After a glorious month off from work I’m back in the office. It was not easy to go back and I really need to win the lottery so I can write all day and hang out with my dog. This is truly my version of an ideal life. 

Hi mama, I know you’re writing but please pet me and hold my head.

I’ve only got one month in the office before I start grad school, after which I will be a full time student and that will be my only job for the next ten months. I don’t yet know what my school schedule will be so I can’t really plan my day – when I’ll exercise, when I’ll write, when I’ll study. Apparently the first week of August, the first week of classes, I’ll get everything necessary for the semester: books, schedule, etc. For someone with a Type A personality, not knowing it’s driving me insane. Because I have to plan, because I need to know what my schedule will look like, because I’m working on a new writing project that is unlike anything I’ve ever undertaken and it’s exhilarating and terrifying: friends, I’m writing creative nonfiction. And while I’m not quite ready to call it a memoir, it looks something like a memoir.

The idea had been ruminating for a while in my brain and I kept ignoring it and pushing it aside. I’m a poet, I don’t know anything about writing full pages, about writing paragraphs, about full sentences and dialogue and moving a story forward. But it wouldn’t go away and it kept popping into my head, lines writing themselves as I was walking Piper or working out or just sitting in the backyard, drinking wine. And so I gave in and started writing.

Thus far the words have come fast and furious. For someone who writes poems that rarely exceed one page, writing 3,000 words the first night I sat down was a surreal and bizarre feeling. But also an amazing one.

Of course this bit of brilliance didn’t hit until I went back to work so it means I’m squeezing in the writing around working. I’m writing in the evenings, in between taking Piper for multiple walks. I’m getting up early, before I go to the gym, to sneak in 30-45 minutes of writing. I’m jotting notes in my journal and then expanding on those thoughts when I get in front of my computer.

It’s hard to write with this face beckoning me!

I don’t know what will become of this piece. It might be decent or it might be complete crap, I have no idea. But I do know I need to write it. So here’s to pushing boundaries and seeing what happens.