Sara Tasker on hyperfocus, exhaustion and finding the new normal
The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Sara Tasker on hyperfocus, exhaustion and finding the new normal
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This week Katherine chats to Sara Tasker, writer, social media expert and coach.
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine May:
Hello. I'm Katherine May, and this is the Wintering Sessions. Today, I've come down to see a beautiful high tide. I love it when we have these spring tides. They're just so full. They just feel voluptuous. I can't swim in it today, unfortunately, because I've got a new tattoo and I've got to keep it dry for a couple of weeks, which is, believe me, extremely disappointing. It's just one of those ... it's freezing cold, but really sunny with a crisp blue sky, and the sea is just the right side of rough. Everything is golden in the light on the beach.
Katherine May:
There's more people out, it's really interesting. People have started emerging again after a long winter away. The dog is gamboling like a little spring lamb. I think she likes the sun, too. She gets quite depressed in the winter. She doesn't like going out in the rain and the wind. She's got very flappy ears. I think the wind plays havoc with them. Anyway, she's happy. I'm pretty happy, too. It's really nice. Oh. Sometimes you just need to breathe out a bit, you know? It's definitely how I'm feeling today.
Katherine May:
I keep pausing because I figure you want to listen to the waves as much as I do. Anyway. I could just record an hour of ambient sound for you one day maybe. I think you're going to really enjoy listening to today's guest, Sara Tasker. Those of you that know her will know her from her beautiful Instagram page, Me and Orla, and her writing on how to show up online, but the reason I wanted to talk to her is because she's actually just such a warm, intelligent, wise presence, I think. She works in an area, the visual world of Instagram, but a lot of people will denigrate and will think is frippery.
Katherine May:
I think that's why she's worth listening to, because I think she's got a lot to say about how this world, and it is its own world, as constructed as it is, has made space for lots of people to show themselves. What I find really interesting about her is the way she talks about how we construct those images and making it sound more intellectual than it is, I can't help it, it's the way my brain works, but she talks about how or why we would construct those images and why it's okay to put pretty things or beautiful things online, as long as we're being authentic behind them and not pretending they're anything else other than something you've created. They're a kind of art.
Katherine May:
I'm on Instagram. I'm sure loads of you are, too. I know that, too. I want to put things that I find pleasing on there without ever pretending I'm something other than exactly what I am, which is mostly a rolling ball of chaos. Anyway, we got talking about how the world should be. I really love the conversation, and I think you will, too. Loads of you know already anyway, so you'll be really pleased to hear from her. Enjoy, everyone. I'll be back a bit later. Sara, thank you for talking to me today. I'm so excited to chat.
Sara Tasker:
Likewise. Thank you for having me on.
Katherine May:
We've spoken once before, haven't we, on your podcast? I'm thrilled to invite you back. You've taught me a lot, literally as well, because one of the things I did the year before last was sign up to your Instagram course at the Insta Retreat, which helped me enormously with my own storytelling online. Thank you for that. I'd like to say that upfront.
Sara Tasker:
Thank you.
Katherine May:
I want to talk today, I guess, about, well, maybe this is a tricky topic to talk about on a podcast, but I want to talk about the messiness of lives behind all the stuff we put out there, because you're really good at striking that balance and about talking about how you enjoy the presentational aspects of life online and that that feeds into all of your different practices, but that also you always acknowledge how complicated things are. I'd like us to riff on that today, if that's all right by you.
Sara Tasker:
Yes. I love that. I also love, isn't it always interesting when you hear an outside perspective of your own work from someone, especially from someone you admire, like I do with you, to hear it so succinctly brought together? It all makes sense in that way.
Katherine May:
You know what? I find it really weird when people talk to me about my work because it's often so different from my conception of it. I also think that everyone remembers what they've read of me more than I remember writing it, so quite often I think, how do you know that? Oh, yeah, I wrote it in a book. All right, then.
Sara Tasker:
Have you ever had that thing where you read some advice or something you've contributed to an article and you're like, oh my God, I needed to hear that, and it was your own words.
Katherine May:
Yes, totally. In fact, actually, I tell you what, worse than that, I often see people putting quotes that they attribute to me on Instagram, and every now and then I think, I didn't write that, and so I look it up in my manuscript it and find that I did.
Sara Tasker:
I love that, though, because I always think the advice that we need the most is the advice that we find easier to give to other people. If we could only be our own coach-
Katherine May:
That's so true.
Sara Tasker:
... we would be the best coach for ourselves. It makes sense.
Katherine May:
Maybe that's the thing. That's a really positive way of putting that. I think I'm just extremely forgetful.
Sara Tasker:
Maybe with that as well.
Katherine May:
Given that I've edited each book eight times or something, you'd think it would've gone in by now, but no, apparently not. I totally just forgot it.
Sara Tasker:
You just underestimate your own genius. I think that's what this is.
Katherine May:
Actually, sometimes I'm more like, I didn't write that shit.
Sara Tasker:
Oh.
Katherine May:
It's often because they quoted it in a weird way, out of context of the paragraph.
Sara Tasker:
That's it. It's that quote, yeah.
Katherine May:
They've clipped a sentence that had other stuff around it that made it mean something different. I just think-
Sara Tasker:
Contextually, yeah.
Katherine May:
... wow, you really went hunting for that, my friends, didn't you? That was like, no way.
Sara Tasker:
How much it must have meant something to them, so ...
Katherine May:
Yeah, that's true. It's true.
Sara Tasker:
It hits different for everyone.
Katherine May:
Well, okay, so let's ...
Sara Tasker:
Semitangent.
Katherine May:
Let's move on from my extreme forgetfulness, but I think tangents are what you and I do really well because you've began to talk more recently about being neurodivergent, haven't you? I'd love to talk about that a little bit because I think the world you portray is so elegant and sparse and ordered, but I think things often feel really chaotic, too, behind the scenes. Is that fair to say?
Sara Tasker:
Absolutely. I think that's why I'm so drawn to these moments of order and beauty. I find it very, very calming. My house, I try and keep it as minimal as possible. I like white walls, I like white everything, because my head is so busy and if my space is busy and my head is busy, it's just going to go up in smoke. That kind of juxtaposition, I think, is the balance. I would be really sorry if someone only took away from something like my Instagram the idea that my life is perfect, because that's definitely not the message I'm trying to share.
Katherine May:
It's a really complicated line that I think we all tread in our lives online. I spend a lot of time talking on Twitter and on Instagram and I write a newsletter and I have a podcast, and I always try and externalise the complicated bits of my own life. That's definitely a key part of my practice, but also, I do want stuff to look nice when it goes out there. I'm not as in control of it as you are. I know that I do show the tidier corners of my house when I show it and I know that I find beautiful things to put up there when I'm walking in nature. Also, I'm thinking about the words that I put in those captions really carefully, too.
Sara Tasker:
I think we have to acknowledge that that is completely human and also really makes really good sense. Nobody goes on Instagram because they want to look at a dirty nappy or the cat sick and old shoes in the corner. The content that resonates, the content that succeeds online is attractive or appealing or enticing or beautiful.
Sara Tasker:
Of course we want to share that and of course we want to create that. Humans have always done in it, whether it's painting an oil portrait of somebody that makes them look a little bit more beautiful than they really are in real life or the landscape and making it just look idealistic, or taking these photos for Instagram. It's not a dishonesty. It's the edited highlights.
Katherine May:
It's an aesthetic, too. I think it's really interesting to watch the conversations about this stuff go by because we often talk about the toxic ends of social media. There are definitely really clear places where that presentation tips over into something that is, if not deliberately dishonest, that certainly massaging the truth in a way that I'm uncomfortable with, but what we're really bad at talking about is why the hell we are on there in the first place and what we get from it. I do think we lack that conversation and I think we need to start having that, too, because otherwise, we get this picture of us all drifting around this space that we absolutely hate being in and that's destroying us. I just don't feel like that's true.
Sara Tasker:
If that was true, we wouldn't be doing it, right?
Katherine May:
I assume so.
Sara Tasker:
There has to be something [crosstalk 00:10:47]. Maybe a few people out of some masochistic urge, but the rest of us wouldn't. Yeah, I completely agree. It's unfortunate really that the headlines, the clickbait, the big things that sell are negative stories about social media, because everyone's had a negative experience, whether that's just within their own head or someone saying something horrible on Twitter. People are willing to believe that narrative very easily.
Sara Tasker:
Like you say, we don't always give enough air time to the opposite side of it, which is all of the good stuff. I count myself very lucky. I don't know if this is true for you, but I was an early adopter of social media. I was an early blogger. Back then, there wasn't this conversation of, this is bad for you, this is going to end the world, or we're all going to die. It was just like, here's some knitting I've done and how amazing that we're all friends.
Katherine May:
Yes, this is my breakfast.
Sara Tasker:
Yeah, exactly. For several years from those early days, it was purely a celebrated, joyous ... we were all just looking at each other online going, can you believe that we get to do this? This is so fun. I'm really grateful I've got that foundation because I know how it feels when it feels right, and so I'm always working to stay within that space with all of my online connections and work and anything else.
Katherine May:
What boundaries do you assert? What boundaries do you assert for your own behaviour that stops you from tipping over into becoming one of those people, and what boundaries do you assert for other people, too? I'm always fascinated by people's fences that they put around their social media.
Sara Tasker:
I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I've seen people start to add to their Instagram a highlight, a story highlight that specifically outlines their boundaries, and mine definitely weren't that defined, but they're always there by feel. I think we all have natural ... we know when we've touched the fire and that it's hard and we don't want to go back there.
Sara Tasker:
I have rules about, if I feel very emotional about a message or something someone said to me, I will not reply while my emotion is still very high. Having ADHD, I also have something called rejection sensitive dysphoria. You might be familiar with it because it often goes with autism as well. If I reply from that space, I'm not replying as me, the whole Sara. I'm replying from a really vulnerable, frightened, emotive place. I've done it, and I've regretted it, so I'm not doing that anymore.
Sara Tasker:
Things like if I am still processing something that's difficult in my life, even if it's seemingly a small thing, something like my daughter not sleeping in her own bed or something, I won't talk about that until I feel fine, until I've come out the other side. Sometimes that means I'll write it in the moment. I might write a caption or a blog post, but I won't publish it until I've totally processed all the emotions and know where I am with it because it's so seductive either way.
Sara Tasker:
If everyone agrees with you, you feel justified and you feel vindicated and you can completely lose perspective. If everyone disagrees with you, then it seeds all of this doubt and it's just messy. There's a beautiful quote from, I think he's called Marcus Aurelius, who was the founding Greek person who started the Stoicism movement?
Katherine May:
Yeah, that's it. Yep. That's him.
Sara Tasker:
I'm saying these words, right?
Katherine May:
You are using it. All right. You're fine.
Sara Tasker:
I'm going to quote it wrong, but the gist of it is like, we only have one life and yours is already running out, and you're giving responsibility for all of your joy and happiness to everyone else around you. That's what I'm always trying to avoid whenever I'm online.
Katherine May:
That's such a great way to think about it. Tell me about your ADHD. It's actually quite a recent understanding for you, isn't it?
Sara Tasker:
Yes, completely, which is ironic because before I did what I do now, I worked in special needs as a speech therapist.
Katherine May:
It's often so true. I worked with loads of autistic kids before I knew I was autistic.
Sara Tasker:
I thought I knew what ADHD was, but of course I had that very stereotypical viewpoint of it that it's the naughty boy that climbs under the tables and disrupts the class. Those people exist, but also there's a whole different spectrum. Especially for girls and women, it can look really, really different.
Sara Tasker:
For me, it was a jigsaw piece puzzle that I found by accident. I was struggling to feel productive, struggling to want to do anything. I was listening to this whole range of different podcasts, whatever came up into my search terms, and one of them happened to be about ADHD. The more they described it, the more I was thinking, hang on, this all sounds weirdly familiar. Went online, did lots of reading, eventually went for an assessment, and it now makes perfect sense, but if I hadn't seen that other side of what the diagnosis can look like, I think I'd still have no idea.
Katherine May:
What were the key differences? It's so interesting, isn't it? I was a trained teacher. I had done some training in neurodiversity, although not very much. I think that's possibly part of the problem. Also, part of my degree was in psychology. I'd studied this stuff and my given understanding was so inaccurate from what I should have understood about it, because actually we don't talk about the embodied state of being autistic or of having ADHD or of many, many other states of being that we're now all beginning to recognize much better. If I couldn't recognise it in myself, I came to realize that I was probably understanding it very poorly in other people, too, because I was [inaudible 00:16:37]. What were the things for you that felt like it was intrinsic to your experience that you weren't expecting to be ADHD?
Sara Tasker:
Even just realising that there are two elements to ADHD, that you can have the hyperactivity and you can have, they call it the attention deficit, but it's not a deficit of attention, it's much more about not being able to control and choose where you focus your attention. I don't have hyperactivity. I'm the opposite. I'm very sleepy. I have a chronic illness aside from all of this. That means I'm naturally a very sleepy person.
Sara Tasker:
I do have this difficulty choosing what my attention is focused on, and hyperfocus, which again is going to be a phrase that's very familiar to anyone with autism diagnosis as well, that moment when something just captures you so wholeheartedly that you don't have a choice, you're going to spend six hours reading about it on Wikipedia or making tiny doll house furniture or whatever the thing is, when it gets you, it really gets you. I'd always had that as a pattern in my behavior, but I'd always seen it as, I'm weird, there's something wrong with me. I noticed other people didn't tend to do it, but I thought it was a personality flaw and not the wiring, the hard wiring of my brain.
Sara Tasker:
Also, the rejection sensitive dysphoria really immediately resonated with me, but also, elements like, I remember there's a doctor called William Dodson who does some really excellent public speaking on ADHD, and he talked about how generally when he sees patients with ADHD, he asks them, "Is there ever anything that you've tried to do in your life that you couldn't do?" He says people with ADHD always say, "No. As long as I could focus, as long as I could get myself to try, I can do anything." I really like that. I was like, oh, my God, that's me. If I can make myself do it, if my brain's onboard, there's nothing that ... I fully believe I could build a house or win Strictly Come Dancing, or whatever. If I was obsessed, I'd do it.
Katherine May:
It's really hard to talk about that balance between the things that this neurotype gives you and the things that it takes away. I find it really hard to mediate that because the ability to hyperfocus is everything to me. It's given me everything I've ever achieved. It's completely intrinsic to my experience of what it is to exist, actually. I can't imagine existing in another way.
Sara Tasker:
It must be so boring without it.
Katherine May:
I can't imagine it. Yeah, absolutely. At the same time, I do experience the problems that come with it, too. That will be, if I want to hyperfocus, or not even hyperfocus, if I want to just focus on something-
Sara Tasker:
Just normal focus.
Katherine May:
... yeah, just a normal level focus would be fine, I can't usher my focus towards something that I'm not interested in. It's almost physically painful to do it. I feel like my eyes are switching themselves off as I'm trying to look at something.
Katherine May:
I find it very hard to talk about in public in terms of finding that balance because I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. I don't ever want to come across self-pitying, but it has caused me significant problems across the course of my life. At the same time, I want to put forward how glorious this can be when there is something that your brain is like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I will take in infinite amounts of stuff on this and we will do something with this.
Sara Tasker:
It is so rewarding. The dopamine is like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
Katherine May:
It's heavenly.
Sara Tasker:
Yeah, and that's it. Again, William Dodson talks about the ADHD brain and neurodiverse brain as being just on a completely different operating system. One's Windows', one's Mac's, and they're not the same, but then one's not necessarily better or worse than the other. Sorry, can you hear my cat doing the giant meows? It's like she's dying. A door is closed, so she's very angry.
Sara Tasker:
I think it is that. It's that we're just different. The problem is that the whole of society has been constructed specifically with neurotypical people in mind, and so it becomes a disadvantage, it becomes a disability in certain situations because they've been crafted for one type of brain. They've been crafted for the Windows PC, when we're over here on a Mac going like, I can't even open the file.
Katherine May:
Sorry. It's just corrupted, I'm sorry. I've not got access to this today.
Sara Tasker:
I'm just going to go on Photoshop, guys. I don't know.
Katherine May:
My internet's down, sorry. To talk about that sometimes really offends neurotypical people.
Sara Tasker:
Of course.
Katherine May:
Even saying the word neurotypical really offends neurotypical people. To that, I would say, well, you can't just have a world where you say one group of people's weird and you're not something. Actually the truth is we're both a thing. That's why we use the word neurotypical, because otherwise it's, you're weird and I'm not. Sorry, we're not having that narrative anymore.
Sara Tasker:
Absolutely. I truly believe it is a spectrum that everyone is on somewhere, or it's multiple spectrums.
Katherine May:
It's really interesting because I'm not so keen on the idea of a spectrum that's zero to autistic and everyone's a bit on it. I think there are a distinct group of people, but I think it's bigger than we used to think it was. I actually think it's huge.
Sara Tasker:
I agree. I was saying to a friend the other day, everyone I know who's got a little boy at the moment, so all my friends who've had boys, it seems like nearly every single one of them is now receiving a diagnosis.
Katherine May:
Oh, wow.
Sara Tasker:
I'm thinking, this isn't a change in the population. I think it's a change in our level of awareness.
Katherine May:
Yeah, and how inadequate school has been for a long time for so many people.
Sara Tasker:
Absolutely.
Katherine May:
Actually, maybe we will come to a point one day when people don't need diagnoses because the world will just meet the needs of loads of different people, but right now, it's necessary to have something that gives you the right to the stuff that you basically need. That's all we are talking about here.
Sara Tasker:
And forgiveness. For me, it was the huge, overwhelming sense of forgiveness because my whole life I thought I was lazy, I was undisciplined. You see the difference between your abilities and other people's. I think a lot of us, especially women, we tend to internalise that and assume that it's something we need to work harder on. We need to buy more self-help books, we need to just buy more planners and then we'll fix it. I did all the right things-
Katherine May:
Oh, my God, that was definitely me.
Sara Tasker:
That was one of the diagnostic criteria on the list I read of things for women. It was like, you're always buying new planners or new apps that promised to get you organised, and you've just got hundreds of them and you're still not organised. Yeah, because it's not that we don't want to. We have the same wishes. We steal the people.
Sara Tasker:
I always say, Hermione Granger, I would love to be Hermione Granger. She's read all the books in advance. She's done all the homework in advance. That's just not what I was given. That's not the brain I was given. The brain I was given is amazing. I'm so lucky. It does amazing things. Being able to stop resenting myself for the things it couldn't do, it was just this huge weight off my shoulders and also freed up an awful lot of energy because you stopped trying to run against the tide.
Katherine May:
You've talked really openly about depression quite often in the past as well. Has that diagnosis had an impact on that part of your brain as well? I always wondered that being neurodivergent and growing up neurodivergent fixed a pattern of depressive behaviour in me that I couldn't really escape, but I have found it easier to escape now than I certainly used to, I think.
Sara Tasker:
Is that because you are choosing the right ways now for yourself?
Katherine May:
Yeah, I think so. I'd love to say it's about because I've completely accepted myself. I'd love to claim that way.
Sara Tasker:
You [inaudible 00:24:46] one.
Katherine May:
It is not true, but what it means is that I'm meeting my needs further down the line before they become urgent now. That's the huge change for me, that I'm getting the solitude that I need, which is just completely vital to me. I'm taking walks and, yadda, yadda, yadda, I'm doing all of those things that I need without waiting to be forced to do it by making myself sick or very, very depressed.
Sara Tasker:
Yes. It's been tricky for me to really make that distinction, I suppose, because my diagnosis came just before the very first lockdown. Like a lot of people, I've struggled with my mental health during lockdown after lockdown after lockdown. I feel like I don't really know myself out in the wild now with this information. I haven't had chance to run free with it. I had a few months, I think it's about two or three months, and the friends with me then was like, you're like Sara 2.0, because I was just so full of this newfound enthusiasm and this fresh understanding of, oh, I can make it work for me. I don't have to try and make it work the way it works for everybody else.
Sara Tasker:
That happens in every area of your life. It's not just about work or it's not just about study. It's even simple things like washing the dishes like, oh, if I've got a podcast on, I'm going to be much more excited about washing the dishes because I want to listen to the next episode tomorrow. It's little hacks that you need to give yourself permission for. I don't think a diagnosis is necessary for that at all, but it's a helpful way in.
Katherine May:
I like to talk about identification now instead, because I do think we can reach a post-medicalised world on this, actually. Some people will need professional support, but actually for loads of people, that identification is the thing that changes everything. You don't even need more than that. You just need an understanding and good information to get you to the place that you need to be, for me.
Katherine May:
I don't know, I think we just in lots of ways need to find ways to crack it open to people who ... because let's face it, loads of us that are diagnosed ended up going for private diagnoses because we couldn't have ever got them through the NHS, and friends in the States I know find it even harder to access. Actually, how do we let people recognize what they need to do to live comfortably and happily?
Sara Tasker:
Right, because none of these things are difficult to access in terms of applying them to your own life. With ADHD, there are prescription drugs-
Katherine May:
Yeah, prescription medication.
Sara Tasker:
... and that's generally the advice I give to people is, they say, "Should I go for a diagnosis?" I say, "You only need to do it if you want medication, if you're open to trying it," because a lot of people are very anti-stimulant medication before they go down that path.
Sara Tasker:
If you know you're never going to want to try that, you probably don't need to spend the money because everything else is available. It's out there and all you need to do is give yourself permission to need it or to try it. All of those strategies, and there's so much overlap between different neurodivergent conditions ... Conditions, is that the word we would use? Probably not.
Katherine May:
Honestly, the language is so hard. Everything is difficult. Don't worry about it.
Sara Tasker:
I'm not meaning to offend anyone, but yeah, different labels, let's say, you need to just go out there and find that information. It's a shame that we weren't given it a long, long time ago, and parents aren't giving it to their children, who then grow up and don't fit into the perfect square-shaped mould that they've been told they should. They think it's their fault or they think it's their child's fault. All of that damage starts so young.
Katherine May:
We're still in a very complicated place with it. In lots of ways, I think the way that we school children now and the way that their social life operates is making life much more complicated than it once did. It's bringing these things to the fore. Education has become so one-size-fits-all compared to even how it was when I was a child, actually. I had a lot more scope to behave in different ways at school than my son does quite often now.
Sara Tasker:
As a teacher, you'll know firsthand. My husband was a teacher as well. In fact, we ended up, we put our daughter into a Steiner homeschool hodgepodge situation-
Katherine May:
Thing.
Sara Tasker:
... because I just couldn't bear to see her squashed by the sausage factory in our village that wants to churn out identical, good little workers.
Sara Tasker:
That's not to say at all that the teachers out there are not doing an amazing job, because they really are. There are some phenomenal teachers, but I know the pressures that they're under and it's all about data. It's all about constantly striving for progress and there's no room for individualism and there's no room for my little girl who feels the whole world at an 11.
Sara Tasker:
A teacher only has to talk to her without a smile and she's like, "I think I'm being shouted at." She finds that really difficult. If there's an option for me to give her something that's more nurturing, that's more flexible, I'm really grateful to be able to take it.
Katherine May:
There's lots of options out there. That's a good thing. Thank goodness for options. I want to talk to you about animals because they seem to be such a big part of your life. It's interesting to me because it seems like it's a very neurodivergent thing to have a strong connection with animals, but you have some waifs and strays in your life, don't you?
Sara Tasker:
I really do. I saw something online recently actually that said it's common for people with trauma or childhood trauma to want to look after animals. I don't know if that's part of it, but yeah. Who have we got at the moment? Let me look. We've got four cats, all rescues from various places. We have three parrots. We have a cockerel. We thought she was a hen. He is not a hen, so he's going to have to find somewhere away from houses to live. We have a dog and a jackdaw, a tamed jackdaw that-
Katherine May:
Oh, I want to hear all about the same jackdaw in particular, please.
Sara Tasker:
He is fascinating. He's far too clever for his own good. We've called him Baddie because everything he does is with naughtiness in mind. You can see him look at you and think, uh. He has a bell above his food bowl. If he doesn't like his food or he's made his water messy, he just rings the bell incessantly for service.
Katherine May:
Really? Oh, my God.
Sara Tasker:
Yes. He just designed that system himself. He does it loudly. You cannot ignore this. He was a rescue. It was through Facebook. Someone tagged me and said I could take him.
Katherine May:
He was found without a mother?
Sara Tasker:
He was found in the grounds of a primary school and he was flying onto the children's shoulders.
Katherine May:
Oh, wow.
Sara Tasker:
He was very, very weak. He's not really able to fly. What we think happened is someone probably had raised him and then either got bored or couldn't carry on looking after him, and probably quite innocently thought, oh, I'll just let him go, but he can't survive in the wild because he doesn't recognise wild food as food. He's got a very, very limited diet that he'll eat. I'm trying to broaden that, but he just throws it on the floor.
Sara Tasker:
He's not able to live with his own kind. At the moment, there's a lot of bird flu around in the UK, so I can't send him to a sanctuary or anything. He's living with us and we are best buddies. He likes to sit on my shoulder. He likes to steal keys. The window keys are a favourite. He makes the most unlikely noise. It's like a chimp chattering. Actually, they say that that whole family of corvines, those crows, jackdaws, magpies are about as clever as a primate.
Katherine May:
Incredibly intelligent. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't realise that. They're that intelligent? That's amazing.
Sara Tasker:
Yeah. It's a big responsibility. It's like having a young child. You don't want to keep them in a cage. You've got to get them out and entertain them.
Katherine May:
Oh, my goodness.
Sara Tasker:
He's a lot of fun.
Katherine May:
How is the duckling?
Sara Tasker:
The ducklings have gone to new homes. It was two this summer.
Katherine May:
I was going to say, of course the duckling no longer are going to be a duckling, either. They're going to be grown-up ducks now.
Sara Tasker:
Massive. Luckily, because of all this school, we've got this community of equally slightly eccentric people and they have birds. The ducks have gone to two different people there and have lovely, beautiful, idyllic lives. We drive around the countryside near where we live and we're like, look, there's Cheep, there's Lucy. We're always looking out for our little rescue birds. Hopefully the cockerel's got a home coming up in the village, so we'd be able to visit him, too.
Katherine May:
I love that. Hopefully the cockerel's going to be okay.
Sara Tasker:
He's going to be okay because I'm not letting ... he's my baby, but I'm looking for the right setting for him. It's going to be perfect.
Katherine May:
Have you always had animals? Is it something you've grown up with or is this a thing that you've picked up as you've got older?
Sara Tasker:
We only had a cat when I was younger. I guess maybe that's the cat thing to blame.
Katherine May:
Not enough animals. That was the problem when you're [inaudible 00:34:12].
Sara Tasker:
Not enough animals. I'm just someone who's always had so much love, I don't know where to put it all. I think it's that thing of, I can do this. I can see a baby bird that's dying that no one knows what to do with and I can figure it out and I can pay the attention and learn how to tube-feed them or whatever they need and I can get them through it. Obviously I'm no vet. Let's be really clear, but if I can't see something suffering and not do my very best to help, it's just an instinct within me.
Sara Tasker:
I get such a lot out of it in return. It's really rewarding. It brings me so much joy. Also these relationships, I think there's something so fascinating about being able to have a relationship with a completely different species that has zero overlap in their conception of the world and their language in anything, and yet you know each other. They'll come and run towards you when they see you. You have a shared understanding of when they do that, it means they want this. I've never stopped finding that magical. It seems like the rest of the world just knows about that and thinks it's fine. Well, I think it's magic.
Katherine May:
I love that. I absolutely share your sense about that the rest of the world, how can they ignore this amazing stuff that's happening out there?
Sara Tasker:
If there's a rainbow, I'm jumping up in meetings going, "Oh, my gosh, there's a rainbow," when everyone else being very adult about the situation.
Katherine May:
I don't know how you can be adult about a rainbow. When I used to teach, there used to be squirrels that used to run past my window, and every time I'd be like, look, a squirrel, literally look a squirrel. My students after a while were like, you know no one else does this. You know they tell us off if we do that. But there's a squirrel!
Sara Tasker:
Nature. Look! Completely, I'm on board with that. I think they're right, quite frankly. Everyone needs to come to our school of thought.
Katherine May:
Yeah, because the world is full of all these little moments of magic and fascination that I don't want to learn to ignore. If that's what becoming a proper adult is, then I really, really don't want it because it just feels like a big shutting down was ... Before I gave up full-time work and before I really, really committed to making my own time and space to work in the way that I needed to, and that includes to make a living as I needed to, because that has always been a going concern for me, that's not something that I can ever avoid having to do, I just felt like I was constantly being squashed, really, into a shape that didn't fit. I was having to turn off aspects of my brain that were present and that were curious and excited and happy. All of those had to go in order to do more meetings.
Sara Tasker:
More meetings and paperwork. It's so invalidating to have your brain and your heart go, we love this, this is amazing, it lights us up, and have to go, no, stop that, we're wrong, we cannot like this. If you don't even allow yourself to be who you are, how can you ever live to your full potential in the world, or even just find your full happiness in the world?
Katherine May:
I'm just taking a pause to let you know about my very exciting new Patreon feed. If you love the Wintering Sessions and would like to help it grow, you can now become a patron. Subscribers will get an exclusive monthly podcast in which I talk about the books, culture and the news that are currently inspiring me. You'll also get the chance to submit questions to my guests in advance of recordings. The answers will go into a special extended edition of the podcast that only patrons receive, and a day early, too. Plus, you'll get discounts and early booking links to my courses and events, and your podcast will always be ad-free.
Katherine May:
If this sounds like your kind of thing, I have a special offer. The first 30 patrons will be able to join at a discounted rate of $3 a month for life. Do get in early and help to build the community from the foundations. Go to Patreon.com/KatherineMay or follow the link in my bio to subscribe. Please don't worry if this isn't for you. The regular version of the Wintering Sessions will still be free. I really appreciate your listens. Now, back to the show.
Katherine May:
I often talk about this and I talk in my work a lot about the need to rest and the need to step back from commitment sometimes. I find that I quite often, and I imagine you get the same pushback, which is why I want to ask you about it, quite often people say, "Well, isn't that a privilege to do that?" Not everyone can rest when they're sick and not everybody can go out and make the life that they want to or need to. The need doesn't matter. You have to live the life that other people tell you to live because that's the only way you can survive. I wonder, I'd love to know your response for that, because I respond to that all the time.
Sara Tasker:
I see the point. Absolutely. We're all on this huge range of this, aren't we? We're very privileged already because we live in a First World country, because we're white, because we have access to certain things. Of course, we have opportunities that not everybody in the world gets, but everyone should. Surely we can agree that these are necessary things that everyone should.
Sara Tasker:
I don't see how we're going to change it unless some people start trying and doing it and living that way. Also, it doesn't really feel like that much of a privilege. I know my friend Jen Carrington, she has a really well-balanced work time. She has really well-regulated weeks off. I was telling someone about that once and they were like, "Ugh, God, I wish I could do that. Sounds amazing."
Sara Tasker:
I was thinking, you just have no idea. She's lying in bed in pain. She would give anything to be able to get up and go work a nine-to-five job on those days, but her body is unable to. If I was not able to run my business from my bed the way I do, I would probably have to be claiming an unemployment allowance now. I don't think I could work a conventional job physically, emotionally, mentally. I just don't think I could be doing that.
Katherine May:
Naturally, before I got my autism diagnosis, I was in this pattern of going back into, I'm using big scare quotes here, "proper job," every few years and staying in it for ... Two and a half years seemed to be my limit before I'd get physically sick and wouldn't be able to go into work. It's never been a question of, oh, I don't really fancy doing this, although actually, now I've finally broken that pattern and I've really thought hard about how I make my living without that pattern. I do think I don't fancy doing that.
Sara Tasker:
Yes, and that is amazing, isn't it, to have that freedom?
Katherine May:
Yeah. That's fine. I was always willingly going back into that because I wanted to earn a better living. I wanted to take responsibility for my own staff, all of that stuff that people don't think that people like me want to do. I definitely wanted to do it, but I always got to the point where I physically, absolutely physically couldn't anymore. I always worked to that point and then dropped out. That was damaging psychologically as well as physically. It's had some really long-term physical impacts, but it was never, ever about choice, actually. It was always about the world spitting me out, really.
Sara Tasker:
I think this is a huge issue that we're really bad at accepting people's testimonial of their experience. Especially when it comes to anything that goes against the industrial, Protestant work ethic of you get up, you work nine to five, you don't have any human needs during those hours, and anything else is morally corrupt.
Sara Tasker:
I saw on Reddit just this week, someone posted in a doctor's forum where you can ask advice from qualified medical doctors and said she'd been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. The top answer was a general practitioner from the US telling her to get therapy because it was in her head.
Katherine May:
Whoa.
Sara Tasker:
How are we still there-
Katherine May:
I don't know. I don't know.
Sara Tasker:
... where we don't ... It's especially women, it's especially people with mood disorders, especially people who are neurodivergent, who get this label of avoidance or hysteria or laziness. We internalise those labels.
Sara Tasker:
I have believed I was lazy for such a long time. I still struggle with it now when I need to rest, but I know that my family needs me or that this work I could be doing or that the cleaning that needs doing. It's really, really difficult to let go of that. When we get it from people in authority, whether it's teachers, managers, newspapers or doctors, it's only the really, really resilient who can go, "No, that isn't who I am. I'll find a different way."
Katherine May:
I think also we talk a lot about what goes wrong with people, but if we don't at the same time pick apart what's wrong with work, then we're only telling half the story. Actually, jobs today are so different to what they used to be. For a start, it used to be predicated on one part of a married couple working and somebody was at home doing all of the massive work that has not gone away in that time, but is still being done by two people scrabbling around after full-time work hours.
Katherine May:
Then there's the issue that a whole massive chunk of our jobs don't pay for basic living standards that we once would've expected, that our parents would've definitely expected, like having a house, for example-
Sara Tasker:
Or being able to have childcare.
Katherine May:
Yeah. All of those things are not possible on most wages now, which is extraordinary, even though both members of the couple are working. Then there's the fact that in middle-class jobs that maybe do allow you to actually live somewhere, shock, horror, people don't seem to be able to walk away from them the end of the working day.
Katherine May:
They're constantly getting emails on their phone and they're expected to be checking in and expected to be working much longer hours. It just seems to me that there's an awful lot of things that are going wrong with what we consider to be normal work that's making it completely unmanageable for what increasingly looks like the vast majority of people to me.
Sara Tasker:
We've created a system that is hyper-competitive, hyper-capitalist, hyper-productive, and then when people can't function in that way, because we are animals and we were not designed to function in that way, the best we can do is medicate them so that they don't notice it as much. That's our solution. We don't make any systematic changes. We don't go, oh, this seems to be creating mood disorders on an epic scale that we've never seen before. Maybe we should change it. We just go, well, drug them so they can keep working and making money for the billionaires.
Katherine May:
And scold them if they don't keep working.
Sara Tasker:
Yeah, exactly. Let's shame them into forcing themselves and ignoring their own bodies. What do you say when you're levied with that question of privilege?
Katherine May:
Sometimes I get increasingly outraged about it. Where is your radicalism, whoever it is that's asking me that question. They ask it like it's the most right-on question to ask. I think it's the least right-on question to ask. Stop accepting this. I'm not saying that everyone can afford to walk out of their job tomorrow and take up some stupid fluffy career.
Katherine May:
I'm saying that people are working themselves to the point of exhaustion and they need urgently to find a different way to do that and that we need to collectively make a world in which that is possible and to start refusing the current state of affairs that's breaking so many people. So many people that we need to stay in necessary jobs, that we need teachers to be able to stay in their jobs rather than not being able to cope with their workload. We need nurses, we need midwives, we need doctors.
Sara Tasker:
What if the person whose brain comes up with the ultimate cure for cancer is someone with a chronic illness who can only work an hour or two a day? Right now we're not letting them into any medical fields, so we're not going to benefit from that. I think about that all the time. All the people who are being wasted, all of the human amazingness that doesn't get to participate, and I feel so grateful that I still am able to because of my business. I love paying my taxes. I get so excited because I'm contributing, and yet people will tell you that you're part of the problem or that your message is damaging or unrealistic. I just think, I never promised you I was going to be realistic.
Katherine May:
It just seems that the expectation at the moment is completely unrealistic. Everyone I know who is trying to work, what those people will consider a proper job are doing it for, in effect, less money every year with longer hours and are completely burned out. What happens when the last nurse drops? What happens when every teacher realises that they can do something that earns the same money for less stress and less prospect of complete burnout?
Katherine May:
I don't think it's realistic what we're doing at the moment. I think we have our head in the sand. I think that working towards a new way to do it is going to be a slow process, but God, we have to start thinking about it. Everyone gets to do that.
Sara Tasker:
I think the movement is brewing. There's a subreddit on Reddit called Antiwork. When I first joined, it was very small and much maligned. Everyone thought it was just full of lazy people, but it's grown exponentially. It is huge now. I have to say, it's mostly Americans, because Americans have it even worse than we do.
Katherine May:
Oh, my God. Sorry, hello, American friends. You don't get much holiday, you guys. We get a lot more holiday than you.
Sara Tasker:
We get 28 days, don't we, pretty much, with bank holidays?
Katherine May:
Yeah, 25 to 30 normally I think, between those two.
Sara Tasker:
We get maternity leave and we get sickness leave.
Katherine May:
Working without maternity leave just shocks me, and so many things shock me.
Sara Tasker:
And healthcare, you have to work in order to have healthcare because it's tied to your employment. I think America is going to be the tipping point maybe first because it is not sustainable. There are people who are dying because they can't work, so they can't have medical care. I really fundamentally believe that that has to change, and it has to change soon.
Katherine May:
I completely agree.
Sara Tasker:
Then hopefully the rest of us can carry on that wave, because COVID has sped this up I think as well. I always was such a proponent after I left my NHS job and started working from home, I was really like, why are more businesses not doing this? There's so many jobs I've done in the past I could've done from home or partially from home with an internet connection.
Sara Tasker:
It was very much like, oh, you're dreaming, Sara. That's never going to happen. Then along comes COVID and lots of businesses are now realising that it's not worth paying for an office and squashing everybody in together and making them waste hours on pointless commutes and live within a certain radius of that building just because it's what we've always done, for no other reason than that.
Katherine May:
Also, for me, it's just going back to how we used to operate, which is people didn't use to commute as far as they do now. Actually, we're now rejecting that commute that we've all been undertaking, like driving in the car for an hour each way every day, which is definitely what my husband was doing before the pandemic. Just no.
Sara Tasker:
That became normal, didn't it?
Katherine May:
Totally normal.
Sara Tasker:
I remember when my commute went over an hour, everyone was like, well, if you lived in London, you'd commute double that. That's what made me feel better. I was like, oh, you have got it good.
Katherine May:
Yeah, whereas actually -
Sara Tasker:
Instead of going, well, maybe that's the problem.
Katherine May:
Maybe that's also a problem. When you actually start to name the things that we've been doing and to really think about what that means ... The other thing I think to mention is the push towards constant growth. You're supposed to constantly be earning more every year and getting promoted and taking on more-
Sara Tasker:
Working on yourself, evolving. The primary school targets, progress every year.
Katherine May:
That makes me sad, actually, an awful lot. That's a whole other podcast worth of content. I think the thing that sticks in my mind is, where are the good craft-based jobs that people used to go into very happily? Where's the learning to be the village blacksmith? I know that's a really stupid example, but learning a skill that you can reach its full extent and then just carry on doing it because you enjoy it and it's valuable and it makes you enough money to survive, all of those things together just don't seem to come anymore. You have to, I don't know, become a manager in some awful business that rides your arse around until you're 60 and then doesn't even buy you a present when you leave.
Sara Tasker:
A book token or you become -
Katherine May:
A book token, actually I'd love that.
Sara Tasker:
As long as it was worth enough.
Katherine May:
I don't want a carriage clock. I want a book token.
Sara Tasker:
Or you become one of those people, I suppose, who I work with, which is somebody with a passion for creative work or human-centered work, but then you also have to be a social media manager, an email replier, a marketer, a photographer. You have to do all of that other work as well. There is no just focusing on your craft, or there's very little of it.
Sara Tasker:
There's a friend of ours who's a joiner who lives in our village and he's probably a decade or two older than us. He's exactly what you describe. He went straight from school to learn on the job. He's spent his whole life doing it. He is amazing at his craft. He's obsessed with wood. He'll just bring us bits of trees. He's like, "Smell this," because it's in season. He's just so excited by wood. Now he's at that point in his career where he'll say no. There's certain jobs where he is like, "No, it doesn't matter how much you pay me. I don't want to do it, so I don't need to do it."
Katherine May:
I love him.
Sara Tasker:
He's built that life for himself. I keep telling him he needs his own podcast. He is a talker. I wonder, where is that next generation of those people? Because they're getting harder and harder to find.
Katherine May:
They should definitely have us running the world, Sara.
Sara Tasker:
We do. We've got a solid plan. The only thing is we're going to need a lot of naps.
Katherine May:
Yeah, there will need to be naps, and also for about four or five months a year, I won't want to talk to anyone, which is a bit problematic for running a country. I'm so sorry about that.
Sara Tasker:
If we can just coordinate those months, but if we both disappear at the same time, there's going to be a lot of unanswered emails and messages.
Katherine May:
I don't know, though, I think the world would learn to just get on with it and wouldn't worry. I think it's fine.
Sara Tasker:
Do you know what this is reminding me of, though? Over Christmas, hyperfocused, I read the Unabomber's manifesto.
Katherine May:
What? This got dark really suddenly.
Sara Tasker:
I'm so sorry. He was a murderer and he was insane, let's be clear, but he was very anti the way industrialisation has changed the pace of human living. He was also a very intelligent Harvard graduate. He went to Harvard at 16. I don't know, there's something even in his message-
Katherine May:
Sorry, I'm trying not to giggle here, because I really hope you're going to clear this up for us [inaudible 00:55:09].
Sara Tasker:
I think we need to bomb ... No.
Katherine May:
No. No bombing.
Sara Tasker:
I think it's a struggle that people all across the world have been identifying for a long time, but it's coming to boiling point. It really feels like that. The solution is not terrorism-
Katherine May:
No, no.
Sara Tasker:
... but there needs to be a solution, and I hope it happens within our lifetime that something shifts, because people can't carry on like this. We're going to destroy ourselves.
Katherine May:
No, I do. I feel like there's a shift happening and I think it's going to take us a while to wind back from it. I think I can see the beginnings of people just wanting to live a very different kind of a life and wanting that for their kids and not necessarily thinking, oh, I need to make sure my kid is in a profession so that they can get onto that track, and instead thinking like, how can I teach the next generation to make a life for themselves?
Sara Tasker:
The whole concept of slow living, the slow living movement, that ties us back around to Instagram. It's easily criticised. People like to talk about it as being very pretentious or luxury, poverty porn, pretending you have to sweep up and you don't have a Hoover, but-
Katherine May:
Is that what it's all about?
Sara Tasker:
I think it can come across that way, which I can understand. Very wealthy people talking about the broom is maybe ... What I think it really starts with is this desire for slowness and this desire to be connected to just everyday life and not have to rush around, not have to be on that treadmill.
Sara Tasker:
I think when there's a new movement starting, when there's a change happening, this is what happens. You see it in all different places. It's like a zeitgeist. Lots of people are conceiving of it on different levels, and eventually they all come together and you've got the snowball that starts rolling.
Katherine May:
I think there's a desire for contact with things that feel real again, materials that feel natural. Natural is such a loaded word, but a few years ago it occurred to me that most of the things that I used every day in my life, I wouldn't have a chance of making myself. How would you even begin to make a computer? There's no way of making it, there's no way of mending it.
Katherine May:
Then I thought, well, hang on. How would I even make a dust pan and brush? Mine is made of plastic and the bristles are plastic. We've come so far in terms of the materials we use. I think part of that slow living movement is about moving back towards physical contact with materials that we understand, that we-
Sara Tasker:
Yes, which is why it seems to have such an aesthetic, but I don't think it's necessarily aesthetic-driven. I think you're right. It's much more about tactile. For me, it's so much about story. A handmade ceramic cup has humanness in it that a perfect shiny Ikea one just doesn't. The wood in our house is weathered and it's worn by the places that we walk and the places that we don't are still pristine and shiny. That's the story of living. I get such a lot from that.
Sara Tasker:
At the moment, as you know, we're looking for a house in France. I want to buy an old dilapidated cottage and have some fun doing it up. Every day is a disappointment. When I look online and see an amazing house with beautiful pastel shutters and it's slightly tumbled down, and inside, it's a pristine box of shiny red kitchens and every single trace of natural materials has been stripped out or boxed in.
Sara Tasker:
For me, I'm just like, this house has been here for 300 years. I want its story. I want to see that. I want to see the person who laid those bricks and found the perfect combination for the dry stonewall, whatever it is. That human connection is something that we've all always needed as a species, and I think it's harder and harder to get it.
Katherine May:
That's such a lovely place for this conversation to end. We've solved the world's problems, but-
Sara Tasker:
We have.
Katherine May:
... we've come back to our desire for connection. Connection between people, we talk about a lot, but I think there's something to be said about connection between us and the materials that surround us and the-
Sara Tasker:
The nature.
Katherine May:
Yeah, and how all of those things link together and how we want to get back to this embodied sense of living in a world that we made or that was made by people in a way that we could vaguely understand at least. There's some magic there that we're all looking for, I think.
Sara Tasker:
I absolutely agree. Hopefully it's resonating with other people and maybe they've got other takes that they can add to our conception of it, because it's not even got a name, has it, this feeling we have?
Katherine May:
No. No, it hasn't.
Sara Tasker:
But it's so strong.
Katherine May:
A yearning towards things getting more basic again and to push back the tide of stuff that comes into our homes, to get back to having fewer things that we treasure more and that we physically understand, that our hands understand.
Sara Tasker:
And that have a finite lifespan. Not the plastic thing that will live forever, but the wicker basket that the more you use it, the more it degrades, and eventually it's time to make or find a new one.
Katherine May:
Yeah, and that that doesn't have any impact when it does degrade as well. The end of a wicker basket is a gentle, as opposed to the plastic Tupperware that you keep, even though it's scratched and awful and bent out of shape and you know that-
Sara Tasker:
And you've lost all the lids.
Katherine May:
You've lost every single damn lid, and where do the lids go? Thank you so much for this conversation. It's been really nourishing. I think I needed to have that today. I think I needed that-
Sara Tasker:
Me, too.
Katherine May:
... sense of contact.
Sara Tasker:
I hope that your listeners can carry on with us. I'd really love to hear what they have to say on it, too.
Katherine May:
That would be really, really interesting to hear where everyone is with this, I think. I'm fascinated by that at the moment, definitely. I wish you very good things in 2022 and I hope you've got some exciting projects underway. Is it okay to hope that?
Sara Tasker:
Yeah, I think we're allowed, aren't we? Likewise to you as well. I think we're all a bit burned by 2021 after the-
Katherine May:
Yeah. Are we allowed to plan anymore?
Sara Tasker:
Just please don't suck. That's all.
Katherine May:
What are you planning alongside your French house? Have you got some cool things on the way?
Sara Tasker:
Yeah. In my business, I am making this very grown-up shift to being more of a CEO and less of the founder, so getting a little bit more distance and delegating more all of the things that I do not find very natural, but it means that it frees me up so much more to do the work I really love.
Sara Tasker:
I'm taking on some more one-to-one clients, which I haven't done for such a long time because I've been far too busy with classes and things. I'm hoping to write my next book this year. I'm working on the proposal for that at the moment and finding out what it's going to be and that process of just feeling it out.
Katherine May:
Amazing.
Sara Tasker:
When I get my French house, we should do something there. We'll do a writing retreat or something amazing.
Katherine May:
Ooh, that sounds very lovely.
Sara Tasker:
With lots of mess.
Katherine May:
I just want to come to the French house, actually. I don't want to work there. I just want to have a sit-down.
Sara Tasker:
We'll just drink. Yeah, you're right. We'll just drink rosé in the garden. That's what we'll do.
Katherine May:
That will be plenty. Thank you very much.
Sara Tasker:
And cheese.
Katherine May:
And cheese, definitely loads of cheese. Ah, Sara, thank you. I will make sure all of your contacts and links are in the bio here so that people can track you down, if they don't already know you, which I suspect they probably do, but for the-
Sara Tasker:
Thank you.
Katherine May:
... very few people who haven't come across your world, then they will enjoy discovering you.
Sara Tasker:
Thank you, and thank you so much for letting me ramble on today. Hopefully we've made some sense along the way.
Katherine May:
I'm just walking over to stick my head under the harbour so you can hear it, too. Lovely, big thunder in here. I love sticking my head in there, basically underneath the concrete construction that makes up the key of the harbor. There's a big hollow space. It's not under the boardwalk. It's concrete pillars, rusty ones. It makes the most fantastic sound as all the water sloshes about in there and echos. When there's no water in there, me and Bert like to come along and stick our heads in and shout echo. Simple things please me, what can I say? I thought you might enjoy the sound, too.
Katherine May:
The dog is going wild this morning. She's running around in figures of eights on the beach and occasionally banging into me. She's a sheep-herding breed from Lesvos, the island off Greece. She does try to herd you sometimes. Particularly if there's small children about, she'll try to herd them. I think she's herding me today. I think I spent too long talking to you guys and she's fed up with me.
Katherine May:
I hope you got a lot out of that conversation. I felt like we could have talked on and on, and if they'd have let us, we could have just solved all the world's problems, really. Someone has to, right? It's just such a good message, really, to think about how you can go out and be yourself and, oh, God, it just sounds so lame when I say it. She says it so much better, but you're allowed to go out and be you rather than something fixed. The world is changing and we're all part of remaking it. I think that's just so exciting. We don't have to follow the path and patterns that we once had to follow. That's all going.
Katherine May:
I also think she's a real comfort for people with chronic illness. There's so many of us out there who struggle with very different energy levels on different days and have to measure out our spoons. I hope that offers a little bit of sucker for anyone that feels that they can't get enough done. A nice comforting podcast day. We all deserve it.
Katherine May:
I'm going to walk home now. Even the harbour's busy because the tide's high. The fishermen are drawing their nets in. It's easy to forget that Whitstable's a working harbour. It's always seemed as this fancy town, but there's a very real core to it. From this part of the beach, I can see the gravel works as well, which a lot of people think is ugly, but which I think is a crucial part of our little town. It shows that it's a real place and not a theme park of a Victorian fishing town. I'm watching the diggers go around it at the moment, which again, very cool for small children, trust me.
Katherine May:
Well, thanks for listening. Thanks particularly to my patrons who helped to fund this. If you love the podcast and would like some extras and would like to help, please have a look at Patreon.com/KatherineMay. It's really appreciated, and necessary. It's meaning that we're carrying on this season way longer than we would've done before. It's just such a brilliant effect.
Katherine May:
Thank you, Sara Tasker. Thank you to Buddy Peace, my producer. Thank you to Fraggle the dog. Thank you to Meghan Hutchins, my assistant on all things. I thank you for listening. I hope you have a beautiful week with plenty of spring sunshine. See you soon.
Show Notes
Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.
This week Katherine chats to Sara Tasker, writer, social media expert and coach.
While you might expect a full on party-popper celebration of social media from someone like Sara - an expert within the realm, this is a very honest chat which takes many entirely relatable routes and tangents which surely many of us can relate to. Sara and Katherine also connect on matters of the neurotypical and neurodivergent, involving Sara's own ADHD and hyperfocus and how that sews its thread into the fabric of her life and career. Really it's a just a perfect non-stop whirlwind of a conversation which flows freely, breezily and easily, with uplifting and positive navigation points for all while being straight up and down to earth. With so many jump-off points and natural detours, it's hard to summarise so just leap in with confidence, and enjoy. It's a goody...!
We talk about:
Neurodiversity, ADHD, hyperfocus, rejection sensitive dysphoria
We could be our own best coaches
Honesty on social media
Scenarios crafted for certain neurotypes
Awareness in neurodivergence
Animals and nature
Pet collection
Unsustainability of normality
Links from this episode:
Sara’s Instagram
Sara’s Twitter
Sara’s website
Sara’s podcast
Sara's Insta Retreat
Marcus Aurelius quote
Please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing to my Patreon where you’ll get episodes a day early (and always ad free) along with bonus episodes and more!
To keep up to date with The Wintering Sessions, follow Katherine on Twitter, Instagram and Substack
For information on Katherine’s online writing courses, including her programme Wintering for Writers, visit True Stories Writing School
Wintering is out now in the UK, and the US.
