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Hi, it’s me, Noelle! I know I haven’t been on here for a while, but I hope to be returning more routinely. If you’re new here, I’m a self-published poet and author (as most of my social media usernames would suggest), with a book out in the wild that I published in late 2024 . . . and then promptly did not market a lick of it for the following year. I do have a few excuses for that—mainly losing three family members within a couple of months of each other, thereby losing complete track of time throughout 2025 due to grief and burnout—but quite frankly, I also didn’t quite know what I was doing, either.
I know . . . shocking! Perhaps even a tad unprofessional to admit such a scandal . . . and yet, I am, as ever, a human at the best (and worst) of times. And humans, it turns out, are messy, imperfect creatures.
I think, as humans, we all try our best to perfect something at some point in our lives, right? (Or is that just the recovering people-pleaser in me talking?) At any rate, they didn’t coin the term “keeping up with the Joneses” for nothing. It’s something we all very easily fall victim to—whether it’s buying the latest car model, chasing the newest fashions, or comparing ourselves to others in our desired professions. And this? This is where I realized I was no longer treading water but in over my head. I had inadvertently locked myself into thinking that my only social media presence should be about my writing. I mean, my username for just about everything is “Noelle – the Poet”, so that’s what I should be posting about, right?
But the truth is: I am so much more than just a poet.
For most of last year—grief and nervous-system dysregulation aside—it felt like I was trying to fit a very square peg into an even rounder hole. And that just isn’t comfortable, is it? I reached a point last fall where I finally took a time-out to pause and ask myself why I was holding myself back . . . and the answer was one that shocked me.
I had started to fear that I wouldn’t fit in . . . again.
This is an age-old fear of mine, really. The quiet girl constantly picked on in grade school; the theater-kid-at-heart who was never quite comfortable being on stage; the office inside-joke because she didn’t trust groups anymore and kept herself aloof. It’s a repeating cycle I’ve seen play out for over three decades now, and somehow, I had fallen right back into it.
At some point, I began to believe I wouldn’t be palatable to anyone if I didn’t keep my internet presence based solely around writing and poetry. That if I deviated from that subject, I would be too much. Too loud. Too chaotic.
Too . . . interesting?
Look, I realize we all know there’s more to people than what they do for a living, and I thought I’d gotten over this particular insecurity years ago. I mean . . . hello, I’m a bald white woman in a society that still often measures cis femininity by things like hair. I’m used to not fitting neatly into boxes. But for some reason I had gotten it into my head that I was supposed to act like writing—and/or marketing my writing—was my entire life.
And . . . well, it just isn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. I love it so much that I’ll talk the ears off my closest friends about the many book series I’m plotting, or immediately send a newly written poem to my best friend for her review. But writing and poetry are just a pinch of who I am as a person.
By limiting my online content to just writing, I found I was essentially limiting myself to a basic RGB when, in reality, I encompass an entire spectrum of color, just like each and every other human on this planet.
What finally broke me out of this self-induced cycle was the quiet privilege of watching a few people in my orbit realize something similar, and bravely expand their online presence by letting themselves be more than one thing. Seeing that gave me the permission I needed to do the same.
What can I say? Sometimes permission doesn’t come from within at first, but comes from witnessing others give it to themselves. And that? That’s an important part of healing, too.
So here I am again, after yet another overhaul of scraping back layers to rediscover the true essence of what it is that fuels this incessant spirit of mine. I’m looking forward to sharing what I find with you. I can’t guarantee that what I end up sharing will always be about writing . . . but I can guarantee that it will always be real.
Until next time,
xoxo
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