On being a Writer...

It's a tough title, it's one I've shied away from for years, being a Writer or a Poet is something I take very seriously and the title carries weight with me. This week I spent time looking for an old training guide that I developed in 2000, and in searching through plastic bins I found all of my old poetry notebooks, some papers and some fiction I'd written in high school and college. I'm delighted that most of my college essays had, scrawled at the top, copied for the class. I forgot most of them and certainly forgot I was used as an example.

It's funny now to see them, typewritten with whiteout and all masking the errors, but the writing was solid. And even funnier are the carefully handwritten papers, blue ink, double spaced and more whiteout.  Overall the tone is a bit young but very solid and I'm not embarrassed about it. Ok, truth be told, the poetry is very gushy and hallmark but I was young and it's how I processed falling in love for the first time. And eventually processed him cheating on me and breaking my heart (sound familiar at all?).  I pulled all of it into a single bin and have it in my office now. I want to go through it not just because it'll be fun to see where I was but I'm sure there are nuggets I can pull out and play with.  For example a phrase to play with: shining knight in a black camaro.  That needs revisiting, so does an essay I wrote at 16 about sports and the idea of men planting themselves in front of a TV for four months during football season--not bad for a kid!

I've been writing very consistently ever since picked up a pen at 16 trying to sort out my feelings, it's how I've processed the big things that happened in my life from love to not love, from joy to pain and later it was how I got to the other side of PTSD. I process with a pen and paper, I have reams of paper and dozens of notebooks but I don't really  consider myself a writer because I've never been published.  But that's not true either, I used to have a column in a local magazine years ago, so I've been published.  Yet I hold the title Writer reverently and refuse to apply it to myself, that is until recently. Recently I've described myself as a Poet who does project management to pay the bills or a Writer who has a job to pay the bills.

Calling myself a Writer is easier than saying I’m a Poet. I remember the first time I said I was a poet, it was 2 years ago.  I went to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and took a week long session with Dora Malech and it was amazing. At the end of the week Dora offered up an hour to each of us to just talk one on one.  I told her I was having a hard time saying I was a poet. She leaned back, crossed her arms and said "say it, say you are a poet, because you are one." I was flabbergasted and stumbled but said it, I am a poet.  When I was checking out of my hotel later that day the hotel clerk asked if I was there for the festival and I nodded and said, "Yes, I'm a poet," and then promptly burst into tears because it was the first time I owned it out loud. 

I still struggle with owning it, with owning that I am a Writer and that I want to be a Writer. There are lots of opportunities in Omaha to share poetry and I hesitate to step forward and put my hand up, I need to work on that more this year. I do regularly go to an open mic (watch my Facebook if you are interested) and will continue to seek opportunities to help me develop my writing and share my poems.  And even typing that I have a small constant voice in the back of my head asking just who the hell I think I am saying any of this. 

Oh that voice, that same voice that says I can't run a mile or that cake is better than working out. This voice wants me to not only stay where I am but would probably like me to go back a few steps. This voice holds me back and does not want anything to change, but she can't win.  The things I'm doing today are uncomfortable and new and terrifying and exciting and scary and necessary.  I will not be who I've always been because while I love that it got me to where I am, there are other things I need to do.  So I'm a Poet-project manager-daughter-sister-aunt-friend-runner, and I can't wait to see what additional hyphenates I can add to that someday!

**Writer and Poet are capitalized on purpose and with forethought.**