I’m trying out something, a new way to write to fix what seems to be out of alignment inside myself. Of course, I went to that great oracle, Google, that infinite information chiropractor of the Internet.

I typed in, ‘how to be a humorist,’ and found it located under ‘how to be funny,’ but above ‘you are not a comedian.’ So what am I?

I’m told I’m deep. Usually, I don’t believe it and quietly mock myself for situations where I’m anything but wading in a deep pool. But something happened to me, (I blame higher education for this) I forced myself, despite my inner mind kicking and screaming, the one that insisted shaving a one inch section of hair above each ear, like hairy racing stripes, was a great idea, into thinking that for me to be considered intelligent and Literary, I must be dark. Dark, then translated to Horror, which then translated to deep. So here I am, a deep and dark Horror writer who is constantly in a posthumous rub between who I am and who I think I should be. I wasn’t always like this.

My mom used to compare me to the great humorist, Erma Bombeck, and for most of my life, I took it as a compliment until recently, when I decided to tackle getting a college degree. Then, anything attached to a wifely and motherly of any type was abhorrent—yet I am and have always been a housewife, and a stay-at-home-mom, so another rub.

This kind of search for authenticity while living an unauthentic life has turned into fat. I seek comfort in Culver’s Concrete Turtle Sundaes. I sneak handfuls of gooey caramel popcorn and eat it while I’m taking a bath. That’s the other thing I do I take hot baths all of the time. I’m in the ol’ sulk n’ soak from January to the beginning of March.

I suppose not fitting into my clothes has made me reconsider my lifestyle and a change in my writing style. This led me into Blogging (simply writing down the words sends my Horror-ist persona screaming to the dark corners of the Starbucks that has established a store in a prime location on my soul, directly in route to my heart). Blogging. I’m a blogger. I blog now.

Anyway, as I blog, I find I’m happier. I feel energized and like my old self, again. I can write whatever flows from my pen without having to listen to the soundtrack of “Stranger Things” to get me going. Huh. Could the advice passed down from every mother, everywhere, be right? The best thing to be is yourself?

I don’t know if I’m a Satirist, though I love to read it and I seem to find that certain gravities have a smidge of hilarity to them. I don’t know.

What I’m discovering is that for the first time since I was a teenager, I’m enjoying writing again, and that’s not something I’m ready to bully myself out of yet.