Back out west

It has been a very long hiatus. Like, years. Or a year and a month, actually. It wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to write about; I wrote a lot of things, actually, but most of those things are fiction drafts that continue to live in a folder on my computer in very messy form. I’m at a point where I need to compile and cut and paste and rewrite, but I am stalling. Revision is its own beast, and sometimes it’s just easier to keep typing or writing away instead of looking critically at the thing you’ve spent months working on. So that’s where I’m at, in a writing sense.

In a geographic sense, I am back in Minneapolis. I miss my family all the time, but the move has been filled with so much good. I’m surrounded by words and creative people at my job and I get to see John all the time and I am starting to get serious about my goals. Of course, there is always the doubt and the procrastination to fight off, but I am beginning to see what I want my life to look like and how I might be able to get there.  Things will change unexpectedly, of course, but having a plan to ground what I’m doing now is so important.  Part of that plan is daily writing, be it stories or letters or a short hello to the blogosphere (is that an annoying term? I can’t decide), so this is me making good on my promise to self.  I do want to say that one reason I stopped writing in my blog is because I’ve had to sign some crazy non-disclosure statements in the past (no, I haven’t been working for the government, just for really paranoid people), and I was kinda afraid to divulge when I was on payroll.  Now, I am free to regale you with tales of the pontoon boat tour I managed and the telefundraising position I recently left!  Or not, but being able to do so is pretty liberating.  I am working with fellow word nerds now at places I love, and I have only great things to say.  Life is good, my friends.

One more thing to tell you before I go back to the other writing I’m working on: I saw one of my former students yesterday.  I was sitting on a bench in the hallway of a local YMCA, helping a student with his college essay.  The space was sterile and bright and smelled of chlorine.  We were talking about the power of good paragraph breaks when a kid ran up the stairs and stopped on the landing, shouting to someone down the hall that I couldn’t see.  I instantly knew it was one of my seventh graders: he was taller and his cheeks were less full, but it was Dennis.  He said hello to the student sitting next to me and then we made eye contact for a moment.  I tried to come up with something to say, wondering if he recognized me too, but he turned away and continued to yell down the hall, running toward the swimming pool.  So much went through my mind in that second we looked at each other, though: I’m wearing the same glasses that you guys called my goggles; you are still running in the hallways but this time I don’t have to chase you down; your crocodile tears were so annoying; I worried about you all the time; it makes me so happy that you are spending your Saturday at the Y.  I always wondered (and worried about) what would happen if I saw one of my students again: would I be filled with regret?  Sent into a tailspin?  Of course, when you play out a scenario in your head, it is infinitely more dramatic and rife with meaning than the actual moment, which comes and goes.  Afterwards, my only reflection on the encounter was that we were two people whose paths had crossed once, and isn’t it funny that our paths crossed again in this little way, as each of us were doing our things.  Dennis was still being a kid, making his presence known.  I was still trying to convince people that writing is awesome.  Carry on, Dennis, that moment seemed to say.  Carry on, Meg.