Kidding

introduction, or: why I wrote this

In the spring of 2016 I was on the verge of the career I’d always dreamed of. For ten years I’d worked toward the publication of my first book, and finally it was happening. The dead-end “filler jobs” I’d had in order to make rent while stealing minutes and hours to put pen to paper, the parties missed and “no’s” I’d issued and relationships thoughtlessly squandered—everything I’d sacrificed to achieve the thing that so many people talk about but so few actually do—were paying off. Words had been proofed and front covers designed and there, on the spine of a hardback, was my name. I did it! I had national newspapers asking me to write things for them, my photograph was in fancy magazines, and important people said my name. There was a big party to celebrate, where everyone came for me, and I had a living room of more lily bouquets than Elton John. It was the moment of my life. The pinnacle of so much. I’d made it.

I’m sure it would’ve all been incredibly exciting, were it not for the fact that I was dead inside.

I’d burned out. I didn’t know I was burnt out, because by its very definition it’s a sort of slow fizzle. Nobody wakes up one day to find creativity packed up her paint box and left with the kids, Playfulness, Giggles, and Fun, poof! Just like that. No. Burnout is clever. Burnout goes slowly. Burnout blurs the edges, at first, by telling you to work harder, for longer, and suggesting that maybe sleep isn’t that important after all. Burnout tells you nothing could be as important as work. “Success.” Burnout dismantles the house bit by bit so that from the outside everything looks the same, but inside, the furniture has been moved in a way that doesn’t feel like you, somehow, and the curtains have been drawn so it’s all a bit dark. The music has stopped. It’s all very serious.

I didn’t know I’d stopped feeling the warmth of April sunshine on my face, or that I’d ceased to find things funny, or that I no longer did things simply for the pleasure of doing them, until a medical professional asked me the right questions. I hadn’t noticed I sighed a lot. Got cross frequently. That everything had to have a reason. A purpose. That it all had to be for something. I didn’t know I was miserable until my doctor told me so.

I thought I was simply an adult.

The doc explained that no, it is not normal to be exhausted and teary and work sixteen-hour days. I wasn’t, she intoned, making a fuss out of nothing. What I’d done, she said, is work so hard that I’d used up all the serotonin—the happy hormone—in my body, and I’d continue to feel pretty shitty if I didn’t drastically reconsider how kindly I treated myself. It’s ironic, really, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see the issue of a monthly magazine that I was featured in, cited for my “bravery” and “daringness” in living a life that went balls-to-the-wall. I was sitting opposite a kind GP and telling her I couldn’t properly taste food anymore, that I was a fraud. There was nothing bold or daring about me. Not right now. I’d forgotten how to just be happy— how, in fact, to just be—and I’d hidden that behind the foolhardy notion that that’s what being a grown-up is. Hard work. Relentless, miserable, hard work.

That’s not what being a grown-up is.

What happened next is a bit out there, but when I saw a posting on GumTree (a classifieds site in the UK) for a part-time nanny for a local family, I applied for it. I don’t even know why I was on GumTree looking at nannying jobs. As I said, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything in those months. I met the kids, they weren’t awful—they were, in fact, more clever than me and funny and very polite to boot—and so I told their mum and dad that I’d love nothing more than to make packed lunches for three under-elevens every morning. Sure, I said, a 7 a.m. start is fine! Great! I smiled, $15 an hour is perfect! No worries, I nodded, it takes three buses and an hour to deliver everyone to their individual schools? I’m looking forward to it! I had a bonkers nine-month period after that, in which I spent twenty-five hours a week braiding hair and playing dolls and going to the park with somebody else’s children, before heading off to the BBC for radio interviews or writing a column for a national magazine. Then I’d take these children who didn’t belong to me to swimming class or gymnastics. I don’t think their parents ever truly understood why a writer who sometimes gets recognized at the bus stop was loading their dishwasher—because it was cash-in-hand, maybe?—but as it all worked out so well for everybody involved they didn’t push the issue. I don’t know what I would’ve said if they had. It was weird to me, too. I just knew that being around kids would… help. And that I’ve always been good at it. I used to run a children’s language school in Rome and do summer camps while on break from school. Kids have always been my natural refuge.

Anyway. I’m not saying that if you’re knackered or a bit sad or overworked, you, too, should go and insert yourself as a hired help into somebody else’s family—and for less money per hour than you normally spend on an average lunch, too—but I am saying: holy shit! The change in me was almost immediate. From that very first day after school when the six-year-old slipped her hand into mine and said, “Laura, will you come on the swings with me?” I started to come home to myself. I was forced to clear my mind to focus on this new, massive responsibility that had nothing to do with me and my words and my typing and my self-editing and my career, and by the end of week one was able to marvel, for the first time in a long time: So this is what it is like to play, huh?

Every day I’d find something to laugh about with them. They were hilarious, and difficult, and stubborn, willful, opinionated children who asked questions and told me when they were upset. They fought and loved and fell over and got back up and talked shit about each other but snuggled up in a pack on the sofa when it was movie time.

Kids, I learned, they live in the present. They lose themselves in what they love. They show off. They like themselves. Kids are curious as default, and don’t have limits because they haven’t learned to think they exist, yet. Kids do whatever the fuck they want, precisely because they want to.

Kids have the answers, man.

Acting more like a kid—being childlike, not childish— finally made me content again. I get it now. The point of it all. Kids saved me. Being more childlike saved me.

Kidding is a book, then, about all of that. About the childlike solutions three kids from North London unwittingly taught me to apply to my own adult problems, most of which were bullshit and all made up in my head, so that I could rediscover what it feels like to go full force on the delights of my own existence. This is a book about how fun is a choice, but silliness isn’t a privilege. It’s a right. A necessity. Let us play or let us die, says I. The overly somber alternative is no life at all.

Kidding means knowing what the grown-up rules are and bending them for shits and giggles. For the thrill of it. Questioning what we “should” do and doing what makes us cheerier, instead. We can’t have ice cream for breakfast every day, but when we do it is naughty and freeing and cheeky and childlike. Let’s all have more ice cream for breakfast—or at least behave like we have.

Divided into forty (swear-y, which isn’t very childlike at all…) life lessons from the mouths of babes, read this from start to finish or dip in and out when you need it. It’s not written in any particular order because fuck it, you think those little monsters taught me this stuff in any kind of linear fashion? To hell they did. It was chaos, and I’m still reeling from it. Chaos doesn’t have to be bad, though. They showed me that. They showed me everything.

These are notes on curiosity and play. Living in the moment and worrying less. Words about how worthy you truly are. It’s a book on how children can reteach us to use our imagination and creativity and to locate our joy. It’s a book about feeling better by being who we are.

Which is to say: big kids at heart.