So it's the last day of 2018. On Jan 1, 2018 I blogged here about a couple resolutions: 1) getting really brave and going for 100 rejections; 2) blogging more, especially about othering.
I got 98 rejections and 4 acceptances this year. This isn't 100 rejections, but it's pretty close. And since the point wasn't to be rejected, but to be brave and put myself out there, I did that. I put my poems or myself out there 100 times, actually 102. This is way up from 34 from the year before. So that's awesome!!!
In reflecting on how this went, I have to say that I found the emphasis on rejections a bit counterproductive. Since the point was to be brave, the fact that I could only count my brave effort when I got some kind of response made me pretty obsessed with checking Submittable. Since I always sweat contest response dates anyway, this just fueled my obsessions. It also made me more dependent on others' responses when what I wanted to celebrate was my courage. So for 2019, I plan to go for 200 submissions! I include poetry submissions, but also grant submissions and other ways of putting myself out there when I can be rejected.
(Note: I count each poem as a submission, not each bundle or packet of poems. So 200 is not nearly as much as it sounds like. I thought of changing it to a set number of submission packets, but I haven't tracked that so well so I don't know what is a fair but challenging number. I plan to track all of it a lot better this year.)
About blogging: I started blogging Israel-Palestine poems, but then stopped because I was busy at work. (I've quit my job, but I don't think I'm going to go back to blogging Israel-Palestine poems.) I also blogged about how the psychology of genocide can help us address our own racism, prejudice, and othering on the blog on my website. I think those blogposts were very important because they helped me start to imagine the longer work I want to create on that content, but I'm not sure that blogging about it is the best way forward for that project. I stopped though when I needed to focus on the Holy Land Poems and found that creating those blogposts took a lot of dedicated time every week.
What I would very much like to do blogging-wise is to blog about the place I live and try to understand it better, make peace with it, even love it. I'm sick of fighting with winter and seeing the obvious drawbacks of where I live. There's a lot to love here but I don't name it very well. Blogging would help with this. Place has always been very important to me: my poems include a lot of focus on place, even winning the Phenomena of Place Poetry Award and most recently appearing in Scintilla's special issue on The Patterns of Place: Seeking Shelter; Finding Home; I was also the editor of Plains Song Review, a journal exploring a sense of place in the Great Plains. And there are all sorts of things about this place I would like to explore, including the history of my land and Michigan-ness. I'd also like to blog about my garden and chickens and ducks, which is very tied to my sense of this place. And I need to make friends with real northern winter, making sure I have the right equipment. (Is it in Sweden they say there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong equipment?)
But I'm not making any promises about blogging, though, to myself or you today. Much of my energy will have to be focused on crafting myself a new career (or getting a job). Since I've done a fair amount of editing/proofreading in the past, I'm going to refresh my skills and build myself a freelance editing business. And for that with my introversion, I will need to be very very brave.
Let's celebrate all our efforts and accomplishments in 2018! And have a great creative, blessed, and fun 2019! Happy New Year!!!!
