A Work In Progress

I’ll be honest, the reason I picked this book up was because I grew up in the same small town in Minnesota that the author grew up in. This alone made me want to read his book. In his memoir, Connor takes about his early life and his family. He has his parents write letters to him to help explain who he is.

Connor is a  YouTuber, who has millions of subscribers. He begins by sharing how he started talking to a camera at a young age, in a video that his father was recording of a race in his hometown of La Crescent. The  topics he includes involve his struggles with his identity, body image, and sexuality during his teen years. How he struggled with gender roles in high school and avoid things that “boys don’t do,”  things involving the arts. He also talks about what led him to his decision to Los Angeles.

Connor’s memoir is filled with short stories about him and things he learned from that experience and advice from those experiences. One statement of advice that I really liked came from something his mother told him as a young boy when he was upset about his looks, “If you like you, that’s all that matters. If you don’t, then maybe you could work out why that is.” In his comments to this statement, Connor says, “No one teaches you that if you accept and love yourself, nothing and no one can touch you.” I find both of these statements as important things to remember.