Another heavy, sticky morning, but as far as I can tell, no rain fell overnight. Our drought goes on and on. 

And this household is back in vehicle limbo for the foreseeable future. Tom can't get anyone to look at his truck's power steering till after we return from Chicago, so once again I am carless. I know I shouldn't be grouchy about this, but I am a little. I've already spent too much of this summer borrowing other people's cars and begging for rides, and I hate having to start all over again. But Tom needs to take my car to work, so I am stuck.

Thus, today I'll be driving my generous neighbor's car across town so I can get my hair cut. Under normal circumstances I might just cancel the appointment, but that's not really an option on wedding-countdown week.

Otherwise, the day is fairly open. I'm working on a poem draft as well as web copy for next summer's conference. I'm rereading Byatt's Whistling Woman. I may start sussing out my November Poetry Kitchen class or the workshop I'll be leading at the Belfast Poetry Festival in October. I've got a couple of smaller appearances to prep for: a morning at a Jersey City high school in September, a morning in a Bates College class in October. And my Monson Arts high school classes begin in late September.

Yesterday I met with my friend Gibson, who's the executive director of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. He wanted to talk about how the organization can support me--specifically, through grant writing and promotion and helping to set up programming around the state. It was a really helpful conversation. Of course I need all the aid I can get with that sort of administrative work. But it was also good just to talk to a knowledgeable friend about the odd discomforts of the position: its amorphous expectations, its political undertow. I have a fairly clear idea about who I am as a poet in private life. But the public role remains mysterious.

What he made clear was that I need to do what I already know how to do: work with kids and teachers, work with community members . . . but also read books and write poems and continue being a striving, active maker. I already knew this internally, but it was good to hear it from someone else. A lot of people have a lot of ideas about what I should be doing, and I haven't always been able to align them with my actual capacities. Imposter syndrome is incurable. But it is possible to stop paying attention to it.