Perceptions versus reality
In a Vegas hotel room, I did a deal for ghostwriting a book. It’s not as glam as it sounds
Hello! Happy day after Bonfire Night. I hope you enjoyed it / enjoyed avoiding it, like me. And thank you, as always, for reading The Honesty Box.
Today, I’m going to tell you about a trip to Las Vegas, where I did my first (and only - so far) ghostwriting book deal a few years ago.
This story is really about perceptions versus reality. I’m definitely a compare-and-despair type, and admit to feeling envious about other people’s lives sometimes. But what’s really going on for someone is often quite different to what you think is happening, and my life is no exception.
So, on to my Vegas tale.
It’s a hot spring day in 2019, and I’m on the phone in Las Vegas, standing by the window in a large hotel bedroom on the 11th floor, looking out at a boiling blue sky and stark mountains beyond.
As I talk, I look down to a sparkling swimming pool where servers are delivering bright cocktails to people in swimwear on loungers, and once my call is done I’ll join them.
I’m in a hotel with a scratchy brown carpet which, along with the mountain view, is opposite a place where you can pawn guns
I’m on the phone to a new client, and she’s offering me a sum of money to ghostwrite a book for her.
She’s an entrepreneur, and we’re talking about how I’ll fly to Germany to spend time at her office and home, listening to stories about her business, before bringing them to life on the page.
It’s a really exciting moment in my career, and describing it now, I remember the trepidation I also felt about it.
And it does sound glamorous, right? Vegas, book deal, swimming pool, career advancement, adventure. I appreciate all of those things.
I feel like an outcast among the smiling couples and splashing groups who sit in the pool with buckets of beer
But the reality is, as I hang up the phone, I’m on my own in Vegas, and I feel lonely.
After staying at a fancy hotel on the Strip for a conference, I’m now Downtown, in a much cheaper hotel with a scratchy brown carpet which, along with the mountain view, is opposite a place where you can pawn guns.
Round the corner is the Heart Attack Grill where diners wear hospital gowns to eat “The World’s Highest Calorie Burger,” whose windows are plastered with posters of women in nurses’ outfits sitting in martini glasses next to the words: “Alcohol It’s Good For You!”
To cap it all, inside is a large weighing scale where anyone over 25 stone can eat for free.
Beneath the façade or behind the words there’s often a bluer reality
The restaurant is on Fremont Street, a mall I’d spent the previous day pottering along, where groups of people chugged sugary alcoholic drinks from foot-long plastic beakers or flew along a zipwire overhead.
I’d also sought out local cafes and a yoga class, and been to the Neon Museum, which exhibits some of the city’s beautiful old casino signs (those are three things I really enjoyed).
But as I get off the phone and step into the lift to the pool, I feel quite alone as I’m carried along by groups of people heading outside.
I’m excited to sunbathe in the April sunshine and head for a round sunlounger set back from the pool, but after a few minutes, hotel staff ask me to “scooch off” as they say it’s reserved (hours later, no-one turns up).
I spot a single sunbed among the rows and order a cosmopolitan. I feel proud of myself for doing the book deal, and I’m looking forward to reading magazines and doing a few laps.
But, as the day wears on, I feel like an outcast among the smiling couples and splashing groups who sit in the pool with buckets of beer.
Is there anything you’d like me to write about? Freelance journalism life (yes, sometimes it is feast or famine), what it’s like to be an auntie (which I LOVE, but I always thought I’d be a mum too), anything else? Leave a comment and let me know.
A single woman alone in Sin City can only mean one thing, I feel, and so I go back to the room with the scratchy carpet for a takeaway salad and an early night.
I did choose to spend time alone in Vegas (and I appreciate having the means to do so), but with hindsight I’m not exactly sure why.
Sure, afterwards I pitched and wrote a story about my time in Vegas – as it’s often strange experiences, new angles or unusual adventures that editors are interested in commissioning.
But the perception (doing a book deal in Vegas) versus the reality (lonely and feeling like an outsider) is really quite stark.
Beneath the façade or behind the words there’s often a bluer reality, (and this is nowhere more evident than on Instagram) and I’m interested in what’s really going on for people.
I guess I wrote about Vegas because I want to show that while sometimes life looks glitzy, dig a little deeper and there’s swirling self-doubt there, or some kind of sadness.
And I reckon if we were all a little more honest about what’s really going on for us, we might connect better and be kinder to each other. High rollers included.
Things I like
Dr Alex’s honesty
You might remember Dr Alex George from Love Island a few summers ago (I promise I’ve barely watched it!) – he was the slightly less hunky one who actually had a personality.
Anyway, he’s a real doctor and he’s written a children’s book called A Better Day, which he describes as a positive mental health handbook. I haven’t read it yet, but his Instagram is full of honesty about his mind, his body and having dyslexia. High five to him.
Bankers behaving badly
Always late to the party with TV series, but my latest guilty pleasure is Industry (on BBC iPlayer), a drama about graduates in a London banking firm that first aired in 2020.
It’s on to its second series now and is full of sex, drugs and hangovers and was written by two ex-bankers, so they apparently know what they’re talking about. The FT interviewed them and some real City workers, with one saying: “This is the closest to reality I’ve seen.” Very bad behaviour, but great telly.