and now I write

People have been telling me my whole life 'you should be a writer'.

Now I know, I am a writer.

Yesterday I completed the second of two sessions in a Creative Writing Bootcamp put on by Lifelong Learning at the University of Utah and it blew my mind.

I learned, aside from everything else, that I'm pretty good at this. In fact, after reading one of my pieces out loud, the instructor said "fuck that was really good".

I know I began this year, 2018, as my 'year of art exploration', and then it morphed into many things. I started out with drawing with the intention of painting, but the class I signed up for was terrible (I never did get my money back, yet they kept sending me bills for subsequent months). Then I joined a choir, rehearsed with them for 9 weeks, performed, and dropped that choir. Two days later, I was in another choir, one that fits me much better. We performed two Easter services (Holy Thursday and Good Friday), and then we prepared for our big concert in May where we performed Mozart and PDQ Bach. That was a lot of fun, they are nice people.

At that concert, my friend Jenn told me that my favorite author, Michael Ondaatje, was coming to Salt Lake City the following week. A dream come true!

I pre-ordered his newest book, Warlight. I lined up outside the venue 45 minutes before the doors opened (I was the first in line). I got a seat front row, center. I was eight feet away from my literary hero. He read from his book, took some questions from the moderator, then the audience. Several people asked him about his writing process.

One of the things he said that stayed with me - which was a light bulb moment for me - was when he said he didn't know at the beginning of a book where it will end, he just starts writing.

I thought, I could do that!

So I cast around looking for writing events in Utah. I came across the League of Utah Writers Summer Symposium in Logan, and I went.

Already at the first session, I felt like I got my money's worth, it was so useful. I got some validation there about my writing ability. I met some people, but mostly it turned the gas up on the fire that had been lit within me.

After that I looked around for what was next.

Having spent so much of my life in academia, naturally I looked at what continuing ed at my institution had to offer (as an employee, I get a 50% discount). I found this Creative Writing Bootcamp, that was two Saturdays, four hours each.

It got me doing Morning Pages again. It got me thinking Yes I can write stories. One of the things I have been struggling with in this writing journey was wondering if I could do fiction and then how. This workshop has given me the confidence to do that. Next I wonder how to get published. I like to put the cart before the horse, you know. But I can't publish anything until I write it.

I have since joined the League of Utah Writers (LUW) but have not been to a writing group yet (we moved last month, our life is still somewhat chaotic and we haven't completely settled in).

Something Johnny Worthen said in the Bootcamp - he asked us all what our writing experience was. I had never considered that before. I wrote hundreds of teenage poetry (sadly, long since burned), I have been writing a journal for 23 years (I still have all of those), I had an English Lit degree (60 essays), blog, Morning Pages, and 9 years of Twitter.  Johnny said Twitter doesn't count but journals do. He quoted a famous author having said you aren't really a writer until you've written a million words. I'd say I have long since done that. I am a writer. And oh my goodness I have just signed up for the Quills Conference next month.

If I have any readers left, thanks for sticking around. I'll be spending more time on my laptop, possibly working out my ideas here. 

we interrupt this blog post

I know I promised to post the rest of our travel photos "tomorrow" a week ago. And I will, possibly later today. Where does the time go? I'm going to tell you a little bit of news, then I'm going to go outside and shovel snow, then I'm going to decide what we are having for dinner and make a shopping list. I'll walk to the grocery store two blocks away through this blizzard, and then come home and start cooking. Or maybe I'll get another blog post in first.

The news: We have been here for eleven days now. Surely the weather is colder than we are used to and there has been snow on the ground the whole time. I don't mind, it's just one more new experience. Well, not new, I did after all grow up in a place that has real winter. But it's been twenty years since I really lived in a place that has weather like this and that it is a normal thing that will stick around longer than a few days.

We are enjoying our new surroundings and are making new friends. The "street" we live on, the one on our address, is not actually a street, it's a sidewalk off a street. I'm guessing it used to be an alley for horse-drawn carriages? At any rate, it means that all our neighbors are close but we have an amazing amount of privacy. With no cars going by, it is also very quiet, which I love. The place we were in before was noisy and not at all private, and I felt like a caged animal in that house. This house is much nicer than the one we moved out of. It's smaller, and far easier to keep clean. I can't tell you how happy I am about this. Sam is happy too, she has been more affectionate with Dan here than she ever has in her whole life.

So my first bit of news is that I have been requested to write a blog for a private company. It hasn't started yet, as the company isn't quite ready to get going, but when they are that task will fall to me. I'm pretty excited about that, it's a great company.

The second is that I had an interview with the Wasatch Community Gardens on Monday. I had contacted them in December, in applying for one of their intern programs. I am passionate about local food and I wanted to get involved with the local foodshed right away, this seemed the best place to start. After my conversation with the coordinator, we agreed I am a good fit and so will be their 2014 Urban Farming Apprentice, starting in a few weeks. Much of the things they want done are things I have done before, in terms of compost rehabilitation and soil building, and there will be some organizing too (yay! I love organizing).

The biggest news: I have been in touch with a few people from the University of Utah, having met a number of them at the AMIA Symposium back last November. After a meeting yesterday morning that I was hoping would result in a job, ended up resulting in an application to do a second Master's degree. I was kind of deflated at the suggestion ("but I already have and MSc in this field!") but it became clear that there are many more doors open to students. This is not to say there won't be work for me beforehand, and I am making my rounds and meeting all the people. There is a dearth of qualitative researchers here and I am SO EXCITED because I was warned all those years ago that there wouldn't be much work for people like me. There hasn't been. Until now. I am in the right place. So HURRAY! I have sent off my resume to a number of people and some of them have heard of me already. I'll go to the research seminars presented every week (the U is an 11-minute train ride from my station, which is only a block and a half away) and will get deeply reacquainted with what is happening in the field. Turns out there is a lot happening at the University of Utah.

It all happened so fast yesterday that I was still spinning by the end of they day, but it feels right. If I can turn that Master's into a PhD, I may do just that. This is a place I want to stay for a while, I can certainly commit to being in Utah for at least five years. More if things are good for both me and Dan.

Oh there is one other thing - we got fitbits! I heard about fitbits in November when I was at the Symposium and have been thinking about them ever since. Certainly with the stress last year and the difficulty exercising (due to crazy schedules and not feeling safe in our neighborhood), I have regained much of the weight I had lost back in 2011. But I did it once and I will do it again. This time it will be much easier (well, if weight loss can be easy) because it seems like a video game and watching the stats on my iPhone app is a data manager's wet dream. People are obsessed with these things. I hope I don't become like that. I'll let you know.

Still one other thing: Thanks to my Twitter buddy Donna Druchunas, there is a small group of us doing a group course of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I have owned the book since 1998 and have done the program a couple of times on my own, but it is nice to go back to it with a bunch of buddies and see how we do. I may do some blog posts specifically about that - I hope I have time because this kind of work digs up a lot of stuff formerly buried in one's psyche.

Okay that's it, I really have to go shovel snow. I will try to post photos later!