Someone at #HarvardWriters2019 asked me whether I knew my profile pic was “half a head”?
Yes, my friends, I do know! I framed it that way, on purpose.
(note: profile pic has since been changed)
Exhibit A, below:
“But why!” you may be exclaiming, right about now, cocking ur head to the side in confusion.
Well, here’s why (in one of my creative Twitter threads):
1/ When I was young, I didn’t always fit in w/the crowd. I couldn’t grasp why, b/c heaven knows I tried (really hard!) to fit in.
But the older I get, the more I realize I don’t have to.
..& instead, I increasingly set out to defy the rules of conformity, the standard of norm.
2/ Basically, I try to not fit into a box. That works w/everything & anything, but esp w/the things I’m most passionate about (like ✍🏼&📸&✈️&👨👩👧👦& esp😆)
At 1st, I got a lot of slack 4 doing this. B/c I had trained 2 be a #physician, & we are SUPPOSED to do things ‘a certain way’
3/ b/c I wasn’t doing things the expected way, it was deemed ‘wrong’. But that really didn’t sit well w/me.
“Why couldn’t I create a new space for myself – as a #physician – online? Why couldn’t I express myself & bring new💡to the table, sharing them w/the rest of the 🌎?” I 🤷🏻♀️
4/ You never know whose life I could ‘touch’, I reasoned.
But I was still told NO & that I shouldn’t.
“U really should stop.”
Why was I not just ‘being a doctor’ & sticking 🗳 to what I was ‘supposed to do’ – inside my white coat & behind the privacy of the closed office doors?
5/ But here’s where a little #secret about me, which gets truer the older I get, comes into play:
When someone says I ‘can’t do something’, it makes me really uneasy.
& sometimes, it makes me want 2 do it EVEN MORE. “Why can’t I?” I wonder 2 myself.
Of course I can! So I do.
6/ Which brings me back to my profile pic, an example fitting perfectly into the point I’m trying to make.
If everyone does a full front face, why can’t I do just half?
BUT it doesn’t just end there, folks. There’s actual reasoning behind why I’d want to do it that way.. ⬇️
7/ I do it b/c it massages my inner creative. If artists of our past made rather curious pieces of #art work – even those that didn’t conform 2 the norm – then why can’t an average doc do it too? Couldn’t I be just like ‘em, in fact (& maybe even start a #halfhead Twitter trend?)
8/ So I will.
& as 4 the #curious among u, who r left wondering whether the full image is about to come out, I’ll say this: I’m keeping u curious, at a #halfhead me. Because, as Walt #Disney once famously said:
“When you’re curious, you find lots of #interesting things to do.”
