Where oh where did I leave off? Oh yes faithful happy-hour goers at the Railcar catching up over delicious cheeseburgers and glasses of wine…

…Soon after the second glass Sam and I parted ways. I was on a tight schedule to get to my next event by 7PM. I scooted my booty downtown so I could attend a feedback reading. If I haven’t talked about this before, my bad. A feedback reading is when writers read published work or work in progress and after they are finished, there’s an open dialogue with the audience.

I arrived right as it was about to start and got stuck in the front row. Bah! One of the readers was a high school teacher in the area and the other was a woman who is a native of Florida but got her BFA at UNO. She’s also one of the mentors in the MFA program I’m in at UNO and that’s the main reason I really wanted to make it to this session. Attendance for me at stuff like this is hit and miss because of all my other obligations. However with my renewed sense of commitment to my writing life and my interest in hearing one of my potential mentors read again, I wasn’t going to miss this one. 

It was awesome. Great poems and narratives and an interesting discussion after. Despite being in the front row, I kept my mouth shut. I gave myself permission to be silent and thereby relieved my anxiety about the potential spotlight. I was able to just listen and enjoy and take a few notes about things I might return to later for inspiration. I always get inspired at these events and my head is full of things I want to write about. It’s hard to hang onto though. Like a dream you try so hard to remember yet it slips away. The notes help, but it’s still not the same as actually capturing the full thoughts as they happen. 

Sadly by the time I arrived home and checked in with the kids and spoke with Jim, it had all slipped away. Now it’s tomorrow and it’s back to the gym and back to work and back to parenting and I’ll never get that moment back. I’ve learned not to get too bent about this occurrence. Those inspirational moments are in abundance in my future and though it will never be the same, it can potentially be even better. 

There’s a dedicated workshop with the same two writers on Saturday and that’s  my next chance. For that I will have more time during and after to really capture the essence of my subject matter, whatever that turns out to be. Totally looking forward to that. 

Also looking forward to Residency in July. I’m ramping up now and have begun writing and reading and revising every day. It’s a challenge to do it all, you know, life. The trick is to taste the sweetness when you can and do your best in the spaces between. 

Hey.. I see one of those spaces coming up now. 😏

On the Happy Path, 
~Miss SugarCookie