I look at the color on the key board when I type. When I needed to be someone totally different, look at my words from a different point of view, I painted them tan. I needed to feel like they were new hands somehow. I needed to feel like the end of the self-edits was new.

One of my students noticed the nails. She scrunched her face and told me she would tell me tomorrow if she liked them. This is the same student who told me, that she wanted me to be the fashion club sponsor, but it was totally okay that I wasn’t fashionable… Teaching teens is often a little rough on your ego.

This time, she didn’t accidentally insult me. She told me the tan was fine for my skin, but it didn’t suit my personality. I needed something bolder. She said I am never understated. So she brought me in gun-metal. It is chipping off as we speak, and I don’t even care.

I need the gun-metal nails today, this week. My book is completely self-edited and I just sent out every chapter to a different somebody I respect and they are reading, and commenting, and editing.

Everyone told me that the book writing process was going to be hard, that it would take a lot out of me. But no one told me about the sharing, the critiquing, the editing. I told someone I think I would rather have sent off sixteen naked pictures of myself. Giving birth. (Don’t worry internet those don’t actually exist.) That is how vulnerable I feel.

So, I am sporting the gun-metal nail polish. I need to be reminded that I am a bad-ass. I need to see the proof of it on my fingers. Sometimes, you have to wear the costume, to feel like the super-hero you are.