Mid-term break

A review: the story so far and the deep satisfaction of following through.

Welcome to new subscribers! Substack has become my favourite place to hang out on the internet. To join the community and support my work, you can manage your subscription below. Just a heads up I am taking a little break whilst I work out the new format for my posts but there is a wealth of content available in the library that I’d love for you to check out.

It has been exactly three months and three days since I posted my first piece on Substack. Since then I have showed up every Thursday, every other Sunday and every second Wednesday of the month, with something to say about something. This is my twenty-fourth post of original content although my whole library boasts thirty one pieces in total — or thirty-two, now. And you know I’m big into libraries!

I’m kind of amazed. For years I have been an overflowing font of ideas but they resided quietly inside me, or on my laptop, or within the confines of safety on my phone. This is the first time I’ve ever followed through on any of them with such unwavering seriousness and daring, let alone twenty-four. Much like Cher Horwitz who I referenced in that very first piece, I still feel as clueless as ever but I have been treating Substack as a sort of apprenticeship. I am learning by doing. I have managed to be relatively gentle with myself through the process; allowing for mistakes, being patient when something technical isn’t working. And so in the spirit of that, I am choosing to take a moment to consider everything I have learned in these last three months — about myself, about my writing, about my time management, about my priorities, about how much all of it means to me and how to make it even better.

I had a thousand things I wanted to write about before I typed out a single word on Substack but in the writing, regardless of the subject matter, similar themes have revealed themselves. I’ve discovered that what I most enjoy writing about is actually writing itself which has kind of surprised me, also the creative process and art too, by which I mean all art: movies, television, poetry, books and of course artworks themselves — one of those is coming. These are the things I am most drawn to. It’s all of the things I voraciously consume. It’s all of the things I am ‘obsessive’ about. And I use that word in its most positive iteration if such a thing is possible. Maybe passionate is better.

I have learned tons about the kind of writer that I am too - I write really fast but I need a lot of time to edit. And getting myself to sit down and get on with it has required much more discipline than I thought it would.

I have learned that the consistency of showing up will cultivate confidence. It will politely show your ego the back door when it is doing its damnedest to stop you from getting on with things — which it will with the same level of consistency the more you keep going. All of the above, will inform your work, give it a flow, a shape. There will also be moments of extreme self-doubt and discomfort though I have definitely made a lot of headway beyond the restrictive grip of perfectionism that has pretty much controlled my every move until now for as long as I can remember.

I have also learned that the more creative choices you make the more creative energy you have. Writing is something that I put off for the longest time but in starting my Substack, I have found that it has made other creative decisions far easier to tend to in all areas of my life which includes the writing itself. Much like exercising, if you do a little bit, it makes you want to do a lot more.

I have a working theory that this has something to do with the ever so sketchy tightrope balance between being in a passive or an active state — how much we consume versus how much we create and therefore how much we are taking versus how much we are contributing. Social media to me for example is all take, it saps us of energy, of time, of creative endeavour. It is the energy vampire of our age. It is dependent on us slouching ever deeper into the greasy armchair of passivity, sitting around waiting for likes. Creativity is its opposite, its nemesis. It will wrench you out of those depths onto the front footedness of worthwhile pursuits. It will inspire you from the inside out to take risks, to live with purpose, on purpose. Perhaps incidentally, I have discovered that I am literally far more front footed and focused if I write standing up rather than sitting down. It makes me want to go and rewatch that Amy Cuddy TED Talk on power posing.

But just like you don’t want to spend all your time dissolving into the squish of your seat or the scroll of your phone, spending too much time on your feet or constantly in a state of creation will inevitably lead to another form of inner discordance too. So whilst I’m really proud of myself for showing up with such consistency, I have occasionally been getting my pieces written ‘no matter what’, even if it’s to my own detriment and I am beginning to feel the strain. The last few weeks as more acting work has started to creep in, I’ve been chasing my tail a little bit.

It’s very me to take on too much so I’m not surprised in the least that this has happened, particularly given that a couple of weeks ago my solution for how best to manage this work overload in perfect repetition of what happened when I first created Still Space, was to create even more for myself to do. Thankfully I didn’t put any of those particular ideas into action. Instead, I have decided I am going to break the endless chain of doing by using this first trimester not as a stopping point, but as a moment of self-reflection. A step back to gain perspective. A pause. A breath. The Christmas holiday after the first school term. A Spring clearout. I’m going to give myself some space.

I want to meditate, literally and figuratively, on all that I’ve achieved here thus far and how best to take things forward that will ultimately be more satisfying for me, as a writer, and of course you, as a reader. I want to reassess. I want to review. I want to restructure. My weekly posts are wonderfully eclectic and there’s nothing wrong with that, love eclectic, but I want a little more clarity of purpose in what I’m posting going forward and the scheduling of those posts in a way that is far more sustainable than my current set-up, regardless of whether I’m in the midst of acting work or not. Needless to say maybe but this timing has pretty much perfectly aligned with my heading back in to a very heavy acting schedule, so I want some structure in place to plan accordingly. Adriene Mishler of Yoga With Adriene calls it ‘freedom within the form’ which I love. And in the same way that Dr Seuss apparently created ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ following a bet with his publisher that he couldn’t produce an original work using only 50 unique words, I need to rein myself in a bit in order to flourish. This feels like the next right thing.

Side note: whilst I have had a small number of press obligations and a few days of other work engagements during this three month period, it’s worth mentioning that I have not been working at my regular day job as an actor. This is sort of because of how my schedule has panned out but I actually pulled out of a couple of acting commitments in order to make sure I could show up to my writing with the commitment that it deserved in these early stages. It has been an immeasurably valuable gift of time. Not unlike getting my dog during lockdown, I have been able to dedicate and direct my energy where it was needed at the precise moment when it was needed. I have had the time to not just buy some seeds I liked the look of but sow them, water them, make sure they’re getting plenty of light. And now I’ve gotten my hands dirty I want to take the time to do some proper research into their optimum environment, to learn more about what makes them thrive.

This has all of course been pretty elucidating about where my priorities lie with regards to writing, now that I’ve finally taken the leap of faith into the unknown, though none of it is entirely surprising given that every step of the way has just felt right. That might be the most special thing about it honestly. As someone who believes wholeheartedly in living an intuitively led life, to have the opportunity to explore what it actually feels like to go through a process entirely led by my intuition from day one, tells me that I am precisely where I need to be on this, day ninety-two. Of course I have been happily devoted to that process, to putting down roots here, because I am doing it for all the right reasons. There is something so pure and vulnerable about it as a pursuit. And perhaps even more wonderful: it has taught me what true stability and longevity look like when you grant yourself the gift of the slow burn. A hugely important life lesson for me that perhaps I would never have learned if I hadn’t dared to get started.

I have a number of posts planned over the next few weeks but they are not yet written so they will form part of my wonderings about what comes next and how. In the meantime, here are some of my own personal highlights from my first season here on Substack:

Access Hollywood :: My piece on a recent press tour I went on for my Netflix show Unstable, that was selected as a Substack Read.

‘Listen to the whispers of your soul’ :: My interview with Farrah Storr for her own excellent Substack,

Things Worth Knowing with Farrah Storr

.

Revelations :: A three-part series exploring sleep, death, renewal and the Greeks.

Panah Panahi’s Hit The Road and Other Awards Season Upsets :: All the things about movies and how awards shows actually work that you didn’t know you needed to know.

Around The Discworld in 41 Books :: My ode to Terry Pratchett and truthfully, the opening of a Pandora’s Box into my true inner geekdom.

Into The Unknown :: A stream of consciousness post exploring my creative process, and apparently Disney’s too.

I would like to take this opportunity to say an enormous thank you to everyone who’s been so supportive of me in pursuing this new project for myself, particularly the Substack community. It’s been scary but in a good way and enormously rewarding as a result. I cannot wait for more — I have arrived! But perhaps far more importantly, I have stayed. A lot of that is thanks to you. And of course, friends, family and loved ones too. And though I might still be as clueless as Cher Horwitz in her splashy new Jeep that’s accidentally careened onto the highway, I’m in this for the long-haul. As a Londoner I’ve never needed to learn to drive (at least that’s the excuse I most often offer up) but this year I’m going to make sure that whether or not my most capable looking outfit is at the dry cleaners, I’m going to get my licence.

---