I’ve kind of always known I was nobody, you know being a girl and growing up when I did. Unfortunately, that belief has been reinforced of late. Trying to identify what group I am a member of, I found am not quite a baby boomer nor a Gen X. I am on the cusp of both, and being the person that I am, I happily take on all the faults and failings of each. I feel bad for all the things people hate about all of my people. It must be a thing with us cuspers.
Though none of that has ever been a real issue. I like to keep myself to myself, just one of the reasons I live in the north woods. Far from the maddening crowds, the only insults and admonitions to reach me come from YouTube and Facebook. I can take those rather random and nonspecific hits.
Then I went and ruined it all by writing a book, well 25 books to be honest. That one act has given me official confirmation I am nobody.
I dropped off some of my books at a nearby library. You know local author and all. As the librarian approached, she said “let me see what you have.” She casually picked up the books, precious objects to me. She flipped through the pages turning them over in her hands with a kind of indifference. She looked up and addressed me, “You know you’re nobody. These are just going to sit on my shelf doing nothing.”
As a well-trained cusper, knowing my place in the world, I responded quickly, “Sure I know, sorry.” I have to say she took me off guard. Insulting me is okay but not my books, like I said those books have value to me. Financially I had around $60 in, but those pages held my joy and my characters, my very precious characters. I may be nobody but every one of them is a somebody, even the bad guys.
So I have had to step out of my safe place and try to do right by them, trying to find the audience for my stories, for my people. I have ventured into the much feared, terrifying world of marketing. I figured I would be safe stepping into the social media milieu, I mean being a nobody is good cover. Didn’t work, I took some weird unexplainable hits, ended up having to prove who I was. How could I do that, I’m nobody, I have no credentials to prove that. Maybe I could give them the number of that librarian.
May you never believe you are a nobody, you are part of someone’s story a beloved character in someone’s life, you are somebody.
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