My Beginnings

It’s 2 AM and I’m awake at my desk back in April of 2019. I’m sitting there crunched over my computer, writing, editing, re-writing, and re-editing an essay. It’s an essay about what I would consider the biggest moment in my life to this point—the time I had to tell my dad I stopped believing in Jesus and the Bible, and what it felt like to have to announce this truth to someone who I knew couldn’t be happy about my revelation. No matter how I reword it or rearrange it, the story just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel complete, and in the back of my mind I hear my editor’s words, “who cares? Why does this story matter to anyone else?”

I slam my computer screen shut. I’m not upset at her. I’m upset that I’ve stayed up late again with nothing to show for it—I could have gone to sleep five hours ago and had the exact same amount of progress on my essay—zero. Now I’m going to wake up tomorrow tired as hell and wondering why I can’t be efficient in my day-to-day activities. Then when it’s late in the evening, I’ll try to make up for an unproductive day by working late into the night. When that doesn’t go well, I’ll turn back to my writing, hoping to escape my failures at my regular job, but again finding myself staring at the computer screen at 2 AM wishing I had just gone to bed. I’ve been stuck in this same loop for months, or maybe even a year, but I rest my head on the pillow hoping tomorrow will be different—but knowing that it won’t be.

My alarm goes off and it feels like I’ve gotten only 10 minutes of sleep. I pull myself out of my bed to get going on my day, starting with getting my four and six year old sons ready to go to their respective schools. After dropping them off, I head back home where I’ve been working from for the last five to six years. I sit at the same desk I was just at earlier this morning, except now I am sitting in front of a different computer screen staring at one patent application after another. I am a Patent Examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and while I once thoroughly enjoyed my job I’m currently going through a stretch where I hate it. Hours pass without me even realizing it and without hearing a word from another human being. They say time flies when you’re having fun, but time really flies when you’re in such a dazed state that when you snap out of it the whole day has passed. Now it’s time for me to pick up my boys from school and head into Manhattan for my older son’s Jiu Jitsu class.

As we finally sit down in the C train headed into the city, I pull out my phone. I don’t want to think about how unproductive I was at work and I don’t want to think about how to finish my essay. I really just want to distract myself from everything. I could go onto Instagram to really get lost in nothingness, but I hate Instagram. I could turn on my favorite writing podcasts and learn something new, but I’m tired of learning about writing. I want to complete something of my own—even if it’s not useful to anyone. So as we head into the city for a 30-minute subway ride to my son’s class, I decide to open my notes app and write a distraction piece about the smallest moment in my life—the one time I was late to pick up my son from the bus stop a few weeks earlier.

I started writing lazily, as if texting a friend a recap of the events of that day without concern about grammar or writing tips to follow, and for the entire 30-minute train ride my fingers did not stop typing on my phone. It’s kind of fun, there are no stakes, and no one is ever going to see this, so I try to keep the writing going while my son is in his class. Unfortunately, his younger brother is not in the class with him so I can’t keep writing, but I’m happy to take a pause and play with him without thinking about how terrible my day, month, or year have been. When my son’s class ends we head back into Brooklyn on the C train, and I pick up where I left off on my story. Shocked about how fast the 30 minutes train ride home went by, I rushed to finish up the rest of the story just as we left the last station before our stop. It felt good to be done with a story, even if it was not an important story.

Later that night, I transferred the story from notes to a word document, I edited the piece to make sure it captured what the moment meant to me and what I realized about myself as a person from the events of the story. Then since I’ve always known that grammar is one of my weaknesses, I sent the essay on to an online proofreader for $10 and was in bed before 10 PM. The next day I had a finished essay. It wasn’t nearly as polished or as well thought-out out as the piece I had been working on for over a year, but it was done. It had all been completed within the span of less than 24 hours, but it felt so much more alive than the big piece I was trying to write.

I decided to pitch the essay to my favorite writing podcast. Less than a week later I received their response—they wanted my story. I was so excited when I read the email that I took out my phone and captured the excited expression on my face so I would never forget how powerful the moment was for me. I couldn’t believe that the essay I had written as a distraction from what I thought was a better and more important piece had been accepted for publication. A couple months later the same essay written in the notes app of my phone was accepted for publication in the Washington Post.

Having a piece I wrote appear in a place where thousands of people can hear and read it was life changing for me in two ways—first, it showed me that the little moments in my life can be of great meaning to me and to others, and second, it showed me the power of speaking from my authentic voice. I had spent so much time on the earlier essay trying to make it perfect, trying to make it sound like other essays I’ve read, and trying to change the world with a six page document, but I had to stop and learn that there is no voice I can write in as powerfully as my own.

Ultimately, this is what lead me to the personal storytelling stage—I wanted to exist in a space where my authentic voice became the only voice I knew how to use, and being on the stage to share my personal stories meant giving up the control to look perfectly put together and replacing this facade with just the human being I am and nothing else.

I was toiling away in secret hoping to present myself in a way that was loveable, but now I know I AM LOVEABLE without having to perfectly craft a narrative around my life.

If you are somewhere along my same journey—a perfectionist afraid to make mistakes to a person empowered by taking a chance and appreciating the imperfections of human life—feel free to jump aboard the train… I think you’ll like the view.