I Might Be Starving

"Hello? God? Yes, I'd like to place an order."

I know I have been eating enough after accidentally under-fueling for a few months because I’ve been day dreaming lately. “Day dreaming” is whimsical, manic-pixie code for deep, (sometimes agonizing) contemplation. I get lost in the soap suds gathering at the drain in my kitchen sink, staring into the rice while I wait for it to come up to a boil, and inspecting the leaves of the Birch tree in my neighborhood while Iris sniffs around the trunk.

I never realize how hungry I have been until I am actually fed.

I dream of long stretches of time dedicated to writing, uninterrupted by the other work I have to do in order to keep my bills paid. I have created so much over the course of my life, but most of it feels intangible and impermanent at this point. Sure, there are a few “products” or metrics I can point to when I need to feel like there is some proof that I really made something, but I don’t have a real book or a record or a film or a television show or a professional playbill with my name on it. There is an IMDB page attached to my name, but only one of the credits actually belongs to me, and the rest belong to someone else named Meg McDermott. Go figure!

These might seem like unreasonable benchmarks, rooted in some fantastical understanding of who I am and where I am meant to be, especially if you’ve only come to know me from the internet. They really aren’t, given my educational background, work history, and talent. Pretty much all of my collaborators from college can claim at least one thing off that list, and in a way the average person would recognize.

Do I believe the only value in creative expression lies in some sort of end result, product, or notoriety? No, no I do not. The process is the point. But, or rather, AND, the end result is a part of the process, too. I often feel like I should be further along, and that the amount of energy I put into various creative endeavors should have produced greater results by now. I want to break this down. I need to write about it here and to be witnessed in it, because I know I am not the only creative person in the world who feels this way. So much of this feeling has nothing to do with ability or effort. It’s about access and class structure. It’s about money.

I remember writing my first book when I was in first grade. It was a children’s book, and I do not recall its subject matter, but I do know that in addition to writing it, I illustrated each page and bound it together. I wrote my first song when I was twelve, but I didn’t show it to anyone. I spent long hours in the sweltering heat of my unfinished attic bedroom in high school, making folk songs on Garage Band, painting, creating digital zines, writing, learning lines, practicing the drills my Opera teacher gave me, and studying drama. I’ve been doing this forever. I worked my tail off in high school to get into NYU, where I learned how to make a factory of myself, churning out idea after idea and project after project, rooted in “industry standard.” I got the best internships, I was in one of the most coveted extracurricular groups at Tisch from the second week of my freshman year, and I had a work ethic and social acumen that could get me into any room. And all I ever need is to get in the room.

This all feels very solipsistic, writing this down here like this, but I have a point, I promise. First, I want to make it very clear that I am entirely grateful for where I have been and where I am. The privileges of my life, my education, and my current career status are not lost on me. There are people who look at my life, and my career specifically, and see their dream reality. I know this to be true because they’ve told me. Similarly, I know I could be living in a very different version of my life at this point if I had said “yes” to various opportunities that would have required me to compromise my values, my humanity, my integrity, and my creative voice. Please understand that isn’t hypothetical. I have encountered the “sign here for your soul” moment multiple times. My ancestors wouldn’t let me. The angels wouldn’t let me. My future self and my inner child, together, wouldn’t let me. Despite how things have looked on the surface of my life at different points in time, I have always tried to be good. I have always tried to be myself. I chose to be where I am, and I wouldn’t change the choices that led me here.

When I close my eyes and feel into my relationship with expression, the process feels anxious and rushed. A rush job! This is not rooted in carelessness, impatience, or self-consciousness as a personality trait, though I can be both of the first two at times. Creativity requires time, and time is expensive. I do rely on creativity for the entirety of my income, and I have yet to reach that tipping point after which I can buy enough of my own time back from the companies that own my car, my apartment building, my health care, my internet, my electricity, my phone, my food sources, and my debt that I can truly clear my mind and hear what really wants to be made.

I have never had the time or space to let my creativity be truly free. There is a big, deep well of energy inside me, built up over lifetimes. It’s a giant volcano that has only ever been given the opportunity to spit out a few drops of magma at a time, relative to all that’s in there, the energetic momentum behind it, and the technical skills I have spent this entire lifetime cultivating.

What would I make if I had a real, unquestionable safety net? Years of my life have involved reorganizing my understanding of what it means to be held and cared for in the material sense. Years ago, in order to survive and create, I had to stop expecting people or money to take care of me, or to arrive at all. I adopted the belief that money is an irrelevant means to an end, a tool. The real resource that the ability to feel physically and psychologically safe enough to access my own genius hinges on is bigger than that. Can I let myself trust the Divine, the Universe, the Earth, and my life enough to know that no matter what things look like in the present moment, I will always have exactly what I need? Well, the answer is yes. I do have everything I need. This is especially true when I take .5 seconds to think about anyone other than myself. I’m living the dream.

This is true, and it’s also sort of a lie. I need more. I need care. I need to be held physically in the circumstances of my life beyond what I’ve been making due with. Thank you for the scraps, I will call them dinner. Some people don’t get scraps at all. Thank you thank you thank you.

It bothers me that I feel like I am not allowed to say out loud, and with my full chest, that I want a romantic relationship to fill specific needs in my life. There are many reasons contributing to this feeling.

1. People take it to mean that I’m lonely when I’m not, and that bothers me. I actually love spending time with myself, and my life is full of rich, life-affirming relationships of all kinds.

2. The landscape of modern feminism as it pertains to everything, including work/life balance and identity, is a mine-field. Am I a trad-wife if I want to be taken care of and provided for to a degree that I have space enough to actually fully focus on my own work for once? Does that make my work mean less? Is that an amount of privilege that cancels out the validity or value of my perspective? Traps! There are traps everywhere!

3. (And this is the big one!) What if I say it out loud, with my full chest, and it doesn’t ever happen? What if I put my trust in someone, or even the opportunity of someone, and I let myself fully want them, and they don’t want me back? What if they think they want me at first, and then decide they don’t after I have surrendered aspects of my independence to them that I can’t really get back without an uphill battle? What if I end up depleted by them, like every romantic relationship I’ve let myself explore before this one? I’ve been told my standards are too high, but this has only ever been communicated to me by women who are in relationships I’d rather die alone than commit myself to. I’ve also been told my standards aren’t high enough, and that I should build even taller walls around myself that are nearly impossible to scale. This comes from the opposite, from women who have been so wrecked by men that they don’t believe any good ones exist, and they want to protect me from my own deluded fantasy of partnership. Everyone just wants me to be happy. I am happy. And I need more. That’s allowed.

Lately, I find myself wondering who I could be if I didn’t have to trick my mind and body into feeling safe enough to access my creative channels in a way that feels honest and fulfilling. What would I have already put out into the world? The tangible result of the creative process, the “product,” becomes a doorway. What experiences, relationships, and insights would these hypothetical projects lead to? The external is one thing, but I mostly feel this inside myself. Everything I’ve ever made feels half baked, because I simply didn’t have the time or money to fully honor the idea.

When I am asked to teach about the relationship between Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine energy, I like to remind anyone listening that it transcends gender. These are energetic dynamics that exist within each individual, and then show up in our relationships. I think of it like a television show… Divine Feminine is the creative department. Divine Masculine is the production department. In my entire creative life, I’ve had a world class writers room, a homerun showrunner, a visionary director, an otherworldly production designer, and an Emmy award-winning cast with a production department that’s literally MIA. Line producer? Never met her! Even when I had access to a lot more resources and opportunities at NYU, I was never able to take full advantage of them because of financial constraints and social factors. These little moments are invisible and they add up.

And so I dream of long stretches of time dedicated to writing, uninterrupted by the other work I have to do in order to keep my bills paid. I dream of having enough recurring income to not only afford moving back to New York (did you know moving costs seventy billion dollars?), but to comfortably sustain living there with my dog and my car. I dream of sitting down at my writing desk or with my guitar, and letting things flow, without the rituals I bring myself through to clear my mind of financial pressure long enough to try and share something honest and cathartic. When it comes out and I have to move onto the next task on my never-ending to-do list of paying for living, I still feel hungry. Creative people need creativity. This is not just about attention! It’s not just about being recognized for having made something! If I stopped creating, I think I might die. Not of my own hand… It’s like eating or drinking water. It’s oxygen. I would implode or explode or fade away like Marty McFly in that photo. I would rip a hole in space and time, and cease to exist.

What tools and resources would I be able to create and share in public for free as a healer if I didn’t have to work with paywalls, subscriptions, and high ticket clients to survive? Films, tv shows, albums, books, magazine columns, immersive experiences, paintings… There are so many stories and projects in me, ready to be made in a real, non-duct-tape-chewing-gum-and-paper-clip way. None of them can afford the ticket out of my body and into the world in a way that truly honors the substance. I have the technical skill and experience to share them, and I think I would enjoy sharing them, and I think the world would like them, too.

Sometimes it feels like my life is happening somewhere else and I am missing it. It is refreshing to yearn for something and realize the object of that yearning is myself. It also feels unfair. It’s not unfair, but it feels that way sometimes.

I am certain there is a genius of divine design here yet to be fully revealed… When I was presented with a book deal in my twenties, I turned it down. The contract was unfair to me as the writer, the advance was next to nothing, and the book they wanted me to write was not the book my agent and I had actually pitched. I took a few months of asking myself what felt like the right answer, and found a lot of peace in saying no. I was offered another book deal last year. This time, my agent hadn’t sent anything to anyone. A publishing company found me online and reached out to me. My lawyer aunt looked over the contract. Again, there were subtle but significant legal traps laid for me as the writer. It was much easier to turn that opportunity down, because I have an unwavering trust in myself now. I am so unbelievably grateful I didn’t write those books, beyond the legal snares.

I am only 32 years old. Our youth-obsessed culture is increasingly focused on INSTANT GRATIFICATION. This is emphasized in a media and literary landscape that is increasingly only accessible and sustainable for wealthy nepobabies. Are our attention spans unwilling to focus on long-form content because social media is zapping our brains into oblivion, or because that movie is slop made by a group of rich people who are so used to being clapped for and simultaneously have a chip on their shoulder about proving they’re not just their parents’ job or wealth or whatever, that it… kinda sucks? Probably both, if you ask me! But I’m just one girl.

I was pretty deeply entrenched in the New York comedy scene one million years ago, and I knew people who did improv or standup seven nights a week for years. They had sharp minds and incredible talent, but they stopped being funny. Their work became an exercise in inside baseball, like a body possessed by a copy of Truth In Comedy moving around the stage. A comment on a comment on a comment on what comedy is. Because when all you spend your time doing is comedy, you stop being in the world. You stop observing, and all you have left is harping on the last thing you observed, before you stopped. Writing is the same. If you spend all your time writing, or thinking of things to write, or living through the lens of “this will make a great essay/book/instagram post,” etc., you lose your connection to the experience itself. Or, rather, you prevent that connection from ever developing. So everything you create from that perspective is at a distance.

There’s no intimacy. How could you possibly write what you know, when you haven’t taken the time to actually know it? It’s disconnected, like an echo as opposed to the shout. You know how Judd Apatow makes movies about people who make movies, or who very comfortably live in LA? I’m more of a Freaks and Geeks kind of girl, personally. (I actually got special permission to write a spec of that show in college, even though it had been off the air for over a decade. Industry standards be damned! Suck it, Charlie Rubin! He didn’t like me anyway, and Seinfeld never appealed to my personal tastes.)

I’m here to capture the SHOUT. To capture it, I must allow myself to BE IT, and WITNESS IT, without the filter of turning it into something later. RADICAL! PRESENCE!

I didn’t write those books because I’ve been in the middle of messes, and I’ve seen miracles, and I’ve got dirt under my fingernails. My twenties weren’t for writing books, they were for living, for struggling with big questions, big circumstances, and developing a perspective that won’t feel inadequate looking back. They were for developing a moral standard. All of the work I have shared thus far is valuable, and I am grateful for making it. But these “more legitimate” projects I long to realize and put out in the world feel more eternal to me, more permanent and fixed. There is a fluidity and a flexibility that will no longer be there. I can see now, only through perspective developed over the time it has taken to get here, how serious that is. Not so serious it will prevent me from engaging FULLY if and when I get the opportunity to. But I am ready to offer my voice and my heart the equal amounts of respect they deserve, and to create from within the boundaries of that respect.

And, hopefully, I’ll be able to fully honor the idea and make something that matters to the world, or even just to one person.

Even if that person is me.

Meg McDermott is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, writer, and educator. She studies and channels ancient medicine for the modern era to facilitate deep healing and self-discovery. Her work seamlessly blends sonic landscapes with visual art and potent language, creating immersive experiences that bridge traditional wisdom with contemporary life. Through her teaching and artistic practices, she empowers others to reconnect with their inner wisdom, find holistic well-being, and serve the greater good.

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