About Me — Rosalind Pagan
Messy matriarch, dater of disastrous men, writer of provocative prose.
Sounds like there’s a story in that photo caption… There’s a story behind most of my bad dating decisions, so it’s a good thing I’ve made lots of them!!
Writing about relationships is a bit vulnerable and raw but I’ve also had some fun exploring my reasons for staying single. I’m rather partial to a feminist rant or two and that’s not always compatible with meeting new men without scaring them off.
Who am I?
Everywhere I go I seem to have a lot of doppelgängers. People are always telling me I look like someone they know. I’ve actually had someone argue with me on the street, trying to convince me that I was the person she believed I was. I guess I have a generic face but hopefully you will get to meet the real me through my writing!
The British Isles have been my home for my entire life, with the capital city Edinburgh in Scotland my birthplace, its castle built on an extinct volcano and surrounded by arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And of course JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books here.
I still live in Scotland, where we do indeed eat haggis made with sheep stomachs, the men wear skirts and we add a bizarre selection of words like crabbit and blether to our vocabulary to confuse the tourists. Or possibly as a throwback to when we all spoke Gaelic.
I managed to squeeze in my degree in speech and language therapy before starting a family. I was crazy young at 21 but the upside of having children in my 20's means being a young grandma and I’m looking forward to welcoming my first grandchild soon!
I like defying the stigma of age and if anyone ever suggests I inject a toxin in my face I will raise an eyebrow and sneer — I’m able to because my face still moves the way it should and I’ve earned every one of these smile lines, furrows and wrinkles.
The history of me — origins of a nerdy writer
My childhood was spent with my head buried in encyclopaedia and absorbing information about science, literature and the world around me. My goldfish was called Othello as it was a black moor and my gerbils, Monty and Rommel, the desert rats. I’m just realizing as I write what a precocious and pretentious child I must have been.
I still love science, linguistics and history and the intersection of these, being the science and etymology of language. One of my first ever — and pretty terrible— musings on Medium was on this theme.
At high school I wrote an English dissertation on Shakespeare’s villains — Iago and Lady Macbeth being my firm favorites. I’ve always been a bit obsessed with vampires and Sci-Fi — sadly the Twilight saga was just a couple of decades too late for my teen angst period, but my kids are really into Star Wars which makes me very happy.
Evolution of a nerdy writer as an adult
I believe that Susan Cain was right when she posited in Quiet, her brilliant book on introversion, that all the extroverts left Britain to colonize the Americas a few hundred years ago leaving all the introverts on our wee island to talk about the weather.
We do have a lot to talk about though! Buffeted by several seas and the Atlantic ocean, we can encounter every season in a day.
Working as a tour guide in a whiskey distillery a few years ago pushed me out of my introverted comfort zone. I had a captive audience and had to try to keep their attention throughout the tour. Trying not to go off-script and into all the scientific detail and magic of whiskey creation was the real challenge.
One of the few facts I remember about that job is that you can only legally call it Scotch whiskey if it was made in Scotland!
But I’ve come back to my first love of writing and focused on Medium just before the pandemic hit.
It’s been an incredible year of meeting new people in the virtual world, finding my feet as a feminist and spending far too much money on writing courses I never complete.
Non-writing things competing for my time and attention
I love running in the way that only runners can understand. It’s a form of meditation, setting your feet into a rhythm and just going forward at speed. If you manage to live somewhere you can get into nature and run through woods, glades and alongside rivers, you’ll feel lucky to be alive with every step.
I was struck with a new obsession for bouldering a couple of years ago — as sports go, it’s insanely easy to start. You just need a body that moves reasonably well and a pair of shoes.
The reason it’s so addictive is the challenge of pushing yourself to your physical limits and the sense of achievement every time you literally climb a ten foot wall with your bare hands.
A bit like writing, you get better fast by being in the flow, remembering to breathe as you grasp for each next hold confidently until you reach the top.
Flashback snap
I like to think that this photo of me as a small child sums up who I really am: Carefree on a beach with a random dog I had befriended and a cheeky grin on my face. Right down to the messy hair, dishevelled clothes and podgy midriff, I’d happily embody this character for the rest of my days. I’m not sure if I’ve ever grown-up really. And for as long as I can get away with it, I never will.
Fun facts about me, in no particular order, in importance or chronologically:
- I was a total Doctor Who nerd as a child — I kept a record of all the DW books I’d read in a mini-ring binder.
- I have five children who range from 11 to 29. I try not to write about them but sometimes I can’t help myself.
- I’ve acted on stage as the fairy godmother in the play Cinderella.
- I had a heart attack aged 43.
- I have a small device in my heart that will hopefully prevent me having another heart attack.
- My mum was adopted. I’ve always wondered if we have other family out there. It’s like our genealogy stops with her and we’ll never know. She was a war baby in 1943, very blonde and blue-eyed and my wild and overactive imagination makes me think she was the English offspring of a German officer.
Well, that was like pulling teeth telling you a bit about me! I think from now on I’ll let my writing do all the talking, as it were:
Feminism, justice and equality:
- The reasons why I’m no longer talking to men about sexism
- Myth-busting around domestic violence and gender
- The ever-present male privilege
- Gender pay gap musings
Life lessons, love and other stuff:
- 7 reasons to relish your single status
- On defying the perfect love story
- How do you measure success
- Find out if you have FOBO — the Fear of Better Options
- Should Anti-Vaxxers be allowed to call the shots?
- Make procrastination your superpower
Medium and writing:
- 5 Positive Reasons For You to Keep Writing in 2021
- How to shake off inertia and start writing
- How to run a second Medium account
- What to do about haters and trolls
If you’re still here and would like to join me on my Medium journey and read even more, do hop onto my email list and I’ll make sure to keep you up-to-date with my latest work. Thanks for reading!!