ferocious composure

I’m going to be stepping back from Social Media this month (and hopefully beyond) so that I can focus on my creative work. But before I go I wanted to leave a few self-indulgent posts about the past year, where I am right now, and what I’m hoping to achieve over the next few years (and maybe there are people on here who can help me with that).

2022 was a landmark year for me. After a very negative and traumatic experience developing work in 2019, I found myself withdrawing from the arts almost entirely. I posted about it on here at the time, and people were lovely and super supportive, but I still couldn’t put pen to paper for about 2 years afterwards. I was pretty sure I was done with the arts in all its forms, and most of what you all saw on my social media around that time was equal parts performative and aspirational. The only things that kept me tethered to the world of art were the constant, thrilling chats about theatre with my friends; working with, and feeling valued by, the incredible team at Cork Midsummer Festival; and Molly Twomey appearing out of nowhere as if I’d summoned her from a dream.

And so in 2022, after much coaxing and encouragement, I really feel like I got my groove back. I started writing. A lot. Mostly for the legends over at The Thin Air, who gave me so much trust and encouragement to bring outstanding live music and upcoming bands the coverage and kudos that they deserve. I even ended up being a judge for the NI Music Prize, which was an odyssey in itself. Being immersed in listening to music also led me to return to my first love, making music. Red Mask and I started creating street art and putting out lofi tracks for nobody but ourselves, and I started to write songs again for the first time in… well, I can’t really remember. Somebody can remind me when I first wrote “Plenty Of Fish”😅.

Speaking of Red Mask. As much as he pretends to despise me and my process, he’s been a massive help to me, and a champion of artists in general. I sincerely hope he gets to keep doing that (for me, and for others) for years to come. He’s a tool, in many different ways. Primarily for me he was a hammer this year, and without him I would never have knocked through the layers of protective self-doubt and achieved my biggest highlight of the year: Returning to the stage.

Getting to put my work on stage again was such a cathartic experience for me, and I’ve never felt more calm and at home than when I put my first foot on the stage (even though I had a panic attack right beforehand). It truly felt like I was closing the door on a very dark period of my life. Doing so on the Everyman stage was particularly special, as it’s where I’ve seen some of my heroes perform, as well as being a space that has so often welcomed me in roles backstage, or by providing space for me to write, rehearse and explore. Getting to step onto the stage… I mean, getting to watch Red Mask step onto the stage… was a special moment that I’ll keep tucked away inside my soul forever, occasionally taking it out to glimpse when I’m having doubts about myself and what I’m capable of.

I also got to travel a lot. Heading to Canada for Jim’s wedding, then driving from Seattle to San Francisco with Ferg in our magic mushroom adorned campervan, getting to see incredible work at the Edinburgh Fringe. All these things left me feeling inspired and excited to move forwards.

Mostly, in 2022, I was grateful for people. People who championed me like Naomi Daly, Louise Stephens, Brian Coney, and of course Molly Twomey. People who trusted me like Rose-Anne Kidney at Goldiefish Events, Shaun and Nyree from The Collective, and Lorraine and Allyson at Cork Midsummer Festival.  To all the people on here and in real life who have ever uttered an encouraging word to me, no matter how small or inconsequential, you cannot fathom how much it meant to me. One of the symptoms of ADHD is a thing called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which means that I don’t take rejection very well (understatement of the year), but the flip-side is what’s somtimes called Recognition Responsive Euphoria, which means that that any words of positivity or encouragement is like dropping me in a swimming pool of joy and confidence. To everybody who said they enjoyed reading something I wrote, or listening to something I recorded, or watching AN ACTUAL LIVE THEATRE PERFORMANCE I MADE (still can’t believe that one), thank you from the bottom of my heart. In 2023 I promise to pass those good words on and on and on, and I hope you continue to give them, because they are a gift, and you don’t know which words will be the ones that push somebody over the finish line on something they’ve wanted to do but couldn’t find the resolve to finish.

Onwards.

This past October I was thrilled to be one of four Cork-based artists selected to show an excerpt from my new theatre project “HEEL/TURN” at The Everyman, Cork as part of PopUp. “HEEL/TURN” is a metatheatrical, interdisciplinary piece that I’ve been developing with my frequent collaborator (and occasional sworn enemy) RedMask. It uses music, video, song, improvisation and an unnecessary amount of professional wrestling terminology to attempt to convey a sense of what it’s like to be neurodivergent, while also exploring what it means to be truly present in your own creative process.

At the Q&A afterwards I got to discuss being neurodivergent, and how my own creative process has evolved since I received my ADHD diagnosis. I spoke about how I’ve been learning to work with my disability, instead of constantly banging my head off of the obstacles that my ADHD has been, unbeknownst to me, throwing in my path for my entire life. It was incredibly cathartic and freeing to finally feel like I’m embracing my true self, after decades of wrestling with him.

Also, two young girls nervously approached me with their mom after the show to tell me that they really liked my music, and I think that it was honestly one of the highlights of my life.

I’m currently applying for funding and opportunities to further develop the piece into a full-length show, but for now here are a few great photos taken by Patricio Cassinoni on the night.

It’s been a wild few years inside my head…

Just over two years ago I was on a video call with an acquaintance, writer/comedian Erin McGathy, about a TV pilot I was scripting as part of an online course she was teaching. We were in the middle of a truly ruthless critique of my ideas when she suggested to me, quite out of the blue, that I might have been unknowingly suffering from a debilitating mental disorder for my entire life. Initially we both laughed at the bluntness of her suggestion, but the more she explained the more the cogs in my brain started to turn. She suggested I should look into it, and we moved on with her shredding my precious ideas into microscopic particles.

After the call I decided to investigate it further, so I did the thing that you’re meant to do in these situations. I contacted my GP. Because of COVID the consultation had to be over the phone, and you had to pay up front, but I didn’t really mind. I wanted to get answers. He was very sceptical when I told him my concerns, but I’d expected resistance, and had built myself up in advance of the call, so I firmly asked him to refer me to the local mental health service. A few weeks later I received a letter telling me that my referral had been refused. I didn’t even know that was possible. They said that because of the waiting lists for more urgent mental health conditions, they wouldn’t add me to the list to deal with my possible condition, and instructed my GP not to send any other referrals to them unless his patient was psychotic or suicidal. In my frustration I sent a tweet (which you can see below) complaining about the experience. It absolutely fucking blew up. As of now it has been liked 9,221 times and retweeted 1,186 times.

I sort of went to ground after that, and decided to put a heavy focus on my own mental health, since the system wasn’t exactly rushing to do it for me. I pursued getting a diagnosis privately at first, but eventually got into the public system and thankfully, after a year of struggling, questioning, and self advocating, (and with the guidance of some very kind and knowledgeable friends,) I received a diagnosis confirming my suspicions. Although I’m sure my friends are sick of me prattling on about it in private, I realised that I never really spoke publicly about it. I suppose I was still getting my head around the ramifications of it (and continue to do so), as well as pursuing all the available treatment options and coping strategies. I also returned to therapy, armed with this new knowledge, and started to pick at the decades worth of knots in my brain. Another year has now passed on my journey, and I finally feel like I’m in a place to discuss that journey openly. In 2021 I received a definitive diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD.

So what? Who cares? Loads of people have ADHD. Schools are full of kids with it. It’s not a big deal.

Except for me it was a very big deal. It’s hard for me to explain how all encompassing and devastating an effect it’s had on me without my knowledge of it even existing. I could list all the ways it’s been impacting my life from childhood, through my awkward teenage years, and all the way through college and into my adult life. I could catalogue the great jobs I’ve left at the drop of a hat because I started to feel like an imposter who was about to be caught out. I could talk about the relationships I sabotaged because I couldn’t adequately regulate or express my emotions. I could itemise all of the second chances I was given throughout college to get my work in on time, or at all, and all the people who stuck their necks out to get me through assignments and work that everybody else seemed to complete with ease. I could tell you about standing terrified on a bridge at 21 years of age because I was considering a very hard dismount from it, feeling like my life was falling apart around me, unable to quiet the cacophony of noise in my head, and convinced that it was nobody’s fault but my own.

But I’m not going to go into any of that. Not now anyway. What I’ll say about my experience instead is that for as long as I can remember I’ve had one phrase on a constant loop inside my head, and that phrase is “You’re not trying hard enough”. When I wake up in the morning, when I forget something at the shop, when I’m late for an appointment, when I forget to do the dishes, when I end up going to the pub instead of finishing something I said I’d finish, when I go to bed and lie awake at night. Constantly. “You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not trying hard enough.”  That constant spiral of self blame has done unfathomable damage over the years to both my mental health and to the creative work that I absolutely love, initially as a musician, and more recently as a theatre maker.

On the day Erin suggested to me that I might have ADHD (which she did because she could see I was struggling to choose which script to focus on in her class), I called a friend who is a psychiatrist (but not my psychiatrist) to find out more information about the condition. He had quietly had his suspicions about me for a while, and he helped to get me on the long road to an official diagnosis. He’s also been a vital confidant while I navigate the quest for control over my own mind. On a walk with him down the Marina in Blackrock one evening, still a year away from getting an official diagnosis but very much coming to terms with the reality of the situation, I mentioned the phrase forever rattling around inside my head to him. “You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not trying hard enough.”

He stopped walking and looked at me. Looked heartbroken for me. I’ll never forget his words, spoken with purpose, as if it was some sort of binding incantation. “The problem isn’t that you’re not trying hard enough, Mike. It’s that you have to try harder than everybody else does.”

The many implications of that statement rushed through me in a deluge, and the very obvious truth was now staring me right in the face. I was trying. I had been trying really, really hard actually. But it wasn’t a question of effort. If that was the relevant measurement, then I was already putting far more in than most people need to. It was a question of equity. If it was a hundred metre race, then I was starting twenty metres behind the rest of the runners and then blaming myself for not medaling. But knowing that was the case meant that I could stop blaming myself, and start celebrating the fact that I was crossing the finish line within a hair’s breadth of the other runners, and often beating quite a few of them. It meant I could focus my attention on more effective ways that I could catch up, instead of constantly berating myself for falling behind.

An instant after my friend uttered his spell, the voice was gone. No medication, no therapy, just the honest words of a knowledgeable and sincere friend. It was like an ever-present knot in my chest was finally untied. For the past two years I can honestly say that I haven’t heard that phrase in my head one single time other than as a memory of a tougher time. It’s been a lot easier since. People who receive the diagnosis later in life often speak about a period of grief, or mourning. It’s certainly been true for me since I found out. But my main source of grief is for how I had been treating myself for almost my whole life, since I was 8 or 9 years old. Berating myself because the “cool people” in my school occasionally found me annoying. Withdrawing from things I excelled at because I didn’t want to stick out, afraid people would think I had “notions”. Dismissing every piece of praise I received and obsessing about the occasional piece of criticism. Constantly wanting to make things, to “live up to my potential”, and show what I thought I was capable of, but never quite getting off the ground.

Even though I only received my definitive diagnosis last year, I’ve spent the past two years trying to re-imagine how I can make work in a way that works with my brain rather than against it. I’ve become an advocate for neurodiversity and neurodivergent ways of thinking and making art. I’ve been working really hard to overcome the obstacles that ADHD has created for me, and leaning into the sometimes amazing tools that it gives me. Honestly, there are so many positives to the condition that I’m only beginning to uncover, and a lot of them are simply the things that have made me who I am all along, I just didn’t realise they were anything out of the ordinary. I always thought that I was weird, but I never thought I was different. Being weird felt like it was my fault. I’m ok with being different. I love things that are different.

I’m looking forward to getting stuck back into the things I’m passionate about, armed with a new outlook and new tools. I’m looking forward to writing, making, and showing my own work, as well as helping other creative friends and collaborators to write, make, and show their work. (Please do reach out if you’re working on something you think I’d be interested in. There’s nothing I love more than kicking an idea around over a pint or a coffee.) Mostly though, I’m looking forward to taking off the mask I’ve been wearing for my whole life while struggling to fit in.

Anyway, all of this is really just to say that I have ADHD. I’m neurodivergent. Sometimes it’s shit. Often it’s great. It makes me the scatterbrained, multi-faceted, boundlessly enthusiastic inter-disciplinary artist that I am. 10/10 would recommend getting a diagnosis from Erin McGathy. Still a bit raw about the TV pilot though…

Thanks for reading.

Mike

A Premium Haunting

Dan and Mary bought a haunted house.
Not really haunted, just haunted enough.
Enough that they could make some easy cash
by opening a haunted B&B.

They cleared out the Victorian pantry,
and gutted the eerie children’s play room.
They rigged the place with automated ghosts,
and upped their nightly rate 90%.

Dan accidentally hung himself while hanging spooky lights.
Now Mary lives alone with further rate increases in her sights.