Are you the main character in your life story?

When I was in America a couple of years ago, I attended an event in a bookstore where they had an impressive range of book-related stickers for sale. It’s not often that you see stickers for the book-obsessed, or it’s not often that I see them anyway, so of course, I had to buy a couple.

One was a picture of a stack of books with the words, NO SHELF CONTROL and the other simply said MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY in bold black letters.

When I got back to the cabin I was staying in I stuck them both on my laptop, hoping that the MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY would remind me to write interesting and compelling main characters in my novels.

Shortly after that I became aware that #maincharacterenergy was a social media trend, encouraging people to become worthy protagonists in their own life stories. But what does this mean exactly?

When my son saw the MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY sticker on my laptop recently he immediately took the piss, joking that it could be seen as a narcissistic thing.

I was horrified. There I was, thinking that whenever I took my laptop to cafes to write I looked all creative and enigmatic, but no… it turns out I was proudly announcing that I had the world’s most self-obsessed personality disorder.

announcing to the world that it’s all about ME!

“Not that you’re like that at all, Mum,” my son quickly added. I was about to make him breakfast so he was probably panicking that I might spit in his coffee. But he did have a valid point.

No one wants to be that person – the one who thinks the sun shines out of their backside, and that the world and everyone on it should revolve around them.

But on the other hand, there can be nothing worse than feeling like your role in this life is to be an extra in someone else’s story, or even worse, everyone else’s story. Let me share a little tale from my own life to demonstrate…

Way back in the mists of time when I was twenty years old and had dropped out of university and was panicking about money, I took the first job I could get.

The first job I could get turned out to be working in the complaints department for a well-known frozen food company. The company was well known for being super cheap, which meant the food wasn’t the best quality, which meant there were a lot of complaints.

All day long my phone would ring off the hook with irate customers wanting to take their fury out on me. Sometimes they wrote furious letters too, which I would have to write groveling replies to.

My desk was at the far end of a very long, open-plan office, with row upon row of workers stuffed into cubicles like battery hens. Our ‘roost’ was ruled over by a dour Scottish woman of little humour, who appeared to be channelling the character Miss Jean Brodie from the Muriel Spark novel but unlike that character, she was most definitely not in her prime.

The company only gave us one 30 minute break at lunchtime, unless you were a smoker, then you were allowed to take an extra ten minute ‘fag break’ every morning and afternoon (ah, the halcyon ‘health and safety be damned’ days of the 1990s!) Needless to say, I was soon smoking like a chimney.

I worked in that job for four long, smoke-filled years and most days I would have lunch in the staff canteen but sometimes, when it all got too much, my friend Jeanette (who worked on Reception) and I would hotfoot it to the local pub, which was a 5 minute drive away.

Now, getting to the pub, ordering a drink, drinking said drink and making it back to my desk in 30 minutes, required Olympic levels of speed and commitment and obviously, on some occasions, I’d be a minute or two late.

To get back to my desk, I had to walk past the Dour Miss Jean Brodie Dragon, who had stationed herself right by the only door, facing the giant clock on the wall. Every time I was even a minute late the exact same thing would happen.

I’d make it a few feet past her desk, allowing myself the slightest sigh of relief that I might have got away with it but then I’d hear it. (I want you to imagine the line that follows in the most high-pitched, nasal, elongated Scottish accent possible.)

‘Is … every …thing … all … right … Shiv …awwwwwn?’

I would come to a halt and slowly turn, heart sinking, to find myself fixed by her icy stare, her ‘Twilight Teaser’ painted lips tightly pursed.

‘Yes – I’m sorry – I…’ I would stammer, my face flushing from a mixture of the swiftly downed vodka, lime and soda, the breakneck race back, and my frustration at this buttoned-up [bleep] of a woman revelling in her pathetic little patch of power.

I’d then get a scolding about time-keeping in front of the office before slinking back to my desk to write yet another groveling apology letter.

Dear Sir, I’m so sorry you found a frozen maggot in your frozen peas…

On days like that I would think back to my childhood dream of becoming a writer and want to cry at the cruel irony. Yes, I was getting paid to write but not the books of my dreams. Pretty much the furthest thing from it.

Looking back on that time now I can see so clearly that I didn’t feel like the main character in my life at all. I felt like a bit part in the story of the office and an extra in the life of my manager, with no call to adventure or quest to call my own, other than to turn up at the office day after day like a good worker drone. I was going through the motions, a character desperately in need of a plot.

The truth is, we are all the main character in our own life story because we experience the world through our eyes and our own unique perspective. And I believe there’s a way of navigating this in which you can be both empowered and empathetic.

Main character energy means taking control of the plot of your life when you feel unfulfilled, sidelined and stuck.

You can embody main character energy whilst also respecting it in others. As long as you have this balance right, adopting a main character mindset can be so liberating and lead to much joy and fulfilment.

I finally started behaving like the main character in my life in my twenties when I returned to my long held dream of becoming an author and I taught myself how to write books.

I also left that crappy job – and I’ll never forget the shocked look on my boss’s face that sweet moment when I handed in my notice. It was as if she’d realised that I was an individual person with my own story to live rather than an extra in hers, for the very first time.

The next few years weren’t the easiest but I kept moving towards my goal, slowly but surely, until finally, I got my first book deal, and in doing so, my story really began.

So, how about you?

Has reading this rung any bells for you?

Do you feel as if you’re living your life to the fullest, or are you more at the mercy of other people’s stories?

Something to ponder perhaps, along with the question: If my life were a story, what would an inspirational main character do?

If you’ve enjoyed this post I’m happy to share that it’s taken from a new non-fiction book I’m writing, which is all about the transformational power of seeing your life as a story, so there will be a lot more fun stuff to come here on this theme. And talking of more fun stuff to come…

Dream Dare Do

When I started writing this weekly Substack letter over two years ago, it was born from a desire to shake up my life after the pandemic. Or perhaps, ‘come back to life after the pandemic’ would be more accurate.

I was acutely aware of how small my world had become and how I’d stopped seeing the wonder in the everyday and the joy in the simple things.

I hoped that if I had to write about wonder every week it would force me to change my life for the better.

It worked.

So much has changed since I wrote my first post.

First, I downsized my work life to only writing books and this letter, to end my feeling of burnout.

Then I started taking solo trips around the world in search of wonder and to see if I had what it took to rock up in a new place on my own and live and work there.

It turned out that I did.

So I downsized my entire life to the contents of a suitcase and gave up my home in the UK to write my way around the world.

18 months later, I’m still living as a nomad writer but I’m currently spending a lot of time in the UK to be there for my dad as he experiences some health issues.

Through it all, I’ve sent out this letter every Sunday, sharing a tale from my travels and wherever I can, a lesson I’ve learned along the way.

And without doing any marketing, the number of readers has slowly but surely grown from a handful of friends to hundreds of people, and writing this letter and receiving your lovely comments and messages in response has become the highlight of my week.

So, as I look ahead into 2025 I’m going to be putting my Substack platform at the heart of my work life and expanding my offerings here. The joy of Substack is that it’s not just about newsletters anymore - you can offer video and audio content too. Anyone fancy a weekly voice note or podcast? A fun-sized course? Or a monthly workshop?

In the spirit of this expansion I’ve decided to change the name of my Substack to Dream Dare Do - as that’s what I’m hoping to help people do - but still with a sprinkling of wonder-dust too.

Buy me a coffee?

A lot of writers put some or all of their offerings on Substack behind a paywall.

I was very clear from the beginning that I’d never charge people for this weekly letter. I know what it’s like to be broke and I’ve always liked to help people for free whenever I can.

Having said that, this is my livelihood and I do put a lot of time and effort into writing these posts. And I’ll obviously be putting in a lot more work on the other things I want to offer here.

Then last week, a friend told me about ‘Buy Me a Coffee’.

Put simply, this is a fun and super affordable way to support people who work in the creative arts.

If you want to show your appreciation for their work you simply make a donation through the Buy Me a Coffee app (for the price of a coffee).

As someone whose life’s work has been fuelled by coffee - I’m writing this post to you jacked up on a double shot Americano - I love the idea of this.

photographic evidence of my coffee addiction

So, if you find these weekly musings of mine helpful, inspiring or entertaining and you’d like to thank me by keeping me caffeine-fuelled I’d be hugely grateful.

All you have to do is press the button below and it will take you to my Buy Me a Coffee page, where you’ll be given a couple of options (about how many coffees you’d like to buy me!)

As Dream Dare Do expands into audio content, courses and workshops, in addition to the Sunday letter, I’m so excited to have found a way for people to show their appreciation for my work if they can afford to and at an amount they can afford to.

Huge thanks in advance and I’m so looking forward to sharing more good stuff about living life to the wonder-fullest.

Siobhan