I love all things celebrity.
I love podcasts.
You want to know what I am not loving? Celebrity podcasts.
It feels like in the last year or so celebrities have been infiltrating the podcast world more and more. Maybe it’s the pandemic and podcasting an easy way to connect with their fan base? Maybe it’s because they are seeing it as an easy revenue stream as their platform is already established? Whatever it is, they are now there in droves and it bugs me.
I am worried about the “little guys.” The independent creators who are sharing great knowledge and fantastic, real stories. These people are funny and smart and have things like day jobs, banal responsibilities like meal planning, picking up regular house clutter and dealing with childcare issues from time to time. They draw from these real life situations and experiences in their content.
Celebrities don’t and can’t do this. They have a team of people managing their day-to-day and another team of people helping them even just get their podcast up and running. Good podcasts are so much more than talking into a mic. There is hosting and graphics, show notes and calendars and so much to know in regards to editing, mixing and marketing. Even if an independent podcaster now has outsourced those things thanks to some extra revenue, it was something they had to learn and do when starting out. A celeb gets to completely bypass this.
I am even not a huge fan of the celebrity guest. There are exceptions, of course. But, it is clear when someone is making the rounds to drum up excitement for a new book or movie and not to actually share wisdom or a story. And, while there are some exceptions, most of the time celebrities all kind of say the same thing.
My proof? Listen to a few celebrity interviews. A celebrity almost always starts their story with some iteration of: “I was a weird kid.”
They say this with an inflection that implies that it was their “weirdness” as a child that led them to their future success.
And, when asked to explain their “weirdness” in childhood? It’s that they were playing any instrument they could get their hands on. Always reading a book. Loving old movies. Doing anything to get a laugh. They just loved being outside or never wore a normal outfit or was always cutting their hair. So weird. >>Insert eyeroll here.<<
This isn’t doing it for me because the more I watch my own kids, their cousins and friends, and even think about to when I was a kid, the more I’ve come to realize is that all kids are weird.
They make strange connections and laugh uncontrollably at their own jokes (that make zero sense…). They wear costumes on the regular and three patterns at once. They put ranch on everything and like it. They get hooked onto a cartoon or a toy or a character and go hard for months. They wear sandals in the winter and snow boots in the summer. They sleep well just about anywhere… but their bed. They can make an empty wrapping paper roll, a kitchen pot, or a hairbrush upwards of thirty different things each.
And, that is just my kids. I am sure yours are even weirder.
Maybe it was believing that the things they loved were weird and not caring about this that gave them a thicker skin for the circuit of auditions and rejections. But, that isn’t weirdness. That’s gumption. Resilience. And, audacity. Good things. Perhaps personality traits that are a little tough to muster for some people; but, not a weird kid make.
I have begun to wonder if what those celebrities meant was that someone let them be weird. Someone encouraged it and kept them weird and wild and curious and bold into adulthood.
I catch myself cringing every time I say, “Be good” to my kids. I say a lot of “Oh, we are getting a little too crazy…” and “Let’s not be so silly” and every time I do a little alarm rings inside my head.
I was a good kid. A very good kid. I listened, I got the grades, I followed the path. I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t rock the boat, I never got too big or too loud.
Being good kept me out of trouble; but, also gave me plenty of it, too.
It made me keep opinions to myself, so much so that I stopped having them. It made me not react when things or people hurt me. It’s made me not trust my thoughts or my own body and cause a fuss for anything from major medical concerns to just being a little chilly.
When I crossed the 24 hour mark in labor with Theo, I was four centimeters dilated. Four centimeters that were not even of my own doing, but rather that of the folly balloon, which is basically a device that manually dilates a woman’s cervix in hopes of jump starting labor. Despite exhausting contractions all day, I still was not anywhere close to pushing. I knew I needed to rest and so I finally agreed to an epidural.
The drugs hit and I felt relief that gave way to a few good hours of sleep. When I woke up, the doctor checked my cervix and I had dilated to a seven.
At first, I felt great. A seven, I celebrated. That is so close!
And, then my mind started thinking.
What if all along it had been a “me” thing? A mental block? What if I had been trained to suppress my natural state of being in not allowing myself to get too wild or strange? What if my body was wound so tight it couldn’t do the most primal of things? Like how it took cocktails to finally get me to dance or to sing, it took drugs for my insides to open up.
As a kid, I loved to dance and sing.
But, then I started to have outside influences: Concerns about my size as a dancer or lack of talent as a singer. “Be quiet’s” and “Be careful’s. “Not inside” and “settle down’s.” Things that are seemingly innocent and perhaps even things that keep us safe, at least for a moment. But, do they add up?
A good, respectful kid is so great and important. I want them to be safe, kind and to listen. But, one of the biggest things I wrestle with as they are coming into their own little person is how to help them be– for lack of a better word– good while maintaining their wild, weirdness.
It’s all over t-shirts: Raise Good Humans.
I like the idea of it, but like so much in parenthood it’s precarious, this “good” thing.
So my brain swims with thoughts. How do I keep their natural spirit without crushing it within this responsibility of raising good humans? How to I fuel wildness, but also demand order and civility in and out of my home? How do I let them be themselves and encourage it as they grow in the face of a world that will tell them to be what it wants instead?
These are questions I have in real time and I don’t have the answers. I can do my best to change what I can, but I know enough to know that the world do a number on them. Without even meaning to, the beliefs and systems we have in place will strip some of their weirdness away. They will learn to second guess and question themselves because they will be told they are wrong or just a little “too much.”
These are systems that raised me, too. So, I have work to do as well and there are things I need to change. Without meaning to, I will also do a number on my kids. It’s the reality of living in humanity.
I am humble enough to know that I will get a lot of this wrong. But, willing to try my best to not only raise them “good,” but also do all I can at keeping them weird. Always welcoming curiosity, pain and silliness and exactly who they are.
In my efforts to learn about art and my new iPad as well as in the work I am doing to celebrate my kids weirdness, I created “dream prints” for both of them. I love asking them each morning what they dreamed about. I want to hear the stories that their sleepy subconscious creates and about the things that greet them in their sleep.
These are pieces that will never be in a museum. I still have so much to learn about art. But, they are a snapshot of who my kids are right now and that is special to me. The dreams of Pokemon chasing and ballerina dancing won’t last forever. They will give way to dreams that are more practical, less chaotic and not so magical; but because of these prints, we all will have the reminder of now and I hope that inspires them to keep dreaming no matter how big or weird.
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