Nico Yañez

As much as I’d like to pull some magical lever and just be who I want to be, it’s not that simple. In fact it’s impossible. I’m just me. Stuck there. And I’ve never accepted it. I’ve never wanted it. And now as my youth fades, so too does my hope that I’ll ever be comfortable in my life and my body and my soul.

As long as I can remember, I dedicated my life to the arts. I didn’t know it for a long time. I called it something else. But I was writing books and plays and harmonica songs as a toddler. I was planning backyard wrestling events and making videos and promoting live events for it in middle school. I dedicated my whole high school life to my band. And I’m the guy who kept doing it all as an adult. I never stopped. I never quit. I never will.

I haven’t written in a while. Not that I was doing it very regularly to begin with. Usually, to write something down and put it out there, I’d need the stars to align, so to speak. I have to feel inspired to say something about a certain topic. I have to feel motivated in the moment to write. And I have to also have freedom in that moment (no work, other projects to attend to, work shifts, etc) to knock it out before the aforementioned motivation runs dry. Usually, this all happens around the...