Attention, please.

Posted on by bikecyan

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.

My frustrated tweet went viral, garnering 72,000 engagements and more than half a million impressions.

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.

I’ve been going to therapy on and off for over a decade. It’s not as dramatic as in The Sopranos, but it’s certainly been vital for me these past two years.

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.

Driven to Distraction by Ned Hallowell is revered by many as a foundational text in understanding ADHD. If you’re interested in learning more I highly recommend it. (I listened to the audiobook as, predictably, I find it difficult to concentrate.)

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.

Looking forward to making more creative work, armed with my newfound knowledge about myself.

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

When Talent Comes Out In The Wash

Posted on by bikecyan

First published in UCC’s annual magazine ‘Independent Thinking’ in 2016, which can be read in its original format here: Cónal Creedon Interview, Original.

Cork novelist, playwright and documentary maker Cónal Creedon, has been appointed as UCC/Arts Council Writer in Residence at UCC for the current academic year. He tells Mike Ryan about what has inspired his career as a writer, including opening a laundrette in the city centre 30 years ago

As you walk along Half Moon Street just behind Cork Opera House, in the city centre, you’ll notice a series of murals depicting Irish literary illuminati – with Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, and Yeats predictably present. But amongst those pillars of Irish literature is also the visage of local man Cónal Creedon.

Cork city chooses its sentinels of culture very carefully. Writers, performers and artists can spend their lives grafting in the various theatres, concert venues and bars, and yet however hard they work, they never manage to crack the paint around the fortress of Cork’s artistic heritage. For Cónal, writing was never work; it was a compulsive urge.

“I’m the least ‘writerly’ person you’d meet”

“Genuinely, I’d say I’m the least ‘writerly’ person you’d meet, if there is such a thing,” he confesses. “I look at the world, and I assume that writers are a certain type of person. I would never have seen myself as that person, because it just wasn’t my thing. At least, I didn’t think that it was my thing.”

But life can send us messages in interesting ways: for Cónal it was when he opened a laundrette 30 years ago. “I remember very soon after that, the film My Beautiful Laundrette came out, and I remember thinking ‘You know what? Maybe my inspiration was really to write that film script’, because I had started writing sort of… compulsively. I found myself in the car writing, and in the laundrette while the machines were going ’round. I wasn’t writing for competition or publication, I just kept writing and eventually I had a lot of stuff written.”

That compulsion is clearly still strong. Over the past three decades he has written for theatre, TV and radio, as well as publishing multiple books. Cónal’s stories resonate with readers in his own unique way. It’s understandable, seeing as the content of his writing is somehow universally local, and was even litmus tested in its early days by those about whom he was writing.

“I remember I used to bring them around the corner from where I live, to get typed, and I wouldn’t put my name on it because they knew me. I said ‘Oh, my friend dropped this in and asked me to get it typed up for him’, but then eventually they realised that these stories were mine, because they were all about here, and they started telling me ‘I liked the last one now, but this one now isn’t great’.”


UCC’s new Writer in Residence, Cónal Creedon with his dog Judy in the Glucksman Gallery cafe, which is built on the green site where he used to play football in his youth. Picture: Clare Keogh

From the start, Cónal’s work has often dealt with the theme of family. His Second City Trilogy, which was performed as part of Cork’s stint as European Capital of Culture in 2005, and has since been staged in New York and Shanghai, is a collection of three short plays, The Cure, When I Was God and After Luke, which each look at the intimate nature and influences of parents on their children, as they move through adulthood themselves. Coming from a brood of 12 himself, he has no shortage of inspiration to draw on.

“My greatest source of inspiration has to be the mother and father. I dunno how they did it. Twelve kids, all different ages, so at any one time there’s a first tooth, a first birthday, a first confirmation, a first holy communion, a first date, a first heartbreak, first leaving cert. This is going on all the time. And I see people now with one child, and they have these events coming up, and the whole focus is on this big event, and I’m saying to myself ‘How did they do it?’, and truthfully, they just seemed to take it in their stride.”

The writer has his own way of dealing with life’s ups and downs: “When I hit a bad day in life or in my own self-confidence or whatever, I just think ‘Cónal, you don’t even know what a bad day is brother, get out of it’. And when I hit a good day, I start to realise, you know, a good day is when you’ve a sick child in hospital, and you have somebody else there with you, and you’re dealing with it. Don’t mind taking a bow in some theatre. That’s not a good day, that’s your ego talking. You’re dealing with adversity head on and you’re getting out the far side.”


This old photograph of Cónal Creedon, outside the Cork city centre launderette where he used to write while the machines were running, is a nostalgic reminder of his early creative urge

Death is also a frequent presence in his work, though having grown up right beside a funeral parlour, where he still lives in the city centre, he feels that death is not something to be feared.

“Every night coming out the gate – not that it’s even worth saying – but you do meet people crying every night because their father, their mother, their brother, their son, is next door, and after a while, it isn’t that you become cynical or anything, but you become slightly desensitised to it. I mean if you meet someone on the street and they’re crying, the first time it’s going to traumatise you a bit, but after years of it, all you can be is respectfully sympathetic and empathetic, because of that desensitisation. When my mother died, and when my father died, they were removed from next door. There’s very much an awareness of death in a lot of my stuff.”

His most recent book, The Immortal Deed of Michael O’Leary, is a historical biography of the first Irish man to be awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery during First World War. It’s a far cry from the cerebral world of his previous novel, Passion Play, in which the protagonist decides to go on an acid trip before taking his own life, and winds up encountering a series of long-deceased friends and acquaintances.

“Somebody said to me recently ‘I hope there aren’t as many dead people in this new book, how does it compare to Passion Play?’ And I said ‘Well, in Passion Play there’s about 20 people dead, and in this one I think it’s 3.5 million dead’.”

Being chosen this year for the position of Writer in Residence in UCC, has taken him by surprise. For many it would seem like a natural fit, but he is humbled by the unique opportunity – one that he says he had never really expected to be offered.

“It comes up every year, and I never really applied for it because realistically I didn’t think I’d be what they wanted.” Then about two years ago he met Frank McGrath – who used to work in UCC and tragically died in an accident there afterwards. “Frank said to me: ‘You know, Cónal you should apply for that’, but I didn’t, because I thought I’d apply for it, and then I’d spend the next six months telling people that I didn’t get it. And sometimes you’re better off just sticking with the work, rather than anticipating a rejection slip, you know?”

But there was no rejection: “Truthfully, I do think they could have selected somebody of a much higher profile, of a national and international profile, and for them to select me is a huge endorsement of their faith in my integrity really. In my line of business, if you want to call it that, you know why you’re doing it; you’re doing it because you can’t stop, but sometimes you question the validity of what you’re doing. Sometimes you do need a certain amount of validation from third parties, so this for me is one of those moments.”

In his younger days, Cónal used to play soccer on the site where the Glucksman Gallery is now, and “get chased out” by the security men. “That’s about it – I was never a part of UCC. What I find is really interesting is that every town, village and crossroads have a number of worlds. Some of them are cultural, some industrial, some commercial, some sporting – right? And in most cases, somebody who’s in the middle of all that would have a finger in all of those worlds, and I suppose what has amazed me is that I thought I was in the middle of all that, and then when I was accepted as Writer in Residence I realised that, actually, that’s one world I know nothing about. So I’m looking forward to engaging with this new world. It’s a learning process for me really.”

Illusory Profit Margins – A Poem About Ghosts and Capitalism.

Posted on by bikecyan

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.

Obituary Generator

Posted on by bikecyan

I’ve started writing obituaries for fun in my spare time.

It’s almost Halloween in this, the year of the ongoing difficulty. Does the above statement really shock you?

I’ve become a little bit obsessed with their form and language. How do you even begin to conceive a form aimed at summing up somebody’s life, let alone do so in a way that it can be consumed in print by thousands of friends and strangers? It feels so dated, but then I suppose there’s nobody (yet) to lodge a complaint about the quality of their obituary.

So I started reading them. My friend Sean started to save me the obituary pages from the Irish Times, which he regularly purchased. Our relationship is such that he only barely rolled his eyes when I asked him to do so. Several weeks of reading their every gruesome detail has resulted in my extraction of the following formula for generating a generic obit. 


SURNAME, Firstname. (Address, formerly of Address) Date, [mood at time of death]1, circumstance at death2, [Present Particible Modifier + Noun] to Name3, {repeat as necessary} Removal from Location, Date and Time. 
~ Quote in Italics~

1 – (e.g. peacefully)
2 – (e.g. surrounded by…)
3 – (e.g. Loving carer to Mary, caring lover to Ignatio…)

The form of an obituary is simple and direct, but limited. It will never truly capture either the essence of a person’s life, or the immensity of their absence from it. It is, on the other hand, a near-classic and under-utilised structure in the realm of literature. I hereby set about to change that.

Headstones, of course, are famed for their brevity…

Now, not to make light of death during a global pandemic, but but I think there are two ways in which we can view this formula.

  1. As an outdated and limiting form, from which true expression of the instance of loss cannot possibly be captured, or would be inappropriate to do so.
  2. As a classic form which, when applied creatively, opens up the possibility for wider experimental use in literature.

“Please stop now before you ruin our day” I hear you cry! Too late. Let me give unrequested examples of each.


Example One

MCGIMPY, Patrick. (Cork Road, Tipperary, formerly of Tipperary Road, Cork). September 19, 2020, screaming with resolute fury, surrounded by so-called friends whom he never truly cared for. Over-achieving brother to Patricia, Padraig, and Pablo. Disappointing son to Patricia snr. and Patrick snr. Imagined acquaintance to the author of this obituary. Removal from his own arse, September 20, 8pm.
~You Never Truly Lose Those Who Never Existed~

Example Two

MUG, Ceramic “I Hate Mondays” Garfield. Second cupboard from the left, formerly of the third cupboard from the right. September 19, 2020, tragically in a microwave induced hand slipping incident. Beloved of Christopher. Coveted by Johnny and Mike. Derided by Aisling and Katie. Removal to the Black Bin sometime tomorrow, if it stops raining.
~I Hate Saturdays Now Too~

There might be something entertaining in it. I’ll keep messing around with it if I get the chance before reaching my own, natural, conclusion…

Happy Halloween!

M I K E

Time Immomentum

Posted on by bikecyan

Despite being busier than I’ve ever been creatively, I recently realised that I haven’t had a completed piece of work staged in almost 3 years. It’s somewhat cathartic to admit that rather than ignore it as I have been, but I’m still worried. At what point do I stop being allowed to refer to myself as a theatre maker? When do they call to my house and cut my membership card in half with a scissors? After how many years of idling does my hardware automatically reboot and I restart as a wannabe Instagram personal trainer?

Maybe I’ll restart as somebody who can actually play the piano…

I haven’t had a completed piece of work staged, but that’s not to say I haven’t been working. I’ve probably never been more prolific to be honest. I’ve been writing, re-writing, and researching practically non-stop for as far back as I can recall. I’ve had several “work in progress” showings, but any “progress” implied by such a term at the time hasn’t necessarily gained momentum. Some might say my “work” has “progressed” to a shuddering halt. I’m not one of them, but I’d stand by their decision to take that tack.

Behind the scenes, I’ve been lucky enough to be supported in making my work for the past two years by Cork Midsummer Festival, The Everyman Theatre, and Corcadorca via their joint mentorship programme Tessellate (through which I received mentorship from the incredible Lorraine Maye, Julie Kelleher, and Conall O’Riain). I’ve also had training opportunities with the Abbey Theatre, and was even shortlisted for their emerging playwright programme “Abbey Works” last year. In the past few weeks alone I’ve spent time in The Everyman working on a new project having been selected for Mermaid Arts Centre’s “Gap Day” programme (thank you Arts Council).

So there is work ongoing. Too much work, really. I’m actually a bit of a workaholic when I actually break down my schedule. I never take a day off, I have multiple projects on the go at once, and they’re all brimming with potential. It’s just that, for the most part, these projects are all still being developed exclusively in my head. It was recently suggested to me that there might be an underlying mental health condition at play. I think that might have something to do with my current confusion and concern. Until the day I found out, I had assumed that everybody’s mind worked with the same chaotic, frenetic verve that mine did. It turns out that constantly thinking about forty different things isn’t normal. Who knew!

I’ve been feeling particularly useless lately, so I’ve decided to resurrect this blog in the hope that having some form of outlet for all the ideas clogging my brain will free up space for the ideas I can actually see to fruition. I don’t expect many people to read it, so please accept my apologies if you do stumble across it. It’s partly therapy, partly an attempt at organising my brain. If I put the ideas down here they can exist on their own without the need for my constant supervision or attention. Maybe once they’re out in the light of day I can spot ways to give them a second life. Or maybe I’ll just clear enough room in my head to start enjoying mine again.