Meet Janet Navarro

We recently connected with Janet Navarro and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Janet, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

The question is in the past tense as if my confidence is already developed. Yet, my answer is that my sense of self-confidence, my self-esteem, my sense of self, as it were, is very much an ongoing project with peaks and valleys, highs and lows, ebbs and flows.

For me, acknowledging the ongoing nature of it, I think, has been my key to developing it. Meaning, I have to work at it. For me, working at it includes

1) making sure I try new things and continue to work toward goals that take me way out of my comfort zone,

2) making sure that each and every day I wake up and purposefully put one foot in front of the other — taking the small steps necessary towards accomplishing bigger goals, and

3) most importantly, taking time to reflect back on what I “walked through.”

It’s important for my confidence that my goals stretch me physically (i.e., competing in triathlons or continuing to improve as a waterskiier), intellectually (i.e., earning a Ph.D), artistically (i.e., writing and playing around with some visual arts), and personally (i.e., continuing to make new friends). It makes sense to me that my favorite saying, which I made up, I think, is “You have to go backwards before you can go forwards.” By this I mean, that to have confidence for the next challenge, you have to go look back and acknowledge what you have already accomplished and take stock.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Throughout my 40-year career as a teacher educator, I have been working on developing my writing chops as a poet. While I shared drafts in workshops with students or at a local coffee house from time to time, I did not have the time to fully develop drafts or even think about putting poems out into the universe in a published form. Now, as I ease from my career to my next act, I am delighted to have the opportunity to write with more intention and focus. Consequently, I am very excited about having published my first collection, Scent of Dust, available on Amazon.

It is a set of poems linked together using the literary device of cleaning a closet. The poems offer a unique take on tidying or decluttering. Readers are invited into my closet as I sort and sift through it. Items of found, such as a blazer, a hoodie, a pair of old running shoes, a dog collar, spark emotional memories that launch each poem. Yet, while the poems arise from personal recollection, they connect to our collective memory of profound social events that occurred between the 1960’s to the present day.

One thing I’m particularly excited about in addition to how the the set of poems chosen for the collection hang together, is the hand-drawn illustrations made by Anthony Sumoza, an up-and-coming artist currently studying and playing soccer at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His skills as an artist give the book a unique visual appeal. And, while he was able to capture the essence of the ideas in the book, he did so without giving anything away. The illustrations complement the text but leave the reader completely empowered to construct their own meaning from each poem.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think as a poet, one must study prose and poets and poetry and work at the writing almost constantly. While much of the actual writing happens alone in a room or alone in public in a coffee shop or library, I have also found that the work cannot happen without some kind of community. These four qualities or “moves” I think, have supported me on my journey the most.

1. Stamina — it is easier to give up than to keep going — but continuing to push is essential.
One has to keep going even when they do not see the point, is full of self-doubt, tears up and tears up, binges on potato chips, and/or re-cleans the already spotless floor.

2. Being open to surprises — one of which is realizing that often you are working even when you think you are not working It’s when you are out on a walk, binging on junk food, cleaning your spaces, procrastinating, chatting up a stranger in a line or a coffee shop, when an idea or an solution, a new direction, a new colleague or creative shows up in your head space or literal space.

3. Seeking Feedback — Sometimes feedback is painful and can be enough to make you stop. But, it’s essential to solicit, to listen to, consider, evaluate, peck through, and take heed of others’ feedback. Call if notes or “feed-forward” if you wish, but pay attention. It’s not personal no matter how vulnerable you feel.

4. The Positive Support of Another — Because feedback can indeed be debilitating, an important counterbalance is at least one come-as-you-are, supportive, kind, energetic, optimistic, friend or colleague who gets what you are trying to do and gets you coffee.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

Renna Nightengale is that person for me. She helped me move from a private, part-time drafter of personal poems to a published poet. A big challenge for me was figuring out HOW to get my poems to the finish line and she walked me through it all from start to finish. Speaking of being open to surprises … I met Renna in one of the lunch spaces at the MET. If we both had our earphones in or otherwise had been unavailable for conversation we’d never have met and my poems would still be mere words saved on my computer.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @jannavarro
• Facebook: Janet Navarro
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janet-navarro-3696b4158/

Image Credits

Anthony Sumoza