What does it mean to want to be published in a book?

So it happened again. I submitted a poem I wrote to an anthology being put together by someone I know and it got accepted. You can find my poem along with countless other poems by some of the most talented poets in Southern California in the book A Poet is Poet No Matter How Tall an anthology by Raundi K. Moore-Kondo. While I'm honored to have been a part of the anthology, I don't think my name on the table of contents is gonna sell any books to anyone besides my parents. If I'm honest, I don't even have a clear recollection of which poem I submitted. I've missed most of the book release events that have happened lately. I've been adjusting to the hectic Fall 2013 season of Andyland: new job, new schedule, the changing weather affecting my sleep.

Raundi is one of the most motivated and talented poets I know. She loves the written word and teaches poetry to groups of home schooled kids. She invites poets from the area to help teach her classes and share there work. She has a website too. Oh what's this: http://www.theloveofwords.com/ a link to her website where you can find out about taking your Southern Californian children to so they can learn about poetry and expressing themselves through written verse? Why yes it is. How convenient for those that are interested in not raising Philistines, but instead well rounded individuals.

It feels strange to be published in something. I don't feel a connection to this new anthology, which was also the case for the last one. I suppose part of it has something to do with not getting to the book parties and events, but at least with this one I feel like my poem belongs in the anthology.

I still regret the poem I submitted to the other anthology. Now my poem about gifts to give loved ones who've died is in a book of poems about zombies. While reading humorous poems about the zombie outbreaks you run across mine; which just makes you feel uncomfortable in the context. I always felt like it shouldn't have been accepted, but the guy publishing it knew me and I'd kind of written the poem off a prompt he gave me in a writing group he'd run and he liked it a lot so he just put it in. I'm grateful I got to be associated with the book and the press, but I feel like I could have written (and subsequently did write) a better zombie themed poem.

The whole thing had me question a lot of my previous motivations in my work. I'd always wanted to have my name on the cover of a book. Not on the cover page of an ebook, but a physical object to have on a shelf. I am not sure that's a motivation I can follow anymore. I don't think there will be a sudden revival of people not buying shiny new tablet readers and instead spending more money for actual books. This doesn't mean I don't still want to get my work out there. I've just got to rethink my approach. I think 2014 will be a better year for me than the past few have been and it'll make my attempts at getting my work out there much easier. Now I just need to spend the rest of this year figuring out what my new approach will be.

Keeping up with my sleep

When I find myself laying in bed wishing I were more tired than I was, I'm reminded of days when I used to wish I had more time in the day to get everything in I wanted done. I used to stay up until the sun came up over the weekends just out of habit. I always found my most interesting ideas came to me in the middle of the night. I'm not the only one who thinks so. It's a popular idea.

From a man of few written words, Rives:

Society's sleeping habits have changed dramatically over the past century. Compensating for all that giant populations bring to a city. Competitive job markets, 40 hour work weeks, commuting, and getting up at the crack of dawn the following day to fight for freeway space early to avoid the slow crawl of traffic. People 100 years ago had a lot more free time on their hands to set their own schedules. Of course they also had child labor, no safety standards, and no indoor plumbing. I imagine that meant many of their free hours were spent avoiding dying rather than spent on leisurely activities.

I've always thought about changing my sleeping pattern in some way. I thought of going to bed extra early, waking up for a few hours in the middle of the night to read or write, then back to sleep until dawn for the day. I wanted to try some crazy Uberman's sleep schedule in college. My main hesitation was that everything I read said that kind of change to your sleep schedule typically involved a period of adjustment of about 10 days where you wanted to kill yourself from lack of regular sleep; and who needs to deal with that for any days let alone 10?

Since I don't have any trust fund money headed my way, and I'm not counting on any lotto winnings rolling in to free up my time to have a ridiculous sleep schedule. I'll just do what I've always done: celebrate day light savings time in all of it's brain tricking weirdness. This year my day light savings resolution is to use the extra day light I have in the morning to help get me use to waking up AND being functional early in the morning. I'm gonna use the extra night hours to trick my brain into thinking it's the middle of the night. That's kind of the same thing as a dramatic adjustment to your sleeping pattern, right?

My new job doesn't have mirrors for practicing jazz hands

I finally escaped the gravitational pull of my last part-time job and into an exponentially better full-time job. It still feels like a dream. I keep expecting them to tell me the really awful part. "Oh by the way, in exchange for the free bagels on Monday, this dude comes by Thursday to punch us all in the neck." or "Hey it's time for the weekly thumbtack eating contest. Participation is mandatory." or "No that's not the fire alarm. That's the: it's Friday alarm. Yes it will be sounding all day. No we can't turn it down. Knob broke off at '11' years ago."

Thinking back to what I put up with for 8 months or so those things wouldn't really be that unexpected in this position. I can't believe I used to sit at a desk where I could not extend my legs fully and still use the computer without sitting sideways. I'm kind of a giant, so sitting at the desk at my last job was similar to sitting in the backseat of a two door Volkswagen. Before that if I extended my legs incorrectly I accidentally unplugged an entire side of the office. Being able to have my legs in front of me without fear of disaster while using a computer is a strange and new experience to me. Shockingly, it is much easier to do work when you're comfortable.

The new job is full-time; which previously had been a major issue for me. Full-time jobs mean less time for pursuing my aspirations of writing something worth reading. Looking back on it though, it wasn't the hours the job took, it was the hours I spent getting there. An hour each way driving to get less than 30 miles drains you whichever direction you're headed. When I would take public transportation to get there, it meant 1.5 hours of public transportation to get 30 miles as long as I didn't miss any of my connection. Having that crap commute made the stress of my job seem that much less appealing. Who wants to drag themselves out of a nice warm bed to go to a place they know will make them unhappy by the end of the day?

I'm still not sure how my new job will turn out, but at least I haven't found any random word documents in a some hidden folder in the computer's recent documents pleading to me to leave before it's too late or anything. Not saying that necessarily happened at any of my old jobs, just saying I've learned my lesson and those are the type of red flags I keep an eye out.
-AB

Getting Lost on my Commute Back to Work

Every time I go looking for work, I inevitably go for the first job that is offered to me. This is a terrible way to pick your place of employment. It leads to an inevitable feeling of not belonging there. The novelty of income wears thin when you are someplace you don't want to be. It isn't that you don't like the place necessarily, but more along the lines of not feeling engaged by the work.

Any time I go looking for work, I have visions of some close to perfect job just landing in my lap. Some high-paying job I could get that would relieve the stresses in my life. That job does not exist in the real world though (at least not yet...), so I end up crawling through the muck of craigslist ads with bad spelling, high standards, and poor wages for anyone who isn't trying to become a salesman.

I remember dreaming of becoming a teacher some day. Then the crushing world of academia reared it's hideous beastie face at me and I lost interest in it a bit too late in the game to change things up while I was at college. I embrace my love of the dying medium of books and their wordfulness. I'm adjusting my dreams to the new world in which I do not what to be broken by the standardized test teaching nonsense of most public schools these days.

So what's it mean when you lose a dream. You have to find another one obviously. That part I haven't figured out yet. I don't know where my dream career is and given the prospects being offered by the internet's go to junk pile. Still, I think it's time I tried to figure out what the next dream is gonna be.
-AB

BUELLMAGGEDON!

Buellmaggedon came and went. California survived having the full weight of awesomeness from two people with Buell DNA within it's borders. My little sister came out to visit two weeks ago.When I say little I mean a 26 year old sister. I have not seen any of my family in over a year. It was wonderful to spend time with her and start to show her some of the things that I have fallen in love with in California. The last time she had come to visit, I didn't know the area well enough at all to really show her around. Plus I had to work the entire time. This trip I had the entire week with her. I got to re-experience my favorite things in California with someone who was experiencing them for the first time.

We spent the week over-indulging in everything. Lots of trips to the candy store and as much delicious food as we could find. I was sad to see her go, but the whole trip had left an overall feeling of renewed love for where I am in my life. Her being here also got me thinking a lot about the past. A re-evaluation of how I became who I am and if that's who I want to be going forward through the rest of my life.

Very little of what I learned in college was useful outside of college, but there were a few noted exceptions.  One of those exceptions my class on the bible as a literary text. Specifically the lecture on the book of Revelations. The professor stressed from the onset that Revelations is apocalyptic writing; which is not to be confused with writing about THE Apocalypse. Apocalyptic writing is about how societies crumble and are reborn. It is the cycle of destruction and rebirth. It isn't the end of life, it is life.

I find that same cyclical pattern happening all around me. It as a cycle that I, and probably most people, have to go through. The loss of who you were and rediscovery of who you are. There are a lot of things that can trigger one of these sort of things in my life: the waxing and waning of that feeling of potential in myself, a broken heart, losing my job, losing a friend, etc. I can see it in my writing. I look back at past poems and journal entries and I can see the cycles playing out.

Since my sister's visit, I have felt like I'm on the upswing out of a mentally destructive period. I can see how much confidence I had been lacking in my own ideas and understandings of what I am living. I'm in the beginning of a rebuilding cycle. I am not sure what I'm building just yet, but I feel like something is boiling up inside my brain's guts and is going to find a way out of my head sooner or later.

Seasick is Lovesick's Wavy Cousin

Seasick is Lovesick’s Wavy Cousin

A Storybook Poem by Andy "Ocean in my Beard" Buell

Illustrations by Tom "Sassy Sailor" Dewing

Out later than he should have been,
a nervous sailor
gets caught in a storm of night lightning.
As the angry waves threatened
to steal his vessel as a trophy
for the lonely ocean floor,

the sailor stood at the
side of his boat, opened
his chest and placed his
heart in a bottle.

He hoped offering his beat
to a lonely sea dweller
would calm the waters
and the wind to bring him home.

A mermaid, who longed for the
taste of atmosphere,

caught his sinking rhythm.
Placed it to her ear and heard
the sound of the shore
echoing in its depths.

She opened her chest,
placed her own saltwater pump
into the sailor's bottle,
floated it back to him,
The bubble-tears she wiped from her eyes
carried it up to the surface.

The sailor plucked it from the waves,
and felt her salt-water rhythm
as the winds changed
and the ocean guided him to shore.

Safely to port, salt-water 
pumping in his veins,
the sailor wrote thank you notes
to the mermaid for returning him home.

With sand between his toes, 

he sent out fleets of these

messages in Mermaidese,

filled with hope that someday

he can thank her in person,

when they've learned

 to breathe the same atmosphere

The End

What I learned during 30 in 30.

Every year during National Poetry Writing Month (April) I try to challenge myself to write 30 poems in 30 days. This was the first year I was able to complete them on time, without haiku-ing my way to 30 "poems". There are a lot of people who make a habit of posting what they write onto social media websites. I am not that brave with my words. This year I tried to see it more as an experience in understanding how to refine my own process of writing more than a social occasion.

In years past I've tried to share everything and felt a weird pressure to write something great the first time. I am not good at great the first time. This year I tried to think of it more like a lot of first drafts coming out however they are. I tried to move out of my comfort zones and really push through the work until the idea was complete, even though none of the poems would be. Just in thinking of them as first drafts to be fixed at a later date made it easier to get the poems written. No one should expect perfection out of their first draft.

I'm hoping to take that same attitude towards the blog this year. Instead of spending five months not giving it any time because I don't feel I've got something worth hearing in me, I'll take more time saying whatever it is I'm going to say. If I let my draft's goal be completing the idea, then I'll be able to complete the work when I go back to reflect on the idea.

Planned posts on the horizon: Buellmageddon and how to survive it, Getting lost on my commute to work, and more than a few poetry posts?