You need to be like green hair, my freelance writing friends. Story time!

When my daughter was in elementary school she decided she wanted green hair. Since we’ve always encouraged our daughters to be themselves, her dad spent all evening lovingly coloring her hair.

The next day, I got a phone call from my daughter’s teacher. The green hair caught the eye of a bully and he was harassing my little girl. I was sad for my daughter, but what the teacher said next floored me. “She really needs to change her hair back to blond so she doesn’t distract the other students.” So, basically, my daughter needed to conform to make the bullies comfortable and quiet. A white-hot rage welled up inside of me. Our world is seriously fucked up, I thought to myself.

Your freelance writing dream is a lot like green hair. It’s different. People are uncomfortable with different and, more than likely, family and friends will give you hell over your decision. Why can’t you just have a nice, stable normal job like everyone else? Get your head out of the clouds and come back down to Earth, they’ll say.

Ignore them!!!

Your job in this life isn’t to make people comfortable with your personal choices. The choices you make for yourself are meant to do one thing: make you happy. If you love putting words on blank screens or filling pages of notebook paper with ideas, go for it! You do you. Luxuriate in the feeling of being weird and free.