I've received a good number of not-so-pleasant responses for my articles. Criticisms are nothing new; it's part of getting work out there.
In this article that I published on NewsBreak, A Woman In Her 30s Defines True Love, a reader commented I am devoid of a life of experience. I read that and recognized she is right.
I imagine she must be a lot older than me and read what I had to say about love. I imagine she had experienced love differently and has a deeper interpretation, or appreciation of it.
I didn't respond to her, or to the others, because I don't want to have an exchange over her and others' opinion they are all entitled to.
If anyone who reads my work thinks I am this or that; it is entirely up to them to think that way.
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Here's one thing about writing:
We see many writers as experts in their respective fields. There are also writers, including me, who write what we write only for ourselves and not for anyone else.
We write for clarity. We write to understand. To condense. To write what little we know about our spectral worlds. To make sense of, hoping in writing it down, we can figure some things out.
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Other comments I got recently:
"So this loon considers getting older a crisis? Maybe for her convoluted mind."
"ITS ALL YOUR ISSUE. LIVE WITH IT."
"Yoga is racist…"
What comes with doing what you love is that you can never please everybody. Writing in NewsBreak is getting more interesting. 😀
It's a small price to pay for having this privilege to write and be read by readers who question - while others beat - what they read. I keep that in mind all the time.