Celebrating a Blog-Tastic-a-Versary

Happy Blog-a-versary Month!

It was two years ago that I started blogging and realized how much I missed writing. Its one of those things that you get to do in Jr. and Sr. High School all the time. And then when you are done with school, you go to college and take MORE classes that involve writing and drive your husband crazy over how fast you can bust out a 10 page paper using critical analysis to assess the highs and lows of a 10 line poem. And that is when you wonder if you revealed this side of you too early in your marriage and you hope he doesn't leave you so you start talking about BMW's to distract him.

When I was in elementary school, I decided I wanted to become a writer. I wrote short stories all the time. I had love stories, I had adventures and I moistly had tales of friendship. Once I moved into Jr High School, I wrote a lot of news stories for the school newspaper. And then once high school struck, my full order of teenage angst and unrequited love was delivered and I wrote poems about the boys I "loved" and how they didn't "love" me back. I even had an ongoing story my best friend at the time and I wrote about the two guys we liked and how we got married and lived on the beach and the guys played volleyball and my best friend and I worked at Bobby McGee's as Snow White and Alice in Wonderland. (I never said the stories I write were grounded in reality.)

After getting married, my writing turned more to term papers for school and articles for the Tierra Times. Nothing too creative but still writing, nonetheless. And then, once Nate the Great came along, my writing was confined to e-mails all about my new son. And although people who met me post Nathan but pre blog didn't know my love for writing, a handful of friends and family members and specifically my husband always encouraged me to write. David is most definitely my biggest fan. If I say anything funny or tell a story that is interesting he will respond to the story and then follow up any comment with, "You should write a book about that so you can make all kinds of money and I don't have to work." Now that we have been married 10 years, it has shortened to, "Write a book!"

Needless to say, when I started blogging, he was elated. And I must say that writing and making myself write even when I don't think I have anything to say does something for me that singing, acting and photographing doesn't do. And as I met other bloggers and made some of my friends start blogging I remembered how much I looooove to write.

So, in honor of this month representing 2 years of blogging, I will be blogging every day this month. This week will be highlighting my past writings and specifically the hilarious (but terribly serious) poems from high school. Interestingly enough, I never felt the need to write the sad and melancholy poems once I met My David.

Are you ready now? For the angst? The pain? The unrequited teen-age love?
Well, here you go then! One of my first in a series of poems that I felt were so important that I put them all together in a “book” and printed multiple copies for both my mom, dad, sister and anyone else who was amazed by my depth as a writer and thinker.

JUST A FANTASY
by: Bethany Shumate

I look in your eyes
And I melt to the floor
My heart does a flop
When you walk through the door.
I get in your way,
So that you will see
All of the magic
That you bring to me.
You would be blind
Not to recognize,
All of the love
I have in my eyes.
Just say the word,
I’ll be by your side.
We’ll walk hand in hand,
Never breaking stride.
I would love you
And you would love me
Then I’d wake up and realize,
It’s just a fantasy.