A fun fact about me as a writer is that a big percentage of my writing experience comes from working at newspapers. My career in journalism began in high school working at the school paper. In undergrad I took some COMM classes here and there and worked at the newspaper for every college I attended (3). I was good at writing features and as uncomfortable as I was cold-calling people to ask them about their play or their concert or their cat show, I liked being able to work from a script and I was good at synthesizing our one-sided conversations into something cohesive.
But writing and then putting something in the newspaper to be read by others often left me feeling very anxious and sweaty. There is something very naked about publishing your writing, and I was doing it frequently. Every week, multiple times a week, and often things I didn’t exactly love thanks to the pressures of a deadline.
I did not actually like this kind of writing work, but I did also think I wanted to do it for a job. There was something pretty glamorous about it. People were often in awe of me. You wrote this? You wrote this thing that I am holding in my hands? That’s a really big feeling, to feel like you can do something special, something not everyone can do. So I kept doing it, and one day ended up with an internship at a local weekly newspaper.
This position went well. I did what I was told and learned some software and from time to time I got to have a little story in the paper. I was mentored, etc. When I completed my little stint, I’d had two big pieces published. The first was a summer piece about all the hot local spots for tourists and how much they sucked. The second was a giant listicle of all the best bar specials and how much you sucked. Both of these pieces were well received and/or generated a polite amount of controversy, which the newspaper (an indie paper founded by a weird old hippie who only ever wandered silently around the office with his dog) loved. I felt good about this, but I also didn’t feel comfortable.
After my internship ended the paper hired me on as a freelance writer. I had a couple little assignments and then they pitched me something weird. They were regularly publishing ads in the back for an organization called The Optimist Club. What the hell is an Optimist Club? They thought it would be a fun idea to send their “crotchety intern” (this is literally what they called me, in print) to find out. So I went.
Here's what an Optimist Club is: a community service organization founded around the principle that children’s lives should be good. The group that I visited invited me to lunch at their favorite Mexican restaurant and the 12 or so retirees told me all about their fundraisers to help the children in their school district. They said they did whatever the district needed – one principle said their students needed socks, so they found socks for those children. They worked with the schools to promote bicycle safety, sometimes served crossing guard duty. They had a scholarship program. And they were lovely. They fed me sopapillas and paid for my lunch. I was moved.
When it came time to write the story about them, I found myself in a difficult position. I knew I had been given this story to be shitty about it, about these kind people who were so eager to make the world a better place, but meeting them only made me feel shitty about myself. I wrote my story with the angle that they had softened my crotchety intern heart, and then I told the newspaper I didn’t want to write for them anymore. I would write for newspapers no more, forever.
I’m writing this story here, now, for a couple of reasons, but the first one is because I’ve never really had any clarity about these events. I knew they were emotionally complex, but I didn’t quite know why. I had had a great success as a student journalist and could have gone elsewhere, if I wanted. But the whole thing felt really miserable to me, and I realize now it’s because I had created this persona in my writing, this voice, that wasn’t me.
I don’t think I’m crotchety, not at my core. I like things. I like things most people don’t like – such as People, generally. I’m a teacher, and one of a teacher’s favorite complaints is their students. I like my students. I like my job. I like working. I like beans and bad TV and group texts even when the group is talking about something that doesn’t even apply to me. There are plenty of things I don’t like, I’m a real person, but I just don’t think I am actually crotchety.
In my early 20s, though, this was a Self I cobbled because it made me feel safe and it provided me with a means to an end. I could write – I could make myself vulnerable – but still feel invulnerable. I could generate honest to God controversy (this sounds so stupid and fake, but it is true! I have received threats for things I’ve written!) and play it cool, act like Ha Ha! These Fools! I Am Above This!
None of it was real, though. It wasn’t honest or authentic, and meeting The Optimists made that lie something painful that I couldn’t ignore – even if I didn’t quite understand why the pain existed in the first place.
The second reason I am writing about this now is because of the reason I finally have clarity about this time in my life. Today I had to do something uncomfortable and difficult and weird and also related to writing. I put one of my chapbooks into a local bookstore and then sat in front of it for 2 hours and let people come and talk to me about it and whatever else they wanted to talk to me about. This is an exercise in vulnerability I am not excited about. It is hard, it was hard.
I am good at sharing my writing online, on the Internet, in a literary magazine. I am good at having my writing rejected, even. But this kind of work happens at a real distance. The actual, vulnerable experience is so removed from my literal, actual life. These are words on a screen, not my face in front of another face, and so in a lot of ways, this shit is fake. Which means it’s easy.
Today in the bookstore was not easy, but it was good because I remembered how important to me it is to be fucking nice. To smile at people I don’t even know and to take interest in their lives even though I probably won’t ever see them again. I like the way these kinds of interactions make me feel. I like being able to talk lightly and casually with strangers, to make a joke, to not be the crankiest person in the room, the crotchety intern, the person sent explicitly to shit on the event.
I have never been approachable. People tell me all the time that I was scary to them before they got to know me. At times in my life, that was by design. I am interested in designing myself differently now, though, and this work has been in progress for many years, actually. When I have told some people about this goal – to be more approachable, to be nicer and kinder and more gentle with people – they told me it wasn’t a good idea. They’d had their own reasons for thinking this way, but their reasons weren’t my reasons, and I’ve tried to be friendly and nice and receptive for a few years now in spite of the reservations of others. It has not always been well received, and I have fumbled many times, but I have also never been taken advantage of. I have never regretted my own generosity. I have often felt bad about being cranky and critical. I have never felt bad about being nice or open or receptive to another person.
I am maybe writing a philosophy of being, but my point here does come back to my writing. My best writing has always been my most vulnerable, honest, earnest and open. And that’s not even a revelation – I’ve always known this.
Back in college, writing for newspapers, I’d sometimes find myself totally blocked, unable to write a single word. I didn’t quite clock this then, but I was blocked because I was bullshitting myself. In these moments of blockage, instead of continuing the charade and killing myself trying to work with a voice that wasn’t actually my own, I’d lean into something else. Something scary because it was so earnest. I would turn up the volume on an inner voice who was eager, excited, engaged. This inner voice used exclamation points and had a lilt like she was smiling. This writing always felt deeply uncomfortable, but when I’d hand it over to my editors – Here! Take it! Ugh! – every time, they loved what I’d written. This person has always been in me, I’d just been afraid for a very long time to let her live. I’m trying to give her some space now, though.
