FOSSIL BLOG (Patreon)

I will try and reply to each of you individually, but I just want you to know that I read all your comments beneath my post at the weekend, and appreciated every single one of them.

I just want to let you know… I’m okay, and please don’t worry. 

As I said on Saturday, when I write something like that it sort of helps me to process. I’m absolutely dogged when it comes to my feelings, and not letting them dominate me. There’s part of me that feels I shouldn’t share something so intimate and personal, but most of me just doesn’t care. We all feel. We all have stuff. So what? 

I’d rather present a real, authentic, version of me to the world than try to portray a lie that everything is great 100% of the time, and I’m fiiiiiine. Ask me how I am, and I’ll usually tell you – so don’t ask if you don’t want to know. Yes, that comes with a greater risk of having the real you rejected, but if it’s only a fake you that is being accepted by some of the world, then you’re not being accepted at all. 

Does that make sense?

When I did my counselling training, our year gained a reputation among the years above us for being scarily fearless in that area. I liken it to there being a monster under your bed. You can pull your covers over your head and try to pretend it’s not there… or you can shine a torch into the shadows and see what it is you’re actually dealing with. Sometimes it’ll be nothing. Sometimes it’ll be something, but at least if you face it you can grab it and pull it into the light.

Sorting through feelings, for me, can kind of be like archaeology. You uncover a bone, and you think “Oh! It’s a t-rex...”… then you uncover a tooth and you think it’s actually maybe an iguanadon… and then you keep going, and scraping, and dusting, until the whole fossil is revealed, and you put the pieces together, and you're surprised to realise it’s actually a big turtle or something.

Surface feelings are rarely, if ever, the whole story. When I wrote what I wrote at the weekend, I knew that, but I had to excavate that first part of the fossil. The piece that was sticking out of the ground, that I kept tripping over. That post was the start of that process.

MAKE PEACE

I mean, on a purely intellectual level I know that terms like “success” and “failure” are pretty abstract and meaningless, not least because everyone’s definition of those terms is different. It didn’t seem like something that would normally affect me, but what you think and what you feel are different. Unfortunately, it’s almost always impossible to talk your feelings around to your way of thinking.

Which is why I liken it to archaeology, because unearthing your feelings – the feelings that are beneath the surface – allows you to understand them, and understanding them is how you stop them from controlling you. It’s only when they’re exposed fully that you can truly know what you’re working with – and find ways to make peace with that.

So, suffice to say… I went away and had a good long delve, and beneath the feelings of failure that came from the past year or two was something else entirely; feelings of rejection. That’s what was really going on. There might be more to it – I don’t yet know – but that feels like the baseline.

Feeling rejected by the TV industry. By my peers. By certain parts of the Digi audience. I even was feeling kind of rejected by my kids, because they’ve all moved to different parts of the country. And all those feelings kind of got mushed up and fed into one another, creating a big ball of… meh.

Because feeling rejected is the flip-side of not feeling needed – or, rather, not feeling I offer anything which might be needed by anyone - I was left with a sense of wanting to stop trying, because… what’s the point of doing anything if nobody needs me? If they just want other people to make their videos, and put on their live shows, and write their telly? And that’s not like me.

As I say; dogged.

"IT" DRIVES THE CAR

So, this is good, because now that I know that I can negotiate with that feeling of rejection. I can work with it, instead of it silently trying to grab the wheel while I drive the car (not literally; it’s a metaphor). I can ask it what it needs, and what I can do to help with that. I can empathise with that part of myself, and show it the love it’s actually crying out for.

So, that’s where I’m at with all that. It’s a process. It’s something in me that has probably been there a very long time – from childhood, like all these things are. A feeling from back then of being rejected for being me. Of feeling I don’t have enough to offer. Of wanting to fit in, I guess, and never quite being able to – and the pain that comes from being ejected from a club, or a clique, or the majority.

It’s also totally possible – but I don’t yet know for sure – that some of it might’ve been exacerbated by my dad dying. I mean, I know I’m more raw at the minute than usual anyway – and my emotions can be a bit heightened at the moment – but my dad never really understood me. Never really got me. He was never creative in the way I am, and saw me almost as this totally alien thing. 

He was very vocal when I became freelance, warning me it would all fail, and that I was taking a risk – and here I am in a situation in which he seems to have been proven right. Yes, it took 30 years of continued success, but… y’know. He was sort of right in the end.

Admittedly, that’s just me reaching, because it feels like there should be a connection there, feeding into the perfect storm. We’ll see.

Anyhow. Thanks for indulging me once more. You lot are brilliant.

Paul