Please take your quill, dear poet, and jam it in my eye

There has never been a time in my life that I have despaired my future as a writer like I do right now. Between poetry and fiction, I don't know which end is up, and I feel like I'm clinging to a life raft with a huge hole in it.

When I started fiction, I didn't have any concept of how much I didn't know. I assumed I was a brilliant writer, and as I learned steadily, my understanding of how hard the craft is and how small my place is in it began to grow. Through all of it, though, I've never considered writing to be "too hard."

Poetry is where I started. Years and year ago, before I met anyone that I know now, I was a poet. I stopped writing for several years, and when I went back, I went back to fiction. But, the idea of poetry, the movement of it, the language, has always drawn me. But, sitting in poetry class and not having that innocent naivete I brought to fiction is gut wrenching. I know where my poetry stands in relation to my fiction.

I could handle struggling in poetry, but it has combined with a current struggle on the hardest story I've ever written. Heather, my amazing friend and writing partner, says that it's my strongest and most complex story she's ever seen from me, and I believe her. I think it's so hard because I'm pushing beyond my comfort zone and where I've written before. It's not a one level story, as all of my others have been. I believe it may be the first story I'll publish, whenever the hell I finish it.

So why despair? There are so many things changing for me right now. Operation: DBH is consuming me, as is trying to balance teaching and writing and accomplishing everything I want to accomplish. There's just so much to do, and I don't feel like I have enough time. Not enough hours in the day, not enough days in the week, not enough months in the year to get it all done. I'm not willing to sacrifice anything, so I'm sacrificing a little part of all of it.

I'm frustrated. And the more I think about it, the more frustrated I get. Is it Friday yet? Please?