Don't Give a Crap

I gave myself a lot of rules in 2023.

If you scroll back to the beginning of my measly excuse for a list of published stories on Vocal, you'll find very carefully curated poems paired with moody black and white photographs.

I wanted to build a brand. I wanted you to see my profile and know what to expect. I cared.

I think I cared so much that I burned out faster than a match at a birthday party thrown by a helicopter parent. You'll notice that I haven't published any content since... I don't know. November?

And let's not forget to mention my senryu vomiting episode. Bless the souls who tolerated my hopeless desire to win an "easy" challenge.

I have to admit that when I joined Vocal, money was on my mind. I needed a side gig. My boyfriend and I had just bought a house. I was living paycheck to paycheck. It seemed stupid not to try.

And I wanted to impress my dad. He's what my mother affectionately calls an LD. Language Dork. He's a genius with words, in more than one tongue. He's boggled my mind with story pitches. His praise is where I find confidence and pride.

But what if I stopped writing for you? For judges? For my dad?

What if I wrote for me? For Emma Kate? For Em?

I want to vomit my world onto pages. I want to have a tiny notebook in my breast pocket where I jot juicy tidbits. I want to publish what my eyes would say if they could speak. (May God bless you, Mark Zusak. (Another LD I admire.))

I already have tidbits on my mind. I find this one humorous.

A chicken leg. Bites taken out of its middle, all the way around the bone. Then discarded on the sidewalk outside of my office.

How in the name of all things holy did it get there? Whose tongue is still tasting the grease on their lips? Whose hand dropped it onto the cement, still damp from rain? Whose eyes peered at an exposed tendon or pink vein and decided they'd have enough?

I want to write about chicken legs. But not just. I want every little thing I love on a page. For me. Like a photo album for my brain pictures.

Here's another.

A teepee in a backyard. A trampoline twisted in the last storm. Colored string lights in porch rafters. A mother in living room light, tidying shelves on shelves of books. Shelves shaped like branches of trees. Her children's art pinned on the walls. No frames. Just fingerprints on paper.

I pass that house daily. It's a treasure trove of joy. Why haven't I written about it yet?

Maybe I thought you wouldn't be interested. Maybe invented romanticism isn't for everyone. But why should I care?

I used to think I'd be Jo March when I grew up. Maybe I am. Writing and writing and writing endlessly for a newspaper. Stories that I believe matter. But maybe they don't carry feeling.

I wrote a poem once for my mother. Its images came from a photo she took of my brothers and me one Easter. We squeezed onto a soggy wooden bench in our backyard, and I cheesed while the youngest of us wailed through tears.

That poem made my mother teary. Her friends told me they cried. Strangers were moved by a moment long gone. Because it was personal.

I fear that what's personal isn't always relatable. I've never won a popularity contest, unless you count the "Best Writer" senior superlative my peers begrudgingly gave me, the chief editor of the high school newspaper.

But I'm sure someone else out there would find joy in the journey of a half-eaten chicken leg. Right?

Ugh. But I'm doing it again. I care about what you think. It's human to care about what you think of me. Especially if I want to succeed.

But that's just it. Jo March didn't find happy success until she wrote about her sisters. Until she wrote about something she cared for. Something personal.

That's what I want for me. I want to preserve my brain pictures. Pictures of my sister. My brothers. My mother. My father. The family cat that died on Thanksgiving.

And I plan not to care about whether you like it or not. Judges, too. I won't submit content to every Vocal challenge, because I won't write if I don't want to. And it's not about money. I want Vocal, for me, to be about feeling.

So, I give myself one rule for 2024: Don't give a crap.

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This piece was written in response to the #200 challenge issued by Vocal: "Write about your aspirations for yourself as a creator on Vocal in 2024."