I’ve been quietly writing poems first thing every morning for a couple of weeks now. I guess, it’s my idea of morning pages, which is a writer thing where you write in the morning. Or maybe like journaling, which is a self-help thing where you get your brain ready for the day.
So, I write a poem in the morning lately.
This morning’s poem is up there.
And I’ve been not-so-quietly writing a hyper-local news blog for about a year now. It gets about 70,000 views every month, which is pretty cool and also sort of amazing since I kind of thought it would get–maybe 100?
And on this Friday, I’m trying to be a bit braver about the things I do maybe too quietly and to not be afraid to go a bit bigger in ambition and voice and focus.
It’s weird to go bigger when people expect you to be small.
This, of course, made me think about expectations.
This woman I met last week did the typical, “Oh what do you do?” as if my occupation defined me. I know! I know! People ask that to make small talk, but I’d so much rather we got to know each other by asking questions like, “Do you talk to birds?” or “Have you ever hugged a tree?” or “Do you believe that dancing in the rain is a cliche, silly, ridiculous, or a must-do whenever it is raining?”
Anyway, she asked me what I did.
I said, “I write novels.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
She asked the next question, which if you are a writer, you know is always, “Have you published any?”
And I got to say, “Yes.”
Shaun yelled in, “She’s an NYT and internationally bestselling author.”
And her other eyebrow went up into that shocked look. I shrugged.
Here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter if some of my books randomly made those lists. What matters is that I love stories and creating them and sharing them.
What matters isn’t that I’m now somehow more acceptable because of a bench mark of success.
What matters is that I talk to birds and have definitely hug a tree and think dancing in the rain can be whatever you want it to be.
It’s okay to be big when people expect you to be small. It’s okay to create your art and not have to have it become a “mark of external success.”
And it’s also okay to be small when people expect you to be big.
We get to be who we are. That’s it. Be who you are.
And also I hope you have a great and brave Friday!
Here’s my painting this week. It’s a couple of colors that almost don’t go together. Kind of like expectations and reality, right?
