Author’s Note: The following was submitted on 3/30/2022 for the Reader’s Write section of The Sun magazine. The theme readers were invited to write about was “learning the hard way.”

Throughout my adult life, I have pursued one creative endeavor after another. First it was improv with a small, offbeat troupe that morphed into a scripted performance piece where we were all grunting cave people. Here I got my first rush of audience adulation, the thrilling addiction that comes with being onstage. Playwriting provided more of the same, especially hearing kids laugh during a reading of my work. But the nitpicky critiques from peers I decided I could live without. Painting and drawing classes were gratifying but reminded me that I was never satisfied with the art that I created as a child.

Voice and vocal performance classes touched something deeply personal and untapped inside but the emotional nakedness of doing cabaret was unnerving. Blending into the ensemble of a Gilbert and Sullivan group, I savored contributing small moments of business that accented the overall canvass but I also aspired to land a principal role. Piano gave me something to do with my hands and to look at other than the audience, though it was clear that becoming proficient would take years. Voiceover classes were a lot of fun, reminding me how much I enjoyed tape recording myself as a child. But hawking someone else’s product wasn’t what I was looking for either.

Eventually, I became a music programmer for several years at a local community radio station. I got to play whatever I wanted and it evoked memories of blasting the stereo out my bedroom window to the street below as a teen. As I got comfortable over time, I shelved the smooth, FM deejay voice for the familiar cadence of my normal speaking voice. “Don’t try to be a second-rate someone else,” my voice teacher had told me years earlier, “just be yourself.” After years of searching for it, I had at last found my voice. It was relaxed, fun, and, most importantly, it was mine.