I am coming back

I have been meaning to write on here for quite some time. I've had lots of ideas: I spend a lot of time on the train to work writing down bits of language I see that's evocative for me of one thing or another, strange connections we all make from a subway sign to something from a relationship we had years ago and then to the emotions that relationship brings up now, how it's different from then, how it reminds us of a season, or we wonder how that person is doing. A word misread opens up an idea for a poem, a reprise, something in an NPR podcast makes me think of how birds are all that matter, really.

I am done teaching and I am glad I am done. I will work at Trader Joe's four days a week, write the other three. Jeannine makes enough to support my habit.

I am all ideas and no follow through. I talked to a friend today, she said maybe it's ok to just have beginnings right now. I think she's on to something. I have been beating myself up about not writing: I start a poem, never finish it, I can't, it's like I've forgotten how. I have written three poems in almost a year and only one of them is done. And that one is not very good. Please don't leave comments of encouragement. I am not looking for sympathy. I'm not looking to be reprimanded either.

Now that I have time to devote to writing, I will write something really great. I know it is still in me, to take myself seriously. I don't know that I took myself seriously in grad school. I think I wrote funny poems because I didn't believe I could write good ones, ones that deserved to be serious. I wanted to believe I could be serious and funny. I couldn't. Or at least I wasn't.

It's time for me to take my writing seriously again, as though my life depends on it. I think it does. I see now that it does. If I'm not a writer, which I am, then what am I? A fucking grocery store clerk? A payment to my loan company? I am an oxygen converter. A cat feeder. An energy consumer. I am something to worry about or be indifferent to. That can't be all, that's not what I thought when I started writing 15 years ago. I was a writer then, even when I didn't know shit. I knew I was a writer. If I can't do that, I'm nothing.

It feels self-involved and pretentious because I keep listening to everyone else. I am going to stop doing that. I have to write for myself again. When I do that, I love it. When I do that, I'm good at it. I am really fucking good at it.

I am going to go write now, but I am back, and will be on more frequently, like before my absence. Let me know how you are, if you drop by.