Combadges and Holodecks

It amazes me when I see people living their lives exactly how they want to especially when they've left the beaten path and gone on to forge their own instead. It's inspiring. I love to see people being true to themselves with no apologies and acceptance (at least most of the time) of who they are. Again, so inspiring. It's a hard road no doubt but isn't life fuller, richer, deeper, more vast, more exciting, more real, when you're being honest with yourself?

Why do we try so hard to be these people that we're not?

Today I was at a used book store and I spent an hour wandering around looking in the Sci-fi and fiction and YA sections with an old grandpa in running shorts (we're talking marathon short) and a tank top and a scary looking dude drinking a monster energy drink and asking where the horror section was. And then there was me. Of course I had a ginormous stroller and baby who wouldn't stay in it so it took an embarrassing 30 seconds to get out the door while everyone watched me shoving and twisting that thing through this door that wouldn't open all the way trying to balance a babe on my hip and a stack of book and a purse in my other arm....I looked foolish. It was clumsy. It was un-cool. But as I walked to the car I thought, that's me.

Tonight we went to a bbq dinner party with some acquaintances and I found myself sitting alone while other people chatted around me. The conversations were about R-rated movies (which I don't watch because everything is too real to me) reality tv (which I also don't watch because it's stupid and a brain drain), and work inside jokes I didn't know about. No one read the NYTimes, Nathan Bransford, Vanity Fair even! No one was talking music or literature or good politics or traveling abroad...I spent the first half  of the evening internally beating myself up for not being more pro-chatting, inserting myself in others' conversations instead of waiting for them in include me, and doing all the points I've read in magazines about "How to Be an Interesting Person". I tried. But that's not me. I'm shy, I'm a homebody. As many writers/readers, I longed for a quiet corner and a book and some good music in the background.

These two situations really hit home on what I should have realized in high school and even college. It's time to STOP TRYING TO BE SOMEONE YOU'RE NOT.

This is why I want to write books for YA. Because you guys are the next generation and everyone out there is trying to tell you to be somebody you're not. It's time to BE YOURSELF. I'm just learning how to myself but tonight I feel free. I'm sure there will be more lonely nights in a crowd full of people but I'd rather be me, be lost in my imaginary worlds and characters, stumbling around old, used bookstores and dreaming of the day my published words might find their way into someone else's heart.