What's Up With That "13 Going on 40+" Playlist?

Because I quit being able to be 13 when I was 13.

Why does a polished, professional musician like me have this little playlist on Spotify?

When I was 13, it’s kind of a long story, halfway through the school year, some others decided what my future was going to be, teachers went with it, and pretty soon, my world had to become grownup before its time. When I expressed a strong distaste for how my life was going, grownups all around told me how ungrateful I was. Nowhere to turn. Not one adult stuck up for me, so I stopped bothering to stop the serious train.

I found myself within a flash writing piece-y articles about stuff I couldn’t care less about when one article that was in my view was a one-off placement in the student newspaper and became a career goal I didn’t ask for, taking my first online community college class for junior high/high school credits at 14, and my personal best pick of them all. I quit busting into the basement recording songs for the fun of it. Playing games, playing music, playing randomness on the computers, listening to music on my CD player with my headphones on nonstop. No, I had to be serious. Being serious won me respect from strangers and parents. I had to pick an approved career and…shrug…

Music was permitted: AT SCHOOL OR PRIVATE LESSONS. Not fun little jam sessions where I could make mistakes or sing silly things I wrote down in homeroom.

Where did being serious get me? Because in life, I can wear anything, cut my hair like an old woman, be corporate, be not, and whoever is going to take me seriously either is or is not. With the large amount of conformity and sexism in the world, the expectations I never met being female for what young ladies and then young women then women 30+ had to do, you can guess how I’ve never fit in. How serious led me to 90 percent failure with the “serious world” people.

Slowly but surely, the keyboard piano got less usage because I had to do something serious. I did use it. I used the piano at lessons. But at home? No, 15 year old me had to care about being a political journalist and making that my major I didn’t ask for before I graduated early, so I could graduate early again from the community college mostly online degree and barely set foot in until I was forced to by the school to graduate, to graduate early from a university I loved. The one big step I took was transferring out to a general liberal arts degree I could pick from when I turned 18 at school. Had a journalism minor anyway. Cool. Right?

Journalism was always my own. Every word that made it to print was mine. Music, food, movie themed writing is always MY OWN, exclusively. My early pen names’ political journalism, or op-eds, were always 100 percent of the time so edited, the words belonged to middle aged or senior citizen male, and at times female but usually male, editors inserting their true thoughts as mine. Ew, much? The things I did to make people happy with proving I was nabbing clips so I would have a future. Looking at you, men who claimed I lived in a city I never did, with opinions that weren’t mine, as you twisted my words around quote seeking to fabricate entire pieces “written” by young me, refusing to scrub those articles I never really penned off the web for some self righteous point I fail to understand. Looking at you, op-ed editor, who ran my “writing” for free I took to get a clip desperately hoping someone would hire me, as I didn’t write a lick, typing verbatim what you instructed me to say like the prisoner of my own pen name, age 21. Shame on all of you. Shame on everyone else who congratulated me for this weirdness. And that’s scraping the surface.

Can we out a publication? Yes, let’s.

A little off topic moment I have to call out, one I’ve been going back and forth over and feel like, yes, Nicole, you need to correct this. It’s unfair.

Most places that printed my work for no pay or low pay have obliged by my wishes to either take down the articles/op-eds I “wrote” as assorted pen names that were actually 90 percent or more rewritten around my quote gathering, or scrub the pen names if low pay were involved. THANK YOU.

So since I have asked nicely enough times, I’ll just say who is the single place that won’t: The Heartland Institute. A job I took because I needed food money post graduation and had some pleasant editors, some not, where I was a quote gatherer who suddenly turned into “One of Nicole’s Younger Writer Aliases lives in Dallas, Texas (where Nicole has never resided),” my words all given political spins that were straight up journalism that major publications I’ve worked for applauded me for but weren’t political enough. Who never forgot that little detail about your lobbying for “smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer” as 20 year old me browsing Craigslist for a freelance writing job, my new degree in hand, would have never agreed to when my great uncle who was like my grandfather died violently and slowly of lung cancer when I was 11 going on 12. Who used to be a humble thinktank about smaller government when you exclude that evil smoking angle, who now spread hate speech about the LGBTQ community and other things to try to fit in with the times. You know, Heartland Inst.? Maybe it is time you quit laughing about having removed the pen name at top and leaving the entire bottom byline with factually incorrect info…my words, I never “wrote”…and scrubbed them off the web. Keep the articles you paid me peanuts for that, admittedly, I’m still grateful for because that helped me get sandwiches and basics between having to fight down quotes because the same people were sick of being milked for free quotes for you, and you were stringent on who was qualified for interview sources. I had to keep editing and editing, as major publications in my teens to now run my work without ONE word removed. Who cares? Work is work. We all have places we’d rather not have known. But don’t act like there is some grand reason to keep someone who has felt misled by the smoking lobbying I had no idea of and has no will to being part of your present day hate speech and whatnot, whose words were remixed out of recognition so I could apply for further work as young me struggling to get freelance journalism work but for then The New York Daily News randomly…. come on, you know the right, moral thing to do. REMOVE MY PEN NAME’S END ARTICLE BYLINE on all of the articles falsely attributed to my writing. You’re not making a profit under “written by Nicole’s first of many aliases that later included male names and anonymous ‘staff' writer’” here. Funny, publications people read at the dentist’s office waiting room run my pieces straight through, not one edit, so that I “needed” my work rebranded under your publication was kind of unusual to say the least, and stranger is your refusal to divorce my pen name from the authorship. 🤷‍♀️

Some of the publication dates quote 2016 on there. That timing feels off.

I also recall a very uncomfortable situation in which I was instructed to go to someone’s personal residence while her husband was out. She could only meet me at the home, not the nearest coffee shop. She insisted on meeting a lowly freelancer she never interacted with once. Got alarm bells when she kept saying I had to go meet her because her husband was out. And to top it off, when I declined and changed my number to be safe, I was let go from the final mini publication place I was freelancing for within the Heartland’s spider web and forced to ask where my many months overdue payment was at the time. So yeah, I’m totally thrilled to continue being included.

Either way, should you keep it up to prove yourself how “right” you are, fine. I divorced myself from that first pen name ages ago. You can keep it while I’m out working on my authentic career goals.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Looking back, UT Austin was a place I should have spent more time, if graduating early, to get a master’s or anything reasonable. The final days of normalcy. I didn’t need to be thrust into 20, then 21 year old me, in NYC dealing with brick walls of the hiring world who refused to see I had almost a decade of journalism experience with professional publications running my work, arguing why I deserved to work somewhere when people told me to party or be an unpaid intern like I’m Carrie Bradshaw living off shoes and cigarettes, but hey, someone else 20-22 coming with or without a university degree was fine to hire if there were a nepo route.

I regret not studying science as a fallback day job, because science or math lead to income, and anything dreamy and cliquey like journalism, with continuing down the rabbit hole that wasn’t my choice post graduation to fanfare, I mean, too much failure, and that failure blamed on me? Well, that wouldn’t have happened to Nicole the chemistry major. Earth science major. The computer science major whiz.

I made the most of it with my free time spotting camera angles for future films I intend on making and whatever, getting to be a very underpaid working agency model, freelancing for low pay for name places, fine. It’s amazing, truly. A young woman out scouting locations and doing film research when she has time is goofing off. A young man doing that same thing is intelligent. Hire him for a studio. Or so the world was in 2007-2010.

No, I didn’t need to witness much of what I did within the then norms for younger female models within that system that I hope has since changed.

No, I didn’t need to be boiled alive left and right seeing many things I could have been fine without away from that. Film research turned into, “Wait, what is this I am seeing?” one too many times.

People pleasing was imprinted on me as a toddler and elementary student by the world, then it went full blast age 13.5 onwards.

I never really got to finish being 13. So I did it as an adult, releasing silly songs trying to sound like my 13 year old self, my student lyrics, randomness, and finding others to go along with me with their own youth selves’ lyrics.

I know somewhere, someone is making fun of me for it. I don’t have to go very far to find someone making fun of me for it, because someone always makes sure to verbally tell me how stupid I am or how much I suck.

And that’s precisely why I wanted to do this. When you are 13, you don’t care about how much you might suck. You are unfiltered, learning, having a blast. You get a pass for being 13. You are free. You can wildly do whatever you please.

And I’m so sorry to my younger self. If I could undo anything, this is a huge chunk of it on my long list.

So I did what I did. Warts and all, I tried to have the fun I was forbidden from having then by the world. Trying to sound younger is hard. I don’t know if I am fully done with the tracks on this weird playlist, or not. Maybe I am. I don’t know. This might be a conversation with myself someday.

Anyone can sound awesome when you rehearse a tune for a Broadway production enough times, or awesome enough. Take a peek at the non-singer names who never studied music and have sung in Broadway roles. Singing and writing lyrics, as with anything, isn’t winning an Olympic gold medal. Want to learn how to draw? Go on an archaeology dig? Complete a marathon, not win first place maybe, complete it? Win first place at a poetry slam? Win first place in a freestyle rap contest? Go to medical school? You can do all that. You can write poetry like you’re in eighth grade again for the sheer fun of it, or chase down that banker job you wished you had as a teller who hasn’t gotten a promotion at your bank. What if another bank has an opening?

Want to be more attractive? Most people clean up well. How can you find what you need to clean up? Or what if today you want to play dress up for Halloween in a ghost onesie, having never had it because someone said you couldn’t as a young person? Want to go to culinary school? Get an MBA? Get a bachelor’s degree after having raised a family, as you sit beside people half your age? Become an elected official on the city council without knowing anyone? Leave the city and buy a farm, and turn it into a big moneymaker?

There is no age cut off for most goals outside of professional sports, but we have a lifetime ahead of that, or we ought to. You need to get through the early you to be the complete grownup you, and that phase never happened for me. I sound sour because I am. People still tell me how stupid I am, and they use this concept from getting to play 13 again as “proof” of my stupidity.

The only worse thing would be playing serious because who am I impressing getting that? 13 year old was naive enough to be robbed of happiness in exploring music without rules. I’m not dumb enough to do that again at 39.

Yes, I release piano cover tunes, I want to and will have serious scores. My serious scores don’t lessen my animated scores for shorts starring my cat I released, overdue by a year, finally online in 2026.

Mind boggling how I always have to hear about how “talented” I am at something and get shot down for just about everything else. Yes, when I say, “Someone else did this.” People attribute it to me and rave. “I hate this.” People try to force it on me. Projections.

Well, project this: ONLY I WRITE THE SCREENPLAY THAT IS MY LIFE STORY. 😉

Anyone can be good looking, talented, smart, and valuable. The people we hear pinned up as “goals” for us are ordinary human beings given the smoke and mirrors in every profession. I’ve said it before and will until time ends until the message is taken in by society, Playboy might have wound up what it is. The original concept from Hugh Hefner that the girl next door was strikingly beautiful and perfect as she is with a little Tinker Bell fairy dust is my motto for anything work, talent, beauty, or life.

Please folks, if you have kids, do not do this to your children/teens. Let them be young. Allow them to live. Graduating early is fine; much of what goes with that territory is unnecessary.

Your kids are going with the flow because they like the better treatment that comes with being serious. Nobody really wants that. I think about the things I missed out on, because right now, I’ve reinstalled some games I had on my computer at home around then, remembering how at 12-13 I jammed on my keyboard trying to play songs from the radio, and went on to play Monkey Island or King’s Quest 7.

Yes, I right now and probably forever, for the rest of my life, will resent what the world did to me. Undoing the clock is impossible. “I’m big, and you’re small. I’m right, and you’re wrong. And there is nothing you can do about it,” to quote Matilda. The people responsible for this get to live their lives as what, I have the emotional cost of the consequences of serious too soon on my plate for every eternal meal. And I’m big now, I’m right, but there is nothing I can do about it anymore.

A second lesson: never take on any pen names, because people will think you ARE your pen name, anyway. Be you.

Lesson three: never do any work that you feel requires an alias.

“You should forgive and forget.” Easy to say,, isn’t it?

No, literally take a page out of the diary younger me should have had. This is it. A diary entry, now told by yours truly, on my 39 year old self’s 2026 Substack. ❤️

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one bit the reason I strive to be a role model for young women to pursue the arts so badly. So you don’t deal with having to live your life for the adults in your universe until you can’t take it anymore.

Of course, my Dee Snider “can’t take it” rebellion is in the form of arguing why I should be the real me and doing it.

When I was younger, people would talk behind my back repeating my feelings on all this, and make fun of me. I’m beating you to the punch, sharing it with the world. Enjoy. My heart, my feelings, my real experiences.

Repeat, don’t do this to your kids. Let kids be kids.

xoxo,

Nic