a little. I have learned from some of the best musicians I know and am better, but I will never be great.

I am not an accomplished theatrical artist. I can understand a script. I have some decent design concepts, but I am not going to be winning any awards for my direction.

Those things don’t bother me. (Well, maybe the theatre one, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) My real insecurity, my main insecurity, is that I don’t know why people want to be friends with me. 

I needed to let that one sink in a little. It was hard to type.

But it’s true. I question every relationship I’ve ever had. What could you possibly be getting from being friends with me? I know what I get from being friends with you, but what in the world do you gain from my being in your life?

And this is where the theatre thing comes back. I know I’m not the best, but I think I’m pretty okay at it. I’ve helped some kids grow into better artists and people, and that’s a damn good accomplishment, if I do say so myself. In the end, though, my shows are never exactly what I had in mind, and that makes the perfectionist in me really, really upset.

But I have this friend…y’all. You don’t even know. Most of his shows are so intense and insanely well-directed and well-designed that I just sit and stare with my mouth hanging wide open as I watch them. I will never in a million years be as good at theatre as this incredible genius.

Here’s the weird thing though — somehow, he gets something out of a friendship with me. He has double Masters degrees in design from THE top theatrical design program in the country, and he’s about 10 million times smarter than me, and yet he asks for my self-educated advice on theatre. (Don’t let me oversell this, it’s not major pieces of advice, but it makes me feel good.) I do not understand.

But I’ve realized over the last several years — this brilliant genius of a friend of mine is also insecure. In fact, he hates being called a genius because although he knows he’s good at what he does, he doesn’t think he’s the end all be all. He has incredibly high standards and sets unreasonable expectations for himself, just like I do. He always thinks that what he’s done could have been better. Even if it’s beyond my range of comprehension or abilities, he knows he could have done more.

And that’s just the thing — we ALL have unreasonable expectations and high standards that we’ve set for ourselves. Why do we insist on comparing the standards we’ve set for ourselves to the standards someone else has set for themselves? My friend is not my friend because I can bring the same things to the table he can. He’s my friend because I bring something different to the table that he needs and wants. I don’t know what that is, but it’s really not my place to know what that is. My best friend has told me repeatedly it’s not my business why she chooses to keep me in her life. And it’s not. It’s my business to keep being me. If people want to choose me, then good for them and great for me (because my friends, y’all, are pretty freaking fantastic).

And here’s the other things — if they don’t choose me? Well, that’s okay too. It’s not their loss necessarily, it’s just not their gain in the particular areas I have to offer. That’s a hard one to swallow because, man, do I really hate to fail, and when someone doesn’t pick you, it sure feels like failing. But it’s not. They just don’t need or want what I bring to the table. AND THAT IS OKAY. 

As a writer, this is also a particularly difficult concept to swallow. What could I possibly have to offer that other far smarter and better people haven’t already offered to the world? 

Well, I don’t know. But that’s not really my business. 

My job is just to write and send it out there. It will be just exactly what some people want and need, and very much what others do not. But more importantly, much more importantly, it will be what I need. 

So send it out there, friends. Your art, your love, your whatever it is that you are incredibly insecure about. We are right there with you, and we want and need what you have to offer. It’s not your business why.

“‘I am sorry I am not the girl with the golden crown.’ The insecure girl said.
The boy put his arm around her.
‘But you are the one with the silver wings.’”
— Giovannie de Sadeleer

Embracing My Creativity

I know. I have not kept my promises to myself to post a new blog at least once a month. I mean, really — how hard is that? Once a month. Actually, my goal should be once a week, but I was realistic with my goal setting and settled on once a month. And I couldn’t even keep that up. 

It’s not that I didn’t want to. I actually have a list of blog ideas. They’re already basically outlined and ready to type. I literally just had to sit down and write them out. 

I even had a friend message me to tell me how much he enjoyed my writing and that he was looking forward to when my next post would be written. I had no idea that this meant anything to anybody besides me, and I was so, so touched. It inspired me. I have an actual audience. I need to write for them!

But I didn’t. I meant to. I wanted to. But I didn’t.

I’ll be honest. I was freaking out about money. 

I’ve talked before about how I have a penchant to be obnoxiously over-planned about all aspects of everything. I think through every scenario for every situation and have an agenda, three alternatives taking into account variables seen and unseen, and an emergency plan in place before I even start on an activity. 

I both love and hate this about myself. The feeling of order and calm all of that planning gives me is one of my favorite feelings. The inability to think about anything besides all of the planning is one of my least favorite. 

It’s something I struggle with a lot (clearly because I’ve written about it before). And it’s something I’ve been struggling with over the past few months because, let me tell you, the coffers were running low at the Dallas house. Not exceptionally low — see all the planning discussion above — but low enough that my emergency plan was about to have to kick in, and I hate having to resort to the emergency plan. That means four other plans have fallen through. That’s not okay for my brain.

So I refocused, took stock, and planned again. I found alternatives to supplement my bank account, and I went after them with gusto. The problem was, I had no brain space for anything else, especially writing. Creative free-thinking goes out the window when I’m in planning mode.

What wound up happening is my schedule was packed from morning to night. I was driving a ridiculous amount of time to get to one source of income and my day was carved into tiny segments from hopping back and forth to two other sources of income. By the time I got home, I just wanted to binge watch Gilmore Girls for the fifth time to numb my tired brain (and because Gilmore Girls is exceptional). 

But, then my best friend told me something that made me re-evaluate. (She has a knack for that.)

“If you’re spending all this time working and you don’t have any time to write, you might as well just teach so you can have a steady paycheck that’s more than $10 an hour.”

Oh, right.

See, my problem is, I have a hard time making writing my job. It should be. That is my goal. But actually prioritizing it when it’s not currently making me money is tough. But, my best friend is right. (She has a knack for that, too.)

So, I scaled back at the same time that some things fell into place that allowed me to scale back without stressing. I have to plan a little differently throughout the month in terms of paying bills, but I’m pretty good at the planning thing, so that’s not that big of a deal.

Now, I have to force myself to turn writing into a job. In other words, I have to plan to write, something I was not doing before. (I know. I’m as shocked as you are.) 

Since life is funny and timing is often fortuitous, this book Embrace Your Weird by Felicia Day just came out. It also was not a plan — I didn’t even realize it was being published. But I saw it on social media one day and bought it on a whim.

Guys. I cannot stress enough how awesome this book is.

Embrace Your Weird is a self-help/workbook that encourages you to actively work on your creativity and to prioritize your personal needs aka working creatively. Felicia (I’ve read her book, so that makes us first name friends now) shares her own thoughts about how scary and stressful but overall soul nurturing this process is, and it’s just such a comfort. 

I’m only three chapters in, and I don’t work on it everyday, but it’s helping me take some baby steps to thinking differently about writing. It seems silly that I have to teach myself to think differently about something I’ve been doing for 25 years and that I literally have a college degree in, but…I do. Because I’m not perfect. I don’t want to be perfect. Perfection is way overrated. 

(That’s my new mantra — working on convincing the planning side of my brain that it’s true. We’re getting there.)

Check out Felicia Day’s book(s) here: http://www.feliciadaybook.com/

A Case for Re-Reading

I am an avid reader. Like I assume is the case with most avid readers, I am also an avid re-reader. Don’t get me wrong, falling in love with a new book is a joy that cannot be properly encapsulated into words. Falling in love with a new author is even more joyous. There is something mysterious and heartwarming and awe inspiring about new books.

The Little House series were the first books I remember LOVING. (Bold and italics and capitals 100% used for full effect there.) They were all that I had never realized books could be. I reveled in deciphering the words and discovering for myself this story of Laura, her Pa and Ma, and her sisters. 

But then they were over, and there was no more Little House, and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. How could they just be over? Finishing a book is more heartbreaking than almost anything I’ve ever encountered (unless it’s finishing a book series). It’s like simultaneously having to attend the funeral of/go through a breakup with 20 people. 

The only way to soothe yourself is to lose yourself in other books, books like Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter and hundreds and hundreds of others. I could not begin to tally for you the number of books I have consumed in my life. I have studied and read and re-read until I’m sure the number of minutes I have spent with a book in my nose far outnumbers the total number of minutes I have done just about anything else. 

Re-reading is the other way I have found to soothe myself after finishing a much loved book or series. I find on the re-read I discover new character traits and motivations or little turns of phrases I never noticed before. Re-reading allows me to re-experience what I first loved in a whole new way.

In my literature courses, I was taught to re-read — you read something the first time for the content and then after that you read it to analyze. Society, though, has taught me that re-reading is something of which I should be ashamed. If you Google, you will find dozens upon dozens of articles which claim that re-reading is a waste of your brain space and that you should be expanding your mind by experiencing new things, new authors, new themes, new characters.

They aren’t wrong, but I can’t seem to stop either. Often, I re-read when I am in need of an escape. I may be stressed or sad or just plain tired and I don’t have brain space to consume or understand something new, so I turn to old friends. 

I have re-read Little House and Harry Potter and Anne I couldn’t tell you how many times. Harry I have read annually for the last 20 plus years and I wrote extensive research papers on them in grad school. I can practically recite them. 

This year I decided upon a new re-reading method — audiobooks. I have a weird thing with audiobooks — I can only listen to books I have previously read. I find that my mind tends to wander when I’m listening instead of actively engaged in reading and so only if I know the book can I pick up the threads of the story again when I have mentally wandered while listening. Naturally, then, I began with Harry Potter. Next, I took up Anne

And here’s the funny thing. I love the first three books, always have. I am head over heels in love with Gilbert Blythe, and I have no qualms about admitting that publicly. The next four books, with the exception of Anne’s House of Dreams, have considerably less Gilbert, and 6 and 7 even have considerably less Anne. I enjoy the stories, but I do not love them. 

The final book in the series, Rilla of Ingleside, I must admit I have suffered through when I have tried to read it in the past. The World War I theme was interesting, but it was so far outside the world of Anne (which is admittedly the point) that as a young person, I felt no connection to the story or the characters. Rilla Blythe irritated me, and I desperately yearned for more of Anne and Gilbert’s thoughts on the horror of seeing their sons march off to war instead of their live-in Susan Baker’s. So, upon my listen, I fully expected to feel the same.

But, here’s what happened — I sobbed like a baby while hearing this particular story read aloud. 

I never once had shed a tear when it came to any of the Anne series (excepting Matthew’s death). But this time when Jem left Dog Monday at the train station, when Rilla read Walter’s last letter home before his death, when little Bruce drowned his kitten in hopes that the sacrifice would bring Jem home, and particularly when Little Dog Monday greeted his returning soldier at the end of the war, I could not contain my tears. 

And they weren’t just tears. I did that particular kind of cry where you are trying not to cry too loudly and so you are making this horribly odd sucking sound in the back of your throat while tears stream down your face. I still have not figured out why. 

Why this time — this tenth or eleventh time that I am reliving this story — why did it affect me so much? Was it just hearing it instead of reading it? But no, many, many books that I have read for myself have made me cry. I admit that listening gave it a different kind of poignancy, but I do not think that was it. 

I think I’m…older. I’ve grown up since the last time I read this book, and although the protagonist is a 15 year old girl at the beginning of the war and I was much closer to 15 the first time I followed her story, I can understand at 31 what I could not understand at 15. The tragedy of life, the fear of the possibility of this kind of war repeating itself again, the unforgettable knowledge that death is permanent and infects everyone — all of that is real to me now. 

I used to think that I would only find growth by reading new things, writing new things, experiencing new things. This is not false — the path to adulthood is paved with new things, and I rejoice in finding and learning them. But when you experience new things, you grow and change, you become new again, which means you can never look at your old life exactly the same way. You don’t relive the past, I would never suggest that, you just learn to look at past experiences differently and they color how you handle the future.

Or to borrow a Rilla quote, “It’s strange – isn’t it – They have been two terrible years – and yet I have a queer feeling of thankfulness for them – as if they had brought me something very precious in all their pain. I wouldn’t want to go back and be the girl I was two years ago not even if I could. Not that I think I’ve made any wonderful progress – but I’m not quite the selfish frivolous little doll I was then. I suppose I had a soul then…but I didn’t know it. I know it now – and that is worth a great deal – worth all the suffering of the past few years.” 

My soul, spirit, inner self, whatever you’d like to call it, had never had to do much growing. In the last 5 years, though, it has grown a lot — and it hurt. A lot. But, I wouldn’t trade it. Maybe it wasn’t World War I, but it was something, and because of it I have a whole new outlook.

So, I no longer feel guilty for indulging in a little re-read now and again, for everything old is made new again when we come at it with new eyes, a new life. I guess, in a way, we aren’t ever really re-reading. We’re simply getting the pleasure of reading a story for the first time again with our fresh souls. It is truly one of the most wonderfully mysterious, heart warming, and awe inspiring experiences one could ever imagine.

Perfection vs. Process

 

On a recent trip, I found the magnet pictured above.

As soon as I saw it, although it was not clearly a souvenir of the city I was visiting, I knew I had to buy it for my older brother because it so perfectly encapsulated us

If you know me, you’ll know that I am a meticulous planner. Obnoxiously so. For an event happening three weeks in advance, I will already have a detailed timeline and to-do list prepared. If you tell me to be somewhere on the hour, I will start pacing in my house 30 minutes prior because I’ve been ready since the hour before and have run out of things to do to occupy my time so I don’t arrive an hour early. (Early is on time, after all.)

My brother and I both have this same gene. When my grandmother died two years ago, I called him at 2:00am to let him know, and we immediately began multiple lists, organized by person and activity so that we had a game plan we could attack as soon as he arrived in Texas. 

This type of planning calms us. It allows us to be in control of situations so that we can be assured we won’t have to stress about things going wrong. In fact, we have already planned out all of the worst case scenarios so that we know exactly what we will do in case of something unexpectedly going awry. We were stage managers of theatrical productions for a reason.

I know this irritates a lot of people. I have driven many a colleague to distraction requesting their extra-curricular schedule for the entire year so that I could plan my activities around theirs. (I was just trying to be considerate so all kids could participate in all things!) My best friend often chooses not to fill me in on all the details, just because she thinks it’s good for me not to have everything planned out to the second in my life. (I do not like admitting that she’s probably correct…)

But here’s the thing that is super baffling — I’m not that way when I write. I never have been. Creative, academic, whatever kind of writing you can think about, I don’t pre-plan it. 

I despise outlines. DESPISE. Whenever I was assigned an outline in school, I would write my paper first and then go back and fill in the outline. I understand the concept of them — I taught them to my own students. But my brain doesn’t work that way when it comes to writing. 

Instead, you would find me eating lunch alone in the cafeteria at college with a far off look in my eyes while I talked to myself and all of the reading I had filed away in my head. I doodled a very informal outline on napkins or the edges of notebooks, but you would never catch me willingly using Roman numerals to organize information.

I had forgotten that I am this way when I write creatively, since it has been so long since I’ve attempted the task. I have been languishing a little on my novel, and it wasn’t until I re-plotted the whole thing that I realized why. 

I was trying waaaaaaaay to hard to make my characters do what I wanted them to do. They had other agendas. Sure, I have a rough outline because how else would I keep track of what exactly this novel is supposed to be about? But I have had to make myself let go of sticking to it precisely. 

Because art isn’t about precision or perfection. Art is about the release of raw emotion and thought. Art is about giving yourself over to all of the scary things in your head and letting them drive the wheel for a little bit. Art is about getting over yourself. 

So, my best friend will be very glad to hear that I am learning to let go of a little control. Just a little. I do still have a white board with a plot diagram meticulously filled out sitting beside me, but I don’t let it dictate how many chapters I have to have. 

I let the unexpected happen. I trust the process. I’ll work on perfection in proofreading. 

An Accidental Prose Poem

I have nothing much important to say tonight except to share that I feel perfectly at peace.

I am sitting in my living room lit only by a candle in an old wine bottle with a gigantic wooden wick that is throwing off just enough light for me to see to write. The familiar feel of the pen sliding smoothly across paper, homemade paper that fills the leather journal I sometimes spill my thoughts into, is essentially all that is guiding my hand.

It is dusk, and very nearly dark, so just the faintest of blue light is peeking through the windows. It will be a navy blue soon and then just the candle or the muscle memory of pen across paper won’t be enough to see.

It is enough light for dreaming though.

The road noise of passing cars and the occasional eighteen wheeler mingles with the sound of the candle popping, the light bouncing off the wick and into a larger circle against the wall. In the back room, my dogs occasionally readjust themselves, nails clicking on tile, breaths coming out in relaxed huffs of contentment.

This is the music of my house. It is soft, calming. Sometimes it is too quiet, and I crank it up with singing or television. I skate through the house pretending I am a ballerina or a company member in a Broadway play. Sometimes my dogs and I are characters in movies and television shows, inserting ourselves into storylines as we binge the latest episodes of a myriad of shows or become enthralled again in the dystopian universe of The Hunger Games.

But just now this near silence is the perfect sound for dreaming.

Tonight I am also perfectly alone. I have not spoken aloud, nor have I been spoken to in hours. Nobody else’s thoughts or actions have infringed upon my own. I have not even conversed via text messaging.

Not every night is like this. Some nights I long to hear my best friend’s laughing children or the sounds my mother makes while she is cleaning the kitchen after a family meal. Sometimes I need to sit in perfect silence with my best friend, our feet propped up on the porch railing outside her house with just the light from the dim string of lights she has decoratively draped on the small table that holds our coffee.

But tonight, I am lonely — the perfect kind of lonely for dreaming.

This quiet, this dark, this loneliness is what I crave. I do not wish for anything different than to hear the sputter of my candle mixed with the whir of tires on asphalt outside my window. I have no desire for sight beyond the circle cast onto the wall of my living room from my candle. I want no one here to sit beside me and interrupt my dreaming.

My dreams of Paris — visiting Gertrude Stein’s house and walking the same cobbled streets she and Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Picasso once strode.

Of England and the grave of Anne Boleyn, the birthplace of Shakespeare, the home of Austen and so many other castles and homes and pubs and schools I cannot possibly begin to name them all, but I can feel their names echoing in my soul.

Dreams of my home being filled with all the people I can only imagine — Anne Shirley and Hermione Granger, the crew of the Firefly, Mr. Darcy and Jon Snow. They sit quietly with me in my darkening living room, sharing a laugh at some inside joke and asking nothing more from me other than to continue dreaming them into existence.

There are other characters; characters I alone have dreamed. I spend time with them in the quiet, too, asking them questions about their hopes and regrets so that I can encase their souls in ink.

My dreams are silly, illogical, fanciful. But all I wish for this evening is to continue sitting here, enveloped now in the navy of the night with only the flicker of the candlelight to illuminate and fill the silence. And my pen. Always my pen.

So I have nothing much important to say tonight except that I am perfectly at peace. And I hope beyond anything I could ever hope for in this world that you know peace as I know peace alone in my home. And that you find it, often.

Which perhaps is, in fact, something terribly important to say.

 

The Guts to Get Out

I meant to post this on Saturday, but then a tornado hit our town.

All is mostly well. Several homes were lost (not mine, just to be clear), the baseball field is destroyed, and there was some damage to the track and a whole bunch of junk blown around. No serious injuries and no deaths, so we escaped relatively unscathed. Still scary and life changing for people near and dear to me though.

So because of that, graduation got moved to Sunday and then the older brother flew back home Sunday and then best friend and I decided to be healthy and do some exercising and then I had to watch the Game of Thrones finale so the Internet wouldn’t ruin it for me and then I sang at the junior high awards assembly and then… well, a few days late is better than I’ve been doing, so I’m gonna take it.

But anyway, read this knowing it should have been posted Saturday.

Today marks the official one year anniversary of resigning my position as a teacher. Or to quote my best friend’s mother-in-law, today is the day I had the guts to get out. It has been a year that has felt simultaneously as if it contained about 15 years in one and also as if it was maybe just the longest month of my life. Everything has changed and yet nothing feels different. It is an extraordinarily exhilarating and confusing feeling.

I have been asked by many people if I regret leaving. I always laugh and cut them off before they can even finish the question. No. Never.

There have been moments I have missed it. Watching the kids I’ve known since they were little bitty perform in their last ever musical or One Act Play, I shed a few tears, I’ll admit. (I’m sorry, daughter of mine, for sobbing on your shoulder that one time, and thank you for letting me.) However, I do not regret my decision to leave.

Over the last year, I have changed more than just my profession, though, and so I thought I’d share some other things that have changed or that I’ve learned about myself in the last 12 months because who doesn’t love a list?

Top 12 Things that Have Changed in the Last 12 Months

  1. I can admit that I was depressed (sometimes still am because depression doesn’t just go away) and that I have at least a mild case of anxiety. It has lessened since I removed myself from situations that caused it to flare up.

  2. I am not angry as often. I am not stressed. I can breathe freely. Seriously — I don’t hyperventilate anymore and I haven’t had a panic attack in months.

  3. I am not afraid to be with my own thoughts anymore. I no longer need to drown myself out with Netflix. I can read (something I hadn’t done in awhile) or, more importantly, I can just sit and think. There is power in just sitting and thinking.

  4. I don’t drink as much as I used to, and I eat better. My body is not 100% yet, but it’s getting there. I knew that mental and physical health were tied together, but I never really knew until now because now I actually want to take care of myself — I have a craving for it.

  5. I’ve stopped involving myself in drama and with dramatic people because I don’t need the distraction of their lives anymore. (I also don’t see teenagers on a daily basis, which helps, love them as I do. And I deleted Snapchat. I highly recommend deleting Snapchat.)

  6. I’ve learned and am still learning to say “No,” even to my own family, which is hard. So incredibly hard. But I’m done with obligation, and it is definitely okay to say no.

  7. I cry more easily because I’m not bottling everything up anymore. Movies, TV shows, books, plays — they make me sob. In public. A lot.

  8. I love traveling alone. I also like traveling with my dad and with my older brother and with the rest of our family. Traveling is no longer an escape from life, it is a driving force in my life. I am working towards visiting all 50 states. I’m over halfway there.

  9. I don’t want children. Maybe I will again someday, but to quote the older brother — I just got free again; why would I want to change that? I love being an aunt, and I’m good with just that role.

  10. I love being alone. I am sick of people (including myself) trying to stop me from being alone. I do not need someone to complete me whether that’s a partner or children. I am not a whole person only when I have become a wife and a mother. I am a whole person right now.

  11. I am better at things than I give myself credit. I don’t give myself nearly enough credit, still. Luckily, I have a best friend who tells people I am working on a novel when I gloss over that fact. Feels funny still to say “I am a writer,” especially since I don’t yet have any proof. But then again, it’s not really about proving it to anyone besides myself.

  12. I feel more like myself than I have in over 10 years.

Yeah, that last one was kind of sappy and I do despise sap, but I really needed a 12th one to make the whole idea here work, soooooo…