Episode 15 - Julia Disappears In A Puff Of Smoke

HELLO I’M HERE, I’M BACK, HELLO.

For the last 8 months, I’ve had to hit the brakes on life for a bit, as the autoimmune condition that I suffer from (but don’t talk too much about) flared up in a big way.

I’ve had this condition for around 20 years. It comes and goes and when it comes, I stop whatever it is that I might be doing at the time, and when it goes, I start again. But, at the end of last summer, I made the decision to disappear once more in order to recover but, I also decided that I would not reappear again until I truly had a handle on the whole blahdy thing. I didn’t know how long that would be and in that unspecified amount of time, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t socialise all that much, and, most importantly in the context of the HOW TO EAT ALONE project, I definitely haven’t been able to make any new podcasts for ages. All I’ve really been doing is making stews and walking the dog. I did briefly run 3 self portrait classes in October, but after that, I faded to black…

Enter, Spring:

I feel brand new, the medication that I have been waiting on for a long time has worked. And so, I am making podcasts again. I soft launched this first episode in a while earlier this week; it is an explanation, a thawing out, a sharing of thoughts about disappearing, about taking yourself off to recover and to not be afraid to smoke bomb, to Irish goodbye, to vanish, POOF, in a puff of smoke for a little while. We are taught that tapping out is not ok, but don’t listen, of course it is.

We are encouraged to always be ON, to be 7/11, 24 hour machines, to always be available, contributing, working, thinking about the next thing. Disappearing is not encouraged. But sometimes it is necessary, and I was encouraged to keep wearing my invisibility cloak until I was well and truly feeling stronger by Michaela Coel’s 2021 Emmy acceptance speech.

This is the first episode of many more that I have been incubating over winter. Some are already fully formed chickens, some half hatched but all will make an appearance in your ears (if you choose to listen to them, of course) in the next few months.

I’ve missed you.

Recipe for chicken and bean stew that sits alongside Episode 15 will follow by the end of the week.

---

Transcript for Episode 15 - Julia Disappears In A Puff Of Smoke, read by Julia Georgallis:

Hi! I’m here! I’m back after doing a disappearing act for the last 8 months. 

I had fully intended to keep putting out regular, monthly podcast episodes and newsletters after I moved the podcast over to substack. But I vanished in a puff of smoke some time at the end of August last year, I resurfaced briefly to run How To Eat Alone’s first ever event series, a self portrait class called DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, and the classes were great, they were super fun and I’m glad I got to do something tangible and in real life related to the project, but then promptly after the third one ended, I faded to black. 

I’ve mentioned in this podcast before that I have an autoimmune condition, so with certain autoimmune conditions what can happen is that you can have long periods of good health where you are asymptomatic, but then all of a sudden the condition flares for whatever reason, maybe for a few months, maybe for a few years and because of the unpredictable nature of my condition, I’ve always struggled with consistency, to hold regular, consistent work down because I’ve had quite long and often unexpected periods of poor physical and mental health caused by these flare ups and very often during times when I don’t feel well like these I tend to disappear into myself or physically disappear.  Whenever I’ve been sick in the past, the goal was to recover out of sight and then just pop up again and slot myself back into my busy little life as if nothing happened.  I’ve found it easier, historically, to work part time, or to work freelance or to work for myself, and I’d work two or more flexible jobs at the same time, as it has helped me to manage the uncertain nature of the illness. Pretty much since I started this podcast actually, I’ve been going through a flare up of monumental proportions, that have been getting progressively worse, which is largely why I record a few episodes and then I stop, and then I start again. But I have always been really hard working and I like to work and I think I’ve felt quite ashamed to admit that I just can’t work, so I don’t really talk about it. 

It wasn’t just the pandemic that galvanised me into starting the How to eat alone podcast, I’ve always had to stop and start a lot, be it with work or relationships so I’ve had to put myself in periods of isolation or periods of rest or just take myself away for a little while. And there’s lots of people like me, lots of people who are dealing with things that means that they have to hit pause on whatever it that they’re doing, not just physical illness or mental illness, maybe they have to suddenly become carers, I guess you could also say that when people go on maternity leave even though you’re looking after a child so you might be really busy, you might have to hit the brakes on certain other parts of your life like work.  So there are lots of different situation which mean we have to disappear for a while and I’ve had a lot of thoughts over the last few months about what this means and what it means to live your life that way, it’s just not something that’s really spoken about because we’re just supposed to keep on with this relentless rat race and not stop and just be 7/11, 24 hour machines who are always on and contributing and working on the next thing and thinking about the next thing and planning the next thing and feeling FOMO if we don’t do that thing. 

But I don’t want to do that anymore, and I haven’t wanted to be that way for a really long time, I thought I would share this this time as to why I have been so quiet, because I think with this bout of illness and this little quiet spell I really decided to take control of my health in whatever way that I could, so I was on a long waitlist for quite a while to start some quite intense immune suppressing drugs which would keep my condition under control and I started those in November, I was quite scared to go on them, but they’ve worked, they’ve been successful! I’m back to what I think is normal, I think this is what everybody feels like who isn’t ill. I think I’m ready to re-enter the world again.  Not to say that I will be jumping feet first into anything, I still think there’s lots of reason to take things slowly and not burn out and not go too fast, because perhaps I can start to be consistent or not just drop off the face of the earth again.

And it’s nice because kind of idea of restarting or re-entering has coincided with spring. It was the start of British summertime yesterday, it was Easter yesterday which is a Christian holiday that reappropriated the pagan holiday that marked the beginning of spring, that symbolises new life, new beginnings. And so it feels really relevant to me that this first podcast back should talk about reconnection after a period of disconnection and isolation and being quiet and disappearing.  

Usually when I do my disappearing acts, I don’t talk about it, I just reappear and I’m always a bit scared of reconnecting or reappearing, because I’m comfortable in my own little world when things get a bit uncomfortable, and the older I get, it’s a bigger push and a bigger effort to rejoin. So it’s harder to get back to work or it’s harder to start socialising again or start dating again, I’ve had long periods when I haven’t done those things very much and then you have all this social anxiety. You think you might have forgotten how to talk to people or date or work!  I think as well every time I go back inside myself I come out again weirder or I come out again more awkward. And when I am in these periods of isolation or recovery or recuperation, I feel quite guilty for not contributing and scared that I’ll miss an opportunity or that I’ll be left behind somehow. 

But there’s a speech that has been on my mind over the last few months, it was an acceptance speech by the actress Micaela Coel, who wrote the brilliant ‘I May Destroy You’ for which she won an award for. In part of her acceptance speech she said: 

“Write the tale that scares you. That makes you feel uncertain. That isn’t comfortable. I dare you. In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible — for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success — don’t be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.”

I think her words ‘don’t be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.” have really encouraged me to keep on not putting out podcast episodes or not to work so much and to lay low until I felt better, truly, in myself. And it’s been really worth it. I’m not saying that you should quit your job and you should go and live in a cave for a while, I’m not saying that at all, I’m just saying that it’s really nice being introspective, and to make a full recovery and to not be afraid of doing that for yourself. 

So what have I been eating by myself during this period of not really doing a huge amount. 

Well, I haven’t been entirely alone actually. In fact, I haven’t really been alone at all and that makes me also feel a bit guilty for having a podcast about doing stuff by yourself but not really being alone. I find myself in such a different position to how I was living when I first started the podcast three years ago. I’ve said this before, I have always thought of myself as a professional single person, I really like my own company, I was very much expecting that I would perhaps always be alone or living by myself and I wasn’t really looking for any other way of living my life.

But a few things happened. The first is that a year and a half ago I met my partner and we have been in a long distance relationship since then, as we don’t live in the same part of the country.  And the second is the cost of living crisis, which has been unkind to us all, but very very unkind to single people like me - Apparently those living alone spend over 10% more of their disposable income than in households with two or more people. So I rented out the bedrooms in my house.  My best friend rents a room from me now. And then my sister moved into my house as well, very unexpectedly and very temporarily and so, for the last few months, I have been very much not alone, there’s been three of us in my house and a cat and a dog, my boyfriend visiting, and I am never alone for longer than a few short hours anymore. Which I thought I would find quite tough. 

But there is something about this NOT BEING ALONE that is different this time. So when I was in my 20s, my obsession with always being out, always being surrounded by people was very much out of desperation and I would hang out with people, or go out to just be OUT ANYWHERE just for the sake of not being alone. But that is different now, I have far fewer friends, I only go out to events when I want to, or when I feel well enough to or when I don’t have a good enough excuse not to. 

But, conversely, I am always surrounded now. However, the people who I surround myself with are very different kinds of company. They are people with whom I am so close to that they might as well be an extension of myself. They are people with who I actually feel like I am alone. I don’t mean that I feel lonely with them because I can’t connect to them. I mean that I feel as comfortable with them if I were alone with myself because I feel comfortable with myself. And I think maybe that was a goal of mine without knowing that it was a goal that could be reached. 

And so to answer the question of what I’ve been cooking, I still do a lot of cooking by myself. My housemate, my sister and my partner are all busy bees, we’re all still very much independent adults, we’re not obliged to eat together but I do still have more time than the others to cook and I’ve been cooking for myself and dishes that I enjoy eating by myself but I’ve been cooking dishes that are easily shareable if they need to be so dishes that are easily heat upable, dishes that make great leftovers, dishes that can sit on the stove for a while. 

My favourite thing to make for myself that might be shared with the others, recently, has been stew. We’re coming out of winter now and stews are associated with winter because they’re so warming and stodgy, but I think there’s a space for stew all year round and I wanted to share a recipe for a chicken, sausage and bean stew. I like this recipe because it’s a one pot meal, so it takes a while to cook but you can get a few lunches and dinners out of it. And I also like it because it’s got everything you need in it, it’s got veg, protein and it’s got carbs, if you’re veggie I reckon swap out the chicken for some meaty mushrooms but just don’t cook them for as long. I’ll put the recipe up on the substack page, but essentially what you want to do is you want to get a large heavy bottomed pot, I’d say something le-creuseut adjacent and then, heat up some butter, brown your chicken and chopped up pieces of sausages or you can also use chorizo.  Then, using a pair of tongs, onces everything’s browned and sealed, take the meat out of the pot and put it to one side. Make a mirepoix, so cube celery, carrots, onions throw that in the pot that you just browned the meat in, maybe with a bit more butter for 10 minutes ish. Crush some garlic, throw that in, add in some dried herbs like oregano and bay and cook those in the fat as well. Add in 2 punnets of cherry tomatoes unchopped because the heat will make them all burst and you’ll save yourself some time chopping tomatoes, add in the chicken, fry all that for another 15 minutes on a medium to low heat, cover it with stock, you can use veggie stock or chicken stock, bring that all the boil, then leave it to simmer with the lid on for about 2-3 hours, but in the last hour, add in some rice and I like to put in a can of mixed beans as well. Add in the sausage at the end, so maybe when you’re like 20 minutes away from everything being cooked. Once it’s all done, season and take off the hob - it’s a one pot meal and you can just keep going with it for as long as it takes to polish off, either by yourself or with housemates or whoever else is around at dinner time. 

I’ve got a few podcast episodes up my sleeve now, some I recorded months ago and never finished, some new interviews that I’ve recorded recently, but I’m really looking forward to sharing them over the next few months. This tiny episode was just to provide some proof of life and thoughts about disappearing and about having good friends and stew, so I hope you enjoyed it.  You can find out more information about the podcast at howtoeatalone.substack.com, sign up to the newsletter if you like, I only really send out a couple a month. Also if you like this episode or this podcast in general, please share it with someone who you think might like it too I would really appreciate that! I hope you enjoyed being alone with me and I’ll see you next time for the next episode of How To Eat Alone.