Reality Check (Warning!)

I have been avoiding the blog because I am utterly overwhelmed, but tonight a friend asked me: “Are you laying off the blog for a while?”

I had to take pause. Really, I had no intentions of doing so, but I can see now how I’ve been stumbling for weeks. The poems I enjoy, and often lead to bigger, more exciting ideas. But they also only take about three to five minutes and I can get lost in them, rather than creating a structure to some inspiring event and bringing it back to life with full sentences in prose.

And so, dear readers, I will vent through listing only for a brief moment, then return to my homework and hopefully tomorrow will bring renewed vigor to the blog.

I used my weekend to complete a 2,000 word freelance assignment. As a reward, I went to a gallery opening where I saw an artist who wanted to know what such-and-such magazine thought about the essay I wrote about him. I had to tell him I hadn’t written the essay yet (though I didn’t bother to explain why – the chief reason being that such-and-such magazine has a six month back up on copy right now which makes competition stiff and therefore coverage of his hard efforts and my hard words even harder to get!). I’ve been writing a poem every other day for 42 days and I’m tired because I’m a perfectionist and want everything to be good. I have 400 pages to read in the next week and a half, twenty pages to write, two essays to write, and a craft letter to compose. I have a jeweler knocking on my door for a review and a magazine that needs it, yet I still can’t get it together enough to email the editor. I have submissions out to seven publications, six of which seem dead and dull to me but I have yet to remind them or replace them on my magic list for “getting stuff out there.” One of them looks promising, and it’s my top choice to hope, hope, hope!

More? I have a signing performance in three weeks, which we just booked yesterday. I have eight emails from MFA friends I have neglected for over two weeks. I have articles to coordinate for a local festival. I have to move in three weeks. I have wood to haul and a house to clean before the neighbors return in two nine days. I have friends that live spitting distance from my cabin that I haven’t seen in months (Vic!).

There. I hate that purging feeling when it seems like I’m dumping it on the world. This blog has been going almost every single day since July 2005 but I am not the same person and I am not the same writer and I do not have the same demands on my time that I did back then. Change is normal. It happens every day. Expressing it daily through a medium means that the slow and steady of work of change of magnified, and can lead to impatience in the worst of ways and at other times, elation in the best of ways. Lately, I’m just hoping for enough clarity at the end of my day to articulate myself clearly. Give me time. I’ll get there.