I just recently began calling myself a writer.

Prior to being published, prior to getting a bit of money for my articles, and prior to this website (and my subsequent incognitly famous “Dear Alcohol” letter that has gone around the web), I felt like a fraud. Who was I to say I was a writer, what with the bevy of writers and authors who had ‘made it’ whereas I, little peon, was a mere neophyte?

But one day, someone asked, and without thinking, I replied “I’m a writer.” From then on, it became my standard answer.

At times, I elaborate, telling them that I have a full-time job doing fun and exciting things like assessing epidemiological software for the CDC in sub-Saharan Africa (true) yet explaining about shesheme.com and Citysearch and my future 10 lbs. that I will gain as a restaurant reviewer. Other times, I leave the rest unsaid and remain, simply, a writer.

I’ve found, though, that as time passes, I feel more and more authentic, like the true writer that I wish to one day be. I find myself truly believing that one day perhaps this WILL come true, I find myself both more and less critical of my writing and more and less enthusiastic about queries, article submissions, and the like. But, regardless, the more I tell people that I’m a writer, the more I believe myself that I truly am.

Using that logic, anything is possible — perhaps I should set my goals a little loftier. Next time someone asks me what I do, I know what I’ll answer.

“I’m a Movie Star.”

Not an actress (not as fancy and too generic) — a full-blown Movie Star.

Take this scenario. On Friday, I go to this snazzy shindig and John Doe chats me up, asking me what I do, to whom I give the requisite “Movie Star” answer. Come Saturday. I’m at yet another snazzy ‘do and in I walk, in typical Aubrey Glitz and Glamour (or “In I stumble, in a haze of beer and wine fumes”), and Jane Doe asks John Doe who that lovely lady is. John, appropriately enough, replies “Oh, that’s Aubrey. She’s apparently a Movie Star.”

And thus it begins.

I’ll even let you say you knew me “when…”