Maya My My

I realize I may be a little while past the curve here, but I just finished reading Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Now, having finished it, I'm still not really clear on exactly why the caged bird DOES sing (though I have my ideas about that), but my god does Maya know how to write! Poetry just pours out of her pen. Aside from it being an engaging story and a heartfelt glimpse into a world I can never truly understand, I was incredibly moved by the sheer beauty of the writing and the way she strings her phrases together. I found myself savoring the words and lingering over countless sentences, reading them again and again, marveling at her mastery of the language. I haven't read much of her work, but reading this book made me want to read more and to see how her writing has evolved since then (it was written in the lae 60's, after all). More to the point, reading it inspired me to want to get some words down on "paper", too -- hence this blog, I guess.

In my everyday life -- in my "day job", if you will -- I'm a writer. Well, sort of. I write grant proposals and things for a nonprofit, and I've done it for almost 10 years. It's not exactly poetry, but is creative in its way -- and helps to raise money to support a good cause. I like to write...mostly. But the writing I do for my job isn't really very fulfilling, and I've not really ever explored doing much else beyond writing for business. As I get older, though, I find that I'm becoming more drawn to wanting to explore what lies beyond business in a number of ways; and that includes writing, and it's a big reason I decided to pursue massage therapy as a mid-life career change.

I can certainly be long-winded when I get going, huh? I guess there's more in my head that wants to come out than I think there is. I'm really going to try hard not to put absolutely EVERY thought I have down in this blog, but it might take a little time for me to figure out where that line is. We'll see. For now, it's new and fun, but I've never been all that good with consistency. I'm a typical Aquarian, always looking for the new and different, and I'm easily bored. It's a character "defect" that I'm working on...