These words inside me...

Not that I’m counting, but, 73 days, 1752 hours or (now, insert the music from Rent) 105120 minutes of pure summer lies ahead. I am not under any illusion that this isn't a luxury. It is. It is pure luxury. It is well deserved, and I will defend the work of a teacher any day, but I recognize that it is a pure luxury to have this space in my life.

I am a person who needs space. I am on that fine line of introvert/extrovert and have found over my 40 years that I crave space. Space to think, process, relax, and more recently, write.

Writing is vulnerable, however. It is something that I have been drawn to my whole life in writing letters to my grandparents and aunts and uncles, and now, with blogging I get to write you a letter ever so often. :) But it’s vulnerable.

Not only grammatically speaking (I mean, I may or may not have gotten an ‘F’ in grammar in college…) but words try to capture elusive emotions and crooked feelings and this isn't easy.

There is a song by Anna Nalick that tells the story of the power of words and writing. I particularly like this part:
2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to
But you can't jump the track; we're like cars on a cable,
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand.
And breathe, just breatheI have words inside of me that are threatening the life it belongs to...

See, there’s this novel swimming in my head and I think I may dedicate this summer to throwing it a few life rafts and getting some of it to shore. It’s scary, and vulnerable, but I really want try writing a novel! I have the title already, it’s called, Commuter of Crows. The commuter crows are the dumpster divers of the bird world, and they stick together doing it. Basically, I want my characters to go through the grunge of life and stick together doing it.

So. There it is. Plans for my 105120 minutes of summer.

I’ll keep you posted.