EJ

Hello, my name is EJ, and I am many things.

I’m a brother and a protector.

A friend and a hype man.

An enjoyer of the Wilson translation of the great Greek epics, and the great Twilight saga.

But more than anything, the truest thing about me is that words have always had a piece of me. I can’t pinpoint where this started, but all I know is that when I discovered fantasy novels, poetry, and classical literature, something sparked within me.

Absorbing these words, whether it was through a battered library book, a class handout, or a quote floating through a feed felt, truly, like sucking the marrow out of life. There’s an intoxication to, “To be or not to be, that is the question: whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer / the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing, end them?… (Shakespeare, Hamlet)”

There’s serenity to, “You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. (Oliver, Wild Geese)” 

These creative works, and countless others, are so deeply tied to what it means to be human; with that, I feel it is an extension of my humanity to write. Whether it’s pen to paper or a hastily dictated concept in a notes app document. I want to continue to be human and revel in that creativity and imperfection.

As an adult, a contributor to society, that is something I want to continue to channel in my life. The last few years have felt like lessons on where I don’t fit, from a STEM degree to Twitter, but these lessons have been invaluable in that they’ve prompted me to cultivate my own meaning—to my presence, to my purpose.

Now I enter into a brave new world, where my writing is published, where I have a voice that can scream, where I study what sets my soul on fire. If my writing gives the world anything, even if it’s just a small pocket of the internet, I hope it’s a community. Our world is wonderful shades of grey, and my experiences have been wildly, wonderfully, intersectional, and I hope that expressing the heart that is at the core of every triumph and scream resonates, whether that’s for people from similar backgrounds as me or someone who has never encountered such an experience before.