Boys Like Girls & A Dinosaur

Can you spot the dino in this newsletter?

I’ve been in an interesting spot creatively recently. A lot of ups, and some downs. Please enjoy this excerpt from a rough draft of an essay I’ve been working on.

Starting with the All-American Rejects and Ending In Creative Hope

Sami and I loved the All-American Rejects. Well, I know I loved AAR, and Sami and I were best friends, so we were in it together. That’s how it works in middle school when you’re still working on this thing called identity.

We listened almost religiously to Mix 93 point 3 (the point is an integral part of the jingle) while growing up in the suburbs in the early 2000s. Every year the radio station had a December concert called Jingle Jam and in our 6th-grade year, the All-American Rejects were headlining.

Our eyes glowed with the blue light of the old-school desktop monitor in the living room at Sami’s house. (This was before we all had our own devices and family computers were regulated to living rooms.) We saw the date on the band’s website and immediately wondered how we could convince our parents to let us go. We were willing to trade anything: chores, TV time, whatever currency preteens have to bargain with.

When we achieved what had felt impossible, it was my first concert and it was at Uptown Theater. Now, we were wholeheartedly there for AAR. But Boys Like Girls opened the night, and they stole the show with cascading guitar riffs and infectious energy. 

Afterward, Sami and I quietly asked ourselves, “Do we like them more than AAR?”

Blasphemy!

But…also a little bit true.

—

Then, they were always there. Lighting up the screen of my iPod Nano (#throwback). We were part of the generation that invented trying to hide your earbuds in your hoodie sleeve in the back of class. 

BLG put words to angsty feelings of teenagerdom and the melodrama of middle school and junior high. We too had crushes whose voices were the soundtracks to our summers. We too wanted to make peace with an empty town. 

Graduation: The Great Escape. 

Boys Like Girls carried me into and through my freshman year of college. I remember listening in my first car. Windows down. Dreaming of love. Broken-hearted. Still restless for something more. 

And then they just sort of faded.

—

Lately, I’ve been feeling frustrated. It’s so easy to be impatient in the pursuit of creative projects. Things go wrong, take longer than expected, and sometimes you find yourself wondering if anything you’re doing matters.

Call it serendipitous, but the week I was feeling my lowest recently, Boys Like Girls announced a new single and new album after 12 years of silence.

I came home after yet another open mic and listened to the new single in my apartment. And felt like I was 13 again. Like it’s not too late. 

It’s never too late to come back to the project. To recommit. To keep going. Or to start something new. Even after 12 years. 

We’re only here for a moment, which is somehow a fact that commands gravity but demands levity when everything is said and done.

We’re only blood and sugar, right?

I’m finally on Button Poetry’s YouTube channel! What happened to make the Button gods smile and put this several-year-old video up is beyond me, but please enjoy this performance from the 2020 Woman of the World Poetry Slam in Dallas, TX, and share with a friend if you feel like it!

You can also find my poem “Fun-Sized” in the latest issue of Pile Press. (Issue 006)

I’m very excited to have “Fun-Sized” in print because it’s actually a part of my KC Fringe Show this year.

Also very excited for this show coming up in a couple weeks!

Remember to check out Chill Subs for submission opportunities! I’ll get back to sharing specific ones in the fall when I’m back on the submission game!

Here’s A Writing Prompt

Write “A Brief History” of something you know a lot about. Or something you don’t know a lot about and have fun with it!

“A Brief History of Candlesticks”

“A Brief History of My Mom’s Diagnosis”

“A Brief History of …”

You get it.

A Writing Challenge:

Write for 10 minutes every day for 2 weeks and see what happens!

Not sure where to take your writing practice next? On my blog this month I wrote about setting goals for your writing.

Read it here!