This One Thing Changed My Life

Photo by Henrik Dønnestad on Unsplash

“This one thing changed my life”. This is what I call a clickbait headline. It is a marketing strategy, designed to capture the attention of the reader. Its intention is simply to entice someone to click through to read more because these days, in this transactional world in which we live, clicks matter. Clickbait headlines arouse our curiosity. They use emotive language and a sense of urgency, bait in other words, to hook us in. They often focus on our insatiable desire for self-improvement. People will be seduced into looking at the rest of the article because they too want to find that one elusive thing that will change their life.

But someone else’s one thing that changed their life will be something practical like going to bed and getting up at the same time every day or reducing their wardrobe to six capsule items or making their lunch at home instead of wasting £7.50 on a sandwich or never eating carbs after 6pm or something tenuous like altering their perspective, whatever that means. It will be something that changed someone else’s life, a life that often looks completely different from ours. Clickbait headlines can leave us feeling dissatisfied because we never let a morsel pass our lips after 6pm and our perspective is all over the place and that hasn’t changed a thing. Clickbait headlines promise much but often deliver very little.

Let me tell you about the one thing that changed my life this week, and I say this week because if I was to analyse the last few decades, there are probably many things that changed my life for a season like not using reusable nappies or switching from an iPod to an iPhone or refusing to lead anything or Wella Deluxe Rich Oil which does an amazing job with frizz. This week, the one thing that changed my life is my new eyewear chain. It arrived in the post on Monday. I am including a picture in case my description falls short of explaining its wonder. It is a 76cm, rhodium-plated, black necklace with silicone loops at each end to attach to the temples of my glasses. My spectacles no longer have to perch precariously on the top of my head. They can now reside around my neck. My children have been staring at me in horror. “It makes you look old,” said Lucy eventually on Thursday. “You are missing the point,” I said. “This has changed my life”.

On Wednesday, I visited my elderly parents. At the end of my regular visits which include catching up on all the maintenance that needs done to their Edwardian semi like their collapsed chimney and their wonky boiler and their wrinkly carpet and the damp patches in the living room, I usually leave with some sort of souvenir, some remnant from my childhood or some other sentimental item that my mother has unearthed from the back of a cupboard. This week, it was a letter informing of my place at primary school, a couple of tickets for my 1996 winter graduation, seats 6B and 7B, and the receipt for my first pram, all life-changing events. My parents can barely hear a word I say. We are navigating around this. I shout a lot, carefully annunciate my words, look directly at them so they can lip read. They continue to look at me blankly. My mother turns to my father in case he has caught any of it. If there is anything particularly important to impart, I follow up with a text message. They refuse to get hearing aids. They refuse to downsize. I am mindful of their dignity, of their right to choose. I hold back from telling them a bungalow and amplifier circuitry could change their life because they want to keep their life the way it is and what I’m really saying is I want to worry less about you. I want you to do something that would change mine.  

I read a piece¹ this week by Joy Sullivan, the author of Instructions for Traveling West, a book of poems about letting your life fall apart and then remaking it as something else. “First, you must realise you're homesick for all the lives you're not living,” she says. “Then, you must commit to the road and the rising loneliness”. Joy had recently written what she thought was a humorous essay on her linguistic pet peeves. She outlined common phrases she disliked. Most of her subscribers got it, but a few didn’t. Some called her “a thief of other people’s joy”. She received an email from a disgruntled reader. It was full of grievances. She had put in a paywall when previously her work was free. Her writing had become judgmental. In summary, it said, “I used to be your biggest fan. Then you changed”. She called him Sad Fan Man. After reading his email in a coffee shop, she walked home and crawled into bed. “I wanted to tell him that I’m a multi-dimensional, complicated, loving, often depressed, occasionally funny, sometimes shitty person. I needed him to know that I was good and mortifyingly, I wanted him to still love me”. Now she imagines him reading every sentence, wonders if he’s disappointed, if he doubts her goodness, if he’s laughing, even a little. 

At first, she felt compelled to reply to the critical comments but eventually, she stopped. It wasn’t worth it. If she wrote to pacify Sad Fan Man, she’d lose. She didn’t owe Sad Fan Man anything. She didn’t owe him his answers. She didn’t owe him a justification for her choices. She didn’t owe him what would change his life. Those who bring their art into the world are not here to be accessible and nice and cute and palatable, she said. They are here to speak the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Whilst they appreciate the devotion of their readers, to only satisfy their needs would be to deny themselves the one thing that drives them, their right to produce their bravest, most authentic work.

“In order to endure as an artist, you must commit to being misunderstood, even though no one warns you how painful that is”.

“Every morning, I have to sit down to the page, slap myself across the face, shoot a shot of imaginary whiskey and ask myself: Hey, are you an artist or a copywriter? Are you free or are you owned? Then I have a little cry (as a treat) and tell myself: Don’t be a puppet. Be a goddamn poet”. 

This week, an eye chain was the one thing that temporarily changed my life but the one thing that has permanently changed my life is leaving my job and committing to write. I committed to letting my life fall apart and then remaking it as something else. I committed to sharing how it felt. When I started publishing, I wrote timidly and tenderly. I aimed to please. I wrote what I thought people wanted to read. Then as Joy says, I began to make the art I most craved. I began to write what I’d want to read, what I wasn’t finding anywhere else.

On Tuesday, an opinion piece I wrote in January was published. I approached it gingerly, hesitated about re-reading it. Was I still the same person now that I was when I wrote this eight months ago? Was it accessible and nice and cute and palatable or was it brave? Within the space of a few hours, it was re-posted three times on the same platform, each time with a different headline. “Four things women want from church,” said headline one. “It might be controversial, but as she enters the second half of life, Deborah Sloan is finally raising her head above the parapet,” said headline two. “I am a huge fan of church, but it can be yet another form of institutionalisation for women. I mainly know what I don’t want from church now,” said headline three. And even though I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to say it out loud, I inwardly roared for this woman who was willing to put her head above the parapet.

Clickbait headline or otherwise, you can read “4 things women want from church” here.

P.S. I haven’t said this for a while but always feel free to get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.

1. Essay: Woman In Trouble