Sharpening my Focus

When I first started this blog, I had no idea what would come of it. I still don't. I'm just desperate to write and to have some venue to do it. And I'm tired of journals. My wrists hurt when I use a pen at such a feverish pace and I'm a fast enough typer that I can almost keep up with my brain. So being on the computer makes more sense. I didn't want it to be a mundane, irrelevant tab of my day to day doings, but I didn't want it to be solely based on my past either. Although, the more I wrote down those old stories, the more I realized how much I was really enjoying getting them into the written form after all these years. I've been finding that my writing, much like my day to day doings, is so much about catching the past up to the present so that there can be a sense of cohesiveness to my life. So that there can be a stronger sense of peace and definition. I've spent the better part of my life thus far groping around for some idea of who I am and it's only been in the past half decade or so that the answers have been trickling in. Slowly but at a steady pace. I have to work for them. I'm just standing by the fax machine of self-realization gathering the paper in neat stacks.

When I first started this blog, I kept it to myself. I wanted to have some freedom and space to see what happened to my writing without the inhibition of known readers. I looked forward to the anonymity. I've noticed that since I've given out my blog address to a few friends, my writing has slowed down tremendously. My conscience and subconscience have recently gathered in the ladies room and put two and two together.

I've got stage fright.

I laid in bed last night, the window cracked so that I could hear the rain and feel the cool breeze on my head, and I made a decision to post at least once a day.... on whatever. Something.

Last winter, I joined a small writer's group. We have a studio center in our neighboring town where artists come for anywhere between three week and three month residencies. One of the artists-turned-employees led our group. It wasn't necessarily based on feedback as much as it was based on process. The first group led to another and then another....the last two being focused on writing poetry. It was my first time in that kind of writing venue, and while I enjoyed the company and the new experience, I found that at the end of it all, I was no longer able to write poetry at all. Something that was always entirely free flow and intuitive became totally stunted. Still is.

Years ago, Jim Brandenburg, a photographer who does work for National Geographic, took on a project in the mountains of Northern Minnesota. Over the course of 90 days, he allowed himself to take only one photo a day.... all of which were then published in National Geographic in a feature called the North Woods Journal. As an exercise for the class, we decided to take on a similar practice with our writing. To write, even if it was only a paragraph, about at least one thing a day.... one observation.

I have real issues with follow through. I really do. I try to work on it... and it continually gets better but twenty years from now there will probably be some kind of medical breakthrough and a resulting prescription for what I deal with. My North Woods Journal lasted, maybe, three days. I wasn't feeling it. But honestly, I think I just may not have been feeling the class.

For as many gaps as there are with this blog, I feel like I've been following through... maintaining it. But last night, rain falling outside, the smell of wet earth coming in with the winds, I decided to start up a new kind of North Woods Journal. Not necessarily observations.... no limitations..... just something.

If I start to slack, leave a comment. Hold me accountable. I need that!

We can just bag the Equinox marking spring here in Vermont. Usually when the Equinox rolls around, we're still under at least two feet of snow. There are no crocuses bordering pretty houses. I doubt robins have even begun their journey north. Spring happens when the ground thaws.... when the circles of wet Earth start to ring the trees and big bellows of steam can be found billowing out of sugar houses along the sides of country roads. And we're right about on the cusp of that.

So, I'll just kind of visualize my writing as the little crocus bulb working it's way toward the sun. A post a day. It's possible.