Stop suffering, start being weird
How I'm learning to tell new stories about what my life is asking of me.
As I've gotten older, I've noticed how certain people in my life have started to change.
They are becoming weirder but happier. More honest and less apologetic about who they are and what they need. They are doing work that is more aligned with their singular talents. They are more creative, they take more risks, and they care less about what others think. They are sleeping better. Exercising. Spending more time with the people they love.
A lot of this didn't happen overnight. Because most of us are not that old, I still remember the days when a lot of these same folks were absolutely miserable.
They were showing up to jobs they hated. They were prioritising everyone else's needs above their own. They were over-sharing on social media in a bid for connection and validation. Floundering in toxic relationships. Partying all the time and doing everything they could to stop themselves from slowing down, seeing where they were, and asking themselves if this was really what they wanted out of life.
So what happened?
A few years ago, I chanced upon the autobiography of Marie Colvin, an American war correspondent widely recognised for her frontline coverage. As famous as she was for the fearlessness of her journalism, she also lived an extraordinary life—commanding audiences with dictators and infecting those around her with her boundless energy and charisma.
Yet remarkable as she was, she too wrestled with demons. She drank too much and never found a way to stay in relationships that made her feel safe; she sought the adrenaline rush of every assignment, chasing one danger after the next. What started out as a passion for humanitarian causes eventually turned into a kind of desperation, and In Extremis details how the line between seeking purpose and escape often blurred.
We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, what is bravado?
— Marie Colvin
I am not a war correspondent. Chances are, neither are you.
But I bring this up because when I first chanced upon the story of Marie Colvin, I was already living out a similar story. A story in which I wanted intensity and turbulence. I wanted transcendent ambition and the unwavering dedication to something beyond myself. I wanted the romance of rushing deadlines, words lubricated by whisky and cigarettes.
And so this was how I lived. In the early days of Rice Media when it was just two of us in a room, chasing stories and throwing shit at the wall to see what stuck, my days often looked like this. I wrote a lot and slept very little. On days when something went viral or someone tried to get an article taken down, it genuinely felt like we were changing the world.
All of this also cost me, whether it was my health, relationships, or sense of self. When I look back on those days, I know that we did what we did with the resources that we had in order to survive and build something we believed in.
We worked like this because it was the only way we knew how. And I now know I never want to do it this way ever again.
Many of us have our own versions of this story. We've done things we're proud of, but often at a price we had no idea we were paying.
As I've confronted this reality for myself and watched others do the same, I've been thinking a lot about how, in the same way that many of us can get used to accomplishing things through brute force, we can get used to navigating life from a place of sacrifice.
Whether it’s choosing work over everything else or choosing to remain in unhealthy situations, we inadvertently end up sacrificing something because
We don’t know how to motivate ourselves to succeed other than by comparing ourselves to others, constantly fighting the fear that we will never be good enough and deserving of love/validation/recognition unless we've achieved something exceptional
We don’t know how to decide what matters to us without deciding who we're trying to prove wrong
We don’t know how to get stuff done other than through manipulation, aggression, or even sheer inflexibility
We don’t know how to feel a sense of belonging other than by ignoring our own tastes, instincts, and values to curate who we are so we seem more interesting to others
We don’t know how to process challenging life events in healthy ways that don’t involve numbing, evacuating, blaming, or fighting
The list is endless, but these are the things that help us get what we want, while also ensuring that we will lose parts of ourselves along the way. We confuse 'this is what I achieved' with 'this is what I was willing to give up'. Without realising it, our actions end up being driven by jealousy, spite, resentment, inadequacy, cynicism. We hurt only ourselves in the process.
These days, there are certain things that I am tired of and no longer want to feel: I no longer want to feel disconnected from who I am and what I want, or that I need to prove myself, or that I will only feel whole when I have achieved certain things or my life looks a certain way.
These sentiments made it possible for me to work inhuman hours, and to build a life that on the outside looked almost perfect. But I am now also conscious of what I lost along the way, and I don't think it was worth it.
In one of her Substack newsletters, Ancestry CEO Deborah Liu talks about how the best piece of advice she ever received was when Sheryl Sandberg told her, "You can stop fighting now." Mel Robbins calls this 'dropping the sword'.
What they both mean is that we can all learn to stop operating from places of fear, desperation, and insecurity, and learn to access the parts of ourselves that help us feel lighter, more present, more secure, more creative, and more joyful.
This means that when I feel stuck on something, I don't start playing the movie of how my life will be an utter shit show until I figure it out. If I'm feeling emotionally activated, I don't try to numb or obsess over "finding the right answer". I go for a run, I take a shower, or I sit in a noisy coffee shop and watch the world go by. I find ways to remind myself that there are better ways to do things. Ways that don't involve me making myself miserable.
And it’s so hard because we can get so used to living from fear—of punishment, of losing, of missing out—rather than from a love of life itself. We don’t realise that it doesn’t have to be like this.
As I'm writing this, I am also conscious of the fact that to live is to experience unpredictable pain. We don't always get to choose what happens, and often there is no method to the madness of the world we live in.
But I am slowly seeing that it is possible to choose how we respond. And it is a choice that we need to make over and over and over again.
A few days ago, I told a friend that I'm starting to understand what it means that good things happen when I’m able to let go, to fully embody what Katie Hawkins-Gaar means when she writes, “I no longer wonder who I will become or what my life will look like. This is it.”
"Yet somehow," I said, "I keep getting this feeling like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like I need to do something to fuck it all up."
This is the fear in me speaking—the fear of not knowing what life would look like when I learn to stop suffering and sacrificing.
It is also a fear that I am learning to listen to and acknowledge, and still choose to tell new stories. Stories about giving unconditionally, about solving meaningful problems, about having fun, about braving hardship and frustration, about allowing life to surprise me, and allowing myself to change and to become the weirdo I was always meant to be.
Some other things
A big thank you to everyone who recently signed up for a paid subscription to this newsletter! It really has helped me be more conscientious about my writing, so thank you 🙏🏻
I’ve just added a Work With Me page to this Substack. I spent most of the last few months figuring out what I want my life to look like, and am now slowly orienting myself towards doing more in the professional sphere. So this is a first step in that direction (and also me learning to be a bit more shameless about self-promotion).
Two of my friends recently started Substack newsletters—if you’re looking for more writing to follow, please check out what they’re up to!
by- by
That’s all for now, see you at the next one 👋🏻