Mixed Metaphors

“I’ve learned that by the practice of writing with intention, discipline, and passion, I became a writer.”

This past week marks a year, the anniversary, the birthday of this blog. I’ve been writing as an avocation for over 35 years, beginning with poetry, followed by recovery journals, stand-up comedy and monologue scripts, memoir writing, and finally as an activist-essayist.  Since starting this blog and maintaining a practice of writing at least weekly, I’ve become the thing I’ve been doing. I’m a writer.

As a person in their sixties I often reflect on my life and chart the path from there to here, from then to now, to where to, and what’s next.  I’ve often envied people who knew at a young age what their calling was and what they needed to do to get there. For some it was simply being who they were, for others it required planning and execution. For me it felt like I was sailing, sometimes adrift and at the mercy of the wind and waves, occasionally in control at the helm, navigating.

Uncharted

“I feel like I’m in a small boat, rocking back and forth, not having a rudder or oar to steer me. I’m at the mercy of the waves and where they may take me, where I may drift closer to or further from the shore, to a new destination, or return me to where I began.” Journal Entry 4/6/12

Day breaks open my heart;
Fear greets me.
The comfort of sleep disrupted
as dreams dissolve, dissipating
in the morning light.
I’m reminded in this fragile moment
of both the promise of a new day
and my inevitable mortality.

I exist at the intersection,
the longitude and latitude of my journey,
the culmination of choices,
the destination to which I’ve navigated
a day at a time. Decades later
I’m uncertain at what the new day may bring,
how the course of my life may change
as I steer the rudder of my heart

The first time I remember flirting with the idea of becoming a writer, I was an adolescent.  It was a weekend; the family was gathered together in the living room. The television was turned off and we were talking and sharing stories, laughing at ourselves as we repeated and embellished tales of our family history. Each story was the glue that connected our individual lives, the bond that made us a family.

As we laughed about some humorous (and most likely, dysfunctional) occurrence, I turned to my parents and siblings and stated emphatically, bordering as a threat, “Someday, I’m going to write about all of this.” I believe it was my mother, who usually remained more in the background of these conversations who said, “Well, I look forward to reading it.”

When I look at my resume, like that sailboat on a lake, I did a lot of “going with the flow.” After I dropped out of college and abandoned my journalism and communication arts education, I worked with my hands and became a screen-printer. It was the kind of physical work I could do during the day and sleep well at night. It also enabled me to engage with my community, my energy, passions and self-esteem were channeled into other things: feminist activism, peer group facilitation, creation and support of women’s spaces, become a youth mentor, serve on non-profit boards of directors, and when it became necessary for me to recover my sobriety and life, a sponsor and friend to others on similar paths.

The skills and experience I gained in my avocations opened paths to utilize what I learned in my workday life. I went from working with my hands to managing people, relationships and projects. Soon my resume included sales and marketing, account and production management, business development, and publishing and public relations. Business writing became a daily practice.

In my non-work writing, I wrote first for myself, poetry to express my heart and thoughts, then journals which helped me hold up a mirror to know first who I am and a rearview mirror to see where I came from, and finally, to help me navigate where I was going.  Then I began writing for others as I took the stage and followed my dream of becoming a stand-up comic and spoken word artist. Most recently, I’ve captured on the page the stories of my youth and my family’s history as I’ve worked on my memoir, Perfectly Flawed. Like the metaphor for journal-writing, it’s a road map, with chapters entitled, Preparing for the Journey, Hitting the Road, Detours, Dead Ends and Roundabouts, and the Home Stretch.

Writer’s Desk

A year ago, in a moment of flow, a blink, I signed up at Madison College for a WordPress class. I created this blog, Mixed Metaphors, Oh My! as a way of integrating the elements of both my personal and professional writing lives. Most recently, I introduced my freelance writing and storytelling endeavor, Full of Myself Productions, as a launch pad for the next and final chapter of both my life and my memoir.

Writer’s Tools & Friends

Self-discipline is not one of my strong suits, though a degree of compulsive behavior and a reliance on habit and routine serves me well as it has for keeping up this blog. One of my mentors, Sarah White, reminded me that a blog requires at least weekly feeding of new content. I’m glad. The act of writing on a weekly basis, sometimes daily, has made me a writer. I’ve become the person I first dreamt of as an adolescent, a writer and a storyteller. I hope you keep reading; I’m going to keep writing for myself and for you.

This week, I introduced a new feature of the blog, Tidbits, bite-sized morsels of news and happenings: more characters than a tweet, more ephemeral than a post, less satisfying than a conversation.