There is a distinct relationship between how much I manage to post on blogs and how much I manage to get accomplished with writing. The less attention I give to my blog, the more writing I get done. The opposite is true as well. That said, April has been a greatly productive month for me writing-wise. I’m on track to have all 60 poems done — both for Robert Lee Brewer’s April Poem-A-Day Challenge and for National Poetry Writing Month.

Of course, then there’s Script Frenzy.

I had finally caught up with Screnzy. I went to bed, exhausted and really ready for a trip to Dreamland. I woke up yesterday morning, grabbed a caffeinated beverage, sat down at my computer, and found…

…my computer restarted itself. Windows Update be damned! I knew there was a reason I’d turned OFF automatic updating. (Incidentally, neither of the other computers in the house had updates that restarted their computers, and I’ve not heard of anyone else having restarts Friday evening/Saturday morning.) Had I saved my file? No. Had there been an emergency backup of the file made? No. After a few minutes of mentally going through every curse I know — including curses in Spanish, Irish Gaelic, Korean, Italian and English, because I’m nothing if not a multi-lingual curser — and shedding a few tears, I decided to chalk it up to (more) experience and move on. I’ll still try to make a go for Screnzy, but I’ve at least got my rough sketches and ideas down, whether or not the actual script is in any way finished. Plus, as I’ve mentioned to a good friend, it’s not like writing must drop off the edge of the planet after April ends. I can — and will — finish my script, just maybe not this month.

And now to go make some biscuits.

My poem inspired by today’s NaPoWriMo prompt actually has a small story behind it.

A few months after we met, Dear Boyfriend and I went down to Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was a completely impromptu trip, and it was originally supposed to be to going to Cape Lookout for a phenomenal albeit primitive camping experience. After getting bad directions from Google (Rte. 168 is the best way down there, NOT Rte. 17), we ended up very far away from our original destination at a pretty late hour. We looked at a map and found we were about equidistant from Cape Hatteras, where Dear Boyfriend had a friend he’d lost touch with, or New Bern, where my parents enjoyed a very quiet week in a quaint little town.

We decided to go to Cape Hatteras, home to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Some may remember several years back when the lighthouse was moved because of a serious erosion problem. (Note: I’ve been to the original area on a later trip, and the whole area does seem pretty well steady, making it seem as if the relocation was a bit unnecessary.)

But…I digress.

We ended up getting to Cape Hatteras, but the late hour made it impossible to see if his friend was around. We got a water-only site at the KOA campground. We (by which I mean HE) pitched the tent in a roaring wind, we put our overnight stuff in the tent, and took some beverages to the beach. We sat down and watched the light from the distant lighthouse rotate and reveled in the almost complete lack of light pollution. We looked up and realized we were there at the peak of the Perseid shower. As we watched the meteors fall, we made wishes.

And that, my friends, is the story behind today’s poem:

“Falling Faster Than the Stars”

Sitting under the stars,
drinking Jager and Red Bull
out of a large Gatorade bottle:
That’s when I fell in love with you.

Watching comets sparkle in the sky,
wishing, hoping, holding hands,
wondering if your wishes matched mine:
That’s when I fell in love with you.

Watching a cruise ship sail on the horizon,
headed to one tropical port or another,
wondering if I could run away with you:
That’s when I fell in love with you.

I’m actually not a fan of either piece I wrote today. At the end of the month, I will have 60 poems. I realize that not every poem will be a winner. Of today’s two pieces, I slightly prefer the Poem-A-Day draft better than the NaPoWriMo one, so that is the one I’ll share.

Natural Writing
Some days are hot and hazy,
When it doesn’t pay to dress.
I’ve beaten feeling lazy:
That’s when my writing’s best.

When it doesn’t pay to dress,
my clothes hither, thither strewn,
That’s when my writing’s best:
it’s a hot, humid day in June.

My clothes hither, thither strewn,
it doesn’t seem so bad.
Though it’s a hot, humid day in June,
with no A/C working in my pad.

It doesn’t seem so bad,
to hang around sans clothes.
With no A/C working in my pad,
I can write naked, then just dose.

To hang around sans clothes,
I’ve beaten feeling lazy.
If I can write naked, then just dose,
that’s when my writing’s best.

Wow…it’s really been that long since I last posted? Life, oh life. Why must you make me so insanely busy? And days, why can’t you just have more hours?

Something should be noted about my personality: When push comes to shove, I have no qualms about making a sacrifice or two in the name of a good night’s sleep. Blogging, for instance, is one such thing. Believe me, I’ve been writing poems every day. I’ve even managed to edit some and, will wonders never cease, begin working on piecing them together into a nicely put together, actually formatted book. Heck, I’ve even been slowly but surely churning out more on my Screnzy Script. Updating my blog — and my Screnzy page count — have been grossly neglected.

And all of that is on top of a full-time job. And on top of baking and decorating cookies for the Dear Boyfriend’s 30th birthday. And on top of going making a day trip to go up and visit him.

All in all, you might be able to say that I’ve been pretty busy. In the best of all world, working on my writing would be my full-time job, and I’d be getting paid decent enough money to excel in said job. Sadly, I lack a certain something (marketing skills? va-va-voom? real, quality belief in my writing abilities?) that means I am not getting paid for my writing. And so, given there are but so many hours in a day, blogging will tend to fall by the wayside.

That said, here’s a random sampling of some of my NaPoWriMo pieces:

lovluest

(I wrote a draft of this post on my phone last night during quick break from my job, then promptly forgot to post it. I’ve backdated it to reflect when it was actually written, not when I actually got around to uploading it. D’oh.)

Tonight I pondered the incredibly interesting way that te quiero in Spanish means “I love you” and “I want you.” The difference between te quiero and te amo is, so far as I understand, that the former is more physical whereas the latter is more all-encompassing. English fails to have such a phrase, so today I’m making my second Pwoermd since sometimes you just need one word or one short phrase to really encompass so many meanings. This is my English answer to te quiero…

L<--@-->ST

Today’s challenge over at the NaPoWriMo site suggests writing a form of poetry called the Pwoermd in honor of the Fourth International Pwoermd Writing Month. I willingly call myself out on this one: I am not entirely sure how, exactly, you can be successful at this particular form of poetry. It is, so far as I can understand, a poem comprised of a single word, and that word an entirely made up word. I THINK that this particular piece here can be considered a Pwoermd, but I can’t be entirely sure as I’m still not entirely sure I even understand the form.

Because I’m a fan of full disclosure, transparency, whatever you want to call it, I feel compelled to explain my thought process here. I should also warn you that most of this is coming completely out of left field and was comprised on the fly and should be taken with a GIGANTIC grain of salt.

My Pwoermd is the word LOST broken up by two arrows pointing in different directions, with the @ symbol taking the place of the O in the word. This is symbolic of the feeling you get when you’re lost, when you’re stuck in the middle, being torn between two opposing forces, unable to get anywhere because you’re just lost as to what to do.

…yeah, like I said, take it with a grain of salt. It is what it is, as they say.

In any case, here is today’s NaPoWriMo poem:

Today’s NaPoWriMo piece is inspired by the second image on the Image Prompts entry over at Poise and Pen. Incidentally, Poise and Pen, run by author Rhonda Parrish and a team of other great writers, is a great spot for inspiration when you’re in a writing rut.

And now without further delay, I give you…

Chicken Little in the 21st Century

Spreadsheets and projections and layoffs, oh my!
It’s as if the stars are about to fall from the sky
I’ll hide under here to weather the storm
of rate hikes and unemployment rates above the norm.
Economic roller coasters like this do my heart no good!
Everyone should take shelter! I know that I would!
Things aren’t going as planned, not at all!
I swear there’s something up in the sky that’s ready to fall!
Meetings and budgets and decreased revenue, oh no!
I’ll just hide under here till my 401k starts to grow.

–

Incidentally, I should know better by now than to attempt to copy and paste directly from Microsoft Word into, well, pretty much anything. Weirdness happens more often than not. Yeah. Oops.

(And so does Script Frenzy, but that’s another challenge entirely.)

Last year, I had high hopes for the month of April. I planned on doing Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-A-Day Challenge concurrently with Script Frenzy. I penned three poems and five pages of my script. Life happened, as it so often does, and that’s where both projects stood on May 1. This year, I really think I’ll be able to do the 2011 April PAD Challenge and Script Frenzy. I’m also going to try to do National Poetry Writing Month, which is what inspired this poem:

[[ one – april first, twenty-eleven ]]
My father watches over the Oceans,
my mother, the Skies up above.
To the Mountains go my sisters’ devotion.
While to the Fires, my brothers’ great love.
The last in a long line of protectors,
I’m seemingly a start of a new line
whose Elements are in different sectors
that are more dangerous than others combined.
My affinity is for all things Electric,
from static to lightning and more.
My children, attuned to other new elements,
watch the Uranium and Plutonium cores.
Man thinks not of the dangers too countless to name,
so we exist, enforcing this dangerous truce.
As the world grows and changes, we do the same.
protecting Man from hazards he has let loose.

–

By far, it’s not my best work. It’s got problems with its rhythm, its flow, its rhyme scheme (forced much?), but at least I’m writing, however underwhelming such writing may be. Also, this really was written yesterday, but thanks to a super-killer migraine, this is just getting posted today. (Insert grumbling here about the evils of pollen allergies and subsequent migraines here. In sum, when I’m down with a migraine, I’m curled up in a very dark, pretty cold, extremely quiet room until the migraine disappears.)

Herein lies the beauty of blogging, or really of any sort of journal-keeping. It’s easy to take a quick look back through the archives to see exactly what was going on at any given point of your chronicled life.

One year ago, I was getting super excited about a number of good things whilst being exhausted from massive amounts of overtime. Being that March 16 was a Tuesday in 2010, I can almost guarantee that I’d gotten to work around 4 AM, probably not leaving till close to 4 PM. Aside from those small things, there’s really not much else that DID happen. Work was pretty much the sum total of my life.

I was also, apparently, working on a soon-after abandoned 365 project, wherein you take one photo every day for a year. This project, while awesome in its own right, takes more commitment and dedication than I was able to muster after the first hundred-odd days. The attached picture is from Mar. 16, and it was taken as part of the alphabet project-in-a-project. That day’s letter was W, and this was originally titled “W is for Wow What a Wonder Wicked Was!” (Or something like that.)

Five years ago, I was apparently a little bundle of negativity. My life wasn’t bad, not really. I was just in a pretty bad place mentally. So on Mar. 16, 2006, I was working as a part time temp at a Community Services Board in my area, pushing papers. I was complaining about my meager salary — which by today’s standards would actually be below minimum wage — and the price of gas. Copied and pasted from an old LiveJournal entry: “And on a totally unrelated note, gas is up to $2.47 here. Outrageous!” Considering that the lowest gas in my area is now $3.39, I’ve got to admit I’d love to have the good ol’ $2.49 a gallon days back. At least my car gets pretty decent gas mileage!

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a teenager. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be an adult. I had no concept of the responsibilities that would come with adulthood.

Growing up, I’d hear a lot of people say I was “wise beyond my years” and other similar comments. My sisters are much older than me — I was a “Texas Surprise” as my parents call it — so I got used to looking at them, seeing how mature they acted, and wanting to be just like them.

Of course, at 5 years old, I thought 16 was SO OLD. At 16, I thought 25 was SO OLD. Now at 29, I’m pretty sure you’re not “old” till you get at least three numbers in your age, and even then, you’re only as old as you feel. There are some pretty spry centenarians out there.

I think one sign of actually being a grown up is that I would not want to go back to being a child or a teenager. Most of the responsibilities that come with being an adult aren’t fun, things like bills, taxes, and moving. But as much as those things can just suck the joy right out of adulthood, there are DEFINITELY benefits.

If my sisters and I suddenly get a whim to take a cake decorating class on a Monday night, we can do it. As an adult, I’ve got the freedom to explore things I never really gave much thought to as a child or teenager. Heck, I might even be good at those things!

Cookies decorated by me, your illustrious blogger, at a Wilton Cake Decorating Class on Monday.

As a child, I couldn’t make my own sundaes. I had to rely on my parents to make them for me, at least partly because I couldn’t reach the freezer. That’s actually another bonus to being an adult: I may be short to this day, but at least now I can reach most things! My parents made decent enough sundaes, but they’re nothing like the creations I’m responsible for concocting these days. A sundae might be a sometimes treat, but when I do decide to indulge, I pull out the big guns.

A sundae from Sunday, Feb. 27, consisting of no less than three kinds of ice cream, two kinds of sauce, whipped cream, and a bunch of toppings. Not everything is visible, but everything was delicious.

I have stopped overindulging in ice cream. I’ve honestly stopped overindulging in most things. Being an adult has taught me that there are limits to how much fun you’ll want to have. While that lesson has taken a while to learn, it’s definitely one of the better lessons I’ve been able to acquire thus far.

Of course, every time there’s cake around, I can’t help but think, “I’m an adult, and that means I can have this CAKE for BREAKFAST!” And every time there’s cake around, I will eat a piece for breakfast. The day after my birthday, I indulged in a ginormous piece of red velvet cake for breakfast. I even ate it on my bed, which was definitely heavenly.

What is quite possibly the biggest piece of Red Velvet Cake I have ever consumed. Happy birthday to me, indeed!

So yes, while things like bills and stresses can make adult life seem like it’s all work and no play, there’s also a lot of fun to be had with all the small freedoms afforded to adults. Freedoms like eating cake for breakfast.