Blog Reflection #2

With my seventh creative act, the poem "High Back Chair", I struggled with the writing of it. I originally conceived the idea after seeing a High Back Chair on someones lawn with a free sign on it while riding my bike. I thought about how something that obviously has so much history and craft put into it is just being tossed out, and how I felt about it. However, what I want to talk more about is the struggle I felt while writing it.



Even now I don't think that poem is close to finish, and I do not like the state it is in, but I feel this is part of how I write. When I write, I constantly revise and never think something is finished, only that I am tired of working on it. I never think anything I do is that great, or that I've done my very best, and I feel that this is because of my birth order.

As Jeffrey Kluger talks about in The Power of Birth Order, I feel a bit overshadowed by my brothers. One of them is heavily into drama, although that has subsided recently, while the other one has gone from drawing to cooking to tons of other creative activities. Where ever I've been, they've been before me, and I can feel their shadow. As such, I think that whenever I try to perform a creative act, I feel that shadow and am constantly trying to get past it. It effects me in ways I probably don't realize, both physically, as the article talks about, and mentally. However, I think that this is a good thing, as it pushes me to be more. I think being the youngest of three boys is something that I should embrace, and help me go beyond what I think I can do. Looking at this, it helps me understand a bit more why I have so much trouble editing work and "finishing" things, although I am not blaming my brothers for my, in some cases, laziness.