Renee and I were joking today, about being busy--how if things to do are things being carried then I'm using both hands, both feet, all my teeth, and a swaying stack of tea cups clatter balanced on my head. The month of May, an exquisite tumbling of thing after thing after thing. My birthday is my new year, and for each one I like to reflect heavily. I usually write up something in this space to honor it, but this time I didn't have just that: time. I kept the reflecting more on the quiet side, staring off into a space a lot on the actual day. My love and I were married 9 days before it so I felt entirely surrounded by sweetness. Truly a gorgeous month.
May also marked the month I started my role as a teaching assistant in a fairly intense writing workshop. I'm feeling particularly proud of grinding for this position--last fall I took the workshop as a student for the first time. This helped push me to finish my book--huge victory. I took it again in the first month of 2021, opting to kick things off right. Then I volunteered for another session to be a TA-in-training, and did well enough to get the role. What a wild trajectory. I made sure to message Renee and thank her for the push she gave me last fall, when I was on the fence about doing the workshop at all. Fretting about signing up, I had reached out to her to wonder aloud if I should pull the trigger. She said the thing my heart most needed to hear: your work is worth investing in. And so I did. So much has been born from this decision, and this is another reason to add to the pile of reasons as to why we are inksisters/life long loves.
So, not only am I giving feedback to a slew of students, I'm also participating, which means homework every week. Yes, it seems I am constantly finding new and inventive ways to give myself homework--this appears to be a life long pattern, but who doesn't enjoy being a student of something, if not life itself? Let me learn it all. This week I'm trying to master the scaffold of sestinas.
Add to that, my book is out! As of last week, Hotwire is in the hands of many others, and it feels so, so wonderful. I had my first in person feature in over a year (!!!) last night, and sold 10 of them. I have 5 more to ship out to people this Wednesday. They are going fast, and I'm trying to savor every connection, every copy that leaves my posession. I'm so proud of this work. That sentence feels so tiny and flimsy compared to my actual, in-body feelings, but I don't really hvae words to do those feelings justice.
My goodness did it feel good to be on stage again, in front of actual faces. To feed off a crowd in the moment, and not over a screen via Zoom. Everything felt so very right--to stand behind a microphone and read poetry in the city I first started in at the age of 18. "Full circle" doesn't feel like the right term for it, but it felt like the closure of some loose strand, and I felt completely present, in my body. If this is how 40 is going to go then hell yes to all of it.
Hoping to have time to share more soon. Between class and work and writing a new project and hugging all my loved ones again(finally), spare moments are a bit hard to come by. I feel like I have so much to say about where I am at this point, but the kicker is I'm enjoying the busy-ness of living it. Stopping the momentum to dissect it isn't doing it for me. And on that note, let me go steal a kiss from my sweetheart before I return to assembling this sestina.
May also marked the month I started my role as a teaching assistant in a fairly intense writing workshop. I'm feeling particularly proud of grinding for this position--last fall I took the workshop as a student for the first time. This helped push me to finish my book--huge victory. I took it again in the first month of 2021, opting to kick things off right. Then I volunteered for another session to be a TA-in-training, and did well enough to get the role. What a wild trajectory. I made sure to message Renee and thank her for the push she gave me last fall, when I was on the fence about doing the workshop at all. Fretting about signing up, I had reached out to her to wonder aloud if I should pull the trigger. She said the thing my heart most needed to hear: your work is worth investing in. And so I did. So much has been born from this decision, and this is another reason to add to the pile of reasons as to why we are inksisters/life long loves.
So, not only am I giving feedback to a slew of students, I'm also participating, which means homework every week. Yes, it seems I am constantly finding new and inventive ways to give myself homework--this appears to be a life long pattern, but who doesn't enjoy being a student of something, if not life itself? Let me learn it all. This week I'm trying to master the scaffold of sestinas.
Add to that, my book is out! As of last week, Hotwire is in the hands of many others, and it feels so, so wonderful. I had my first in person feature in over a year (!!!) last night, and sold 10 of them. I have 5 more to ship out to people this Wednesday. They are going fast, and I'm trying to savor every connection, every copy that leaves my posession. I'm so proud of this work. That sentence feels so tiny and flimsy compared to my actual, in-body feelings, but I don't really hvae words to do those feelings justice.
My goodness did it feel good to be on stage again, in front of actual faces. To feed off a crowd in the moment, and not over a screen via Zoom. Everything felt so very right--to stand behind a microphone and read poetry in the city I first started in at the age of 18. "Full circle" doesn't feel like the right term for it, but it felt like the closure of some loose strand, and I felt completely present, in my body. If this is how 40 is going to go then hell yes to all of it.
Hoping to have time to share more soon. Between class and work and writing a new project and hugging all my loved ones again(finally), spare moments are a bit hard to come by. I feel like I have so much to say about where I am at this point, but the kicker is I'm enjoying the busy-ness of living it. Stopping the momentum to dissect it isn't doing it for me. And on that note, let me go steal a kiss from my sweetheart before I return to assembling this sestina.
Comments
Post a Comment