The Fable of The Stick
What if it's not that complicated?
This past week, I had the pleasure of spending my time at the Electronic Arts office in Guildford, Surrey. The weather continued to be unseasonably warm, hitting 26 degrees one day and delivering verdant views like this:
But the real highlight of the week was discovering that my dog, Chewie, otherwise known as the menace and real star of this Substack, cannot tell the difference between a permissible chewable stick and a planned-for-use 2x4.
I cannot get over how proud he looks in that photo. He’s like a Tinder man showing off his most wonderful fish. But I actually want to swipe right.
As annoying as this theft was for my husband, because like most men, unbeknownst to me, he had intentions for the random 2x4 that he had left sitting in the corner of my office for weeks…
…here’s the thing— Chewie was right. He’s right. That is a long, thin piece of wood.
It’s not just a glorified stick… it is, in fact, a stick.
We had a similar problem when he was a puppy and we went through a phase where we tried to be a bit bougiee and switch to wooden hangers.
We knew they were hangers, but he knew that, really? Those were sticks. And they were damn good for chewing.
His name is Chewbacca, but we call him Chewie, and he’s earned that name.
Other nicknames for him include Chewbs, Chewbert Dewbert, Chewbalicious, and Chewbastank.
I’ve written about his antics multiple times, but he never fails to disappoint with some new chaos worthy of a Wookiee auuughuuurrreeoooo. I’m not sure if my dog is the smartest or least intelligent creature on the planet, but I seem to learn something from his fuzzy butt every single day.
I am, unfortunately, a deeply cerebral person. By which I mean that I’m a chronically anxious overthinker. This has sometimes benefitted the world and/or me, but overall, I have been making strides to become less like this because it often causes me to shoot myself in the foot. Think too long about anything and you can start beginning to rationalise choices you probably shouldn’t be rationalising… especially if the overthinking is paired with some trauma and neurodivergence.
This manifests for me in all kinds of ways, but mostly, these days… I’m an overly sceptical bastard. I went from being a young person who trusted everyone all of the time to swinging the other way and believing very little without going through the card catalogue and fact-checking.
In our current world, this can be a good thing. There are… sighs, tragically hilarious, countless, unbelievably wrong things posted on social media daily, and way too many people fall for them and don’t double-check. There are scams. There are narcissists and bad people.
But there are also good people and people who want to love and support me, and I’m not always great at letting them in because I’m too wary. Still wearing that ancient armour, I guess.
I’m not even great at letting myself in sometimes. I’ve written before about my habits of self-sabotage, and I could probably make this entire Substack about that topic if I really wanted to. I have traditionally not been good at allowing myself to succeed.
Again, I’ve gotten much better at this. Awareness is the first step, and I’m aware. That awareness has made being creative much easier. It’s made being collaborative substantially easier. And it’s made being married, well, possible.
My first marriage didn’t work out for a slew of reasons, but I learned a lot from how we both did and didn’t show up, and I try to apply that in my life as much as it’s applicable without, again, overthinking like a madwoman.
My first husband and I definitely did do some things right, though. It was quite endearing— whenever he caught me spiralling into that kind of overthinking nonsense (and he had a good nose for it), he would remind me, “If it looks like a snake…”
Of course, his Texan self didn’t, for the first six or so years of our relationship, ever finish the saying. And my young, unknowingly-autistic self, embarrassed that I hadn’t asked him what the bloody hell he meant the first couple of times, never asked and just kinda rolled with it.
I eventually used Google like a normal human and learned that he was saying a variation of the adage, “If it rattles like a snake and moves like a snake, it’s a snake.”
Because of that situation, I have, for years, referred to moments where things seem simpler than they first appear as snakey snakes.
I would like to clarify that I have never written that down or said it out loud to another person. This has been entirely in my head.
Going forward, as charming as that memory is, I think I’ll refer to them as sticks so that I can evoke that photo of Chewie being proud of his stick.
Here he is again, for your viewing pleasure.
For me, the biggest place of potential improvement, where I tend to imagine that sticks are much more important, unchewable 2x4s, is tasks. Sometimes I will have something that I need to do, and the importance of it grows and grows in my mind until it becomes overwhelming. It can even be something that I started out very much wanting to do, but if the task starts looking like a 2x4 instead of a stick… I don’t want to play fetch with it any more. I want to leave it in the corner, waiting for the perfect moment to use it in the perfect way.
And that’s how sometimes, an email that would’ve taken me three minutes ends up taking me three months. The importance level escalates, festers, and gets in my way so badly that it’s almost paralysing.
When really, that email?
It was just a stick.
The same thing can happen with story ideas. I’ve talked about ideas before, but it can be very easy to get stuck on one that just feels too perfect and then not want to write it or develop it because it’ll never be as great as it felt in your head.
And what if it is that great, but no one else likes it? If you write the book and no one buys it? Oh no!?!
The thing is… much like sticks become infinitely more charming when a dog picks them up and carries them down the street, your stories become infinitely more useful and brilliant when they’re in a format that allows someone else to enjoy them. Sitting in your head, they do nothing.
They’re just sticks.
Write them down.
Go now. Stop procrastinating by reading Substack and write your thing x