We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Kay Barclay a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rachel Kay, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
You got it. First, I believe purpose can’t be obtained through external sources, like outside guidance or praise. It simply dwells within us as a knowing — a sparking impulse to act and follow down its path, whether it makes sense to the logical mind or the outside world. It’s what we came here to do on a soul level, and it can take on a myriad of forms from scientist to entrepreneur to gardener to mother to writer — the possibilities are endless, as is the soul’s longing to express this purpose. I also think many of us have more than one!
From a young age, I’ve known that I’m a writer and that writing is an intrinsic part of my soul’s landscape. Writing has never felt like a choice for me. It’s always been where I belong – a living force grounding me in this body, place, and time. My love and pursuit of theater and film were clear choices I made in my twenties, and I made them because they were natural vehicles for my writing and my purpose of sharing the light and joy that comes through my writing with the world.
While there are many like me, who know from a young age what they’re meant to pursue, for others, the path feels murky and less clear. A lot of this confusion is driven by today’s achievement-oriented culture and the deep need for external validation that comes with it. Finding one’s purpose may also feel daunting because of the strong messaging we find everywhere that says purpose and how we earn a living need to be one and the same. It’s such a limiting point of view that I spent over a decade believing and eventually overturning.
I now firmly believe that one’s purpose and what one does to earn a living wage do not have to intersect, although it’s wonderful when they do. The great writer, Charles Bukowski, worked at the post office for over a decade, up until the age of forty-nine, all the while writing poetry, short stories, and novels that have left an indelible mark on the American Literary Canon. T.S. Eliot worked at a bank, and even after he became a household name, he maintained another day job as an editor at a publishing house. Today we do not remember these writers for their years of work as a postal worker, banker, or editor, even though that’s how they made a living for decades. We remember them for the powerful writing that resulted from them following and honoring their inner purpose, regardless of its monetary value or how it appeared to outside viewpoints.
Since life purpose is something that lights us up from within and can’t be logically deduced or found via searching outside ourselves, it is within that we need to retreat when questioning our life purpose. For some, this may sound daunting or impossible, especially if they’ve been conditioned to follow outside voices, authority, and recognition as beacons of purpose and success.
The door to this ephemeral space can be opened though by simply following intuitive nudges: impulses that seem to say, “This might be fun,” or “This feels both scary and exciting,” or “I’m deeply curious about this.” The impulses don’t have to scream life’s purpose right away, they simply may stop us in our tracks and make us say, “Huh…isn’t that interesting.” Even a subtle intuition like this, if explored, can, and often will, lead to a beautiful discovery and unfolding.
Every life is worth taking the time to knock on this door. Regardless of life history, age, gender, or what we have or haven’t achieved, we deserve to take a moment of pause. We deserve to take the time to notice what happens to our spirits when we do, and to ask questions that open our curiosity.
Life purpose is a fundamental birthright. All that’s required to claim it is honoring these internal nudges and the flicker of curiosity when it rises to the surface. Then we must have the courage to say, “Regardless of how busy life is, how much I have on my plate, or how insane this seems, I’m going to follow this sparkling thread, and see where it leads.”
The destination may surprise you.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Sounds great! I’m a writer and filmmaker, primarily known for creating, writing, and producing the web series, Human Telegraphs, which won numerous awards in the film festival circuit, including several Best Web Series and Best Comedy awards, and screened at festivals like the Malibu International Film Festival, the Big Apple Film Festival, and the Garden State Film Festival. I also co-founded Three Bright Lights Productions in 2017, a production company committed to giving women and underrepresented voices in the film and television industry a platform.
I grew up in a small Midwestern town, but spent most of my professional life on the East Coast, mainly in NYC and Washington D.C. As a result, these two worlds often playfully merge in my storytelling. My writing is characterized by female-driven narratives, quirky, effervescent characters, and larger-than-life worlds. I also often write about human connection, vulnerability, and following one’s unique path.
As an early writer, I mainly wrote plays and poetry. I still love both of these genres! I’ve been known to share a poem here and there on Instagram and you can find a few of my poems published in the hardcover anthology, The Poetry of Yoga, which may be purchased on Amazon. My plays have been produced across the United States and beyond in cities such as London, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. I was also a recipient of the Kennedy Center’s JFK National Playwriting Award for my play, ‘Trees are Living Legacies,’ which was performed at the Kennedy Center. Lastly, I was also a finalist for the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Award.
I’m currently working on a middle grade novel about a young girl, who has the fate of seven interconnected worlds resting on her shoulders while she’s searching for her missing mother, and piecing together how her disappearance fits within the greater danger threatening to shatter all she holds dear.
When not writing, I spend my days with my sweet four-year-old and husband, exploring nearby hiking trails and reading magical stories on our patio in sunny Austin, Texas.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
That’s a great question. I think two qualities that helped me early on in my career were my innate optimism and tenacity.
After graduating from undergrad, I dreamed of being a writer and produced playwright/screenwriter. I also had no clue how to go about achieving those dreams, especially with little to no contacts in those industries. I was riding in a taxi one afternoon when the driver asked me what I did for a living. I immediately said, “I’m a writer.” At first, I was shocked by my response because I had no published work to my name. I later realized that this didn’t matter because I truly believed that I would find a way. I had an innate knowing that the force that put me on my creative path would also pull me in the right direction — to the right people and places — if I committed myself to the work with faith and belief that my effort would be rewarded. It didn’t happen as quickly as I had hoped, but doors did eventually open, as long as I kept searching, working hard, and vulnerably putting my work out there.
This is where tenacity and the final attribute, the willingness to fail, come into play. The two go hand-in-hand. We must be willing to fail and then call on our deepest tenacity to get up and try again. As Albert Einstein said: “Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.”
Being willing to fail is a quality that was initially quite foreign to my perfectionistic tendencies. It’s a mindset I’ve put a lot of effort into developing, and truthfully, I’m still chiseling away at it. I think that being willing to fail, to have our work laid bare in such a vulnerable way, isn’t something that comes easily to any of us. Sometimes we want to wait for our writing, our art, our music — whatever our vision holds — to be perfect before exposing it to the glaringly bright and often harsh spotlight of the world. The prospect of someone rejecting something we’ve put our hearts and souls into creating can take our breath away and feel utterly debilitating. But if we want to grow, we have to put ourselves and our work out there anyway. It’s the only option if we want to learn and evolve in our craft. And yes, when we do face rejection, when we inevitably fail, when our ultimate creation doesn’t live up to what we initially envisioned, it hurts. A lot. We have to dust ourselves off and enter the fray again anyway. Why? Because that’s practice – the work we’ve signed up to do.
The process is painful, but also eventually liberating. With each failure, rejection, and letdown, the sting becomes slightly less brutal and a little more bearable. When a door does open, all of the ones that previously slammed shut and brought us to our knees become worth it. The door is the light at the end of the tunnel, the outstretched hand that promised to meet us in the dark if we kept trudging forward, carrying our optimism and faith before us like a bright, shining shield. This answer to an unspoken promise we didn’t know we carried pushes us forward, and suddenly, we’re ready to enter the uncertainty again. This time with a bit more faith and knowing fortifying our courage and our heart’s desire.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
Being a theater and film nerd, I love collaborations! I’m always looking for kindred spirits to collaborate with, whether it’s a film/series project or other form of writing/creative project.
My current main interest is a collaboration with a literary agent, who represents middle grade fantasy authors with messages of courage and hope, but I’d love to hear from anyone interested in building something beautiful and fun together! You can find me on Instagram @rkbarclay or via my website: rachelkaybarclay.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rachelkaybarclay.com
- Instagram: @rkbarclay
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelkaybarclay/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/humantelegraphs
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/
name/nm8428151/
