The last time I sat down to write anything of substance for my blog was a month after my wedding, once all the chaos and stress melted off with the makeup and hairspray and lipstick. The last time I sat down to fill in my faithful listeners with life updates, I was a completely different person. Not to sound cliche or anything - because I would never - but, so much has changed, deviated from my standard norm, that it’s hard for me to put it all together in words.

For a writer, that’s the hardest obstacle to hurdle - not being able to easily articulate how much has changed since I’ve taken a deep dive into the Truth About Coffee. Well, I guess here goes nothing.

Once the excitement of marriage bled into the routine that is now my day-to-day, I really evaluated my career and my goals. Most of you know that I’m a teacher, and I truly love my job. I thoroughly enjoy teaching students how history and literature become one and how to creatively tap into the parts of their brains that they don’t always gain access to in a math or a science class. I’ve had fun reorganizing my Film curriculum to match new groups of students, and I love finding new texts for my students to read every year. I also took on an AP Language and Composition class, and that has been a challenge, to say the least. But playing rhetorical charades and The Debate Game with a full-fledged referee uniform - thanks to my husband - has made my professional day feel more like a 9-5 of fun than ever before.

However, something in my professional endeavors has always felt like it was missing. Actually, something in my personal life has always felt like it was missing. So once our wedding had come and gone and some of the financial excitement and stress had faded after also becoming newly minted homeowners, I decided to attempt to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine.

I finally stepped into shoes that never felt like they fit quite right - always a tad too big. I finally pursued a degree in writing. Since June of this year, I have been pursuing a Masters (MA) in Creative Writing, and I plan to stay in the program to attain a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) - truly a dream of mine.

But the thing about me and dreams is that we never fully could see eye-to-eye. I always felt as if it would be a wasted venture. No one would ever want to read a published work of mine, let alone the fact that no one would ever even think about publishing something of mine. I always tell my students to set their goals higher than they think they’ll ever reach because if they put the work in, they’ll get there one day.

It was time I finally started believing the cadence that reverberates off the walls of 417. So I jumped. I applied on a whim one day during my prep period and compiled some of my short pieces, blogs, and poems from over the years. And then I waited.

I remember walking through the aisles of Marshalls with my mom looking for little things here and there, when I saw I had missed a call from a number with an area code similar to the school I had applied to. Immediately, I listened to the voicemail from the director of the program telling me that I had made it in to the cohort that would begin in the Fall semester.

I literally jumped for joy like a giddy child and potentially scared the wits out of a store employee. But, I couldn’t contain the affirmation. Someone had read my work and felt it was good enough to cultivate over the next three years.

A few weeks ago, I finished that semester having learned more about poetry and creative nonfiction than I ever thought I would. I spent weeks crafting poetic lines in schemes and forms all new to me, and I explored parts of my past through nonfiction that opened a well of memories that will provide such depth to what I shape in this next semester.

I learned that I am overzealous in the elements and craft aspects of writing that I wish to explore. I have learned to slow down, zoom in, and let the words take me for a ride. I have uncovered an ability to torque syntactic structures in a way that keeps your eyes alert for changes in tempo, rhyme, structure, grammar. I learned that I am a writer, and I always will be.

So, for the next two semesters, I will be reading and writing like I never have before on a full-length manuscript that will maybe one day grace shelves near and far. At least that is my hope, and I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge or a goal or a dream.

That’s it for the Truth About Coffee for now. I’m sure I’ll be back eventually with an update or a poem or two. Until next time …