Show Notes
Patricia and Nicole chat about what they learned this year, how they approach setting goals, and dare to have some ambitions for 2024.
Note: We talk about food we want to make and eat on the show. There is no mention of diet or food restriction other than less-frequent iced coffee.
Mentioned on the show:
The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time by Nancy Davis Kho
Books & Bakes newsletter
Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlie Jane Anders
Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls by Kai Cheng Thom
Homemade Marshmallows Recipe via The Frugal Girl
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Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Patricia: Hey party people! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I’m your co-hostess with the co-mostess? Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording this show on December 18th, 2023.
Patricia: I am so happy this year is almost over.
Nicole: I think you and a lot of people.
Patricia: Yeah, yeah. In a recent newsletter, I wrote about how this year has been pretty terrible for a lot of people, us included. Also that it’s weird that we still need to go to work and eat and do chores and everything else, when there is just an absolutely crushing amount of grief and loss and injustice with no end in sight.
Nicole: It has actually been a lot, hasn’t it? Like, it seems way more than before, or is it just because we’re like older adults now?
Patricia: Mmmmm
Nicole: With more access to news.
Patricia: I think that’s a good question. You know, I think there’s a few things. I think it’s because of our age and our elders being of certain ages, but also, yeah, access to news is one thing.
But also, I think things are just more terrible. Like, there are so many slides backward in reproductive rights, in trans rights, in LGBTQ rights.
Nicole: I feel like there’s been a lot more, like, war and, like, genocidal activity going on this last year, which is horrifying.
Patricia: Yeah, and then the book bans, they are flabbergasting me.
Nicole: Yes, I have seen your gaster been flabbered.
Patricia: Whoa, maybe…
Nicole: Maybe we cut that one out.
Patricia: No, you know what, I’m keeping it.
Nicole: Great.
But this year hasn’t been a hundred percent awful. Of course, there have been moments of joy. These are often smaller, you know, between us. But I think it’s important to be able to see and acknowledge both of these things, both the grief and the loss, but also the joy and the happiness.
For me, as hard as one is or as high as the other, they only really make sense when experienced alongside each other. In some ways, I, I really only understand the grief and the loss alongside the happiness and the joy, and vice versa.
Patricia: That makes sense to me. And, you know, it’s, it’s the saying, no, no rainbows without rain.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: But there’s been too much rain. There’s been too much rain. And it is outsized compared to the joy. So we are at the end of 2023, and I am grateful for it, and I am hoping for more rainbows in 2024.
Nicole: Oh, absolutely.
Patricia: And, you know, it starts off with a bang, as it were. New Year’s is actually one of my favorite holidays.
The past few years, I’ve really leaned into my father’s side of the family and our Southern traditions. Especially the past couple of years, I’ve been learning so much more about Southern traditions and superstitions as well. And they’re kind of one in the same in a lot of ways, the superstitions became tradition.
And a lot of it for New Year’s for me is around food. Of course, I make black eyed peas with collard greens. The black eyed peas are supposed to signify wealth and prosperity, as well as the cornbread, you know, color of gold, greens, color of money, so whole bunch of luck and prosperity. You’re supposed to get a whole bunch of luck and prosperity on the new year. And so one of the things is that you don’t do any cleaning on New Year’s Day. You don’t shower, you don’t wash the dishes, you don’t do the laundry because you don’t want to wash away that New Year’s luck. So you clean the house, you do all your cleaning the day before, and then you do some cleanup on January 2nd.
But on the first no cleaning.
Nicole: Yeah, this has been really nice.
Patricia: Well, and the idea is also the New Year’s Day is when you kind of set your intention out to the universe. So what you are doing on New Year’s Day is what you will be doing the rest of the year. That is the intention that is traditionally, again, going back to my southern roots, that is kind of the vibe they’re going for.
So on New Year’s Day, you spend it in leisure, you read, you watch television, you do things you enjoy, because then the idea is you’ll be doing things you enjoy all year.
Nicole: I have absolutely no intention spending the whole year scrubbing the bathtub.
Patricia: That sounds awful.
Nicole: It really does. It really does.
Patricia: And then another thing, which also some folks do this at the beginning of the month, is blowing cinnamon in through your front doorway.
And so, I usually do it at the beginning of the month, on day one of the month, and that is supposed to bring luck and prosperity into your home.
Nicole: Is this one of the things you do without telling me?
Patricia: Yep, it’s my undercover hoodoo. Don’t worry about it.
Nicole: I won’t. I absolutely won’t worry about it.
Patricia: One of the things I love is the goal setting. I like the optimism of a new year and yes, time is arbitrary and you don’t have to start things on the new year, but I do really love goal setting. And so, our plan for today’s show is we’re going to reflect a little bit on a few of the lessons that we learned in 2023, whether we wanted to learn them or not.
And then we’re going to share some ideas of what some of our goals might be for 2024.
Nicole: Are you asking me to do some of that introspection you keep telling me about?
Patricia: Until the day I die.
Nicole: Oh wow.
Okay, I think we can work on that. We’re starting with some of the lessons we learned. I’m gonna start off with something that I picked up earlier this year that did bring me a lot of simple joy and that was growing some flowers.
Some of you out there may follow me on Instagram where I shared the progress of my chaos garden as it became known because my garden was wild and overgrown and I I really loved it. It was my own little slice of nature that I could, in the middle of the day, just take a few minutes and go sit with it, go kind of explore it.
It seemed like every day something was changing, some new butterfly or something was out there, and it really just, it brought a little, a little slice of nature into my life that I felt like I’d been needing. And now that winter’s come and everything is just bare sticks out there, I’m really looking forward to it again in the spring.
Patricia: Yeah, I could feel your palpable joy when there was like a sprout and you’re like, is it one of the flowers you actually planted? Is it a weed? I don’t know, gonna be excited either way.
Nicole: Yeah, something’s growin’ out there.
Patricia: So, a little change of speed, for folks who don’t know, I fairly suddenly and tragically lost my mother at the beginning of this year, so this whole year was nothing like either of us had planned.
And the biggest thing I’ve learned this year, and I’m going to try to share this without crying, is how to let people help. I have always been fiercely and stubbornly independent. As always the first one to jump up and help someone else and I definitely got that from my mother and when mom got sick and we also suddenly had to like pack up our lives and move across town people really showed up. Friends, family, they showed up for mom, they showed up for us in helping us pack up our lives and move to another larger place. And I really didn’t have an option to not let people help because it was so overwhelming the amount of things we had to do. That I knew we couldn’t do this ourselves and I wouldn’t ask it of you either to do everything.
I’m still in the process of learning that I am deserving of help, but I did learn people really want to help. Like, it’s not even a burden to people to help a lot of times. Like, if they are offering help, they sincerely want to help, and It is just a confirmation, or a re-confirmation, of the importance of community.
When we moved up to the Bay Area, over five years now, we packed up and did that all ourselves.
Nicole: Yeah, it was a lot.
Patricia: It was a lot and it was traumatic and the reason we moved up to the Bay Area is because we have more community up here that is more accessible. Like, we definitely have people down in LA, but everyone is so spread out.
Nicole: And the thing about LA too is that people can even be like close by a couple miles, but it’ll still be like an hour away.
Patricia: Right, right. So yeah, I have learned a lot of lessons about accepting help and the importance of community this year.
Nicole: And that’s also being transferred to me. That is, that is a hard lesson for me to learn as well.
I spent so long just doing everything on my own and, and learning to have that community has been really an important step and I’m hoping we can continue to see that. And grow that.
Patricia: Yeah and we’re not going to dig into it today, but I’ve been reading a lot about community and also loneliness and how it is sometimes divided by gender.
It is sometimes divided by ethnicity, right? I have a big Filipino family. I have a lot of people and cousins are like siblings and it is something thinking about community isn’t something that is a… it was always just a given, and I’ve learned that that’s not the same in a lot of people’s lives. But maybe we’ll dig into that in the future.
Have you learned any other lessons this year?
Nicole: Oh!
Well, I think part of the community thing is we learned we can podcast together. And part of the talk about starting this was also about building a community as well. So…
Patricia: you heard it here, folks. We started a podcast to make friends.
Nicole: Whoops. No, but I learned that we could do this together.
I know I was really nervous coming into this. But I did get some good feedback off the first couple of episodes, and you were also really good at reassuring me that it was gonna be okay. And I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with it, I think. But also, I just like to work on projects with you, so it wasn’t that hard to get me to do this, honestly.
Patricia: You know, this is going to be a little gross and I am sorry listeners, but Nicole and I are such a good team and I am, I am convinced that if double dare we’re still a thing. And also if either of us could stand getting even a little dirty, that we would just sweep the floor with the other people.
Nicole: Probably.
As long as I could wipe my hands off afterwards. Because that slime looks
very gross.
Patricia: The slime looks slimy, it does.
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: It does. So those are some of the lessons we’ve learned, and now I want to look forward and talk about some of the ideas we have for goals because these are not finalized. We still have some time before the end of the year.
And we also have like a monstrous list of all the things we want to do. We tend to be very optimistic about our capabilities. Before we get into the details of what these goals are, I want to cover a bit of the framework that we use and the questions I ask when goal setting with my mentees or even my friends or co workers.
I try to focus on making goals that are fun. And focus on not making a goal because it’s what I think I should do or what other people are doing. And you’re going to see this reflected in some of the goals that we mention in a few minutes. I also try to figure out some kind of accountability structure or partner for a lot of my goals.
And sometimes that is just announcing to the internet I’m gonna do this thing. It might not be a specific person. that I am checking in with, or it might be, it might be a mentor, it might be a co worker, it might be my wife, it might be a friend. Although, okay, so full disclosure, she’s smiling at me over her microphone.
My wife is not a good accountability partner for me because she never tells me no or even wants to do anything that would push me or make me mildly uncomfortable, even if I say you should really check in on me about this thing.
Nicole: I, I love going along for the ride. And if the ride has changed, like, cool, let, we’re changing it.
Um, I am not the best accountability buddy.
Patricia: It’s okay. It’s okay. We have, we have a lot of other buddies. So another thing that I recently even asked one of my mentees about around goal setting is, what is your plan for that? For instance, if the goal is to be on social media less, I basically ask, how are you going to do that?
Are you going to use the Forest app? Are you going to deactivate your accounts? Are you going to delete the apps completely from your devices? But on the flip side, and this is the part that a lot of people I find miss around the goals that are about doing less of something, is asking yourself, what are you going to do instead?
If you are not on social media all the time, what are you going to fill that time with? So, if you don’t have a list of things of what you’re going to do, you’re just going to default back to the social media on the phone because that’s what’s easiest, that’s what gives you a little dopamine rush.
Likewise, if you say you are going to drink less coffee, what are you going to reach for instead when you have the urge for coffee? Maybe you’re just switching to tea. Maybe you are just going to have a big cup of ice water. I still suggest that you hydrate with something, but maybe you’re drinking coffee because you’re bored and maybe examine looking into, like, why are you reaching for that and what do you want to do?
Nicole: This is why it’s really important to always have a good book and a cup of hot chocolate.
Patricia: That’s fair.
Nicole: Keeps you off social media and stops you from drinking coffee in the evening. That’s Nicole’s secret.
Patricia: Wow.
Nicole: No, it’s not, but it is also very important. The other thing we do, though, is we have monthly check ins on our goals.
This is where Patricia is a really good accountability buddy for this, because she helps me remember the monthly check ins. But this is a good opportunity to review the goals, check if any of them are still working for you, or if there’s a goal that’s no longer serving you, don’t be afraid to reprioritize halfway through the year, or stretch a goal that you’ve already met.
Also, this has just been helpful for me when I really get off track for a month. It gives me the opportunity to review and reprioritize the goals that I want to work on. So, Patricia, we were talking about our goals before this. Surprise, we prepped for this show.
Patricia: I know it doesn’t sound like it, but we prepped for this.
Nicole: But a lot of the goals we were talking about focus on getting back on track where we left off at the end of 2022. About a year ago was when your mom first got sick, and it really derailed us, and 2023 was just absolutely rough. I personally don’t like to think of this as we’re trying to get back to some sense of normalcy, but it’s helping point us back in the direction we wanted to be heading.
Patricia: Yeah, I like that, because honestly, after the pandemic began, I don’t even know what normal is anymore. Like, normal’s just kind of out the window.
Nicole: Right, and I don’t, you know, with a lot of things we mentioned at the top of the show, I don’t want to consider any of that normal.
Patricia: Right, right. So, I do have a lot of food centric goals, and by food centric, I don’t mean dieting, I mean food I want to make.
And so if you are someone who has followed me on Instagram for a while, you know that the last couple of years I’ve been on a really big adventure to learn how to make beans from scratch, that’s sorting the beans, soaking the beans. Being in the kitchen for four hours on a Sunday and having bean day Sunday, and it’s been amazing.
I have not had bean day Sunday in a few months now, or a couple months at least. Things have just been chaotic, and so I look forward to getting back to Bean Day Sunday.
Nicole: I look forward to getting back to eating Bean Day Sunday.
Patricia: And I think that I also am going to revive one of my goals I had initially set for this year, which I did not do because, again, here, sideways, which is making pasta from scratch. Last Christmas, you had gotten me some beautiful pasta making tools, and I really look forward to using them.
Nicole: I will be very excited to see these get put into use, finally, because they are really great and beautiful tools.
And also, there is nothing like fresh pasta.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: We love carbs in this household.
Patricia: Speaking of which, I also had gotten a pizza steel last Christmas, and I haven’t made any pizza, and so I really want to, like, nail down my pizza making.
Nicole: Yeah, we had one go with a pizza stone that shattered on the first attempt.
Patricia: Yeah, that was, that was not successful, but I’m, I’m looking forward to trying again.
Nicole: I’m more optimistic that you will not shatter this piece of steel.
Patricia: Is that a challenge?
Nicole: No, please do not shatter a giant piece of steel in our oven.
Patricia: Okay.
Nicole: New Year’s goals, though, don’t have to be so elaborate as making homemade pasta, or they, they don’t even have to be things that will take more than one event.
One of the things I put on my list this year, and I guess this makes all of you listeners accountability buddies for this. I want to go get my nose pierced. That’s on my list for 2024. I also want to go talk to Patricia’s tattoo artist. I’ve had in mind some ink I want to get put down, and I feel like 2024 is a good year for that.
So, those are things that are on my 2024 goal list.
Patricia: Yes.
I also want more tattoos. But I always want more tattoos. And I can never like, I have some ideas.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: I have some ideas.
Nicole: And that’s why I feel like we should go talk to the artist.
Patricia: Absolutely. I am not an artist. I am not a tattoo artist. But speaking of maybe arts, I know that I am a happier person when I am learning something.
So, I have quite the Duolingo streak going, and sometimes I do the bare minimum on the multiple languages that I am learning, and so one of my goals this year is to do maybe three lessons a day instead of just one in order to keep my streak. The other things that, uh, this is a carry over from last year, is learning how to crochet.
My grandmother crocheted. It’s something I’ve wanted to learn for years and I’ve been intimidated by, but we finally have all of the things here and so, who knows, folks, by the time you’re listening to this, I may have already picked up a hook. The other thing is, if I ever get my vehicle back from the mechanic, I want to look into going back to piano lessons.
Nicole: Ooh, I would love that.
Patricia: I am sure you would.
Nicole: One of the things for me that I want to get back on this year, this is something that I had started in 2022 and that I mentioned that we kind of, I kind of lost in 2023. It was my snail mail. Patricia’s really big on snail mail. I was starting to get better at it in 2022.
I was sending out a lot of cards for special occasions. And I really want to expand more on that, and in particular, I want to expand on snail mail in a way that kind of pulls out of social media, in that I want to, to share more of the kinds of things that often get shared on things like Instagram.
So this looks like, for me, like, taking more pictures of Patricia and I, or places we’ve been, or just things I find interesting, and sending that to friends, family, along with a letter about it, with the intention of kind of cultivating a more intimate experience than what you would get on, say, Instagram.
This is, this is a much more tactile experience.
Patricia: Yeah, and you’re talking about physically printing the picture.
Nicole: Yes, physically printing out a picture, tucking it in a letter, and sending it in an envelope to someone. So that, that’s just something I share with that individual person. And it’s less of just another thing I’ve put out there into the ether of the internets and helping just expand on those relationships and in that way that you don’t see done very much anymore, especially with people who we don’t live near anymore. I’ve got a lot of family still in Southern California. We’ve got friends on the East Coast, family on the East Coast. I’m looking for other ways to connect with people other than like, hope you saw my Instagram reel.
Patricia: Right, right. I, as someone who had a mother who was a photographer, and also my job for a long time was working in photo labs, and camera stores, and alongside my mom, and there is something very special about a printed picture.
You know, you can’t go over to people’s houses and flip through photo albums anymore.
Nicole: And no one still wants you to show up with a slide projector and a carousel.
Patricia: That’s fair. And I think it’s also, I recognize that this is not an explicit show, but Polaroids back in the day used to be known as a way people would share scandalous images because they wouldn’t be, there was no internet.
And it was also something that was just for that person unless that person physically shared it with someone else.
Nicole: Don’t expect me to send scandalous photos to listeners or other friends. I’m putting that out there right now.
Patricia: You know, I also have some snail mail goals, not scandalous pictures. But I love sending snail mail. I’ve kind of fallen off the snail mail wagon, and I want to jump back on. And I don’t know what this looks like yet. I don’t know if it looks like three pieces of mail a week, which a postcard takes like three minutes to write.
Three sounds like a lot. It’s not for me. And I also have some overdue thank-yous. Some heartfelt thank-yous to some of my elders. And I’m taking inspiration from Nancy Davis Kho, who wrote The Thank-You Project, who I think she wrote, what was it, 52 thank-you letters for a certain birthday year. And they were thank-you letters that she may or may not have sent.
She may have written it and then read it out loud to the person that she was thanking. It could be parents, it could be friends, it could be a teacher, first grade teacher, your, and I think there are a few people that I want to write these letters to, and one of the things I learned this year is, like, give people their flowers while they’re still alive, so.
Nicole: Yeah, we talked about that a lot earlier this year.
Patricia: Another one alongside of that is, I want to give more compliments. Right. I want to give more compliments, whether it’s in person or whether it’s on Instagram beyond just like sending a little heart or something like, and not just like, I love your meme, right?
Like, but compliments if a person posts a selfie or something and an actual, authentic, genuine compliment and give my wife more compliments. So she learns how to take a compliment.
Nicole: I don’t know what those are. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Patricia: And again, another related thing is I want to get back to writing reviews for like everything I buy for service.
I usually, when I go to the post office, I fill out their survey and I tell them everyone was great all the time because I know it’s a silly thing that managers look at. And I only want to leave good, like, I’m only reviewing things that are good, I just give good reviews, but I want to get back to that.
It’s a little thing that can actually help someone out.
Nicole: Yeah, it is a small thing that can really turn around someone’s day sometimes, because typically, I feel like especially right now, most people are only leaving, like, negative reviews, or calling and, and, when they’re mad about something. So to leave positive reviews and compliments is, that can make little changes.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: One of our bigger goals, and this is one of those kind of more nebulous things where we know what the end goal is, is making space in the office for me to move in there. I currently still work from the kitchen table when I work from home.
Patricia: Yeah, and a lot of the stuff in there is stuff in our old place that we had kind of in a storage room and now it actually really needs to be dealt with.
So my strategy for this, again, I ask myself like, okay, what’s your plan, is 20 minutes a day. Initially, we had thought maybe like one box a week or something like that, but sometimes a box could take four hours.
Nicole: I feel like we’ve been telling ourselves, like, one box a week for the past, like, three or four years since we moved up here.
Patricia: Yeah, so, so twenty minutes a day I think is more manageable. Something else that is, you know, like I said, we have all these ideas for all these goals. We’re really optimistic. And another one is, I want to hire a photographer and take some nice photos together.
Nicole: I would love to take some nice photos with you.
Patricia: Like get big. poofy dresses or something, I don’t know, spend some money on some outfits, go to a location, but we don’t have any nice pictures of us since our wedding, and actually you transitioned after our wedding…
Nicole: Yeah…
Patricia: So we have no nice pictures of the real you and me.
Nicole: Are you telling me that the selfies you take of us all the time are not quote unquote nice?
Patricia: They’re fine, but they aren’t as dramatic as what I have pictured in my mind.
Nicole: No, I totally agree with you. I can’t wait to take some fun, fancy, actual professional pictures with you. Another one, I hope we can keep this podcast going.
Patricia: Oh, absolutely. I think, you know, we definitely have sat and said, okay, let’s keep it going for three months and then we’ll check in after three months and we’ll see how we’re doing.
And again, it’s just something that we’re going to have regular check ins about because we want it to stay fun for us and we want it to stay fun for the listeners.
And, okay, this is just me geeking out and I realize that this is not for everyone, but this is the first year where we are going to use a joint planner.
I historically have aspired to be a planner person, and I’m not, and I feel like this has been a long time coming. I had asked for us to use a planner together years ago, but I don’t think either of us was ready.
Nicole: Right, and then when the pandemic started, something we started doing when we were both working from home was every day, writing down when our meetings were, to know where we overlapped, where did someone need to maybe go to another room to take a meeting, so that we weren’t talking over each other.
This evolved then into you finding some actual notepads that had, like, 7am to 10pm or something on them for us to fill out daily.
Patricia: Right, and so we got in the habit of doing that for the past three years now. And then on top of that, we would always write our goals down for the year on a physical piece of paper and have that hanging up where we could see it.
Nicole: Mmhmm.
Patricia: And then we also got in the habit of writing a joint weekend to do list that would then bleed over into the following week. And every week there was a fresh list. And so we really got habituated to having these things written down.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And so now that we are well established in writing the things down, we can then consolidate all of these pieces of ephemera into a single planner.
So I am really optimistic, and my advice for what the best planner is? The best planner is the one that you’re going to use. It doesn’t matter if it has all these amazing layouts and stickers and colored pens and everything. The best planner is the one you’re going to use.
Nicole: And I am really kind of excited to see how this turns out, because I’m going to be able to go to one place to find our to do list, to see our weekly schedules, to see our goals, like, it’s all going to be in one place.
I’m not going to have to go to one room to find the things that are stuck on the wall, to another room to find the to do list, and over to the kitchen table to find the daily it’s all going to be in one place, which really helps me out. I think the next item though is something that some of the listeners who are here for you in particular are very interested to hear.
Patricia: Yeah, I can’t get through a whole annual goal setting show without talking about reading goals. And so actually the past couple of years I’ve just set my Goodreads goal to 100 because I know I’d hit it. And it was just a way for me to easily track the books that I have read. I also use StoryGraph sometimes, you know, I go back and forth.
Sometimes I use them both at the same time, but I think I’m still going to just set that goal at a hundred books.
Nicole: Mmhmm.
Patricia: You know, I don’t really have a book number, like amount of reading, reading goal, but something I carried over that I wanted to do last year. Which I, I’m gonna try to do this year is read all of Octavia E. Butler’s works.
Nicole: Yesss.
Patricia: And I wanted to do that last year. I have a tattoo with one of her quotes in her handwriting on my arm. And I just… I think it’s time. And I know some of, like, they’re going to be hard reads
Nicole: Mmhmm
Patricia: but I, I want to do that. I also recently have read a bunch of picture books from the library. And talk about a dopamine spike.
Like, I just want to get more picture books from the library. And my friend Laura over at Books and Bakes. She, I think, is going to read. 365 picture books. She’s trying to read a picture book a day.
Nicole: Whoa.
Patricia: And so I think those are more my goals. More picture books and Octavia E. Butler’s works.
Nicole: I think for me, one of mine in that realm is just to pick up tracking again.
I did really well in 2022 logging just about every book I read into Goodreads and this year, I just didn’t. And I tried to do some where I shared what I’m reading on Instagram or whatever. I want to make it a goal this year to try to keep track of everything in…
Patricia: StoryGraph?
Nicole: StoryGraph! The not Goodreads one.
But yeah, Storygraph. I like that one. I like the interface more on it. So I’m going to try to do that. The other thing I want to kind of talk about in the book realm is this idea of books to revisit. I know in some of your other book related work you’ve mentioned there are books you like to revisit at the beginning of the year or during the year, and there’s one for me that I read this last year that I really feel like is one I need to revisit regularly, and that is Falling Back in Love with Being Human, Letters to Lost Souls by Kai Cheng Thom.
I read it earlier this year, it was It was heartbreaking and enlightening and so many things, but it also is a book that can be taken in very tiny bits over long pieces of time. The author also provides you with prompts of activities or journaling or things to do and I feel like it’s just the kind of thing that I need to revisit regularly to, as the title says, fall back in love with being human.
Patricia: I would love to revisit that book. I had listened to it on audio and I had turned up the speed and so it was just getting these intense, beautiful, powerful poems just absolutely fire- hosed into my head. And it was so good. And yeah, I want to revisit that one.
Nicole: I would definitely recommend this time taking it slow.
Patricia: I don’t know what that means. There are so many books I want to revisit, and I rarely do because I’m like, oh, I have limited time on earth, and I can only read so many books, so why don’t I read new books? But one that I definitely want to revisit is Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders.
I almost always hate books that have writing advice. I am never excited by books that have writing advice. It’s so unique to the people and it’s not one size fits all, but Never Say You Can’t Survive is perhaps the best writing advice book I’ve read, and it just, every page resonated. And so I, I would like to revisit that this year.
Nicole: I love Charlie Jane’s work, so I will always support that.
Patricia: Do you have any other goals for next year?
Nicole: There’s one I want to just float out there as… a… maybe….?
Patricia: Mm hmm.
Nicole: We’ve talked about this off and on for the last couple of years. Maybe we get some kittens?
Patricia: I really want kittens, and I’m scared. What if we get evil kittens, though?
Nicole: I, no, that wouldn’t happen.
Patricia: That wouldn’t, kittens wouldn’t do that to us?
Nicole: No.
Patricia: Uh, yeah, yeah, we want kittens.
Nicole: It’s a good reason to clean up and make our house a little more kitten safe.
Patricia: That’s fair.
We also have hella boring goals about finances and regular movement like walks and yoga at home. But these were some of our fun goal ideas. And we have some takeaways. So our big takeaways are: Yes! Have. Fun. Goals. You’re going to be more inspired to do them if you are into them. Also have a plan around your goals. And have regularly scheduled check-ins to see if the goal still serves you. And this doesn’t necessarily mean check-ins with a partner or even another person, like check in with yourself.
And a reminder that time is arbitrary and you can start anything at any time, even on a Tuesday.
Nicole: Even on a Tuesday…
Patricia: ha haaa.
Nicole: It really is okay.
Patricia: I’m gonna start making you start things on Tuesdays.
Nicole: Oh god, Tuesday’s not a good day to start things. I say that and I realized the other day that I totally start my pillbox cycle on a Tuesday and had some friends give me some, give me some grief about it.
But I feel like it’s okay. It’s okay to start things on a Tuesday. Just, sometimes Tuesdays aren’t good days.
Patricia: It’s okay sometimes except for when it’s not.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah, there you go. That should be a sticker we make. Sometimes it’s okay except when it’s not.
Patricia: Sure.
So, I’m not going to share a resource today. We have talked and talked, and it’s also the end of the year, so I I would like everyone to just celebrate and reflect, and a little bit of housekeeping about moving forward. In December we have posted a show every Wednesday, and we are finally in the new year going to our every other week schedule, so our next show will drop on Wednesday, January 10th.
Nicole: With that said, I think we’re at the point in the show where I have to ask you, Patricia, what is filling your cup?
Patricia: Well, it’s a simple and complicated thing, which is we’ve been making our annual massive amount of homemade marshmallows. Which is a pretty involved process over the course of two days, but we now live in a place with a bigger kitchen and we kind of have a well choreographed marshmallow making factory in here and they are just, uh, they ruin me for regular marshmallows.
Nicole: It really does. And just about anyone who’s tasted them is like, well, now I can’t have store bought marshmallows anymore.
Patricia: The recipe is from America’s Test Kitchen, but I will look around and see if I can find a comparable recipe to share in the show notes. Nicole, what is filling your cup right now?
Nicole: I am still riding high after this weekend.
We took Friday off to celebrate my birthday and we went out and had an expensive dinner and it was really good. And we went out and saw some holiday lights. And then the next day, we went into the city and had some more food that I really enjoy at one of my favorite spots to eat it, which is under the Golden Gate Bridge.
And it was just a really nice weekend, and it felt like it’d been a while since the two of us had had time to just go out and have fun, and be ourselves together and it was just a really good weekend and I missed doing that and I look forward to doing it more, but I’m definitely still kind of floating on that.
Patricia: Good.
I’m happy to hear it. I’m happy to hear it. So am I. It was, it was a great weekend. I’m I’m glad you had a birthday.
Nicole: I am too.
Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdlou.com. We’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our Bookshop link, the podcast email list, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram and BlueSky at eedapod and email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We’re nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would also appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. It really goes far in helping other people find us.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon.
Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself, drink some water, make good decisions, and we’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: I’m really gonna actually have to go get my nose pierced now.