Origins

I wrote this in preparation for a job interview a while back, where I thought I had to wax poetic about myself for 5–10 minutes. They never ended up asking me to, but here’s what I started at anyway.*

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I surprised myself by doing this today. For most of my adult life, I’ve described myself as shy, which I slowly learned is inaccurate. Maybe it’s reserved, but even I have my doubts about that descriptor, too. I’m not the most outgoing person by a long shot, so to be ad-libbing in front of you all is something I might treat myself to lunch over.

I’m a storyteller by nature. When I was a youth, I’d put crayon to paper and get to crafting fictional tales about knights and castles. And animals that talked. And recipes that I know I couldn’t cook, let alone describe. My parents loved them all; they still have the staple-bound scraps of construction paper in the house, occasionally pulling them out to reminisce and mock the crazier of the stories. I just knew I wanted to be an author, build worlds out of words and share them, but my bubble got burst in elementary when somebody told me that wasn’t a real job. Crushed, I searched within myself to find a plan B. I knew I was the one my friends could confide in, dump their weight down on me and leave it there until they were strong enough to take it back. Ah, psychology, I thought, could be the way.

It was during that brief stage of empty belief that I came in tune with my ear. I was a quiet observer who listened well. I listened and watched, watched and listened until I fell out of love with it. The trying to fix the embattled, that is. And while I crumpled underneath the weight of people’s problems, I’d write to maintain the light. Short stories, poems, letters and diary entries, blogs once I was allowed to have an AOL account without parental block. By the time high school came around, I found myself in a creative writing class, my favorite, where I felt free. Sentences tumbled out of me like stream water. Sensing this, my ease of the pen, the way the tales of the imaginary became my own, my creative writing teacher pointed me in the direction of a summer journalism class. “Just try it,” he said. I did, and a light bulb went off. This can be for me.

When my well of stories runs dry, I fill myself up with the satisfaction of being a vessel for others. I love the exchange. The questions, answers, solutions, lack there of, then stringing it all together on the page like poetry. Like a puzzle needing to be figured out. How do I remove myself from the equation and show all of them and their truths, their quirks, their problems that they entrust me, the writer, with?

So here I am, trying my best to do just that, until the time comes for me to construct my own hardcover purge of thoughts. In time.