My mini identity crisis

On Saturday I went to a travel writing workshop at the NSW Writers Centre led by the ultra talented and super inspiring Claire Scobie. And some time after the workshop – roughly between when my writer’s high* had worn off and when I had sufficiently obsessed over some of Claire’s beautifully-written articles – my own inadequacies knocked on the door of my brain and then let themselves in without invitation.

They didn’t even take their shoes off; just came stomping in and throwing dirt all over my confidence. First it was the typical “where is your career going?” I had some answers to that one. I have plans. Big plans. But they persisted “why haven’t you done more with your life until this point?”, “Why don’t you work every waking hour of the day for what you want? Did you really need that five hour sleep the other day?”, “What is your blog even about?”…and then again, for good measure, “What is your blog even about?”

So you can imagine that within three minutes I was rocking back and forth as my brain comforted me with largely uninspiring thoughts: “that last restaurant profile you wrote; that wasn’t bad” and “you can be funny in emails…sometimes”. I rebelled by swallowing three scoops of pistachio ice-cream, because as any writer with crippling lactose intolerance would know, feeling like your esophagus is going to run away with your liver is a lot more pleasant than facing writing insecurities.

For the lucky ones who have never had to brave this experience, let me just explain that writing insecurities speak in the disappointed voice of your grandmother. In my case (and here I am being gentle) my grandmother has the subtlety of a stampede of elephants. This means that my insecurity looks around my brain, picks something out of its nose or its ear…or both…and then tells me in no uncertain terms that I’m crap. And that I should really lose some weight because when it was my age rabbits could leap through the gap between its legs. Large rabbits.

So other than being imparted with the image of an anorexic she-beast with robust, hairy moles and a feeling like I had just accidentally swallowed a balloon filled with both hydrogen and cement (thank you lactose intolerance), for a few terrifying moments I have to consider my career choices. This time around I forced myself to see that while I don’t have any Pulitzer-worthy material, I’m not a complete disaster either. Then my esophagus and liver climbed out of my left ear and I spent the rest of my weekend coaxing them back into place.

* A condition writers get when they get super enthusiastic about their craft. It’s sudden, blinding and all-consuming. The withdrawals are harsh. It’s the heroin of the editorial world.