I said last week that I’d tell you about a lie I tell myself, that I have recently stopped telling myself. That I have mostly stopped telling myself.

It is not my calling to be creative.

When I was a child, my siblings danced and were charmingly, endlessly inventive. At school, I struggled in dance class and was routinely asked to not keep trying out for choir. My clay pots cracked. My embroidery was passable but I resented every stitch for reminding me that my all-girl high school was still designed to turn out wonderfully educated housewives.

I spent hours and hours and hours every week in the art room, watching as my brilliant friends painted and drew and sketched and then I helped them name the works and edit the portfolios that would get them scholarships despite the objections of their parents.