Summary

This reflective poem and essay discuss the author's struggle with self-worth, mental illness, and lost potentials, ultimately leading to a new mindset and the pursuit of her dreams in writing and art.

Abstract

The content revolves around a reflective poem and essay written by Lori Carlson, inspired by another writer's Coffee Times Resolution Challenge. The poem, titled "A Game of Hide and Seek," explores the author's past struggles with mental illness, sexual addiction, and self-worth, which led her to hide her potential and give away her work for free. The essay delves deeper into the author's experiences, including her abandonment of art due to a busy work schedule and her reluctance to seek monetary gain for her writing. She also discusses her struggles with self-worth stemming from her mother's comparisons and a high school teacher's discouragement. However, after extensive therapy and a new mindset, the author has taken back her dreams and potentials, becoming an editor and joining the Medium Partner Program. She sets two goals for 2022: writing more often and finding time for her art.

Bullet points

The reflective poem and essay are inspired by another writer's Coffee Times Resolution Challenge.
The poem, "A Game of Hide and Seek," explores the author's past struggles with mental illness, sexual addiction, and self-worth.
The author gave away her work for free and hid her potential due to her struggles.
She abandoned art in the late 90s due to a busy work schedule but continued writing poetry, short fiction, personal essays, creative non-fiction, and two novellas.
The author struggled with self-worth due to her mother's comparisons and a high school teacher's discouragement.
After extensive therapy and a new mindset, the author has taken back her dreams and potentials, becoming an editor and joining the Medium Partner Program.
She sets two goals for 2022: writing more often and finding time for her art.

POETRY | ESSAY | ILLUMINATION

A Game Of Hide And Seek

Lost potentials and shattered dreams

Life hasn’t always been fair playing games with her dreams setting herself up for failure as potentials flowed downstream

This artist, writer, dreamer couldn’t hold on to her goals allowing sexual addiction to bind up her soul

As she hid behind mental illness no life lessons would she seek just an endless flood of disappointments kept her confused and meek

She felt no self-worth, no purpose stashed away her dream’s work if she could find no value neither would those who lurk

What little work she put out she gave away for free how could she charge others when even she couldn’t see

And then one day, out of the blue a new mindset arrives she did have worth and value it was time for her to thrive

No more hide and seek no more shattered dreams only life’s full potential without all the extremes

This reflective poem is the result of jules’s Coffee Times Resolution Challenge essay. (Please go have a read and leave her some generous claps so she can qualify!)

What Makes You Come Alive?

In response to Coffee Challenge — why I want to be a better me in 2022

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At the end of her essay, she asked — Do you play hide and seek with your potential? and what makes you feel alive? The only things that have ever made me feel alive are my writing and art. I gave up art in the late 90s because I worked one full-time job and a part-time job. I just didn’t have the time. I would do collaging now and again, but no watercolors, charcoal drawing, or pastel paintings.

Images by the Author — On the left, My muse Catharine. On the right, a collage titled “Contemplation”

My only constant has been writing — poetry, short fiction, personal essays, creative non-fiction, and two novellas — but I have never tried to have any of my work published. I’ve always thought that if I seek monetary gain for my writing, it would diminish it somehow; and yet, my dream has always been to see my work in print.

I have struggled with self-worth my entire life. Part of it stems from my mother comparing my As and Bs to my sister’s As in high school. And yet, I was taking classes like Algebra, Geometry, Spanish, Biology, and Chemistry because I knew one day I would want to go to college. My sister took secretarial courses like typing, stenography, and Business Math. She never took hard classes because she didn’t plan on going to college. In fact, when she did finally decide to go to college in the early 2000s for a nursing degree, she had to take pre-requisite courses in those maths and sciences.

Another problem was my Creative Writing teacher in high school, Mrs. Vaugh. She didn’t approve of my horror, science fiction, or speculative fiction writing. This was in ’83. She flat out told me that I would never be a writer. Her words echoed through my mind for nearly fifteen years and I sometimes hear her words even to this day.

And of course, my dream of being an editor was shattered by complications with my last year of college and being unable to get my transcripts due to a financial issue not of my making. I’d been offered an editing job for a small literary magazine in Maine and had to decline it.

I could sit and wallow in self-pity and regrets for the rest of my life, but neither of them brings me joy. In the last two years of extensive therapy, forgiveness, and a completely different mindset, I have taken back some of my dreams and potentials. I am now an editor. Although my publication is small, I have had the pleasure of working with some amazing writers. And finally, after nearly two years as a writer on Medium, I have joined the Medium Partner Program (I know, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, I have been stubborn on this front for a long time, but I do remember your advice).

Although the poem and these ramblings were initially sparked by jules’s essay, I do have to thank Marcus for his prompt today on Changing Mindsets

The Daily Special — Dec 28th

Poetry Prompt

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I have no clue what awaits me in 2022. I may fail miserably at editing and earning money from my writings, but I am okay with that now. I went into the editing with no expectations and yet, it is working out better than I could have ever wished. And I go into the MPP with no expectations either. I do go into 2022 with two goals — 1) write more often and 2) find time for my art. And that is enough for me now.

Thank you for reading. If you have time, check out these gorgeous writing gifts that I have collected over the month of December

Join Medium with my referral link — Ravyne Hawke

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Lori Carlson writes Poetry, Fiction, Articles, Creative Non-Fiction, and Personal Essays. Most of her topics are centered around Relationships, Spirituality, Life Lessons, Mental Health, Nature, Loss, Death, and the LGBTQ+ community. She is the Owner/Editor of Promptly Written and Not For Bedtime Stories. To find more of her poetry and fiction, check out her personal Medium blog here.