I've looked at clouds from both sides now

Relevant To Your Interests #10

Happy Friday, A-Mailers! 

Today, I’ve got a fresh instalment of Relevant to Your Interests. Consider it the OG version of my newsletter, where I spill the tea on what’s been going on in my life, share links to stuff I’ve written and offer up some unsolicited, counterproductive life advice.

This issue is all about my fear of flying because this week I went on hols to Bucharest and that meant I had to take a plane. (What a fascinating insight into how editorial decisions are made here at A-Mail, eh!)

And if you want a hot take on why the season finale of The Traitors UK was a dystopian theatrical masterpiece – read til the end!

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👀 A lil life update

Here’s what I’ve been up to recently and what’s on the horizon:

• I launched the Substack Income Transparency Project, to find out how much writers actually make from their newsletters on the platform. (More info here). If you have a newsletter on Substack, please fill it in and then share it widely with other writers, too. Thank you!

• I’m speaking at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia in April on a panel about freelancing and AI. Tickets to the ‘European Glasto for journalists’ are free and it’s happening in Italy in spring – need I say more?!

• I adopted a dog! Bella is a 13-year-old Staffie. She came into my life after my friend Harriet Minter reposted her heartbreaking story on Instagram. The police found her after her owner had sadly passed away and Bella was believed to have been lying next to them for a week. Needless to say, her little world has been turned upside down. Settling her in and getting her used to us and our other dog, Jack, has been taking up most of my life outside of work. She’s a total babe. Here’s a pic of her <3.

Bella <3

💌 A-Mail Inbox Zero

• I published my latest Income Report exclusively for my A-Mail Pros. These reports are a detailed look at exactly how much money I make in a three-month period and I include EVERYTHING: all my income streams, total revenue, costs and profit from that quarter. What I hear from readers is that it’s my ‘financial feelings analysis’ that they find most helpful.

• My pro-January manifesto received the best comment I’ve ever had on a post, courtesy of Zan Tafakari: “I dunno, I still fucking hate January but that did not stop me from enjoying this post”.

• This piece I wrote last year about how my art teacher cut up my final project has also resurfaced and is getting comments from people who experienced similar things at the hands of grumpy teachers.

• And most recently, I wrote about how a notebook decluttering project in my study spiralled into a contemplation of my artistic legacy. Just girlie things!

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✈️ Counterproductive advice for coping on a plane

When I fly, I don’t pray exactly but I do make promises to myself about how I’m going to be a better person upon landing. I find the vastness of the sky liberating and claustrophobic at the same time. I can’t quite compute the rush of conflicting feelings when I’m up there so my body just lands on the comfort of the familiar: debilitating anxiety.

Here are some personal tips I have for my fellow nervous fliers.

A good travel companion

Like with most anxieties, when I fly I want to be left alone and kept company at the same time. This week, I was flying with my BFF Tiffany Philippou who left me to stare out the window when I needed solitude and then entertained me when I demanded she distract me. Only the truest of friends will let you sit by the window while they suffer the middle seat ON BOTH LEGS OF THE JOURNEY.

Be weird

When I was circa 10 years old, I flew to America with my parents and I watched Spice World: The Movie back-to-back eight times. They thought I was just a girl band-obsessed tween (I was) but what I was actually doing was comfort-watching TV before I – or the internet – had a term for it.

In an NYT essay, Meher Ahmad wrote about watching movies on planes to conceal tears. Her theory is that in-flight crying is so common because of “a simple confluence of altitude, loneliness and the heightened emotions that accompany the humiliating experience that is modern air travel.” Ahmad’s antidote is a bad film. She writes:

I had little interest in watching “Lion” in theaters or at home, but I knew it would give me the opportunity to freely weep at someone else’s anxieties instead of my own. Above all, it gave me an excuse to cry when there seemed to be a reason to, a semblance of control.

By the time the plane begins its descent, I’m blotchy-eyed but emotionally sound; I’m still riding the high of postcrying calmness while standing in the airport taxi line. The rhythm to the ritual is comforting enough that I don’t even need to discreetly nibble off-brand Xanax in my seat; it has replaced my new-age meditation completely.

In other words, flying is weird so why not deal with it by just being weird?

Similarly, I was talking to someone recently who’s also afraid of flying and he told me that he makes a point of frequently going to the loo on planes. He said that there’s something almost ridiculous in the mundanity of going to the bathroom that helps quash his fear.

Now, there’s a fine line between magical thinking (eg superstitions about the seatbelt sign going on or off) and odd but ultimately harmless coping strategies. I reckon that embracing the strange is perfectly acceptable in the realm of air travel, where the line between logic and comfort often blurs.

Soundtrack your flights

When overwhelmed by the turbulence of emotions during a flight, I listen to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album. I find solace in the familiarity of the music, having listened to it countless times on bumpy rides.

If you want a suggestion for a poignant flying anthem, may I suggest Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. She wrote it on a plane and the poetry of the lyrics encapsulates the complex emotions that bubble up when you’re in the air.

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
Looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Accept that you’re gunna die  

Last year, I wrote about my attempt to overcome my flying phobia in the Guardian.

As I wrote in that piece, two things ultimately helped me: the first was going on a fear of flying course (I did the British Airways one but lots of airlines offer them – a significantly cheaper option is to just buy the accompanying book). 

The second thing was super chill and easy to do – confront my fear of death. I spoke to a hospice nurse and TikTok star, @hospicenursejulie, who told me that her experience of watching people die has taught her that the secret to a good death is acceptance. (Julie’s got a book coming out that I’m planning to read).

Anyway, to do my favourite thing and quote myself, I’ll leave you with this:  

A tidbit from the course came back to me – your anxiety is likely to spike as you board. No kidding. Then I remembered something McFadden, the hospice nurse, said to me about our minds taking care of us in the moment. “Our bodies are these miraculous things that really can take care of us – physically and mentally – in times of crisis,” she said.

I squeezed my bum and shuffled forward, on to the plane.

As the flight took off, I thought about anxiety. When I’m having a panic attack, I think that I’m dying, but it can’t actually kill me. A turbulent flight feels deathly frightening, but it’s not actually dangerous. Just as a plane is designed to withstand turbulence, the body is designed to withstand a panic attack. There was a strange comfort in my new perspective.

I looked out the window. As the houses dropped away, I had one thought: what a terrifyingly beautiful view you can only get from up here

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Unrelated to the above but nonetheless relevant to your interests: The Traitors 🎭

I’ve been holding in this hot-take about the ending of the most recent season of the UK Traitors and I can’t get it out of my head so here is it just for you. If you haven't watched it yet, please exit now because #spoilers. 

It was a theatrical masterpiece! An Orwellian psychodrama about the dangers of living in an oppressive, totalitarian regime under constant surveillance.

Traitors is not so loosely based on Mafia. The parlour game was invented in 1986 in Moscow by Dimitry Davidoff, a psychology student who was juggling his research obligations with his teaching duties. He came up with the game as a light and fun way to demonstrate what happens when you have an informed minority and an uninformed majority. 

From Davidoff’s original rules of Mafia:

A rite-playing game in which players become characters suspected in having Mafia connections. Two teams: the Honest and the Mafia will compete against each other. For the Honest team players, the task is to stop Mafia before it eliminates them. Mafia members have to hide their identity and pose as Honest players in order to manipulate the other team players towards self-destruction. It is in each player’s best interest to prove his or her innocence (or if you are a Mafia member, to hide your guilt) by accusing and interrogating their fellow suspects, until all members of the opposing team are eliminated from the game.

Mafia swept through Soviet campuses and schools, eventually making its way to the US where it was re-branded as Werewolf by Andrew Plotkin in 1997. (And now we have the international Traitors TV franchise. I’ve so far devoured the UK and Australian version; I’m currently watching Traitors New Zealand, but I couldn’t stomach Alan Cumming’s US adaptation.)

In a brilliant Wired story from 2010 about the history of the Mafia game, Margaret Robson wrote: “At its heart, perhaps inevitably for a game created by a psychology student who came of age under a regime that hushed up a massive nuclear disaster for more than 30 years, is the question of whether knowledge is power.” 

This plays out perfectly in the show. The traitors wield absolute power because they have full oversight. As the viewers, we share the same vantage point – we’re also fully informed. It’s obvious but easy to forget this, but the faithfuls aren’t only unaware of who the traitors are but also uncertain about the identity of their fellow faithfuls.

The fatal mistake all faithfuls make is trying to play the game as a team. In the absence of the foundational trust necessary for success, this approach never works. Counterintuitively, it’s Jaz's refusal to conform to a team mentality that not only gets him to the finale but also enables him to identify the traitors. But seeing the puppet strings isn’t enough to sever them.

It’s that deepening paranoia endured by faithfuls that’s central to the show’s narrative. Inevitably, the atmosphere becomes unbearable, leading to a tragic spiral of mutual destruction as the cast succumb to their fears. Rationality becomes a scarce commodity. One of the most exasperating instances in the season occurs in the final stretch when Evie and Jasmine, gripped by desperation, turn on each other. Harry confuses them with a lie about how his possession of the shield proves his innocence. Lost in their paranoia, they fail to pause and critically assess the faulty premise underlying Harry's argument.

And then, the grand finale unfolds. Harry embodies the calculating charisma of a dictator, ensnaring Mollie with his allure. Evie is easily discarded. Jaz stands as the lone whistleblower, struggling in vain to open the masses' eyes. In a fitting denouement, it's Harry left standing alone amidst the rubble, clutching his ill-gotten gains.