I’m trying something new today…you can listen to me read small made thing #148 right here if you like, and let me know what you think!
Hello beautiful human,
Once upon a time, when I was in my early twenties, just graduated from college and knowing very little except I thought I had found my one true love and I knew I wanted to be a published and respected poet, this was my pattern: go to work for eight hours at whatever bleary job I was holding, come home, and sit at the writing desk for two hours. Sometimes the two hours came before the workday, if I managed to get up early enough. It was always two hours. To. The. Minute. (I wrote the date and the time at the start of every day’s writing…4:32. 5:47 etc) I had made a pact with myself: hold down any job that paid me enough to survive, while I worked to transform myself into the writer I wanted to be. I gave myself ten years to accomplish this, because one of my writing teachers had (wisely) shared with us that it would take about ten years to start getting reliably published and until that happened you just had to hang on and keep going on faith. I had faith. And I had all the ferocious, naive, laughable and enviable drive to commit to that pie-in-the-sky-and-pigs-might-fly vision. It was a time of fairy tales.
And you know, fairy tales at their heart have a kernel of truth and discomfort. I can see now from this distance of thirty years on that my motives were mixy. I was trying to win approval, I was trying to follow a script that was or was not my own. I had no idea what true love was although along the way over the next thirty years I think I’ve done an okay job of figuring that one out for myself.
And I wrote some books. I did some stuff. A lot of stuff, actually, that I don’t want to go into this morning but I have dedicated some part of the summer to reviewing and reconsidering. Somewhere in there divorce, burnout, covid, other happenings took me off that original script of “Esteemed Poet” and brought me, after all, through the buggy swamps of life to right here.
My writing time looks very different now, although I find myself still holding down a day job that will allow me to keep connected to the work of writing and more importantly staying open creatively to life in its most non-linear shapes. I noodle, doodle, drift. Sometimes it’s two hours and sometimes it’s more like a squeezed thirty minutes. Sometimes I find myself on my phone. Sometimes I stare out the window, just feeling the feelings as they come, clouds in the sky. I envy that younger self her dedication and her naive enthusiasm. I envy her energy and focus. I’m deeply grateful to her also. And although I’m way off her script by now and she would be so disappointed in me, I don’t regret a single choice I’ve made.
Doodling and drifting this morning I’m in a richer, more lively, more interesting and liminal place than my younger self could have imagined or comprehended. Once again, the work begins. Once upon a time is now. And the time is 7:38 am.
Looking to grow the connection and energy in other ways besides subscribing? Here are some options:
Engagement and conversation are another way to co-create and collaborate with An Inviting Space. I always love to hear from you!
Your time and attention are the true gifts. Thank you. xoS
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to An Inviting Space to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.