I'm Aida Limone and this is The Slowdown.

No matter how I look at it, the fall is about new beginnings.

Students are going back to school and my friends who are teachers are starting their year

at the front of the classroom.

For me, I will begin my tenure as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.

Like anyone starting something new, I am nervous.

I hold my fear gently and try to remember the phrase fear is excitement without the breath,

which inevitably reminds me to breathe.

When I feel myself getting off-kilter or feel myself spiraling into thinking about all

the things that could go wrong, all the ways I could mess up my life, I think about the

ground beneath me.

That may sound strange, but once when I was nominated for a book award in 2015, I was

suddenly inundated with attention by the likes I'd never seen before.

I was overwhelmed and elated, but also at a loss as to how to respond to everyone,

how to rise to this occasion.

That same day, I got an email from a poet friend and mentor who had once won this particular

award.

She told me to wake early before I left for New York and walk on the grass and whisper

to all my ancestors.

And I did.

And then I felt grounded again, or some version of grounded, which is a little off-kilter,

but somehow exactly how it should be, too.

...