I Did a Thing . . . x3!

After years of writing and hoarding poems, I finally submitted to a few competitions! Okay, so I'm actually a bit late giving this update, but you likely already saw it if you follow my account on Instagram. All the same, this is something I've avoided doing for a long time. I've been told by experienced poets that it really is a wise choice, but it just seemed so intimidating. So why now?

Well, I'm going through some things and making some changes in my personal life. One of the things I'm particularly challenging myself to do is step outside my comfort zone and lean into discomfort.

I'm a mother to a vibrant little human. She's incredibly resilient and confident in some ways, but not so much in others. When she was particularly little, she used to tough through or seem to not even notice certain pain points in life. There were no obstacles in her mind, and what even were physical limits? As she's gotten older, though, I've watched some of that determination, boundary expansion, and audacity fade. One specific area is in regard to discomfort. Where she used to know the difference between discomfort and pain, we began to notice that she treated every mild inconvenience as if it were the same thing as having a limb chopped off.

This past year especially, I've been talking her through some of those thought patterns and challenging her willingness to sit on the sidelines out of fear of discomfort. And I got a startling wake up call that showed the same tendency growing in me. I'm not one who's great at leaving things alone once I've identified there's an issue. So I got to work on rooting that out in my life, finding the areas where I'd let complacency keep me from growing. I decided to do things that make me uncomfortable and do them audaciously.

Obviously, one such area is in my writing. I've taken a long break from publishing, but I started working on the three books I've been talking about for years now. I started real work on my first novel-in-verse. I started experimenting with other little writing and reading goodies I want to put into the world. Then I submitted over a dozen poems to different poetry contests.

And, while I'm excited, I'm choosing to hold a lot of this loosely. Doing things with audacity means doing things out of my wheelhouse, things I'm not qualified for, things that I'm going to be bad at while I learn. Which means I have to really embrace that discomfort. To greet it and use it and thrive in it, even when it's not the best or means rejection or gains critical inspection.

And, all the while, I keep reminding myself of three things. Discomfort is not pain. I am doing things with belief in the potential. It's just gonna suck sometimes.

So while I'm going through all this change and self-challenging reflection, I'd like to extend an invitation for you to do the same. Maybe you don't need it. Maybe you're already flexing your free will to improve yourself. But perhaps you're like me and didn't even realize how much you're inhibiting your own personal pursuits, creative passion, or poetic potential. If you're feeling at all prickled by what you've read here, I encourage you to do your own self-assessment. Or feel free to email me (at the bottom of the page) or message me on Instagram/Facebook. I love talking to others and finding mutual encouragement to get unstuck and get creating.

Hope to hear from you soon or see your passion out in the wild!