I've been wondering whether the way we pay for things changes how we pay attention to them.

I started publishing my failures three years ago. This essay is about why I haven't stopped.

I have three names. The one my parents gave me, the one the world decided I should use, and the one I chose for myself. My parents named me Amarachukwu. It means "God's grace" in Igbo, and it is beautiful and specific and mine. It contains a theology and a hope and a sound that, when my mother says it, carries the particular melody of someone who chose every syllable deliberately. The world decided I should use Amara. This happened gradually, the way a river rounds a stone. Teachers shortened it. Friends shortened it. Immigration forms didn't have enough boxes. At some point I stopped correcting people, and the truncation became my public name — the version of myself that fits in the space allotted. The name I chose for myself is the one I sign my work with: A. Obi. Not because I'm hiding anything, but because initials create a small privacy — a membrane between the person and the public. When someone reads an essay by A. Obi, they bring fewer assumptions than they would to Amarachukwu Obi.

My grandmother could read a pot of jollof rice the way a doctor reads an X-ray. I've been thinking about what that kind of knowing actually is.