The official blog of Michelle Tuckett, word ninja.

Things are going to be a bit different around here.

For one thing, it’s going to be a bit, well, more likely a ton more active. I realized lately something simple, profound, and freeing:

I don’t care what anyone thinks about me anymore.

And that’s a good thing. Looking back over my life, I can see how this is the crippling blow: caring. Caring what others think dampened my spirit, keep me in jobs that didn’t suit me, friendships that corroded my being, diets that were expensive and made me sick, clothes that I hated.

Caring what other people think is why I’m not a published writer by now. It’s why I put up with bad jobs, worse friends, and years of trying to find my real job and get over this whole being a writer crap.

You see, I’ve been writing. I’ve written so many false starts and almost-blog-posts that every time I restart my Mac, my computer chokes on the number of untitled Pages documents poping up, balefully starting at me, daring me to post them, to show my true colors.

There’s a disease of writing in the open. Strike that, living in the open. We feel like we need to care; every sentence could be a neat big break, every photo must show a perfect alternate reality. We come to blog because we want to show off, to create a small alternate reality on the internet where we are epic, fantastic, great writers.

It’s a lie, a big one; hard to keep up with. That’s why we quit, that’s what kept those documents unposted, blogs half-written for someone who isn’t me, and probably written for an audience who isn’t you. It’s the reality I wanted to pretend is real.

And it was exhausting.

I think you know exactly what I mean.

The reasons and the way I got here are pretty boring and can be replicated by watching pretty much any 80s coming of age movie or that amazing clip (NSFW) from SLC Punk. I’ll likely wax poetical at some point about how my caring circuit got fried to oblivion, but for now just fill in the blanks in your head.

I’m so sick of perfection it makes me want to puke – I’m sick of the person I was trying to be, sick of the writer I though I had to become to be successful. I just want to write, to think what I really think, to just exist in a way that makes me happy to live in my skin.

Cue the montage, the Michelle Pfeiffer raiding her closet, the nice girl turns Catsuit Sandy, the GI Jane shaved head, the exiting the dressing room in stomping boots, a new mysteriously obtained tattoo, and a studded belt attitude.

Get your inner punk rock on, people. Let’s get started.