I’m not a good poet

In approximately eight and a half months I am going to be going on a six day, five night writing “retreat” all alone, and this will be the first time in my life I’ve had the opportunity to do anything like this. 

My favorite living writer has a tiny house / AirB&B on per property that she is offering to writers and artists as a place to visit, relax, and I suppose most importantly of all, to create, and to create in solitude. 

I love being alone. 

I love being with friends and family, too, but I am definitely the kind of person who wouldn’t go crazy alone on a deserted island. I would Castaway the shit out of that experience except for the part when he decides to leave. I’d just stay and be alone until I’m dead. 

The thing of it is, I haven’t had many opportunities in life. 

I haven’t had many experiences that feel like they’ve been handed to me without me making a lot of sacrifices to get what I want. 

This entire thing seems too good to be true, and what life has taught me is that when things feel too good to be true, it’s usually because they are. I come to find out that the things I had been looking forward to are either not what I was expecting at all, or were snatched from me completely. 

I have to manifest this into being, is what I need to do. 

I can’t just believe that in eight and a half months I’ll be going to this sanctuary, I have to know that I am going for sure and plan accordingly. 

But What will I do when I get there? is something I have been asking myself from the moment I requested my time to go. 

So I imagine it. 

I won’t get my hopes up and assume that my favorite living writer will greet me at the door and show me the ropes of the place before leaving me to my solitude, so I imagine taking a key from under the doormat (because she doesn’t seem like the lock box type), and entering this beautiful space that I will call home for the next five days.

I imagine the sun will be shining through the windows and the skylight over the loft. Will I dare climb the ladder every night and sleep in the loft, so I can look out and see the moon and stars? Of course I will have to dare at least once.

I will put my laptop on the desk as if I will sit and write there, but I know I’m a butt on the couch type, and want to be as comfortable as possible when I’m writing. I’ll have to try writing in the Adirondack chair on the little porch; I wonder if I can see the bay from there. 

In the mornings I’ll wake up and make coffee, because duh, and if it’s warm enough maybe I’ll start my days with a little walk outside before I go in to start writing. 

I’ll open the windows to let in fresh air, and I’ll let the sounds of the space be my music unless I feel the need for some music, which I often do. I’ll write and drink coffee until I’m hungry and then I’ll stop for a snack. Maybe I’ll go into town to check out a local coffeeshop and do some writing there, maybe I’ll go for a walk on the beach.

On one of the mornings I will wake long before dawn and get down to the water, and I’ll watch a sunrise (alone) for the first time in my life. 

Forty-three years on this planet, and I’ve never watched a sunrise. 

It’s like how I’ve never left the country except that one time to Toronto in high school with the choir, or how I’ve never been to a drive-in, I’ve never jumped from anywhere so high it could kill me, and I’ve never felt any real kind of peace.

I’ll write about that while I’m there. 

I’ll write about all the things I’ve missed out on, all the chances I didn’t have, and the chances I didn’t take. I’ll write about the things I’ve lost, and the things I still hope for, I’ll write about the people who hurt me, and how I’m going to take my revenge by living a better life and becoming a better me. 

I am going to go back down to the water for sunset, where I’ll see nothing but colors, the slow descent of darkness, black over the blue water falling like a curtain. 

Maybe there will be fireflies because it’s summer, maybe there will be sweet red ripe raspberries I can pick and toss into my mouth on the way back, thinking about the people I’ve popped raspberries with on walks, thinking about how I’ll never see some of them again. 

I’ll write about that.

Perhaps I’ll get lonely, so I’ll need to bring extra tissues just in case. 

Who knows what my life will look like eight and a half months from now, who knows whether I’ll be grateful to leave or to have anyone to greet me when I come home?

Hopefully, I won’t spend my five nights in the loft crying myself to sleep and knowing that it’s not just loneliness, but that I am alone. 

Hopefully, I’ll be able to turn any pain into something I can use. 

Which brings me back to the question:

What will I create in that wild, precious time?

Will I work on a novel I haven’t started, will I try to resurrect some old story from the dead, or will I just free write my way through the week, trying so hard to make something beautiful from the slop inside my brain, trying so hard to be a poet. 

I’m not a good poet. 

I know I’m not, which is exactly why I am determined to write 90 poems in 90 days, using prompts from my favorite living poet, scratching my way out of the depths of “I’ll never be good enough for this,” to wondering when (not if) I’ll be ready to go back to Instagram, and be a poet of Instagram. 

I have to manifest this all in to being, remember?

I need to tell less and show more, I know this.

The poems that I have shared so far in the last week have been terrible, embarrassing really, but everyone has to start sharing somewhere and somehow, and I need a project, not just an intention. 

Goals are good for me, as long as I don’t put too much onto myself, which I often do. 

But I can’t just list out my thoughts, my regrets, my reservations or complaints, I have to write poetry. I have to make art out of the awful in my life, and I have to do it with some kind of grace.

Eventually, I want to be proud of what I share on the internet, not just okay with it. 

One of these days I want to not care about what the forgotten kids in high school think about me. The thing that should matter most, or at least first, is for me to start caring about me. 

Manifesting amazing experiences into being is going to be my number one goal for the coming new year, and I am not waiting for that new year to start. 

I’m a shit poet. 

No one would scroll past one of my poems and think to themselves, wow, I wish I could write like her – and that’s the entire point. 

Really, for someone to say “I wish I could write like her,” would be the greatest compliment I could receive. 

At least I think that now, but oh, we know things change. 

I want to be a better poet before I got to the retreat offered by my favorite living poet. 

I want to walk into that little house knowing exactly how I am going to spend my time writing. 

I want to figure that out as soon as I can.

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_{Photo by Bruno Ngarukiye on Unsplash}