Day: March 14, 2012
Journal

Oops, Mae Maxima Culpa

Yesterday’s post seems to have come across a little gloomier than I’d intended. So much so that I actually went back and re-read what I’d written, trying to puzzle out why it was drawing the comments it was (which, don’t get me wrong, are thoroughly brilliant and affirming and my thanks go out to all of you) and the conversations I kept having today with people who thought that maybe I needed a hug and a pep talk. Which is nice, sure, but it kind of baffled me. Surely it’s not that bad? I thought. I mean, I did write that paragraph about my life being essentially awesome most of the time, right? Then I re-read the post and realised, yes, I’d written that paragraph, but I’d also deleted it from the final post. And yes, it was a post that came with a side of gloom cookies, and I probably did sound rather like I needed a hug at

PeterMBall 14/03/2012
Journal

BILDUNGSROMAN

ONE I was twenty-one when I first realised that writing wasn’t going to be easy. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I was fresh out of my undergraduate, fresh out of home, and about to dive back into an honours year at University. I remember sitting on the balcony of my shitty share-house flat in the wee hours of the morning, nursing a cup of coffee and paging through one of the cheap, shitty poetry anthologies I’d picked up in a second hand book store. This is back when I lived on the Gold Coast, where even the best second hand book stores are fairly starved for poetry. At the time I still figured I’d grow up to be a poet, and I already knew there was no chance of making a living at that. So I drank my coffee and read poetry and thought about what I was going to do with my life, looking at

PeterMBall 14/03/2012