Ep. 2 The Self You've Been Too Busy to Be — Field Notes Radio

She said it like a confession. Everything she does, she does to share it. Even walking. Even the books she reads.

The whole room went quiet. Because everyone sitting there did the same thing and nobody had said it out loud before.

So I asked them when’s the last time they did something with no audience. And people actually slowed down like the question caught them.

I spent fifteen years backstage.

Tour buses at 2AM, boardrooms, the whole thing. Being useful is a seductive identity — you get praised for it constantly, people start introducing you by what you do for them, and one day the usefulness is just the whole self and you can’t remember there was someone underneath it.

That someone didn’t go anywhere. She’s still melting in the park on a Tuesday with nothing to show for it. Still the most herself in the moments she’d never think to photograph.

This one’s me catching the exact second it flips. When a true thing turns into a thing you’re doing because it’ll photograph well.