The Head Chef and her Devoted Janitor

Here's the thing:

I despise writing.

Not because it's boring – far from it. Like many people, perhaps, I often find I can express myself much better on the page than I ever could out loud. No, I hate it because I can't shake the feeling that it's all a performance, a pretense designed to feed my own ego, making me sound more eloquent or insightful than I actually am. The 'me' who writes feels like a carefully constructed character, the better version, starkly different from the real-world model.

In reality, I'm quiet among strangers, almost painfully introverted in crowds. My ADHD makes steady eye contact a struggle, and I confess I rarely absorb a full sentence when there are shinier, louder, more colourful distractions obscuring my vision. But writing offers this strange gift, doesn't it? A legacy from ancestors who figured out how to translate fleeting feelings into lasting marks. It gives me the capacity to step into that 'better' skin, to embody a different character. Anyone who knows me in real life sees the drastic difference, and trust me, so do I.