My favourite feeling while writing is when I have something I really want to say, and then get really into saying it. Sentences get too long because I have specific sentiments that I NEED to express. And I like writing anyway, about whatever it is, but there is something incredibly satisfying about articulating a feeling, and having the time and space and words to do it in full, and feeling like you’ve really got everything you want to say across. Constructing something coherent from previously shapeless floating ideas is incredibly satisfying.
However, I did not feel that I was in a space where I was able to do that when I sat down to write this article. Usually I know what I want to say, but to be completely candid with my adoring audience, I got started today feeling really tired and quite hungover with a total lack of inspiration. I have now written something about that, though, which is a start.
That feeling – of having something you want to express so desperately that it feels like your mouth can’t move anywhere near as fast as your brain and you need to just speak at four times your regular speed so that you can squeeze as much information as possible into the length of time in which someone will be willing to listen to you – is why I think I should have a podcast. I actually really should. I have always been one to go through intense phases of interest in a certain topic (e.g. Stalin’s rise to power, or Eva Perón), and to just want to somehow untether myself from rules and limits of conversation and pour everything I know about it from my head into someone else’s. This is a feeling that I experience quite often: this sense of wanting to share something, and enjoy someone else’s enjoyment of it, in the same way that I take way more pleasure in other people liking the food I ordered than I do in liking it myself.
This kind of self-reflection would be a significant component of my podcast. I think that, because I am very interested in my own and others’ thought patterns, and because I am also interested in my own, I assume that people would like to hear me rambling on about these things, making my own silly little mental connections and bringing charming anecdotal material into each and every episode. I don’t know what I’d call it yet.
Speaking on the subject of podcasts more widely – for me, they have become representative of my growing love of spending time on my own. I am extraverted (77% so, according to holy grail Myers-Briggs 16 personalities website), but I am realising more and more how much recharge time I need, and how exhausted I become when I don’t have any time to myself in the day. I’ve categorised my media and activities for me-time (does it surprise you when I say I am incapable of relaxation?) in such a way as to make sure I am as stimulated as possible; I need auditory, visual, tangible, and mental stimulation at all times. Podcasts are GREAT because they provide auditory and mental stimulation (i.e. I am listening and also thinking) but they are also flexible; I can play it from a stationary device and bustle around doing whatever my tangible stimulation is, and I don’t have to worry about moving the device around with me like you do if you’re watching TV. I can just absorb the information, whilst also being productive. I don’t have to stay in one spot, but equally I can, if I want to. They are extremely freeing.
I am not totally sure what I have written here. I have ended up with some kind of rambled, winding block of text about liking writing… And podcasts. But I do like those things. And when I set out to write this column, I wanted to write about identity – which includes the deep stuff, and the hard stuff, but also this stuff. Something light and easy and – guess what – a part of who I am! So yes. This week, instead of writing about trauma or whatever, I’ve written this, and you are welcome for that. I’ll be back to oversharing before you know it.