The First Of Many Thoughts.

An intro to Things I Thought About + struggling to convince myself I am indeed a writer.

It is not a coincidence that I came around to writing this periodical missive while stomping the mean streets of New York City.
The crunchy winter air, the bustling atmosphere, the feeling of power that takes over while swiping my now overused debit card to pay for a $5 way too-sweet latte, and the unique independent bookshops all played a role in my decision to take my ranting career to the next level.

Maybe it’s the spirit of Carrie Bradshaw hovering over the city, perhaps it’s the ambiguous yet terribly cool individuals rushing from train to train, maybe it’s my significant other’s (I guess the cat’s out the bag now) resilience in trying to convince me to do it, but I have been conquered by unprecedented inspiration.
This compelling feeling pushed me to finally be able to take control of my passion for critique and turn it into a Substack.

The premise of this newsletter was to create a space where I could babble about the most disparate topics without forcing people to break their thumbs skipping from story to story on my Instagram account, but as I am typing this out, I believe Things I Thought About will become a much more intricate and layered editorial space. A place where I will yes, ramble about — quite literally - things I think about, but also a sort of experimental column with no real boundaries or forced direction.

At times I will be discussing social affairs. Other times I will be paraphrasing a great conversation I had. Other other times I will be sharing personal anecdotes and philosophies which inform the way I conduct my life and interact with the world around me.

It will keep you wondering what’s coming next. It will prompt you to yell at me through the screen, crinkle your nose in puzzlement, and hopefully trigger new ideas, challenge your current speculations, and ultimately start a conversation. With that said, let’s delve into the First Of Many Thoughts…

I wasn’t always a great communicator. In fact, I started to properly articulate my words fairly late compared to other kids.
As a child, my older sister would tease me because I could not seem to get the syllables of some very easy terms straight. Like cinema for example. No matter how many times my relatives repeated the word to me, whenever it was my turn to spell it out, my brain would scrabble the letters and I would pronounce, with triumphant confidence: “C-I-M-E-N-A!”

When it came to writing though, let me tell you… I was born a writer. My talent manifested in excessively creative manners.

One time, for instance, I took a rock and tagged the door of my mom’s brand new Seat Ibiza with the only word I knew how to spell at 2 years old: Naomi (egocentric much?).

I didn’t get a whooping, but let’s say she wasn’t exactly blown away by my superior skills until many years later when I got to elementary school and started being assigned essays.

I remember my mom always told me I had a fervid imagination and a fascinating approach to words—even when my high school teacher scorned me.

In a way, due to my innate aptitude for handling language and my pursuit of linguistic excellence, I could consider myself a linguist, a philologist of some sort. However, before my editorial debut in 2015, I had never considered journalism or writing as a viable career. I always had my eyes on a different prize: Fashion.

Looking back, I understand that communication and storytelling have been an integral part of what I do even when it wasn’t the primary focus.

Working in marketing, you are forced to use impactful language to create compelling campaigns that will catch the attention of a specific target audience and/or come up with ingenuous tag lines to steal the hearts of senior management in order to get those high budgets signed off. Hence, I can easily say my literary muscles have been steadily inflating over the past decade even if they never officially made it to the professional league.

I have been slowly claiming my space as a writer over the past 4 years, approximately. Anything published prior to joining Season Zine as an editor at large feels like a hit of good luck and mercy. Matter of fact, despite having appeared in numerous international publications, built editorial frameworks for a platform, and reported on the lives of extraordinary human beings, I still find it hard to associate myself with the word “writer”.

When I look at the stack of papers where my work has appeared, I feel glorious. I am thrilled each time somebody reaches out to me to cover a story, I get butterflies at the thought of creating my own printed matter.

So why am I left with this perpetual question: Am I a Writer?