About Me — M. Cole Grady

Hey folks :)

I love a bit of introspection, but good god, writing about myself never gets any easier!

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I spent my early years braving intense heat and small-town gossip in Georgia, USA (the same place they filmed Dukes of Hazzard!). Like most who grew up in rural towns, getting out — escaping — dominated the first 18 years of my life.

And that’s exactly what I did, all the way to Edinburgh, Scotland. Five years, two degrees, one visa wedding, and a pet axolotl named Gary later, I escaped again.

This time to Mumbai, to the city of dreams. I’ve since spent my time falling in love with one of my new favourite places and getting swept up in the city’s intoxicating energy.

Having recently abandoned my tech job to join the ranks of the gainfully unemployed, I’m writing on Medium to use my time job-searching as well as possible (and, in a very lofty sense, to skirt the job world for as long as I physically can).

I’m also writing to get over my fear of writing for others! It takes profound vulnerability to put your ideas into writing and share them with the world.

And that is fundamentally terrifying.

What if I write with my head and present fiction as fact? Or I write with my heart and produce something grotesque? What if there is some fundamental flaw to my prose that makes it inherently worse than literally anything else ever written? What if I share what I’ve written with people I care about, only for them to smile an artificial smile, trying to hide their pity at my ambitious mediocrity? What if I misrepresent someone or something? What if I have no authority to be writing in the first place, and everything I put into the world is nothing more than the arrogance of a naive, self-important, jobless twenty-something?

If I want to spend my life doing what I love, I cannot let those questions stop me.

Even if they get no reads and my fantasy of self-sustaining as a writer collapses, it doesn’t matter! With each word published, I am achieving more than I thought I was capable of.

I’ll scream into the abyss for as long and hard as I damn well please, and nobody can stop me!

I’ve always loved writing about community movements, people coming together to brace whatever the world throws at them.

As someone who struggles with how bleak our collective outlook is, perhaps there is some value in exploring what people do — despite everything — to ‘make it work’.

But in general, I‘m just going to try throwing pasta against a wall and seeing what sticks. Language learning, cooking, travelling, environmental *stuff*, reading, journalism, axolotls (love ya, Gary!) — anything I find even remotely interesting, I’ll write about!

I’m also a bit of a sociology & anthropology nerd. One of my goals is to find ways to synthesise concepts from these disciplines with easily digestible, reader-friendly writing.

There’s still a long road ahead, but we’ll — fingers so very tightly crossed — get there!

Anyway! Yes! That’s me. I’d like to get to know anyone foolish enough to follow through my written ramblings, so make yourself known :)

Peace, love, and cheesecake, folks!