A few years ago my aerobics teacher started using weights and encouraged us to do the same. The “barbells” were small ones of course, brightly colored little things about two pounds each. Dispite the feminine yellows and reds, I was sweating in my sports socks. Would I be able to lift them through a whole song? Would I make a fool of myself in front of all my classmates?

Pride got the better of fear, and soon I was rockin’ through those songs with the best of them. Then one day a song ended, and I wasn’t at “near muscle failure” as my teacher calls it (with a twinkle in her eye). I went out the next day and bought three pound weights, in purple. They seemed really, really, heavy. But then a few months later, five pound weights, in green. Then eight, in blue.

In the midst of all this muscle stuff, my boss asked me to write an article on some event. Huh? I didn’t know how to interview anyone! I didn’t know how to write an article! Well you know I couldn’t tell him that. So, my pride again got the better of my fear, and the article wasn’t half bad either. A little while later, I started writing a movie review column for the local paper. A few months later a few more columns. One day I realized I had become (drumroll please) “A Writer.”

After years of identifying myself as a graphic designer, this was a new one on me. The thing is, there aren’t too many famous graphic designers. Graphic design is by nature transparent. So transparent that people rarely notice my designs, much less tell me they were “moved” by them. Yet sometimes a friend admits that something I wrote made them a little mushy. While both graphic designers and writers are as plentiful as ladybugs on a fall afternoon, words resonate with a person’s heart.

Now I’m writing more and more, and wanting more weights in hot pink and electric green and burnt copper. Stories explode in my brain like endorphin firewords at the peak of a song, when blood is hot in my face, and I am approaching, but not quite at, near muscle failure.