Member-only story
About Me — Jae Nichelle
Going viral online changed my life. So, what now?
Right now, I have a lot of titles — poet, performer, ghostwriter, editor, and (to my mother’s dismay) grad school dropout. Figuring out my life in these past two years after leaving school (aka the only thing I knew how to succeed in my entire life) has been both exhilarating and extremely stressful. Still, even though I don’t always know what the heck I’m doing, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Here’s what happened.
The above photo is from 2017. I was on the final stage at a slam poetry competition called Texas Grand Slam (TGS), performing my poem about anxiety, “Friends with Benefits.” I placed 4th in this competition and, though I wanted to win, I was thrilled by my personal progress. Little did I know that not a month later, the spoken word platform Write About Now (WAN Poetry) would release the soon-to-be-viral video of my performance.
If you’re curious, here it is:
The video went viral on Facebook in 2017; then again in 2018 when other platforms like…