Being original doesn’t require being loud. Some of the most one-of-a-kind people barely raise their voice.

Originality lives in the content of what you do, not its volume, though the two get bundled together because loud things get noticed first. Plenty of genuinely distinctive people are quiet, and their difference shows up in the work, in the questions they ask, in what they decline to do. Performance and distinctiveness are separate qualities that occasionally travel together. Neither one requires the other.

If you are quiet, stop treating it as something to overcome. Put your strangeness into what you make rather than into how you present it. The work carries further and lasts longer.