The State Of Things
March madness and messy truths
Hi! It’s me, Catherine Fortey - an illustrator and artist, turning voices and stories into pictures. You’re reading a free post from “The Quiet Blackbird”, where I talk about my illustration journey into children’s publishing, but often get sidetracked by the million other things my brain wants to share.
Hello Coal Tits,
I’ve been avoiding writing this newsletter - can you tell?
March was a mad month, and now we’re here at the end of April and I’m not quite sure how I arrived. I feel like I got sucked under a waterfall, and 7 weeks later I’ve found myself spluttering, but alive, on a river bank. I’ve always been scared of waterfalls and weirs, ever since learning about the recirculating hydraulic that keeps you trapped at the bottom. To be fair, I’m not a fan of being in water at all.
It all began with me asking for help.
The organisation, despite waving the flag of accessibility, said no. No support. No adjustments. No leeway. So I shut up, and waded on.
I asked for help again.
The GP sent me this form, and that form, and a link to the wrong thing, then a link to the right thing that still didn’t help, and it made me confused, so I shut up, and swam on.
And good things were happening, and I was happy but also scared that it was another thing I now had to keep hold of, when everything was being pulled from my fingers.
And my children needed me.
And the thing I’d started in November, that thing that seemed so far away, was now here. That work thing that had become a me-from-25-years-ago thing, that had opened me up again, that had showed me what a truly accessibly space is. That was here. And it was amazing, and beautiful, and I did it, and I found a part of me that I had been missing for so long. It became political. And it left me unfinished.
I did the work I had no leeway for. I smiled through the meeting I wasn’t allowed to miss. I watched my daughter sing to the boy pretending to be dead.
And I missed my children before I even left.
For 12 days I was 874 miles away.
And every day I swam.
The State of Things
I’ve realised that I’m really shit at multi-tasking. I thought I was really good at it, but actually I’ve just been trying really fucking hard.
When I play computer games I start to panic when side quests come in, or when you have unlimited choices about which path to take next. And I hate the quests where you have to go back and forth, and you can’t just complete things in a nice, logical and succinct order. So, I like to play computer games with the walkthrough. I play the game, and complete the quests in the most efficient and linear way possible, no surprises, nothing missed.
I can do one thing at a time, and I can do it well. I can do it really fucking well. I am the queen of blinkered-focus, I see the details, and I pre-empt the problems, and I have such an incredibly high standard of myself, that I sometimes forget not everyone else has the same for themselves. But there’s very few places where I can excel at this. Because life is a multi-task, parenthood is a multi-task, and self-employment is most definitely a multi-task.
So if any of you out there have found a way to manage being freelance with a brain that wants to do things one at a time (to completion), please send me your wisdom.
Time for treasures or in a rather ranty month - things I will never not talk about:
How difficult it is to grow up a girl in the world - I’ve been banging on about it since my degree dissertation, and I’ll bang on about it until things are better, which will most likely be way past my lifetime - Silencing Of the Girls
And Sad Girls, Mad Girls and Bad Girls - Is Taylor Swift A Poet?
And since working with Viv in March, the reality of being a CSA survivor (especially now everyone’s watched Baby Reindeer and still can’t understand why he makes the choices he does) - Alive
And poverty and intentional inequality - Before Our Eyes
And prejudice and discrimination - Assume That I Can
And how in it’s own messy way, Bradford rocks - BFD by Kirsty Taylor
And if you stuck around to the end, then you’re definitely one of my people - I’m so happy that you’re here.
Love,
P.S. If you’re wondering when I got so sweary - well the swears have always been there I just hide them well; but March used up all my shits, so here we are.
Hey Cat! Sending much sympathy! I feel you. I am a single tasker too! I try and break things into big chunks, as much as I can, as I know I can’t shift too much. Especially not in one day. When I did my first two books, I had to work on them at the same time, and so (with agreement from the publishers) I worked on one per week (or occasionally I would work in even bigger chunks, sometimes two or three weeks). And when I was teaching in Nov and trying to paint a book at the same time, I just had to ask to stop the book for a bit and move it into a shorter amount of time than I ideally wanted. But I knew that would work better for me. It helps that I know I am a sprinter, so I know I work quite fast when I am in hyper-focus mode, so I do have faith I will get it done. Sending good creative and peaceful vibes your way! X
I once went on a training course and the trainer said that we aren’t supposed to multitask, no one is genuinely good at it (although I think some people manage it better than others), it’s just that it’s a kind of necessity in modern life sadly, along with lots of other things we aren’t really made for. So swear away about it. And boo to organisations claiming to be accessible and then not putting it into practice, pet hate of mine.