Poetry

I first wrote poetry at the ripe old age of 12. My mother gave me the scrap of paper she’d saved over the years with my first real poem. (I’d written a poem in 3rd grade which I can only describe as doggerel.) So this scrap of paper held the starting words of “Introspection is me.” I was already looking at the inner journey by that age – maybe because my outer life was so unsatisfying, and I hadn’t yet really fallen in love with anyone despite crushes.

As luck would have it, my mother was of the opinion that people cannot “make money” from either poetry or art. So I did not get an early start and ended up choosing motherhood and family instead. I did make several attempts at other pursuits but always gave it up for something else. Once I started to learn landscape architecture.

I enjoyed that semester, going round to all the various areas in Balboa Park and doing tree identification. (I’ve always loved trees since the big Catalpa tree in Alexandria behind our old house.) That part, I did well. Meteorology class, not so much. I failed the first test and dropped out – I could never stand any kind of failure because it happened so little. I read very well, and in math I could hold my own – and even plain science did not phase me. But something happened with that class and I never did figure out why the glitch.

Then I tried Broadcasting. I’d always been told I had a good voice on the CB radio and also when reading aloud – so I thought maybe I could do something with that. It wasn’t going badly, but it seemed to require a more outgoing personality. At that time of life, I pretty much was not outgoing and in fact very shy and kept to myself wherever possible (despite having a small child who attracted reams of attention in tow)!

So when love came my way a second time, I gave up all that and settled in (somewhat) to raise kids and keep house. Not entirely however; I did want to mess with computers. The basis for that is my disorganized brain and I felt that there was magic in computers to keep things straight that I alone could not. So I took one six month programming course and got my certificate.

I still didn’t work in it. About that time, personal computers came to the foreground and I jumped into them with all the passion one feels digging into a dish of ice cream in the summer. (Although unfortunately I did too much of that as well.) We started out with Timex Sinclair 1000, Atari 800, Commodore 64, and Commodore 128. I also played with what was called a Memowriter . I was fascinated by it, I could make notations about anything. And even write receipts for things we sold at yard sales.

But poetry. I wrote some in the 80’s and 90’s as I kept a journal. In the late 90’s, I started to write some online – and eventually in the early 2000’s, I self published; both alone and jointly. The experience of the publishing part was good – not so much the other stuff. Some of the poems were good; but honestly, a lot of it was emotional writing that does not interest most people. A few humorous poems, a lot of reflections about life, but way too many personal poems that reflected how I felt at the time. Looking back, it was good practice but a lot of that was waste and I still fight the desire to leak out my emotional life in my poems.

So after a long hiatus in which the muse mostly fainted (She rose now and then as if to prove she was still alive) I am back to writing. At this time I am working on revamping my life so I can do more of that, and other creative work. It’s rather amusing to have so much going on at at time when I have almost more freedom in my life than I have ever had. I am not responsible for anyone else but myself. Because of where my home (at present) is, I get no visitors and so I don’t have much work other than working towards leaving here. My days are pretty much my own.

Except for when something is scheduled with my seniors. Which was today, but of course I forgot. That’s okay really – I miss seeing my friends, but I’ve been working on the above, and poetry, and rearranging things in my Secondlife island. Having put these thoughts down, I can now go back to those other activities.

Thank you for reading! 😀