I am better than you, but you are doing fine

I'm approaching that point in productivity where you're running as fast as you can, but you see the wall ahead. There are two options:

1. Slow down and see if you can find a way around the wall. Maybe you can climb it (ew just kidding I hate climbing things). Find a way around it at a walking pace.

or

2. Keep running as fast as you can and accept that you're about to hit a wall. Just turn your head to the side so you don't break your nose. I've recently started to really like my nose. It's cute.

The latter will prevail. I remember they said once in driver's training not to swerve for animals. They probably would have said, "Stop for walls," but I don't remember that, so I'm going to loosely apply the animal tidbit to walls in my creative life and hope it works.

The wall I'm approaching is built from bricks of other writer's works. Originally, I wanted to say it was built from the bodies of other writers, but that evoked a certain image I already try to avoid given my blonde hair and alabaster skin. Maybe we just imagine a wall of writers in an arm-linked-fence kind of way. Red Rover style. That sounds less controversial.

Anyway, me, running, wall, writers.

Point being: those writers are not better than me. For the first time in my life, I read things and think, "I could have written that better." I was explaining this to my roommate (who I would call my best friend, but we all know my recent luck with that title), how I am better than these writers. And I just finished reading Mindy Kaling's book. That's like the Pope saying he could have made a hotter Adam & Eve. Or at least ones that didn't have a weird thing for apples.

to which my roommate replied

I think it's time you start calling yourself a writer.
and
Stop making religious references. 

Da FUQ*? I wasn't looking for advice. I was just bitching over a grande blonde roast, but he was right. Those writers were writing successfully because they are writers. As straightforward as that should sound to anybody over the age of 6, it wasn't until this moment that I realized how much I'd been avoiding the issue.

Because if I called myself a writer, it was one more thing to fail at.

-I ended that sentence with a preposition. I know that because I am a writer.-

I had been swerving. But I didn't go to school to be a writer. What claim did I have to titleship? Then again, I didn't go to school to be a restaurant manager and I'm OK failing at that. Move over, Ellen Paige, it's my turn to come out.

Red Rover, Red Rover, this bitch is coming over.

Writer,

TJB: Making It


*Translation: The Fuck? as in "What the fuck?" Good for Snapchats.