Nic Narrates

I’d had four Guinness, otherwise I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to do it. Nonetheless, there I sat, in my cups so to speak, jotting it down on the back of a cocktail napkin.

Was I trying to impress? To be known? Found out? Maybe. Moments before I’d learned he too had a blog, a music-centric one. I guess he’s what the kids these days would call a hipster.  A friend of a friend, he was eccentric in a thoroughly entertaining way and as different from me as could be minus his holding my dream job at Burnett. I’d have loved to talk shop, to network, but UGH. I’m just not that ambitious these days and I don’t want to be THAT GIRL. We swapped urls rather than business cards, and I vaguely remember telling him he’d probably hate everything about Nic Narrates.

The little girl part of me, that I still carry around as it were, worries about what people think of her, worries she won’t be liked, won’t be accepted, won’t be at all what she ought to be. Thoughts like those used to keep me from sharing anything of my inner thoughts with my family, friends, and boyfriends. I grew up believing I had to be who each person I met wanted me to be. It was exhausting, and as a result, few people I’ve known have actually known me. I wish someone long ago would have taken me by the shoulders, shaken me, and told me “don’t be afraid to be who you are” until I believed them.

That said, I worry much less about these things now. Writing this blog, pouring my worries, my hopes, my frustrations, my catastrophic single girl moments out to whomever happens upon them has certainly encouraged me. I’m not as afraid anymore to share myself, to confide the very things I divulge here, with those who know me in real life. I worry less about being accepted, less about the risk of being hurt, and have stronger friendships for it. I have yet to find the man strong enough to be with someone like me however. All in due time perhaps.

I do still wonder about the voice I maintain here though, wonder if it isn’t outrageously self-indulgent and recklessly insipid, wonder about verging on trite or irrelevant. I don’t write to appeal, but it’s certainly nice to resonate, isn’t it?

And then there are your emails, your comments, even your own posts over the years that have cheered me to know I’m not so alone in my worries of being deemed nothing more than a silly girl with some foolish inclination to write. In fact, nothing could be more normal, more human, than wanting to be well-liked. Whether that’s on or offline, as a writer or as just one more person out there looking for love and acceptance and comfort.

Still, I’d venture to guess my Burnett hipster isn’t a reader.

Filed under: anyone out there?, blogging about blogging, childhood, city encounters, friends, singletons, things people say, write on, you're a card by Nic