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Little Miss Positivity

 You’re just five minutes away from achieving REM sleep when you hear it, the faint sounds of your phone buzzing. Through bleary eyes, you squint at the bright screen, snapping awake as you register the name. You swipe right, “hello, hey what’s up?”

“Where is it?” the voice at the other end does not sound amused. 

Your brows knit in confusion, “huh?” 

“The blog post? The short story reel? How many chapters of your book are ready?”

“Uh, I’m working on it” you say, trying to reconcile yourself with the fact that you’re probably not gonna get any sleep tonight. 

“It’s been a week. Do you enjoy disappointing your followers? Is that it? Do you think we don’t deserve nice things?”

“I’m sorry?”

You can feel her exasperation through the phone, “less apologizing, more writing”

You smile as you end the call. She’s one of the most annoying people you’ve ever met but she’s also the reason you’ve made it so far in your writing journey. Like Luke Dunphy, instead of asking the question why, she asks the question why not? She believes in you in a way that’s so unrealistic that you’re fooled into believing in yourself. You see yourself as a struggling author who may or may not make it to the big leagues and she sees you as a bestselling author in her ‘lazy girl era’. 

There are times when life screws you over so bad that you lose sight of the endgame you’ve been working toward your whole life and that’s when she’s there. Under her sarcastic comments and dry quips, there’s someone who genuinely wants you to succeed at everything you try and has saved a place on her bookshelf for a signed copy of your debut novel. She’s heard the songs you’ve written, read the books you’ve been too embarrassed to put out there, read and convinced people to read the book you have put out there, texted you at 2 am to tell you about potential ideas for your blog, texted on on every single social media account you have, including Gpay, when you don’t pick up her calls for whatever reason and most importantly, makes you believe no goal is too unrealistic, provided you want it. 

So even on the days you feel like nothing is worth it and that you’re not one of the people who gets to make their dreams into a reality, you open Instagram and scroll through all your chats, the threats, the begging, the passive aggressiveness, the good cop - bad cop routine, the guilting and you open up your laptop again because if there’s one thing you know for sure, it is that if you’re not a published author by 2026, she’s definitely gonna kill you.     

 


For Amber, my zaroorat se zyada positivity, who will hopefully get off my back for the next week.

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