The Strongest Influences are Unintentional

Just got back from my first poetry reading at open mic night and I had a great time.

I was running late because I had gotten a great idea for bringing this draft together and I stayed up all the way until 9:00 a.m. today writing and editing. Then I fell asleep around 10:00 a.m. and slept until 3:30p.m. I commute about an hour to the coffee place and needed to pick up my bestie so I got ready as quick as I could and took off like roadrunner.

I did not have time to get nervous before, because I was rushing, but then we turned the corner to the coffee shop parking lot and my hands all of a sudden began to shake and I went goosebumpy everywhere and my heart bounced up into my throat. Writing my name on the list, I thought my veins were rushing waaaay too fast to be healthy. Then I ran back to the car and did a run through of my poems, put on my make up, and calmed down. My great crowd of friends kept me calm until it was my turn.

I felt so loved because I had the sweetest and most supportive crowd show up to watch me. My amazing best friend from freshman year, my AP English teacher, ex Assistant Principal, my boss, and my friend and fellow poet, my sister even sent her guy to get some video for her. I read, “Mrs. Wilcox at age 90,” “Slow Dance,” “Top 40 Fed,” & “Compost.” The reception went well and I was amazed how quiet it got while I read. It was empowering; I cannot wait until I get to perform again. My sister got video so hopefully I will get a chance to post it within the next few days.

My coworker, who also read tonight, had the great idea to try to organize a poetry reading at Andrea Kristina’s sometime. I think that would be a great experience. We both enjoy listening to poetry and there are not too many events where one can go and listen to a diverse amount of poets, at least not too many that I have heard about. We are not professionals, but still, many of the poems I have heard from others are honest and that makes it worthwhile to listen.

There are times when authors come and read, but I think that organizing something where amateur poets and writers can come will be good. Part of learning to do something is to share it with others and to interact with people with the same interests. In this last year I have began to forge relationships with others who share my love of writing and it helps me to improve. Other writers understand the drive and emotion behind writing and the struggles that occur between drafts. I like that.

Plus, in actually getting more involved in the community, we can influence others. Tonight I felt so happy when my teacher told me I had inspired her to begin writing her poetry again. My best friend has not been writing too much poetry since high school, but she too wants to begin again. This feeds into my theory that the strongest influences are unintentional. 

Breathing to Breathe

The big decision that I have been debating over has been made, which is a nice relief off of my shoulders. I have decided to take a breath on my educational road and sightsee.

I really love learning and the classes have been entirely thrilling for the most part, but a college education costs money and it is really not very practical anymore to have both me and my significant other in school at the same time. Costwise  *ouch* !!! He is focused in on his goal and I am still feeling through and squinting towards the future, very unsure of what exactly I want.

I’ve taken a break before, right after eighth grade I took off two years before starting high school. Those years were beneficial in helping me to create my own identity and regain focus. I am hoping this hiatus does the same. Perhaps I will discover something amazing about myself or what I am capable of, which is what happened during those first couple of years out of junior high. When that break was over, I was ready, I was motivated, and I was determined to enjoy all the ups and downs of high school and appreciate everything.

I cannot wait to get started.

Right now I am transitioning out of the obligation mode. It is as if I have trained myself to repress what I want to do and I feel like I am standing at attention, waiting for someone to give me a task. I understand how this has come to be though. In school, I have to revolve around my professors and my assignments. At work, I revolve around my boss and his expectations and the customers. This is what I needed for school and work in order to take care of things, but now I have a bit more leeway to decide what I want to do.

I have been exceedingly happy to have been able to go to open mic night at our local coffee shop. I have always wanted to go but always had work or schoolwork. But I have a two week break before I have to return to work and I am not taking any classes, so I went twice. It was so rejuvenating! I absolutely loved it; there are some amazingly talented people. I was toying with the idea of reading some of my poetry and have not yet.

But I have made a commitment to read next week and there is no backing out or making excuses because I have let some of my friends and family know. It will be great. I have not written anything new since I took my poetry class this last spring semester, but I have a few that I can choose from to read. My first time reading was fun. We performed as a class and all got to read about three or four of our poems. My plan is practice reading this week and narrow the poems down to about four.

I am also planning on getting back into reading again, reading for pleasure and fun that is. No more trying to rush through novels and poems to make a deadline. I am going to explore and fully indulge and take as much time as I want with whatever I am reading before moving on to the next one. I have a little bookshelf full of books right now, some that I have not read in years, others that I have bought and never opened. Load me up, expose me to new authors, I am ready to explore.

[3 a.m.] Perhaps a blog...

Here is my first post, which has been a long time coming.

I have been so busy with school work and  work that I really have not made the time to blog, thus breaking my hope of beginning to blog once more. I really used to love to blog and kept one up when I had a myspace page in 2006ish. Even though I have not posted anything, I have been busy.

In December, after the fall semester ended, we had a potluck at work and got to enter our name to win a door prize. The bigger story is that we got a sheet with a brainteaser and were supposed to solve the puzzle and then write our name on it and throw it into the pot. I did not solve the brainteaser, which was a suduko puzzle, but I slipped my name in the drawing anyway. My name was drawn and I became the owner of a leather journal.

I had always wanted to buy one, when I was an avid journal writer, but I was always broke and never really felt the need to have one enough. Then poof, my name was called and there was this Holy Grail. This I have been writing in on and off since January.

From age sixteen to about twenty-two or three, I kept a journal. I even had volume numbers on the sides so that I could keep them in order. But then after awhile, when I would reread things I wrote, I did not like a lot of it. There was negativity from past relationships, deaths, and changes that were out of my hands. It depressed me to read. So I decided that I would just trash them. Out there, in some landfill, is a treasure trove of journals waiting to be unearthed. Hopefully an archeologist, or even an average person, will find them and get a thrill.

One afternoon in a local thrift store, I found my thrill. It was a new place that had opened up about three months prior and it was like a giant rummage sale. There was slight order, but not enough to be official. In one small room, there were a few bookshelves with book piles. There was not enough to be intimidating, so me and my sister sat and began to go through them shelf by shelf. On one there was a pile of composition books.

I haphazardly began to flip through one and discovered it was written in. There were poems scattered through with half written letters. It fascinated me. I do not know the person who used the book, but their life immediately drove me to sit and read through everything. From what I could infer, the girl had taken meth and was trying to stay clean, she was going through a break up, her brother had died, and she liked to get high. This brief summary communicates none of the emotion that her written words evoked.

What I cannot relay are the slight changes in her handwriting based on the subject matter, the crossed out words that were lost from her poem drafts, letters to people that were never sent but where her words trailed off, pages that were torn out or pieces of paper torn off, the flow of words as she tried to find rhyme, or the varying number of pages skipped between compositions. She gave that book life. She gave it character. While I will probably never know who she is, she has become this book to me. Between the pages is life.

This is when my mindset began to change. While I do not regret my decision of throwing my journals away, I wonder what will happen if I begin my journal collection anew. If my marriage falls apart, or I experience great hardship that I would rather forget, would I need to purge myself of those first-hand accounts? Or will I leave them, and perhaps keep them in hopes that one day I will face that period of my life with strength?

There are some things that I know were in those trashed journals that I miss, that I would love to read or see again. There is no undoing that can be done, so now a fresh start begins. I will try. Right now my brain is debating so many things, over and over, it seems that there is no clear direction to head into. But that is fine; I have a week or so yet before some final decisions have to be made.

That is the one major flaw I feel could be ironed out.

I pull myself in every direction, debate every side in my head, weigh the pros and cons, completely and entirely knot myself in a hug tangle before making a solid decision. Usually this decision is made right up to a deadline; I cannot help but to cut it close because I really do want to be as sure as I can. And when the decision is made, I am never sure but it is far too late to change it. It is nice at this point to know I have to stick with whatever choice I made. Here the pressure begins to dissipate.

“Reservation Nights” is my current long-term project, more about that later. It is nearly three a.m. and I work at eight. My cat PeeWee is curled up on my lap wanting us to head to bed.