#this is overwrought idk byeeee

[baladric]

i've had a lot of weird big developments in my, like. general Personhood in the last 6 months, but one of the deepest and quietest ones is i've stopped identifying as "a musician" or "a singer." if i'm introducing details abt my personhood now, the first thing i lay claim to is "writer" and the second (if it comes up) is "artist"—and i maybe wouldnt even notice this, except i got my current job thru a friend at my old choir job, so i was introduced to this space as A Musician. and now when i'm actually sitting to chat w a person, i mention the writing, and the art, and often receive "gosh, on top of being a musician?! you do it all!!" and i have this really striking moment of cognitive dissonance. bc god, that's not my word anymore, and god, that would shock the person that i was so deeply. bc i had hung so much of myself on that Word, right? i formed all of myself around a profession that had been hurting me deeply since the age of 8. why was i doing that? why was i clinging to it so fearfully for so long?

and sitting here just now, i realized that i was clinging to that concept of myself because i believed, really and truly, that singing was the only thing that made me valuable.

and now what? 24 years after i slapped "SINGER" on my soul and called it proof of an essential worth that should never have been in question in the first place?

now, i have a job that i was immediately and uncomplicatedly good at, where people immediately and uncomplicatedly valued me simply for being warm and curious. now, i have a collection of weird, wonderful friends who want me around even when i'm miserable, which i know bc they will say "man you are so miserable rn, come over here and be wet and pathetic on my couch and i can feed you." now!! now, it's become stunningly easy to know myself as valuable in my entirety, bc i now do so many things for so many people that have nothing to do with music—and even when i do it clumsily or unhappily, i'm still met with gratitude for trying in earnest.

and like obviously that's all huge and wonderful and astonishing, but the most joyous side effect of all rn is that this sense of inherent worth has finally, finally freed me from the paralyzing doubt i've been mired in about my own original fiction. suddenly, i'm in love with my own ideas, and with the process of refining them. i'm in love with my ever-evolving characters and the stories they're here to tell. i'm in love with my willingness to ride out the bad drafts and the dozens of rerolls for scenes that didn't go in the right direction (my scraps doc for Book is 88 pages; Book is 50). like!! for real? for real!!!! i am making things that i am so emotional about, so proud of, so challenged by, and i honestly didn't think i was capable of that at this point. i thought i'd missed the cut-off somewhere along the way. but i didn't, bc i'm here now, chipping away with whole-hearted determination.

just. im sitting here and marveling at having become, quite suddenly, a person who no longer looks at his life and says, "this experiment is unsustainable." bc i did think that. i said to myself almost daily for about 15 years, in this exact phrasing, "i am an unsustainable person." i very sincerely thought i was going to just cease to exist somewhere along the way, in a very undramatic and inevitable way. how miserable is that? how cold is that? how did i bear that for so long?

idk!!! idk, i am just so fucking proud of myself for being who i am now, and im proud of the past versions of me who gritted their teeth through three decades of grief and doubt and violence to get here, and i'm proud of the hard-won willingness to keep changing when it would have been easier in many ways to set myself in stone—and i'm proud of my fucking WRITING, jesus fucking god am i proud of it, i really really cannot wait to share this story 🥹

ok the end, if you read this i am kissing you on the mouth, and if you didn't, i am still kissing you on the mouth, only it's probably a lot more confusing for you bc you don't know why i'm doing that, anyway remember to get yr covid booster + flu shot, ily