0:00

It's a terrifying thing when the heart

0:02

starts to howl in any capacity, whether

0:05

in grief or joy. But

0:07

I think it's sort of terrifying primal

0:09

feeling that sometimes when we get too

0:11

happy, we get really

0:14

worried that it's going to go away. But

0:17

I just was so surprised after

0:19

years and years of not literally

0:21

not feeding myself great food, not

0:24

eating enough, not giving myself enough

0:26

pleasure, enough joy, enough freedom. When

0:29

you finally give that, there can

0:31

enter in the sort of howling

0:33

that is both grief and joy

0:35

that you waited so long to

0:37

start feeding the self. So

0:42

many of us have had this fantasy of

0:44

leaving behind some kind of mainstream corporate job

0:46

to follow our passion like art or writing

0:48

or some other creative pursuit. And

0:50

then reality sets in or rather our

0:53

belief about how impossible it would

0:55

be to support ourselves, let

0:57

alone truly thrive and love what we do

0:59

and earn a great living doing the

1:02

thing that lights us up following

1:04

some inner creative impulse, which

1:06

is why I am so excited

1:08

to share executive turned full time

1:10

and flourishing poet Joy Sullivan and

1:13

her amazing story with you today.

1:15

So Joy went from an accomplished

1:17

marketing career to becoming a full

1:20

time creative entrepreneur in her new

1:22

book, Instructions for Traveling West. She

1:24

chronicles this journey, both literal and

1:26

metaphorical, from the corporate world to

1:28

self-expression and more than corporate level

1:30

living through art. Joy

1:33

received an MA in poetry from Miami University

1:35

and has served as a poet in residence

1:37

for Wexner Center for the Arts. She's brought

1:39

her words to classrooms and events across the

1:41

country and now she helps

1:44

other writers nourish their craft through her

1:46

community sustenance. I was blown away by

1:48

Joy's courage to leave the corporate life

1:51

behind and build a career

1:53

around her creative calling and her deep

1:55

and enduring passion for poetry. But

1:58

she's quick to also bust the

2:00

myth that that you have to

2:02

be broke, lonely or suffering, to

2:04

be an artist. Her story shows

2:06

that it is possible to transition

2:08

gradually, thoughtfully through a portfolio approach

2:10

without losing everything you hold dear.

2:13

During the conversation, we explore what it takes

2:15

to overcome doubt, nurture your inner light, and

2:17

manifest the life that you have been dreaming

2:19

of if you've ever longed to

2:21

make your passion your profession. This

2:24

conversation will open your heart and mind

2:26

to the possibilities of being ready to

2:28

be moved and inspired. So

2:30

excited to share this conversation with you. I'm

2:33

Jonathan Fields, and this is The Good

2:35

Life Project. Ryan

2:45

Ryan Reynolds Here for Mint. With price of

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Invesco distributors, Inc. What

6:42

I'd love to do is actually start out before we

6:44

even dive into the new book and some of the

6:46

poems and some of the ideas and the concepts and

6:48

the stories. I also want to

6:51

sort of take a broader look because

6:53

the journey that you have traveled over

6:55

the last chunk of years is pretty

6:57

astonishing. Some of it is laid out

6:59

in verse in the book, but also

7:01

you've written about it as well on

7:03

Substack in different places. Two

7:05

posts really jumped out at me that

7:08

you shared last September where you

7:10

kind of did this two-part thing that

7:13

started with lessons from leaving corporate America

7:15

and then from corporate America to creative

7:17

entrepreneurship. I think the ideas in

7:19

those essays would be so interesting to so

7:21

many of our listeners because I think so

7:23

many people harbor these desires

7:25

to make a meaningful change in the

7:27

way they're contributing to the world, to

7:29

their lives, and with a

7:31

really deep and profound creative impulse, but they

7:33

either don't believe it's possible or

7:36

they don't have any idea how to do it.

7:39

You shared these two posts that I

7:41

thought just teeted up beautifully. The first

7:43

was lessons from leaving corporate America where

7:45

you kind of listed out these five

7:47

different things. You basically

7:50

said, if this is what's going on, you're kind

7:52

of like, we need to talk because this is

7:54

not true. Could we walk

7:56

through some of that? I'll tee some of them up and

7:58

I'd just love to hear your thoughts. Absolutely. I'd love to

8:00

chat about it. Awesome. So out

8:02

of the gate, you basically write,

8:04

if it costs you sunshine relationships

8:06

or health, your salary is irrelevant.

8:08

Take me deeper into this. Yeah.

8:11

So I really started thinking

8:14

about that about halfway through

8:16

my corporate career trajectory. I

8:19

had been working at a branding agency. I

8:21

had worked really hard to get promoted. And

8:23

for a long time, that was what I

8:25

just sort of thought I had arrived. The

8:28

feeling for me was going to be how

8:30

far I could get promoted into this agency.

8:32

It's a great agency in many ways, women

8:35

owned, etc. But what I discovered in the

8:37

pandemic, for me, really the gift of all

8:39

that solitude, and if you're somebody who's in

8:41

corporate America, like the first time maybe getting

8:43

to work remote in a while, was

8:46

this like expansive opportunity to

8:48

the outside in ways

8:51

that I had never had. And it

8:53

sounds really fundamental and basic, but just

8:55

like the life giving opportunity to go

8:58

for a walk when I wanted to,

9:00

I was like, this

9:02

is revolutionary. Like, why have

9:04

I waited so long? And

9:06

I've been so focused on my

9:08

metrics have been, you

9:10

know, what, how far can I get in the career

9:13

and it started to take this just tremendous

9:15

toll on my body. So I had a

9:17

big wake up call when I discovered

9:19

that I was having issues with my

9:21

hands and with my arms from constant

9:23

typing. And I went to the

9:25

surgeon and he said, you got

9:27

to find a different way to live or you're

9:30

going to lose your ability to write. And

9:33

it was just this kind of terrifying

9:35

moment that in all the metrics of

9:37

my life, if I didn't have access

9:39

to sunlight, if I didn't have access

9:41

to health, and if I didn't have

9:43

access to stable relationships, for me, it

9:45

just all added up to net loss.

9:48

So I think I am offering readers

9:50

just a different way of framing success.

9:53

When we think about like, God, is this

9:55

actually when I look at my End

9:58

of the day, am I happier? Are

10:00

you and I can't? I. Mean. It's opposite

10:02

of me laugh at about five minutes to

10:04

worth starting to really drink my body or

10:06

I can't feel a second. Half consists of

10:09

relationships. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting

10:11

to me also, because. Granted, This

10:13

came when there was a forced shift this

10:15

year but he had to go through. But

10:17

for so many when we come to this

10:19

awakening we come to it on our knees

10:21

in some way, shape or form like we

10:23

have. we've known it was kind of sense

10:26

It we sell, did those handling put it

10:28

over there and then something something major happens

10:30

whether to health crisis or some other laws

10:32

are you have a job blows up. And

10:34

then we start to think about these things and.

10:37

You. Came to this the you are a

10:39

subtler pass but it was also it sounds

10:41

like you know this was just a profound

10:43

insight and okay I can't not do something

10:45

about this. A more money or things he

10:48

talks about in that post was this notion

10:50

of worth not making you quote good which

10:52

I think this is really interesting thing that

10:54

we tend to hold onto. Yeah.

10:57

And just society hours late. He.

11:00

Will keep it up for know

11:02

someone who isn't me. Wrong

11:04

dominate me and for me as soon

11:07

as it's coming back. and the pandemic

11:09

one of the idea of sovereignty of

11:11

fastest like that, thin and light. How

11:13

do I really matters except for myself?

11:16

One is my body that telling me

11:18

that I need to do and it

11:20

seems it's that same national flag. No

11:22

matter how hard you work, corporate America

11:24

isn't gonna love you back. You are

11:27

always gonna be out for seen time,

11:29

relationships and health for this thing that

11:31

the end of the day didn't add

11:33

up to be. Very meaningful to me

11:36

and I think we can have a

11:38

lot of. I grew up in a

11:40

very like authoritarian culture, religion or called

11:42

and so for me this idea other

11:44

people sorted either busy decision for me

11:47

are awesome. Valid eating my where it

11:49

was really hard to let go of

11:51

that. I see them live in people

11:53

and in corporate relations. Have fun at

11:56

five of. Other. Than around with

11:58

prove it doesn't. matter if

12:00

I'm pleased with me. And so I

12:02

think the inversion for me of the

12:04

pandemic with so many people was waking

12:06

up to like, Hey, I'm

12:08

halfway through life. And is it adding up

12:10

to something that in the end, I think

12:13

is really meaningful? Yeah, that makes so much sense. I

12:15

have so many people have felt that and also ties

12:17

into sort of like the third point that you drop

12:19

around, like the importance of having a point of view.

12:21

Because I think so often when we

12:23

step into a career, we either don't

12:25

have a point of view or we do, but we

12:27

feel like we are not entitled to share it. And

12:30

we hide it and we just and we think

12:32

everyone else around the table is smarter than us,

12:34

you know, more experienced than us and listen to

12:36

all the brilliant things that they're saying. And

12:39

then we kind of learn along the way that no,

12:41

actually, like that little thing inside of me is

12:44

equally valuable, which also brings it around to

12:46

the fourth point in that post, which is,

12:49

it's all bullshit. I feel like those

12:51

two tie together really well. Totally. They're

12:53

kind of like opposite parts of the

12:55

same coin, right? I just remember my

12:57

friend, I was so intimidated. I had

12:59

been a teacher, I had a master's

13:01

in poetry. And then I made this

13:03

career job to go into corporate America

13:05

and become like a marketer and branding

13:07

copywriter. And I just remember like a

13:09

huge imposter syndrome, which now I work

13:12

with creatives all the time. And I

13:14

just see that this is the characteristic

13:16

thing that we all struggle with. We

13:18

all think our work is terrible. We

13:20

all think that we don't deserve to

13:22

have an opinion on things. We

13:24

all think that there's some kind of

13:26

like arrogance or narcissism present

13:28

if we have like a really formed

13:30

idea about what we think is a great

13:33

piece of art or what makes a

13:35

great poem. And so to me, it

13:37

was recognizing that everyone around me in

13:39

the state of agency felt the same

13:42

way and had these kinds of anxiety.

13:44

And the most valuable thing was me

13:47

again, with that sovereignty itself to have a point

13:49

of view around my art and to say this

13:51

is the reason why I think it's valuable in

13:53

the world. And here's the rationale that got me

13:56

there. And Then also to recognize

13:58

that in the end, it felt like. Bullshit.

14:00

Like everybody's on that same spectrum of trying

14:02

to figure out how to be a human,

14:04

how to be a good human, and how

14:06

to make art. That matters, you know? there.

14:09

Is to let me ask you this question then. Lets.

14:11

You create something with you're an artist or write

14:14

or whatever like of a sounder he puts on

14:16

the and the world and there's of voicing you

14:18

that same maybe for the first time. Oh,

14:20

this is really good. Like this is game changing.

14:23

The good may be tons of just for my

14:25

game, but whatever it is, How

14:27

do we know without relying on others

14:29

to quote the holidays because they see

14:31

the value in and also. Whether

14:34

it truly is. What

14:37

we dream of it being or whether

14:39

it you know it's it's. Return.

14:41

Deluding ourselves whether it's really igor

14:43

Iraq and speaking. The. As

14:45

an interesting question, because think.

14:48

For me. As someone

14:50

who shares were online on each

14:52

day of release and being laid

14:55

off into. This. Poem and only. Third,

14:57

I think my article a good.

14:59

it's it's popular or if it's

15:01

shared. I have been so like

15:03

sense as so and I think

15:05

it's a trap that a new

15:07

specifically and contemporary society because of

15:10

the prevalent the way we share

15:12

our and our creativity online that

15:14

you can get instant feedback and

15:16

you can start to have what

15:18

I think is the misconception that.

15:20

Everything is that good article of

15:22

popular I I that's. Not always

15:25

the case and for me I really

15:27

had to say i'm thousand and myself

15:29

that this is an interesting idea if

15:31

this is not panic idea if this

15:33

is a true idea that has please

15:35

my standards. Than. I

15:37

can send it out and the world and

15:39

I could divorced my thoughts from the outcome

15:41

because they don't think what it's popularity is

15:44

always get art and I don't think it

15:46

should be or metric from when we share

15:48

or how we share we're never gonna know

15:50

how are our plans, we can only know

15:52

how it plans in our Sos faith and

15:54

so for me it was like really raising

15:56

the standards for my spouse does the stereo

15:58

and that is this is. Have

16:00

I heard this before? Am I pushing

16:02

this to some new territory? Am I

16:04

a little bit, is this disgusting,

16:07

this idea that I'm thinking of? Have I

16:09

pushed it far enough? Is it a little

16:11

bit uncomfortable? If someone says

16:13

my art is nice, that's just like

16:15

the most depressing thing I

16:17

could think of. So for

16:20

me it became about a level of

16:22

tape, that I don't mean that in

16:24

a classic or a hierarchical way, I

16:26

mean have I fulfilled for myself what

16:29

I think is interesting? Have I satisfied

16:31

that? Because I see a lot of

16:33

creatives and writers putting their work out

16:35

there and effort of getting

16:37

more likes, getting more shares, getting

16:39

kind of online approval and they burn

16:42

out because they're not feeding their

16:44

own sense of creative self, they're not

16:46

satisfying that. Yeah, no, I love

16:48

that. It's kind of like the way that

16:50

Rick Rubin describes, like when he senses what

16:52

he likes, he has a very developed sense

16:54

of taste and he just knows

16:57

it. If it goes out into the

16:59

world and people love it, awesome, that's great. But

17:01

if not, he's still, there's something in him

17:03

that says, this is the only aspiration for

17:05

me, is to create something that

17:07

rises to my level of taste, which really brings

17:09

it around to the final point in that post

17:11

that we were talking about, which is to nurture

17:13

your knowing, you've got to know yourself. You

17:16

can't understand this if you don't, what is

17:19

your taste? What is the

17:21

thing that is deeply embedded in you that

17:23

you've learned to get out and how do you know when you're

17:25

getting it out in a way that's meaningful to you? Totally.

17:28

I'm very much about the wisdom of the

17:30

body, the intuition of the body, the instinct

17:32

to travel less. Animals have it

17:35

too, right? This instinct to migrate,

17:37

I think somehow as people, we think

17:39

that we're not just animals that also

17:41

have instincts that lead us to some

17:43

other path, to some other place, to

17:45

some other life, Which is where

17:47

we really need to be. And So this idea

17:50

of nurturing your knowing is like, what are those

17:52

intuitive hits that we get all the time, but

17:54

we kind of push down or suppress? I Mean,

17:56

very early on when I was a kid, I

17:58

was like, I'm not going to do this. The

18:00

teenager beard I would see people

18:02

are firing Started as an intern

18:04

and unpaid intern at like. Twenty

18:07

eight and neither can I entered year

18:09

had no experience in the corporate world

18:11

and I would guess these hints of

18:14

life me I to be doing the

18:16

high to be in front of the

18:18

boardroom I could be leaving the creek

18:20

see the presentation. That and that helped

18:22

me take a lot of with the

18:24

map career and then the same into

18:26

listen and since it has told me

18:28

his time to get out like your

18:30

body is tired there is more that

18:32

you could do upstairs leaps that you

18:34

can take that I think. We.

18:36

Have to get really quiet and.

18:39

For me that's happened in the ten

18:41

thousand for getting closer enough that I

18:43

could actually hear what it was inside

18:46

me. that with team to come out

18:48

and I was all the middle of

18:50

the desert in Arizona to do it

18:52

again I really got quiet. There's something

18:55

about the desert in wintertime as like

18:57

the most violent place on earth and

18:59

in the stillness Sigma Unbearable Silva you

19:01

get to hear what it is that

19:04

your body is asking you to do

19:06

and son has he can't even name

19:08

is finance. Your body doesn't even know. It's

19:10

a flaw the beginning to pool.

19:13

Lot older than I did so

19:15

we've been more like a call

19:17

for me. Want to be seen

19:19

my name and a half century

19:21

licenses? and be prepared. For

19:25

most sense, as much as

19:27

my life totally flipped, I

19:29

compared. To that know in there

19:31

and I mean it's It's interesting you

19:33

described the word. I'm like that going

19:36

out into the decline miss as unbearable

19:38

and for so many it is. And

19:40

and I almost wonder whether. The.

19:42

Unbearable. Part of it for so many

19:45

of us is decide that when we

19:47

get really still when we serve as

19:49

we eliminate all the distractions, all the

19:51

stimulus and everything else and we just

19:53

said there's nothing but asked, you know

19:55

there's nothing that moment. Makes.

19:57

us face whatever it is that's been

19:59

brewing that we've kind of been setting

20:01

aside and you're like, there's nothing to

20:03

distract me from it anymore. And that's

20:05

the unbearable part because oftentimes, those

20:08

things are not things that are happy for us.

20:10

And we don't know what to do about them.

20:12

For you, at least in part, and as part of

20:15

this journey west word for you, but you

20:17

know, said emotion even earlier, it sounds like, and

20:19

this also kind of leads to the part two

20:22

of the post that you shared on

20:24

your sub stack, it led to this

20:26

really big disruption to a big transition

20:28

from this, you know, corporate career that

20:30

you started as an intern built up

20:33

your copy director, like really succeeding by

20:35

all the quote, you know, external metrics.

20:38

And then you decide, no, like

20:40

this is this actually can't be

20:42

my life anymore. And you leave corporate

20:44

America to go into creative entrepreneurship. And

20:47

in your writings, you address a series of myths

20:49

that I think hold a lot of

20:51

people back from this one is this myth

20:54

that if you're going to be an, quote,

20:56

artist, well, there's a certain amount

20:58

of starving that is just embedded in

21:00

that experience. So take me into this.

21:02

Yeah, I was just so

21:05

surprised within the corporate trading

21:07

world to be so creative profession,

21:09

all these myths

21:13

or misnomers or ways that

21:16

you kind of that stuff

21:18

or fixed in corporate America,

21:20

it really talented, brilliant creative

21:22

people stayed in jobs where

21:24

they were making less money, I

21:26

think, that if they would have

21:28

gone elsewhere, because of this idea that like,

21:31

I can't I have to stay

21:33

in traditional fixed structures, and it

21:35

can be to be makes me good.

21:38

But then also, like, I'll never make

21:40

more money than this on my

21:42

own, like, I have to be

21:44

tied to this structure. Artists starve,

21:46

they can't be successful, they can't

21:48

learn the art of marketing, there's

21:50

no way to promote yourself without

21:52

being icky, you can't be a

21:54

best selling author and not sell

21:56

out. So there's inherently I think creatives

21:58

get it on the market. both sides. You

22:01

get from corporate America, which is

22:03

really invested in keeping you in

22:05

that paradigm, right? And the

22:07

myth there is like, you'll never make

22:09

more money, you'll never have stability like

22:11

you have here. And then you also

22:13

duly get it in academia and on

22:16

the creative side within like MFA programs

22:18

that are like, we're actually never going

22:20

to give you any money to teach.

22:22

And so you will be you will

22:25

be a starving artist if you pursue that.

22:27

So for me, it was sort of

22:29

revolutionary to find this third path to

22:31

take the skills I have learned in

22:33

marketing. And some of just I mean,

22:35

I'm very grateful for my time in

22:38

corporate America, I guess it taught me

22:40

a lot about how to market how

22:42

to promote, but also that resolve of

22:44

remaining authentic to my own taste, to

22:46

my own sovereignty as an artist that

22:48

there really could be a very happy

22:50

medium between those two things. And

22:52

the idea that you can't make as

22:55

much money doing your own thing as

22:57

an entrepreneur was so happily overturned for

22:59

me, you know, I started my own

23:01

writing community. And to be able to

23:03

work for myself doing the things that

23:06

I wanted to do, I had just

23:08

such a different level of investment. And

23:10

pretty soon I also saw a financial

23:12

return that was was pretty exciting. Yeah,

23:15

it's not that when you you know, I'm

23:18

many decades into my life as an

23:20

entrepreneur, and many different versions and iterations,

23:22

and you certainly don't work less, you

23:24

know, also in a very past life, I had a

23:26

hot minute in the context of my life as a

23:28

lawyer. And at one point, I was working in one

23:30

of the largest law firms in New York City. And

23:33

I often work more hours now,

23:35

even though I worked a lot of hours back then,

23:37

and I would complain about the hours that I worked

23:39

and how I had no life, and it was ruining

23:41

me and my health and all this stuff in my

23:43

relationships. I work a lot

23:45

of hours now, and I always have,

23:47

but it's a completely different context. It

23:49

changes the way you feel, when

23:51

you know, it's more of an expression of something is

23:53

deeply meaningful to you, it matters to you, it's an

23:56

expression, it's like an emanation of who

23:58

you are. And I Think one of the. The

24:00

allergies and you can speak to. This

24:02

is not the hours. It's. The context

24:04

that wraps around those hours that makes

24:06

them me like potentially so grueling and

24:08

depleting. Totally. I think as

24:10

humans again for me it was really revealed

24:12

in the pandemic was inside the and that

24:14

were. Built. Her name. And

24:17

I don't think anything as harmful to

24:19

our house. Is doing work that

24:21

we to see this means And

24:23

it's not to knock on people

24:25

who are in different careers Done

24:28

thoughtful El Paso landed but I

24:30

couldn't think. At that time I

24:32

live in the middle of the

24:34

pants and that anything off meaningful

24:37

than developing. Email campaigns face.

24:39

To sell products that I just didn't

24:41

think mattered. And so for me it

24:44

is. See your point, it sounds. of

24:46

restructuring their life stories like

24:48

are off summit value system

24:51

but it's also about like

24:53

finding meaning and purpose. And south

24:55

for me it was a realignment. Less

24:57

like little I think that really matters

24:59

and for me that has become healthy

25:01

people. On this trip to their boy

25:03

saying that is worth. The

25:05

work was a couple of yeah. And

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Good Life. Brings

29:27

up another point that you mentioned and this is one of the

29:29

other myths, which is that if you

29:31

do creative work, you'll automatically

29:33

love your life. That's not entirely

29:36

true. Yeah, that's

29:38

such a funny one because you know, now

29:40

I am a full time writer. I'm that

29:42

mysterious unicorn that people are always like, Oh

29:44

my God, you're a full time writer. They

29:47

don't even ask me questions. They just

29:49

say, God, you love that, right? And

29:51

it's kind of like not all the

29:54

time and the hard part of being

29:56

a full time writer, even though I feel often

29:59

very aligned with that. Purposes like family.

30:01

You're referring to the fear

30:03

timetable you are. Responsible for

30:05

a lot of other things. As an entrepreneur,

30:07

you have to hire people. You have to

30:10

run a business. God. Yeah, city

30:12

taxes for to. Suffer the worse than

30:14

an entire world. So it's not

30:16

always lot. Flip the silkier

30:19

automatically gonna love everything about your life.

30:21

I think for me it was recognized

30:23

the that there's a real trade off

30:25

in this new round and that like

30:28

having full time access to my name

30:30

was and has it's own kind of

30:32

burden to make what you love the

30:34

our in a to take on all

30:37

the pressure on your happiness is a

30:39

lot of I think about it in

30:41

comparison Sue someone that I worked with

30:43

an agency hand he was a decision

30:46

and an artist and he refused. Promotion

30:48

consistently at this agency that we were

30:50

fat and instead he just felt like I

30:52

want to come in our work eight

30:54

hours a day and then I want

30:56

to go home And I want to

30:58

make art and I want to write

31:00

music and sound So occurred to me

31:02

as long. As there's a

31:04

salad path forward to say later and

31:07

have club my time in years and

31:09

then I'm gonna go home and and

31:11

they are and he was asking his

31:13

or her support him or to be

31:16

cut his entire financial. Needs and

31:18

say. Well as people when they're

31:20

thinking about the things you're really consider like

31:22

what is the role that want art for

31:24

place. And are you ready for it to try

31:26

and sit for with you. Financially and

31:29

emotionally friends hand is not always the

31:31

payoff. Depending on who you are, it's

31:33

person that's worth doing. Yes, So agree

31:35

with you've ever read the book

31:38

daily rituals. But. It is basically

31:40

tracks that twenty four hours as really

31:42

daily cycle have so many different people

31:44

writers, artists if who are iconic, a

31:46

really well known and. When. You

31:49

read that? it's amazing to see.

31:51

That a number of them had full time

31:54

jobs with no intention of ever leaving those

31:56

full time jobs. There are plenty Monday with

31:58

their with their okay yeah. They took

32:00

care of the expenses, they took care of

32:02

the family detour gets. They took that off

32:04

the table so that when they went and

32:06

did the art on the five to nine

32:08

and then on the weekends it gave them

32:11

the freedom to not have to worry about

32:13

whether this or it was rising to the

32:15

standard of being sell a ball. It was

32:17

just an expression of what they want it

32:19

creates and that led them to not censor

32:21

totally in a way that actually let the

32:23

worth be the worth and that in turn

32:25

ended up making feel like that and the

32:27

stasi impact. Truly. I think there's

32:29

such. As a

32:32

sex mass a sign of have five thirty

32:34

six a snap back when I have enough

32:36

on their car, when I have more time

32:38

or start as I could just be a

32:40

full time writer and have that literally the

32:43

lights are to get up and right then

32:45

I would make aren't all the time and

32:47

have a novel in no time I would

32:49

have a collection of poems. Whatever it is

32:52

and the reality is often we use. To

32:54

change the relationship with aren't like would not

32:56

seeing gets to be the aren't you get

32:58

to make at the end of the day

33:01

it seems is your relationship. With a

33:03

you're really excited. You wanna do

33:05

it? You're making time for his. Mother

33:09

didn't. Pull. The said honestly.

33:12

As an entertaining between were com and

33:14

me at present season and on my

33:16

lunch break. Because I knew I had

33:18

seven minutes and then oh really? now? Well

33:20

we thought that I have two hours to

33:23

set up a bad. Precedent

33:25

The same. Way so I always tell

33:27

people to collect the scrap if you're

33:29

somebody has never gonna leave a nine

33:31

to five job at that for team

33:34

for you. And also set top box

33:36

suited to pay your brain city. anxious

33:38

about money and all the other thing

33:40

for that's great for yards but it's

33:42

collapse of scrap. I think people underestimate

33:45

the amount of time you can actually

33:47

dedicate. To. Writing if you right in

33:49

the five minutes in betweens Yeah, so

33:51

agree. And so often I think. The.

33:54

Snippets: The ideas like the sentence

33:56

fragments that become amazing things down

33:58

the road you doing something. Early

34:00

differently and adjust. It drops into your head. your

34:02

groove. I have no idea what this is. But.

34:04

I need to write a sentence down because at

34:07

some point is gonna be tough something. So.

34:09

Search of it just happens in those in between

34:11

moments. Totally and also the mess

34:13

as late as to have a cabin

34:15

in the woods now and my whiskey

34:17

on the Dad skyn may get out.

34:19

figure out with the long haul there

34:21

and then I'm gonna be this great

34:23

American novel and straight must not have

34:25

the. Majority of writers that I

34:28

know and my father says now

34:30

hobby to do well to me.

34:32

And sexy way. It's funny. sometimes it's

34:34

literally first thing in the morning before

34:36

I got an interview or before I

34:39

got a meeting our work cause as

34:41

ten minutes and my laptop in bad

34:43

times fast enough the first item field

34:45

or most that doesn't feel as the

34:47

sexy a piece of advice that I

34:49

think we have a misnomer that. People

34:52

you have the does the topic in

34:54

the world for you to have. Immense

34:56

amount of time I saw think that

34:59

our. Brains develop creative work and

35:01

yeah of truths about your take on

35:03

on on a different in I've heard

35:05

a lot. Also you're not necessarily in

35:07

the context of reading of the certainly

35:09

in that context but in the contests

35:11

have club creating great art and and

35:13

he goes the referring to something like

35:15

this in order to create great art

35:17

or great art comes from great suffering

35:19

when I was a kid when as

35:21

a my late teens remember spending a

35:23

summer out renting a house and painting

35:25

houses on the East and of Long

35:27

Island and like kicking around and bare.

35:29

Feet and my roommate in that

35:31

house. Was. An aspiring writers he

35:34

knows probably twenty years old and at

35:36

one point during the summer he vanished

35:38

and basically said i need to he

35:40

would do very Privileged Slice. It came

35:42

from a lot of money but he

35:44

wanted to be a great writer and

35:46

he basically said. And. To suffer

35:48

in order to be great for all

35:51

of the greats have suffered like mightily

35:53

so you know He basically. Said.

35:55

a backpack full of close bought of an

35:57

old beat up station wagon the drill to

36:00

the middle of the country and said, I just need

36:02

to live, you know, like, in a really tough circumstance.

36:05

Forget the fact that there was great privilege

36:07

that still waited any time, you know, he

36:09

wanted to turn back to it. But what

36:12

is your take? And I have heard some artists

36:14

who have great astonishing work say it came from

36:16

suffering, and they were literally afraid to remove suffering

36:19

from their lives because they were afraid it would

36:21

no longer allow them to create the work that they

36:23

want to create. Yeah, it's

36:25

such a fascinating topic. And it's

36:27

one I thought a lot about

36:29

because for me, yes,

36:32

I think suffering is helpful because

36:34

suffering does bring us to language,

36:36

it drives us from it

36:38

literally, it's the same language in our bodies.

36:41

It's sometimes until we are in I

36:44

mean, in any change that we make,

36:46

it's usually suffering, we get uncomfortable

36:48

enough to have to make it. But

36:50

I don't know that that exactly is

36:52

the prerequisite. Like I think for me,

36:55

it's not necessarily suffering,

36:57

but it's the ability to inhabit lives

36:59

that are not necessarily my own. And

37:02

what I mean by that is the

37:04

gift of like moving west with this

37:07

tremendous ability to be anonymous for a

37:09

while to like enter a new city,

37:11

I could go into the bar and

37:13

say my name was Ada, and bring

37:16

my typewriter if I wanted to write,

37:18

it was this totally this ability to

37:20

find a multitude of things that I

37:22

wanted to write about and people that

37:25

I potentially wanted to become. And so

37:27

I think there's a level of

37:29

discomfort of like, really saying like,

37:31

what is inside me? And I

37:33

think suffering is one modality. But

37:36

I think there's many ways to

37:38

get there as an artist. I'm not

37:40

really a fan of this idea that we have

37:42

to live in perpetual states of

37:44

melancholia, which are often hurt our art as

37:46

well, because it can be hand in hand

37:49

with being a waste of pressure and we're

37:51

unhealthy patterns of relationships that

37:53

sometimes like accompany our depression.

37:56

And so I Want to release all

37:58

this from this idea that the. The miserable

38:00

study. Do think to be a

38:02

good writer you have to be willing

38:05

to be uncomfortable death and maybe even

38:07

as you know you don't have that

38:09

suffering in your own life to cultivate

38:11

embassy so that you can understand what's

38:13

going on around you and really sir

38:15

like feel into other people's experiences. Truly,

38:18

I want to set up that a bow

38:20

on this part of the journey. Like because

38:22

people may be thinking of his sounds really

38:25

interesting. I'm inspired like this whole bunch of

38:27

miss busting. But. She's literally was

38:29

from corporate America to create of entrepreneurs what

38:31

does that actually looks like and free listed

38:33

this out you know first it was part

38:35

time like point that to some part time

38:37

work and need he sees had a little

38:40

bit more bandwidth to then started to vote

38:42

to the next seemed and he started typing

38:44

lives palms like it, different events, parties, whatever

38:46

it is getting people and by the way

38:48

I have seen a number given people doing

38:50

this as as is the real thing um

38:52

das as in getting to mission to write

38:55

poetry on line to printing printing prince and

38:57

then running workshops and then. Eventually.

38:59

Creating. Your own, a community sustenance

39:01

committed to support other writers and

39:04

that it's like the portfolio of

39:06

these things that eventually culminated in

39:08

you saying Okay, so. I.

39:10

Can literally step into this. And.

39:12

Do this in that I wanna do.

39:14

It wasn't like I just he snap

39:16

your fingers and like okay I'm a

39:19

poet like I was as a copywriters

39:21

like focusing on branding and marketing and

39:23

now I'm poet and everything is awesome.

39:25

This was a process and there were

39:27

number of different things that you did

39:29

piece together and then eventually it's kind

39:31

of figure out what's warm and safe

39:33

does this. Do. People want to actually

39:35

support financially and will give me those. things

39:37

that I said I held dear is like

39:39

the sunshine and the relationships. Did I miss

39:42

anything? There's a context that makes sense as.

39:45

Know. I think that's exactly around

39:47

since I've done to correct lot

39:49

and I have some straight into

39:52

the abyss without having any fan.

39:54

There can be a strategy to

39:56

that because when you're pretty solid,

39:58

nothing other than. you to get your

40:00

life in order, like the

40:03

immediacy of having to,

40:05

you know, figure out that, but I

40:07

didn't go that route. I definitely took

40:09

it piece by piece, step by step. And

40:12

my agency was very kind and letting

40:14

me go part time, but that allowed

40:16

me to open up, okay, if I

40:18

can spend two hours a day now

40:20

on writing or writing related things, what

40:23

does that open for me? And I

40:25

sort of built this path forward very

40:27

slowly. I'm actually a risk adverse person.

40:30

I have had to build a lot

40:32

of courage around making these leaps. And,

40:34

you know, I sit at my writing desk every

40:36

day, and I have all these trees overlooking McStreet

40:39

here in Portland, and I watched

40:41

the squirrels leap from branch to

40:43

branch to power line to the

40:45

rooftop. And I got really interested

40:48

in how does the squirrel know?

40:50

Like, they never fall. How do

40:52

they know the distance between

40:55

the power line and the

40:58

branch at the top of the tree? And

41:00

so I actually did a little research on

41:02

squirrels and how they learn to gent their

41:04

leap. And it's that they

41:06

take very small leaps at first, and

41:09

then they slowly build to

41:11

these longer really astounding leaps.

41:13

And when they miss a

41:16

branch, they have these claws that can

41:18

cut and they can also like somersault

41:20

back, they're like incredibly agile creatures. But

41:22

they basically take all the data from

41:24

the miss leaps, and they apply it

41:26

to the new leap. And I thought,

41:29

God, this is a metaphor for leaving

41:31

one's life and the ways that we

41:33

teach ourselves as humans to leap, like,

41:35

the reason squirrels don't fall is because

41:37

they have, if they miss, then they

41:39

have claws that are going to catch

41:41

them on the way down, or they

41:44

can course to at midair if they've

41:46

overshot, and then they get to apply all of

41:48

that data to the next leap. So for me,

41:50

I took just a small

41:52

series of hops, You

41:54

know, going to part time, moving to typing

41:56

poems live, which is its own kind of

41:58

terror, right?? What? Movie

42:01

About. Other

42:03

have overseen off a couple on

42:06

a fee paying out of home

42:08

and found didn't. Seconds

42:10

is. My

42:13

favourite in the that and then for

42:15

narrative rather than I have a threat to

42:17

the were not pay me for that.

42:19

where they came here to Kunis and

42:21

com. Okay true to my phone for

42:23

that. Maybe I could start posting on

42:25

line. Maybe I could send a sad sack.

42:27

So I think something is this creatures

42:29

than assume an animal. These data on

42:31

the teacher found. The. Simpsons

42:33

elite and build our own

42:35

courage. We've. Had this idea that the

42:38

trying to preach the world that were an

42:40

artist I think. Firstly. Rashly trying to prove

42:42

yourself were enormous and a lot of

42:44

that evidence Believe it's just the science

42:47

of the lead singer. And now, okay,

42:49

I've done this far. Can

42:51

they sent a little further? I

42:53

love that the notion that we're really trying

42:55

to prove it to ourselves first Cs and

42:57

when I'm hearing also said somebody needs to

42:59

write a book called The Squirrels Guide to

43:01

Career Change. A

43:04

steam s. Three

43:06

cents. An entire

43:08

car at his place. We gotta

43:10

find this. that is also have

43:13

that now have like a the have to

43:15

go research squirrels custom really cares about this

43:17

a penalties as tier such as we're traveling

43:19

was you know and this is. Words.

43:21

And thoughts around both a metaphorical in a

43:24

literal journey. That. Really has unfolded

43:26

over the last cent of years. What

43:28

leads you to decide to sir like

43:30

mount is this journey and then. Documented.

43:34

And Sarah's. Yeah, so

43:36

again, when I was, you know,

43:38

in the middle of the

43:40

desert in the pandemic? I wrote

43:42

a poem to themselves. And it was

43:45

me trying to believe in myself as

43:47

a writer, as a woman, as as

43:49

a solo traveler, Nathan and seen anything

43:52

packs a day and making yourself really

43:54

uncomfortable. I done something really scary for

43:56

me which was to travel. To six

43:58

weeks offense, the American. West by myself.

44:01

I had never really traveled alone before.

44:03

And so in that process,

44:05

I wrote this poem called instructions

44:08

for traveling West. And it was,

44:11

it begins, you know, first you must

44:13

realize you're homesick for all the lives you

44:15

are not living. I always had people be

44:17

a poet, not a preacher. I was not

44:19

preaching to other people. I was telling

44:22

myself, like, Joy, there's something inside you

44:24

that is asking for a different life.

44:26

It has been asking for a long

44:28

time. And then the rest of

44:30

that poem was literally just all

44:32

the things I wanted to say to

44:35

myself, you know, give grief

44:37

her own lullaby, met yourself with

44:39

all your newborn courage. And

44:41

I think the beautiful thing about the

44:44

page and about poetry is it has

44:46

this strange alchemy. When you take

44:48

a leap on the page, you can take a

44:50

leap in your life, right? Sort of

44:52

practice that idea in the

44:55

space of the page. And within

44:57

40 days of writing that poem,

45:00

I had sold my house, I packed

45:02

up my Subaru, my two cats and all

45:04

my books. And I left

45:06

a relationship and I had done part

45:08

time at work. And so it was

45:10

just this kind of amazing momentum, I

45:14

think, both within poetry and also

45:16

within really getting clear on yourself,

45:18

one, what is the thing

45:20

I need to say? And if I

45:22

really make good on that, how does

45:25

my life transform? And then I just

45:27

remember posting that poem and being shocked

45:29

at how many people resonated with this

45:32

idea of traveling less,

45:35

you know, physically or as a metaphor for their

45:37

life, what was the thing that they were kind

45:39

of not looking at

45:41

or looking away from and what

45:43

was their figurative west. Yeah,

45:46

I could see so many people really just

45:48

embracing that. It's funny as you're describing it

45:50

also, after I was a lifelong New Yorker,

45:53

like raised a family, married like in 30

45:55

years in New York City and September

45:57

2020 in the scariest part of the history.

46:00

pandemic in New York City, we packed up

46:02

and came out to Boulder, Colorado for

46:04

what we thought would be a couple of months,

46:06

three and a half years later as we're having

46:08

this conversation like now Boulder is home. And there's

46:11

I think so many people launched

46:14

into this journey. But I

46:16

love the fact that the notion that something can

46:18

start on the page and

46:20

then somehow become real enough

46:23

that it inspires you to

46:25

manifest it, to actualize it.

46:28

But then a part of that poem

46:31

also, the lines also come in

46:33

that you must commit to the road and the

46:36

rising loneliness. I think

46:38

this is something that sometimes we're

46:40

fearful of because we feel like if we're

46:43

leaving all of these things behind, what

46:45

lies ahead of us is not just

46:48

possibility, but also loneliness. Because

46:50

we don't know the people, we don't know the places,

46:52

we don't know what's going to happen. And

46:55

a lot of people from our quote,

46:57

past lives won't understand what

46:59

we're doing and why we're doing it. And

47:01

I feel like this is so much of what you weave

47:04

into the different writing in this book. This

47:07

idea that like, you always have to

47:09

go and that if you go, if

47:11

you take the leap, your

47:13

life will just be great. You know, everything

47:15

will work out for you. You'll find your true

47:17

love, you'll find your true career, you'll find your

47:20

true home. You

47:22

know, there was a point of

47:24

view that really wanted that to be true.

47:26

When I started this journey, I was like,

47:28

I'm going to do one scary thing. And

47:31

then the rest of my life is just going to be

47:33

great. And then I'll never have

47:35

to do anything again. And what I

47:37

realized is like, God, this

47:40

road comes with its own

47:42

price. It is hard. It

47:45

is hard to leave a life.

47:47

There's real grief. There's real loss.

47:49

There's real loneliness tied to that.

47:52

When I was writing this book, I

47:56

had all of my poems laid out

47:58

and I had organized the book. into

48:00

sections that are different lines

48:02

of that initial title poem.

48:05

And I was trying to end, I

48:08

realized that I was writing the poems

48:10

towards this idea of home as the ending.

48:13

I wanted the last option of the book to

48:15

be home. And I could not

48:17

finish that book with that structure.

48:19

And I realized that I was

48:21

also trying to live my life

48:23

with this very singular, okay, I've

48:25

done the one scary thing. I

48:28

feel lonely, I've experienced

48:30

loss. I've reinvented myself,

48:33

I get to stop. And I realized

48:35

that that actually wasn't a clue. It

48:37

wasn't a clue for me. I

48:39

haven't lived it. For me, I

48:41

had not found home at the end of

48:43

this book. I haven't found every answer

48:45

to everything. But I

48:47

have found this tremendous sense of self

48:50

and this tremendous sense and confidence and

48:52

the ability to continue to leave,

48:54

which is inherently uncomfortable. But

48:56

it made me rearrange

48:59

the order of the book as,

49:02

you know, lines of that

49:04

poem. And so the book

49:06

now ends with the section, joy is

49:08

not a trick. But it doesn't

49:10

end at home. Because for me, that was

49:12

a falsehood. And I didn't want to write

49:14

a book that wasn't true. That's not

49:17

like the worst stuff in the world to

49:19

hand to you some kind of factor and

49:21

idea that if you leave blue, it'll all

49:23

be okay. The truth is, we

49:25

don't know it might not be okay.

49:27

But I'm trying to suggest to readers,

49:29

it's absolutely thrilling, absolutely beautiful, and absolutely

49:31

profound to still take the leap. Curt

49:34

Jaimungal Yeah. And once you hit

49:36

on the reality that actually my

49:39

current state is not okay, then

49:41

you're not comparing some false

49:44

illusion of okayness now to

49:46

some uncertain future. Once

49:48

you realize like actually, you know, things

49:50

aren't as they seem now. So yes, I'm

49:53

stepping into uncertainty, but also possibility

49:55

and maybe that's better, you know.

50:02

So you all know I'm a huge fan of

50:04

our friend Glennon Doyle. We've actually had her on

50:06

the show twice and a transcript of our first

50:09

conversation actually appears in the paperback of her book

50:11

Love Warrior. Glennon's vulnerability and her

50:13

kindness and her just straight up wisdom are

50:15

things that I really aspire to. Well, Glennon,

50:18

along with her amazing wife, Abby Wambach, who's

50:20

also been a guest on the show and

50:22

Glennon's sister, Amanda, they host an amazing podcast

50:24

called We Can Do Hard Things and it's

50:27

really something special. I mean, imagine sitting down

50:29

with the people you love most and having

50:31

this honest, no holds barred conversation about

50:34

the hard stuff in life. That's

50:36

exactly what Glennon, Abby, and Amanda have

50:38

created with We Can Do Hard Things.

50:40

There's no facade. They just dive straight

50:42

into the heart of topics like sex,

50:45

parenting, anxiety, and addiction with raw honesty

50:47

and amazing guests like Jane Fonda and

50:49

Brene Brown. The hardest things become easier

50:51

when we share the weight of them

50:53

with others who understand. And that's what

50:55

this podcast gives you, a safe space

50:57

to embrace vulnerability and find solace in

51:00

shared struggles. So join our friends every

51:02

Tuesday and Thursday for We Can Do

51:04

Hard Things, one of the top podcasts

51:06

of 2023. Listen

51:08

on the Odyssey app or wherever you get

51:10

your podcasts. Hi,

51:17

this is Craig Robinson from Ways

51:19

To Win and support for this

51:21

podcast comes from Invesco QQQ, the

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51:48

Inc. Hello. I'm

51:52

patio Donald, colour expert for Farron Ball

51:54

and the host of our first ever

51:56

podcast, The Crimiologists, where paint and colour

51:58

meet life. Each week we

52:01

immerse ourselves in the life and home of

52:03

a different special guest, asking them to choose

52:05

pivotal colours that have shaped them on their

52:07

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52:09

I explore colour we leave in designers, artists,

52:12

creatives and performers. You

52:14

can listen to the crimologists wherever you get

52:16

your podcasts or learn more on the Farron

52:19

Ball website. In

52:28

one of the early poems, remember what it was

52:30

like to be a kid, you really sort of

52:32

recount childhood wonder and that state of wonder. Do

52:35

you find yourself giving back into sort

52:37

of like intentionally moving

52:39

back into that childhood state of wonder,

52:41

especially as part of the creative or

52:43

the writing process? That's a beautiful

52:46

question, Tom. I've never been asked

52:48

that and I quite like that. I

52:51

do because one

52:54

of the best pieces of advice I've

52:56

ever done as a writer comes from

52:58

Brendan Constantine, a poet, and he talks

53:00

about moving into the world of an

53:03

alien. You've seen everything

53:05

for the first time. And

53:08

that is what it is to be a

53:10

kid. You're just this little tiny alien on

53:13

earth and you've never seen any of this

53:15

before and the kind of immense wonder. And

53:18

so when we think about writing beautiful,

53:20

profound, life-changing work, it comes

53:22

from that sense of sort of

53:25

isolating or defamiliarizing oneself

53:27

from the world. And

53:30

it's a whole like philosophy

53:32

of detachment or defamiliarization in

53:34

art to sort of better

53:36

see it, right? Because

53:38

of deconstructed the faith that you can

53:41

better understand what it was to be human.

53:43

And I think that that's really important in

53:45

our work, like how can you see the

53:47

world for the first time? And a lot

53:49

of times that's as a child. And for

53:52

me, that was seeing the world

53:54

and then learning language for the

53:56

world was so fundamentally

53:59

powerful. for me. And I'll just tell

54:01

this brief story. I remember as a kid, we

54:04

lived in Central African Republic. So we

54:06

lived overseas. My dad was a doctor

54:08

and we had a telescope

54:10

set up in the backyard some nights and

54:12

we would look out and we'd see the

54:14

stars. And there was a man from a

54:16

neighboring village who came by the house and

54:18

wanted to look out the telescope and he

54:20

had never seen the sky up close before.

54:22

And as a kid,

54:24

seeing that man, it's space,

54:27

the jubilant that came over him

54:29

to see stars up close and

54:31

the moon up close. I thought,

54:33

God, if I could have one ounce of

54:35

that in my adult life, not one ounce

54:37

of that on his face. That is the

54:39

joy of being allowed us to see things

54:41

fresh and for the first time. And

54:43

I think that's the gift of poetry. If we get to do

54:45

that over and over, we get to sort

54:48

of relive that sense of childhood wonder. I

54:50

mean, do you feel like that is inherent in

54:52

poetry or do you feel like that's the lens

54:55

that you deliberately bring to the

54:57

way that you write poetry? I

54:59

think both ends. I mean, I think good

55:01

poetry acts not to just be read,

55:03

but to be felt in the reader's

55:05

body. And the only way I know

55:07

to get you to feel

55:09

something in your belly and not your brain is

55:12

to ask you to experience it for yourself. So

55:14

you have to use that de-familiarization technique.

55:16

You have to say it in

55:18

a new way. You have to say it

55:21

as if you were a child being it

55:23

for the first time or else I think

55:25

we bring all our own preconceived notions, memories,

55:27

ideas to that thing and we don't get

55:29

to experience it in its fullness. So

55:31

for me, also having been

55:34

a stranger in many places in

55:36

my life, growing up overseas, moving

55:39

back to the U.S. when I was young, I'm

55:41

kind of used to that

55:44

strangeness of a new place and seeing

55:46

something as if I were seeing it for

55:48

the first time. So

55:50

I do try to apply that to my work.

55:53

Like what if I was experiencing this

55:55

and I sort of take myself back

55:57

to those years of

55:59

acculturation? where the US,

56:02

Ohio, where we were, was just

56:04

blaring and strange and there was

56:06

Walmart and Happy Meals and highways

56:09

so fast it felt like flying.

56:12

What is it to be a new creature

56:14

in this world to sort of have that

56:16

alien experience? How can I translate that to

56:18

the page in a way that wakes up

56:20

my readers too? Yeah, that also

56:22

ties in really beautifully to one of the later

56:24

poems in the same part, where you

56:26

really explore the theme of belonging. So

56:29

it's interesting the notion of sort of

56:31

like constantly looking with fresh eyes, beginner's

56:33

mind and being in different places with

56:35

new people and new experiences but also

56:38

trying to tap into the sense of

56:40

this innate human need that we all

56:42

have to feel a sense of belonging.

56:44

And I wonder whether you feel

56:47

like belonging more is an

56:49

outside in thing or an inside out?

56:51

Can you say more about outside is?

56:53

Yeah. But the belonging comes from

56:56

those around you seeing you as you are

56:58

and accepting you or does it

57:00

first need to come from you seeing

57:02

you and accepting yourself before anyone else

57:04

ever has the opportunity to do that?

57:07

Yeah, such an interesting question. You

57:10

know, I think for me belonging has been

57:12

this really elusive thing just

57:14

like every time that anyone asks me where's

57:16

home, I just curl up into a ball

57:18

and I don't know how to answer because

57:21

I moved around so much as

57:23

a kid. And I was constantly

57:26

shifting culture, right? And so

57:28

ironically, when I came to words, it

57:31

was because I couldn't speak the languages and the

57:33

places that I was in. So

57:35

to come to the page and sort

57:37

of have this private way that I

57:39

could communicate was very sacred to

57:41

me. So I do think the

57:43

sense of belonging for oneself has

57:46

to come from that innate listening to the

57:48

self to that innate listening to

57:50

the voice. I think we all like

57:52

to think we're special little creatures for whatever reason

57:54

that oh, I just I've never really felt like

57:57

I've fit in anywhere. I've never really felt like

57:59

I've believed in. And I think that's

58:01

just like a fundamental part of being human

58:03

is always feel on the outs.

58:05

A little bit of any community that we're in,

58:07

but I think really what that points

58:10

to is more discomfort with

58:12

self. I think when we get

58:14

really clear on what that voice

58:16

is, who that person is,

58:18

what that sovereign self is inside us,

58:21

it matters less for the geographical

58:23

location that we're in or the

58:26

sense of larger wholeness. It

58:28

can just be in oneself if

58:30

that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think that

58:32

resonates with me. Further

58:34

into the book, really deep into

58:36

life's simple joys, appreciating life's simple

58:38

joys, the deep instinctual response of

58:41

the heart to true happiness. Tell

58:44

me more about your take on the

58:46

heart's capacity to sort of howl for joy.

58:49

It's a terrifying thing when the heart

58:51

starts to howl in any capacity, whether

58:54

in grief or joy. But

58:56

I think it's sort of a terrifying

58:58

feeling that sometimes when we get too

59:00

happy, we get really

59:02

worried that it's going to go

59:04

away. And that's where that line comes

59:07

from later in the book, joy

59:09

is not a trick. It's like

59:11

if I really let myself feel

59:13

care and then I really

59:15

let myself feel joy, if I really let

59:18

myself feel all of life, what

59:20

happens when I don't can't feel it

59:22

anymore? And that's a terrifying

59:24

question, right? Maya Angelou, she

59:26

was asked, can anyone write a poem?

59:29

And she says, I think so. I'm not sure

59:31

everyone would write a poem. But

59:34

in order to write a poem, you have to

59:36

have sharp ears and you have to not be

59:38

afraid of being human. And

59:41

for me, that's really the key of like

59:43

what it is to fully feel is to

59:45

have the courage to fully feel it all,

59:47

which is something we're always all trying to

59:49

do. But I

59:51

just was so surprised after years

59:54

and years of not literally not

59:56

feeding myself great food, not eating

59:58

enough, not giving myself enough. and

1:00:00

that's joy and freedom. When you

1:00:02

finally give that, there can enter

1:00:05

in the sort of howling

1:00:07

that is both grief and joy

1:00:09

that you waited so long to

1:00:11

start feeding the self. Yeah,

1:00:14

no, that makes so much sense. And part

1:00:16

of that howling, I feel like, is also

1:00:18

often embedded in there is longing. And

1:00:21

this is something that you speak to in Ghost

1:00:23

Heart, which really reflects on the longing

1:00:25

for places and lives unexplored, the

1:00:27

concept of sort of unfulfilled futures

1:00:30

and the feeling of belonging to the unknown. And

1:00:33

I think so many people relate

1:00:36

to that sense of almost like

1:00:38

unquantifiable or unidentifiable longing, but they

1:00:40

just feel it in their bones

1:00:42

in some way. It's

1:00:44

so fascinating to me. And Cheryl

1:00:47

Strayd calls that other life,

1:00:49

that place that we're home to for, her

1:00:51

version of that is the ghost ship, right?

1:00:53

These sort of salute from the shore, the

1:00:56

other life that you didn't get. But

1:00:58

I think there is some part of that

1:01:00

that is really natural and that we can't

1:01:03

change, but we're always going to have with

1:01:05

one or from longing, like that

1:01:07

sort of discontent with part of

1:01:09

being alive. But I also think

1:01:11

there's such wisdom in

1:01:14

what that longing is asking us to

1:01:16

do. Again, if we compare it to

1:01:18

the call that animals get to migrate,

1:01:21

instinctually, our bodies are asking us

1:01:24

to listen to that. And

1:01:26

I think even if we

1:01:28

can't all leave our lives, we can't

1:01:31

always move West or quit our jobs.

1:01:33

I think it behooves us to listen

1:01:35

to the wisdom of that body, the

1:01:37

wisdom of longing, the wisdom of want,

1:01:40

if you will. I just

1:01:42

know before I left Ohio, I

1:01:44

woke almost every single morning at

1:01:46

4am from the same dream. And

1:01:49

it was that I was stuck in a barrel

1:01:51

of water decomposing. And it was this terrifying

1:01:54

image. And every morning I woke

1:01:56

with that, and the day

1:02:00

from that little blue house on Avondale

1:02:02

and moved to Oregon, the

1:02:04

dream never came back. And so I

1:02:06

think there is this idea of like,

1:02:09

what is the body asking for? What is

1:02:11

the life that we haven't lived? How can

1:02:13

we answer that? And I think it looks

1:02:16

different for every person, but I think there's

1:02:18

wisdom in listening. Yeah, so agree.

1:02:20

And you use the word dream and it shows

1:02:22

up in different ways in the writing and in

1:02:24

this book, you know, in the part where

1:02:27

you explore giving grief her own lullaby.

1:02:29

And one of the poems is called Dream. But

1:02:32

you sort of go, dream is sort of

1:02:34

like, when you get to that place, you're talking about

1:02:36

the collective, not just collective dream,

1:02:38

it's collective grief. And you sort

1:02:40

of ease your way into it with sisters

1:02:42

or like you're talking about the different individual

1:02:45

explorations of grief. And

1:02:48

then you sort of, you move your way

1:02:50

around to this poem, Luck Five, which is

1:02:52

really sort of exploring, okay, so yes, and

1:02:54

like we all feel this individually, we feel

1:02:56

it collectively. This is a part of the

1:02:58

human experience. And even while

1:03:00

we're moving through it, we still

1:03:03

have access to these small

1:03:05

joys. And I think so

1:03:07

many people struggle with that. Dear friend of mine, Cindy

1:03:09

Spiegel wrote a book a couple of years ago called

1:03:11

Microjoys, where she was moving

1:03:13

through a profound season of just astonishing

1:03:16

loss and grief and

1:03:18

sadness. And yet she found she

1:03:21

still had this capacity to like

1:03:23

find these tiniest little moments, but

1:03:26

she almost had to let herself feel

1:03:28

them because so often we're

1:03:30

like, I should be, like there are reasons for

1:03:32

me to be in a state of profound loss

1:03:35

and grief. I should not be

1:03:37

feeling joy now. And we shame

1:03:39

ourselves when there's a glimmer of it.

1:03:41

And it seems like this whole part was sort

1:03:43

of like dancing with these ideas. Yeah,

1:03:45

I think this strange mechanism

1:03:48

of grief is how

1:03:50

closely it is associated with joy and

1:03:52

how terrified as people that we are

1:03:55

to feel either one of those things.

1:03:57

But I think there is this, this.

1:04:00

time when we're experiencing loss and loneliness,

1:04:02

the dark gift of the pandemic

1:04:04

was also brought into sharp focus

1:04:07

all these things in our life that were quite

1:04:09

beautiful. And then I think a lot of us

1:04:11

got to do it, you know, a couple

1:04:13

years into that and didn't want to let go

1:04:15

of those things like this. Things that came into

1:04:18

think of this and became not only small

1:04:20

joys but deep delight, you know, the ability

1:04:22

to go for a walk every day just

1:04:24

became a pleasure that I couldn't

1:04:27

imagine having to let go of when

1:04:29

we were all supposed to come back

1:04:31

into the office, right? So for me,

1:04:33

it was this idea of like, as

1:04:35

Roské also talks about this in his

1:04:38

Book of Delights, but just these

1:04:40

small ways every day that we're

1:04:42

changing meaning and that these actually

1:04:44

grow within our collective imaginations when

1:04:46

we give them time. So within

1:04:48

my writing community, I call it

1:04:50

tiny tenders. I say that the

1:04:52

base of every poem is a

1:04:54

tiny tender. It's one small detail.

1:04:56

It's one small thing that you

1:04:58

have witnessed that you are now

1:05:00

going to give reverent

1:05:02

attention to on the page. And so

1:05:05

I think it's really an exercise of

1:05:07

that reverence of attention. And I just

1:05:09

remember in the loneliness being

1:05:11

on the road standing in the sunlight

1:05:14

washing tomatoes in my sink and I

1:05:16

looked down and I thought, my God,

1:05:18

I've never seen anything so beautiful as

1:05:20

these tomatoes and I never want to

1:05:22

lose this reverence for these dumb tomatoes.

1:05:24

But for me, it was about that

1:05:27

the reverence and attention that we

1:05:29

can bring to the small delights and how we

1:05:31

can stretch them out and give them to one

1:05:33

another. Yeah, that reverence and the

1:05:35

attentiveness I think is just so lost in

1:05:37

so much of our lives these days. You

1:05:40

know, the pace of everything is accelerating. We

1:05:42

live in a state of such perpetual distraction

1:05:44

that when you can drop into it, even

1:05:46

for a heartbeat, you're like, oh, oh, this,

1:05:48

this is actually what it's all about. You

1:05:51

also and you wrap around to this in the last part

1:05:53

of the book, you mind yourself, Joy, not

1:05:55

a trick. There's a piece when the queen

1:05:57

dies where she's saying, let's pay attention.

1:06:00

and let's be here, let's acknowledge a loss. And

1:06:02

also there seems to be this underlying instinct in

1:06:04

us to move forward. So

1:06:07

I'm curious, like in your mind, how

1:06:09

do we navigate between this attentiveness to

1:06:11

the moment too often to loss to

1:06:14

change, and to standing

1:06:16

in a place of also constant

1:06:18

access to hope and possibility? Yeah,

1:06:21

it's so interesting, just even as

1:06:23

a woman now who's gone

1:06:25

through therapy a lot, and the thing

1:06:28

that my therapist always is always talking about is

1:06:30

this feeling. It's like,

1:06:32

I feel all the time, okay? I'm a

1:06:34

poet, right? She's like, that's it, I think you could

1:06:36

still feel a little bit more, right? And

1:06:38

so it's this idea of feeling every

1:06:42

feeling fully, of like

1:06:44

having to feel

1:06:46

all of it, and then not getting

1:06:48

us to the next

1:06:50

place that we're supposed to go. So I

1:06:53

think that poem begins, you know, the instinct of

1:06:55

these and then the body is to be

1:06:57

rebuilding. And sometimes I imagine myself and

1:06:59

all the emotions and all the things

1:07:01

that I feel as literal these inside

1:07:03

me that are just quivering forward.

1:07:05

Like they're trying to feel the ecstasy

1:07:08

of the grief or of the joy,

1:07:10

and then they're literally trying to

1:07:12

rebuild and to find the honey and

1:07:14

the sweetness and all those things. And

1:07:17

there's that line in the poem that talks

1:07:19

about, you know, who is the first person

1:07:21

that told you that your soul's monarch was

1:07:23

dead? And then even so, what did

1:07:26

you turn into honey? And this idea

1:07:28

that no matter what card we're dealt

1:07:30

in our lives, like what are the

1:07:32

ways that we insist on healing? What

1:07:34

are the ways that we insist on

1:07:36

rebuilding? Just like these. I'm

1:07:39

making honey. I just think there's such

1:07:41

a beautiful lesson in that. Yeah,

1:07:44

so great. When you bring

1:07:46

a work like this book to

1:07:48

the world, when you're working on it, when you're writing

1:07:50

it, when you're living the stories that then end up

1:07:52

becoming the words and end up becoming the

1:07:55

emotions and the feeling sensations.

1:07:57

I'm curious, do you create?

1:07:59

and intention beyond your

1:08:02

own honesty and expression or

1:08:05

a desire for how you want this work

1:08:07

to land in others' minds and hearts. The

1:08:10

only thing harder than writing the book

1:08:12

was living the book, right? So it's

1:08:15

just sometimes hard when you're a person

1:08:17

who writes a lot of autobiographical

1:08:19

work, a lot of poems that

1:08:21

are clearly, the eye is the

1:08:24

poet, is the speaker, and

1:08:26

the writer is one and the same.

1:08:28

It sometimes tough to then send that

1:08:30

book into the world because you basically

1:08:32

feel like you've invited everyone over

1:08:35

to look inside your closet and to

1:08:37

talk about all the house classes that

1:08:39

you wear, right? So it's this kind

1:08:41

of bizarre feeling to feel like, God,

1:08:43

I put all of that out into

1:08:46

the world and now people are

1:08:48

gonna read it and judge me. And what

1:08:50

I found more is that poems

1:08:52

stand as sort of nears to

1:08:54

the self. Like certainly they reveal

1:08:56

something about me but mostly

1:08:59

they reveal something about you as

1:09:01

the reader. And that's been really

1:09:03

helpful for me that these poems

1:09:05

when I release them, I think it's really good.

1:09:07

It's the only way I can write. And I sort

1:09:09

of send them off and I say, like,

1:09:11

now you're your own thing now. Like you're

1:09:14

flying away from me. They are not me

1:09:16

anymore. So once I had written the book,

1:09:18

I sort of release it into the world

1:09:20

and I say, like, you are now

1:09:22

separate. And I allow people to have

1:09:24

their own experience with the book. Like

1:09:27

I can't dictate how people read it,

1:09:29

if people like it, if people see

1:09:31

themselves and don't see themselves. And I

1:09:33

think that's a healthier approach and that

1:09:35

keeps me sane and able to keep writing is

1:09:37

this ability that like people are

1:09:40

mostly gonna find truth about themselves

1:09:42

or not in the work. And

1:09:44

it's less about my experiences. It's

1:09:46

now about their experience with the book. At least that's

1:09:49

what I tell myself. Yeah,

1:09:51

I kind of love that frame. It's

1:09:53

funny because I can't remember the poem but I

1:09:55

remember like being in an environment where people were

1:09:58

fiercely debating what. what the

1:10:00

writer's meaning was behind every word, every phrase, every

1:10:02

line, and what you're kind of saying is like,

1:10:04

okay, so I had my own meaning when I

1:10:07

wrote it, but once I release

1:10:09

it out into the world, I can, you interact

1:10:11

with it. Whatever meaning, however that

1:10:13

lands in your heart, that's what it is.

1:10:15

You don't have to know my

1:10:17

side of the story. Like, this is gonna land in a way,

1:10:20

like, honor your, this goes back to the

1:10:22

beginning of our conversation, like, know yourself, honor

1:10:24

your lived experience. Like, what is real for

1:10:26

you? Like, that's enough. Truly,

1:10:29

I think that's such a beautiful way to put it,

1:10:31

and like, there's a poem in the book called When

1:10:33

All This Ends, I'll Throw a Party, and

1:10:35

I wrote it as a poem of longing,

1:10:37

of deep loneliness, mid-pandemic, when we couldn't touch

1:10:40

each other, there was no vaccine yet, and

1:10:42

it's just like, I wanna throw a party,

1:10:45

and I wanna kiss everybody, and I wanna

1:10:47

get sloppy, and have blackberry wine, and hog

1:10:49

and dance, and I don't

1:10:51

reference the pandemic explicitly in the

1:10:54

poem. When I posted it, everybody

1:10:56

knew, but now people

1:10:58

read When All This Ends, I'll

1:11:00

Throw a Party, and usually

1:11:02

people, without knowing in the context

1:11:05

that it was written the pandemic, see

1:11:07

it as an expression of the afterlife,

1:11:09

or a way to think about losing

1:11:11

someone after death, and like, what

1:11:14

comes next? And I think that's

1:11:16

so deeply beautiful. And

1:11:19

so, for me, the way that

1:11:21

we give our poems, our art

1:11:23

of creativity, longevity, and act of

1:11:25

generosity, is to sort of remove our

1:11:27

original intention, and to say,

1:11:30

I'm gonna allow this to be whatever

1:11:32

it is. It's a life on its own.

1:11:34

It's literally a bird flying forth. I can't

1:11:36

dictate where it ends up. I just have

1:11:38

to let it fly. I

1:11:41

love that. It feels like a good place for us

1:11:43

to come full circle in our conversation as well. So,

1:11:45

in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer

1:11:47

up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes

1:11:49

up? I

1:11:52

think, for me, to

1:11:54

live a good life feels like

1:11:56

fully inhabiting the work that

1:11:58

one is meant to do. which is

1:12:00

always going to come back to voice.

1:12:03

So it's, again, getting in touch with

1:12:05

that voice inside you and then letting

1:12:08

that dictate what you

1:12:10

do, what you say, where you go,

1:12:12

where you travel, where you land. So

1:12:14

for me, it comes back to voice

1:12:16

and finding one's purpose and asking those

1:12:19

two things to be in alignment. Thank

1:12:21

you. Hey, before

1:12:25

you leave, if you love this episode, say

1:12:27

that you will also love the conversation we

1:12:29

had with Morgan Harper Nichols about her journey

1:12:31

as a successful poet and artist. So find

1:12:34

a link to Morgan's episode in the show

1:12:36

notes. This episode of

1:12:38

Good Life Project was produced by executive

1:12:40

producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields,

1:12:42

editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter,

1:12:45

crafted our theme music and special thanks

1:12:47

to Shelly Adele for her research on

1:12:49

this episode. And of course, if you

1:12:52

haven't already done so, please go ahead

1:12:54

and follow Good Life Project in your

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favorite listening app. And if you found

1:12:58

this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable

1:13:00

and chances are you did since you're

1:13:02

still listening here, would you do me

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those, you know, those you love, those

1:13:17

you want to help navigate this thing

1:13:19

called life a little better so we

1:13:21

can all do it better together with

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more ease and more joy. Tell

1:13:25

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conversations and conversations become action, that's

1:13:34

how we all come alive together.

1:13:36

Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields,

1:13:39

signing off for Good Life. Thank

1:14:00

you.