This year, I have been finding myself again.
Thirty years old. Single. Standing on the other side of heartbreak and unfinished chapters… and somehow, with more going for me now than I ever imagined when I was still trying to hold everything together.
The funny thing about doubt… especially when it’s aimed at your character — is that it has a way of clearing the air. When someone chooses to see you through the lens of suspicion, it tells you less about who you are and more about who they need you to be. Their doubts become their own reflection.
So to every person this year who doubted me… thank you.
You thought you were reducing me, but all you did was refine me.
You thought you were calling me out, but you were really calling me forward.
You thought you were wounding me, but you were showing me the parts of myself that could no longer be broken.
Your doubt forced me into honesty. Not just with others, but with myself. I had to ask: Who am I when the story being told about me doesn’t match the man I know myself to be? The answer came quietly at first — in the stillness of nights where loneliness pressed in… and then louder, as I kept moving.
I am a man who has survived.
I am a man who has rebuilt.
I am a man who is carving out a legacy with his own hands.
Because perception is a currency. And if you think I don’t know how to shapeshift, how to bend the story, how to turn the light just right so you see exactly what I want you to see? You’ve already underestimated me. I don’t just endure doubt — I know how to use it, how to flip it, how to let it build the myth while I build the reality.
Maybe that’s the part people can’t stand: I refuse to stay trapped in the version of me they try to write. I will change, adapt, and maneuver until their narrative falls apart under its own weight. And while they’re busy painting me as cruel, as bad, as broken — I’m three moves ahead, already shaping what comes next.
Some people inherit names polished by money or status, altering them like props to keep up appearances. But me? I carry mine without disguise. Joshua Colby-Gene Norvell. A name as unborrowed as the life I’m building. There are only two Norvells I know of creating something real in this world — and I am one of them.
So yes — doubt me. Call me cruel. Question my intentions. Paint me as the villain in your story if it makes your role easier to play. But know this: I’ve learned to live in that role long enough to let it work for me.
This year I’ve learned that being single doesn’t mean being incomplete. That being doubted doesn’t mean being diminished. And that sometimes, the greatest gift you can receive is disbelief in your character… because it forces you to define it for yourself.
So thank you, each of you. Without your doubt, I might never have seen myself this clearly.
And now that I do — the game is mine.
And now that I do — there’s no going back.