My birthday, which lands tomorrow, strangely on a Monday, is always a time for reflection, perhaps moreso than even New Years, a time when I become even more introspective than usual. The boost is that I will also be releasing animal,vegetable, monster so its also a book birthday, and its looking like my copies will be in my hot little hands as early as Tuesday. In other news, I spotted the first bursts of green in the trees after a warm Saturday (though Friday it stormed and then howled like a wintry banshee all evening outside my windows.) Such is weather inconsistency in the midwest I suppose, though this spring has felt longer, cloudier, and colder than others. I've been happy to not have to be out in it much, but I still long for those longer, better lit days even inside. I can finally have the windows open, which is my favorite things after so many months, and enjoy that longer wander into evening. After years inside in a library cubicle-land with no windows, I learned, during the lockdowns a couple years ago, to appreciate testing how long I can go before having to turn on lights. A little later everyday starting in late March, then through September, not til after 8pm most nights.
In all my taking stock efforts, I sat down this morning with my favorite scones and tea and thought about what I want to accomplish in the coming year, which are mostly creative and press-related goals, but also bulking up my content writing to be able to put more away for rainy days or things like travel or bigger purchases and not just surviving, which is how I feel I've spent my entirety of the past 20 years. One of the the things that spurred me out into the freelance world was the feeling that I should be much less in survival mode and more stable in my late 40's than I was, but maybe that is a lie the world tells us and no one really is--least of all creatives. The nice thing, is have much more time and mental energy to work harder and smarter (and not simply more..)
In creative goals, I'd like to continue to release a couple larger projects each year (self-issued or traditionally published, either way), a few smallish zine projects here and there. I'd like to send more out for submission in general (hell at this point at all, the only work I've published in the last year or so has been solicited.) I've been building a list of possibilities, but I haven't really had time to sit down and do the work of preparing submissions and reading guidelines. Paid would be nice, but I realize how rare a bird those are. I'd also, if and when things are less covid-ey, like to do (and just go to) more readings They were always harder to manage working nights, but now I have a bit kinder schedule and more impetus to leave my house. Even having done a handful via zoom, which I appreciated for not having to go on long public transportation journeys to get to them, in the end, I like the performance aspect of face to face.
As I put the final touches on my trailer for the new book this week, I also realized how much I need to get back to making more video poems. I 've done trailers for other releases, and some small reels for instagram, but since I finished up swallow, the video chapbook, I haven't done as much as I'd like. That was a mammoth undertaking, but small random videos here and there for individual poems would be more feasible and allow me to jump around more where my interest takes me with newer work.
As for newer work, there are lots of things sitting on the back burner--the blue swallow project, ideas for my female Greek epic, some flower poems that will accompany artwork, a more epistolary-driven project. Right now, I am knee deep in the memoir in bone and ink poems, which may wind up being a larger or shorter series--we'll see how I'm feeling at the end of this month (which I do realize means next week.) I've been writing a lot of prose things late at night that I have not yet decided the intent of. I like them, but when I am writing stories, I always feel like I should be channeling those similar narrative energies into poems. That maybe I am an okay fiction writer, but so much better at poems. But I do feel the efforts are making me better at writing and finishing longer things, which is good either way.
