Dear supportive reader,
After several weeks of feeling like I’d been spun about on a social carousal, the ride is slowing down and soon I’ll be able to hop off the plastic horse and step back onto solid ground. Although, I’ve a few whirls ahead of me in the coming weeks — more on that in a future newsletter. I’m simply in synch with the cycle of the year. The academic term is beginning, the days are shortening, and the season of introspection approaches.
Halloween decorations have been materialising in shops for a month already, so even as the days remain bright and busy there are skeletons and bats grinning down on you, portents of what is to come.
It will be no surprise to learn that I’m a fan of autumn, falling leaves, and watching horror movies by the light of glowing skulls, but I’m also becoming much more of an adherent of living in this moment, right now, rather than wishing for the past, or waiting for the future. Sure, some of us aren’t built for glaring sunshine, others even hanker for mist and rain, but this world spins inexorably around the sun in a predictable fashion, and time progresses in a steady pace even when we wish it would stop and when we wish it would speed up.
As someone who thinks a great deal about stories, their origins and evolution, it’s interesting how easily I forget about the ones we tell ourselves. These are the narratives we say by rote to people when they ask questions about our background, our interests or our difficulties. Much of the time people don’t want complicated responses, they want the edited synopsis, which is appropriate during that awkward small talk encounter with strangers over canapés at a wedding.
The problem with repeating the personal highlight reel is that it becomes imprinted on your mind as Your Story. We exist in peak moments and everything else is left on the cutting room floor: the mistakes, the stagnancy, and even the small joys and successes. We are taught early on to omit the complicated and the odd, and to make ourselves palatable and understandable. The extreme of this impulse can be seen on many people’s social media accounts.
It is simply a mirror of that early conditioning to present only the impressive sections of ourselves, especially when we are dealing with others in non-meaningful ways. I’m not about to advocate for radical over-sharing, however. That’s the other wild swing of the pendulum. My experience is that most of us are a bundle of eccentricities, strange thoughts, and obsessions. I do not need to know that when you are sad you comfort-watch Friends in your underwear while eating peanut butter from a jar, but your fascination with octopuses will be of genuine interest to me. We can choose a couple of weird, true facts about ourselves to divulge during the small talk situations that might lead to a more interesting conversation than a blow-by-blow of the traffic on the way to the venue, or bemoaning the cost of living. Irish people default to talking about the weather, and fair enough, as it is a shifting kaleidoscope of moods (mostly involving rain).
Then there are the stories we tell ourselves, often some version dating back decades, or a story someone told us about ourselves that we believed. Such as, ‘I can’t sing.’ That could date from the time you were a child and an overwhelmed teacher assigned you to be in charge of the props for the school musical rather than be part of the chorus. You saw their face when you sang your audition song. That slight expression of pain has been imprinted on your memory. Not every person can be coached to sing at competition level of course, but when we tell ourselves that we have zero talent for it, then our throat reflexively seizes up and we can only croak.
We learn early that risk can result in pain or humiliation, and our human instincts nudge us to avoid both scenarios. Yet if you observe a toddler attempting to walk you will see them fall over a lot. If they are capable they will learn to walk and run. When I’m struggling with a skill or a process I remember that if I simply keep going I’ll improve. There is no fast track. Despite what the Star Wars movies might lead us to believe, being ‘naturally talented’ doesn’t mean you can expertly wield a light saber after a few quick lessons and be capable of fending off multiple Elite Praetorian Guards.1
This leads me to someone I started following on Instagram recently — yes, for all my misgivings about the attention-suck involved in social media, I follow a list of accounts on Instagram that inspire me. I’ve a wide range of interests and the algorithm serves up the occasional winner. Recently, that was Koy Suntichotinun (@Koysun), who is a Thai Teochew American artist.
Alas, Koy’s YouTube account only has a couple of videos that won’t display here, and Instagram does not embed well in Substack, however I encourage you to watch his reel titled ‘Stick to what you’re bad at’.
The upshot is that Koy was told he was bad at a lot of things when he was growing up so he focused on his art skills and worked on them constantly. In his late twenties he suddenly realised that he was limiting himself based on self-imposed beliefs. Koy now does rock climbing and long distance running, as well as continuing to refine his skills as an artist and being open about his ups and downs. He challenged the stories he inherited. He wisely suggests:
‘Learn to do hard things and be patient with yourself.’
It reminds me of the story of Japanese actor/filmmaker/artist Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano, who dropped out of college, worked as an elevator operator, became a comedian, then the MC of the popular TV show, Takeshi’s Castle, helped design a video game back in 1986, moved into acting, and eventually added screenwriter and director to his titles. His highly lauded career nearly ended in 1994, when Kitano had a serious motorcycle accident. I remember him saying in a documentary that he figured if he survived that then life had something else in store for him: so he began painting. He eventually worked as an instructor at the Graduate School of Visual Arts, at Tokyo University from 2004-2008.
We often observe such multi-talented people and marvel at their audacity, but it could be you. What exciting new chapter of your life might be waiting for you to turn the page?2
Throughout my life I’ve accepted and created Stories of Maura. Most people want a version of a three-act structure, involving passion, set-backs, and triumph, but over an evolving life that stretches into many cycles of renewal, doldrums and expansion. What can help is to let go of old stories, envision new parameters and explore different solutions.
For instance, recently I said to a friend ‘No one reads my work,’ (I was referring to my fiction) because it sounds like pragmatic acceptance to my ears.3 Behind it lurks a profound insecurity about the quality of my writing. So I tell myself the story that no one reads my fiction as a defence mechanism. It is also manifestly untrue. Lots of people have told me they have read my work and enjoyed it. But I have put aside their more unbiased opinion to favour my internal bad press. This is a classic cognitive distortion. When I write it in this bald fashion it falls apart completely. The antidote (for those of you familiar with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) is to write a rational response with the truth.
What is the truth? That people read my fiction, some like it, others don’t, and some of my writing has been nominated for awards. Those are facts. It is now up to me how I proceed with this information.
Will I continue to repeat untrue things to people or will I begin to show up for my work? In this world we often wish for champions to rescue us and open doors, but why would they do so if we cannot first befriend our own work? This is simple, and yet our psyches make it complicated.
The insecure artist story is a very well accepted narrative. Imposter Syndrome is a vibe. This is armour we wear — sometimes proudly — to protect our vulnerable heart. The problem is that it becomes rigid, and it fuses with us, and it becomes harder to remove. Better to clank about than risk the the stigma of confidence!
Underneath it all we simply want people to love our writing unconditionally, but it is an impossible request.
Quite simply, you have to love your work unconditionally. Even if it breaks your heart and it’s odd and out of proportion and people reject it.
It’s yours. You made it.
Love it wholly.
Let the rest of the world applaud or ignore it. That’s their decision.
Write again.
Write your way with love.
Yeah, I enjoyed the cool swishy action even as I hushed my inner critic.
Hopefully, without the near-death experience.
My friend, quite rightly, challenged me on it. This is the mark of a genuine mate.
Thanks for this. Lately, I've been struggling with the fear of doing things the wrong way. But is there really a wrong way to do things? It's something I have to constantly reask whenever that fear pops up, but it's a hard one to get over.