Realizing Things

This is how I spent my Saturday night.

Not in the bar, or hanging with friends, or doing anything social.  Just me and my words at my desk with a glass of beer, my water, and my thoughts.  It’s a far cry from where I could be, but it’s exactly where I needed to be.  I wrote earlier about nearing the finish line of the piece I’m working on.  And as I look back at this photo, I realize I’m where I need to be.

Grad school is coming to a close more quickly than I’m willing to admit.  I don’t know what happened to all these months, or how it is that I’m nearing graduation.  I can only think of the next step; chasing publications like they are my ticket out of here, seeking a National Book Award, poetry in print in Poetry Magazine.  I know all of these things take so much work, but I know I’m working it. 

So.  Even though I might’ve seen my girls, hung with Rubin, saw Ghost and the kids, or skyped with Efed, I know that this is the best way to nourish me right now.  I have to believe in my dream, as much because I know it will come to fruition if I keep at it as because this … writing, working, editing, my lab, all nourish me in a way that I haven’t experienced in the last decade. 
Dreams are a funny, fickle sort of thing, right?  Some days, the goal seems so obtainable, others not so much.  But if I keep returning to this scene, to this moment when I’m feeling open and whole and raw all at the same time, surely something will come from it.