Being Anyone

It was a Wednesday morning. I’d recently relocated to a grey typhoon-y thick-aired Singapore and left it all behind. A career which had been going - so I thought - pretty steadily, having moved sideways from photography production to the more conceptual and emotionally charged world of branding design, a family I loved, bonds with whom I’d fought hard over the last few years to re-establish and maintain and a social life I’d rebuilt from scratch after a blistering break up and a move to London.

The decision to leave had been touch and go, but more touch, after all I’d been given an opportunity which would end at worst with me returning to everything I loved. Win - lose - win.

There was, on that quiet lonely morning however a realisation that I’d left behind something more, and a creeping truth peeked it’s cold not un-sinister fingers into my brain. I could do anything I want here. Nobody knows me. Nobody cares. No brows will be lifted if I state my identity as a long time banana merchant from Brazil. I really could be anything I want here, straight away.

I’d describe myself as a professional daydreamer. I’ve honed the craft over half a lifetime and have learned how to eek the most meaning out of almost every interaction. It may seem to you that we’re having a somewhat banal conversation about the kind of birds you tend to hear in the morning at this time of year and to all intents and purposes I’m utterly engaged but every conversation seems to be more of a seed then a gentle breeze to my busy brain.

Questions about the natural history of those patterns in bird’s behaviour, and who had maybe, stood on this very spot 400 years ago, milk bucket in hand, might have observed the same song will haunt me for days.

On it goes, exhaustive, far too philosophical for an average work day 3pm musing and regrettably totally pointless. The energetic thoughts never made it out of my head into many conversations and certainly made me no money. The professional daydreamer’s dilemma.

When I decided in that midweek moment that maybe I could starting putting down on paper (on screen hello I’m not that romantic) the copious existential, whimsical, fantastical thoughts and ideas which had been floating around following me all my life, I was initially intimidated. The idea of a blank canvas looming ominously with nothing in my grasp to merit soiling it, until I realised, I’d already started.

Opening one of the most powerful applications on a phone, the humble notes apo, I reviewed reems and reems of book ideas, unusual words I’ve learned and loved over the years, insightful quotes by the great and sometimes the unknown thinkers of the last few hundred years, ideas for businesses which read more like an eccentric uncle’s diary. It was all there.

I had only to organise the fodder and feed it to the social machine. Expanding and elaborating on one after another idea was a work in practice but I had nothing but time, and a lot to say. At the risk of sounding like another crashing bore on linked in dishing our unsolicited life advice at the ripe old age of 23 this whole experience made me wonder how many of us have unconsciously been doing what we’ve just as unconsciously always wanted to do our whole lives, the whole time?

The (imo) toxic recent trend of monetising every hobby notwithstanding, I just wonder what a world would be like where children were taught in a more holistic way, not only their talents noticed but their passions. And those practices demonstrated at a later age as money making possibilities.

There again I have a hunger for the other stories. I’m in danger of walking a narrow precipice and falling off a cliff into the apparent “finding myself” or at best “success” stories because there’s a discipline in the art’s I’m currently pursuing (and loving) but why do we never read a novel about a talented young artist, with fortune and accolade, realising at an age where routine epiphany seems to reside (mid 30s / 40s? Is it something to do with recognising we’re half way through a life we didn’t curate?) that he actually wants to just….be a dad, and turn his hand to local painter, walls and murals: , odd jobs priced on request. Are there those stories? Do we ignore them? Or do the majority of us in western culture deify the creative sphere and forever mourn the ropes that pulled us away - leaving us only celebrating those who cut those bind, maybe at the cost of family support, a sharp dwindle of our future savings strategy, at cost of our stable existence and balanced mind.

I’d like to hear from you, if you’re out there, those of you who feel you’ve crafted your life with conscious choices you’re content with, in any profession with any hobby you’re any degree of talented or abominable at. How did you choose who to be?

I’m sure the greater philosophical approach is Momento Mori, it doesn’t matter, be happy in the now, nothing ever really changes etc etc and all this is valid but I sit here, doing something that comes more naturally than anything I’ve ever been disciplined enough to try, with the confidence that I’ve been given a chance right now to be be anyone, and here I am, Jodie Bass, a writer.