When I first moved to New York, I lived in a communal house with nine other people. A few days in, a roommate asked me what it felt like to walk into a room the way I did. I didn’t know what he meant. “This confidence, this assurance,” he said.

I was reminded of this at dinner a few nights ago when I walked in to meet a friend. He immediately said, “If I could only have your confidence.” I hadn’t said a single word. In fact, I had spent the walk to the restaurant thinking about my upcoming birthday and how it made me miss the parties my parents used to throw for me. Internally, "confident" wouldn’t have made the list of how I was feeling.

Read on, and share your story, through An Artist’s Blog on Substack.