Poem-Gear

Switched gears a little bit today. Instead of doing any work on the book, I revised a poem and did some organizing of the poems I'm thinking of sending out. Massively exciting stuff, right? But there's a deadline for a contest coming up, and it's a journal I love. AND in the results of last year's contest at the same journal, I had a poem in the top 20 (out of 6500) and that was a huge boost. It got published and I'm doing a reading in August. So you'd think, after a shot of validation like that, I'd have hunkered down and sent out more work. No. I didn't. Not even one. This is what I'm worst at. I have all this writing and it sits here idling away in my computer. I spent time today setting apart the poems that have already been published (from 1996-now) ((only 1 published since 2007 when I stopped submitting because I'm a moron)) and am ready to get at it again. I'm trying to carve my life into the life of a writer, one habit at a time. I'm almost 54. I sometimes feel too old for it to matter anymore. But I'll feel way better at 74 (if I get there) if I've thrown more time at the writing back here in the 50s. God knows I have enough regrets in my life. I want to, as much as possible, avoid creating more. Now there's a writing project: listing all my regrets. Shut the front door.