I Don't Always Want To Be In Charge

I admin eight groups on facebook. I started five of those. If there is something I want that does not exist, I usually start it up myself.

Park Day was fading away? Sure I'll take that over. Playgroup for toddler? Sure. Over and over. Sometimes I just don't want to be the one in charge. I want to be the one who goes, takes part, without the added stress of being the organiser.

I am finding writing to be like this. So many people keep pushing me to self publish. No. I just want to write. I just want to make. I want to create. I don't want to start up a poetry journal just to have my own work published. I don't want to e-book a monthly zine. I don't want to market, design, and publicity. I do that already for the farm.

But sending out writing and art only to get rejection after rejection is wearing me down. Vanity press is sitting the corner like a glittering pimp, saying, "Hey baby.....I got what you need...."

No. Just no.

I want to travel. I want to write. I want to speak my work out loud. I want to drink tea in strange places and see the world through the eyes of local artists and minstrels. I want to see the world through my own eyes and then spiral the ink down on paper, click the shutter, and share with the world what I see.

I don't want to be in charge of another project. I am fighting against this current, the tidal pool that brings me back to it every single time. If you want something, make it happen. If you wait for others to find you, you'll die waiting with cold coffee. Maybe it really is the Iowa in me, saying build it and they will come. I have the nails. I have the hammer. I have the dream. I am just so very tired of building always so others can play or learn or rest.

Chad doesn't understand my hesitation either. I have been working for others in one way or another for my whole life, sneaking in time to write or create when I could but less and less and less until ten years had slipped by and I had done nothing but blog about what the people around me were/are doing. I just need the wide open sky right now. I want to see the landscape for a while and just be in it.

I'm not sure what is next.

I'm not sure what I want to be next.

That's the beauty of life though, right? Sometimes you plant the trees and sometimes you harvest the fruit. Sometimes you get your face and hands sticky and purple from berry juice and sometimes you carefully harvest and freeze for later.