THATSBUG2U.COM​

   I've spent my entire adult life producing content for others to see, whether as a journalist, freelance writer or communications director. The reception my work receives can be edifying ... but it can also require the crust of an armadillo. I learned this the very first time I was published, well before I knew I wanted to make communications and storytelling my vocation. 

 

   I had just won first place in my middle school's New Year's resolution contest — I came up with something about poison ivy and turning over a new leaf, as I recall — and my entry was printed in the weekly newsletter sent home with us each Friday. Boarding the bus that afternoon — the newsletter tucked inside the cover of my hardback history book so as to keep it crisp, pristine and suitable for framing — I expected the adulation of my classmates.

 

   Instead, an eighth-grade girl read the resolution aloud on the crowded bus ... then declared that the only thing dumber than my resolution was the judge who awarded it first place. Needless to say, that hostile critique dulled my triumphalism.

 

   Somehow, though, that episode neither diminished my urge to be published, nor deterred me from attaching my name to my work. Of course, critics deserve a fair hearing, and I must admit my resolution was pretty dumb. That's the other important lesson that bus ride taught me — if you're going to put your work out there, make it something you'll stand behind.