Timely Therapy

Juls Macdonell

Juls Macdonell

— 4 min read
Timely Therapy
From Parts Unknown: Hawaii, CNN

A class last week in my "The Writing Business" course came with perfect timing.

After previous classes discussing the financial benefits of writing (very bluntly), and a guest speaker accountant, prof Marita thought it was high time for us to get some much-needed love. Or therapy.

I'm kinda sad that it takes until a fourth year course for a room full of writing students to be told,

"It might seem easy if it's your calling, but what you're doing is sacred work. Answering the call, there's risk to that. I'm proud of you."

but for me it couldn't have come at a better time. I really needed it.

I'm at a stage where I'm agonizing over my work to figure out what's "best." I'm interrogating why I write speculative fiction and what it means to me. I'm desperate to get into an MFA program, to keep writing. I'm staring at my Query Tracker. I'm sick over contests and subs I haven't heard from. And I have no idea what it'll look like next year if I don't get into a program and/or don't successfully get my job back when my contract's up.

Eight months from now, I'll know. But not til then.

Deep down, I know it's not so black and white. My circumstances love to work out in complicated ways, and I'll never stop writing. But fear is stubborn.

And that's part of what that "therapy" class was; personifying your fear. Marita suggested an animal, and I knew mine right away.

The Northern Royal Albatross chick, a large, white-fluffy bird with a big pale beak and cute black eyes. She holds her wings up behind her, white and tipped in grey. She's standing on green grass, with blue water and coastline behind her.

Just last week, the Northern Royal Albatross check fledged at 232 days old. I've been keeping somewhat up to date thanks to Cornell Bird Cams and others on Instagram tracking this hatchling now for, apparently, 232 days. It's been fascinating to watch, and not just because they're near-mythical birds. The care and love that goes into restoration efforts is heartwarming, and I'm fucked up about them ever since an IMAX doc at the BC Museum featuring the horrific, pollution-related ways a hatchling might not fledge. I remain haunted.

The concept of fledging itself is wild to me; that after all that flapping and jumping and hopping around they simply take off.

Whether it's planes or birds, I've been increasingly fascinated with flight over the last few years. In 2022 when I was set to move to Victoria and enter UVic, my themed word-of-the-year was "jump." Since then, if the journal words have anything to say for it, I've been flying. The wind caught me. But it feels like I'm about to jump again and learn all over.

Screenshots from Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service. In the first panel, Kiki, a pale girl in a purple dress and a red ribbon in her hair, says "But still, if I can't fly-" and is interrupted by another voice, saying "Then I just stop. Second and third panels: Kiki again, looking closer to the camera in surprise. The voice continues: "Take long walks, look at the scenery, doze off at noon. Don't do a single thing." Fourth panel: Ursula, a pale woman with reddy-brown hair in a red tanktop, holding a sketchbook. She continues: "Then, suddenly, you'll be able to fly again."
Kiki's Delivery Service is one of Studio Ghibli's more cutesy movies, but underneath that coming-of-age story in a pretty seaside town is something terrifying: a witch that forgets how to fly. Despite the horror with which this is presented and how it affects Kiki, the solution is frustratingly simple: live anyway. It'll come.

So when we had to personify our fear and then write it a rejection letter, which I admit is a cheeky writing exercise, I found I couldn't reject it.

Long ago when I started watching Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, one line in particular from an episode on Hawaii, and not even said by Bourdain, stuck with me. Paul Theroux says:

"But when I navigate a voyage, I know when the storm comes and it's going to take you to the bone. And if the storm keeps coming, you've got to stand up. That's just what you've got to do. And it's this zone where you learn to make fear your best friend. You hold it really close to you and you open up the door to believing that you can make it."

Maybe that's part of why I felt I couldn't reject my fear. Maybe it's because I could really see, as Marita mentioned, that my fear was just looking out for me.

My fear is, ultimately, a big lonely bird. But he can't just not fly. His wings are gonna get a bit wet, and he'll have to take off again. And for all I'm afraid of so much in the world, for all that I double check my locked doors and stove knobs, for all that I need drugs to catch a flight, for all that I check for emergency exits in any concert or theatre, for all that I hate how it feels when my skin's not as thick as I hoped it was, I can't just not live. And I know that because I've tried to run away before, and all it did was make me more afraid.

So what I wrote to my fearbatross wasn't, "unfortunately, we've decided to go with other birds," but "I know you're hungry."

It was "It's important to me to try, and it's okay if we fail."

It was "I know the winds are changing and the fish are failing. We're not going to ignore these things. I'm with you."

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