Taylor Tomlinson says it’s okay to change your mind

This post was originally published on Audible.com.

Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.

Haley Hill: Hey listeners, I'm Audible Editor Haley Hill, and today I'm so excited to be talking with Taylor Tomlinson about her debut memoir, Actually, Nevermind. This listen dives deeper into the neuroses behind her belovedly hypervigilant brand of stand-up comedy, offering sage one-liners on childhood trauma, sexuality, and a whole lot more. So, let's dive right into it. Welcome, Taylor.

Taylor Tomlinson: Hello. “Belovedly hypervigilant” is maybe the best description I've ever been given. Thank you so much. That was so accurate.

I'm so glad (laughs). I thought so, too. So, first off, as someone who's built your career behind a microphone, I'm curious, what surprised you most about recording an audiobook?

Ooh, that's such a good question. Because you would think that that would be the easiest part for me, right? It's the closest to performing onstage, it's the closest to doing stand-up. But I was actually a nervous wreck to record the audiobook. Maybe it's just because I had sat with the book for so long and reading your own writing back once you can't make any changes to it is a very specific kind of torture. So, I actually read it through out loud alone in my apartment the week before to sort of hopefully catch any things that I wanted to maybe tweak and then also make the actual process of recording the audiobook go by faster. I really do think it helped.

I was lucky that I had a great director who was very encouraging, because I went in that first day really, really scared and she made a point to say, "You sort of settle into it. But the first couple chapters, you're usually a little stiff and then you go back and rerecord those first few chapters and it ends up being a lot better.” So, I found the process to be a lot easier than I was anticipating, but that's only because I was dreading it.

It ultimately sounds great. I will say, coming from the Audible side, as audiobook nerds, we have loved so much how much you have been promoting your experience in the recording booth and all of that all over your socials. It's so fun to see, as just audiobook fans, that behind-the-scenes.

Oh, good. I'm so glad. I'm an audiobook fan. I love an audiobook. So, once it was done, it was fun to go, "Oh, wow. I'm going to be something people listen to for eight hours. That's pretty cool."

Definitely. It's a great listen. So, the memoir largely explores your relationship with your memory of your mother, who passed when she was the same age you're currently approaching. You mentioned toward the beginning of the listen that you've long understood there's only a finite amount of information for you to learn about your mother, all of which you say you already have memorized. But I assume you wrote that line before getting behind the mic to explore this relationship, even reading passages aloud from her journal entries. So, I'm wondering, did your experience recording this audiobook change that perception for you at all or bring your relationship with her legacy to life in any unexpected ways?

It was really emotional reading the excerpts from her journals that I had included in the book out loud. It was something that I went back and forth on including. And ultimately, there's only maybe two entries from her diary, two short excerpts—a line towards the beginning of the book, and then a letter she wrote to me in a journal shortly before she died. So, it's not a lot. I think it's sprinkled throughout. But I think the reason it was so cool to see it in print and read it out loud is because it was a way of publishing her, because I think she was such a great writer and it's been so amazing to include her writing and have my editors compliment her talent and for other people to see it. And it does make me sad that she never got a chance to write her own book, because I think it would've been far better than mine.

I think it was just very emotional, but I expected it to be. I think I saw that coming. And grief is so weird. I mean, you have years where you think about it every single day, and then you have other years where it's not at the front of your mind. It's just sort of in the background. So, it ebbs and flows, and I'm certainly not the first person to say that, but I didn't even anticipate that this book was going to be so much about my mother. I did not think that it would go beyond maybe one chapter. I’d talked about losing her onstage and I had talked about it in so many interviews that, initially, I thought maybe it's gratuitous to put it in the book. But when I came up with the idea for the book, which was, “Here are a bunch of essays about things I've changed my mind about,” I basically worked backwards when I was figuring out where to start, because it was purposefully vague, the theme, so that I could go anywhere with it.

I thought, "All right, what does everyone need to know about me? Like, what are the things that are going to show up in other decisions that I've made?" And the two things that kind of weave in and out of so many other things—marriage, sex, kids, et cetera—was religion and losing my mother. And losing my mother was what made me change my mind about religion and God at a young age. I can't write about myself without writing about her because my whole life is sort of a reaction to losing her. So many decisions I've made and so much about the person I've become is a reaction to her absence, and the person I became as a result of that loss, and this responsibility I feel to make the most of her gifts and talents, of which I received a sliver.

Speaking of identifying those things that you feel like everyone needs to know about you, you say in the audiobook that some experiences are so formative it feels dishonest not to tell everyone you meet forever. What differs in your approach to recounting those unavoidable and potentially unsavory details about yourself while doing stand-up versus writing memoir?

I mean, in a memoir, I don't have to be funny every 20 seconds, which was really uncomfortable for me, and at the same time, very relaxing. But it's a totally different approach, because with stand-up, you're trying to say something in the most concise way possible. You are trying to get the thought as short and punchy as you can. And then with prose, you're like, "Oh, I actually write all the thoughts about it. I explore every corner of it, and that's what I'm supposed to do." And so to shift my brain from short-form, the least-syllables-possible jokes into long-form prose did take me a minute, I will say, to shift. People like to say, "Oh, of course you're a writer, you write jokes." And I felt like it's completely different, though. I mean, it's like saying, "Of course you cook, you make amazing smoothies." It's just a totally different skillset. So, it was a very different process and a very different approach.

As far as revealing things that are so formative you feel guilty not telling people, I think there are certain facts about you, losing my mother being one of them, that it feels like if people don't know it about you, then you're not that close. And revealing those things helps people to get to know you better, or it explains your personality. The chapter that line is in is talking about playing clarinet and being lactose intolerant. And it does help contextualize you, especially if you've grown into this adult who seems like they really have it all together and have become successful or have become socially adept or what have you, to then reveal what you were like as a kid or a teenager or the things you went through, I think helps people understand why you maybe are not as confident as they think you should be, I guess.

That totally tracks. You are writing jokes all the time, and something I really appreciate is that you really never exposed too many details about the people in your life through your comedy. So, further exploring that difference between memoir writing and comedy writing, did you find it more difficult to strike that balance of preserving others' privacy while writing something as intimate as your memoir?

Thank you for saying that. I really appreciate that because I do try not to reveal too much about anybody who hasn't signed up to be a public figure. With dating, that's pretty easy. You can go, "I dated somebody once who…" Whatever I say, I try not to have it be too specific because everybody has their own experiences with you, so to talk about how somebody else felt or why they felt that way or why they did what they did isn't fair and probably won't be accurate. I tried to stick to my own experience as much as possible because, at the end of the day, I got the book deal and I signed up for this, nobody else did.

I mean, obviously my siblings, I had them read, the bits about them, but the entire book. I absolutely did not want to write anything about my siblings that they didn't sign off on or didn't feel comfortable with. I was so happy I did because there were certain descriptions that I had that weren't negative but didn't feel true to them or didn't come across the way I wanted them to, that they flagged for me to change. I'm so grateful to have that sort of relationship with them.

Granted, you don't have that relationship with everybody. You don't have that relationship with exes or estranged parents or former bosses or friends you've lost touch with. I think you have to be careful, and I'm not famous enough for anybody to care that much if I had any sort of tea to spill, which I don't, but even if I did, I don't think I would feel good about that.

What I really didn't want to do is I didn't want to overshare about my family. I didn't want to make being connected to me a liability. I didn't want people who are related to me to feel nervous to have conversations with me. That comes from being a stand-up for years and learning by trial and error. I mean, there have been lots of jokes that I ran past people in my family, or I was dating, and they weren't comfortable with them or would just prefer I didn't tell them, and I go, "Absolutely. We'll get rid of them."

I think when you're first starting out as a comedian or any sort of artist or writer, there's a real temptation to just go, "Well, everything is fodder for my art, and my art is God, and that's who I serve." But I think life will be very lonely like that, and there's plenty to say about yourself, at least I found that. I'm always happy to hear from people who've read the book that they find it honest and raw, because to me, I read it and I see all the things I didn't include. I'm very proud of that restraint, honestly, because when I was 22, I would not have had that perspective or wisdom, I think.

There's really nothing better than, like, I'm so subject to this anxiety and oversharing. I hate being a person who overshares, but I can't help it because I'm very honest and transparent.

Oh, when I was younger, I would tell anybody anything. Anything I had to say, any bit of trauma, any secret. As I've gotten older, I've realized, "Oh, I don't think I need to reveal everything. I don't think everything about me needs to be packaged for public consumption in some way."

I am currently 29, imminently turning 30.

How are you feeling about 29? Twenty-nine felt weird for me.

Twenty-nine, I've decided, is a year for growing pains. I have never been good with transition. I'm honestly looking forward to my 30s, but I woke up on my 29th birthday and was like, "Screw you. You're so far behind,” and all these things, and just focused on my flaws. And now all year, any little roadblock, I'm like, "This is the purging of my 20s flaws that I should outgrow." That's how I've been viewing it.

Oh, that's interesting. When I was 29, I felt embarrassed to be 29. I was kind of like, "You're still in your 20s, but kind of not." I was like, “It just feels like you've stayed at a party too long or something." The actual year was pretty good, looking back, and I was like, "Let me just be 30 already." And my 30s have been maybe the most growing pains I've experienced. It's like I thought I was going to stop changing once I turned 30, and it's been a wild ride the last couple years. But I will say, you do become so much more sure of yourself. Not even sure of yourself, just accepting of yourself in a way that people told me I would, and I was sort of like, "Well, it's just a number. I don't think I'm going to magically change overnight or something." But I really did feel a shift when I turned 30 and thought, "Oh, wow, okay, this might be me." I felt very settled in myself.

You wrote this one passage that really stood out to me on the topic. You said, "I complained about being in my 20s every second that I spent in them. Now it feels like a dream I had, a life that happened to someone entirely different. Younger me is scared of my present-day loneliness, but in awe of my stability. I'm jealous of her wild moods but terrified for her soul." I related to that so much, and as someone living on that exact precipice between the two decades, my next question was actually, do you have any advice for me on savoring the rest of my 20s before I hopefully turn 30 with grace?

I would just say enjoy saying you're 29, because I do miss saying I was in my late 20s. Like, I loved 27. I loved saying I was 27 because I felt like I was an adult, but still pretty young. Like, 27, 28 felt pretty cool to me. Twenty-nine, I was like, "Let's just hurry up and be 30 already." I will say, a lot of my friends are older because I started doing stand-up when I was a teenager, and so most of the people I was hanging out with were older. But to have older best friends who warned me, "Hey, your 30s, you're tired, it's harder to build muscle, you don't have as much energy," all these things that I kind of thought, "Well, not me, not that early." It does happen, and you do notice it, and you go, "Oh, man, I wish I had really appreciated just how much energy I had."

Being in your 20s, you have this sense of, "Oh, I have so much time. I have so much time to do things." And in my 30s, it's not that I feel that I don't have enough time, but I feel that I have considerably less of it. So, I would say just try to enjoy that you're able to say, "I'm still in my 20s," because it is hell being in your 20s, but as soon as you're out, you feel nostalgic for them in a really weird way. Maybe it's because everyone universally agrees that in your 20s, you don't need to have life figured out yet, and that is kind of lovely, that nobody expects you to have everything squared away. And then once you're in your 30s, everybody's kind of like, "Yeah, you should know how to do things."

I appreciate that. I mean, I've been screaming it from the rooftop, so I guess I'm following your advice already.

Okay, great. And then you get to your 30s, and then you start getting fed TikTok videos that are like, "If you're 32, you're in season 1 of Sex and the City, so don't even worry about it." And you're like, "I am. It's okay."

I was Carrie Bradshaw for Halloween two years ago, and that's the most cathartic show for me ever.

Oh, it's so good. Oh, my gosh.

Something I seriously related to was your description of that seriously satisfying feeling that comes from pairing the perfect food with a movie or TV show, especially during a traumatic period of time. Is there any snack you think would pair especially well with this audiobook?

Ooh, with this audiobook. I list so many things in that chapter, so I guess I would say choose from those, maybe. I'm hoping people listen to the book, hit that chapter, and in that descriptive paragraph where I talk about all the different snacks, something will hit your brain and you'll go, "Ooh, chocolate-covered pretzels," and you'll pause the book and go get some. Or you go, "Ooh, chili lime mango, I'm gonna go get some of that." Nothing would make me happier if the power of suggestion—the power of snack suggestion—works on people while listening to this book.

That chapter really reminded me of the fact that your first sort of breakout Netflix special released right at peak COVID, March 2020.

A week before. A week before shutdown, yeah.

That is such a distinct era in time for comfort snacking.

I remember my boyfriend at the time ordered this massive bag of Rolos. I had never had a Rolo before. I've never had a Rolo since. We were eating a lot of peanut butter pretzel nuggets, and those are two snacks I never have anymore because I just associate them with a very dark period of history.

So, I am someone who also has a mood disorder, so my next question actually was about—

What you got?

BPD. (laughs)

Woo!

So, my next question was about changing your mind all the time. My emotions tend to be so black-and-white that it is really hard for me to even remember from one moment to the next how I could possibly feel so differently about something or how I felt so differently the day before. It's genuinely disorienting. So, speaking from that perspective, I just wanted to say that I found this audiobook's reminder of the fact that we're all totally allowed to change our minds sometimes to be especially empowering. How did you land on Actually, Nevermind as the title for your memoir?

Honestly, it's just something I say a lot. I think I talk things out to make decisions, and think I've made a decision about something, big or small, and then in the middle of talking it out, I will sort of talk myself out of it. As a comedian, your whole job is to sort of argue for your side onstage with such vigor that you hopefully convince other people that you're right while being entertaining about it.

But I find that when I talk things out, whether it's onstage or with my siblings or with my friends, I will change my mind a lot mid-conversation and go, "Actually, nevermind. What I think we should do ..." I do it a lot with my team when we're having conversations about touring or anything career-related. I'll say, "No, what I'd really like to do is X, Y, Z. I really want to go to these cities this month. I would love to do three weekends. Actually, nevermind. No, what I really want ..." Like, it's just something I say a lot.

I just remember one day I was really busy and kind of burnt out and I had just been dumped. I'd always wanted to write a book and I didn't know what the theme of it would be because I felt there needed to be some sort of connective tissue. It just came to me one day and I thought, "I say this a lot and it would work well as a title for a book of essays about the things I've changed my mind about, which would allow me to write about anything." I was really thinking a lot about the fact that I had always thought that when I turned 30, I would know how I felt about everything. I thought when you're 30, you're going to know exactly how you feel. There's not going to be all this back and forth. You're not going to have one year where you want kids and the next year you don't.

And then I was halfway through being 30 and I thought, "Wow, I have changed just as much, if not more, in the first six months of being 30 than I did every year of my 20s." I thought maybe it's never going to stop. Maybe I just have to become okay with the fact that I'm never going to be settled as a person. I was thinking a lot about my friends who were getting in or out of relationships they never thought they'd be in, or getting in and out of careers they never thought they would have. I just kind of saw it around me everywhere, this idea of changing your mind, changing your personality, changing what you want in life and wanting more people to say, "Hey, that's completely fine. You didn't waste time pursuing those other things you thought you wanted or wanted at that time. And you could be happy a lot of different ways."

I could be happy with a lot of different lives. I love the one I have, but there are a lot of different paths and directions my life could have taken, and could still take, that would help me grow in different ways. The thing that I have learned that has helped me the most as a person is to not hold so tightly to these decisions you've made about yourself and try to set them in stone, because you're never set in stone. You will be very unhappy as a person if you don't allow yourself to change and evolve and grow and are just trying to stick to an idea of yourself that you've constructed in your head.

I'm really fascinated by that idea that I think a lot of creatives hold in their head, that piece of yourself that's scared to be well. I think you do a fabulous job of advocating for mental health resources and seeking psychiatric help when necessary, throughout the listen. But do you believe you'll ever truly be able to say, "Actually, nevermind" to that underlying belief that your mental illness or your “interesting brain syndrome,” as you prefer to call it, is part of what makes you a successful creative?

No. I don't think so. I think it is an important part of who I am as a creative. I think it is for a lot of people, and I don't think you necessarily need mental health obstacles in order to be creative. But for me, I can point to so many specific periods of time or moments where my mental health, however unstable or uncomfortable I was at the time, propelled me forward professionally.

I can also point to moments where it was a hindrance. So, it's not black-and-white, of course, but I try not to view my mental health as something that only held me back for years, and I try not to think of it as the thing that made me creative, either. It's just a part of me and it has both helped me and slowed me down. I think everything about you as an artist or any sort of creative person contributes to your work and the work you put out and who you are creatively, so I try to honor that.

I don't think I'm ever going to say, "No, it has nothing to do with that. I'm just me." I talk about this a lot in the book, about how at the time when I got that diagnosis, I was like, "Well, then is that me or is that something else that I'm just dealing with? Or is that something I have to just navigate? But it's not really me. Or is that actually me? And me medicated is this tamped-down version of who I am or…”

It's very similar to what we were just talking about, about letting yourself evolve and change and grow and change your mind. Some years or months, I feel totally different than other years or months, and you're going to experience trauma and grief and sadness, and nobody is emotionally stable 100 percent of their life, regardless of their mental health.

These are such good questions that I feel they're making me think about so many things I've talked about in a much deeper way, which is very impressive because I thought about this book for years. I was working on this book for two years. So, to be asked questions that make me go, "Oh, let me think a little bit more about that." Because once you work on a book for two years, you're like, "Well, now I've said everything about how I feel about everything." So, I'm very impressed by these questions.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I wanted to get into, you do really explore quite a few ironies throughout the listen, and one that really stood out to me, for instance, was the chapter where you discuss your physical insecurities, like wearing your hair down onstage, which also, by the way, I had a really traumatic haircut when I was 10 years old, and I did not wear my hair up until maybe a year ago. Like, it took me almost 20 years.

Really?

And I wore it up today for you (laughs).

That means so much to me. Oh, my gosh. It's crazy how stuff that happens to you when you're 10 truly does just affect you for decades.

I found it so ironic how you said that, early on, it was awful when people would laugh as you made jokes about your appearance because it would confirm your fears. I also tend to make jokes about myself as an attempt to beat others to the punch. I'm curious, as such a successful comedian now, is some part of you still trying to beat others to the punch about your insecurities, or what else is motivating you to want to make people laugh today?

I think I'm definitely still trying to beat other people to the punch, but more than that, as I get more and more comfortable with myself, it is always my number one goal to just make people laugh, distract people from whatever they're going through, and make people feel less alone. Like, the reason I talk about things I'm insecure about onstage is because it's usually a good way to find out that a lot of other people are feeling insecure about it as well.

It always means a lot to me when I see comedians, movies, TV shows depict something that I'm going through and are able to put something into words that I haven't been able to vocalize or describe, or I didn't even necessarily recognize within myself. But once I see it onscreen, I go, "Oh, that's how I feel too, actually." And the comfort that comes from knowing that other people are dealing with the exact same thing or have gone through the exact same thing is just the number one thing I always want to provide for people.

That's actually a fantastic segue to my final question today. You say that you want people to leave your stand-up shows feeling not just entertained but encouraged and proud of themselves. How do you want listeners to feel after finishing this audiobook?

Encouraged and proud of themselves. I think I want them to feel the same way. I want them to feel proud of themselves for finishing a book. I want them to feel less alone. I want them to feel like they laughed and maybe cried a little bit, and I want them to forgive themselves for making similar mistakes that I've made. And I hope it's motivating. I realized that I was living my life trying to impress my mom or make up for her death, and you can't live like that forever. You have to live for yourself, and you have to make your own decisions and your own mistakes and make up your own mind.

I hope people finish the book and it empowers them to make whatever decisions are best and truest for them, because your life doesn't have to look a certain way. Your relationship doesn't have to look a certain way. Your job doesn't have to look a certain way. Your family doesn't have to look a certain way. Like, you are in control of your entire life. And that is something that I've only realized in the last couple of years. And once you realize that, it is very scary and also very empowering, because it opens up a whole new world of possibilities and it reveals what you've been telling yourself is and isn't possible for you. I hope people laugh. I hope people just went, "Oh, I just had a fun time for eight hours."

I did. I laughed. I related. I think I did feel a lot of those emotions that you just listed. And truly, thank you so much for chatting today. I've had an excellent time.

These were incredible questions. I mean, truly. Thank you so much. And thank you for reading the book. That means a lot to me.

Of course. That means a lot to me, too, so I seriously appreciate that. And listeners, you can get Actually, Nevermind on Audible now.