Confession Tuesday - Looking Back

Paper art by Peter Callesen "Looking Back" - www.petercallesen.com

Dear Reader, 

It feels like Friday, but no, time to confess all I have been up to in the last week.  It's been a good week, with art and friends, lunar eclipses and also time to look back.  Hmmm, what to write about...

To the confessional--

I confess while meeting Susan Rich in downtown Seattle a homeless man stopped me from being hit by a car.  I had just been talking to a friend about how you never know how your life will or can impact someone, how one small action can change the world.

I had just learned about Harry Belafonte on the CBS Morning Show (a fantastic artsy show if you've never watched it).  He was a janitor at an apartment building, for a tip, one of the residents didn't give him money, but 2 tickets to a Broadway play.  Those tickets changed his life.  He said he had never been to a play and walking in, he knew this was what he was meant to do.

Fast forward to last Friday, I'm standing on the street corner looking cranky and a homeless says to me, "Cheer up, it's a long life."  A few minutes he's making sure I don't get hit by a car.  It happened very quickly, but I find myself returning to that moment on the sidewalk when he said, "Cheer up, it's a long life..." 

So I've been thinking about my life, looking back over a year and thinking about what I've done, what I've liked, what I haven't, the time I spent well and the time I let flutter away.

I confess this year has been less about writing and more about creative activities for me.

Much of the year was readings and events for my book.  A year of editing the literary journal, Crab Creek Review and Fire On Her Tongue with Annette Spaulding-Convy (whose book In Broken Latin will be coming out with Univ. of Arkansas Press next year!)

Though much of the year seemed to have vaporized.

I know I spent two weeks in a haunted apartment (on the grounds they filmed "An Officer and a Gentleman") writing poetry.  I know I connected with other poets to write or to attend a reading.  But my memory keeps it all in a cloud (and not the iCloud where things can be pulled back), but the iCan'tRemember cloud where life events vanish.

I confess I am making plans for the coming year.  

I have a few odd goals of finishing a 1/2 marathon (um, I signed up in September because I wanted a medal and now have to go through with it.)

But mostly, I feel kind of scattered.

I confess I'm just not sure my current poems are "good enough."  And what does "good enough" actually mean?  I'm not sure.  But I just want to think they are incredible, but I don't.  

And I'm not sure if the poems aren't good enough or if I'm just being overly critical of them.  Like having the most perfect body, but complaining about your elbow.  I'm afraid my self-doubt might be coming from that place that doesn't appreciate imperfect elbows.

So I confess there's lots of being in my head for the next two weeks.  I always do this as New Year's offers such possibilities for beginnings.  And I love beginnings.  I could begin again and again, reinvent myself with a tiara, horn and confetti.  

There's a lot I want to do next year.  And a lot of time I don't want to give away.

I'll be thinking more about this.  

How are you feeling at the end of this year?  Confess here (I have the anonymous option turned on)-- what do you hope for in 2012?

Amen.

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