Emma Cragg

If you happened to pass by me this morning while I was out for a run you’d have seen me in my usual state during exercise; huffing and puffing, streaming with sweat and growing increasingly red in the face. Look a bit more closely and you’d also have noticed the tears rolling down my cheeks.

The tears took me by surprise and were brought on by my choice of listening — an episode of the podcast Changes where Annie Macmanus interviews Kae Tempest. It brought up such a range of emotions for me that are bubbling to the surface again while I write this. The tears came from recognition, frustration, overwhelm and ultimately hope.

The interview starts with a conversation about words and writing, and it feels appropriate therefore that the reason I connected with this episode so much was because Kae was able to put into words their experience of childhood, a childhood that has echoes of my own, in a much more articulate way than I’ve ever been able to talk about mine.

They talk about effectively living as a boy until puberty at which point the world kind of forgets that we’re all just kids and starts to streamline the sexes — girls to the left, boys to the right. Of the challenge of getting your hair cut or buying clothes. Of constantly being asked ‘what are you?’

“But the people that knew me, knew me, and they accepted me for who I was. But it was hard to meet new people because you always have to start from zero. Like you know, what are you?”

I’m grateful that my family knew me too and let me be who I wanted to be and do what I wanted to do. But when you’re out of that bubble it’s tiring, and lonely, not feeling like you fit in and constantly having to explain yourself. I used to think it would be so much easier if I’d been a boy.

Now, with a whole heap of hindsight I’m grateful for my experience. Of being neither one nor the other. Of having such a strong sense of myself, and a big dose of stubbornness, that I didn’t feel I had to change to fit in to a world that wants you to pick a side. It makes me unique.

“I’m very glad of being this person now because I have the perspective of both. I have the perspective… which makes me sensitive to things about gender that cis people or people that have always been confident and comfortable in their gender, it would be much harder for them to have contact with. And this is real. This is what we have. This is the blessing of it. This is why it’s beautiful to have people like us in the world, because there’s things that we know that other people just don’t know.”

There’s so much more covered in this interview about discovering yourself, the creative process and how we cope amidst everything that’s going on in the world, that it’s well worth an hour of your time to listen to it all.

To finish though, I want to return to that question, ‘what are you?’ There are many answers. Each one is the right answer for a different audience. But ultimately the answer I want to give and that should be enough is — I’m me! Emma, Em, or Craggy (whatever name you know me by). That’s it. No other labels or qualifiers needed. Just me.

Tags: #reflection #listenting #exercise #gender

I’m fascinated by the different ways we consume, interact and engage with different forms of media. Over the past few years I’ve become very aware of how I’ve adapted my own approach to suit my needs and save my sanity.

I’ve read a few posts where people have shared the what and how of their media diet and thought it would be an interesting activity (if only for me) to write my own…

Blogs

When it comes to reading blogs, RSS is my friend and I happily pay an annual fee to Feedbin. As with newsletters I try to be judicious with what I subscribe to and review the list regularly. When I do this I try to notice when I regularly stop reading and start skimming posts in a certain feed.

Here are a few blogs that keep me reading:

• The Creative Independent
• everything changes by Mandy Brown
• Anna Havron’s blog
• Sue Hetherington’s daily blog
• Weekly Musings and Random Notes by Scott Nesbitt

I also predominantly follow my micro.blog timeline via RSS (primarily on my phone). When it comes to the social aspect of micro.blog I switch to the app.

Books

For the last couple of years I’ve committed to reading only books that I already own. Before that the ‘to be read’ pile (or shelves in my case) was only growing. Now I see that I’m making a small dent. An occasional books slips through the net though — a gift, something for work or a loan from a friend or family member.

I mostly read in the mornings as I wake up with a cup of tea. I switched to this approach after I realised I couldn’t get past a few pages at bed time before nodding off.

News

I made a conscious decision to stop watching the news on TV in the run up to the Brexit referendum in 2016. I briefly went back during the early days of COVID but was soon reminded how very narrow the reporting is and how there’s so much pressure for news to be 24/7 that often we just end of watching the same features over and over. You can add to that the increasing feeling that much of what is reported as news these days is merely gossip. These things all contributed to the sense that for me watching the news does more harm than good.

My consumption of news is now filtered through other channels - often word of mouth - and then I make a conscious choice to engage with it or not.

Newsletters

I use a separate email alias to subscribe that allows me to set up a rule so anything sent to it skips my inbox and gets dumped in a ‘Newsletters’ folder so I can choose when I want to see them. Nevertheless it’s still easy for them to get out of control so I’ve recently cut my subscriptions down to what I consider the essentials ie those that I read in full every issue, including:

• Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files
• Lisa Olivera’s Human Stuff
• Mandy Brown’s A Working Letter
• Oliver Burkeman’s The Imperfectionist
• Kat Vellos’ We Should Get Together

Lately I’ve discovered that Substack newsletters have RSS feeds. I prefer to read in my feed reader so I’ve moved most (I’m keeping some essentials in my email) Substack newsletters over there.

Podcasts

Here is where the overwhelm lies. So many podcasts so little time to listen.

I prioritise sports podcasts. Why? They’re time limited. Next the list I call ‘downtime’ which includes my other interests and hobbies outside sport; film, food and books. I mostly listen when I’m exercising, on the move or in the kitchen. They’re also my go to when I’m struggling to get to sleep.

Everything else, especially work-related stuff, is building up and up and UP. Sometimes I think about declaring bankruptcy…. but the FOMO is real!

Social media

I only access Twitter via Tweetdeck on my laptop. I don’t have the app on my phone and I have Hide Feed turned on in my browser to block my timeline and all the trending topics that do nothing but raise my blood pressure if I have to visit the website for any reason. Until the API was turned off I mainly followed a few private lists via Feedbin. Since then I’ve noticed my engagement has dwindled.

The two social apps I have on my phone are Mastodon and Instagram. I check these a couple of times a day each and post occasionally.

YouTube

I’m not one of those people who spend hours browsing YouTube or following breadcrumb trails from video to video. I go with a specific purpose in mind which is usually to watch a live sporting event, a recording of a live event that I missed or an instructional ‘how to’ video. I use lists to create a queue for watching things later. Anything over 15 minutes usually gets added to the queue and I then schedule time to watch these over a lunch break.