Amateur*

Amateur. Amateur, typically meaning not professional, without payment, or worse, incompetent. In college, I took a poetry class, and we all met at a local coffee shop a couple days a week. It was quite existential, as any poetry class should be. My favorite quote of the whole semester was from Rainer Maria Rilke, “you must change your life.” I remember one day walking across North Campus in Athens, GA talking with my professor. I had to present the poem I wrote to our class, and I was super nervous, because, “I’m an amateur,” I told her. She stopped, we both stared at the most beautiful yellow daffodils, and she said to me, “Do you know what amateur means?” I, of course, said nothing, because I didn’t want to be wrong. My professor looked down at the dew soaked petals and told me that being an amateur was like being in love. The word stems from Latin amare meaning “to love” and amator meaning “lover.” So here I am, an amateur in the best sense I know. Thanks for following along, and English teachers, beware – I’m not a writer, I’m just an amateur.*