"There's a poem in that..."

I was thinking recently.  About poetry.  Specifically the writing of it.

I've been having difficulty coming up with new ideas for each day's poem, and it's been enough of a struggle that I'm pretty sure I've written about the carpet in my apartment at least twice, and cornfields more times than I can count.  This lack of variety strikes me as disturbing if only because in my first year of The Poem-A-Day Project, I stumbled upon some new topic every single day and that created some sort of variety in and of itself.  Maybe it's because my life has settled into some sort of routine that doesn't allow for exciting poem topics, so I have to make them up myself.

Or maybe I'm just not paying attention.

That first year of my poetry writing, I was surrounded by people who would stop mid-conversation and say, "There's a poem in that..."  Maybe not surrounded, but I definitely spent a good amount of time with the small number of people who would make that observation.  Of course there was a poem in that.  There was a poem in the epic battle between humans and zombies, there was a poem in the dining hall's lack of Sunday dinner, there was a poem in the sidewalk cracks between my dorm room and my first class of the morning.  Sure I revisited some of the same topics over and over again, but the images that showed up in each new poem were different because I was doing something different almost every day.

Now that I'm not physically around people who can make observations about finding poems for me, I'm coming to the slow realization that I have two options:
1.  I can go glue myself to the sides of the people who can find poems for me in conversations and daily life.
2.  I can start paying attention.
Part of my willingness to glue myself to the side of poem observers comes from missing them so much, but I think there's also a level of laziness there too.  So that leads me to conclude that paying attention is really my only option for writing some wonderful poem that isn't about how Nebraska isn't Chicago, because let's face it, that's been done about eighty times, and people are going to start to get bored if they ever read my Project from beginning to end (then again, won't they get bored with parking lot poems or "It's my senior year of college" poems?  Oh well.).

So here it goes, my mid-October resolution to pay attention in order to write more interesting poems.

Ready?  GO!

"Every day you play with the light of the universe."

- Pablo Neruda

Dependent

I'm having a problem.

I feel like I depend on other people far too much.  I have a couple examples, but the most glaring example is at work.  Yes, I'm learning how to do things and I'm getting into the groove of things, but I feel like I'm probably asking questions before trying to figure out the answer on my own because it's easier to ask the question first.

I spent a lot of my first semester of my senior year of college asking my boss what I should do in nearly every situation.  Having trouble with a desk aide?  I asked my boss what I should do.  Hearing RA gossip?  Talked to my boss, asked her what to do.  Not sure if it's a date?  Asked my boss.  I'm not kidding.  And every single time I came to her with a question, her answer was, "Brianna, what do you think you should do?"  I don't know if it's because she secretly didn't have the answer, but I like to believe that my boss knew exactly what should be done, but she wanted to see if I could figure it out for myself.  Because that question irritated me so much and because I got frustrated every time I had to tell her, "I don't know..." I started coming into meetings with my boss saying, "So I'm having this problem, I'm thinking of doing this, is that right, or am I missing something?"

This might have something to do with my need to have the right answer.  It's not that I need to be right, it's that I need to get an A on that paper, and get every quiz question right.  For some reason, I depend on the people around me to affirm my actions and pat me on the back.  I'm not sure if this is a normal thing or if it's some form of self-esteem issue, but I'd really like to pretend that I don't have self-esteem issues.

I'm not saying that I don't want people in my life, it's just that lately I'm starting to feel like I put a lot of stock into the opinions of others.

Which feels like a bad thing.

Right now, I have a Post-It stuck to my office computer monitor that asks me: "Brianna, what do YOU think you should do?"  I kinda feel like I'm starting from scratch again here, but I'm hoping that this Post-It and my awareness is going to help me figure things out.  And I know that sounds silly or trite, but there it is.

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I'm still doing my Poem-A-Day Project.  This should come as no surprise considering I've gotten into the habit of writing every day, and now it's a habit I haven't yet broken.  Strange enough, I wrote today's poem yesterday.  Which is almost virtually unheard of...but I still feel like I need to write right now, so there may be two October 1st poems.  Unfortunately I don't have a challenge for this month, but I'm sure I could tackle more Halloween poetry if the occasion calls for it.  So yeah.  Poetry.

Lame Brianna.  The end.

"You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy.  So let them go, let go of them.  I tie no weights to my ankles."

- C. JoyBell C.