I spent a large part of my teens feeling badly about the way I looked, not because I particularly disliked my body, but because it wasn’t up to the standard of perfection that society had set for us.
I spent a large part of my twenties feeling badly about who I was—an Indian woman who was single, lived alone, liked to travel, and had far too many male friends—again, not because I particularly disliked who I was, but because I didn’t meet my society’s standards of what a twenty-something Indian woman should live like.
Now I’m in my early thirties and there are other competitions—career, parenting, fancy homes and cars, etc—and this time I’m learning to stay out of it.
Sure, I wish we owned a home and had more money than we do. I’m not above feeling envious when a friend heads off to Spain for a holiday and the last holiday I had was when my child was first learning to walk, but for the most part, I love my life. I have a family I love and a career that continues to grow. When I look back at my teens, I realize that I didn’t just look fine, I looked great, and when I look back at my twenties, I really like the person that I used to be, even if back then she was uncomfortable in her own skin. She lived fearlessly, heading off to Ghana on a whim without knowing a soul in the country, traveled across Indian villages finding women whose stories she could tell, she landed up in towns and cities she’d never been to before with no contacts and no company because she wanted to explore the world without being shown how. I love that I once got to be that person who did crazy things, lived with crazy people, and got to be a little bit crazy herself.
I’m not that person any more and I never will be again and that’s just fine because I’ve grown, I’ve changed, and I’ve become more responsible. I will be the hypocritical parent who marries a man with a motorcycle but then tries to forbid her son from ever owning one. I got to be that person for a while and now I’m someone else.
I was a different writer then, too. I am not that writer any more and I never will be again. I was the journalist who always showed up without an appointment because I didn’t want to meet people who were prepared, I wanted to meet people who were real. I went on 48-hour train journeys because a story couldn’t become a story until it had first been an experience. I met every source I could, including the doctor who got a one-line quote in my piece about losing weight. Back then, I was a passionate writer who had to live it to write it. I didn’t care about what it paid, I cared about what it changed. I was ambitious, but I was also righteous.
I’m not that writer any more. I prefer collecting thoughts to experiences these days. I like quiet time. I don’t have much energy for crazy people. And I’m pretty certain that Dr. Seuss effects at least as much change as any journalist or literary novelist I’ve ever met.
I tell you all this today because we’ve just finished the first session of my 30 Days, 30 Queries course and I received a very nice e-mail from one of my students who early on in the course had a massive case of career envy but towards the end received an assignment from one of her dream magazines.
She’s in her early years of writing, but she was comparing herself to award-winners who’ve been doing this for a very long time. She was feeling teeny tiny in comparison. So small, in fact, that moving a muscle felt painful. She was cowering in a corner, refusing to send any queries, because there was no way that she could compete, there is no way that the query she sends out even today is going to be anywhere near the queries that this award-winning writer sends out regularly, without even thinking about it.
And let’s be honest with ourselves and each other. This is true. A newbie with no experience is not going to have an easy a time writing a query (or an article or an essay) in the same way a 40-year veteran will. Or any kind of decent acceptance rates for those queries. But that newbie may have the passion to chase a story no one else will or the patience to look in every dark corner until she finds the source, the quote, the statistic she needs.
A writing career is much like a life. Very rare is the writer who is comfortable in their skin, but when you look back at the writer you were, you see all that you had going for you. The new writer me took risks because she had nothing to lose. She got rejected by a Time magazine editor four times before she said, “Look, this isn’t working out. Can I just swing by the bureau so that you explain to me exactly what you’re looking for?” She got drunk at a party and embarrassed herself in front of a New York Times editor she really wanted to impress (the editor became a friend and recommended her for years). She pitched stories about communities of cannibals, traveled without money, and happily walked into strange people’s homes.
The writer I am today wonders how anyone could ever be that stupid.
So embrace the writer you are today and know that you will be a different one tomorrow.
We’re all growing, we’re all learning, and we all have something that’s working in our favor right at this very moment and it’s up to us whether or not we choose to see it. You’re not quite where that 40-year veteran is, but the question is, why would you want to be?