Who am I anyway?

Be your own self

Two weeks ago, I confessed to a friend over Voxer that I am usually afraid people won’t like the things I make. There’s a muddle of reasons: I wasn’t popular growing up, though I had friends. Nothing I’ve done has really taken off, though it lands a decent response. Just last week, I clicked on a woman’s Substack post and saw how many likes and comments she had and just logged back off my computer.¹ I also don’t care to take the time to convince people to like me or my work.² Like it or don’t, it’s up to you.

I loved two books in particular in middle school. They sit in a prized spot on the living room bookcase today. One was Emily of New Moon, the first of a trilogy that tells the story of an out-of-place orphan who is taken in by two aunts and eventually becomes a writer to the horror of everyone in her life except an old teacher who was often drunk.³ The second was A Ring of Endless Light, the fourth in the series by Madeleine L’Engle that featured Vicky Austin, a writer in a family of scientific masterminds. The stories are different but it’s easy now to see the same themes. The protagonist was a girl and that girl was a writer who felt out of place.⁴