I began to dabble with poetry when I was in the ninth grade. This venture into poetry writing came from a bout of boredom in my sewing class. I suppose the structure of the class clashed with my personality and learning style. We spent the first two or three weeks in formal lecture. I grew bored with this structure after around day four or five. In the margins of my notebook I doodled, yet I was still dreaming of wearing a pair of jeans sewn with my own hands.

When we were given the green light to sit at our sewing machines and begin our projects after cutting out our pattterns, my desire to sew had vanished. I had a new Tigger notebook that had been bought on my family’s Spring Break vacation to Disney World. It was an orange  fuzzy notebook with Tigger’s embroidered mug on the front. The pages were plain orange, no lines. I spent those final days of by freshman year scribbling thoughts and emotions about family, my dreams, my crush, etc. At the time I didn’t have a name for what they were. At first I didn’t even consider them poems because I believed that poems were deep and rhymed. However, I eventually learned (probably after surfing the internet) that poetry could be written as free verse. Free Verse became my jam and still is for the most part.

I grew obsessed with writing in my little orange notebook. The TA (teacher assistant) worried about me because I stayed at my desk with pen and notebook for companions. I was stitching sentences into seams across reams. It was rare to find me sitting at the sewing machine. The TA, bless her heart was always encouraging me to sew. She was resilient but so was I. Looking back I don’t recall how I managed to just barely passed the course; perhaps it was out of pitty?!

I finished my Tigger notebook over the summer and started blogging on a teen platform called kiwibox.com. My first blog was called Bear Hugz. I remember being somewhat apprehensive about posting my work yet the desire to grow in my craft was stronger. As a shy teenager, writing gave me a voice without the fear of judgement. I often felt bolder in writing, something I wasn’t used to.

A finished journal was a rare feat in my early writing days (and sometimes it still is). For over the years, journals (notebooks) would often distract me causing me to buy and begin a new journal at the unfinished expense of my old one.

I still have that first notebook, it serves as a time capsule of my juvenile attempts to write a thing called poetry. My poor Tigger journal  has fallen apart over the years, loosing its back cover and probably several pages have been lost. However, it is safe in my journal trunk.