The Things I’m Not Doing So that I Can Focus on One Thing

1. I’m writing a book of poems. Of 88 poems, about a specific set of things. (Constellations) It’s as ambitious as a novel, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
2. I started this collection in grad school, back when Bush the second was busy invading Iraq and spending our children’s future on a (wrong) hunch about nuclear capabilities.
3. At that time I wrote about 25 poems. And then…I let it linger.
4. I picked it up a year ago. After trimming out poems that no longer interested me, I had 13 poems left. Plus two prologue poems, which to this day, remind me exactly why I started the effort in the first place.
5. In the past year I have written about 55 more constellations.
6. That means I have focused. I used to believe that creativity spread wildly magnified itself. But I have few fully completed projects to show for it. And no book publication. I have rebelieved.
7. I have only 20 constellations left to poem.
8. That’s the back quarter, the last slip of the moon’s worth.
9. Now.
10. To get there, here’s what I haven’t done.
11. I haven’t organized my office.
12. No carpet cleaning has happened in this time period.
13. My office is still tangerine- and creamcicle-walled. Lovely colors, but not for me. Not for poem-ing about constellations. For that you need blue.
14. I have given up paper crafts (I love handmade paper, but it had to go.) Also, jewelry making.
15. I have given up baking. Although, I gave that up too, to save calories.
16. Not that it helped in that regard.
17. I jettisoned (love that word) washing my car every month.
18. I forgot to get pedicures. (That’s a first world problem, but one of my true loves.)
19. I avoided freelance work.I joined no committees. I haven’t had many people over.
20. I let the garden overrun itself.
21. Wow. That’s a lot.
22. I have run out of ideas, and ran into them again. I became overwhelmed at the vastness of the universe, universes, galaxy, galaxies.
23. I came through that black hole.
24.  And kept sitting down to tackle just one more.
25. And one more.
26. And one more.
27. It takes that much. I always knew I had it.
28. I’m almost there.
29. I have so far to go.