Breakfast at the Wolseley

This (what I hope will be an) ongoing series of ideas, stories and ways of thinking has nothing to do with AA Gill’s excellent book of the same name. I just have breakfast at the Wolseley with a friend or friends every fortnight or so and the conversation usually turns philosophical in some way. I’ve found that stories and ideas emerge in my head after we’ve said goodbye as I walk to work that encapsulate the thrust of those conversations. So I thought I would write those ideas, stories and ways of thinking down that emerge as I’m walking along Piccadilly.

I usually meet my friend the author and coach Hilary Gallo, but also meet others from time to time. I will not put words in my companions mouths. These pieces are just at attempt to map where my head goes after our breakfast conversations.

This story, or idea, came up after a conversation with Hilary about success some months ago. Over scrambled eggs we talked about how the goals you aspire to never feel the way you expect when they are reached. We began to wonder whether what you want evolves without you realising it from the moment you aspire to something, which would account for why success often feels so empty when you attain it.

As we left a memory appeared in my head about two visits I made to a music festival.

When I was in my late teens I used to go to the Reading Festival. These were the days of paper tickets when only VIPs got a wristband that allowed them into parts my paid for ticket couldn’t reach. I grew up in a small town in rural Hampshire and felt as far from my largely American musical heroes as it was possible to be. To be in such close proximity — separated by only a fence or a stage — to people like Cypress Hill, The Lemonheads, Soundgarden, Rollins Band and The Red Hot Chili Peppers was both exciting and absurd.

At one point I remember walking to the backstage area entrance and imagining how achingly cool it would be to be able to go in there. Hanging out with all the beautiful people, the successful people and the bands. I always got a buzz from the music, but had a gnawing feeling of inadequacy that I was not the kind of person — and never would be — allowed back stage.

I spent the next five years trying to find a way to earn money doing something I wanted to do rather than having to have a job. I got myself a role at the Idler magazine where I started as a dogsbody and eventually worked my way up to become Deputy Editor. I also learnt HTML and launched and ran the Idler website. Five years later we launched the Crap Towns project that subsequently became a best selling book and helped me become a writer. During these early years at the Idler I went to see bands but still hadn’t managed to become the kind of person who got to go back stage. I tried to be cool about it, but deep down it still bothered me. I think it’s plausible that my definition of ‘success’ was forged as a teenager somehow and the connection had been hard-wired. But then one day one of the Idler contributors who was in a band came into the office and mentioned he could get tickets for that year’s Reading Festival. Sensing my astonishment, he casually pointed out he could get me back stage passes for the weekend if I wanted to go.

The nineteen-year-old in me rejoiced. The twenty-four-year-old in me felt a kind of excited, but also if I’m honest entitled, sense of relief. I had finally made it. I would even get to camp in the back stage camping area.

I arrived at the festival and felt a frisson of joy when a dreadlocked man with sunglasses put on my VIP wristband and gave me a map showing how to get back stage along with the day tickets I would need to show for each day to get in to see the bands themselves. A few minutes later I walked past the memory I had of my younger self and the security man and entered the sacred space. I looked around inside. There was a bar. There were sofas. I saw a handful of people who I knew were in bands. Small bands, but they were in bands. I went to the bar and bought an expensive pint and met a man who was best mates with the lead singer from Reef. My chest filled out. I had finally arrived. I thought of myself at nineteen and toasted my success. There were even toilets you could use while simultaneously breathing in through your nose.

But then, in my reverie, I saw a gap in the fence a few feet away marshalled by two more security men and saw two people who were in bands showing something that allowed them to walk through. I walked over with my pint, showed my pass but the security men shook their heads. My dream collapsed. I felt exactly as I had when I was nineteen and couldn’t get in to the main back stage area. There was ANOTHER backstage area within this backstage area. And once again I didn’t have the right pass.

The fragile veneer of success I felt as I’d walked into the VIP area vanished. All I could now feel was the disappointment that there was another area I was not cool enough to get into. The bar that had felt so cool a second before instantly became mundane. The other people around me who were in bands were just on their way through to the other area. I had moved up in my imagined hierarchy of success only to now be taunted by another unattainable sanctuary of success within it I hadn’t even known existed before. And the very existence of this new sanctuary was sufficient to obliterate the joy I had felt in finally reaching the first one. My pint had gone flat. I felt a chill in the air. I wasn’t good enough. My shoulders hunched.

I enjoyed the bands over the next few days, but felt taunted by the knowledge that there was another area I couldn’t get into. I knew it was pathetic even at the time. It was absurd. But it hurt and I didn’t understand why. The disappointment drew its power from somewhere deep inside me that I hadn’t either the desire or navigation skills required to comprehend. I decided to go home a day early because the last day was Sunday and back stage camping had also proved to be miserable. It was worse because it was noisier on account of being nearer the stage.

I met my friend and when I told him I was leaving early he asked if I would swap my weekend VIP pass for the other Saturday Production Area pass he had going spare. It would be useless tomorrow. Then he could give my weekend VIP pass to someone else who was coming the next day. I suppressed the rising annoyance that all this time he’d had a spare production pass but consented eagerly, realising that this would finally get me into the ULTIMATE BACKSTAGE area.

The last band of the night were about to go on so I dashed back to experience the dreamy sanctuary. I ran through the outer security, waving my production pass as I went, and slowed down breathing heavily before I got to the final two security guards. They saw my pass and moved to let me through. As I went through they said ‘it’s all closed now, there’s nothing to see’ but I murmured something about needing the toilet and strolled through.

As I went in I could see steps that led to the actual stage and a group of men reaching the top and going out of my view, but other than that I could only see an empty space. There was a large tour bus parked up behind the stage that must have belonged to the band and a toilet block but that was it. My excitement began to deflate. This was not what I’d expected. Then I saw a caravan, slightly half-heartedly decorated with fairy lights. It was one of those temporary mobile home things set off to one side. My heart sank further. There was another backstage area within this one! I heard the crowd roar. The men I’d seen, Blur, had just gone on.

I looked again at the caravan. There was no security now. I walked towards it. No-one would know. I had finally reached the holy of holies. The inner sanctum of the back stage, back stage. What I’d been looking for must be in there. The core of my nineteen-year-old imagined definition of success was there for the taking. Or perhaps the experiencing. The door was ajar. I held my breath and pushed it open. Half expecting someone to shout at me but there was no-one around. I peered in expecting some kind of glow of warmth and triumph.

There was a knackered IKEA sofa covered in burn marks. A small empty fridge with a glass door and a bin liner on the floor. Not in a bin, just a bin liner full of cans and supermarket sandwich wrappers leaning up against the thin wall. There was a table in front of the sofa with an overflowing ashtray. The air was rank. I felt a curious combination of disappointment and disgust. I had finally reached the ultimate back stage area and there was nothing in there. I didn’t feel any surge of happiness or success.

I walked away baffled. I was completely confused. Why hadn’t I felt anything? There was nowhere else cooler it was possible to go in the entire Reading Festival site. I had reached the ultimate back stage area within the VIP section. Why didn’t it feel amazing and cool? I began to imagine how it felt to be in that caravan as Blur and feel what they felt on having got there. With a roaring crowd waiting for them, within this holy of holies. The cruddy caravan and knackered sofa surely must have felt different to them? As I walked back to my tent the feeling I was left with was that the absence of any buzz in being in the ultimate back stage area must have been because I hadn’t got there on merit. I had, after all, entirely blagged my way in. They had deserved to be there, so it must have felt different for them.

Over the subsequent two decades the memory of this experience has lingered. I think I have unwittingly been trying to get back to that crusty caravan on merit, the metaphorical holy of holies the back stage area represented to my teenage and twenty-four-year-old selves.

And I have now achieved things that my nineteen-year-old self would undoubtedly see as being enough to make me a ‘success’. I may not have reached the heights of Blur’s achievements, but given the chance the teenage me would take what I have done with my life so far. I did a book that was a bestseller, and have written others I’m very proud of. I started a successful company with two friends that now employs forty people and has had a positive impact on the world. I am married to someone I love with all my heart and I have three beautiful children. I have amazing family and friends. So I have finally got back to the caravan. On merit.

And what can I report now that I have made it back to my metaphorical caravan of success? Precisely what I had an inkling of the first time I went into it. There’s still nothing fucking in there.

Or, that’s not quite true. There is something new in there worth having. But I realise it wasn’t in the caravan until I (metaphorically) walked back into it the second time.

In the pursuit of my various ambitions I have changed as a person. I have evolved. I’ve become braver and faced my many fears. I’ve attempted to understand the way I respond to things and get out of the habits of behaviour I picked up unknowingly in the course of my life that have historically caused me a great deal of unhappiness. The process of trying to do things that have some kind of positive impact on the world has required me to change. To evolve how I think and behave. I have learned more about life and myself.

My conclusion is that while we may aspire to specific achievements that become our markers for success, it is actually found in how you see yourself evolve as you live your life. Not the backstage pass, mythical amount of money or any of the other things we all hope and imagine will make us feel successful once we have spent our lives striving to attain them. And this is a crucial point. Because it means the feeling of success actually worth having is gained in the pursuit of the things you want to do — not necessarily in achieving them.

If you see the purpose of your efforts not in the result of those efforts but the journey towards them, then you are freed from the need to reach external markers and the hollow victories they bring.

The massive irony, of course, is that if you can live within this mindset that frees you from requiring external success in the pursuit of the things you want to do, then, guess what? Yup. You tend to actually achieve the thing you were striving for in the first place.

But, be prepared. If you do ‘succeed’ in the way you set out to, your reward will be to discover that achieving what you set out to achieve doesn’t feel the way you thought it would. The slightly annoying and empty feeling is just another lesson that will help you grow. And with a bit of luck, if you have had to push yourself very hard to reach your ambition rather than had it foisted upon you, your journey will have enabled you to gather the wisdom required to be able to accept this humble and irritating truth.

My new book, The Surfboard, is out on September 27th and can be pre-ordered now. For a limited time it will be on a price promotion.