You may or may not know that I’m a writer. Or at least I was a writer. Can I honestly call myself a writer when mostly my only writing happens inside this blog? I graduated from college with a degree in English: Writing and Communications which may or may not have prepared me for communicating to my son what he may or may not be allowed to do. I can quite succinctly inform my son the following things, “No,” “Not for [insert name here],” “Walk away!” I have been educated enough to know that he will not understand me if I say, for instance, “There is a marginal chance that you will be electrocuted if you play with that and as your mother I am paranoid enough to worry about such matters and would greatly appreciate it if you would refrain from playing with said item so that I may be relieved of the duty of worrying about things like electrocution and any other harms lurking therein.”

No, he wouldn’t appreciate or understand a statement like that and thus my degree is mostly useless where he is concerned, at least for the time being. I frequently dream about one day publishing a childrens book or book of poetry, and have even occasionally set about writing such a thing, but the truth is lately I prefer reading to writing, especially when there is something good to read that a teacher didn’t force me to read via a curriculum or syllabus. I have always said the best reason to write is when you want to read something that hasn’t been written yet, but I have a lot to read before I can say that these days.

I love to read. I read children’s books to MLM, young adult fare to myself, and the occasionally great piece of literature also for myself. I read magazines and edit them for my own pleasure, snarkily reveling in the knowledge that I am still smarter than someone above the age of 2. I read recipes from cookbooks and internet foodie sites, grumbling about the fact that I don’t keep things like artichoke hearts and heavy cream in my refrigerator in a regular basis.

Oh and the poetry? Here’s the thing – in general, I think any great piece of writing needs a little thing called conflict, and where poetry is concerned I excel at that great cliche called unrequited love. Problem with that: I’m married. My love life is pretty honky dory and I don’t think anyone wants to read my poetry about that. It would go something like this : I’m happy. La de da. . . . . Whoops, sorry, I fell asleep. The things I worry about at great length now I am not entirely knowledgeable about enough to write about and think I’d know what I was talking about. Ode to I’m Sad About Global Warming and War is For Stupids and Other Such Bothers just don’t have that great rigor that is necessary in poetry. In short, I ran out of material for poetry before I got good at it. I am le screwed you could say.

I know I’m young. Perhaps my time for greatness simply hasn’t come yet. I may just need to “live more” and wait patiently for my muse to find me. I see no need to write trite nothingness in the meantime – it would simply be more things to edit with my handy delete key. Thus, useless. So… I am a writer. But I guess my muse is on pause while I busy myself with poopy diapers and Veggie Tales Silly Song marathons. Until next time, I bid you all a fabulous afternoon.