How do you folks out there feel about the number thirteen? Is it a mystical bringer of curses? A sign of bad dinner guests or strange lunar-solar phenomena? Anyone suffering from triskaidekaphobia in the crowd? Right now, I just feel like it’s spelt weird, and I’m wondering if that’s a rumour of what dyslexia is like – you look at a word, knowing that it’s familiar, but it just doesn’t seem right at all. I get that feeling a lot, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t seem to affect my spelling. I do edit as I go though, so maybe I just fix things on autopilot and don’t notice.

I forget, but writing has been my main thing since I was maybe six years old, when it was just the homework that created the least amount of suffering (though I still hated it and hid under a piano stool in a vainglorious effort to avoid it). I mean I’ve actually spent quite a long time learning how to write. How to ‘do writing’. I’m one of these self-diagnosed autistic people, but apart from that I can tell you I did not enjoy a lot of childhood, and I didn’t get good grades at school until I was maybe… well… could it have been 13?

Nah, it was around 12 and again, writing was what showed me the way. My Dad had forced me to learn a lot of the basics, and I appreciated that because it got me through school and because he was my Dad. But apart from the regular nod of confirmation I got from him that I was making progress, I remember specifically an English teacher. (I can see her face but I can’t remember her name right now.) Other things had been making me write more creatively and descriptively, including her classes, but there was one time I wrote this description of a scene under the ocean, and the way she talked to me about it – was as though I was a REAL writer, not just some snot-nosed kid going through the motions.

I guess I’ll always remember that as one of those precious early moments when I felt like I’d actually achieved something in the world.

Speaking of, I actually meant to write this about self-esteem. Been ruminating lately, this morning in particular, that I’ve spent most of my life incapable of finishing a big writing project. And this was not for lack of imagination. I could plan out a story and characters at quite a serious range. I could remember details and plot points, pull them apart, reconstruct them. I could sit doing research for hours, make comprehensive and informative notes. String ideas together, even obscure ones, so they made some kind of sense. I had all the ingredients that would develop into a bigger story at my fingertips.

But I hated myself. Which translates to, “this is a waste of your time” and “no-one will ever care” and “how will you make enough money to survive doing this?”. This was while I was making no money, was primarily unemployed, had a developing alcohol/binge-drinking problem and was habitually depressed. For a lot of my life, my imaginative capacity has been turned in on me. When I was a kid I would envisage impossible but startlingly realistic horrors poised to attack me at any and every moment. As an adult, I would find abstract and emotionally powerful methods of making myself feel worthless at any given moment of happiness or success.

To quote the Dude, “This is a bummer, man. It’s uh… a bummer.”

But you know, you spend maybe 20-25 years more or less actively trying to resolve your permanent depression and low self-esteem and, well, it’s funny, you actually make some progress. I’ve managed to make progress. I’m gonna say the mushrooms helped, for sure. I’m gonna say – controversial here – the drinking helped, at least in that ‘trial by fire’ kinda way that it put me in situations I never would’ve got into otherwise. Learning a bit about how to exist around people and making some good friends possibly helped most of all.

So it’s nice, you know? To feel like progress has been made. And in writing terms, I can now churn out a 2,500 word article in about three hours (the research – both accidental and deliberate – for that kinda speed takes a lot longer, but you accumilate ‘research’ all the time, so that’s not too big a problem).

I have folders with structures for bigger fiction stories. The most developed one on paper maybe has 10,000 words, building a world that my characters can live in. And it’s not like when I was kid – that I get bored or impatient after a page of writing. No, this is stuff I’m constantly coming back to, investing the time and effort, enjoying making these things come alive, however much I’m capable of that.

The anxiety and the doubt is still there – at this point I think it’s just part of my personality, and possibly quite an important part. But I’ve managed to circumnavigate or trick it enough that I can pursue bigger projects that I care about. And I just wanted to take a little moment this lunchtime to celebrate that. (And tempt fate I guess, hahaha.)

Number 13 factoids

Back to thirteen – because I refuse to abandon it as an evil number, shunned and chased about the streets like a leper, so visible it can’t be looked upon.

Apparently, the Knights Templar were (mostly) destroyed on 13 October 1307 – and as both an anarchist and a pagan I consider that an excellent sign.

Medieval monks struggled with thirteen because some years would have 13 full moons (about 37 in every 100 so I’m told), but they planned their church calendar around 12 full moons. And again, I laugh at their self-imposed misfortune. The pagan calendar has, roughly, four seasons divided into two subsections each. So eight periods of time that correspond more to vibe and plant behaviour than calendar date. We never really needed to worry about making people show up to the correct Saint’s day, because we just had a nature festival when the local village felt that time was right for a festival.

Thirteen used to represent femininity in ancient cultures because there’s that many lunar (and so, often, menstrual) cycles in a year. And Christian Patriarchy didn’t like that, so suspicions around the number grew.

I don’t have any issues with my Earth Mother though, and it always makes me smile a little that when we grow in the womb we all start with a female template – that’s the base model for humans. The Y chromosome makes it transform into a filthy mutant male (just kidding, I love men; even if they’re filthy mutants – that’s what makes them appealing).

By the way the term “patriarchy” comes from the five patriarchs of Graeco-Roman Christian faith – they were like five popes, basically. Christianity as we know it now (i.e. post-Roman) is very dad-orientated, but earlier Christianity includes women. Check out the gospel of Mary if you can. Seems to include women and psychedelics, and is therefore very wise. Possibly I imagined the psychedelics (religious cults of the time used hallucinogens and mild-altering plants a lot).

Thirteen is probably when a lot of people really get into puberty, so I can see why there might be some kind of primordial concern associated with it. But puberty is as great as it is terrible, and it’s a pretty necessary part of life for most folks. I reckon thirteen is more or less the same. It’s a funky little number, and not so bad for you.