When I was younger, I was in love with the idea of moving out to a lone island and never speaking to anyone again. I wasn’t good at talking, physically, nor did conversations come easy to me, so I kept quiet and I was totally fine with that. But while the people closest to me rolled their eyes at my wishes (again, lone island), nobody told me how talking to people was fun. Nobody told me how nice of a feeling it was to feel a new friendship blossom, to have inside jokes with people, to hand out compliments and get them back, to ask questions to people who are excited about having the answers, to remember something that someone mentioned last time and make them feel heard, to flatter people, to share slightly embarrassing facts and be able to laugh about them, to have people to say hi and bye to. It took me years and years and years to gather the courage to speak, but it was so worth it. It’s so much fun.
Last Friday I was at my workplace’s internship booth for a city-wide event where tons of creative agencies opened their doors to anyone interested. If you told me four years ago that I’d stand there all night, calming down nervous students and older people hoping to get into tech with my (slightly embarrassing) anecdotes and full-fledged conversations, I wouldn’t have believed you and probably gotten sick at the idea.
Speaking is physically still a challenge to me, as it always will be, but I also know that language is one of the single most important and valuable tools at our disposal. You don’t have to be the loudest person in the room, but the fact that you have the ability to carve out a little crevice for you and someone else by ‘just’ opening your mouth and offering up a sliver of your thoughts is a major privilege. I’m still learning, but the more I do, the more magical communicating truly starts to feel, and the luckier I feel for having the right and freedom to use my voice – no matter how clumsily.













