Month Eight

I started this blog in August 2021 for my personal project of writing a poem a day every day for a year. This was to establish and continue a daily writing practice. I’m posting them on this blog to keep myself honest, and really for no other reason. But of course, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the idea of sharing them with you.

Missed Days

I’ve only missed four days/posts in that time, and my penance was to write and post to make up for the missing posts, which I did. There are already more posts in this blog than the one a day I’ve promised myself (and the very few of you reading this), so I think I can let myself off the hook. For the most part, however, until I’m on vacation again this summer, the days of posting more than one poem a day are few and far between.

Personal Struggles

As some of you may know, my dad died in December 2021, and my mother, grieving and ill, needed to have surgery in March. I travelled upstate to see her, take her to some medical appointments, and to get some of her affairs in order. Time with my parents was already taxing because of the kind of people they are/were. Even with just my mom … well, she’s doing double duty with her anxiety over the surgery (from which she is recovering very well now) and all of the other problems my dad’s death has created for her.

As you may guess from some poems and other writings here, my dad was a deeply flawed human being, and in addition to grieving the loss of her partner of over 37 years, my mother is deeply entrenched in the work of figuring out how to forgive him for her own peace of mind. She’s also sorting through various financial messes my father created in the years leading up to his hospitalization last August. Supporting her through this, even in the limited ways I can, is difficult, but of course she bears the lion’s share of that effort.

With all of that and more on my mental and emotional plate, the novel I was working on (first draft more than half complete) and my TTRPG hobbies got shelved for many months. I plan to pick it all up again in the coming weeks. All that’s missing is a little motivation and a scrap of a sense of self-worth, the last bit of which dropped into an existential void in the weeks following my dad’s death.

The one thing that was constant in all this time, is this blog. 

Poetry

The poems here are admittedly not great. Most of them are not even good. I guess I can’t ask for much from these tangles of words, most of which I only had a few broken pieces of hours to piece together. But I think I’ve improved over all, and a handful genuinely seem like they could become something more.

In my post “Month Three” [linked] I mentioned possibly combing this archive for rough gems when it’s all written and done, polishing them up, and creating a chapbook. That prospect is still appealing to me.

“Art”

As for the visual arts portion of this blog: I’m learning how to paint with acrylics and oils. I am unwilling to post anything yet because I have a lot more to learn and need a lot of practice. I am sketching in ink quite a lot, and also doing some watercolor, watercolor pencil, and colored pencil sketches that are turning out well that I may post here from time to time. But mostly this blog is still just for my writing practice and poetry, so sharing my scrappy, slightly shoddy adventures in the art world will likely be kept to a minimum.

My Novel

As for my novel … I would like to finish the first draft before the summer. It would be lovely to give myself the birthday gift of a first rewrite at the end of June, but I make no promises.

In any case, things are fine. The blog goes on.

Stay well and be good to each other.

- MS