Work: Conundrums and Confessions- featuring guest co-host, author Julie Falatko

In our 18th episode of the Woman Uncaged Podcast, Laura welcomes a special guest to the Woman Uncaged Podcast. Julie Falatko is an award-winning, prolific children's author, who also teaches online classes, and writes a fabulous newsletter on Substack called Do The Work.

Julie and I discuss:
-what counts as "work"
-does work have to be hard and unenjoyable?
-why do we feel guilty when we enjoy work?
-why do we value the misery of work over the joy?
-the question Julie asked herself that has led to her joyful productivity
-Julie's writing process and the challenges of writing
-how writing takes time, including that Julie's next book Help Wanted: One Rooster took 10 years to be published
-Julie's desire that we get off social media and write those great books we're always thinking about writing
-how your writing, and your creativity, is not a corporate agenda

We mention these books:
Sacred Success by Barbara Stanny Huson
Filterworld: HOW ALGORITHMS FLATTENED CULTURE By Kyle Chayka

I also mentioned an article I thought was called "The Blanding of America." I was wrong about that. I confused the article with another I had read in the NY Times called "America, the Bland" and another in the Boston Globe called "The Blanding of America." The actual article I was referring to is called "The Age of Average" by Alex Murrell. It's fascinating and worth the read!

Julie's website: https://juliefalatko.com/
Julie's Substack (which I highly recommend): https://juliefalatko.substack.com/

Laura's Monday Money Missives: https://www.dearlaura.net/letters

As always, we'd love it if you would share your thoughts about this episode with us. You can email us at  womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com. 

We love hearing from you!

Transcript

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Linda 0:02

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Woman Uncaged Podcast. I am Laura Gates Lepton, and we have something a little bit different today because poor, dear, wonderful Linda is sick. And so we have here our first guest ever. And I'm so I am not Linda.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

I'm I'm a substitute teacher, is what I hope.

Linda 0:23

I am so excited to introduce Julie Falapco to all of you. She is so smart and wise and such a brilliant writer. She's an award-winning children's author. And I don't even remember how many books you have out and how many you have under contract, but you can tell us. I know that's a lot. But I'm so happy to welcome her here to talk about productivity and work. Because one thing, one of the many things that I admire about Julie is how much she gets done, but she does it in her own rhythms and very much an uncaged kind of way. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Welcome, Julie.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Thank you, Laura. And uh I am one of Laura's clients, and Laura has changed my mindset about money in a very positive way and continues to. Um, so and I have uh, I think it's 11 books out, and I have four more under contract.

Linda 1:19

So amazing. With more to come, I know. Yeah, I know there are more to come, and then more than I'm writing. Yeah, there are others that are in the works that aren't under contract yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

So right. And that's actually a great place to start because does it count if I'm writing a book that never becomes a book that I can sell for money? Does that count as work? Is it does it count as work if I don't produce something that I can sell to the public?

Linda 1:52

Hmm, that's an interesting question. It really is about that definition of work, right? Like is work, is work only something that generates income or is it all work?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah, I was thinking about that too, because I was thinking, well, rest is really important. It's really important to me. I know that as a writer, I cannot my work day can't be eight hours of writing every day. It's just I would burn out about two o'clock on day two. And so rest is really important. But is rest work then? If it's important for work, if I need to rest, is the rest of work? And then if I if and I don't know that I think it is, unless I start defining life as work, then I don't know how I feel about that.

Linda 2:46

That's a great question. I would say that rest is fuel for work.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

But I think one thing it comes down to is that work is something that we see as it's hard. You it's miserable work, you don't enjoy it. You've got to do the work. Uh, I'm so busy, I'm doing so much work. And it can it people never say, I'm having such a great time because I'm doing work. Right. And I think that I think that there's such beautiful work that we can do in life where you can enjoy the process of work. Um, whether it's sort of being in the moment while you're washing dishes and doing that mindfully and sort of in a zen way, or it's resting for fuel to write the next day. Um, and it can all be this joyful work that's not miserable work.

Linda 3:47

Right. A friend and I recently confessed to each other that we both really like working, which is kind of funny. But why is it a confession? I know, but that's how it felt though. She was like, Well, I have to say, I actually really like working. And I was like, So so do I.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Me too, right? But it's the secret.

Linda 4:06

It is a secret, and I think part of it is because we hear all this stuff about work-life balance. Like you're supposed to have balance. And you know, sometimes I want to work all weekend. Like I have projects I'm really excited about, and that's I'm gonna do this weekend. I'm gonna work all weekend because I have a project I really want to do, and I can't do it during my busy work day, so I'm gonna do it, but I'm looking forward to it. So I don't even really think of that as work necessarily, it's just that falls under that umbrella because it's related to, you know, this like all the things that I do to make money.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah. And that's and that's the question is there's so much for so many people, what they do to make money might be miserable work. And then if they do something creative, it's outside of that miserable work. And so it either seems like a second job. I mean, I think that's why people call it a side hustle, because it's just that's just a fancy way of saying slightly less miserable work that I do when I'm really tired after I work for eight hours for somebody else. Right. Um and then and then you're not having any fun with anything.

Linda 5:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

And then that's a really and I say this from a point of the privilege of that I love writing and then I get to do that all day long, that I don't have a quote unquote day job, meaning that I I don't go work for someone else.

Linda 5:31

Right, right. And I've had clients, most of them writers actually fall in this category who've felt guilty about that. Yeah who yeah, like feel like I really like my work. It is it's like a confession, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Because you feel guilty about it. Because so many of the people in my world don't like their work and tell me about it. And then I certainly don't feel like saying, I had the greatest time writing about a talking bunny today.

Linda 5:57

I love that though. It is true for me too, because my dad, you know, he always said growing up, well, if it was fun, they wouldn't call it work, Laura. Yeah. So it took me a long time to get to the point where I was comfortable being like just it with for myself, not even telling anybody else, but for myself thinking, well, I actually really like my work.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And that that attitude, which is so pervasive of if it was fun, they wouldn't call it work. Like, then you feel like if you're doing something and it's fun, even if it's a chore or something that is maybe shouldn't be fun, but if you're having a good time doing it, because maybe you're with your family, that then you feel like, oh, I did it wrong. I had fun, so I maybe I messed up somehow. I had fun like chipping the paint off of the trim around the window, so I must have done it wrong.

Linda 6:51

Right. Or maybe I didn't do a good enough job because I couldn't, I couldn't have been working hard enough. Because if I were working hard, it wouldn't have been fun.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Right, right, right. I'd be miserable. I was I would have been miserable the whole time. And what a terrible uh lesson for people that oh yeah, that we should be miserable. Yeah, that's that's a better way to be somehow. Then then you cannot be guilty because you can say, Well, I did this work, but I was miserable while I did it. So it's okay. It's okay.

Linda 7:19

You're reminding me of some of my Catholic family members now when you're talking about that. I was not raised with any religion because my parents had very different religions. They chose not to raise us with one, but my dad's side of the family is Catholic. And um, yeah, I've heard things like that, almost exactly like that, of like, but it's okay because I I I didn't like it.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Right. And why why do we have to confess that we enjoy ourselves? Why do we have to confess that we had a good time doing something that we got paid for? Yeah, right, right.

Linda 7:53

Yeah, that's that's a great question. I want to shift a little bit and talk about some of your work with rhythms, like how you work and how you because you you get so much done in terms of writing and producing all of these pieces. Julie also teaches online classes, she's teaching one right now. How do you do all of that? And she's a mom of four kids, I have to mention too.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

How do I do all of it? I mean, the biggest thing for me was really asking myself, what do I want? What do I want to do? What do I want to produce? And how do I how do I want to approach these things that I'm producing? So I want to, I have a lot of book ideas and I want to write them, whether or not they turn into books that get sold to editors, to publishers, I I have these ideas that I want to write. And so the only way to do that is to write them. And uh it's I'm realizing I'm not quite sure how to answer your question because I just do it. Um now I sound like Nike, but like I know, I think for me it comes down to noticing how I feel if I do the work versus if I don't do the work, because it's very easy to not write. And there's a I can sit in front of my computer and click around all day and read articles that are interesting, watch a video that is fun to watch. But when I do that at the end of the day, I don't feel satisfied, I don't feel fulfilled. Um, I feel like, oh, that's not what I meant to do. And then I don't come at it with shame. It's just like interesting information. Oh, I noticed that. And then on the days when I do get writing done, even the smallest amount of writing, uh, I feel much more satisfied at the end of the day. And, you know, when my youngest daughter was maybe three or four, was that was right around the time that I started writing. And I have this idea, like I mean, I've been writing my whole life, but then I was like, okay, I'm I'm really gonna do this. So I was motivated because I'd been home with the kids for years at that point. And I thought, okay, this is oh, right. I forgot that my whole life, this is what I actually want to do was write children's books. Forgot about it. So now I really want to do it. And so we would go to the Y, and she would take a little gymnastics class, and all the other parents would line up in the hallway and talk to each other. And I left. I would go to like this quiet corner and I would write, and it would, it was a very compressed amount of time. Um, I want to say it was half an hour, maybe 40 minutes. But that was often the only time I had all week when I knew that I would be uninterrupted because the other kids were doing other things. And so I would, I would just go and work for that 40 minutes. And then if nothing else happened in between that class and the next class, at least I was making forward progress. And so I saw that by working in these small amounts and then even working in smaller amounts where I would get an idea, I would get a flash of insight, and I would write it down and it would be one sentence, but that was one sentence more than I had at the beginning of the day. Um, it's important to note that I did not have a smartphone at this time, also. So there was, I there were, I didn't have that interruption. And that has been something that I've sort of I got in a phone and then it was an interruption, and then I've realized this is not good for me. And I try to distance myself as much as possible, often physically distancing myself because it gets in the way of work.

Linda 11:59

Right.

unknown 12:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Um, but working in those tiny shards of one sentence at a time, you can write a book that way.

Linda 12:08

But it must feel luxurious now then to have like the kids are all in school, right? You have your space that you write in. It must feel so much more luxurious compared to that to have a space of time to actually write and not feel like, oh, I've got 40 minutes, I gotta get this down.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

It does. I mean, in some ways, I was I wasn't more productive then, but because I was driven by a focused, constrained deadline, um, there was sometimes I did get more done. Um, but now it's luxurious in that there's there can be pauses and breaths and um moments of stillness that I for sure did not have when my kids were younger.

Linda 12:57

Yeah, I get that. One of the reasons I love the content writing creation circle, which Julie is also a part of that I have on Thursday mornings, is that when I write my newsletter, we have an hour and 45 minutes. And so I can actually play with the words. I'm not just trying to crank it out. And to me, that feels luxurious. You know, I can actually like play.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

And one of the things that I love about the content writer's creation circle, is that what it's called? Um, is I just call it co-writing in my to-do list, but uh, is that that is the time when I write my newsletter or I do like business writing. Um, and so then I have the whole rest of the week when I can do fiction writing. And so where I used to be, I would know that I had a newsletter to write or an email to write, and I would think, I'll just write it and get it over with. Now I know that I have that time, the co-writing time. So I can, I don't have to like that is the constrained time. That's me sitting outside of gymnastics class, I guess, and working on that, where now the rest of the time, um, I can I can work on novels and picture books. Although, you know, my kids are in school, but they they're still around a lot. Um I've been it's not quite as like free time and luxurious as as I thought it would be with teenagers.

Linda 14:19

I learned that when my kids went to school after homeschooling. I thought, oh, I'm gonna have all this time, and it just doesn't really feel that way. Um, I speaking of Julie's newsletter, I want to mention that she has a wonderful Substack. We'll put a link in the show notes in case anyone's interested in checking that out. It's called Do the Work. I love reading it.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Um, yeah, I think that's how obsessed I am with this topic is my whole newsletter is about doing the work.

unknown 14:41

Yeah.

Linda 14:41

Yes, absolutely. And that's it's so important for writers, though, having coached writers. Because that was my first, my first eight years of coaching. I coached writers primarily. And a lot of the times I was saying do the work. You know, it's like it's really important to figure out what the work actually is. Yeah. Like, you know, you can't spend your whole time researching and volunteering and going to workshops. You have to actually put words on the page.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

And it's so hard because those words are never going to be what you want them to be.

Linda 15:08

No.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Um, and the longer that you think about what you want to write, the worse those words are going to seem when you put them on the page, because you will have built it up into this like amazing, perfect, best-selling book in your head. And then you start to write this happens to me every time I start to write it, and I'm like, what is this crap? You know, this is terrible. But then it's like, then once I start getting it out, then then the better sentences come to me and I write those down, and it just builds itself up block by block.

Linda 15:44

Yeah. I mean, there's a reason they call it a shitty first draft, too. It's like just get it out, and then you can polish it. But it is hard though. You're right. The vision we have for what we want to write, it's even true when I write newsletters. I think about it ahead of time. I think, oh, this is what I'm gonna say, and I sit down to write it, and I'm like, oh, you know, that's why I like having the time to play, because then I can play with the words and you know, see what I want really trying to say, and you know, it, but it never measures up to what I think it's gonna be ahead of time.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

And being a writer or an artist of any kind is understanding that your first draft and maybe even your second or third draft are going to be bad and not be not even bad. It's not even that they're going to be bad, they might be okay, but they're not going to be the thing you had in your head. And then you have to know like being the artist is knowing that you can do the work to get it as close as you possibly can to your original vision, even if it to the greatness of your original vision, because often in revision it turns into something else entirely. Um, but to sort of accept the gift of the inspiration and to honor that by making it as good as you possibly can. Right. Um, and to know that you can do that and that it takes time.

Linda 17:06

Right. And that what you write today, you're probably not gonna like 10 years from now.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Because you're skilled through. That's great. I don't hear that very often. A lot of times, well, but I but I can see like, oh, I would do it differently. Um but I think also that is why you give it the time it needs and uh give it some space because if you just rush to get it out, then maybe you won't like it five, 10 years from now because you didn't give give it the time that it needed. Now, when we're talking about like an email, maybe you don't, I mean, sometimes you just have to get it out. Um, it doesn't all have to be works of art.

Linda 17:50

True. And I think that's important too. It's like because we can be very perfectionist about things that don't have to be. Yeah. But do you have more than one project going at a time when you're writing?

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Uh, not well, yes, actually. I've not more than one big fiction project. I mean, I'll have they might be in various stages of uh like I might have a first draft and then I've got another one that's been through a couple of revisions, but that but I'm not writing both of those at the same time. Right. Um, and then sometimes a picture book comes through that needs either an editor wants to work on or I get an idea, and because picture books don't take as long, um I might work on that, but usually not because once I'm in the voice of a story, I I need to stay in that. And sometimes other books are very loud and will start yelling, and then um then you need to take notes, but don't switch projects. At least that's not how I can do it.

Linda 18:52

Yeah, that's interesting. Because back when I was writing more and going to conferences, I heard different people talk about their processes. Some people were like, never, only one. I don't even read other people's stuff, I just focus on my one thing. And then other people are like, Oh, I always have two at a time because if I get stuck with one, I'll switch. So I'm always curious about that.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

That's fascinating. I know I love hearing about creative processes because I think that that is the coolest thing that we that there's so many books in the world and so many writers in the world, and that they all got made in different ways. And even from book to book, my process will be different. Especially with picture books. Like I've had picture books that only want to come one sentence at a time, and it's very frustrating. And I'll write a sentence and then I'll stare at it, and I'll be like, I nope, nothing now is coming today. And then the next day I get the next sentence. All right. Um but wow, yeah. And then I mean, some I've written a couple of novels and they've all come very differently. I think because I'm changing as a writer, but also maybe the um the just the books are different.

Linda 20:03

That makes sense to me. It's they're different voices. They're you coming through you, but it they're different voices. Yeah, that's really interesting. I know you have a book coming out that was how many years in the making?

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Like from the time I yeah, my next picture book, it'll be 12 years since I wrote the first draft, but and also 10 years since it got the book deal. So it was 10 years from book deal to publication. Yeah. Um, and so like part of doing the work is having a lot of projects going on because oh my goodness, if I had sold that book and then waited.

Linda 20:41

Well, first of all, you wouldn't be honing your skills during that time. Yeah, right. But secondly, you probably would get interested in something else. Like, I don't even know if you'd be like, Am I a writer? Like I wrote this book 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Right. And I mean, if you only write one book, you're still a writer. You're still a writer, but you're maybe not a working author. I don't know about I don't know. That's I'm not quite sure the phrase. I'm not sure. I feel kind of weird about that too, because to write a book that gets published is uh is an accomplishment, sure, no matter how many you have. Um, but with that book, the the one that's coming out in June, Help Wanted One Rooster, that is one where we went through the whole editing process, then finally it was obviously going to come out at a certain time. And I looked at it and I realized that I had changed so much as a writer that I needed to rewrite the whole thing. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because yeah, because the way I mean it was fine. And honestly, if it had come out when it was originally supposed to, it would have been fine. But I've I saw how I could totally change the whole thing, and so I did. The editor was like, We're almost done. And then the next round, I was like, sorry, I rewrote the whole thing. How did they take that? I was fine because she could see that it was better.

Linda 22:00

Good.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

And I mean, at that point, it had already been what, seven and a half years at that point. So it's like they're not going to say, oh, well, now we're on a deadline, you know.

Linda 22:09

Um that's good. I had a a person in my critique group years ago who had written a novel and had submitted it for a contest and then kind of assumed he didn't win because the deadline had been passed like for a long time. And they and the contest had a particular rhythm to it. So he thought, Oh, I didn't win because I didn't hear anything. So he brought his novel back to the critique group and we re-reworked it. We changed, I think we changed it from first person to third person. Like we made major changes, took out a character, like we all like workshopped this thing, and he rewrote it and it was so much better. Then it turned out he won the contest with the original manuscript. And so he said to them, Well, actually, I've reworked it and I think it's better. And they said, No, like this one, this one, this is the book. So that's the one that got published. Huh.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Huh. That's interesting. Because I feel like every editor that I've worked with would be happy to have the book be better. And maybe they would say, No, you ruined it. And that would be a conversation to have. But it was it wasn't even.

Linda 23:11

Yep. They wouldn't even look at it. They're like, nope, this is the one. And I don't know if it's because they were so far off timeline because it took longer to announce the winner. I don't know what happened, but he came back to Crit Group and was like, Well, guess what? We were all really surprised. And I have to say, I was a little disappointed because I just thought the the next version was so much better. But but it's such an idiosyncratic process. What were you gonna say, Julie?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Well, it still counts, is what I was gonna say. That that work that you all did, even if that's not the book that got published. I mean, yeah, it's still a good, it's all that writing experience that you take into your body and you have in your bones, and then you can use going forward.

Linda 23:54

Oh, yeah. And we all learned a lot through the process too, you know, and had great discussions about why is this why should this character go? Why is this character just like you know, one of those darlings that you need to kill off, you know? Um, and then it was one that he really loved, but I was I remember thinking it didn't really serve the plot. So he was, you know, the character stayed, the character lived in the original version.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

And it's so interesting to me, like I feel like those big why questions, you can't really ask them until you've been through the book several times. I have a uh writing friend named Lindsay Eager who reads a lot of my books, and she will often I send them to her when I don't know what else to do with them, which is when I send things out generally. I try to work on them as much as I can on my own. But she's the one who's really good at asking, like, why is it in this format? Why, why is this character doing why did the character do this? And it's and they're always, I mean, and not in like a she asks really thoughtful writing craft questions that then make the book better. But if you asked that of me earlier in the process, I would be like, I don't know, it just seems like the right thing to do.

Linda 25:05

It's the way it came to me, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

And it's and then it's important to get it out and that because if it's that's the way it came to you, then write it in that way and then then ask why, I think. But all of that takes so much time, right? And that's what um I mean, it's I get so annoyed with the internet taking up so much of our time because I feel like social media and the internet are robbing today's writers of these books that I want to read, right? I want today's writers to give themselves the space and time to trust that they can write these books and that their intuition will present them with a book and they'll write it, and then we'll present them with a way to revise it and they'll revise it. And you can't do that if you're on social media all the time because that makes you question yourself and not trust yourself as much. And I worry that we're not that it's robbing us of these great books that we could be reading. And I want to read, I want to read the great books.

Linda 26:11

I love that. I love that so much, and I think it's so important. And and Julie walks the talk, right? Like your own relationship to social media has changed over time.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, in all of our defense, if you are on social media and you're like, I don't want to be anymore, it has changed. And there was a time when it was more fun, and then it has changed. And now, because of the way the algorithms have changed, I read this great book called Filter World by Kyle Cheika, which is about how um the social media and technology has like flattened culture because it's trying to make us all the same. Because if we're all the same, then it's easier for the algorithm to understand us. We're probably easier to sell to, too.

Linda 26:54

If we're all the same, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yes, exactly, exactly. And uh so that's great for the tech companies and for the algorithms, but it's not great for us, and it's certainly not great for artists, because as an artist, you need to make the weird thing that only you can make, that is like the the equation of who you were in high school and the weird band you liked in college, and your favorite movie from when you were 12, and this cupcake flavor that you really love. Like somehow, all that together makes a book that only you can write. And when you add in TikTok often or Instagram, it it it then that's another thing added into the equation that doesn't really fit in, and then it like shoehorns itself in and flattens everything else out. Um, but and it it also takes up so much time, really. And we need we need time to write the books, both to write them and then just to sit with them and stare out the window for a while. Yeah.

Linda 27:58

Yep. Yeah, that's such a good point. Have you read the article? It's I don't remember who wrote it, but it's called The Blanding of America. No, I'm gonna I'll track it down and find it for you. Um, Linda actually first sent it to me and it was fascinating, but it's about how so many of our choices have been narrowed down to very limited ones, including colors of cars. So if you go to a parking lot, and I I really encourage all of you to do this. The next time you're in a parking lot, look around and see how many colors you see. Most of the cars in in America are black, brown, tan, or blue. But most of them are and white. That's the other color. You do see red too occasionally. But after I read the article, I couldn't, because I live near Cornell, and so we walk through the parking lots over there fairly often as we're going on campus, and I realized, like, oh my god, these cars are all gray, black, brown, white. Occasionally you see a red one, maybe a blue one.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

But then if if there is a new color, not that this is gonna make me sound like I've been studying car colors and maybe I have, but there's like there would be an orange one, and then there would be a bunch of orange ones across car brands, or there's this like gray, blue kind of battleship gray color. I know suddenly that was everywhere two years ago, and it was like, wait, did was there a meeting about car colors?

Linda 29:20

And they were like, it's time to introduce one more, and it's not a bright blue, it's like a bland blue, yeah. Yeah, and it's not that I don't like it, but suddenly it was everywhere. You're absolutely right. It was shortly after I read this article that that color started appearing, but it's just so interesting to to hear to read about. And I'll try to when I find the article, I'll send it to you Julie and I'll put it in the show notes because it's important to know it's corporate. This is a corporate agenda, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

And your writing is not a corporate agenda. And I mean, eventually, if you do get published by a traditional publisher, there is like the business of publishing, yes. But when you are starting your book, it cannot be a corporate agenda. It has to be so specific to all of your weird little nuances. Yes. And the weirder and more specific you make it to you and the heart of you, and what you want to read, and what only you can write, the better a book it'll be.

Linda 30:19

Yes. And one of Julie's quirks, I guess I'll say, but what also one of her talents is that she's very funny and her books are very funny. Right. And that and that comes from your own sense of the world and your sense of humor and the way you look at things. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

I mean, I'm funny out in the world, not just in my books. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, and and I like I don't want our books to be bland gray blue. Right. I don't, yeah.

Linda 30:52

Yeah, I don't want our worlds to be no bland gray blue. I mean, that's part of what this podcast is about, is uncaging our lives. It's like being who we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With in full spectrum.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Yeah, right. Exactly. Because if you if everybody is buying, I mean, and if we don't have the choice of other cars, so maybe that's not a good example. But if but if you do pick one with color, you're pretty voting for that, unless you truly like that color. But like if it wasn't, it was what was Henry Ford said you can have any color you want as long as it's black, black, but yeah. Um, but if you if you paint your nails uh pink, because everybody else in town is painting their nails pink, but really you want to paint them purple green, purple, you should do. I mean, that's that's maybe a small thing, but I think to express yourself to be unapologetically yourself, as Barbara Stanley Hussain says in Sacred Success, that is the way that you're gonna make the world a better place because we make the world a better place by creating the art that only we can make, not by creating the bland stuff that anyone can make and that AI could have come up with. Right. Exactly.

Linda 32:14

Well, I think that's a beautiful place for us to wrap up today.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

It's been so much fun having you here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad I could uh I was gonna say pinch hit, but I'm probably not somebody who should come up with a sports metaphor term. So that might be the wrong thing. Put me in, coach. Well, I am your coach. So I know that one wasn't a sports metaphor. That was a that was the money coach metaphor term.

Linda 32:43

I love it. I love it. All right, everyone. I will put stuff about Julie in the show notes. You should check her out, check out her Substack, look for her books in the library and in your bookstore. They are absolutely wonderful. And see you next time. Bye. Bye.