Apparently, I’m lucky to blog once a month, getting this one in just under the wire. And I’m only writing because I’ve been reading about blogs lately, like old-school blogs. Blogs you read if you were in your 20s in 2008. Blogs that connected you to others or inspired you or created friendships.

I’m someone who used diary-x and LiveJournal. I met two of my best friends through LiveJournal, and we’re still close to this day, so I’m no stranger to connecting online. Blogs did that. And I miss that. But I also understand the need to be professional, especially here, in my writing space. But if it’s my writing space…

And off I spiral.

I look at my life and can’t believe I’ve been making a living as a writer for over a year now. If you told my eight-year-old self that this was possible, I think she would have been thrilled, but skeptical. Yet here I am, still thrilled, still skeptical.

But that’s not what it’s about tonight. I’m thankful for those jobs, grateful for what they’ve given me. But tonight is about creative writing. It’s about cracking my shell and inspecting my process as it happens.

Getting an idea. Writing. Revising. Reading aloud. Revising more.

I won’t submit this piece until later, so I’m sure more revision is to come. If you told my twenty-year-old self that this was possible, she would have smirked in your face. (She hated revision.)

But I feel like I’m twenty again. I’m grateful that I don’t have a full day of college courses and work waiting for me tomorrow, but there’s something invigorating about staying up late (shhh – to a single parent, 9:45p is indeed late) and writing and focusing on creativity and forgetting about the endless To Do lists and have I cleaned but did I call and how will I manage drop off and pick up along with…

Not tonight.

I feel lucky to write and get paid for it. I feel lucky to write because ideas won’t leave me alone. I feel lucky to submit and get rejections and try again. I feel lucky to be part of creative writing workshop groups that let me read and critique great stories and give me necessary feedback on my own work. I feel lucky to read and edit other people’s writing, to send them acceptances and take part in their excitement in some small way. I feel lucky to work with an amazing press and support their fantastic team and writers and readers. I feel lucky to be so connected to the literary world while still knowing there’s so much left to explore.