April was NaPoWriMo. I wrote 30 poems in 30 days. I still don’t quite know what I accomplished. I know some of the poems are very good, most of them are not, and I am certain a good number of them can be worked on/redone and will be fantastic.
I have been spending so much time on Substack that I haven’t really thought about this website much. But yesterday I updated my wardrobe page, and today I am updating this blog.
I am hungover this morning from a 1.5 day migraine. Ouch. This is the second one in three weeks. It’s a real bender of pain and darkness and medication. Then when it’s over and the postdrome hits, it’s like being in thick, bright grey fog. I want to do things, I haven’t hardly moved in days, but my body needs to catch up with its pain-free brain.
I used to moan a lot when I got these vicious headaches. I wondered if I was going to die of exploding head, or worse. And Dale would come soaring up to the attic to see if he could help. This was nice. And embarrassing that he heard me moaning.
Now I don’t moan for the most part. Whether or not this is because the headaches aren’t as bad, or I’m just better able to deal with them, i.e. I know they will pass, I know what to take, etc., I can’t really determine. The weird thing about migraines is they are like childbirth. You lose your connection with the pain the farther your life zooms away from them.
And now I have other pains that are almost as bad, that keep me moored to my chair.
But during knee/head/skin pain, I can draw and I can write. I can listen to my books. I can build my website. I can read and respond to my friends’ writing. I can watch tv, when I dim the screen enough. So it’s not like I’m doing nothing at all. I do really despise doing nothing at all.
Now my thoughts are on what will be the next thing on Substack. I really rose to the occasion when I wrote a poem every day, part of me wants to keep doing something like that….but could I? I mean, it wasn’t hard except for a few days. Mostly I looked at the prompts, and I did the next thing—either I wrote the poem from the prompt, or I looked for further prompts/ideas/poetry-triggers. In other words, I was never petulant, I never just gave over. I worked like a professional, which I am of course. I have been for years and years, I just never realized it until now.
Substack? First…a “buy me a coffee” button. Then….write a poem every day even if it’s just a sort-of-live-journal-blog like I used to do?
~r.
