Celebrations.

Wow, since May has started I've been engulfed in celebrating all kinds of occasions, from my best friend Alice (and soon, Mandie!) moving back to Charleston, to my roommate Dana's completion of graduate school, to the MOST important item -- I won the Forum Prize for the Poetry Society this year!!!

I received a book of W.H. Auden's poetry and essays (donated and signed just for me by the oldest member of our society, who is 101 this year!) plus some prize money. I feel totally proud of myself. And my poet friends all toasted me and congratulated me.

The celebrations don't stop there. This weekend is our annual Girls' Weekend, when my ladies and I all go to my house in Litchfield and enjoy the most valuable friendships we have. I feel certain this year is going to be fantastic.

If only every month could be this chock-full of happiness. But as Brian loves to remind me, then I wouldn't recognize what it means to be happy.

Woo hoo! 

That "Writer Buzz."

Today I completed a story for the July/August issue of Mount Pleasant Magazine and was so enthusiastic with the results, i printed a copy and read it out loud to my boss. (He liked it.)

Likewise, the other week, I suddenly got inspired while writing a story about Jim Newsome, the president of the South Carolina Ports Authority. I kept insisting to Brian that he needed to read it because it was great.

But a funny thing happened later: It wasn't quite as great as I first thought. Sure, it was still a good story. But that "writer's buzz," which had made me feel like I'd opened the creative portal of my brain and dumped sheer genius onto a page, was over with.

I've talked about inspiration regarding poetry plenty of times and that mysterious high you get when a poem is first written. You know -- the high that makes us want to share the poem before it's been fully edited or prepared for consumption by other readers. But I'm just now noticing that the writer buzz happens with genres other than poetry ...even with slightly boring stories that I write for work.

I asked Brian once if he gets the writer buzz when he finishes a story. He said he doesn't. And, to be clear, I don't always get it either. But when I do, it's the best thing ever. It reminds me of why I got into this business into the first place. It wasn't for the money. (Duh.) It wasn't even for the vanity of seeing my name in print.

It's for that writer buzz.

What Would an Adult Do?

Over the weekend I spent time in Myrtle Beach with two of my oldest, dearest friends and their children. We drank frozen cocktails by the pool and enjoyed each other's company after not having it for a few years - that is, until this obnoxious deejay started playing club music and telling everyone to get up and dance. I happened to raise myself from my beach chair at that moment to collect napkins from the pool bar after Haylee, their almost-six-year-old, spilled strawberry drink everywhere.

"Are you about to get out there and dance?" teased my friend when he saw me standing up.

"No," I replied, with more than a gentle curl of my lip.

"Are you old now?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, without missing a beat.

Then, yesterday I was wasting time on the Internet when I saw that NPR wanted to know "how readers' tastes in music had changed since they aged." Had they simply turned the volume knob, or something more drastic, like changing from psychedelic rock to Kenny G? Now, I know I'm not quite old enough (I don't think) to have changed my taste in tunes yet and I know NPR wasn't talking to my age group. But it's still interesting, especially because my own mother still listens to all the ribcage-rattling rock n roll she can -- and brags her taste hasn't changed at all. Still, the fact that she's noted herself how her taste hasn't changed means most people in her age group do tone it down.

What are the expectations when it comes to adult behavior? I ask myself this quite a bit. I don't have a husband (or even a boyfriend or even a plus-one at the moment) nor do I have children, but i still suspect that people are expected to act a certain way and hold certain tastes after ...30? Would Kevin and Natalie have wrinkled their brows at me if I had ordered a shot of liquor in midday, jumped up on my lounge chair and shaken my ass like I was 19 years old? Probably.

Some changes, you aren't even conscious of. For example, I hated being around small children when I was 18, 19 years old. An old friend I had in college was the mother of a toddler at the time and I was a notoriously terrible, impatient babysitter. Nowadays, I love my friends' children, and they love me back. Is this a result of age? What if I still hated children -- would that be a sign I wasn't maturing properly?

Normally, when I write a blog post, I have some neat little way to tie it up at the end. But this question hasn't been fully answered for me. I wrote in my journal (the private one, on paper) yesterday that "as I get older, my place in the world seems to get smaller and triumphs seem to get smaller because I'm pickier about them."

Perhaps this process of "weeding the garden" to create the adult life we personally want is a lengthier process than I imagined. So far, I know that I won't be making a scene in my swimsuit by the pool. But as for loving a good guitar riff, I'll take my mother's cue and blare it in my car. I'm working on a lot of the other stuff, but that's a good start, right?