Welcome to Returning to My Inner Poet

I used to write a lot of poetry. I had a journal in high school that I would write in nearly every night. It was filled with the start of short stories, silly poems, and nonsensical doodles. I still have this journal and occasionally have a good laugh going through it.

I wonder if he ever regretted any of his early poetry?

Poetry was a fun hobby in high school. It was part of my whole: "I'm going to be a famous writer/artist someday" shtick that I try to pretend didn't exist (yeah, high school me was an interesting person). They were short, easy to write, and my creative writing teacher always wanted poems for the literary magazine. I think I had four or five poems and a couple of drawings published before I graduated.

Then I just stopped writing poems.

I don't really remember why I stopped. I think I took a few years of writing off all together in college, until I was blackmailed talked into writing fan-fiction.

I seem to recall having a poetry writing assignment my freshmen year of college. I was pretty sick when I was told to write a sonnet and don't remember many details. However, I do remember my professor saying that the poem I wrote was prefect mathematically, but otherwise sucked.

Meh, I was never a huge fan of sonnets anyway. I liked haiku and limericks a lot more. They're playful and funny.

So nearly a decade has gone by and I haven't written a single poem. And then I have a really bad month. Not bad like bad things keep happening to me, but bad as in my mental health wasn't in the best shape. I keep trying to find the right way to describe what I'm feeling and I lost a lot of interest in writing.

Finally I managed to put some thoughts on paper. Just a couple of rhyming lines that wouldn't make much sense to someone casually glancing at them. A few more weeks go by and I go back to those lines and add a few more. Suddenly I had a poem that helped me describe what I was feeling.

I didn't do anything with the poem. It's been sitting in a notebook for the better part of a year now. I've been focusing on short stories and novel writing.

Then I make a new friend at one of my writers groups who loves to write poetry. We actually have similar stories when it comes to writing poetry. We wrote a lot in high school and then stopped writing for one reason or another only to start writing years later. They've asked me to help out proofreading some of their work that they have on Wattpad (a website where you can post original works for people to read).

When they started sharing their poetry with me, it was like a switch had been flipped. I started writing more poetry. It's still slow and they probably aren't the best poems (not by a long shot), but I'm finding that I really enjoy it.

I might do a few more posts on poetry and see about posting some of my poems here. April is National Poetry Month, so I'm either really late or seriously early to celebrate. But why should I only celebrate poetry once a month?

Until next week.

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Welcome To Your Identity

 It's Never What You Think...

I was thinking about writing about my war on UPS this week, but then bunch of odd coincidences happened that have caused this post to steer in a completely different direction. I don’t know if anyone else who is a recent graduate is going through this, but I am finding the more people I talk to, the more they also feel uncertain about their future. I am not just talking about losing a job or going through a tough time. I mean that there is a whole future ahead of them and they have no idea what to do with it. 

I have come to the conclusion that I have no idea who I am and who I want to be. I know who I was in college and high school. Heck I may have had a small identity crisis when I was seven (I somehow never realized until then what gender I actually was). From that small stepping stone I was able to shape who I was up until middle school. When high school started I decided that I didn’t care anymore what people thought about me. I tried to keep my head down and concentrate on my studies (anyone heard of the IB program?).  I did manage to make a small name for myself senior year by becoming the head of the Model United Nations Club. It was stressful and fun. 

My college identity was fairly similar to my high school one. I was somewhat unconcerned with my (nonexistent) reputation and I wanted to focus on my studies. I did have to get my ego deflated a little bit, but I tried to just enjoy my time and not flunk out. College was great for self exploration and sometimes I wish I had done more. Now I’m just not sure what I want or who I want to be. 

Alright I sometimes imagine myself as future queen of the world, but it’s just a fantasy. I don’t think I would like the lime light. I over analyze myself way too much; I don’t need the media to add to it. 

At the moment I would describe my mental state as standing at a crossroads on a foggy night without a flashlight (though I'm not there to make a deal with a devil). I know where I am and where I came from, but I have no idea which direction I should take or where it might lead. I would also compare myself to Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. I find I take myself way too seriously and nothing seems to go the way I plan. Luckily I also have a great group of people who have my back. 

I hope to eventually get my bearings and blaze a trail for my life. I just don’t want to wake up one day and realize that life has totally passed me by. At the same time I don’t want everything planned out so that I never have anything spontaneous happen. I need a balance of both. As my uncle said, "sometimes I wish I was five years old again and could get on my bike and just ride without a care in the world."

I think all of these introspective posts are happening because a lot of things have been going on. I've started meditating and it is helping me calm down and clear my mind. Thank you all for reading. I hope this helps someone other than myself.