The Final Slice (For Now)

I tell people all the time one of the most beautiful paradoxes to me is writing. And the reason why is because in order to do it one has to live in an extraordinary place of humility, in the process of making something that perhaps might be shared with the world. On the flip side, the mere notion that someone wants to make something that might be shared with the world is rooted in ego.

Jason Reynolds, from an episode of Unlocking Us with Brené Brown

I can’t believe March is over. What a month to have documented daily. An exhausting month. A scary month. An emotional month. A month that finally, thankfully, is coming to an end, turning itself over to April and new beginnings.

I was wary about this challenge, as it’s probably the most disciplined I’ve been writing in years. Maybe even a decade.

I have always been a writer.

As a kid, I would write stories and create fake newspapers on AppleWorks on my iMac. In middle school, I started blogging on Xanga and LiveJournal with camp friends. For years in high school and college, I wrote every day, whether journaling or free writing, or writing stories and memoirs. I surrounded myself with other writers and edited Caliper, Stuyvesant’s literary magazine, my senior year. I even went to college for Creative Writing. I started running an open mic with my friend, as well as a one-page flyer-style lit mag, and consistently participated in both. But in my final semester, I dropped the major because of a logistical conflict (and conflict between professors) with my other major.

After that, I let writing fall by the wayside. I didn’t feel that I could do it, that anyone would want to read what I wrote. I journaled off and on, but could never quite get back into a groove.

During COVID, I started journaling again more consistently, but I wasn’t producing writing for any audience aside from myself.

It wasn’t until I started teaching writer’s workshop that I rediscovered the love of writing within me, through teaching kids how to go through the writing process themselves. Their excitement and nervousness inspired me to write mentor texts, and then their feedback to those mentor texts fueled me further. In our memoir unit this year, one student said, “I don’t understand why you’re a teacher. Why aren’t you a writer?”

Well, I am both. I am a teacher. I am a writer. I write for me, I write for audiences (blog followers, my students, my friends when I write love letters to them). I am a copywriter, using words to advertise and persuade.

This writing challenge wasn’t easy. It was quite difficult in fact. And not every post was a real “piece,” if you will. But it was something. And I put myself out there. And for that I’m proud. I hope to keep the momentum going — Tuesday slices? SOLC 2024?