I've Got Something To Say

This Is What I Learned Today: This Is What I Learned in The Past Year

Some brilliance that I stumbled upon pretty randomly. This advice has helped me so much already.

mattlearnedsomething:

I graduated from college nearly one year ago. Here’s what I’ve learned since then:

1. I love my parents.

2. I love my hometown.

3. I could never live with my parents.

4. I could never live in my hometown.

5. Taxes suck.

6. Realtors and Landlords suck.

7. Insurance is…

wasgolden:

meganfalley:

“A Letter to Alexander Graham Bell from his Deaf Wife, Mabel” a poem by Karly Fesolowich and winner of the Coaches Award for Best Persona Poem at CUPSI 2012.

Remember when I said I’d only post poetry videos here this month if you absolutely *had* to watch them? Well, today is the last day of NAPOWRIMO, and this is WORTH IT. 

SUUUUUUUNY!

The Third Annual Wade-Lewis Poetry Slam Invitational is gonna be off the hook. Performances by Mo Browne, Eboni Hogan, Urban Lyrics, and One Way. Collegiate slam teams from all over this great nation including Wesleyan, UPenn, Dartmouth, Yale, Brown, Clark, Oneonta, and of course, New Paltz. This shit cray. You’re gonna want to be there. Tell your friends. http://www.facebook.com/events/175337315902246/

The Third Annual Wade-Lewis Poetry Slam Invitational is gonna be off the hook. Performances by Mo Browne, Eboni Hogan, Urban Lyrics, and One Way. Collegiate slam teams from all over this great nation including Wesleyan, UPenn, Dartmouth, Yale, Brown, Clark, Oneonta, and of course, New Paltz. This shit cray. You’re gonna want to be there. Tell your friends.

http://www.facebook.com/events/175337315902246/

September Organized and hosted my first slam… and it wasn’t a total failure! In fact it was really a lot of fun. I met Jon Sands, which was crazy. Other than that, there were more Rock Hawk slams, and that was fun stuff. 

September

Organized and hosted my first slam… and it wasn’t a total failure! In fact it was really a lot of fun. I met Jon Sands, which was crazy. Other than that, there were more Rock Hawk slams, and that was fun stuff. 

August Dan and I went to Maine to visit my parents. We hiked through their backyard, rode in inner tubes up the river, ate and drank lots of lovely food and drinks. My dad proclaimed that someday this will all be mine. We bought a ton of liquor in New Hampshire on the way back because there’s no tax on alcohol in New Hampshire.  August was also the first Rock Hawk Slam. I got to see Mike Rosen and Josh Smith again. It was like falling back into an old and comfortable life. Slamming again was awesome, but I also realized that if I want to continue to do it, I’ll have to continue writing new three minute poems. Speaking of poems, I also got 3 of my poems published in The Legendary in August. Woot! It was the first time I ever submitted anything anywhere. A month later, some of my other less amazing poems got rejected from a few other online poetry journals. That brought me back to reality finally after nearly a year of only accomplishments, and I realized that if I want to produce good writing, I’m gonna need to give each piece a lot more of my time. Anything good I’ve ever written has started out as a piece of crap that I slowly polished to gold.

August

Dan and I went to Maine to visit my parents. We hiked through their backyard, rode in inner tubes up the river, ate and drank lots of lovely food and drinks. My dad proclaimed that someday this will all be mine. We bought a ton of liquor in New Hampshire on the way back because there’s no tax on alcohol in New Hampshire. 

August was also the first Rock Hawk Slam. I got to see Mike Rosen and Josh Smith again. It was like falling back into an old and comfortable life. Slamming again was awesome, but I also realized that if I want to continue to do it, I’ll have to continue writing new three minute poems.

Speaking of poems, I also got 3 of my poems published in The Legendary in August. Woot! It was the first time I ever submitted anything anywhere. A month later, some of my other less amazing poems got rejected from a few other online poetry journals. That brought me back to reality finally after nearly a year of only accomplishments, and I realized that if I want to produce good writing, I’m gonna need to give each piece a lot more of my time. Anything good I’ve ever written has started out as a piece of crap that I slowly polished to gold.

July I went to camp with Dan (his family’s place on the St. Lawrence River). It was lovely. Watching him drive a boat was hot. This trip made me want to be rich and spend my afternoons speeding through water. Dan surprised me by taking me on a cruise ship. We drank strawberry daiquiris and listened to live music by a man my dad’s age who played the best folk covers I’ve ever heard. That was easily the best date of my life.  For the first time in my life, I worked on my birthday. I could have easily gotten coverage, but I figured that at 22, I should be an adult. It wasn’t bad.

July

I went to camp with Dan (his family’s place on the St. Lawrence River). It was lovely. Watching him drive a boat was hot. This trip made me want to be rich and spend my afternoons speeding through water. Dan surprised me by taking me on a cruise ship. We drank strawberry daiquiris and listened to live music by a man my dad’s age who played the best folk covers I’ve ever heard. That was easily the best date of my life. 

For the first time in my life, I worked on my birthday. I could have easily gotten coverage, but I figured that at 22, I should be an adult. It wasn’t bad.

June

There are no photos of June. June was the first month in our new apartment, one that was decidedly ours and only ours. June was the first month I worked full-time with no school to go back to in the fall. It was very real. 

May was ama(y)zing. Since I was the only senior on the slam team, I got to have my own poetry show. Even better? People came! even though it was during the last week of classes, even though I’m just me and not that spectacular. There were people I didn’t even know there. There were also people who I knew, but didn’t know were that supportive of me, like some of Dan’s friends and our roommates and people from my English classes and my old suitemate who I was pretty sure hated me for being so mean to her when we were suitemates. It felt awesome.  Karly hosted Take Back the Night. It was our last hoorah as a team (the girls of the team anyway). May was also graduation which was bizarre and really long. Dan’s family and my family all went out for dinner afterwards. Then Dan and I went to my aunt’s house so my mom could take pictures of us and feed us cake and give us cheesy graduation books which “help you with your future” and provide inspirational quotes. Oh! And I almost forgot that I also won the Vincent Tomaselli award for Poetry, which is the highest honor for poetry writing awarded by the SUNY New Paltz English Department. I also performed “Cunt” for my professors and they loved it. It made me giggle.

May

was ama(y)zing. Since I was the only senior on the slam team, I got to have my own poetry show. Even better? People came! even though it was during the last week of classes, even though I’m just me and not that spectacular. There were people I didn’t even know there. There were also people who I knew, but didn’t know were that supportive of me, like some of Dan’s friends and our roommates and people from my English classes and my old suitemate who I was pretty sure hated me for being so mean to her when we were suitemates. It felt awesome. 

Karly hosted Take Back the Night. It was our last hoorah as a team (the girls of the team anyway). May was also graduation which was bizarre and really long. Dan’s family and my family all went out for dinner afterwards. Then Dan and I went to my aunt’s house so my mom could take pictures of us and feed us cake and give us cheesy graduation books which “help you with your future” and provide inspirational quotes.

Oh! And I almost forgot that I also won the Vincent Tomaselli award for Poetry, which is the highest honor for poetry writing awarded by the SUNY New Paltz English Department. I also performed “Cunt” for my professors and they loved it. It made me giggle.

April April was CUPSI! The team that I wanted to win won the whole shebang. I didn’t really meet that many new poets, but I was reunited with friends from past competitions and got to know some of them better. I went to a lot of great workshops, including one on persona poetry by David Blair, master of persona poems. I’m so happy I got to see him perform one last time. I wish I had told him how much he changed my life. 

April

April was CUPSI! The team that I wanted to win won the whole shebang. I didn’t really meet that many new poets, but I was reunited with friends from past competitions and got to know some of them better. I went to a lot of great workshops, including one on persona poetry by David Blair, master of persona poems. I’m so happy I got to see him perform one last time. I wish I had told him how much he changed my life.