Come as you are

Okay, I want you to listen up, really, because I love you. I’m not afraid to say that. I mean it.

This morning I was having a nervous breakdown. Sunday night I start teaching my writing classes again and I’m scared. So I tried to do what I have always done, writing copious notes, trying to make it all perfect. BUT MY PRINTER WILL NOT WORK.

Now I am already nervous because I am going to be doing this Zoom platform which was my DREAM platform and truly I am thrilled to be using it but here’s the thing… separate and apart from just the scary technology part of it all I have a desktop that is a few years old, the camera in it is not slick, I can’t seem to get a really crystal clear picture, and then there is the fact that I am not going to be coming to you from a real techy gorgeous studio with an artful background. I will be coming to you, with my wabi sabi, cattywompus, lopsidedish sort of face BUT WITH A HUGE OPEN HEART and I will be giving 150% and even then it will not be perfect.

So I went to therapy today and my therapist told me that I was a great teacher, that it was going to go well, that I needn’t worry, and that I needed to relax. All would be well. But let me explain my fear and oh lordy if this doesn’t make me feel embarrassed and vulnerable I don’t know what will.

From my late 20’s until my late 50’s I taught — I am, while a little shy, not completely — an amazing journal/writing class. I wrote incredible material for every class. I mean EVERY class, weekly, for decades. My outlines were, I kid you not, 25 pages long — mind BIG PRINT for easy viewing for me — tons of quotes, reading from all manner of sources. I had people repeating my classes ongoing so that I had to add extra nights of teaching, I had waiting lists to get in my classes. My classes were so structured, so — well, you came in, you didn’t breathe, I led you into it, we wrote, we read, we wrote, we read, you were swept away! And when you left you had really GOTTEN SOMETHING out of it. Your life was transformed. I am telling you, I was amazing at it.

I realize that this is not something that people say, but I am making a point.

I had boxes and boxes of files. All of my outlines for classes. And when you left one class you left with a sheet of daily writing exercises to take you through the week. They were gorgeous, there was a lot there. I had hundreds and hundreds of pages of material, boxes full of file folders of material from teaching writing for decades.

And in one brief night, February 5, 2014, I lost it all, all of that material, in the fire. I lost so much in that fire, but decades of material that I will never get back. Gone, forever.

And my confidence, as a teacher, came from the fact that I had so OVER-prepared, written material that was so detailed it was like having a script, like a piece of performance art, that wowed people, that they walked away from as if having had an amazing experience, was where all of my confidence lay, but it is all gone. It doesn’t exist anymore.

Still, I have written since I was 9 years old with a kind of zeal that is unparalleled in my life. I am a writer through and through and I am a good teacher, the thing is, the teacher that was has gone through a metamorphosis. The teacher that I am is one that will have to stand naked before you with what I know in this moment to be true. Writing matters. Writing in community is so powerful it will change your life. And there doesn’t need to be an involved, over-prepared, huge amount of material to make it a good class.

And it doesn’t matter that though I would give anything to have a shiny new computer with a fabulous camera that would bring me to you bright and clear the one I have will be a way that I will still be able to come to you, kind of shy, but with a heart so big, so huge, so wide open that I know, now, today, that it will be enough.

Today my therapist told me to just do it. That it will be good, that it will be enough, that it will work.

But my printer doesn’t work, and there will be no writing 25 pages of notes that end up being almost like performance art. There will be some handwritten notes, and the exercises I have are good, I know that already.

So what I did was leave therapy and do my errands, the last of which was to go to the grocery store. I needed a notebook to hand write my notes in since my printer is not working. I bought the notebook for less than $3 that you see at the top of this post. Fearless and Free. It thrilled me to my TOES to find this notebook. I could have bought one for almost $1 less but when I saw this I knew it was the one I needed. I will write my notes for Sunday night’s class in it, just basic notes, no big deal, certainly no 25 pages, and we will write together, and we will begin our journey in what I feel is going to be a very special thing, in its simplicity probably more important than the work I did for decades.

And so what I want to say to you is this… Please, please join us. Do not worry about what Jack Kerouac called your “experience, language or knowledge.” Do not worry how you look, on video — as I said I will be coming to you a bit fuzzy, from my home, no gorgeous background, with my lopsided Bells Palsy mouth — but oh my word I will be coming to you with such a huge heart, and so much love, and we are, I believe, oh my God, I will even say I know, coming together in something that is going to grow into something so amazing and beautiful simply because we are who we are, nothing special, nothing fancy, just with our huge open hearts, and we are going to write together, and what we are going to be doing is going to change all of our lives in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

I hope you can join us. I promise you, it’s time. It’s time for you, for me, for us all.

If not, why not? If not now, when? As poet Mary Oliver wrote, “What is it you will do with your one wild and precious life?” What we will do is this. We will come together, we will embrace our lives, and we will begin to be what we were meant to be whether we are 30 or 90 or anywhere in between.

Come as you are. Join us, will you?

If you are interested in joining us on Sunday nights please send me an email to: TheSundayNightWritingGroup@gmail.com. I am going to be using a MailChimp list to send out information about the group and I must have your written permission to add you to the list. Simply say “Please add me to the list” and give me the email address you would like to use plus tell me why you would like to join the group. This extra step is a security measure. For more information about The Sunday Night Writing Group click on the link herein.