Confession Tuesday - How to Jazz Up Your Mailbox

How to Deal with Rejection Letters Passive Aggressively

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Confession - This is my neighbor's mailbox and she is not a writer, but her sons are quite creative in their antics.  The pull-handle of their mailbox was designed by them in an attempt to be done with either the Ken Doll or the Lee Majors as the Six-Million Dollar Man.  But as my poet's heart passed by this new artwork on my street, I could not help but think, "What a wonderful way to deal with rejections and what comes in the mail that you don't want." And also, we should all have a jazzy mailbox like this.

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Dear Reader,

Here we are again.  In the shower, when I do my best thinking, I was wondering what I would write today.  Clearly, there are no sins on the tip of my tongue.  But we are (I am) not perfect.  So thankfully, there is always something to say.  So let's begin.

To the confessional--

I confess sometimes for no reason I sing out, "Don't cry for me, Argentina."  I have also annoyed my family to know end by saying, "You better check yourself, before you wreck yourself..."

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I confess I have set some goals with another writers and we check-in with each other every Monday.

I had set the goal to work on my non-fiction work (a creative non-fiction piece about the difficulties of leaving, being on, and returning from a writing retreat and the exploration of how we can get that in our daily lives) for 10 hours a week.

What I learned was, I cannot work on my non-fiction/memoir for more than 1 hour at a time because it is too hard on me emotionally (even though not ever section has an emotional bite to it.)

My writer friend wrote to me yesterday and said, "non-fiction is difficult emotionally because it brings the past into the present in a very real way."  Having only written shorter essays and not something so long (I'm currently at 33,000 words), I hadn't realized that the editing of this work would be so tough.


Because of this, I've lowered my goal to 5 hours a week (1 hour a day for 5 days) and that feels better to me.  

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I confess I am still loving Google Priority Mailbox.

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I confess I am planning on writing 30 poems in 30 days with 5 other poets beginning tomorrow.  We will be sharing our work by email, but every so often, I might post a poem here.  But it will be one of those *poof* poems that will only be up for a short time then disappear into the world of what didn't happen.

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I confess there are certain things that just bring me incredible happiness--

1)  The moon.  Did you see it last night?  Crescent, large and yellow-orange, and perfect.  I could have stood outside for hours just watching it.

2)  Showers.  I am so thankful every day that I can turn a knob and have hot water come out.  This is going to sound crazy (so I will phrase it as a confession), I confess I love my showers so much that I've recently added a waterproof radio as well as Aqua Notes (a waterproof notepad & pencil that sticks to the wall) because as I've said, it's where I get my best ideas.

3)  Morning Coffee by Timer - It's truly magical to wake up and find that my coffeepot has new hot coffee for me that it made at whatever time I asked it to.  Forget computers, iPhones, iPads-- this timer is technology at its best.

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I confess I probably should have waited to share those things for Thankful Thursday, but I'm feeling grateful today.  For the small things.  For the details.

Amen.

P.S.  If any of you jazz up your mailbox, send me a photo of it and I'll include it on my blog.
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