Tag Archives: No-Comfort Zone

NO-COMFORT ZONE WEEK ENDING APRIL 1 2012

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This week was one where I focused on things I need for myself outside my existence as a poet. This is a proactive thing now, rather than the reactive way I have been dealing with things since being handed a severance package after 19 1/2 years with my last employer. In two weeks, I am having a major milestone birthday. I become official then on a couple of fronts: as a retired person and as a fully qualified senior. So it’s a come-to-terms-with it kind of birthday.

This one is a struggle, I admit. But I have a good support system in place. (why do we call our friends a system?) Sorry folks. I have a great group of wonderful friends and fellow poets, without whom life would be rather dull and boring. My biggest regret is that I did not find my poetry for so many years. I can’t really say the time was wasted, although sometimes that is how it feels. I had many years of amazing travel to so many places. When I think that most people don’t go more than 50 miles from home their whole lives, I realize how blessed I have been.

But also why it has been hard for me the last three years to confine my world to its recent limits of Ottawa, Carleton Place and occasionally day trips in the surrounding countryside. I miss the zest that comes with packing and heading out to new destinations or well-loved ones. Next month, I am going to take a trip to Massachusetts. I am nervous about this as it involves facing several personal challenges. I am going to be focusing for the next while on overcoming all that so I can be fully engaged with the writing I hope to do while there. I have taken the first steps. That is my No-Comfort Zone success for this week.

 

NO-COMFORT ZONE WEEK ENDING MARCH 25

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Carol A. Stephen

This week my challenge did not relate to writing or submitting. On a more personal note, I have been having some health issues and trying to deal with them on my own. This week, I finally decided to head to the doctor’s office. It is not a good thing to self-diagnose, for me anyway, because that doesn’t resolve anything for me. I continue to run scripts of “what if” through my head, or drive my friends crazy with the same worries over and over. But this is interfering with a lot of other things, so I needed to ask for help. One of my concerns has been resolved, and beginning this week I will be working to resolve the others. But since this tends to make me lose focus on writing and such, I need to work on the health issues first. I suppose you can say that part of the challenge for me this week was even posting about this!  Carol

 

No-Comfort Zone Week ending March 18

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Carol A. Stephen

This week I sent off 8 poems for submission to an anthology being assembled by a group I belong to, The Ontario Poetry Society. This was rather a safe move  though, as at least two will appear. But still, it is submitting, so I am counting it!   I have done more submitting so far this year than most years entirely, so I am feeling good about it.

I attended the launch of two chapbooks at Tree Reading Series, and was one of the readers for that. These books came out of the two Master Workshops Tree has put on: November 2010 and August 2011.  Another is coming up next month which I will also be attending. The presenter is John Barton, a well-known and respected Canadian poet and editor of The Malahat Review.

Back in January, when I started this challenge and the River of Stones one, I had attended a pottery workshop here in Carleton Place at the studio of Victoria Jenkins. Some of you had asked me to put up the pictures, which I did so the other day. You can see those in my post titled Pottery Cat and Penguins on March 16th. I have also reposted the small stone entitled: Claywork along with the pics.

POTTERY CAT AND PENGUINS FROM JANUARY CHALLENGES, PROMISED PHOTOS

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Here are the promised photos of the pottery pieces I made back in January.

I had written a small stone about them, but working in clay was also a new challenge for me.

 

Here is the small stone again:

Claywork 

finicky fingers hate
to be sticky.
cautious, they hesitate
to work the clay.

but the brick is cool
and moist, waiting
to be poked and prodded,
pounded and flattened.

hands, suddenly eager, begin
to mold pieces into a plate
to hold penguins as they cuddle
and cluster in one corner

do they fear the kiln’s fire
or are they just a little
too far from home?

Carol A. Stephen
January 11, 2012

 

Not sure what happened to my penguins. The two larger ones were supposed to be on either side of the smallest, with the father penguin’s wing sheltering the small one, and the mother’s touching the baby on the other side. But I was warned that they may not be in the same place after firing. I still like them anyway!

And, as you can see, the cat turned out to be more of an impression of cat or memory of cat rather than anything approaching a real one, but at least you get the idea. I think.

Carol