A New Place to Start

“We have not seen enough of the rough drafts of those we admire. Confidence means forgiving ourselves for the horrors of our first attempts.”

— The School of Life Confidence Prompt Card

Hello, hello, and welcome. My name is Lisa, and I’m very glad to meet you.

Some of you may already know me from Zen and Pi where I have been blogging for a couple of years now. This blog is new. I made it after months and months of struggling to write and realizing that much of what was holding me back was not having a place where I felt truly free to experiment.

For those who don’t know me yet, I’m a 33-years-old aspiring writer born, raised, and currently residing in Denver, Colorado. I work as a Bus Assistant, riding school bus routes with Special Needs children keeping them safe, and entertained, to and from school every day. 

I live with my girlfriend. We’ve been together for over 16 years now and less than a year from now we’ll be calling each other wife. We share our home with an anxious dog, a grumpy cat, and two very shy snakes. I come from a pretty big family that could be described as dysfunctional, but we’re close and we’re trying to be better and that’s enough for me.

I’ve been writing in journals since I was a teenager and have always had some small place on the internet to share my stories and secrets, usually anonymously. About two or three years ago I started writing under my own name and since then I’ve had a couple of pieces picked up by small online publications. I was initially very excited, but the recognition terrified me. I suffered intense imposter syndrome and lost all of my momentum and focus.

I’m trying a few different things to get my mojo back. I’m submitting work to publications again, entering contests, and joining challenges. I’ve also decided to convert Zen and Pi to something separate from myself, a place with its own niche and focus, and writing for myself here.

This is a place to learn how to practice. It’s a place for all my bad ideas and horrible first attempts to go. It’s a place to be accountable. A home base to return to, and start out from, again and again. It’s a place I will become a better writer in.

I like to write short, creative nonfiction and particularly personal, confessional, and memoir pieces but I’m working on perfecting my hand at persuasive and informative posts too. I enjoy poetry and have dabbled in micro-fiction as well. I am cultivating a habit of writing daily in a physical journal, excerpts of which may appear here too. When I’m not writing I like making little collages with words and images I find in magazines or old books.

Like most writers, I started out as a reader first. Right now I’m obsessed with Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and ancient Greek literature. Philosophy is another passion of mine and I’m working my way through authors like Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus. I also read graphic novels though not as much as I used to. My favorite at the moment is the Saga series by Brian K. Vaughan.

Science has always been an interest of mine, especially astronomy and biology. I watch a lot of movies particularly from the horror genre but I’m also into superheroes, documentaries, anything the makes me feel deeply, and anything from A24. I enjoy hiking and consider napping an art form. I’m an admitted coffee snob and a staunch political liberal.

I believe in honest painful self-reflection. I believe in sharing our stories, even the ugly and terrible ones, especially the ugly and terrible ones. I believe that beauty and profound truth can be found in ordinary and everyday places. I believe in being authentic and flawed and in love with humanity. I believe in grey areas.

I am a collector of quotes, perspectives, and interesting facts. I take what is useful—from the past, from religion, from schools of philosophy, from stories, from tradition, from ideologies—and leave the rest. I am a weigher of points, arguments, and ideas, and I am a talker.

Like most talkers, I guess I’m just looking for a place to shout myself out into the void and waiting for someone out there—or something inside me—to answer back. 

What I mean to say is, even though I am writing here for me first, I’m hoping that you’ll find something you need too and that we both might find a way forward. So, follow along, leave comments, say hello, and leave all the feedback you can.

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Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash