Introduction

An introduction, I suppose, to start it off…

Just take a look into my Borders bag (which instead of grading papers, was being filled with whatever I could find to keep me away from reality a bit longer)…Perhaps this will paint a fairly good picture to start with:
-magazines on publishing & writing, magazines entitled Adventure & Outside, a page-a-day calendar entitled 1,000 Places to see before you die, books about doing the things you’ve always wanted to but never had a ‘reason’, books on traveling far from home to find yourself...picking up pieces you never knew were there, etc. etc….Ok, I'll admit it, also an US Weekly.

Yes, I think you can piece together something about me based on this small assortment. The stumper though, was the calendar…not the page-a-day (very small commitment in those-rip away your crappy yesterday or gingerly remove the lovely day passed each day), but rather the one that should take its place prominently in my kitchen; the one whose days I’ll mark off, some days proudly, other days wondering how I let that one pass so uneventfully; the calendar (unlike the work desk calendar) that a blank page gets me excited, lets me think of the possibilities for that month instead of the to-do’s(as the aforementioned work calendar always holds)…

Why, oh why, should a calendar be such a tough decision, one might ask. Well, it shouldn’t be. I should have gone earlier when the selection was ridiculous, when any image you could conjure up would have 12 months devoted to just that ideal soul-connected image. Instead, I go on the 2nd of January…when my selection includes various puppy calendars, lighthouses from every angle, Miley Cyrus photo diaries & of course Warcraft fantasy calendars. Nope, none seem to fit…And being what my calendar means to me, how much I value staring into the blank squares & making plans, this is not to be entered lightly. I did find one, though. One that’ll have to do. One that contains some great waterfalls & beautiful predictably unpredictable trees. I’ll have to suffer through the few months that contain a cornfield. Or perhaps those months I’ll challenge myself to find the beauty in the corn…

So, I’ve settled on the calendar & proudly committed to myself that not one of those days may be crossed off until this is done; until I’ve pushed myself out into the world in some revealing & meaningful way. I often tell others who write (I could say fellow writers, however, I always feel quite pretentious saying I’m a ‘writer’; nope, I’m just someone who writes), “Do NOT erase, DON’T throw away those scraps of paper with your words on them, do NOT burn those poems of your heart that you’d never want anyone to read (both because they are revealing, but also because you deem them crappy writing).” I tell people, "You never know when those exact words may be needed & you are unable to un-erase the musings of 2 years ago, or dig through Friday night’s trash, or piece together the ashes of yesterday to find them." So, no, I don’t erase, I don’t throw out, I don’t burn the words of my own….guard them with my life & keep ‘Viewable By Others’ & ‘Never In A Million Years’ books of writing, yes, but I never destroy them…they are me…or were in one brief moment at least.

However, saving them has become for me, in some ways, my own way of destroying them. Placing them in a book that sits by my bed, jotting words on napkins & shoving them into a binder of random musings, carrying a book where, when the mood strikes, I frantically jot down pieces of myself only to throw it back into my purse. So, this is me pushing myself…the way I push my students, the way I encourage others that write, the way I believe everyone should throw themselves into a passion-without restraint & with confidence in who you are. So while others might simply be learning to hold on to those bits of themselves, I’ve held mine for quite a while….I think the next step is putting it out there, sharing that self with, well, whoever might want to know it, believing that somehow, these words matter. Because if I never let them matter, it’s as though I’ve thrown them away or deemed them unworthy…or even more accurate, as though they never were. And they are here…they are me…