There is this phrase that I’ve been hearing a lot lately and it goes something like, your name is being mentioned in rooms you know nothing about.
I keep hearing it and I think it’s because that’s the season of my life I’m in. Where I’m learning more about the conversations that have surrounded my name (hopefully positive ones). And that has felt so real to me in the recent months because I’m getting the validation or the confirmation rather that these conversations are happening.
A lot of the times it feels like you’re working so hard and you’re getting nowhere, but you don’t know who’s watching, listening, and absorbing everything that you do.
The other day, while doing my semiannual Google search of myself to make sure that I’m not being washed away once again by the concept of Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, I found something that blew my mind.
I was a clue in a USA TODAY crossword puzzle. I mean, just look at this!
Now I’m not gonna sit here and act like this has been some big goal of mine, some dream that Ive had since I was a child, because honestly I’d never considered something like that happening. But when I saw it, I was so overwhelmed with happiness and I couldn’t wait to share it with the entire world because that is just another way that I have, in some way, left an impression on the world.
Now as I sit back and I look at my clue in this puzzle that phrase kept coming back to me that there are conversations happening there are people who are speaking about you in rooms in situations that you may never be privy to, but there is a lot that can come from that.
And over the next few months, I will share things that have come from conversations that I knew nothing about, but can ultimately change my life in a major way. Now this crossword puzzle doesn’t really change my life, but again it offers some validation to that phrase. There is no way I could have ever known that a columnist or a crossword puzzle technician or whatever they’re called, would have ever thought to use my name and my book as a clue in a crossword puzzle for a national publication.
But here we are and, of course, this is going into my happy author folder, which is full of all the other things that have happened on this amazing journey. Knowing that this is still just very early on and the trajectory of my career, I am just so excited to see what comes next.
I say all of that to say this, keep pushing forward.
There have been plenty of times I was ready to give up because publishing is hard and critics are harder, but this is my dream and right now the universe is telling me I was right and continuing to push for what I really wanted for myself and for my art.