Trying again and trying
Is it counterintuitive to launch a site, plop down [redacted] dollars for it for a year, and then not touch it for a few weeks? Maybe, but that's showbiz.
The truth is that I'm trying to be better at cultivating and following my creative impulses. My therapist (therapy mentioned in a blog/newsletter--drink) asked me this week why I'd stopped blogging in the first place, and I ended up talking around my answer, chalking it up to the way in which I disconnected from myself from late 2017 to middish 2019, and how little I remember from that stretch. The particulars with why I stopped writing, though, came down to getting in my own head, with block over how a piece should go or just running out of enthusiasm and a will to grind through it and let a thing suck. Which I guess is a longwinded way of saying I stopped believing in myself. I developed such a rigid and controlled idea of who I supposed to be and what I was supposed to do that when I didn't attain those goals, I just did nothing instead (that's not all true--I played a loooot of D&D in this stretch, and TTRPGs have remained a fantastic creative outlet to me to this day). Nothing active, at least; this was a passive time for me, and passive people don't write.
So anyway, now I'm trying to be better about listening to what type of creative thing I want to pursue and when, and knowing that I can come back to a project when I feel called to it. Not inspired, necessarily, just called; that little impulse of "I want to work on ______."
And in the last few weeks, that was finally the poetry manuscript I'd told myself I'd write for Button Poetry's chapbook contest. Last year, poetry played a big part in my creative revitalization. I joined the Creative Writing Project at the Contemporary Arts Center, where I consistently felt good about my writing for the first time. That confidence allowed me to start doing readings and open mics, and really getting to explore who I was as a publicly facing writer for the first time. Honestly, I recommend going IRL social with your hobbies when you get the chance; it really helps you meet new people and feel like someone who partakes in hobby [x]. And so I heard about Button's chapbook competition and that it was being judged by Hanif Abdurraquib, so of course I had to start working on something. I pulled together what I've written in the last few years and came up with a chapbook that I like. It took a while, but it's complete and it's submitted and it's mine.
This is where the second type of trying is coming in. I've never submitted my work for this type of intensive appraisal before, and I'm nervous about it. This is the "other side" of being public with your art: you have the chance to be perceived negatively. If I think about it for more than a second, it's not like the preliminary judges are going to look at my work and email me like "this sucks lol," but still, I'm aware that I'm a DIY-er first timer in a field probably crowded with published-published authors (I have a chapbook out through self-publishing that I like fine, but it feels like a demo) and MFAs. But this is why we try. I want to grow.
Now with the chapbook submitted, I have time to work on the newsletter. I have some 2024 music pieces on Taylor Swift and The Dare in the clip that I want to get dished out, so look for those coming soon before I get into 2024 favorites, peppered in with anything that springs to mind for 2025.
