79. Meet strangeness with kindness - Kestral Gaian on the role of representation, community and politics in fiction

"It's really about what happens when kindness is the first response to strangeness." — Kestral Gaian

What does it take to stay human in a world that often forgets what that means? This episode explores storytelling as an act of resistance: why humans need fiction, why representation matters, and how meeting difference with curiosity rather than judgement can ease the loneliness of modern life.

Our guest is Kestral Gaian, an award-winning writer of fiction, theatre and poetry, whose debut young adult novel "The Boy From Elsewhere" is out now.

In this conversation we cover:

• The origins of "The Boy From Elsewhere", born from a 26-hour charity writing livestream, and what tiredness taught Kestral about creativity and craft
• Why storytelling is fundamental to being human, and how representation shapes what young readers believe is possible
• Whether all art is political, the recent publishing pushback against LGBTQ+ fiction, and meeting strangeness with kindness

Links:

• The Boy From Elsewhere: https://reconnectingrainbows.co.uk/book/tbfe/
• Kestral Gaian's website: https://kestr.al
• Support Humanism Now: https://ko-fi.com/humanismnowpod

Transcript

Meet Kestral Gaian

James Hodgson 0:52

Welcome to Humanism Now, a podcast about secular ethics, curiosity, and compassion. I'm your host, James Hodgson. Humanism asks us to find meaning, dignity, and connection. Humanism asks us to find meaning, dignity, and connection through the stories we tell ourselves and each other. And few people have thought more seriously about the power of storytelling than my guest today. Kestrel Guyan is a writer of fiction, theatre, and poetry whose work asks us what it means to stay human in a system that seems to have forgotten what that means. His latest work is his first young adult novel, The Boy from Elsewhere, which is out now. Kestrel Guyan, welcome to Humanism Now. Thanks very much. It's great to be here. So tell us

Origins of The Boy From Elsewhere

James Hodgson 1:29

about The Boy from Elsewhere. Why start this new series in young adult fiction and what inspired this book in particular?

Kestral Gaian 1:36

Well, the inspiration for this book actually came from a number of places. There are lots of little bits of inspiration throughout this book. But actually, just about three weeks into the first lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, I uh was looking at ways to raise money for charities that I was supporting at the time. Lots of people were going online and doing sort of live streams of video games and things like that. And I'm not really good at things like video games. But what I did love doing was writing. I did a 26-hour non-stop writing live stream for charity where I had a webcam pointed at my keyboard and one at my face, and my writing software was the thing I was streaming, and I essentially set out to see how much I could write in 26 hours, and I ended up writing 26,000 words in 26 hours. Most of it was quite unhinged and really readable. The people who were on the live stream had a good time seeing the story evolve, but it wasn't exactly fiction that you can engage with afterwards. But that formed the seed of the idea for this story. Many of the characters, many of the plot points saw their birth sort of during that that live stream. But really, the the main inspiration for the book and the inspiration for telling that particular story on the live stream was just this feeling of otherness that I'd sat with for a lot of my life, but during the the start of lockdown, that was uh a conversation I was frequently having with people was suddenly I am my own company and I and I'm feeling other, I'm feeling different, I'm feeling strange, I'm I'm suddenly forced to stop and look at how I exist in this world and how I relate to it. And that idea of how do you make space in a world where you feel like you're different, where you feel like you're other, or where you feel like you're from someplace else, from some other planet, how do you sort of marry that with needing to exist in the world as it is today? And I built the story around those themes, around sort of how do you feel like you belong? How do you find your tribe? How do you create this kind of found family around you? And while it's taken shape as a kind of sci-fi fantasy, slightly genre-bending story, it's really about what happens when kindness is the first response to strangeness and how people coming together can solve so many of the issues of what of loneliness that is one of the biggest kind of plagues of modern society, I think. How do we come together and feel a bit less alone?

James Hodgson 4:17

I'm curious

Writing 26,000 words in 26 hours

James Hodgson 4:17

to know what did you discover about writing across that 26-hour period? Did you find there was a certain length of time before you hit flow? And then how you said obviously a lot of it wasn't usable. Did you did you learn a lot about the effect of tiredness and uh on creativity in either way, I guess? But were you able to be more creative through that lack of sleep or or did it actually negatively impact it?

Kestral Gaian 4:39

I think I think there were stages. I think I definitely learned that the water and fruit are better for you than energy drinks and chocolates. Certainly, it was such an interesting experience because it wasn't just me attempting to sit on my own and write for 26 hours. I I almost kind of had this this audience. It was like I was sat in a in a glass-fronted shop writing and talking about what I was writing, and people could look over my shoulder, and it was a very communal experience, and I think that that kept me going a lot, particularly at moments where I was feeling quite tired. I do think there's something about finding a flow. Once I got into it, it took me a good sort of hour to get over the fact that I was doing this in public. It took me a while to realize that I always write in public, and actually, this was no different. I like to sit in coffee shops and cafes and things to write. Rarely do I write at home on my own. And that that was not dissimilar to that. So after about an hour, I really kind of got into a flow. But there was something very collaborative about every now and then I would write a few paragraphs and I'd take a break and I'd look at you know what the chat was saying and things like that. And I don't I don't have that in my day-to-day life. I'm not a TikToker or anything like that. But this idea that you can get into a sort of state where you are existing in a space, you're kind of doing your thing, you're in a bubble, but that bubble could be anywhere. You know, I could be sat in a cafe, I could be on a live stream, and you know, I could be on the beach, and here I am just sort of writing and existing and not making a secret out of the fact that I'm writing seems to give me a lot of energy. And the ability to observe life around me as I'm writing is is a core part of what gives me that energy. So whether that was in a in a chat on a live stream, or whether that's me looking up and just seeing who else is in the cafe and what's going on and what arguments the staff having behind the counter, that all feeds into the creative energy that that I have and that I get. I think as the that particular live stream went on, tiredness certainly played a role, and a lot of the more nonsensical parts of the story that that I'd written on that live stream came about for the fact that when I'm tired, I I'm still quite creative, but I lose a kind of sense of continuity that is really important when you're writing a long-form fiction story. I think that is probably really great for writing short poems, but I was attempting to write a cohesive story, and suddenly character names were changing every five seconds, and you know, they would jump locations or I'd forget something that I'd said three chapters ago. And that I mean, writing a novel, you read you really need to be sharp. Yeah, I've got a for the this series of books that I'm writing at the moment, I have a uh a kind of serious Bible that is as thick as one of the books. Keeping that continuity in mind is really important, and for me that's the first thing that goes when I'm tired. That's not just a live stream thing. If I start to feel a little bit tired when I'm writing, if I don't stop, I know I'm gonna give myself a much harder editorial job later.

James Hodgson 7:37

I think there's a definitely a lesson in that, whatever line of work you're in as well, to actually take that time to properly rest before engaging again.

Creativity as a public practice

James Hodgson 7:44

And it's interesting that that you you view writing as a almost a community activity, that you like to do it in public, that you're there engaging with people, not just in terms of they engage with the work later, but during that creative process as well. Do you see that part of creativity, the writing itself, as a community activity in the same way that you were saying, you know, we need more community in society? For me personally, yes.

Kestral Gaian 8:08

And I think this will differ depending on on different writers. I'm sure lots of writers have their hideaways where they will go and sit and write. But for me, so much of what I write is so character-driven, it's so narrative-driven, and a almost to a point of obsession like to include as real and as messy and as as kind of grounded characters in the things that I write as possible. And so I base a lot of interactions on just what I observe in the world. I so I I'm autistic, and I I do wonder sometimes if a part of that is that sometimes I struggle to imagine what a social interaction between two characters would be like. And so actually being out in the world and seeing all of that around me gives me a more authentic base to be able to create those characters and write them. But whether it's it's autism or just uh writing preference, I suppose, is is six of one and half a dozen of the other. I just love seeing the ways that people deal with the world around them and including little bits of that in the in the story. So there's no there's no kind of one-for-one, oh, this person walked into a coffee shop I was sat in, and I've based an entire character solely on that. But there are quite a lot of elements of here's how this person was looking, and and they said something, and then I really observed how they were carrying those words with them afterwards, and that kind of became uh a trait of a character in a particular chapter. And I think if you're writing stories that involve a lot of human interaction, then just being out there and seeing human interaction, I think, is is so valuable and helps me to really make my characters feel like they're they're more sort of living and breathing in and of themselves. What

Why humans need stories

Kestral Gaian 9:51

do you see as the purpose of storytelling and fiction writing? Humans have been storytelling for thousands and thousands of years. And storytelling is one of the fundamental definitions of humanity. It's one of the things that when you look at evolution has set us apart from previous versions of mammals and things that came before us. Humans have this ability to be able to have social memory and social conscience through telling stories. And some of those are fictional stories, some of those are real events that are passed down, and some morph from one thing to the other, and vice versa. So much of history is just storytelling through different lenses. I mean, people often say history is written by the winners. Well, really, that's just a way of saying the the survivors tell the stories, and those stories then progress through time, and and each time they're told have a different intonation, a different bias, a different set of words used, and that that evolves over time. So I think storytelling is is fundamental to the human experience, and and absorbing stories is fundamental to how we learn and grow. Some of the most interesting people I know are the ones that didn't stop consuming fiction when they stopped being children, and some of the least interesting people I know are the ones that haven't read a fiction book since they were 14. And I think that's a a really robust way of saying that in order for us to evolve as a species, to really reckon with and reason with the world around us, we need this ability to tell stories to make sense of the world. Certainly for me, writing is a way of trying to make sense of the world. And I write lots of different things. You said I write a lot of poetry. To me, poetry is a way of making sense of little bits of the world. So I'll I'll see something and I'll try and make sense of that and I'll fathom it out in a poem. And then fiction writing is really about how do we build a world that we want to live in? You know, how do we imagine the world as it could be? How do we imagine the way that that certain situations would go and we would deal with it? And how do we how do we show that there is a collective understanding so that people feel less alone and people feel less lonely in the world? I think storytelling is is a bit of an act of resistance in that respect. It's not, you know, shouty, kind of protesty resistance, although it can be sometimes, but it insists on humanity. Like we have this ability to make people feel seen, even if you don't necessarily know that that person exists in the first place. So a story like this one, where it's all about trying to find your place in a world that that sometimes doesn't make sense, well, that can have so many different meanings to so many different people. And as someone who grew up not necessarily feeling seen in the media or the stories that I was consuming, the idea that telling a story can help someone feel less alone, feel more included, feel seen, feel like they're not quite so different after all, is really

Importance of representation in fiction

Kestral Gaian 12:58

powerful.

James Hodgson 12:59

And you've spoken previously, I know, about growing up queer on a council estate and not having that representation in in books, television, and movies, and hopefully you're creating that for others now. Does that drive the characters that you create and the stories that you want to tell? Is it is that a fundamental driver, this idea of representation and, as you say, resistance?

Kestral Gaian 13:21

I think it's one of the biggest drivers for me personally, yes. It's it's certainly not the only thing that I think about when I'm writing, and I I like to tell good stories. I'm a massive nerd, I'm a huge I've grew up on sci-fi, so I love the almost stuff like there are lots of different types of sci-fi. I love the kind of the Star Trek view of, oh, maybe we could make a perfect world. Maybe humanity can evolve and get past a war and hunger. So I love all of that stuff. But I certainly remember growing up, it's it's difficult to describe remembering an absence, but um not seeing people like me, that kind of quietly shapes what you think is possible. If you don't see people like you in positions of power or represented in stories or as the the protagonist rather than the antagonist, and certainly growing up in the the 80s and the 90s, seeing other queer people represented in the media in negative terms, not just neutrality, but negativity, uh has a huge impact on what you think you can be and what you think you can do. And so a lot of the stories that I tell, they do have an element of wanting to kind of give my younger self something that it didn't have, and trying to really just expand the world so that the next generation doesn't grow up assuming they're an anomaly. Like you don't want a world where people feel like they're somehow less just because of who they are and because of something they they can't help and something that that is a part of themselves and their identity. And increasingly, I think it was really easy 20 years ago to assume that we were on a forward trajectory and that things were getting better, particularly with LTBTQ plus rights. You know, that it was slow going, but all we could see were were wins, were gains, were improvements. And I think that the last 20 years have shown us that actually wins are sometimes temporary and that two steps forward doesn't always mean that there's then another two steps forward. We could take a step back. And throughout all of that, we need to maintain this sense of self, this sense of identity, this need as a community to look after ourselves and make sure that people know they're not alone and that they are okay. And it's very easy to, you know, go hang out in a big city and think, well, you know, there's there's enough visibility, there's enough representation here that we can weather this storm. But it wasn't that long ago that I think back to the kid on the council estate that I was growing up in the small town, you know, without that kind of visible community around me. And as much as yes, the internet exists now and it didn't when I was growing up, but we still find ourselves that, you know, the internet is both a wonderful place and a terrible place, and we need to keep putting positive representations of people out into the world in order to have those continue to exist.

James Hodgson 16:10

You've

Is all art political?

James Hodgson 16:10

mentioned a few examples there, but there is that strong tradition of humanist thought in a lot of speculative fiction, especially when we talk about trying to represent a world that we would like to see in the future. Do you think that all heart is inherently political and should be making those statements? And do you as an artist think there is a responsibility on you as the creator to make political statements?

Kestral Gaian 16:33

I think there is not a more radioactive word in the English language than political, whether you spell it with a with a big P or with a little P. And I think it's very, very easy to use the phrase or to ask the question, is art political? And it could mean a maelstrom of different things to different people. And I think ultimately to answer that question, we have to look at what what do we really mean by political here? Do we mean does art have an impact on the fabric of society and of culture? Absolutely. I think all art does. All art has an impact on someone somewhere. And there is an argument to be made that if a piece of art moves one person or helps one person change their view or mind about something, then inherently it is political by some definitions of the word political. It's also true that there are many hot button topics in the world right now that are quote unquote political with a big P and with a little P, and a lot of art speaks to that and a lot of art doesn't, and there's a big debate of whether art should stay out of politics and that kind of thing. I would encourage anyone, when even starting to think about this question, to look at history and the inspiration that art can provide. I think all art, personally, this is obviously a personal opinion, all art has the potential to be political because art inspires people into action and art inspires people into thought. People are political. And I don't think that's an unfair statement because even if someone is sat there thinking, well, I'm not very political, that is a choice. And making that choice is a political choice inherently because you are through the systems of the society we exist in in a position where you are able to make that choice to not actively be political at that point in time. There are some people for whom not having an interest in politics, not existing in a political way, is not an option. Marginalized groups all the time will often say, I'm exhausted. I wish my life wasn't political. But it is. Art isn't inherently political. Some art is designed to give a very specific message. Some art is political, art isn't inherently political, but all art has the ability to inspire people to be political. And I think that that's one of the things that is so brilliant about art. People can read a book and take away six different meanings from it, and a hundred people can read the same book and take away a hundred different readings of that text. And you know, in in school, when you study poetry for GCSE English, for example, and you're taught about kind of specific interpretations of poetry. Whereas actually the the reality is if someone reads a poem and someone else reads a poem, they could take completely different sets of thoughts and feelings and emotions away from that. And I think art has the potential to inspire people in a plethora of different ways. I think some of the most abhorrent political leaders of the 20th century were deeply moved by poetry and art in the same way that some of the people that we would laud as saints have been as well. So I think, yes, all art is inherently able to inspire political thoughts and great change and fundamental philosophy within people, but I don't necessarily think that all art is is by its nature political in and of itself. Some authors, some artists, some creators will choose to make a conscious choice to include something that is perhaps at that moment in time controversial. Harry Shelley did that with Frankenstein. Many authors have done that. You look at uh 1984, and it's a story, a really great, fantastically written fiction story, but is also a political commentary of the time. And and each different generation that reads that book will take something different away from that political messaging based on what they're seeing, what they're experiencing in the world of the time. A reader, a person, will always, always look at a piece of art through the lens of their own life choices, experiences, beliefs, and values. And I've seen this with my book as well. Early reviews came in uh sort of within the first couple of weeks of launch, and I was reading through as they always say don't read the comments, but everyone I know that that writes reads the reviews. And it's uh it really resonated. Like some characters really resonated on one level with some people, and then others just didn't get that character and why they were behaving in the way they were behaving. And that's really interesting to me because obviously some people interpreted things in one way, some people in another, and it's all because they're looking at it through the lens of their own life choices, experiences, and and values and and beliefs and views. And uh a lot of my characters are unapologetically part of the LGBTQ plus community. They talk about their experiences in what I hope are authentic ways, and that as well as helping to make people feel seen who might not necessarily see themselves reflected in books, will provoke a reaction in people who are not part of that community that read it, whether that's empathy, or whether that's outrage, whether that's something that feels political to people, well, that entirely depends on on them.

James Hodgson 21:44

You you've spoken and explained very well the importance of having representation of for people who belong to a community. Do you

Reading wider and publishing pushback

James Hodgson 21:49

think it's important as well that, again, it's on us as consumers of different media to try to broaden the range of books that we that we read, the the the range of stories that we're hearing? And I guess it then then comes down to those who are, you know, whether it's publishers, TV stations, producers, to make sure that different stories are being told as well. Where do you think the emphasis lies to make sure that it's not just a case of, as you say, getting stories that represent ourselves, but also getting a broader range of stories that we're receiving?

Kestral Gaian 22:16

Well, there are there are a couple of different questions there, and I think I'll separate the the kind of individual out from the the sort of publisher and marketing level one. So I think individually what you're saying is should humans broaden their horizons through through what they read, what they watch, what they and yes, absolutely. I think one of the greatest joys of humanity, one of the greatest things about being human is that we have this inane ability to expand our horizons, to broaden our worldview, to learn. I mean, the the ability to learn, it's just so beautiful. And such a fundamentally wonderful thing about being human. And I think that everyone should do everything they can to embrace a huge variety of different genres, of different types of things, of different works. It it often bugs me if people say, Well, I don't like this. And that's that's an okay reaction to have it as long as someone has given it a given a go, has tried it. You know, someone says, Oh, I don't like opera, and that's okay if you've been to an opera, if you've tried to engage in that. In the same way that someone says, Oh, uh, you know, I don't like fantasy, or I don't like sci-fi, or I don't like detective stories, or things like that, it's always worth giving those things a try and seeing. And I also think that then that becomes especially important for, you know, views that are not necessarily ones you already hold. So if you want to try and understand the mindset of someone who appears completely different from you, try reading a book that they've read or engaging with the story that they've engaged with. If you don't know a lot about what it's like to be a person of colour, then read a book by a person of colour or about being a person of colour. Similarly with the LGBTQ community. I think it's so important that we absorb stories that are not from our own perspective because that helps us learn and grow. And I think you know, each individual has a responsibility for their own growth and development. And, you know, I absolutely think that's something that's worth exploring because I think it's one of the fundamental joys of humanity is this ability we have to learn and grow and better ourselves. And that really feels like uh the joy of life to me. Now, when it comes to publishers and the responsibility of getting stories out there in the world, I think the the footnote I have to add is we exist in a system of of capitalism, and for better or for worse, however well or badly that has served each person listening as individuals, that obviously has a bearing on anything that is a business. And publishing is an industry, it is it is the publishing industry. A lot of publishers will only publish stories that they think will sell, and a lot of that is based on current climate and mood. I have had a a number of bookshops that have said that a year ago they'd have been delighted to have an event for my book, but in the current climate, they don't want to be highlighting LGBTQ fiction. And a lot of publishers have that attitude, thankfully not mine, but a lot of publishers have that attitude as well. Have some publishers openly come out and said that now? Uh well certainly in responses to people submitting work. It's been a little more subtle than putting on their website we don't accept LGBTQ plus stories. But authors are starting to see pushback and feedback from publishers of could you make this character straight? Could you make this character cisgender and not trans? Maybe you could change the romance in this to not feature a queer couple. Or I'm sorry, we're not accepting books of this particular type right now. Rejection rates for LGBTQ plus fiction have have gone up significantly in the last year. So it's very interesting to see that trend in publishing houses. And I think with publishing, it's often not massively subtle, but more subtle than putting a statement on their website in the what you see there. And it's all driven by market forces. And so while I think you know storytelling is really important, it it's also really important to remember that that doesn't mean that you have to get a book published to tell a story, and that there are non-traditional ways of telling stories, and we should make sure that um, you know, that we pay attention to blogs and that we look at uh you know people who go and and do talks and events and and poetry recitals and things where you the barrier to entry isn't necessarily one of the big five have have said yes to your story and put it out there in the world.

James Hodgson 26:45

And that's it, and I think it only takes with one big hit or with enough market trends, as you say, that suddenly that trend can go in the opposite direction again, and we as consumers can help to drive that. I mean, I've never really understood this idea of if something isn't for one person, why it shouldn't be, you know, it shouldn't be for someone else. But that very much seems to be the prevailing message now is that we need to have quite sort of almost homogeneity across what's available to people. It is strange, as you said, you know, 20 years ago it felt as though we were on the right path, even 10 years ago, we were on the right track towards broadening those horizons. And that meant that more stories could be told, or stories could be told from different perspectives in ways that are reimagined. And that means that there is so much more to experience. So it's it's it's an unusual state for humanity to want to narrow the scope of what's possible.

Kestral Gaian 27:32

We do seem to be in a particular time of intellectual contraction at the moment, which I think is is aided by a a number of things. I think, you know, economically when things are not doing as well, people tend to become a bit myopic and and focus inwards a little. I think that the political climate, politics with a big P is playing a role in that as well. I think globally that we're in a time of slightly more unrest around the world. And I think there are a number of tools out there that take away some of our ability to think critically and and reason and logic and make things feel a bit more homogenous. And I think all of that has combined into an interesting moment where it does feel that we are facing a bit of intellectual contraction as a species, one I hope that is quite short-lived.

James Hodgson 28:19

I'm confident that it will be, and we have to be part of that resistance, as you have

Meeting strangeness with kindness

James Hodgson 28:22

said. I want to return to a couple of points that you mentioned before we wrap up. You said early on you wanted to approach a story about how we can treat strangeness with kindness. And I wonder if we could just explore that phrase a little bit. When you talk about strangeness, could you explain what that means to you? And then how can we approach with kindness?

Kestral Gaian 28:41

I think strangeness is a really interesting word because it essentially boils down to things we don't understand or things we haven't yet experienced ourselves. And this has echoed through fiction and through non-fiction for years, when the British Empire was out being forged and all of these new civilizations were being discovered, and there many historians wrote about people's strange little habits when really they were just um just people being themselves and being different in a different culture, in a different way, in a different land. That language has persevered through the last few hundred years, the idea that in Star Trek people would go out and seek strange new worlds. Well, they're only strange because they're different. They're only strange because you haven't yet encountered them. And strange really says more about the baseline than it does about the thing in question. And I I think that's why I love the word, because it kind of subverts the challenges, the expectation. We will all encounter strange things in our lifetime, and by that I mean stuff we have not experienced before. Stuff that is perfectly normal to someone else but is not to us. And that could be anything from that age-old debate where two people get together and one realizes that their family has always showered at night before going to bed, and the other realizes they've always showered in the morning. You just think, well, that's strange. Right through to I'd spent some time in Japan recently, and it's so wonderful to be in a country where there are so many different cultural rituals that have come from thousands of years of different cultural pathtaking, and thinking about how strange those things seemed to me at first through my lens from my baseline. And I think strange is is good and different is good, but how we react to that is important. How re we react to things that are different than what we expect is really what defines us and what breeds so much either love or or hate into the situations that that we're in. Um so meeting strangeness with kindness I think is a really powerful thing to try and do. I I wrote that into the story, and particularly the the character of David in in this book, who encounters just absolute strangeness and decides, makes a conscious choice to meet that with kindness, to say yes, to want to help and support, and to try to understand rather than judge. That that is an aspirational character for me, and I and I think for so many people to try and aspire to this idea that we will all encounter things in our lives that we aren't expecting and that are we completely weird to us and really strange and that we struggle to get our head around. And rather than going, oh, that's weird, well weirdo, I don't like that, rather than deriding that change or or drawing attention to it, just meeting it with kindness and saying, Okay, this is this is different. I want to learn about this, I want to support this, I want to see where it goes. That I think is is a really wonderful mindset to have, and one that that I hope I can aspire to be like this this character that I that I've written to do that.

James Hodgson 31:53

Before we go, our standard closing question what's something which you've changed your

Changing minds on worth and work

James Hodgson 31:56

mind on and what inspired that change?

Kestral Gaian 31:58

So I grew up thinking that my self-worth was completely abjectly tied to my productivity. And that has led or that led in in my younger years to a very definite idea of what success looked like. Success meant earning the most amount of money, it meant working the most amount of hours, it meant getting the most amount of promotions, it meant going up an arbitrary scale or an arbitrary ladder. And I have completely changed my mind on that in the last few years. I used to equate success and stability and career progression as one thing. All of that external validation was really, really an important measure in my life of success. Whereas now I measure success by alignment with my values, even if it costs a bit of comfort or a bit of money, or I don't earn as much, or I don't have a swanky job title. I think fundamentally a shift from external factors defining how I measure success to internal ones. And this idea that actually my own sense of fulfillment, happiness, and and alignment with the values that I hold is is far more important. And I think the the catalyst for that was was stepping away from a career in in technology. I worked in in high tech for uh nearly 20 years, and uh I've chosen a more creative life over that comfort and certainty and and kind of very clearly defined and rigid way of working because I think I fundamentally realized I had to make a choice between the two. And I realized that tying my productivity to my self-worth just meant that I wasn't in control of that. I wasn't in any kind of control of of how I felt. It was all other people that were making the decisions about whether I was happy, whether I was sad, whether I felt successful. And ultimately, to use a hackneyed phrase, I took that control, but very much of my own mind and my own life and the way that I define success for me. And that was a huge, huge mind shift change for me, but one that's ultimately left me calmer and happier and significantly more creatively fulfilled, I think.

James Hodgson 34:12

Wonderful. Kestrel Guy and thank you so much once again for joining us. The new book,

Final thoughts and how to support

James Hodgson 34:16

The Boy From Elsewhere, is out now. Kestrel, thank you for joining us on Humanism Now. Thanks so much. It's been a pleasure. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review, and why not share it with a friend? It helps more people find us. If you'd like to join our community at KoFi forward slash humanism now pod, we have a growing member community there with many benefits. Thank you for listening to Humanism Now.