What The Last Decade Has Taught Me About…

Evocation. Image © Shirin Abedinirad

Love

In 2012, I got my heart broken. I discovered my partner of 5 years was “sportif” when it came to pursuing other women, as my French friend joked. It came as a shock and felt like someone had died.

I didn’t just lose my relationship.

Far worse was losing trust in my own judgement, shared friends I’d considered family, and my dreams of a joyful future I’d attempted to bring to fruition by pouring my energies into helping all of my loved ones achieve their dreams. 

It turned out I’d built my house on sand, and I had to figure out how to rebuild the whole thing on solid ground. 

In 2014 I was lucky enough to fall in love with a truly beautiful person. This time, I’ve kept my eyes (mostly) on my own growth, both personally and professionally. If I’ve learned anything, it’s to focus on my relationship with myself as much as our romantic relationship. 

Love is such a gift, and I’m grateful that my life is so full of it.

Family

My Step Dad died suddenly of natural causes in 2016. He’d been unhappy and in many ways it felt like a release, but it brought my fractured family face to face with a lot of truths we’d been uncomfortably ignoring for years. 

My Step Dad used to say that my Mum would never survive without him. Three and a half years later she’s still with us. She drinks and smokes less than she ever has in my memory, and she owns her own home, a lifelong dream. 

We all have our familial roles, and I couldn’t carry on with mine, “the fixer”. Anxiety stopped me in my tracks and caused everyone else to step in. I’ve since kept my hand closed when anyone has tried to pass back that weighty baton. 

Our complex history has rendered the expectations society attaches to titles like “daughter”, “parent”, “step-sibling” etc impossible for us to take on. The more we treat each other as the individuals we are instead, the easier it is to survive being tied together by DNA, shared memory and trauma. My Nigerian cousins on the other side of the family expect nothing of me, and their joyful smiles are a testament to their outlook.

My chosen family, my friends, began scattering across the globe as our mid-thirties loomed. Some of us rarely speak, and I have to hope they know I’d drop everything at a moment’s notice and get on a plane if they need a hug. Others of us send each other the purest expression of love daily, video clips of dogs. 

My sister wants this dog. Seriously.

I finally live in the same city as my sister Katy. Knowing I could walk to wherever she is in 30 minutes is a joy I can’t explain. It’s incredible. Seeing my sister-from-another-mister (I consider her mother one of my Mums) Tanya less often as a result of moving further away is more painful than I’d ever imagined. 

You can have it all, just not all at the same time. 

Working for yourself 

At the start of the decade, I was a terrible boss to myself. 12-15 hour days, 7 day weeks, the pay was terrible and usually late, I never took any holiday, I didn’t congratulate myself for anything, and I often worked with people I really didn’t like.

None of those things are true anymore - in fact I’m a pretty good boss to myself these days if I do say so myself. 

My biggest challenge is self-doubt. Someone once said to me that if another person read my CV and kept asking me “so what have you done?” I’d be furious, yet I do that to myself often. Sometimes I read my own LinkedIn just to shut myself up.

Over the past 10 years I’ve been a; writer, programmer, producer, promoter, PR, radio plugger, marketing consultant at record labels, music festivals, magazines and arts organisations, artist manager, choreographer, raised tens of thousands of pounds, funding judge, teacher, coach, public speaker, trustee, mentor, run a company, and probably various other things I’ve forgotten. I’m super proud of that list.

Teaching at the Roundhouse in Camden

The only thing I have formal training in is contemporary dance. I’m walking proof that pretty much everything is figureoutable. The next stage is figuring out how to take everything I’ve learned and pour it back in to my own career. 

I want to write a lot more, and plan to release a new audio project in the spring. 

Working with others 

Something I’ve noticed when freelancing is that sometimes the reason the contract isn’t a formal job is so that the client doesn’t have to fall in love. “Employers” often expect a deeper level of commitment. We’ve all resigned at some point and experienced a response similar to a breakup, tantrums and all. Sometimes it’s worth the investment, and sometimes it’s simply not. 

Managing musicians was the most extreme version of that I’ve ever experienced. It’s a marriage. You’re not just responsible for someone’s career, you also feel responsible for their happiness. 

Pim Stones, one of the talented artists I’ve co-managed and whose loving fans still email me weekly demanding to know what he’s up to.

As a dancer you crave continuous and meticulous corrections, in order to improve your technique and not get injured. How’s my turnout? Was my timing off on that jump? Was that actually a barrel turn or did I just do something that felt really nice? You’re not looking at yourself in a mirror all day for fun, and you’re very aware you can’t be objective about yourself and fly through the air at the same time.

I tend to show love by giving a lot of feedback, in both my romantic relationships and as an artist manager. Whether people are ready to hear it or not.

If you haven’t had a dance training, that probably feels really hard, because society generally attaches shame to criticism. That’s why I don’t tend to manage musicians anymore, but I do offer consultation (hell yes you can pay me to offer you my feedback!).  

A dear friend said recently that the reason I have a good critical eye is that I’m an artist myself. She then said some other very flattering things I won’t repeat here. I do know that I really love art, and my motivation always stems from that love. 

As a marketer and producer I’m drawn to working closely with visionary and original artists/ companies who are trying to do something different. That’s hard. They’re often quite complicated people. I sometimes wish I were drawn to big straightforward companies with substantial salaries. It hasn’t happened yet.

Some people turn their noses up at it but I like marketing. I like telling stories, producing interesting content and websites, figuring out what makes something interesting to the press, getting programmers and artists invested enough to integrate the storytelling throughout so that it feels seamless. I enjoy my work.

What I hope to change in the next decade whatever I do next, is how I work with others. Resetting your working patterns to reflect the fact that you’ve now spent 15 years paying your dues and learning your craft isn’t as easy as it sounds. 

You have to believe in your own powers.  

Life outside work 

My current view

What kind of plant are you? Figuring out the conditions you need to thrive and grow wasn’t something I’d considered until about five years ago. Work was front and center, and that meant living in London. 

Having moved to Brussels for love in 2015, then convincing my partner to move to Barcelona (because it’s awesome) in 2019, I find it hard to imagine moving back to London. Had you told me I’d do any of that in 2010 I’d have laughed in your face. I’ve written about it at length here. 

So now that I’m here, what’s next? Best case scenario would be a permanent flat with a spare room for visitors, preferably walking distance from the beach. With a view. A dog, ASAP. A lot more dancing to afrobeats. Quick road trips to the Costa Brava for turquoise snorkelling and to the Pyrenees for skiing. Growing some of our food. Meeting friends babies. Maybe children of our own. 

I couldn’t have had most of that had I stayed put. I’m not suggesting anyone move country (except my friends who should all move here immediately obvs), but I am suggesting everyone should figure out how to add as much joy to their lives outside work as possible. Which includes not working all the time, even if you love it. 

More important than what you do with your time is your identity outside of work. I lose track of the number of times I’ve asked someone how they are and they’ve responded with how their career is going and how hard they’re working. 10 years ago I used to answer that question “really busy”. No more! 

You are not your work. 

Personal development 

The biggest shift in my life this decade, has been going to therapy. I wrote an article entitled What Therapy Is Really Like for tiata fahodzi here.

I wish I’d started sooner, but as my therapist would say, be kind to your former self. 

Clore 11, the most lovely group of humans

My journey with personal development began when I was awarded a fellowship on the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme in 2014. It’s really prestigious, and I couldn’t believe I got in on the first try. It also came at a real crossroads moment in my career.

I’d tried working in so many roles and companies in the music industry and I was generally pretty unhappy apart from when working with my beloved PMOI teammates Jack Prideaux and Matt Ross, or my wonderful mentor Martel Ollerenshaw. 

I’d started in 2008 when I began blogging and producing club and live nights. I was young and inexperienced and didn’t have a clear idea of what working culture should look like. Quite frankly, much of it was really toxic. It’s starting to change now due to the hard work and bravery of certain individuals, but at that time it was a real boys club. I believe that to this day the music industry’s #metoo movement has been relatively mild in comparison to the level of abuse that has taken place because quite frankly where would you start?

Clore was a whole year out, doing course upon course on what good cultural leadership looks like. We also had a bursary for personal development and business coaching. I worked with two amazing coaches, but was left with a lingering feeling that I needed to address all of the dysfunction in my past that made for bizarre and funny dark jokes but had definitely left some deep scars.

Clore helped me to decide to step away from the music industry (at least for now), and back towards the funded arts sector, which is where I’d begun my career. I often say it feels like going to work in your duvet surrounded by puppies in comparison. There have been some difficult moments, but my mental health and overall happiness has definitely improved and this is an environment I can thrive in. If you’re a musician reading this, please know, it’s not you.

My step dad passing away and resulting anxiety was the final straw, and I began therapy in 2017. It’s been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. If you’re waiting for the right moment or scared you haven’t got time to fall apart, I would encourage you to just start - you will only ever feel better.

Finding and re-discovering your voice

At the start of the decade, I was “Amelia Put Me On It”. People would occasionally even stop me in the street and ask if that’s who I was, as though it were my last name. I’d found my voice by writing about something I loved dearly - music - and it had brought me a community and a platform. 

The beauty of starting in 2008 was that most music blogs were still fairly embryonic, so it didn’t matter that I didn’t know what I was doing - not many did. It wasn’t hard to write when my initial audience was less than 10 people. 

Writing about music, helping artists to get gigs or booking them myself, helping them to raise thousands of pounds, sign record deals, and all the other jobs I did behind the scenes brought me a lot of joy.

PMOI Live at The Old Queens Head in 2013. L-R Roxanne Tataei, Zezi Ifore, Marsha Smith, Samira Hamid Sharifu, Amelia Ideh, Eric Lau.

It also brought me a very, very small amount of clout. I was invited on radio shows and panels, interviewed in magazines, given guestlist and introduced to people as “Amelia PMOI” as though they should know what that meant (they usually didn’t but nodded very politely). 

What I naively didn’t consider, was that many of my very dearest industry “friends”, were in fact not real friends! Dear Reader, please stop laughing. 

When I eventually began to discover the true, transactional nature of our relationships circa 2013, I was crushed. Seriously, please stop laughing. 

I lost my confidence. I stopped writing. I slowly stopped putting on events. I went out less. I refused to make new friends if they did anything in music I could possibly help them with. I was hurt. It’s something I’m grateful to have worked through a lot in therapy.

It turned out that not writing was too hard. It’s how I make sense of the world. There’s a wonderful episode of The Happiness Lab podcast all about how sharing what we love with others makes us happy, and I really missed doing that. 

PMOI is now firmly in the past so I eventually began writing here on this blog. I’ve even written about how hard it’s been to get my head around doing so in a post I didn’t dare share on social media and innocuously titled Year 1 Progress Report instead of “I’m Often Too Scared To Practice What I Preach LOL”.

Yet here I am, spilling my guts about the most personal and in many cases deeply embarrassing parts of my personal and professional life over the past decade. 

I’m writing this for me, because it’s been fascinating going back over photos, writing, emails, notes from therapy and texts to try and remember what I’ve actually done and learnt this past decade. To remember that I have a voice and that silence doesn’t suit me. To remember I am not the same person who began this decade, which is my proudest achievement. 

I’m also writing this for whoever wants to read what I write. Because maybe something I’ve said will make you feel free to share your truth.

Happy New Year.