4 April 2022 |  From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.

 

A personal story today, which has a meaningful lesson for you at the end.

I run the risk of you thinking it's a bit woo-woo and ridiculous, but I'm going to take that risk. If you don't dig it, just delete and we'll go back to regular programming in my next email.

You ready?

When I was 16, I hooked up with a young fella who was in my year at school. He had hair like Robert Plant, was sexy in jeans, artistic, well-read, very intelligent, and cultivated a bit of a James Bond-like air despite coming from a low-end, working-class family.

My parents were not impressed. They didn't like him *one bit*. 

The gap between my parents and this guy was huge. And I was of an age where I tended to lean towards his way of thinking than towards theirs.

We were still together a year later when I finished school. Three weeks after I turned 18, about four months after the end of high school, I left home.

We piled our stuff into my little Sigma, took our impossibly low volume of funds (about $700 in total), and left home. We drove from Western Victoria up the eastern coast of Australia until we hit the beach. Then we stopped. 

 

We had enough money for the trip, for food, for accommodation, and to rent a flat! Can you believe it. Seems insane now. That was 1998.

That place, for those of you who don't know, is Byron Bay. We had dreams of getting to Mullumbimby, but by the time we got to the Bay we were knackered and just wanted to stop.
After a painful and poverty-stricken year, we moved to Adelaide so I could go to uni. I studied, wrote, didn't work. He never worked. He studied, but then never worked. Somehow I never had any money or time, and he always had smokes and time to read and lounge about and meet people. And do goodness knows what else besides.

I never visited my parents (largely due to his view of them and how it coloured my own perception), but he somehow was able to visit his family while I worked.

Over time, the situation became one in which I worked and had money. He never really did, he took all my money and goodwill. There were loads of other things going on, but they're irrelevant here.

And at some point we even wrote things together.

Our co-writing was pretty good, most of the time.

We were together until I was about 29, and it wasn't until I was 42 that I could see the dramatic impact that this abusive, co-dependent relationship had on my own work and my own dreams.

Tracing back through my folio recently, I could almost see the point at which it happened. 
I was about 21 - close to the time I graduated and went into the workforce full-time.

My works went from being fully formed, mature pieces of writing to half-formed, rarely finished, never submitted anywhere.

The dream I'd harboured since I was five years old, of writing my own works for publication, suicided on the rocks below the lighthouse that I had somehow not seen.

So today I want to tell you something.

I don't know if you need to hear it, but perhaps someone in your network does. If so, forward this email to them.

That thing is this:

Never let anybody else encroach on your dreams.

Never allow your artist to collaborate with a vampire.

Never sabotage yourself by imagining that you're working with someone of value when you're not.

This manifests in all kinds of ways. In business, it's that lazy person who somehow takes credit for other people's ideas. In personal life, it's being a giver to the point where you give yourself away.

Look after your inner artist. Care for them. Protect them with things that nurture them.
If you don't, you might live your life in shadow.

xx Leticia 'in recovery' Mooney

 

Please let me know what I can do for you.
 
Leticia Mooney is a consultant with decades of experience writing with and for people like you. Her company Brutal Pixie casts the kind of spells your customers love. Its services are oracles (communication strategy, CCX, audits, investigations, quality assurance), metamorphoses (training, mentoring, coaching, wargaming), and your stories in magick hands (ghostwriting, content writing, editorial support). Leticia is also the mother of an intelligent, engaging, and curious boy, who is named after a character created by J.R.R Tolkien.

 

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