Day 8 – No visible signs of withdrawal. No shakes when walking by a laptop.

Ha.

This week has been much like any other. I worked, wrote grad school papers. Went to a few soccer games. My son is playing soccer this year. He’s fun to watch because, at eight years old, he is fearless. Slide tackle, no problem. He is aggressive and goes after the ball, the goal and the win.

This can sometimes be frustrating.

The team Cole plays on is made up of children age 8 and under. There are three players that play to win. There is a majority that play for the fun of being on the field and running and kicking the ball in the sun. A smaller group that like to pick flowers and make crowns, during the game—while they are on the field, playing defense. Ha. And then there are those that are there, not because they want to be, but because they are living their parents dream—and will kick and scream if you tell them they are going in the game.

Everyone comes to the game with different expectations & different things happening in their lives.

I never wanted to blog in the first place. Four and a half years ago, a co-worker dogged me until I started one. I will be the first to admit my early posts were not good. Ha. It was reflective in my comments as well. The first 6 months, I has very few, if any. But somehow I met a business woman from Europe, who introduced me to a group called Theme Thursday.

It was very cool and they were my first ‘family’ on the internet. There were about 20-30 of us that kinda grew together, ran as a pack for a year to 18 months and got to know each other really well. I was writing short story and creative memoir. It was as part of this group, I met Kat, who challenged me to write poetry.

As Theme Thursday was cooling, I fell in with another group, who launched a poetry community. I was one of the original twelve. In that group were Leslie Moon, Adam Dustus and Pete Marshal. When things went south in that group, the four of us created One Stop Poetry.

One Stop was a pretty incredible Poetry venue. We grew quick. Built a team. It was during this time I met Claudia and invited her to join the team. Gay and Chris joined the team. I met many of you. One Stop won a rather large award. I got to meet Keifer Sutherland. It was cool. (But I will never go after another award again—as I really believe that derailed us—because the attention was no longer on poetry)

As One Stop ended, dVerse Poets Pub was born. The intent was to create a space, a pub, with a comfortable atmosphere where people could come and go and we could play with poetry. That was nearly two years ago.

Each of these movements over the last four and a half years was created by small touches by individuals. I would not blog without Rob. I never would have kept going without being introduced to that first community. I never would have met Claudia if….and dVerse never would exist if not for…a small thread that connects it backwards and forwards.

This is part of why I push myself to touch as many of the poets that come through the door. Because we all come to the pub with different things going on in our lives and different expectations…and for some, they may be ready to put away the notebook, shut down their blog, struggling to find their voice or have no idea what they are doing.

I have been all those people at one point or another.

It has been nice to be away and remember the story that got me to this point, as it reminded me why I do what I do. It’s not about me.

How about you?