I’m a writer, and I somehow forget that a lot. Not in my day-to-day actions, because obviously I write a lot all the time. I’m doing it right now.
But I forget that I’m a professional writer. That it’s my job. That it’s how I make money and have been doing so for a long while now.
I forget that, among the people I know, I am the writer. That’s what people know me as in my town. It’s a label, a positive one, that just is there all the time when people talk to me.
It’s kind of wild to think about—it’s so normal to me.
But this is not a normal occupation. This is not something everyone does.
People don’t think about stories and structure and word count all day. They don’t juggle article ideas and figure out how to make a sentence sound best. Most people don’t make sure to never end their text messages with a preposition. They don’t try different fonts to see if it makes them write any faster or cleaner.
But I do that. I do all of that.
That’s a writer thing. It marks me as one.
Because I am one.
And that’s cool when I remember it.
