My goal at the beginning of 2021 was to spend time each day writing, either a short poem, a blog post, or an entry in one of the many journals strategically placed throughout my home. It is now April 11, and that goal has been thrown to the wayside amidst the stress of teaching in a pandemic, Covid outbreaks, work for classes, and my own inability to just get out of my way. I get distracted by social media, pleasure reading, training for non existent races and the daily grind of staying alive and supporting myself. Although many of my other new found habits have been incorporated into my day (meditation, pranayama, stretching, strength training, and cooking actual food for my body) I have yet to find a space for writing. Which makes me wonder what is it that I fear if I create a writing routine? I have the space within the day if I decrease my time on Facebook and cancel my Netflix subscription, but this very act of sitting down to write is akin to opening myself up to rejection and criticism. Today I sat down to write a marketing plan for a book project I am working on and I realized that I have not been focusing on my writing lately. I have been grading my students’ essays but I have not sat down to look at and create my own. Because really, the more I practice writing the better I will hopefully get at it. But I cannot get better if I do not write. So here we are, sitting on the porch on a cloudy April day, finishing up a class project for yet another degree, and practicing this (hopefully soon) daily habit of placing fingers to keyboard. It takes mere moments to invest in myself. I wonder why I do not do this more?
● About Me

I wrote and published my first blog post on May 26, 2009. I was about to turn 36 and had been accepted to Mount Holyoke College as a non-traditional student, on my way to completing a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in Medieval Studies. I had managed, finally, to know what general direction I was traveling. As a self proclaimed voracious reader I knew that I needed a vocation that would allow me to engage daily with words: reading words, writing words, and hearing words. I also needed to eat, so I navigated my way to a teaching position and I began to fine tune my craft. I love to teach and I love my students, but I also needed to continue to hone my own literary technique, voice, and style. I continued my education in order to delve deeper into literature, making connections, and most definitely, writing. I gained more confidence as a reader as well as a writer of both creative and analytical text. That first blog post in 2009 is short, the writing average, and the topic mundane, but as I continued to learn from other writers I began to understand that to become a better writer I needed to write more. Each time I write and release a poem, a post, or a story, I hone my skills. I invite you along for the ride, for this journey of mine as I attempt to wrangle a wealth of ideas and competing directions into an organized freshly paved path to publication. I might get distracted along the way, but sometimes those detours lead us to amazing views and new friends.




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