You are an astounding part of the influence in my life, you, someone who may have never even met me in person, have shaped so much of who I've become.
I remember being a young child, probably about six years old, writing a story about a girl running a cupcake stand with her best friend. It was inspired by my love of baking and some cupcake stickers that I had no idea what to do with. I was thinking about what would happen if that notebook had been preserved until long after my time here, who would it effect, how many would come to read my words. What if I started writing down everything I knew? How many would it help, how many could I teach? It was on that day I had decided that no matter what I did when I was older, I would find a way to share what I knew with people across the globe. Becoming a writer seemed unrealistic, it was too hard to become famous. But I'm not six anymore, blogging and self-publishing are valid options, and famous people are just people who were noticed, no different than you or me. Maybe I'll find a publisher who believes in me, maybe I won't. At least then I can put those college marketing classes to use, Turns out I have a people-pleasing personality, I suppose that may not be surprising to those of you reading this letter so far, but it was to me, I never thought of myself as a people-pleaser. I never was a people pleaser, I remember the day I became one, not knowing that's what had happened at the time. It was mid-summer, and I was 12 years old, I'd be turning 13 that August. I was at the beach, on vacation with my grandmother. I always had an answer for everything, I knew what I wanted, and I wasn't afraid to say so. Being just my grandmother and myself on vacation, she would always ask me what I wanted to do that day. I started to wonder if my quick and definitive responses took away from her enjoyment. What if she wanted to go to the movies and then walk down the boardwalk, but I was too quick to mention my desire for a day of body-boarding and swimming in the ocean. I told myself that for the rest of the week I would ask her what she wanted to do. We spent the rest of the week sitting in the beach trailer watching whatever was free on On-Demand. So, what on earth does any of that have to do with you? That's the question I want to know the answer to anyway. How has my people pleasing changed the way I write, the content I publish? Sabatino pulled me out of the classroom one day during the beginning of the semester, he told me not to allow anything the other classmates said to bother me, but it wasn't the classmates I should have been worrying about, it was him. I was 15 when I took his English 100 class, I'd been mastering the art of people-pleasing for roughly 2.25 years, I wrote what I thought he wanted me to write, a lot of the time, I still do. He showed me that I wanted to be a writer, there's no doubt in my mind that that's my own desire, but my voice, my words, my content, that was his doing. They're slowly but surely becoming more and more me, but not just yet. My promise to you. and more importantly, to myself, is that I will get there one day. The words will be fully my own, not that which I believe you to expect, not the words of an editor, publisher, or publicist. They will be fully my own, filled with knowledge for you to learn, reaching every part of the globe. The way I wanted it to be back when I knew who I was. I'll get there.
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