vocal bliss

As the new year approaches, there is always a significant push to pick ourselves apart, see where we can make personal improvements, set goals, and decide how to completely change our lives to become even better versions of ourselves. Although I feel the excitement around the impulse of making changes, improving, and setting goals, I’m not one to set my lofty resolutions during the frigid winter months. I’m in hibernation mode, and if it doesn't include a sweater, slippers, and tea, I’m probably not going.

All jokes aside, the thought of forcing myself to set goals and begin the push toward achieving them doesn’t feel cyclically right to my bones. I genuinely believe that one of the reasons I have failed to accomplish many of the resolutions I’ve set for myself is that I pick them during a time of year when all of nature is slowing down and going inward, not revving up. It does not feel natural for me to push out buds in the dead of winter. So, I save my goal setting for the spring—a season when the frost thaws from my cranial folds and the seeds of my mind and body are ready to bloom.

I do, however, in the spirit of turning over a new calendar year, love to pick a single word—an overarching theme to set the tone for the type of year I want to have. In the past, I’ve picked lovely words like authenticity, grace, focus, and thrive, but last year…last year… I didn't pick my word, it picked me, and it wasn't gentle about it. It forcefully cut to the front of the line in my mind, chaotically making a scene amongst the options of lovely words I had beautifully penned into my journal. As I drank my coffee and reviewed my list, a wild word kept forcing itself into my mind's eye. The dang word wouldn’t leave me alone, no matter how much I tried to push it out. After a long, drawn-out battle, I allowed Create to scroll itself onto a fresh page, and it became the theme of my year. What a wild ride that word has taken me on. You can read more about this in my 50th-piece-iversary if you’d like to, but to sum it all up, that word is the single reason I joined Vocal. 

A short bit after this word chose me, and I had literally done zilch with it, I got an Instagram ad for a Vocal challenge. I instantly knew it was a massive, bright, neon sign from the universe to put my word into action. So, possessed by Create, I entered my credit card info into the Vocal Plus sign-up form, and it was the beginning of a wild ride to 51,306 words laid out in 118 pieces of work.

Since that day in January, Vocal has become the single most important piece of my writing journey. If not for Vocal providing my words a place to live and breathe, most of the poetic thoughts that flutter around my mind day in and day out would have suffocated between two ends of a journal. I will forever be grateful for the path this platform has taken me down. Not only have I been inspired to become a better writer, it has pushed me to write more consistently. Vocal has also been a conduit of encouragement when I needed it most, provided inspiration through new challenges, expanding my brain tendrils (I’m a poet, don’t ask), and has become quite a lovely library of some of the deepest purgings of my mind and spirit. I’m proud of the work I have published, and my life is richer because I am here.

I really want to do amazing things through this platform!

So, I decided to put my own spin on the goal-setting challenge, and I picked a special word just for my Vocal year. The word I chose was growth. But, just like last year, a different word wanted its day in the sun. No matter how much I tried to write this piece about growth, the other word kept showing up and gently smacking me in the back of the head, saying, “Why the heck are you writing about growth? That’s not your word. Scratch the g word from your journal and hear me out.”

This word has been so adamant about being chosen that it actually blocked me from writing anything else until I picked it. I’m not kidding. The part above where I said, “I really do want to do amazing things through this platform!” is as far as I got into this piece, and then my brain froze. Seriously, I tried to write this piece about growth as a writer at least a billion times. Growth, growth, growth was all I could type. Just the word with no substance behind it. No plan on how to do it. Like, absolutely nothing. And nothing else, either! Not a poem, not a scribble of a legible sentence—just a giant frozen void of a writer's brain. And then I caved. I crumpled up the idea of growth and gave in to...

J O Y

Joy /joi/ noun: a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

Why joy? Ask the word; it picked me! I honestly don’t know why it was so hard for me to pick it back. As much as I had my heart set on growth, what I’ve come to realize is that growth doesn’t matter at all unless there is joy in the process. And if there is joy, the growth will come.

So, how do I implement this word into my Vocal world? Well, I have thought this through a little bit, but if you'll float downriver with me for another moment, I’ll allow my stream of consciousness to lead us from here.

Here’s what I know. I want to absorb every last drop of the ever-loving joy that I possibly can out of writing for this platform. I want to get so much joy out of Vocal that my head explodes with joyousness.

The first step in my stream of thought is to do more of the things that inspire me to be a good writer. Although this might seem like a personal aspiration, it’s the first step to getting all the juicy delight (that’s joy) out of writing here, and so it has earned its place in the lineup.

Let me explain...when I’m out exploring, walking through the trees, swimming in rivers, reading, playing, dancing, laughing, loving—the inspiration comes. If I’m moving and energy is coursing through my body, that energy-momentum creates words and ideas that pour out of my brain faster than my hands can type. The inspirational flow beats with the flow of my life, in good times and bad.

If I’m stagnant, literally not moving my body, inactive, swirling inside a negative thought loop, if I’m inside too much, my energy momentum slows, and my word energy stalls out. Even through times that I experience mental heaviness, as long as I do something that reconnects me to life around me, the words will flow honestly. This year, I’m committing to the things that bring life energy, which, in turn, brings me joy, enhancing the quality and quantity of my work, which enhances my joy. It’s a beautiful little cycle.

On my joyous journey, I’m also committed to expanding my writing horizons. There are many communities that I would love to dive into but haven’t taken the leap to write for yet. The main reason for this is that I typically think in lines of poetry—when I become overcome by an idea, it weaves its way through my mind and out my hand in rhythmic verse. I love writing prose; it just takes a bit more effort and editing. But I do want to work on my writer’s voice outside of the poetry community, so I'm going to push myself out of my comfort zone. I believe it will bring me loads of pleasure (that is, by definition, joy) to grow my other writing muscles. So, I’m going to let the words take over in some arenas that I haven’t scratched the surface of yet. I already have some inspirational thoughts flowing as I marinate on this idea, and I’m excited (a form of joy) to see what ideas will be freed when I challenge myself outside my norm.

Another aspect of Vocal that brings me "feelings of pleasure and happiness” is this community of writers. I absolutely love reading your work and interacting with you on this platform. You have all guided me to joy in your own ways. During a rough year, your stories made me smile, your comments and our conversations gave me hope and your kindness was a salve to my heart. You became part of my community, and that connection makes me ecstatically happy (also joy), and I’m so very excited to continue to connect with you fabulous humans and learn from your beautiful brilliant minds.


All of this is streaming out of my brain tendrils from who knows where— Joy? Cosmos? My third cup of coffee? But I’m flowing with it, so thanks for sticking with me!

In my continued quest for Vocal joy, I will be trying my best to achieve balance. The balance between writing, reading on Vocal, reading outside of Vocal, being the best wife and mom that I can be, and being a full-time human with other very important life responsibilities that demand my immediate attention. The other day I had a small chat with Heather Hubler and she inspired me to lean into guilt-free balance. Many times, I feel bad when I take a breather, but this year, I need to find better ways to manage my expectations of...myself. I also think I need to take more time to inhale (a beautiful lesson that has stuck with me from L.C. Schafer’s piece, You Write What You Read). So, I’m going to honor my intuitions around what I need personally, and if that means I have to take a break or a big inhale outside of this platform, then I will take it. I believe that will allow Vocal to remain an incredibly joyous piece of my life.

As a final, and maybe the most important step of my path to exuberantly blissful (you guessed it, that's joy) participation on Vocal is to remind myself daily what an amazing gift it is to be a writer, and what a privilege it is to have a place to share the work I’ve created. I have a dear friend who was persecuted in his native country for his poetry because the outpouring of his heart was controversial. The fact that we can express ourselves freely is such a gift. Jay Kantor recently gave me this wonderful quote:

We DO it because we CAN... We 'GiT'to be Writers.

We are insanely lucky that we get to write for the pleasure of it, to express anything we desire, and to share it with the world. I can't think of a more beautiful reason to write than that, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate that I get to write for the joy of it. 

Gratitude = Joy

Also, Joy is my middle name, so...

Here’s to a year of JOY on Vocal. I hope you hold me to it!

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I’d like to give a shout-out to my friend, Tony, and his wife, April. We had a very meaningful chat about joy. Since then, the word has been implanted in my conscious and subconscious mind, which is probably why this specific word fought for the spotlight here. Thank you, friends!