Real Talk With My Old Self

Last week, I was doing something mundane when a few sentences popped into my head, and I knew I had to write them down. The words just flew out of me. Then I read them and realized they were vastly different from anything I’ve written so far. This wasn’t a blog post or a teaching moment. I was writing what I later discovered is “free verse”—a type of poetry you can (apparently) write without knowing anything about poetry.

Three days later, I had six such “poems”, which I titled “Real Talk With My Old Self.” I don’t know where they came from, where they’re going, or if they’re any good, but this felt like a breakthrough in that I managed to express something in writing that feels closer to what I express with my art.

My initial instinct was to send them to a couple of friends for feedback. But then I asked myself a question I try to ask often: “What would I do if I didn’t care what other people thought?” And my inner voice said, “I would post them.”

I just posted one. That doesn’t mean I don’t care what people think—of course I do. But I’m trying to let my intuition, not my fears, dictate my actions.

If you care to read, you can find my post here. But more importantly:

What would you do today if you didn’t care what other people thought?

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