The Outsider Track
What happens when the system isn’t built for you and you learn to sprint around it instead? On the perks and perils of unintentional non-conformity.
Because I moved so much as a kid, I’ve always had a loose relationship with entering established social dynamics. Sometimes there’s power in being the new kid, but more often, it’s a transitional, transactional experience and you learn not to get too comfortable. After all, some dynamics started before you and will outlast you.
I never saw myself as a loner—just realistic. I didn’t have a conventional face or body, a conventional family, or a conventional way of thinking and learning. But I lived in a conventional society and had to make do. Naturally, I gravitated toward art programs, because that’s where the misfits and non-conformists go to die.
It wasn’t that anyone was immune to conventional thought—especially when it came to shaping how we view ourselves and others. I just knew the system wasn’t built for me and was fine with that. I didn’t see a need to resist on principle when I could just work ten times harder to avoid being recognized and called an embarrassment. Fortunately, I also grew up with Girl Scouts, DIY culture, and riot grrls—the cheerleaders I needed to remind me that sometimes life requires carving your own path.
We didn’t have terms like “neurodivergent” or even “autistic” in everyday language—certainly not in any way that helped you make sense of your experience. These weren’t words of empowerment back then. And sometimes I wonder if the internet’s embrace of outsider identity has pushed people into their own bubbles, where the oppressed become gatekeepers and finally having power makes some folks a little sanctimonious, blurring the line between advocacy and alienation until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Personally, I could never quite tell which parts of how I saw the world were shaped by circumstance or by biology, but also never felt the need to separate them.
I wrestle with my own ego constantly, which I blame equally on art school and journalism. Both are disciplines that teach creative people to hate themselves before throwing them into a capitalist system that never valued them to begin with. The masterclass should’ve been called How to Remain Creatively Competitive in a System That Wasn’t Built for You, but instead it was something abstract like Why Neoliberalism Is the Tool of the Oppressor—and Other Theories You Can Think About While Mentally Clocking Out at Your Minimum-Wage Job.
By the time you graduate from an “enlightened” program, you should be spiritually broken and financially illiterate. You’ll enter the world to struggle like every artist before you, quietly assessed for long-term capital value while barely scraping by in your lifetime. Your heart will harden, not only from outside rejection but from the internal monologue that tears your work apart with precision. Ironically, the skill that will serve you best is bullshitting. That’s the one that can carry you for life.
Art school was more of a lifeline for me than a calling. I grew up in a volatile home with a mentally ill parent, dragged between school systems and courtrooms after each eviction or arrest. It was common to be woken in the middle of the night by my mother’s piercing screams, convinced we were being gassed or electrocuted. We’d drive for hours, then check into a motel two counties away, only to return in time for school where I got to listen to other girls talk about their eating disorders and how inadequate they felt.
Because we moved so much, I couldn’t join team sports—even though I always envied the soccer girls with their braces and uniforms. My teeth were overcrowded, and my schedule didn’t allow for practices or fees, but I could run, and sometimes I’d even win.
Eventually, I joined track, where I finally got to fit in and develop an eating disorder just like everyone else. I’d do hundreds of sit ups every night and drink so much water, barely eating anything else. I ran my best mile time that year—a casual 8 minute 24 seconds—during a practice session when I wasn’t even trying my hardest. I was a sprinter, though not as good as everyone else whose families did fun runs and Turkey Trots. I always came in fourth. My mile time was considered slow for a distance runner, most of clocked in under 7 minutes. In retrospect, I was punishing myself for no real reason beyond wanting to join in the collective misery of feeling inadequate.
Halfway through the indoor season, I got shin splints and passed out during a sprint series because I wasn’t eating. After that, I found the school radio station. I needed an extracurricular, and picked up smoking because everyone else did. I tried to get boys to have sex with me, but they said they “respected me too much.” (I still don’t know what that means). I kept trying to be normal, but normal just felt like disillusionment.
I worked three after school jobs and was still broke, a jack of all trades and a master of none, criticized by people who never once wondered how I was managing it all, but still expected me to think about everyone else. Maybe that’s why I volunteer more than they do—because I actually know what it’s like to go without. Part of that work isn’t just offering encouragement or feedback to kids—it’s being honest, so the next wave of creatives can enter with a little more clarity and a little less delusion.
It’s strange because I don’t think much about high school. Mostly because, even while I was in it, I wasn’t thinking about it. I just saw the future—the one where I wasn’t living with the psychotic mother, had a cool job, and maybe everyone (including myself) could see where I was underrated. I didn’t know how I’d get there or what it would look like—just that maybe I wasn’t doomed to a life of misery by default. Still, long after you leave, those are the survival skills that carry you.
Some peoples’ lives end at high school. For the rest of us, the long game matters. If you don’t fit in, maybe you never will. There’s no guaranteed payoff. Even at 40, you might still not know where your story is going (maybe especially then).
We devalue teachers and overvalue fame. There are plenty of people who are more famous than me for doing less—many of whom will never be recognized for more. If I keep measuring myself by that, I’ll never make anything. And I’d never want to tell a younger version of myself—or any other creative child—not to try just because the reward isn’t guaranteed. Still, there are strategies that can help. A lot of it just requires believing in yourself when you’re not exactly sure if anyone else does, too.
So before I go, I’ll recommend Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way again. I’m not the most consistent about my Morning Pages or Artist Dates, but I’ve been trying. I love that her book doesn’t point you toward a specific outcome—just an opportunity to change your own mind. Lately, I’ve seen it mentioned more by other writers on Substack, which makes me think it might actually be an underrated American classic.
You won’t always fit. You might never arrive. But if you remain curious, stay honest, and keep making something—that’s the long game. Keep running.