Okay, so raising kids clearly does not go hand in hand with up-to-date blogging. At least not for me. I would like to state for the record that I am continuing to write my novels at a reasonable pace. Whether my occasional attempt to keep my web presence on simmer is worth anything in the grand scheme of things, I honestly don’t know. Let’s say someday it does matter; I might as well get into the habit of carving out the time to do it. I’ve learned you can make time for things no matter how crazy your days get; you just have to be decisive about which things you’ll prioritize and which things you’ll dismiss with “maybe next time.” So here’s trying for blogging more often than last baby (I am pregnant with my third).

This poem is from the period between my high school graduation and my launch into the ECE field. I was discovering that I was a writer and that it would always be my true career whether or not it ever made me any money. A difficult thing to grapple with when you realize how good you had it as a kid and how hard money is in the grownup world. Because money felt like a mere means to support my writing, it became very frustrating to look ahead at potential years of university or college education which might eventually get me a fake ‘just for money’ career. The first reason I chose the ECE field (my love of young children being a close second) was to qualify myself quickly for a job I could start right away.

Vancouver Career College offered me less than a year of jumping hoops before I’d get the life I wanted. Before that, my last year of high school and my failed attempt to commit to more than the Children’s Literature course in a semester at the University of Northern British Columbia all felt like hoops going nowhere. Hence, this poem:

Hoops

The hoops are law until they are choice.

Out of high school. Where do I jump?

They used to say:

This one, then that one,

One unit, one test,

Through blue hula hoops,

Until the circus parade.

Rehearsals go on, but I want the show,

One part to play that I know I can do.

How many hoops leading only to more?

Talk of “safe” careers that kill my motives?

Jump

Jump

Jump

No promise of landing.

Know what I want, but my eyes flicker down

To check on my feet and the next hoop to jump.