Right Brain Meets Left Brain

My father glanced over, surprised. “Since when do you like writing?” he asked. 

“I’m not sure,” I told him. I didn’t know how, but writing felt like the right thing to do.

On our drive home from Rouge Park, in the fall of 2017, I explained to him how during my year-long backpacking trip I wanted to interview people about how they define success and happiness for a writing project.

As a child, I grew up loving dance and attended a performing arts high school. I dreaded my English classes and started studying sciences in university after grade twelve. Throughout my undergraduate degree in medical sciences, I continued to avoid essay writing and courses that involved large writing projects. My urge to write only materialized after veterinary college denied my application, a few months before this conversation with my dad.

***

Like most teens, I struggled with my self-esteem, craved attention from boys, and too frequently got in trouble with my mom for drinking and staying out late on weekends at parties.

Being a senior in high school meant I had the privilege of having spare periods without classes. The cool teenagers would venture outside to smoke weed or hang out with friends. The nerds could be found in the library, studying or reading.

Me? If there was an unoccupied dance studio, I’d plug in my iPod classic, blast Florence and the Machine’s Between Two Lungs album, and dance. These moments were my salvation. Through improvised movement, I found peace with all the problems I felt were detrimental (of course trivial and silly in retrospect) and found solace in expressing my emotions through dance, because for me, doing so out loud in words was complicated.

Though dancing provided a creative outlet, my left-brain tendencies steered me toward science and math, where I found structure and predictability. My left brain was ever-present—something one of my dance teachers pointed out as one of my negative qualities—and I thrived in functioning quantitatively and analytically.

Admittedly, I was one of the nerds, too. I would sometimes hang out and do sudoku races with my friends from calculus class in the library. My math teacher became my most influential mentor, and apart from my time in the studio, I preferred science and math classes over history or English.

***

Throughout high school, I leaned toward sciences, drawn by the structured problem-solving they offered, while essay writing felt vague and daunting. With trigonometry, I could see the problem, start pulling tricks out of my mental toolbelt, and solve it. With writing, I never knew where to start.

Because I assumed a career in the art world would be volatile and unpredictable, I decided to follow the passions of my left brain. I chose to pursue a degree in medical sciences after high school, putting my love for dance on the back burner.

My studies in university were exciting because I could choose subjects that I preferred, but when I found out I had to take a certain number of ‘essay credits’ to graduate I groaned and complained. I loved reading and found the courses interesting, but when it came to writing essays, the process always exhausted me.

Until the end of my university years in 2016, I avoided writing, except for lab reports. Movement remained my medicine and most convenient form of expression. At the university gym, I lifted weights to burn out my energy and rented out the dance studios to let out my emotions when needed. By then several Florence and the Machine albums circulated my playlist.

By the time I graduated, I had accepted dance as my spare time activity and focused primarily on my application to veterinary school. I submitted countless applications to animal hospitals and different centers to gain relevant experience for my application to the Ontario Veterinary College at Guelph University but landed only one volunteer position.

As I continued through the rat race to apply to veterinary school, my balance between my creative outlets and academic pursuits weighed me down. The pressure and expectation to be successful—to lead a prestigious career—closed in on me, making it hard to hear and recognize my true desires.

***

Spring, 2017.

The screeching streetcar hauled me across Leslieville on Queen Street toward the office for my evening reception shift. The sun was setting, but I saw nothing memorable or strange along the route.

It was a year after graduating from university and I had been desperately trying to score more volunteer positions for my vet school application. An hour before getting on the streetcar, I had opened my rejection notice from Guelph University.

I didn’t cry or scream. What overwhelmed me most was how I would decide what to do next. Stuck on public transit without a studio to move in, I realized that maybe words could provide the release dance once did. I decided to write—not as a requirement, but as a release.

Sitting on the scratchy red fabric seat of the streetcar, I pulled out the notes app on my phone and started typing.

I was furious and disappointed in myself, even though I knew how competitive getting into the program would be.

“Ugh. I should have tried harder to get higher grades.”

Then there was panic. 

“Will I ever manage to get in if I reapply?”

Finally, after a few minutes, my moment of clarity.

“This can’t be the only way for me to feel happy and successful.”

Once it was time to pull the cord to notify the driver of my stop, all the frustration and hopelessness I felt from the rejection notice had started to ease. Like when a fog dissipates from the road in front of you and you can see the path ahead, my vision for a way forward cleared.

From this moment I learned something strangely novel: that writing wasn’t necessarily a chore, but a practical form of expression and a method to work through my thoughts. Like how dancing was a way to work through my emotional strife and feel lighter, it seemed like writing could do the same for me. It was as if I had learned a new method of transit from A to B—like how to ride a motorcycle rather than by car—a new way from a place of confusion to a sense of clarity.

***

Since that day on the streetcar, I sometimes turned to writing through unsettling times. 

At the beginning of January 2018, I left home for that year-long backpacking trip. By late October 2018, I found myself in a staircase outside a locked guesthouse door in the middle of the night in Borneo, with nowhere to go until my outbound flight the next morning.

I had been kicked out of the airport that closed overnight, and no taxis were passing by on the street that I could hail to take me to a hotel or somewhere else. Only a faint yellow light lit the hallway I stood in, and I heard nothing except the rumbling of freight trucks passing by the nearby freeway every few minutes.

I sat there in the wee hours of the morning, terrified at the thought of being kidnapped or murdered. After trying to meditate, and reading my camera’s instruction manual three times in two languages, I looked for something else to calm my nerves.

I dug into my backpack and found my notepad and a pen—the only sensible tool left to drown out my anxiety.

I wrote about how much I’ve learned throughout the past year traveling around Asia, including this mishap in the staircase (always double-check that an airport is open 24/7 instead of assuming you can stay during an overnight layover). I began listing out descriptions of specific scenes that left me speechless, like hiking through the Annapurnas in Nepal or kayaking in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. 

Focusing on creating something new through writing became the perfect distraction. Unlike moving in a studio, I steadied my mind while curled up in a fetal position against my backpack.

Like my mental toolkit of formulas for solving equations, I now had two ways of calming my mind at my disposal: dancing on the studio floor playing music, or with only paper and pen in hand.

By five a.m., when the guesthouse owner arrived, I had several pages of notes, which was the initial starting point of my first book.

***

When I decided to write my travel memoir back in Borneo, I had no idea how long it would take, or how the story would change over time with each redrafting of the manuscript.

Many parts of my book originated in moments of “emotion vomiting”, when I blurted out my uncensored thoughts. For those in the dance world, this process is similar to improvisation, which many of us dancers use as a starting point for choreography.

At other times I opt for more organized brainstormed lists and plans for scenes when I write, or I draw out dancers’ formations on a sheet of paper alongside respective musical counts. Depending on the day, the right or left brain takes over.

It takes countless hours to choreograph a dance, another chunk of time to learn and remember the steps, and then many more hours to incorporate them seamlessly. Much like alterations to the words in a book, when we choreograph dances, we make drastic changes, sometimes moments before a performance. I thank my acquired methodical way of problem-solving learned from classes like calculus as part of why I could spend years perfecting my manuscript, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, word by word.

***

Today, though marketing and planning for my book launch take up most of my time, I am still dedicating at least some part of my day to writing something new, whether on ideas for book number two, short stories for publication, or blog posts on my website. 

In the morning, I sit at my desk with my matcha latte, and let my fingers type away on whatever is calling to me. When I start to feel restless, or stuck and unsure of what to write next, I know it’s time to get up, throw on some music, and dance away the itch to move.

Both writing and dance are necessary parts of my daily routine, and essential to keep my spirit alive.

In the past, I often viewed my frequent changing of fields as chaotic and unproductive to becoming successful at any of them. Isn’t it true that to become a master at anything, we should devote our lives to that one thing entirely?

Recently I began reading Range by David Epstein, which has shifted my perspective. It turns out that success isn’t always a product of relentless focus in a single field. Many who explore different paths gain the flexibility and creativity to excel in surprising ways.

When I announced that I was writing a book, my friends and family were shocked. The girl who hated writing growing up was committing to spend years of her life writing a travel memoir. In a way, I couldn’t believe I was doing it either.

Perhaps what we all didn’t realize is that my time spent dancing and throwing my body around the studio, and the hours spent in the university library studying for exams, were all in some way a preparation for my storytelling skills and trained me to have the drive and determination to push through to the creating the final draft.

The feeling of seeing a solved equation after hours of manipulation, watching a dance piece in its final form on stage, or reading my words printed in a book, have a lot more in common than I thought. Being open to different realms taught me not to limit myself to the familiar. Instead of fearing the uncomfortable, embracing writing has taught me to approach difficulties with excitement and curiosity rather than resistance and dread.

My true power lies not in limiting myself to one passion, whether creative or analytical, but in combining the skills I’ve honed from both sides of my brain.

All the mental tools I’ve gathered—the calculating brain cells, the dancing feet, and my typing fingers—now harmonize, each playing its role as I blend creativity with structure in my writing.