Hey everybody, it's me. Katie asaurus, and welcome back
to infinite Quest. This week's Tuesday, episode is
a very special episode because it is a recording of a speech
that I did. For those of you who didn't
hear, I was asked to do my first speaking engagement as Katie
asaurus recently and this is the speech that I wrote, It's a
speech about a poem that I love called the wild geese by Mary
Oliver. And I actually practiced this
live on my twitch and a lot of people ask me if I wouldn't mind
posting this as a recording because they wanted to listen to
it again and they wanted to send it to a few people and honestly
just meant a lot to me that y'all asked for it.
So I thought I would give you a fresh clean, shiny recording
copy and then that way you can all, you know, accidentally send
it to Ted Talks. So, without further Ado, here is
a speech. About a poem by Mary, Oliver by
k.t. Osborne, you do not have to be
good, you do not have to walk on your Used for 100 miles through
the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft
animal of your body. Love what it loves.
Tell me about despair yours and I will tell you my, meanwhile,
the world goes on, meanwhile the sun and the clear Pebbles of the
rain are moving across the Landscapes, over the Prairies
and the Deep trees, the mountains.
And the rivers, meanwhile the wild geese high in the clean
blue are are Being home again, whoever you are no matter how
lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to
you, like the wild geese, harsh, and exciting over and over
announcing your place in the family of things.
The first time I heard this poem, I rolled my eyes in all
honesty. The first 10 times, I heard it.
I rolled my eyes out, right? I thought stupid, birds, and
pretentious Landscapes cool. I'm bored.
Remember the stupid bird seed becomes important.
Later on for any of this to make sense.
I need to contextualize a little bit about myself.
And for this particular conversation, you need to know
that I am what I like to call a recovering burnt-out gifted.
And talented kid, I spent the better part of my academic My
career all the way through grad school, wildly succeeding, being
good at everything. I tried being lauded and praised
for my accomplishments and achievements, poor me, right?
However, I also spent those years living with undiagnosed
depression and ADHD, which meant that I constantly LED this
secret double life, we're at school at work in public, I was
fine, I was more than fine. I was usually the person people
looked at as his model of success.
The model of Movement, but I couldn't keep my room clean.
I lose things, I forget things, I'd come home from playing
Hamlet to a bedroom. I couldn't walk in because I
couldn't muster the energy to do the laundry.
I'd have meltdowns over the dirty dishes that I'd have to
move off of chairs to get my A+ homework done.
And I thought what is wrong with me?
What is so broken about me that everyone else around me?
Can have their stuff together. But here I am, I have to fucking
master's degree. And I'm playing Hamlet, but I
can't load the dishwasher. I must be broken.
I must be a failure. And I internalized that and I
entered into this cycle where I strive for absolute perfection,
in all things only to burn myself out which would result in
mistakes or mishaps or what have you, which would result in just
affirming. The idea that I'd started with
that, I was a failure that I was a burden that I wasn't enough.
And so I doubled down on trying to be the most perfect in the
cycle. Would repeat itself.
It was exhausting and so I just quietly shove all of that deep
deep down and ignore it because I Want to address it.
I didn't want to admit it. I didn't want to be a bother,
and that's a real thing. I have always been a very
independent person. I am loath to ask for help, I
despise admitting weakness and true story.
I have almost died twice because I didn't want to be a bother to
anybody at the hospital. I am not good at not being.
Okay, funny thing about being, okay, this past year has been, I
think we can all agree a year that hung on a Razors Edge of
being, okay, and fine, and coping, and being profoundly.
Not. Okay, for me in particular, I
found myself in a very odd set of circumstances.
I've worked in theater and the performing arts for over a
decade. It is the thing that I
wholesaled Voted my life too and then in less than a week,
everything I ever knew everything I had planned on an
anticipated and worked for and hoped for disappeared.
An entire industry disappeared overnight, my friends lost their
jobs, lost their livelihoods. I got call after call from
friend after friend, panicking about burning through their
life, savings losing everything despair but not in the way that
any of us had ever experienced It was terrifying.
Suddenly, I had no anchor. I had no plan.
Absolutely, no idea what I was supposed to do with all of this.
And so I did what any good Elder.
Millennial does in a time of Crisis.
I turned to social media and it was surreal because the same
friends who I knew were experiencing homelessness the
same friends. Who'd spent hours weaving with
me on the phone about their life savings.
Driving up. They would post these Shiny
Happy pictures of themselves, you know, like hashtag blessed
has to stop. The spread and I thought, but
despair I've seen yours. I know yours and yet.
We are also scared to show ours to admit that we are struggling
to admit that fear to admit that uncertainty.
And for what Because we might wind up with a few less likes
than yesterday, but even more than that, I felt like a
failure. I knew the people around me were
struggling and hurting and going through these really hard
things. But here I was in my comfy house
being sad because I didn't get to play Hamlet anymore.
So I did the next best thing to Shakespeare.
I started making tick tocks, which I cannot stress enough was
never the plan. I told myself for years that I
couldn't possibly possibly be a content creator because of 1000
stupid reasons. You know, I wasn't funny in the
right way, it wasn't pretty in the right way.
I was too fat, too old to mentally ill.
I didn't know anything about video editing, but I needed
something to do. I needed something to hang onto.
And so I started talking about my struggles with being the
aforementioned burnt out, gifted kid about living with depression
and my struggles with late diagnosis ADHD and suddenly
people started noticing. They started listening first by
the dozens. Over thousands and by the
hundreds thousands than by the half a million.
And I realized that in the midst of this there was a need for
this conversation especially for people like me people who are
loathe to ask for help, but who struggle in secret, the people
who have spent a lifetime burning themselves out, never
feeling like they were good enough.
Internalizing every failure and every struggle as a moral
failing being constantly exhausted by this toxic idea
that we are by the very nature. Nature of our existence in
imperfection, not enough. Remember what I said earlier
about the stupid birds Mary Oliver says tell me about
despair yours and I will tell you mine and the people who had
joined this conversation with me did over and over.
By the hundreds, I'd get messages and emails and letters
and cards. From people saying the same
thing that no one has ever told me that it's okay to fail.
No one has ever told me that it's okay to struggle.
No one has ever told me that I'm not a bad person.
Or not being able to do the things.
That seemed to come so easily to someone else and I thought cool
but I'm just some jackass on the internet.
Who knows how to word good. It's not like I'm special.
So one day for whatever reason Call It, Whatever You Like God
or fate or the Universe, I heard that stupid poem about the birds
again. But this time it was read to me
by someone, I loved someone who would spend the better part of
the Year, trying to break down. My defenses and get to know me.
Be authentic me. And who had?
And this circumstances, quite literally traveled hundreds of
miles to do. So.
And so, for whatever reason on a day, I listened And suddenly out
of nowhere, this poem had the audacity to smack me in the
face. With this Inconvenient Truth
that I've been pushing the side for far longer than a year, 510
a decade like half my life. The fact was I was filled with
Despair and I had been for years.
I was filled with self-doubt. I was filled with this feeling
of constantly and forever, being a failure, being less than being
lonely, feeling placeless. And then suddenly here, I was in
this incredibly weird position of being someone that hundreds
of thousands of people look to for guidance and advice and I
still felt at the end of the day, like I was never going to
be good enough. That I was a fake and failure
and most importantly, like I didn't deserve any of this here.
I was talking openly and honestly, about my struggles
with mental illness and neurodivergent, see, for the
first time, but I still couldn't keep my house clean.
I still couldn't find the motivation to fold my laundry, I
still lost my keys. I still struggled and failed and
I assuredly was not perfect. And then in that profound moment
of Ting. I actually heard the first line.
You do not have to be good and I thought, what if that's true?
What if maybe I don't have to be good or perfect or exactly?
The thing that I've convinced myself that I need to be to be
perfectly happy? Maybe just maybe I am enough, as
I am, maybe what I have to offer.
The world is my imperfections and my struggles and how Tim
hard it is for me too. Remember to shower and brush my
teeth sometimes. Maybe the offering of my despair
is enough, maybe the sharing of my struggle is enough.
The act of speaking and starting these conversations about my
imperfections are enough. And so I went from being vaguely
annoyed at a poem about pretentious stupid birds to
having some of that poem permanently tattooed on my arm
as a reminder that I do not have to be perfect.
I do not have to crawl on my knees for 100 miles to the
desert repenting. I can love what I love
imperfectly and I would invite all of you.
All of you who are listening today to do the same, You do not
have to be good. Listen.
You do not have to be good. Your struggles, your failures,
your difficulties or challenges. They are all part of the sum
total of who you are, and who you are, is extraordinary.
Every person has something to offer the world unique gifts,
unique out, looks unique perspectives, and that
expectation. And that pressure that we put on
ourselves to do it perfectly and precisely.
Internalization that are failures Define us that we are
inherently broken. Because we are imperfect and
because we struggle, you do not have to be good.
Living authentically, living honestly, living in conversation
with who you are and what you have to give right now.
In this moment that is what you bring that is, what you have
already brought by the very virtue of your existence into
the family of Things that is how we uplift each other and support
each other and build a community that thrives in the challenges
that thrives in The Bravery of boldly offering ourselves to the
world imperfections and all you do not have to be good.
Forgive yourself. If you take one single lesson
away from my ADHD ramblings today, it is that you have the
power to forgive yourself for what you may very well perceived
to be moral failings, things that make you inherently
imperfect and broken and flawed. But I'm here with you today, to
remind you, that you are not a bad person.
When you struggle to do the dishes, you are not
intrinsically broken because you might be disorganized Or run a
little late. You do not have to be good.
You are worthy of love as you are in all of your flaws.
In all of your failings you are worthy even if you cannot right
now in this moment love all of yourself.
Love all of your faults and failings accepting love
accepting. The love that offers itself to
you as a member of the family of things that is a place to begin.
You do not have to be good. There may be days when you
cannot do the laundry, but you cannot find your keys or you
forget to call your mom, give yourself permission to fail,
give yourself permission to be imperfect in your struggle
imperfect in your Solutions, perfect, only in the attempt to
learn to, forgive yourself and embrace that embrace the
opportunities you find to learn and grow and struggle.
Because whoever you are, no matter how lonely, no matter how
imperfect, the world offers itself to your imagination.
Today, I challenge you to announce yourself
unapologetically without shame without guilt, without fear,
with all of your glorious, imperfections into the family of
things. And that's it.
That's the end of. This Tuesday's episode will be
back on Thursday for another regularly scheduled episode of
infinite Quest. But in the meantime, if you like
this episode, feel free to reach out and let us know.
You can send us an email at infinite Quest podcast at
gmail.com and hey before you go I wanted to let you know that if
you're listening to this on Tuesday when it's released, we
are now officially less than 10 days away from Eric, moving to
Georgia to start working on infinite Quest.
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remember to take your meds, remember to drink some water,
remember to eat something, remember to be kind to yourself.
Self and kind to others and we'll see you later.
Have a great day everybody.