Sarah Werner:

This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner. Welcome back again this week, friends. I am so happy. I was going to say I’m so happy to hear from you, but I’m not hearing from you, you’re hearing from me. I’m so happy to be here with you today on this beautiful day, wherever you are, whoever you are. I hope that it is lovely and wonderful. Speaking of lovely and wonderful, I have a fantastic guest for you to meet today. This is my good friend Lee Shackleford, who is the creator of RELATIVITY, but that is not all that Lee is. And we’re going to talk a little bit about today, about creating an creative identity and just, hi welcome to the show, Lee, I’m so glad to have you here.

Lee Shackleford:

I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks, weeks.

Sarah Werner:

I love it. I love it.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah.

Sarah Werner:

Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here. You’re in unusual circumstances. You’re on the road right now. So I feel like life is just in turmoil in so many different ways for so many of us right now. That was a terrible way to say, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Lee Shackleford:

How screwed up are you? No, it’s true. And I was just writing something from my website last night about, there are so many things in my personal life and my family’s lives that have just been a mess this year. But I just said, “Yeah, because 2020.” I mean, it’s just-

Sarah Werner:

It never ended.

Lee Shackleford:

No, and it’s been a season of grief and loss. And I think one of the things that happened to me was that I had the really naive idea that come first week of January say, it was all just going to blow away and we’d all be happy again. And you know, that was indeed naive. But then I started, somebody challenged me to do a tally of things that have been going on with me professionally. And when I started tallying them up, the list just went on and on. And so I had to come away saying, just in that sense, this has been an amazing year for me. I’ve been having the best year during our annus horribilis.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

But you know, it’s a reminder that our shows are not who we are. Because if you feel you’re miserable, even though, every time you get notified you’ve won another award. If your response is, “That’s great,” then the disconnect is complete, so.

Sarah Werner:

Okay, okay. I want to hear more about this. I want to hear more about this. This is really good. So you’re the creator of RELATIVITY. And we were talking before we started recording, or before I started recording, I should have been recording forever during our call. But you were talking about how the end of the show is … We were talking about grief and loss. And creative projects, I think we often don’t think about them as either aspects of our personality or if we do, we don’t think about what happens when that project is over. And what it means for a project to be over. So can you talk us a little bit through what you’ve been going through with that?

Lee Shackleford:

I think part of what happened was that while I was preparing the last season or batch or fit or whatever they were, of episodes as RELATIVITY was released, I turned 60. And I like to think that I don’t think of these milestone birthdays as being some kind of well tombstone, or obstacle, or I have kidded myself, I think that I don’t. But 60 comes down hard. Just you wait, missy.

Sarah Werner:

As I said, I have 40 coming up.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah, exactly. And 50 was a terrible, terrible year in my life. So I was looking forward to at least not revisiting that. And I’m now with a partner. My wife is the light of my life, and I couldn’t be happier about that essential part of my life. And I am respected by my professional peers. I teach playwriting and screenwriting for my Alma mater the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the theater department there is a group of people who love and respect one another. And I was a little surprised and disappointed to find that that is not true of theater departments everywhere. A lot of those are acrimonious little groups, but not ours. I mean, any of us, I think would take a bullet for any of the others.

Sarah Werner:

I love that.

Lee Shackleford:

So how rewarding is that? So, it’s just about getting older, but it does mean I may be into that legacy marking phase of life. If you have 60 years to look back on across. A lot of people I think, look back and say, “Okay, so what was that all about?” I think one thing is I learned, I spent a lot of time worrying about things that don’t matter, and missing. I failed to take advantage of a lot of things that I wish now that I had, so there’s that. But, as a creative person there’s this thing and people listening to this may have been seduced by this, the idea that there’s a plateau, that one day you’re going to receive that Oscar, you’re going to get the presidential medal of freedom or whatever it is. One day for a lot of us it’s, my mother’s going to say that was good. There is some kind of-

Sarah Werner:

Finish line.

Lee Shackleford:

Finish line, yeah. And a lot of people who have come to the end of their lives and say, “Son of a gun, there wasn’t a finish line. I did all of those things. I did all of those things and I still felt like there was something else. I never quite got to it.” My theory is that this is why so many people who become successful millionaires overnight in sports and music and other fields of entertainment that they become raging alcoholics and drug addicts. I think for a lot of people this terrible sense that they haven’t done it right, or they haven’t done it yet, or whatever that it can eat you alive. I don’t know. I think that I had fallen prey to some of that. That I would also, I don’t know, look at the successes of, the commercial successes of some of my peers and colleagues and say, “I’m never going to do that. I’m glad for them, but it’s not going to happen to me or I’m not going to make it.”

Lee Shackleford:

And now time is running out. I didn’t make it. And so all of which is to say that at some point during the writing and producing of RELATIVITY, I’m getting such lovely fan mail. And my download numbers are just going up and up. But especially all those people saying, “This means a lot to me. I really appreciate that you’ve said this done this or whatever. You’ve had this happen on the show.” I mean, that’s, as you know, that’s more to be desired than gold, yea than much fine gold.

Lee Shackleford:

And I think it hit me one day, maybe this is it. This may be the finish line for me. I can decide right now that I made it. And there may be other things that I do after this that, are somehow more satisfying or whatever, but why not? I announced myself the winter of my life. I won. And that’s cool. I think that was a good idea, because it felt really tremendous. And then we aired the last episode of the show and that’s when the elevator went down real fast, like, “Uh-oh, I think I gave my own epitaph.”

Sarah Werner:

Interesting.

Lee Shackleford:

That means I’m dead.

Sarah Werner:

But you’re not.

Lee Shackleford:

But I’m not. But I think in some ways the timing may have been bad, because the pandemic has left so many people, so many create, well, maybe everybody, but the people I talk with about it are creative types who are saying, “I don’t know where it’s gone. I just don’t want to do anything.” And for me that felt frightening. There has never been a time in my life, as long as, I mean, I have good memories of being six and seven years old, I was always looking for something to do or make or draw or paint or something. And now I’m just not feeling it. And that’s frightening. It’s like something, I lost something. Something broke. What happened? I’ve never had that feeling before.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

And you know, you and I are a part of a group on Discord, of a sci-fi fantasy podcasters. And we had a discussion in there one day where everybody reported the same problem. And we all agreed that there’s something wrong with us as individuals. And I brought this to my therapist who said, “Did it not occur to you as a group that because you’re all feeling the same thing that means it’s probably something external?”

Sarah Werner:

It’s not us.

Lee Shackleford:

It’s not us. And I said, “No, we’re all a bunch of really smart people.”

Sarah Werner:

Seeing yourself is hard, seeing yourself in truth is hard.

Lee Shackleford:

And maybe, I don’t know, maybe we are people who are accustomed to saying, asking the question about ourselves.

Sarah Werner:

And realizing or believing that we’re the problem.

Lee Shackleford:

Right. So I don’t know. But yeah, I love my therapist. I mean-

Sarah Werner:

I love your therapist, this is great.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. I mean, because he’s got a sense of humor, but yeah, he was saying, “You may not have heard, but there was some bad stuff that went down last year, and it wasn’t just at your house. It wasn’t just in your head.”

Sarah Werner:

I’ve been reading the best book lately and it’s called Laziness Does Not Exist. I picked it up just because I was curious, but really what this book has done is unravel me from my entire core outward. I cannot recommend this book enough. It’s Laziness Does Not Exist. And in it the author who’s a non-binary individual talks about, so this person has a PhD in social psychology and is talking about essentially burnout, but a very different kind of burnout. It’s the kind of burnout that happens when we have created. And we have had these very high expectations of ourselves, but also just been through the pandemic. So this book was just published earlier this year and it’s just been so timely and relevant. And one of the things that Dr. Price the author takes a look at is this fear that I’m not creating now. So I’m not going to be able to create ever again, and I’ve lost something or something is broken in me.

Sarah Werner:

And I think that you and I are kind of both nodding through this, and I know that our group on Discord shared some very similar feelings. And I’m just going to make the assumption that the people listening to this right now are also nodding, because there’s different types of burnout. There’s the burnout that we feel after we’re pushing ourselves physically too hard. There’s the strain that comes from overworking ourselves, but then there’s also this called secondary trauma. And it can come when we are looking at and experiencing, and I’m not a psychologist. So please read the book and do not take my word for this. But just to like, sort of talk about this-

Lee Shackleford:

Sarah Warner is not intended to treat cure or prevent any disease.

Sarah Werner:

Yes, yes, yes. That always, I am also not a financial advisor or legal professional. So keep that in mind. So let me advise you on the housing market right now. But it’s just, when we see other people suffering, like we saw all throughout 2020, and through a lot of 2021 to be honest. For me, 2021 has been even tougher than 2020 was.

Lee Shackleford:

In a lot of ways.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. And when we see other people suffering, when we look at, oh, the ocean’s literally on fire or, there’s all these things and I feel so hopeless and helpless to fix. We’re experiencing that trauma almost as if we were there. And so I think that, I want to say a couple things, that number one, if you need to take a break right now, and I’m talking to Lee and I’m talking to anyone else who’s listening and I might even be talking to myself, if you need to take a break right now, that’s okay.

Sarah Werner:

And if your break needs to be for a month or two months or six months, or for the rest of 2021, if when I say that, if you feel a huge sense of relief, then that’s okay. And maybe it’s okay. You can think of it as a sabbatical if you want, you can think about it as a break. But the other half of that is this fear that when we come back, we won’t have anything left. We won’t have anything. The creativity won’t be there. And one of the things that the book talked me through was, you’ve been burned out before. Has there ever been a point in your life after a year, after two years, when you haven’t wanted to come back to creating? And when I take a longer view of it, I say, “Well no, I always get the itch.”

Sarah Werner:

And even if it’s just a scribble of sentence, if it’s not to take on a huge project, even if it’s just to write a sentence or to have a cool visual idea of something and just to write that down. It’s still there and it doesn’t go away. And Lee, I would love to get your thoughts on this, your experience, as you’ve been through decades of creativity, what do you think about all this?

Lee Shackleford:

I think you’re exactly right. It’s one of the most poorly understood things, aspects of human existence maybe, as you were talking, there was like there was a little bell ringing in my head. You and I have actually talked about this before a long time ago. That people who say, “When is your next episode coming out?” What they’re saying is, I love you. And for a lot of us, what we’re hearing is, “Oh, crap, this person’s cracking the whip on my back. Just what I need is a little more pressure.”

Sarah Werner:

Right. And we’re not good enough. And I can’t do it. And yes.

Lee Shackleford:

Exactly. I am a failure. And holy Hannah, what does it take for us to hear what they said was, I love you?

Sarah Werner:

Love your work. Your work speaks to me. Yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

Right. They’re not saying, “I’m going to walk away if you don’t give me some more this minute.”

Sarah Werner:

They’re not holding us hostage. But that’s what we hear. Because what we’re hearing is our own expectations and our own on ourselves magnified through their words, right? We’re hearing our own anger and impatience, and we’re projecting that onto other people. When really what they’re saying is, “Hey, I love your show. I can’t wait for more.”

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. And and is it ego? Maybe we think that they’re going to die. Because the mental image that I have sometimes is of a nest of baby birds. And I say, “I don’t have anything for you. And you’re going to die.” And that was not what they were saying.

Sarah Werner:

No, no.

Lee Shackleford:

It really is, “Take a step back, Lee, who do you think you are?” But it is, it’s just self-esteem, and I don’t know, self-loathing.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. I mean, they’re real and they’re important, yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

That’s it, yeah. But I don’t know. So I wonder if, when we reach the end, the planned end of RELATIVITY, if I sort of came away feeling exhausted, and being happy that, that responsibility that I placed on myself had been lifted. But yeah, there’s also kind of a high that you get other people saying, “When’s the next thing coming out too?”

Sarah Werner:

Oh. Needing to be needed.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. So it’s very complicated. So we have approach avoidance about that. We want to keep it a distance, but you’re also want. This is the story I always tell about myself, because we’ve talked about Myers-Briggs before, too. That I always sought out on that I/E thing, that introvert extrovert thing. Somebody who really gets his energy from being alone, why in the world would we both want to play the lead roles on our shows? What’s going on?

Sarah Werner:

What’s going on?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. That makes zero sense unless you’re inside our own heads. So at my university, a long time ago, we’ve sort of had to shift the practice now, especially even before the pandemic, but the doctoral hooding ceremony, UAB is built around the medical school, it began as a medical school, is become a respected liberal arts institution. But the hooding of the doctors is still a big, big deal. And we have students who come from all over the planet to be doctors from UAB. And so, I’m proud of that. Well, they wanted somebody who was a professional speaker to announce the ceremony, because we read their names. And as I say, they come from everywhere and we read their dissertation titles. And so I would spend, I got them in advance, thank goodness.

Lee Shackleford:

So there were not a surprise every time you were handed a card or somebody walked across the stage. But I would spend a solid week leading up to that event, researching and practicing how to say these people’s names. Because you know, if somebody from Pakistan has come here and has been here for six years, their parents have flown out here too. And I really want them to hear their son or daughter’s name said the way they say it. And I put a lot of effort into this. And the head of the graduate school, bless them, would end the ceremony by saying, “Let’s take a moment to acknowledge Professor Shackleford who read and pronounced all these names.” And the audience would just go nuts. And I came to look forward to that moment. But when it arrived, I wanted to get under my chair. Sarah gets it, Sarah understands.

Sarah Werner:

I’m going to assume that a lot of you out there are nodding right now as well.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. They go like, I would do the same thing. I would say. Yeah, come on, come on. Oh, okay no.

Sarah Werner:

No, no, no. I’m not that great. Okay. Sit back down. Yep. Nope.

Lee Shackleford:

That’s enough, that’s enough. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Sarah Werner:

I was just about to ask you that question.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah, I don’t know.

Sarah Werner:

I don’t know either.

Lee Shackleford:

I don’t know. I think we are culturally taught that we are not supposed to think better of ourselves than we aren’t. I mean, that’s the Apostle Paul talking there. And that’s what I was hit with a lot as a kid growing up in Church of Christ. Was to not think better of yourself than you ought. That language is actually pretty vague.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah, who decides what odd is?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. And if we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Sarah Werner:

If we hate ourselves.

Lee Shackleford:

Loving yourself, yeah. That’s asking for trouble, isn’t it? So don’t know, it’s fraught. But yeah, I think culturally to be good little boys and girls that we’re told to kind of keep our heads down and not be waiting for applause, even though we know deep down that we earned it, we actually have earned it.

Sarah Werner:

This is such a huge, huge topic I think for both of us, Lee. I mean, and people are complicated. And the way that we were raised, because I was raised the same way, be humble, put others first, but it’s very easy to end up in a place of self-hatred or self-loathing and self-diminishment. And it’s so interesting to be a creator or a performer or anything that we do in the public eye with that mentality. Because it’s like, “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this, but this is also what I feel like I was uniquely crafted to do.” And it’s like, “Oh, do I bury my talents in the ground? Or do I let them shine? What do I do with all this? Do I stay quiet and do I stay humble? And do I let others take the spotlight or do I perform?”

Sarah Werner:

And it’s just this, I feel I’m just repeating your words back to you, but I want you to know that you’re not alone in this. That it’s so complicated. And I actually saw a therapist years ago about this too, who told me, “Why are you dimming your lights? Why are you shying away from your purpose? And on whose behalf are you doing that? And who are you and who do you want to be? And did you know that you’re allowed to be the person that you want to be, and that you’re allowed to want to be something?” And it was just this huge mental, internal culture shift to think that it was okay to want to be seen. And it was okay to want to share an experience and a message. I don’t know, but it’s just this internal conflict, this duality always of, and I love that you even compared it to, am I an introvert or an extrovert?

Sarah Werner:

I don’t know. I think I’m both. I’m both all the time, always. And I’m really trying to … I recently read Anne Lamott’s new book, Dusk, Night, Dawn, and it really put me into alignment with some of the paradoxes. There’s a great appreciation for paradox in that book. And it’s like, I am light and I am dark and I am introvert and I am extrovert and I am sinner and I am saint and we are so much more incredibly complex. And I think we realize, or we can realize, and that doesn’t fit with behavioral things that we’re taught. We’re not taught that like, “Hey, so you contain multitudes. So you may act inconsistently.” No we’re told, do this, do this, do this. And I don’t know where I’m going with this. So I might just throw things back to you. Because I think this is really interesting to talk about.

Lee Shackleford:

And I can’t wait to hear feedback from people listening to this, because I feel that there are probably so many people fans of right now who are, as you say, are nodding, as they listen to this and say, “Oh, holy smoke. They have got me. I feel very seen right now,” they will say.

Sarah Werner:

You are seen, yes.

Lee Shackleford:

You are seen, yes you are. We got ya. And yeah, I hope what you’re hearing is, and we love you. We understand that this can be hard. This can eat you up, trying to figure out how to make sense of all this. I had the idea, I feel like I had exactly one really positive kind of life-changing experience in high school that I was not a popular person in high school. I was frankly bullied and beaten.

Sarah Werner:

Oh me too.

Lee Shackleford:

For being who I was. I know, what a weirdo. And I don’t know what possessed me to do it. But I tried out for the school play, which is our big musical-

Sarah Werner:

Cool.

Lee Shackleford:

… we’re doing Oklahoma! like everybody else. And I was cast as Ali Hakim as a comic lead in the play. And that fell right into my skillset. I was able to be the funny guy. And people who wouldn’t look at me before, after that play, greeted me in the hall. I was a hero, and I can still sort of feel in my bones the sound of them laughing at the funny bits and the way that I performed them. And the applause sometimes, just when my character was supposed to come out on stage.

Lee Shackleford:

Here he comes again, yay. They loved me and yeah. So then I chose a career in the theater because it’s like, “I’ll have some more of that please.” Place where I’m not scorned and [crosstalk 00:24:35], I’ll go there.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. Sounds pretty good.

Lee Shackleford:

But I misunderstood. I think that that doesn’t mean that I was cut out to be an actor. My idea was that I’m going to be an actor for the stage and I’m going to be a working actor and this is going to be my life. And I got all the way through graduate school before I had that finally beaten out of me by a pretty demanding, really wildly dysfunctional I now see in retrospect, but a demanding program in which my big takeaway was, you don’t have the physical persona of the kind of actor you want to be. You don’t have the face of a movie star. You don’t have the movement, so there’s nothing wrong with your skeleton, with your frame so far. “You have a nice figure,” I remember a director telling me once.

Sarah Werner:

Okay.

Lee Shackleford:

Which is very nice.

Sarah Werner:

Validating.

Lee Shackleford:

He said, “But, that was in along the way to say, but you do need to stand up.” And I had always had this kind of-

Sarah Werner:

Oh.

Lee Shackleford:

… curved back posture because I was trying to hide. I was trying to, I’m six, two, and if you don’t want people to pay attention to you, it’s really hard when you’re a six two. So I kept trying to make myself shorter. And so they, I do appreciate the fact that they encouraged me to stand the hell up there the first time. But they said, “But you just don’t, your movements are not graceful. If you think you’re going to go to a career on Broadway, you got to be an actor, singer, dancer. Your singing voice is fare, your acting skills, you have talent, but you seem to be reluctant to share it with anybody. Your choices are always very small. And if you’re going to work for the stage, you need to figure out how to make big and bold choices. You have a facility with voices, but even there, your voices are all, you can always tell it’s Lee, they’re little.”

Lee Shackleford:

So I came away from all that saying, “Don’t try. You better find something else to do.” And I got interested writing during that time. And so I’m certainly grateful for that, because that pushed me along the path to being a playwright and a screenwriter. And that has worked out fine for me in the whatever it’s been, 35 years since then. So, thank you very much, but [inaudible 00:26:59] said it, I even have it on my website. I say, “The camera is your judge. The microphone is your friend.”

Lee Shackleford:

And the discovery that I could give behind the mic. And I can even work in the dark if I want to, I don’t even have to see myself on camera, but I can be anybody that I imagined to be and the physical form that people are going to experience of the character I’m playing is going to happen in their minds. And that has been so liberating for me. And now, I don’t know, well, my partner on RELATIVITY, Alana Jordan, may she live 10,000 years. She and I were honored by the Telly Awards.

Sarah Werner:

That’s awesome.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. Honoring our vocal performances on that show. If you had told me 35 years ago that I was going to win an award like that from my performance in anything, well, no, 35 years ago, I would have said of course, but what I mean is, because you know, one of the reactions to have in low self-esteem is to be brash and arrogant. And so I went through that period too, but the truth is I would have been astonished. But I do think it’s a good performance throughout. I think my work as an actor on RELATIVITY is almost certainly some of the best acting I’ve ever done. And the whole point of this was that that has come as a response to being told that I can’t do this. That I’m not good enough. And I never will be. So what I did was I found something else. And as it turns out, I got back to where I wanted to be in the first place. I found out how to do the work without the judgment.

Sarah Werner:

Yes.

Lee Shackleford:

So, yeah.

Sarah Werner:

So this has said so much, and I’m curious, finding, we started this conversation by talking about finish lines and success metrics and you’ve won an award and you have found your way to the end of, the planned end of a very good show. And there’s just so much tied up in this. There’s so much of you, there’s so much of your accomplishment. There’s so much of your story that’s tied up in this. And I think my question for you is, honestly, what’s next?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. And I don’t know. And I feel like another thing where we again, we may have listeners nodding and saying, “Yeah, I get ya.” Is that I, right now I just don’t feel motivated to do anything else. And yet, and I’ve been saying that for six months, and this is why somebody challenged me to write down things that have happened professionally. Since I started saying that I have this crippling on weed, that I don’t feel like doing anything. I’ve written a play for my Alma mater that we then produced with an amazing group of talents. And it ended up being honored at the Kennedy Center, for heaven sake.

Sarah Werner:

No big deal, what?

Lee Shackleford:

Right. Exactly.

Sarah Werner:

What?

Lee Shackleford:

And I don’t know, I’ve just been asked to come back to a theater festival in North Carolina and do something in this August. And I said, “Yeah sure, sign me up.” I’m not turning things down. I’m just having trouble getting things started. I don’t know. But it’s very strange. I feel deeply that I don’t have anything that I want to do, but I’m doing things all the time.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. Oh I’m-

Lee Shackleford:

Explain that.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah well, I can’t because I’m right there with you and-

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. When is season two of the Girl In Space coming out?

Sarah Werner:

Well, here actually, physically I can show you, see this giant notepad here?

Lee Shackleford:

Right. Oh, that’s fabulous.

Sarah Werner:

Thank you, I know those of you listening.

Lee Shackleford:

I wish everybody, you could see this, but-

Sarah Werner:

I don’t know if you can see that?

Lee Shackleford:

She has some tiny notes, but it looks like you’re story boarding and you’re creating sort of a graphic idea board and-

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. But has my heart been in it?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah, you’re doing it because you know you’re supposed to.

Sarah Werner:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And it’s tied up in so many feelings of guilt because I left my day job to do this. And it’s not what I want to feel. I want to bounce out of bed. And I remember doing this, like when I first started the show and I’ve started other creative projects, my eyes spring open at 6:30 or whatever. And I’m like, “Oh boy, I get to work on blah, blah, blah all day, hooray.” And I jumped out of bed and I make coffee and I sit in my chair and I’m like, “Yeah.” And boy, there’s so much wrapped up in this.

Lee Shackleford:

That seems like a long time ago now, does it?

Sarah Werner:

It does, it does. And it seems like an impossibility to get that back. But I don’t think it is. I don’t think it is.

Lee Shackleford:

Well, I hope you’re right. And I agree, I believe you’re right. My faith is that you’re right. But yeah, I’m not feeling it now either. I just shared a link with you in the chat and I saw you smile and point at it. So I know we’re on the same page about this. There’s a young woman who has created what she considers a legitimate Christian ministry that’s she’s calling The Nap Ministry, and she is now the evangelist, the self-appointed patron saint of giving yourself an opportunity to lie down and go to sleep.

Sarah Werner:

Yes.

Lee Shackleford:

And I encourage people to check it out. We’ll put her in the show notes.

Sarah Werner:

Yes, please. Yes.

Lee Shackleford:

Because it’s easy to smile at that and say, “Oh yeah, it’s everybody-

Sarah Werner:

Oh, that’s cute.

Lee Shackleford:

… everybody wants to be the priestess of Nap. But as you read more about her thinking about it and her feeling about it and her experiences spreading the good news about taking a nap. It is, and I have certainly adopted it. And my golly, she’s right. I think there are times where we’re just saying, “I don’t have the energy for this.” Well, come back to it in an hour, but meanwhile, just lay down and don’t do anything.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

Your job right now is to refresh, replenish, restore.

Sarah Werner:

Fill your cup.

Lee Shackleford:

Fill your cup. You’re trying to pour out of an empty bottle.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

And really, I feel like she is as much as anybody has really helped me say, “Maybe that’s it. I poured it all out in RELATIVITY. Maybe some more comes from somewhere else, but I just don’t have it right now [crosstalk 00:33:37].”

Sarah Werner:

And like, what are we filling up with too? It’s like I realized last year, the end of last year, I realized I haven’t really been reading a whole lot. And so this year I have made it a point. I think I’ve read 40 books or so, so far this year, just voraciously reading. And I’m like, “Oh this is where the ideas come from. This is where the creativity comes from. This feels good. Oh, I’m getting ideas again.”

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah.

Sarah Werner:

There’s just so much going on though. There’s empty cup. There’s exhaustion, there’s burnout. There’s the state of the world. There’s feelings of hopelessness. There’s the expectations that we set and that we believe are set for us by others. There’s a day job that gets in the way. There’s, I think we’re asking too much of ourselves, and this is another reason why I love The Nap Ministry. It’s such a good reminder that we can rest. And that our worth is not determined by what we produce and accomplish at all times.

Lee Shackleford:

Right.

Sarah Werner:

And boy, do you want to talk about wrapping up your worth in something?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Just before we started recording, we were talking about the fact that to many people, when we’ve been at conferences and things like that, people don’t know you at all, but they see your glasses frames and they say that’s Girl In Space. That’s who you are as far as they’re concerned. So if there are no new episodes coming out, maybe you don’t exist.

Sarah Werner:

And who am I? Right.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah.

Sarah Werner:

Or in RELATIVITY, when RELATIVITY comes to an end, who are you?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. Yeah. Didn’t you use to be RELATIVITY? Didn’t you used to be somebody?

Sarah Werner:

Oh no. I hope nobody’s has ever said that to you and never will say that to you. I will punch them.

Lee Shackleford:

No, you know me, I’d be delighted to be recognized.

Sarah Werner:

I mean, okay. Yeah that part is cool. That part is cool. But-

Lee Shackleford:

But didn’t you used to be. Yeah.

Sarah Werner:

But the shaming the-

Lee Shackleford:

Right.

Sarah Werner:

I don’t like that. I don’t like any of the … And here’s the other thing too. And I know that we’re talking to creators and I know that as creators that’s probably the biggest part or one of the biggest parts of our identity is that even when you’re not creating, you still have that part as your identity. Even if you are not actively creating something right now, you are still a creator, and nothing in you has gone away. Nothing in you has withered and died, even though it might feel like it, even though you’re tired or you’re depressed. Even if it feels like there’s just you’ve been under watered and you’re shriveling in the hot cruel punishing sun. You still have a root system. And the roots are still there. I truly firmly believe that. I truly believe that.

Lee Shackleford:

That’s a great image. I love that image. Wow. Yeah, that’s part of what’s happening. Is that to extend the metaphor we have been out of the sunlight and we haven’t been properly watered for a long time. Yeah, I like that.

Sarah Werner:

Oh, oh, this reminds me too. Oh, I think where I subconsciously got that image of the plant. Have you read Austin Kleon’s article about Languishing? And so there was that New York Times article about languishing. Oh, I’m languishing right now. But then Austin Kleon came back with a response and he said, “I’m not languishing. I’m dormant.”

Lee Shackleford:

Interesting. Because I’ve shared that. I love the Languishing article and I’ve shared it far and wide because it really was the beginning of what I felt like an answer for me.

Sarah Werner:

Yes me too. Me too.

Lee Shackleford:

I need to know the follow-up there, because I-

Sarah Werner:

Okay, yes. You need this follow-up, it was so good. And it’s aimed at creators. And you can see, I don’t know if you can see behind me, those of you listening can see. I have 37 plants in my office. Yes, I have a problem.

Lee Shackleford:

This is a problem.

Sarah Werner:

I turned into a crazy plant lady during the … Well I guess I was always a crazy plant lady.

Lee Shackleford:

We both wrote stories about people isolated on their spaceships and their comfort in life is to go where the plants are. That’s not a coincidence.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah, no, we’re just twins essentially.

Lee Shackleford:

That’s right.

Sarah Werner:

But sometimes plants go dormant and it doesn’t mean they’re done. It doesn’t mean they’re dead. Doesn’t mean they’re languishing.

Lee Shackleford:

Because I’ll tell you something that struck me at some point in the process too. And I wondered, “Could this be the problem?” It’s not a spoiler for people who haven’t heard RELATIVITY to say that this is a story about a person, a guy who is half of the story at least, who is in a place cut off from everybody else and kind of working with the technology that’s sometimes unfamiliar to him and he’s fleeing a planet. But that’s in the middle of a climate catastrophe and there’s a species killing viral pandemic. And when the show ended, I was sitting in my little office by myself, realizing I actually am somebody along struggling with my technology in a climate disaster planet fleeing from a global pandemic. Wow, it didn’t go away when the show ended.

Sarah Werner:

No. Ooh, and was the show your way of at least partially processing and dealing with that?

Lee Shackleford:

I think that, well, there wasn’t a global pandemic really when I started writing about that. And so that was sort of weird, and I don’t know, I’m a little more optimistic about our climate catastrophe than I used to be, a little. So yeah. But it is still funny to think about that I was writing a story in some ways about isolation and so many of us then in that last year ended up being isolated. I wonder if that’s one of the reasons why we had sort of a surge of listenership there during the pandemic. I mean, there are a lot of reasons for that, but I think maybe a lot of people have said, “Yeah, preach. I’d like to get out of this thing too.”

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

But, like Chris and Sophia on the show, what has saved a lot of us, what has kept a lot of our sanity going is the sound of somebody else’s voice. Or being able to stay connected through the internet. I don’t know. That really was the idea in the beginning. It was just to tell a story about two people who are remote emotionally and as the distance between them grows, they actually grow closer emotionally. I just thought that was an interesting idea in itself you know.

Sarah Werner:

It’s beautiful. And that’s what saves so many of us through the pandemic and even now. I’m so curious to ask, and I don’t know how to ask it, but in a way we each live through our creative projects, but for you, what does it mean to create something, and what is the value to you in creating and being creative?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah, that is an interesting question, isn’t it? Because as I said before, I just don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t always making something. It just feels like that’s the most natural thing in the world. There was never a cardboard box that came into our house that ended up in the trash immediately, because my mom knew to give it to me.

Sarah Werner:

It has to be a spaceship first.

Lee Shackleford:

It certainly does.

Sarah Werner:

Obviously.

Lee Shackleford:

I mean, yeah. So I don’t know where that comes from, but I do feel lost and alone right now because I’m not feeling it the way I always have. So I know it was vital. I know it was something that I felt like was keeping me alive.

Sarah Werner:

It was like an appetite.

Lee Shackleford:

Right. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s a good image. It’s like that doesn’t taste good to me anymore.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah, I’m not hungry anymore.

Lee Shackleford:

I’m not hungry anymore.

Sarah Werner:

Like, I don’t want any, right?

Lee Shackleford:

I hope we’re right. I hope this is not a permanent condition. It’s just, I love the roots image. The roots are still down there.

Sarah Werner:

They’re still down there, they’re just tired.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah, and dormancy is a normal part of life. My dad was a civil engineer and worked on some, a lot of little projects and some big projects. And one of the big projects was a part of Alabama where the power company was going to build a hydroelectric plant. And which meant that they were going to change the course of mighty rivers. And create some lakefront property, however lakefront property had not existed before. So it meant planning exactly how this is going to happen so that you don’t swamp people. But there were places where there had been a lake before and that had dried up. And so part of the land, there is a point of this story, I promise.

Sarah Werner:

I’m here for it, I’m listening.

Lee Shackleford:

Part of the contour of reflooding this property was going to mean there’s going to be water there, back in this place where there had been a lake, who knows how long before? Outside of anybody’s memory. Anyway, they flooded this property. And very quickly there were fish in the pond, in the new pond. Fish that were not native to the area, fish that were not part of the ecosystem of that lake.

Sarah Werner:

Where did they come from?

Lee Shackleford:

They were the fish that had been in the lake before.

Sarah Werner:

Wait, what?

Lee Shackleford:

Their eggs had been down in the soil. And as near as anybody can tell, waiting there for 50, 75 years.

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh. I didn’t know that was possible.

Lee Shackleford:

I didn’t either. But you know that we had all these expert ecologists who would come around. Those were the ones who were identifying the species and saying, “No, we don’t get these around here anymore. But they were here once and now they’re here again.”

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh.

Lee Shackleford:

So, as one of the great scientists of our day has taught us, “Life finds a way.”

Sarah Werner:

Thank you, Dr. Malcolm. Wow.

Lee Shackleford:

Why shouldn’t that be true for us as creatives too? That are our fish eggs are just waiting down in the soil maybe.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah, oh my gosh.

Lee Shackleford:

But what’s the water? What is …

Sarah Werner:

That’s the question, isn’t it? What brings us back? What rehydrates us? And I was actually, while you were talking about that, I was just thinking myself, “What if we’re so exhausted and maybe our souls have weathered a little bit?” And regardless of where you believe the creativity comes from, whether you believe that it comes from within, or it comes from, it’s a curation from everything that you take in, or whether you believe it’s divinely inspired or whatever else it is you may believe about creativity. What if it’s not up to us to restart our own engine? I mean, what if we need people? And it’s so hard right now, because not even just because of the pandemic, because like we’re physically separated from people. But I think that we need other people to care and to see us and to say, “Hey, I need your art. The world needs your art. I need whatever it is.”

Sarah Werner:

And whatever you create next, doesn’t have to take everything away from you. Whatever you create next does not have to exhaust you. You do not have to give your soul for this work. It feels good to put your heart and your soul into your work, but that’s not a requirement. And I’ve been thinking so much lately about creative community and how much we need it. And I was maybe a little bit arrogant when I first started well, throughout most of my life. Follies of youth. I was like, “Oh, if you’re a writer, you’re just by yourself. If you’re a creator, you’re just by yourself and you’re just on your own power and you’re moving forward and you’re creating things and you’re this, whatever, soul, brilliant, artist, whatever.

Sarah Werner:

And I’m wondering now if I’ve reached a place, and maybe other people identified with this as well, where I need help being myself, I need help living. I need help drawing out creative energy. I just need, I need help. And I don’t know a 100% what that looks like, whether what I need is validation or encouragement, or co-creators helping me with ideas. But I have an appreciation. Now that we, I think, feel so alone, I have an appreciation for other people and for our creative community that’s really, I think, starting to speak out to me.

Sarah Werner:

And one of the things that I love to think about is that I’ve worked this theme into Girl in Space is that like, yeah, it’s really cool for us to take action and save ourselves and to save other people. But we also need to make room for other people to save us. And we all end up needing, I think, to save each other. And I think this applies to life. I think it applies to creativity. And I’ve had to leave some room for nuance. It’s not just like, oh one person reaches out to me and happily ever after I can create forever again. But I think that what we need is maybe a better system of leaning on each other and a better system of encouraging each other and a deeper community. And I know building a community is a lot of work and maintaining a community is a lot of work. But I also think that at least partially, I think that’s where that water might come from.

Lee Shackleford:

I feel that you must be right.

Sarah Werner:

I want to be right.

Lee Shackleford:

Because the anecdotal support that I have for that is that as a sufferer of depression and anxiety, there is a reliable time of the day, we’re working, my doctors and I to fix this. But yeah, there’s a certain time of day when the meds wear off, and I just don’t care anymore. And that’s tough. And it is coincidentally about the time that my great friends, Kyle Jones and Clarence Brown and I sit down to record episode of Discussing Who, and this is our little chat podcast about Doctor Who. And week after week I drag myself to that chair and bring down that microphone and say, “Okay, I got to here. I got to pull it together enough to talk about this.”

Lee Shackleford:

And 90 minutes later, after we finished talking about a 45 minute episode of the TV show, I feel fine. I feel good again. What happened? Yeah, we talked about Doctor Who, but I think mostly I spent 90 minutes with Kyle and Clarence and I think that may have been some that’s some water in the pond. So all of which is to say, I think you’re right. I think my experiences you’re right. That’s where it is.

Sarah Werner:

It’s so easy to forget.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. Especially for those of us who are accustomed to being alone with our keypads.

Sarah Werner:

And relying on ourselves, like I’ve been independent for most of my life. I’ve been self-reliant. I was taught to be self-reliant and it’s like, I even, the first therapist I worked with, just one of the first things she ever said to me was, “Wow, you’re your own best friend, aren’t you?” And my response was like, “Yeah, I’ve had to be.”

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. Nobody else will to listen to me.

Sarah Werner:

I know, it’s just me and me here. But oh my gosh. There’s something about being in that community, about being heard and being seen and just existing alongside other people and having your story inner, I don’t want to say interfere with theirs, having your stories interlock, just for even that brief period of time that reenergizes us. And I think it goes beyond the introvert extrovert thing.I think that that’s, I think it goes beyond that. And I think energy is involved. Like, “Oh, I get energy back from being with these wonderful people.” But I think it’s more than that somehow. And I can’t exactly define how.

Lee Shackleford:

Are we saying, I just want to make sure of this. Are we saying that people who need people are in fact the luckiest people in the world? No, that’s not what we were saying.

Sarah Werner:

I think that’s close to what we’re saying.

Lee Shackleford:

Maybe [inaudible 00:50:46]. I didn’t sing it.

Sarah Werner:

I think that, yeah, no, I think we are. I think we absolutely are. I think we are. And I think we need to remember that. And I don’t know if it goes back to, oh, it’s so interesting about how we think about ourselves. We were talking about identity a little bit earlier and you and I both have essentially what are like solo shows. And along the way I developed the sense of pride that I was creating this thing, “all by myself.” But we’re not, we’re not.

Lee Shackleford:

No.

Sarah Werner:

And we can’t. And so then when I went back to season two, the biggest thing that stood out in my mind was like, “Okay, you did season one. Now it’s time for you to do season two.” And it just was so much, it was too much.

Lee Shackleford:

You.

Sarah Werner:

You, the chosen one, right? Have you seen Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on Your Elusive Creative Genius?

Lee Shackleford:

Yes.

Sarah Werner:

Maybe we need to, and those of you who are listening and you haven’t seen it, please, I’ll try to remember to include a link in the show notes.

Lee Shackleford:

You got to put that. Because you’re the one who sent me that.

Sarah Werner:

Oh, did I?

Lee Shackleford:

I had not seen it before, but yeah, you had shared that with me. Oh, you’re right, I mean, it’s-

Sarah Werner:

It’s so good.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah, it is. It is mind blowing if you’re a creative person, probably just for anybody.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. And she talks about not necessarily community, but she talks about not having the pressure of having to be a genius or having to be a solo creator and being perfect and being wonderful and being lauded and winning awards. It’s not all on you, or at least historically it wasn’t always seen as that. And really, I think the talk is about expectations and it’s about identity and it’s about how hard we are on ourselves. In the olden days you could just say like, “Oh yeah, my muse isn’t here with me today. So I can’t write.” But like today, we live in, at least you and I live in the United States where it’s like all bootstraps and individualism and we’re all John Wayne and it’s up to us alone to save the world. And that has its own. I don’t know, it has its own exhaustion along with it too.

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. Is it Brené Brown who talks about the film Flashdance?

Sarah Werner:

Maybe. I have a confession to make, I own all of Brené Brown’s books, and I’ve never read any of them.

Lee Shackleford:

Wow.

Sarah Werner:

I own them all. I’ve read none.

Lee Shackleford:

I have them as audio books.

Sarah Werner:

Oh, that’s smart.

Lee Shackleford:

She has talked to me on the road. So I wonder if I’ve sat down and read any of it. But anyway, but Flashdance was a cultural milestone for people my age-

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh.

Lee Shackleford:

That was back in the ’80s. But anyway, but you know, it is a story about a woman who has this aspiration of being a famous, a world-class dancer. And it is building towards her audition. And at the end of the movie she gives her audition at the fame school. And it is the most extraordinary thing you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s the climax of the movie, because of course she’s going to get in after doing that. And Brené’s point is, “It’s easy to watch that and say, ‘You’re right. I can do anything.’ But what you’re also taken away is, I have to do that.” And she says, “Here’s a secret about making a movie.” That’s six different dancers wearing the same costume. So you say, “How did Jennifer Beals do that?” She didn’t, she and six other people did that. So get off your own back.

Sarah Werner:

Gosh, that’s fascinating. I have not heard that anecdote before. And it’s really interesting. And oh my gosh, this is going to be the most, I think in my own mind, the most controversial thing I’ve ever said, but I wonder if in that way, get ready. I’m wondering if in elevating what a hero can do in a story, if that is maybe harmless in some way, if we see ourselves as needing to be the sole creator, the sole whatever hero in a story?

Sarah Werner:

And I don’t know, and I know that’s probably just, I think probably Western storytelling that’s like that, but I don’t know that, that lifting up of the individual hero, the hero’s journey, in a way yeah, we’re our own heroes on our own hero’s journey, especially I talk about the creative journey and it’s very similar, but we do. I wonder if we’ve maybe created through that story structure, if we’ve created some kind of harmful-

Lee Shackleford:

Monster?

Sarah Werner:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. He’s made a monster.

Lee Shackleford:

You could say monster.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Lee Shackleford:

We should probably leave it there. Leave that bomb ticking in people’s laps. For one thing, I have another meeting I have to go to.

Sarah Werner:

Perfect, well, and I have to go to, but oh my gosh, I love this. Lee, I want to say before I let you go, thank you for being on the show. I absolutely adore talking with you. You’re one of my favorite people to chat with. This has just been an absolute delight. Where can people find you? How can they encourage you and create community with you moving forward?

Lee Shackleford:

Yeah. Look for my website, which is Shacklefordfreelance.com. Shackle like Shackleford, like Ford, I’ve learned to say. And all of that links you to relativitypodcast.com.

Sarah Werner:

Fantastic.

Lee Shackleford:

So I love this so much. Yeah, I just want to stay here and talk with you all day, but.

Sarah Werner:

But life-

Lee Shackleford:

We’ve got other things to do [crosstalk 00:56:21].

Sarah Werner:

Life happens. Lee, I’m going to let you go. Thank you again. I’ll make sure that links to all of your work is in the show notes for today’s episode, and please take good care of yourself.

Lee Shackleford:

You too.

Sarah Werner:

All right.

Lee Shackleford:

Please do.