Envy and bitterness
leaching through messages
Attacking success,
perseverence, achievement.
Pick them apart.
Minimize them to maximize you?
Hey dude,
Are you compensating?
Facing ‘if such unremarkable folk
can do it,
why can’t you?’
Is wondering why they’ve won
making you feel useless?
Um.
Maybe the difference is
they quit making excuses
and just got it done?
.
such a long time
in the making.
planned so long ago.
waiting.
injury
healing
tiny steps
tiny steps
tiny steps
make the journey
so
long
but here we are at
the
end.
.
.
.
August 2018 Nikolette Jones and I bantered out the plans for 3 Nikki Knox stories that I would write by August 2019. Unfortunately, August 28 I suffered a brain injury that meant time off work, therapy, and a long road of recovery. I have been dabbling for 2 years with the 4th book, and it is FINALLY finished! It is two years late, but it’s here at last! Nikolette is busy with the art and there will be a new, lovely Nikki Knox 4 book compilation out in the next few months! Yay! It’s so good to have a brain that’s working again.
.
.
.
.
.
ten years ago
dream in pocket
breathless
learning to pitch a book
awed by everyone
talent
knowledge.
Wishing.
Today, I pull a bin
to my own author table.
I am awed at everything.
It’s just ten years.
Same space I pitched!
Now,
ten books to spread
for this event.
My words searching for homes.
A blink of time
those dreams
are truth.
.
.
I just realized that this month is the 10th anniversary of my first writing conference. I bravely registered for one day of the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, took my husband and our exchange student to Vancouver. While they spent a day exploring, I pitched my first book to the publisher who would eventually offer me a contract for it and had my first blue pencil with a professional author (Meg Tilley). Ten years later, I’ve been invited to sell at a Guest Author table, in the very same room I pitched in, and I will have ten books on my table to sell and sign. How astonishing. How quickly a decade passes! How amazing to see what happens when you take the risk!
She’s earnest
in all the best ways.
Plasters on that quivering smile
faces the crowd
does her best,
but her best
is not good enough.
Earnestness is not enough.
But I tried!
is not enough.
She needs to be committed
to earnest effort
toward excellence,
maybe for years,
and maybe even then
her earnest desire will not
be enough.
Desire must lead to skill
mingle with effort
sprinkle with luck
and maybe then
earnest will be
enough.
It’s all just possibility,
isn’t it?
The hopes
The dreams
The wishes.
What ifs that linger about us
orbiting like electrons, protons, neutrons
Actively giving us
possibilities
if only we can combine the other elements
to bring them to reality.
Your desperation
leads me to exasperation
How many times do I tell you?
How many times did I tell you?
How many times will I tell you?
Too many.
Once more.
If you do it when you’re asked
Begin when assigned the task
You will not be desperate
and I will not exasperate.
It’s not in the wishes.
It’s in the moments.
The reality.
The day to day.
It’s in consistency.
Trust me.
Your wits are dull
Your eyes are glazed
Your ambitions are low
You are dull
There is nowhere
for you to go.
I am a pick axe.
I grimly focus on the patch of ground
in front of me, and chip, chip, chip away
at the rocks that block my way.
I will wear down this mountain
day by day.
I will find a seam and harvest value.
Today, it may seem too hard to do,
but I will chip, chip, chip away anyway
until I’ve made a hill of this mountain,
and have found the other side..
.
.
.
I’m smack in the middle of my penultimate grad school course. I’m finding it hard to concentrate, what with the recent family deaths and illness and related stress. After a long day at work, I just want to curl up in a warm corner and snooze. This is a required course, so there’s nothing for it but chipping away at readings, chipping away at assignments, chipping away at papers, and then it’ll be over. One month until the last paper is due, and then it’s through! The end is nigh!
Shawn L. Bird 