Passion Projects

Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my whole life trying to hide my feelings.

I wasn’t always very good at it, mind.

I ran away from home at 16 because I couldn’t hide how unhappy I was, and then I spent pretty much the next ten years telling everyone and anyone what that was like.

In fact, even before then I had a reputation as a chatterbox. My cousin and I were known in our family as a loud, impossible-to-shut-up pair, particularly when we were together. This was because we both liked reading and watching films together and then we liked to talk about the books we’d read and the films we’d seen and we liked each other a lot as well, so why wouldn’t we want to chatterchatterchat when we saw each other or called each other?

I was a bit like this with my friends as well. I distinctly remember, age 14, one of my friends telling me it’s just as well I didn’t take drugs because if I ever dropped a speed bomb I was liable to explode.

But then…

Over time, I quietened down.

Some of this was a necessary calming. I started working with young people, both in my day job and as a volunteer host for homeless teens, and frankly I think too many adults talk at young people without listening, so I’ve done my best to Not Do That.

Also, as I’ve become more secure in myself (that period of insecure housing feels thankfully distant from me now), I feel the need to bring it up less often. I have friends and colleagues now who probably don’t actually know about it at all.

But. Some of the quieting of my personality is possibly unhealthy.

Because, in part, I don’t know who would care about what I have to say.

Because, in part, I spend a lot of time convinced I’m not very clever so I should keep my mouth shut.

Because, in part, I was diagnosed with anxiety fairly recently and I do spend a lot of my time wondering how I can move unnoticed through the world.

And what this has all led to, really, is a fear that my ideas aren’t very good. That the things I care about are better served by people other than me. That the best thing I can do is be good, and quiet, and pleasant, and not be too… passionate.

But that’s complete bollocks.

It’s bollocks because I can’t let anxiety shut me up. It’s bollocks because whether I’m loud or quiet, other people’s opinions of me are outside of my control.

But mainly, it’s bollocks because I know how much I like passion in other people. Like, for example, my cousin: she hasn’t fallen into the same hole I have, she’s never stopped chattering about the things she loves and do you know what? I love listening to her. I love it when my best friend gets passionate about her work, or music, or planning her next adventure. I love it when my partner starts to tell me about the history of various jazz musicians he admires, or different ways CMYK printing can work depending on the ink used. I love 3-hour-long YouTube deep dives about the intersection of fandom and religion.

And other people love these things too. Possibly, not everyone will love the way I talk about things. Write about things. But maybe someone will. And maybe my being loud about the things I care about (which range from teen homelessness to career development to medieval fibre art to the unique magic AND class systems of the British Isles to the fact that immigration is Good Actually) will encourage someone else to be loud about the things they love!

This is so important for my writing. For all writing, I suspect.

Because we wouldn’t write at all if we didn’t think we had anything of interest to say - and when I think about the books I love best, they’re often loud, voicey stories that scream their passions.

So that’s what I’m working on right now. And my story, my character, in this book isn’t good. She isn’t quiet. She isn’t pleasant. But she is passionate.