Success?

There is a famous saying: good girls keep diaries - bad girls don't have time. 

Not so, according to the diaries I managed to fill in the late 90s. I've been reading over them for something I am working on and 97 - 99, when I'm a budding reporter/presenter, is spent in a blur of filming, parties, launches, cocktails and stumbling out of the Met Bar at 4am when the lights came on - like a cooler version of the Shane Park school discos where the bright lights illuminating your dodgy neon leggings and even dodgier frosted lipstick, were a sign of - get the hell home now.  

Reading my antics, let alone living them, is exhausting. I am so busy STRIVING for attention and acceptance and well, love - that I barely have time to eat. I tell myself, shamefully, that if I am famous, if I get that glorious next job, if I rise up the ranks to dizzying heights (not sure what these precisely are) then I will be happy. It is goalpost after goalpost. Rarely do I stop to saviour the moments of triumph (blagging my way into and then backstage at Stella McCartney's first ever Chloe fashion show; lying my way into a Bond Premiere and getting a one to one with Bond himself; surviving attending a human autopsy with a Brit party induced hangover). Also, are these REALLY moments of triumph? Or just moments where I convinced myself that at long last I was 'enough.' I am certain that validation is waiting at the end of a camera, or in the arms of some fly-by-night director, or a morose comedian.  What I never realised is that I had to give it to myself first... 

Of course we live in a capitalist society where success is valued in monetary gains and status symbols - but at heart we are hunter/gatherers, desperate to belong to a tribe, needing to be amongst nature. We adapt  behaviours to compete - when we don't even realise who we really are competing against. Or what for. 

I listened to an amazing podcast at the weekend: 'Feel Better Live More,' where Dr Rangan Chatterjee chats to physician and author Gabor Mate. (I'm a fan). They discussed former rugby union player Jonny Wilkinson - who dreamed of playing for England, in a world cup and scoring the winning point... This was his ultimate goal. Then - it only went and bloody happened. In the World Cup final in 2003 he kicked the winning drop goal in the last minute of the game. According to a story he told, before the ball had even dropped to the ground, he started to feel low. The following morning he could hardly get up out of bed and then sank into a deep depression. He had a goal - it gave him purpose in life - but at the ripe old age of 24 he'd achieved his dream - so what then? Jim Carrey wishes everyone could be rich and famous to see just how it doesn't make one happy... When you fail and have to get up or when you are trying endlessly to get to a point in the distance and then suddenly, miraculously it appears - who are you then? Society says you are rich/famous/gorgeous/successful - so why do you feel like an imposter or if you take your foot of the pedal your house of cards will all come tumbling down?

Michael Jackson woke up one night (I know I know, he's persona non grata these days but hear me out) and he had a banging tune in his head. Rather than go back to sleep or just write it down, he got up and went into his recording studio, desperate to record it. At 7am in rolled his studio engineer wondering why on earth Jacko wasn't getting his beauty sleep.  Jacko tells him he has been up most of the night laying this tune that was in his head. Surely they could have recorded the song that morning muses the engineer? Jackson turns to him and replies: 'No, because if I'd gone back to sleep, God would have given that tune to Prince.' 

In the podcast Dr Chatterjee talks about a time when his book was coming out and he got a phone call to tell him that it had done well. Exceedingly so. He took the news, thought 'oh ok,' and then went about his day. He admits that previously, news like this would have given him a high as his ego would have been royally massaged. But, he's done a heck of a lot of work on himself and he doesn't need success (book sales, fans etc.) to validate who he is.  He discussed believing in his work, regardless of how others viewed it. The moment we look to outside sources to give us validation, we lose our own sense of power. 

Another quick story: I listened to another podcast, where the writer of 'Call Me By your Name (SUCH a beautiful book) Andre Aciman was talking about his newest novel. The interviewer was commenting how Call Me By Your Name was huge and even moreso because of the Oscar-winning film adaptation. She wondered how all this interest and attention had affected him? Aciman said that whilst yes, it was lovely that the film had brought him a whole host of new readers, that they will disappear, the attention will vanish and then his core readers will remain. He didn't pay much heed to the glitter, the noise, the sudden interest, because he didn't need it nor desire it. He was just happy, sitting in his little office in New York, writing as he always did, enjoying the journey. It struck me just how assured he is; how happy in his own skin and how joyful he finds writing, regardless of how his books are received. 

Life is fucking short - I have witnessed this on several occasions over the past few years, when I've lost people I dearly loved, who died young. Why spend what time we have here, striving for something that only will temporarily boost our egos? What a horrific waste of time... 

I look back at those painfully detailed, raw and exposing diaries and feel compassion for my younger self. I was looking in all the wrong places. Now I get my kicks from the most mundane of activities. A dog walk yesterday led me to pass by a small library of books hidden within a little nest of bushes near the end of my lane. One book jumped out at me to read: 'The unexpected joy of the ordinary.' I picked it up because I've learnt (as the film 'Soul' so beautifully depicts) that it is the very minutiae of a daily life that makes it so thrilling: the perfect cup of tea in the morning, a robin landing outside a window; a hug from a friend; the chatter of my kids over dinner; a glass of red as the fire roars. Over the past few years I have very deliberately carved out a very simple life for myself; living on the edge of town, with a little stream babbling in my garden; venturing into cold waters every week and walking my dog through fields and forests every day. I've studied and graduated not only to counsel teenagers but more importantly to counsel myself. People keep asking - will you now be a counsellor? Or a writer? Can't I be both? It is surprising how similar both jobs are... 

Speaking of jobs - why does there have to be competition? Another thing Jonny Wilkinson said is that winning the cup meant he no longer played rugby for the joy of the game. Isn't that a shame? When does an activity you have loved become a ball ache - a means to simply make money? I've written diaries since I was a child, blogs as I got older, scripts for a living. I will never not write - regardless what it is for. Does it even have to be for something? My son has just done his GCSEs and I told him simply to pick A levels he would enjoy. That's it. If you don't enjoy what you are doing - studying/job/life - then why the hell are you doing it and who exactly for? 

Which brings me back to all that success I was busy networking for and hustling to get back in my stardust days. I think my nights on the town brought me one job in the end. I lied to myself that I was busy trying to get the glory and get my face on screen because I was 'good at my job.' Which maybe I was... But really it was to be seen, to be heard, to be wanted. It was all just ego.  All that comparison with others - it is only ever going to bring misery. A good friend of mine in the arts, rang recently - upset that her particular artistic endeavours were not being received with as much applause as some other people's. I told her that it was all just noise and fluff and instagram bollocks. I reminded her that she would still have to make dinner that night. Take the bins out. Iron school uniforms etc. That really all that 'success' is just bullshit. In the grand scheme of things, whatever you put out, however it received isn't really the point. What is one person's trash is another's treasure and art is subjective; we all respond to a painting in a completely different way. If you are doing it to be on best seller lists or to get awards - then what does that say about your needs and how fragile they are? What if they fail? Or perhaps worse - what if they succeed? Then where will you be? Trumping yourself I guess.... 

This year I had some bad news about a work thing in January. I walked up the hill, in the rain, through the muddy fields and wept. The next day, I felt completely normal again. Back at the wheel. In August I had some amazing news and I smiled to myself, told my husband and then got on with making dinner. The highs these days aren't so high and the lows aren't so low. That locus of evaluation is more internal. I don't need to feed my ego. Thank god. 

I only wish my 24 year old self could have discovered the above much sooner. I would've saved myself a fortune in lipstick and heels. 

Still, I got there in the end. 

Now I just need to burn these bloody diaries so my kids never get their mitts on them.