Six months ago, my career as a mountain bike coach ended with a sloppy tumble over the handlebars. My coaching stint was on its final lap anyway, this was Eli’s sunset season on the team. Now he’s building his own cadre of riding partners as a budding adult. And I got an extra forty-five days of freedom. Sure, lots of pain, but also lots of free time. Time I didn’t want to squander by not planning ahead. I made a list of focus areas to pursue.
- Fitness
- Writing
- Learning
I put five to ten subtopics under each category. Fitness has ten—I’m killing that category. Running, lifting, spinning, biking. It’s been a long while since I felt this fit. Writing has eight subtopics, but I’m crossing them off the list at a pretty good clip. I think I mentioned my planned foray into a writers’ group. Fail… miserable fail. The people in the group didn’t understand my writing. They took my sarcasm literally. They found my irreverence offensive. I’m not too proud to consider that maybe my writing sucked, but if you need to explain every joke, what’s the fun in telling them. I went to one meeting.
I toy with joining the First Friday Poetry Group, but every month I chicken out. I worry that I won’t understand the other poets and poems, that I’ll be bored, that I’ll be too anxious to read, too anxious to talk with the other people in the room. I worry that my poetry is childish. The email comes one week prior: Join us next Friday at 7:00pm for featured reader Joe Poet upstairs at the Ragged Edge Coffeehouse. We begin with a poetry open mic and then move on to our feature. And I think okay, this is the month. And then I bail. Two of the months, I even printed out my poem to read, but I changed my mind by dinnertime.
I thought I might experiment with podcasting. I like to listen, maybe I’d like to make one, too. I recorded myself reading my stories, a couple of funny ones, and posted them on Spotify. And I waited. Other than my family, I don’t think anyone ever listened. Every month or so I pop by the stats. Five listens on one, seven on the other. I suspect seven or eight of those are me, obsessively looking for mistakes. I didn’t enjoy making the podcasts anyway. It made my armpits sweat.
Last night, Susan called from the next room: “There’s a Crafting Creative Nonfiction class starting in two weeks at the Arts Council.” Writers will learn about literary journalism, memoir, and the personal essay. Each class will have a writing prompt for the genre as well as a mini craft lesson. I’m not sure about learning the genres and the mini craft lesson. It’s possible I’ve covered all of this in prior classes or in books, but a refresher never hurts. The prompts excite me, and it will be fun to meet some other local writers.
In group situations, I have a tendency to close myself off from others, recede into my own thoughts, and display an unwelcoming vibe. I’ll do my best to leave that at the door. I’ll try to be friendly from the start. I’m running out of subtopics. My remaining ideas are more global: polishing, publishing, giving and getting feedback. I’d really like to follow through on one of the writing suggestions I gave myself.
Stay tuned, more to come.
* Sorry if you were attracted by the title. It’s something of a joke. I’m always amazed at how many online posts start with “Blank# Ways to…” Oops. there I go explaining my jokes again.
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
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