Last year was my twentieth high school reunion and, although it was great to reconnect with my classmates from Orange Park High School's class of 1992, there was a reunion that I had later on that meant a lot to me.
While cleaning up around my apartment, I found an old journal of poetry that I wrote during my freshman year of college. Two decades later, I revisited the thoughts of a vulnerable 18-year-old student who was on his own for the first time in his life. At first, I was depressed because I was surrounded by a lot of uncertainty. But, as time passed, I found my voice amid a heady optimism that marked the pre-9/11 world of the 1990s.
In my journal, there are poems of sadness, separation and then joy and life. I marvel at how I took the time to express myself in a journal when I thought that nobody was watching or listening. I shared my thoughts at a random poetry reading here or there, but soon put away my poetry journal for what I deemed to be more 'grown-up' things.
In the last year, I gathered the courage to publish a selection of my poems and share them with the world. Back then, when I was editing my college newspaper, I knew that my audience was limited to the faculty and students of South Georgia College in Douglas, Georgia. I don't know how I would have reacted to today's World Wide Web, blogs and the Information Age. The title of my book is "Twenty Years Later: A Collection of Poems from a Past Life."
As my work was intended to help me through dark times, I promise to donate proceeds from my book to help with mental health services for today's young people who need to find a way through what appears to be the great unknown in their lives. Please visit the link below and purchase a copy! It is only $4.75 on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Years-Later-Collection-Poems/dp/148113759X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372128968&sr=8-1&keywords=9781481137591
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