After graduation from my MFA program and back when I used a Mac Classic — sigh — I would send emails via AOL to buddies from my writing program. One in particular found me and wanted to stay in touch. I found that a bit odd only because my two years in Florida seemed like some other life. I did not expect to stay in touch with as many of the people as I did.

Since I’ve had good friends for 20-plus years, the friends who were only a year or so old seemed too new to keep. Dumb of me? Yes.

I kept my friends. I kept in touch even when I was ashamed at how little I was writing. They did not say anything. They did not need to say anything since I excelled in being disappointed with myself for my lack of writing.

I thought — how cute! — that I was too busy. I worked. Now I can only wonder (and perhaps dream) what else did I do with all of that time?

Now that I’m a mama (a hip one, I hope), I am really busy. In theory, I have no free time. Yet how do I accomplish so much? It’s one of those things I don’t want to question too much. The smoke and mirrors may remove themselves. I only want to accept that I am doing a lot and somehow continuing.

This month, I’m writing one poem per day. If I miss a day, I’m not being too hard on myself. I’m writing one poem per day despite my new two-hour commute to a client site. I’m writing despite owning a business. I’m writing despite running a magazine, having a family and having a number of people in my life fighting some scary-as-heck sicknesses.

So, there you go. If I can do it, you sure as heck can.

PROMPT: An oldie but a goodie. I first learned from this prompt from Dana Roeser. Just recently, Aimee Nez brought it back to mind. Write a poem using an object for inspiration. Help us see this object in a new or unusual way.

Just for you…5 Ways to Find Time to Write Poems

1. Use Bloglines to subscribe to your poetry blogs. Stop using those links in your blogroll! With Bloglines, you can see who has updated so you don’t waste time visiting blogs without new posts since the last time you visited. You are able to read blogs in your Bloglines viewer and easily page through blog posts.

2. Batch Tasks Together: I save up a bunch of 32 Poems subscriptions (did you know you can subscribe now and get one additional free issue in your subscription?) and complete them all together in one batch instead of doing a few here and a few there. The process becomes quicker and more automated if I do them all together. Even better will be when I have software to do this task for me.

3. Figure Out the Most Important Item You Must Do: Are you doing the most important task right now? If not, get it done. You’ll save yourself some energy from worrying about that task.

4. Do Easy Tasks Now: If you get an email with an easy request, complete it now. Then, you do not have to bother with adding it your task list, writing it down or saving the email in a special folder. Do the task and delete the email.

5. Use Lists. I started to place my tasks in Outlook even though I don’t use that for email. Using this task list saves me time, and I can easily rearrange tasks (which is hard to do with paper!).

Have fun saving time and having more time to write poems. Read this for more info on Time Management for Poets.

One poem per week…how difficult can that be? Here are rules:

1. One poem can be shorter than 10 lines. Ideally, the others should be longer than 10 lines.

Only one rule and four poems in month…easy, aye?

If you’re in, let me know in the comments.

Towards the beginning of September, we can all share the titles we want to memorize. Perhaps we’ll discover some poems we’ve not read before.

If you’re super high tech, you can even record yourself and post it to your blog or web site — or send it to me to post if you have no blog or web site.

I’m a search engine marketer. I help businesses get found on the web by their clients, and this often means good pay-per-click campaigns or a top 10 search rank on Google.

Recently, one of my clients was lower in the Google search rankings than a competitor. This competitor was using keywords that were barely legal (using stolen content) and that were in direct competition with my client. So…

In the background, I’ve been working to get my client higher on search results than the competitor. If the competitor disappears forever, even better.

In the past week, bingo! My client now has the highest positions, and the quality of the search on those keywords is better. The top 6 (out of 10) now go to web pages associated with my client. All right!

I’m also considering contacting Google to let them know that the competitor has stolen content on their web site. Oh, yes. I am a web geek.

Thanks to a nifty Word Press feature, I am able to create these posts in advance and have them appear in my absense.

I will not have to touch a computer while I’m gone on my little holiday.

More soon…