the big one.
I'm a journalist, a writer.
I want to be a journalist, a writer.
I've wanted these things for years, and I denied that for a while, shirking these identities off as hobbies or sidehustles for another day. Looking back, it seems so obvious (as it always does) that I'd end up as a journalist, a writer.
I can distinctly remember this stack of paper in my second grade classroom, tissue-paper-thin to write prayer requests on with the golf pencils next to it. I had this overwhelming urge to write on every single page, all one million of them. I wasn't even sure what to write, I just wanted words on the pages.
When the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, 8-year-old me printed out a newspaper template to write about how Curt Schilling beat the odds to bring us home.
I have pages of typewritten stories and newsletters in faded red, quarter-filled journals with story sketches and would-have-been novels. Nothing ever stuck, so I pursued other forms of storytelling.
Maybe I didn't think that I had it in me to create, to produce. I ended up in college wanting to be a psychologist, to listen to the stories of others rather than write them myself.
I asked my mom recently the big question that's been on my heart for who knows how many years: do you think journalism is a waste? What she said doesn't really matter because, of course, the question was posed to myself.
Is this stupid? Is writing selfish? Where is the help in this, why does this matter?
The answer is wrapped up in how I was raised, what subjects are pushed on boys and girls in schools, what attention I get for different things I do, what's "cool" right now, but the answer is the same: yes, yes it matters.
Stories are what shape us -- hearing them, creating them, rewriting them. It would be a waste to do anything that I wasn't passionate about.
So, I'm a journalist, a writer. And praise be for that.
