Wasted.

So I headed back to OKC this weekend to attend the annual writing festival at OCU. That was probably one of the best decisions I've made in a long time. I fighted wanting to go because my schedule is so ridiculously crazy. I have classes to teach, bands to watch, family coming in, and many miles to drive to see other family members. It's a pretty constant go-go-go atmosphere at my house. But I needed to do something for me. So I loaded up and headed to the 405 and got up realllly early on a Saturday morning and hit the festival at OCU. And boy am I ever glad I did.

Driving up 23rd street toward the campus was an experience. I haven't been back in a while, and I found myself getting really emotional round about the corner of 23rd and I-44. I could see the Gold Star building in the distance. And I almost couldn't stop the tears from coming. It caught me totally off guard and I felt ridiculous. And I then I figured out why I had that reaction. It's what the school symbolizes to me. That place saved my life in a lot of ways. It's where I feel like I became a real person. A person with a purpose. A person that not only thinks things through, but acts on things with conviction. I learned that I'm not living in this world alone. I learned that there are a lot of different people in this world who believe and think and live in very different ways from one another, and each and every one of them is valuable as a living, breathing, feeling soul on this planet. And we can learn something from all those people if we are willing to. I learned that learning and the desire to learn and grow is what propels me forward. It's what keeps me from being stuck.

I thought of where I was when I entered that institution-- the shape my life was in. It wasn't a pretty picture. And I thought of where I am now and where I want to go. And I think all those things raced through my subconscious before I could even think twice. And it made me be the girl sitting in the car at the stop light trying to dab her tears away so it wouldn't smudge her eyeliner first thing in the morning.

Luckily I was able to get myself together to go into the building. :) And I got to sit in on some great seminars with these guys: Lou Berney and Doug Goetsch. A. MAY. ZING.

I came away with two main thoughts today.

1) I am a good poet. And I need to write more poems.

2) I've been stagnant in my writing the last couple of years because I have continually censored myself to please the masses. This is going to end today.

I used to write a pretty good blog (I thought), daisy-girl.net, that was edgy. It was raunchy at times. It was very passionate. And I cursed a lot. But it was real. It was thought provoking. I let the blog go for several reasons, the first being I got married and got busy. Secondly, because I felt like I had to grow up now. I never brought it back mostly because of Facebook. Yes, I'm blaming the death of my writing on Facebook. I have a perponderance of friends on Facebook from childhood. Many of them are still very conservative, dedicated Christian people. And bless them. They really are good people, but they would be offended if I threw out an F bomb or an S bomb or talked about extra marital sex or liberal politics that I believe very strongly in.

In effect, it's rendered me useless as a writer. And really, I blame it on Facebook, but we all know Facebook is just a symptom of the real problem I've struggled with most of my life-- being a people pleaser. It's causing me to waste useful years and talent. I'm squandering all of it because I don't want to offend people, most of whom I haven't seen in decades and may never see again. This is not okay.

So I'm over it. From now on, I'm writing honestly. And it may contain curse words or stories about getting hammered and jumping naked into swimming pools in Beverly Hills. That's my life. It's not always pretty or perfect, but there is always a lesson to be learned and a story to be written. Read if you like. Don't if you don't like. But time for playing these petty games and wasting my talent is over.

It's time for the work to begin.