I've never thought of myself as a musician, but music has been part of my life since I was four, when my parents bought me a toy guitar and I demonstrated some aptitude.

I was raised by people who thought everyone needed that one big thing that made them special, one thing that was their whole identity. Dad was a businessman. Mom was like Martha Stewart with cuss words. My brothers were all into sports or took after dad (or both) and I was pegged as the creative one. Violin, piano, voice, and dance were crammed up my ass for a decade.

I rebelled a bit when I decided to practice guitar, then I tried to pivot from violin to harp, but the parental units weren't having any of my crap. In a way, I'm glad they did or I never would have followed through with any of it, and I still like taking part in open mic nights at the local pub or playing for friends. I like being flexible, and dance is a great way to release anxiety and aggression.

But it doesn't define me, because I'm also embarrassingly good with spreadsheets, I like digging into science, and I've loved telling stories since I was tiny. Tinier, anyway. Maybe some people would have said I lied my ass off as a kid, but I like to think of it as blurring the line between fantasy and reality, the product of an active imagination.

Oh, who am I kidding, I was a grade-A liar. That's probably why the truth is so important to me as an adult, and why I struggle so much with a "fake" identity. The compulsive liar has become an over-sharer to make up for all the bullshit I've contributed to the world's stockpiles. Telling the truth also resulted in one of the most defining moments of my life, and one of the most painful.

But I digress.

I tend to avoid the person my family tried to craft me into, and I worry about that a little because some of the real me is probably tied to it. My twenties are turning into a surgical reconstruction of who I am beneath the many masks I've worn through coercion or discretion. The challenge is to avoid throwing out details solely because it's part of something I didn't choose for myself. As I said, I don't hate music. I love it. I'm kind of a music snob. Part of that is because of my past, and I wouldn't go back and change it, even if I resented hours of practice at the time.

No matter what else you do in life, my heartiest recommendation to you is to be authentic. That probably doesn't mean what you think it does at face value, and it's not always easy to figure out. Sometimes it means you understand that there are inconsistencies that you have to face head-on and compensate for. In my case, telling the truth doesn't make me inauthentic, even if I'm not telling everyone that I have 4 degrees in STEM fields and wrote a bestselling epic fantasy series when I was 8 years old (that's hyperbole, I've never lied that badly or that unbelievably).

Or more simply put, wanting to be a writer doesn't make me not a musician.

The least happy people in the world are the ones who are trying to live someone else's life. Don't be that person. You're awesome the way you were made.