Episode 6: Any Knife Can Be a Throwing Knife if You Believe in Yourself

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Episode artwork for episode titled "Any knife can be a throwing knife if you believe in yourself"

Show Notes

Patricia and Nicole chat about how learning a skill and becoming proficient at something often has little to do with having the newest, fanciest instruments and gear. They also discuss recognizing and celebrating wins, especially outside of the typical heteronormative social structure.

This episode is based on Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Volume 3, Issue 1: Composition Transcends Instrument and Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Vol 5, Iss 1: Recognizing & Celebrating Wins

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Sound editing by Jen Zink

Transcript

Patricia: Hey pals! 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 host, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording this show on January 15th, 2024. 

Patricia: So, I recently did some googling, as I am known to do, and I learned that over half active podcasts on Apple Podcasts only have three or fewer episodes.

So this is episode six. 

Nicole: Oh, we are totally double more than half. I don’t know how to do maths on that, but that sounds like we have more episodes than like a hundred percent of the show’s on Apple Podcasts.

Patricia: <LAUGH> a hundred percent? 

Nicole: We have twice as many as half. 

Patricia: Mmm…That. No, that’s not how math works. 

Nicole: I will believe you on this.

Patricia: Thank you all for listening, to the people who are sharing our show with other people who you think will listen to it, and for giving us ratings. 

Nicole: Thank you so much. It’s so rad to hear that people are actually listening to and connecting with the things we are saying here. 

Patricia: Yeah, our trailer and first five episodes have a total of over 400 downloads, and I’ve avoided knowing how much other podcasts have. So, in my ignorance, I’m like, I don’t know, that seems like a lot. So, I’m accepting it as a lot. 

Nicole: That sounds like way more than what I would expect, which was ten for five. We each downloaded each episode and the trailer to our phone, and that would have been ten. And so, there’s now four… four hundred?

Patricia: Yeah. That’s bananas. 

Nicole: Who are all you people? 

Patricia: Well, special thanks to Marathonreader for our first written review on Apple Podcasts. Oh my gosh, Nicole read it to me because she has Apple and I have an Android. And I absolutely burst into tears. That was so incredibly sweet. Just know, everyone, we look at every review, we read every comment, and thank you so much.

We’ve, we’ve had a rough start to this year, and your review, Marathonreader, was just, it was great. 

Nicole: Yeah, thank you so much. It was really sweet. 

Patricia: So before Nicole and I did this podcast, one of the many things we talked about was about cursing on the podcast because I, for one, curse a lot outside of the podcast and I went with my gut and I wanted to keep that explicit label off of this podcast.

I know, for one, it makes it more accessible to more people. Also, so that Apple doesn’t weirdly hide it because it would have that tag on it. And we recently were with some family and Nicole’s sister was saying, oh, she listened to the podcast. And her nephew was like, oh, can we listen to it on the way to school?

And I was really happy I went with my gut because it is a show that people can listen to around children. 

Nicole: Could you imagine having a show like this available to you as a child? 

Patricia: I don’t know if the content’s going to be interesting. 

Nicole: No, it’s going to be very boring. It’s adult stuff like the news. 

Patricia: Like the news.

Oh my gosh. That’s fair, but also, I don’t know. I think as a child it would have been cool to see queer grown ups doing things. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Like, to hear them just living their lives and being married and being happy. 

Nicole: Wow, I wish we had some representation like that for us today. 

Patricia: Yeah. Today?

Well, and related to one of your nibblings. So, for Christmas, we had bought the eight year old a storybook creation kit, 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: and so it has blank pages and she’d make her own picture book, and then the idea is you send it into the company and they bind it and the kid gets back a book. So, we were visiting and she showed us her Pages they haven’t been mailed in yet.

And I was like, wow, this is so good. And her reaction was perfect. Nicole, tell everyone what your niece said when I was like, Oh, your book is so good. 

Nicole: I KNOOOOOWWWWWW 

Patricia: I just, I love it so much. She was just like, I know. I was like, oh, this artwork. And she just kept saying, I know, I know. There was no self deprecation. There was no demurement.

She was just like, yes, I know. And I just, I need to carry that energy with me through the rest of the year. 

Nicole: Right? Like I need… whatever that is, it needs to be bottled because that is some strong energy of just like, yes, the thing I’m doing is great. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: And I know. 

Patricia: So good. 

Nicole: Welcome to the show. Welcome to being here where we all just know how great the things I do are.

Patricia: Uh…Uh…Love that kid. 

Nicole: Yeah, that was really a pretty great little thing. 

Patricia: It’s a bit related to what we’re talking about today, too. 

Nicole: Yeah, I guess it’ll come around. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: It’ll wrap around.

We were out on one of our morning walks the other day. And I mentioned that I was scrolling around on Reddit like I do sometimes. And I saw a post in one of the photography subreddits where someone was asking like, what is the best camera for a beginner? Like, what do I need? Or something like that. And I did not click in.

I did not want to see what a bunch of people said, but I mentioned this to you because it ties into something we talk about regularly. 

Patricia: Right. This runs directly into one of the many hills that I will die on, which is the majority of the time, composition and knowledge and experience transcends instruments.

I want to give a more concrete example of what I’m talking about. Or rather not concrete, it’s made up. But think about if I was in a room and there were two pianos and it was me and Elton John. Elton John would be given the Playskool toy piano. 

Nicole: Can it be the cat piano? 

Patricia: It could be the cat piano from Target, yes. That meows when you hit the keys. 

Nicole: Fantastic. 

Patricia: And I’m given a baby grand piano. Steinway. So who do you think would play better piano? Mind you, in total, I have had maybe one and a half years of piano lessons. A good, it’s got to be, it’s over two decades now ago, versus Elton John. Hands down, Elton John is going to play better piano than I am, regardless of what he’s playing on.

Nicole: I really look forward to hearing the cat piano rendition of Rocket Meow. 

Patricia: Wow. 

Wow. 

Nicole: She never likes my jokes. 

Patricia: Sometimes I do. When you’re not looking. I was also thinking of, you used to watch YouTube videos of a woman who was amazing at throwing knives. 

Nicole: Yeah, she was really good. 

Patricia: And she would just kick back in her desk chair and she had a board off to the side and she would just throw whatever, whatever knives. And I saw one video you’re watching. She threw a butter knife. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: And had it stick in the board. 

Nicole: Yeah. A little terrifying. 

Patricia: It was incredibly terrifying. And it spoke to her years of practicing and experience and talent. That even a butter knife could be a throwing knife. 

Nicole: Yeah, with the Reddit post about, like, what’s the best camera, one of the reasons I didn’t click in was because I didn’t want to see a bunch of people actually recommending specific cameras.

I scrolled past it because my, my initial thought was, the best camera for a beginner is the one you’re going to use and actually take pictures with. 

Patricia: Absolutely. 

Nicole: Whatever that camera may be. And so, like, this is going to where you’re talking about. It’s the one you’re going to get experience with, right?

And you actually had this experience with a camera before. 

Patricia: I did. So, I was at a festival with a friend and with a few friends. And one friend had a very expensive new camera. And I had a very out of date cell phone, but it had a camera on it. And we were taking pictures and he took a picture of one thing and then I also took a picture of it and he was like, why does your picture look so much better than mine?

And it’s because my mother was a photographer. She worked in camera stores almost all her life. She was also a wedding photographer. I was her assistant. I managed photo labs. I worked in photo studios. I worked in a frame shop. I have years of exposure. Hardy har har. And knowledge and practice with a camera that my friend didn’t have.

Nicole: Mm hmm. So on our, our walk that morning, we were talking about this, but it was also the morning after a long rain and the sun was just rising. And so there was some really cool opportunities for some pictures and stuff. And I am not as experienced with a camera as you are. I am still learning to take pictures of a lot of things, but it as we talked about in our New Year’s episode, one of my goals is to take more pictures, work with photography more.

And so we, we stopped a couple of times and I remember there was one point where you managed to get a shot that was kind of through a drop of water where it inverted the scenery behind it and it looked really cool. And I’ve seen these kinds of shots before using the drop of water, almost like a second lens and my phone just wouldn’t do it.

The way my iPhone is set up, it just would not do that, but rather than thinking like, oh, I need to go back and get a different phone or come home and get our camera with the various lenses and like go set up. No, because it’s, it’s less about getting the very specific shot sometimes, and like one I did learn something from that, I learned that phone won’t take that kind of picture.

But also like stepping back and trying to see how I can frame a shot around this in a different way to still get some experience with it and work with that. This is getting down to a similar point of working with the tool I have, right? When I said, like, what’s the best camera for a beginner? It’s the one you’re gonna use.

Well, that’s the one that’s in my hand at the moment. And it’s partially about learning to work with and understand the the tools you have or, or just gaining the skill of whatever you’re trying to do, whether it be playing piano on the cat piano or the fancy baby grand piano, like, work with what you have.

And even like acknowledging sometimes there are some activities that do need a certain quality or level of supplies like rock climbing. You should not opt for the cheapest materials for your rock climbing gear, but… 

Patricia: For the Kirkland brand or up and up. 

Nicole: Up and up. Maybe, I don’t know. Yeah. Don’t buy your rock climbing gear from like the gas station, but you can always like If you’re a beginner, go to a rock climbing gym or, or a club and try it out, get some experience with it before you make a decision towards buying it, right?

It’s, it’s what you have at hand sometimes. You don’t need to rush out and buy all of the most expensive gear. 

Patricia: Related to that, I know this is going to be a controversial opinion, but for some things, the perfect gear doesn’t necessarily exist. Like that perfect notebook or that perfect planner or that perfect pen doesn’t actually exist.

It’s whatever, whatever you have is good enough to get started. Like some people, especially around writing, it’s like, oh, I need this software to write my novel or to write my whatever. And sometimes it’s just you collecting items. And keeping from doing the thing. So, but we’ll get more to that. 

Nicole: How many, how many novels have actually been just handwritten out on like, legal pads or something?

Patricia: Right. 

Poems on napkins. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

And sometimes, like, this leads to, though, a hoarding of items and supplies, or being dependent on having that best thing, or the perfect thing, and really all, I’m gonna say, we’re doing when we do this. 

Patricia: Is this the royal we, or? 

Nicole: This is a very inclusive we. 

Patricia: It’s an inclusive we. 

Nicole: We’re really just procrastinating when we do that, though.

It’s another way to feel like you’re engaging with the activity without actually doing the activity. 

Patricia: Wow. Attacked. Attacked. 

Nicole: Like I said, it’s a very inclusive we. 

Patricia: You’re so rude. And also, I am so guilty of this. I’ve been doing exactly this with crochet for half a year now. I have books. I’ve been, even, even the hoarding of items is maybe just like bookmarking or favoriting patterns online.

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Because I’m not silly enough to start buying yarn without knowing what to do with it. Like I have yarn for beginner’s projects, 

Nicole: mmhmm 

Patricia: but I’m not suddenly going into yarn stores and buying $30 skeins of yarn or something like that. 

Nicole: Thankfully. 

Patricia: Thankfully. Yet. Yet. I was also doing it with getting back into learning the piano by insisting for a while there, like, oh, I can’t learn from books or videos or apps.

I need an instructor because I don’t want to pick up any bad habits with form. And it was, again, just my way of procrastinating doing the thing. However, hoarding information and aggressively researching things can also be a way of procrastinating doing the thing. 

Nicole: Now it’s my turn to feel really attacked.

Patricia: It’s an inclusive we. 

Nicole: You didn’t even say we. But this is, yeah, this is one of the ways I stop myself from getting started. I learn everything I can about the subject, just take in all the information that I possibly can without actually doing it. But what this does as well is it, in some ways, it becomes a way to stop myself from doing something without ever even getting started.

Because I’ve spent so much time researching and seeing what the best people do, the masters of whatever this thing is. I’ve now seen what they can do and everything that they pour into their craft. And there’s no way I can do it that well, so I probably should just move on and do something else. 

Patricia: Yeah, like looking up all the things and reading all the things sometimes can make you intimidate yourself out of doing the thing. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: So, the thing is that we all know, because we see it online, is that there are people out there with fewer supplies, fewer resources, and less knowledge that are already doing the thing, right? There are less qualified people out there already doing that thing that you want to be doing because also sometimes the thing we hoard is qualifications or degrees or line entries on our resume.

And I say this as someone with a bachelor’s and a master’s and many friends who have multiple degrees, so we are, we are out of the same mold. I think one of the things that I’m trying to do is also get comfortable with being a learner. That, you know, I get very upset that I didn’t just arrive in the world fully formed knowing everything.

And I have to learn things, and I’m so good at allowing space for 

other people to be learners, to make mistakes, to fail, to try again, and. It really comes back to something I’ve mentioned on this show multiple times before is self compassion. Turning that grace around that I allow other people and turning it towards myself when it comes to learning things.

Nicole: Ouch. 

Patricia: You’re welcome. 

Nicole: Ugh. Being a learner is hard. 

Patricia: Yeah. It is.. 

Nicole: It’s a lot easier to say I just don’t do something. Like dance or draw. 

Patricia: Rather than put in the time and learn the thing.

Nicole: Yeah. Another thing to keep in mind, though, is sometimes having the most expensive, top of the line thing needed. Needed in air quotes to do the activity that you want to do is actually going to slow you down when it has all of the bells and whistles and various settings and little, you know, fidgety knobs and everything, whatever it’s about.

If you’re a beginner, if you’re a learner. Those aren’t for you, and finding yourself getting bogged down in all of that might actually make it a lot harder to continue on and feel successful. I was thinking about this earlier, a really easy way to think about it is, like, learning to ride a bicycle, right, starting with just, like, one gear and some training wheels.

Learning to ride a bicycle versus a big, fancy, professional, like, mountain bike or racing bike with, you know, 20 different speeds or something ridiculous on it and, like, funky shaped parts and everything. Like, that’s gonna be a lot harder to figure out when you’re just starting. 

Patricia: Well, and it also, your analogy here does relate to the compassion and grace we show children because we do give them push bikes that their feet can reach the ground and they’re just scooting along.

And then we move them to tricycles. Then we move them to bikes with training wheels and we are so forgiving of children as learners that we forget that we can also allow ourselves as adults to be learners, too. 

Nicole: Blink, blink, blink. 

Patricia: I, I know you’re blinking at me, like, like I just said something groundbreaking to you.

I know. 

Nicole: Yeah. This is a really hard episode. I don’t know why we’re doing this. 

Patricia: I know this is a rhetorical question, but I do like to talk about things we’re actively working on, because so much self help out there are people saying they’ve figured out the thing, like they have the thing all figured out, and We’re just trying to say, hey, here’s some stuff we haven’t figured out fully. We’re working on it. 

Here’s what we’re thinking about and is working for us. And with a bunch of self help, you know, you take what’s best, you leave the rest. And so we’re just adding some options. We, we don’t claim to have everything figured out. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: But I think related to being a learner and starting with whatever, whatever I got, it sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes I try to set my expectations at my first go around, or even my first few go arounds on this thing are going to be terrible and just expecting like they’re not going to be good.

Which is very hard for me because I always have these very high expectations as we talked about in episode two, but trying to be like, you know what? I’m gonna allow this first one to be terrible. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

I wish I had learned how to do that younger, but I think this is a good place to start from allowing your initial attempts to be terrible and, and that being okay, because at least you got something done. You didn’t just sit and think about it some more. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: But from there, this, this, when we’re talking about what to discuss for this episode, this immediately connected, for me, with something you recently wrote about in your newsletter, and that’s recognizing and celebrating your wins.

So, like, in this circumstance, sure, your first attempts may be terrible, but what do you do when you finally get something right? 

Patricia: Well, I am terrible at recognizing and celebrating wins, and like I’ve mentioned, it’s something I am actively trying to work on. I was really caught off guard last summer when I told my therapist, yeah, I hit 200 issues of my newsletter, and she asked, how are you going to celebrate?

And I swear, it’s like my face blue screened because I didn’t even know how to answer that. And so my knee jerk reaction was, uh, just keep writing more, which apparently is not the right answer. 

Nicole: No? 

Patricia: But, uh, I mean, yes, writing more, but that’s not a celebration. 

Nicole: That’s fair. 

Patricia: And Like I mentioned, this connects back to some of what I talked about in episode two, which is I grew up with expectations that everything I do be five stars, A-plus, etc.

So I still carry that in me. And so when my expectations of myself are always so high, it’s incredibly hard to recognize a win because I’m just like, well, yeah, that’s what I should be doing. 

Nicole: Yeah, it’s also hard to recognize something as a win if it’s easy. If it feels like you didn’t have to put a lot of effort into it, then why is it worth celebrating or even acknowledging?

And not to say that, like, writing 200 newsletters is easy, but it happened so slowly over time that it seemed like it just came and went. And to catch on that like, oh, shoot, I should celebrate that is sometimes hard to recognize that it’s worth acknowledging. 

The other thing that can make it hard to recognize something as being worthy of celebrating is that we’ve kind of been trained, and this relates to last episode, that something is only worthwhile or of value if you can monetize it. And that doesn’t necessarily mean strictly money. It could also be, you know, social currency or something like that. But I think it’s important to give people permission to do things or make art just for the sake of doing things and making art.

You don’t have to monetize everything. And sometimes it’s enough to even have just done something. Are you learning how to paint right now and you finished your first canvas? Like, that’s rad. Celebrate it. 

Patricia: Yeah, it is okay to do things if you want to do them and not just do them to share the thing that you did.

Like, it’s okay to share it, but in the book The Good Enough Job, the author was asked, I think about grad school, like, why he wanted to get into grad school or something, and the question was, would you still do this if you couldn’t share with anyone that you got into grad school? And it’s an interesting question, but I am, I am derailing, so I’m gonna pull myself back in.

And around wins, I also have a tendency to downplay things that I do so they don’t seem like big wins. For example, I built the website for our podcast over a single weekend, and I acknowledge that it can take people months to build a website. But whenever I share this, I’m like, oh, I add these qualifiers.

I learned how to build websites and write XHTML in grad school. And also our website doesn’t necessarily have a lot of dynamic features. And I started with a template, so it’s not that impressive. And I recognize that some of this might be a bit of the societal pressure on women to not be boastful. And that is also something I struggle with.

Nicole: I still think it’s wild that you just threw our website together in a weekend. I don’t think I’ve tried to make a website since I could get a free page on Angelfire and anything at this point is impressive. I don’t understand how the modern internet works anymore. 

Patricia: Angelfire can’t be around anymore. 

Nicole: I think I tried to look this up a few years ago. I don’t remember. It was like Angelfire and Geocities were your two options. 

Patricia: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. 

Nicole: And to, you know, 13 year old little goth Nicole, Angelfire sounded way more cooler to be your website host. 

Patricia: Angelfire, oh my gosh. 

Nicole: Yeah. Versus Geocities? No. 

Okay, so, we have this concept of working on and recognizing wins, but like, how do you do that? How do I know? 

Patricia: Well, recognizing wins feels like a muscle I need to develop, so in the meantime I’m actually outsourcing it. By this I mean I’m trying to trust your reaction and the reactions of loved ones and other people I trust, like my therapist, to tell me, like, hey, that thing you did is really cool and I need to start trusting people when they’re like, oh, this thing I did was cool.

And yes, I know I’m getting dangerously close to things like outside validation and imposter syndrome, which I have some very strong opinions about, and I’m sure I’ll share that in a future episode. But it’s not like I don’t think I do some cool things. I just don’t recognize when they might be something worth acknowledging or celebrating.

So until I could do that for myself, I am doing my best to trust the people around me. 

Nicole: That’s a dangerous game, trusting me. Because I think everything you do is cool. 

I struggle with this too. And I, I struggle with it in similar ways, but also I, as we talked about in a previous episode, like, I’m trying to figure out what my new hobbies are, what are the things that I answer with when someone says, what do you do?

So that’s a whole other side issue to this is like, I don’t even know what I do right now, but I know, like, for myself, when I hit some level of achievement, I will often just move on to the next level. Like, okay, I did that, now to, like, how can I even be better? What’s, and not taking a moment to recognize that I did something, but it’s also hard.

Not many things in life are structured with clear delineated levels of achievement and success. 

Patricia: These life metrics. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Like, so the question, I think, becomes, like, do we need to develop some sort of, like, SMART goals, or, like, skill trees, or whatever, like, I guess, like, my America’s Test Kitchen cookbook baking bread tried to do this in one way, where it was, like, here’s a quick bread, here’s a no knead bread.

Patricia: Right. 

Nicole: Okay, now let’s, like, shape a round loaf, and then, like, successively move on to more and more complicated aspects of baking bread, but most things in life don’t come that way. 

Patricia: I think our queerness is showing 

Nicole: uh huh 

Patricia: because a wide swath of America is heterosexual and straight and cisgender, so they have these metrics of the job and the children and the home and the marriage, probably not in that order, but I don’t know.

And so society, I think, definitely has all of these different life metrics that we’re just like, eh, not for us, but now we need to figure out what is our structure look like? Do we have structure? 

Nicole: What’s my skill tree? 

Patricia: What’s your skill tree? Right? What is, what is our queer, weirdo, child free skill 

tree?

Nicole: Yeah.

Yeah. Like, what do we do with this, though? Do we need to set up, like, smaller goals to celebrate? Or is this, like, celebrating of goals something that happens more like, or not celebrating goals, but like celebrating achievements in life, something that happens a little more retrospectively? Like, you hit these milestones almost passively, and then looking back, you’re like, oh, I did a cool thing.

Or is it like? Martial arts be like, I just got a purple belt in baking cookies. 

Patricia: You know what? Maybe that needs to happen. Maybe, maybe I need a belt system for baking. 

Nicole: An apron system? 

Patricia: Or like patches. A sash with patches. 

Nicole: Oh. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Anyway, part of me wants all this structure because I am who I am, but then that chaos monster part of me just wants my wins to be based on vibes and just like, yeah, this was a win or this wasn’t and I’ll know it when I see it.

Which is part of the whole problem 

because I can’t recognize my wins. So, I think that answering that question, what is a win, can be very personal. And that is what I struggle with. Again, because high expectations being the norm as well. And so, you’re all hearing us actively try to piece together, like, what is a win?

How do we define it? And how is it different for us? Because like I mentioned, we are queer, we are child free, so we don’t necessarily have these predetermined structures that we’re trying to fit into. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

I think also sometimes, like, the end point is the reward itself, depending on what it is. I keep going back to baking for some reason, probably because it’s halfway mystery to me.

But also, like, you bake some, like, really good cookies, now you’ve got some really good cookies. Like, that is a reward in and of itself sometimes. Okay, so, what if the end point is not necessarily the reward itself, and, or, we’ve spotted something that we’ve done, we’ve met some milestone or some achievement, and we’re like, yes, this should be celebrated.

How do you celebrate that? Like, what do, are we supposed to get some party hats? 

Patricia: Wild gesticulating is happening, by the way, it’s, it’s adorable. Again, this is going to be different for everyone, right? I’m trying, for me and for us, to not have celebrations of wins that are based in capitalism. It’s not a, we did this thing, we got at least 50 downloads in episodes, so now we’re buying ourselves yet another little treat when we never deny ourselves little treats in the first place.

And the other thing is, I don’t want this celebration of a win to feel like yet another thing I have to add to my to do list. I don’t want it to be even more productivity, even another thing I have to check off and manage. My initial thought is to bake something elaborate. Like, yes, I make cookies and biscuits and what have you regularly, but maybe a celebration is something elaborate.

And I am not a supporter of food being treated as a reward, but for me and the families I grew up in, certain foods are a celebration of things, kind of like a birthday cake. So, I’m not just talking about those typical biscuits I bake most every weekend, something more festive is, is my idea. My other thought around this though, is that the reward or the celebration is less the thing I bake, and more the activity of baking itself.

Because I love doing it and so the reward is using a spell slot or two for something fun. I was chatting via email with my friend Jen and she put it so brilliantly and succinctly that the way I’m thinking about celebrating wins is by allowing myself more time to play. 

Nicole: Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective of making it less, like the celebration is not necessarily having the cake, but the enjoyment of making it.

Patricia: Yeah, and the luxuriating in the time it takes. 

Nicole: Yeah, I’m thinking also that like smaller wins smaller things that are still worth celebrating, is it enough sometimes to just take a moment and reflect. Acknowledge how far you’ve come. I think about, like, you know, these last couple of mornings, we’ve gotten up and gone walking in the morning, too.

Like, yes, this is part of our New Year’s goal to move more and everything, but roundtrip, it’s just under two. Is it just over? 

Patricia: Just over two miles. 

Nicole: Just over two miles roundtrip. And about halfway through, we get to this crest of a little hill with a gorgeous view, and I love to just stop and take a breath there, but also it’s like, we got up and we did this today.

Like, I’ve already, I’ve walked about a mile so far, and we’re, we’re doing this. And just like, taking a moment to acknowledge that, I feel like is sometimes enough to be like a moment of small and private celebration. 

Patricia: Yeah, when I am stopping in that moment, it’s, for me, it is a celebration. It’s less of a celebration of walking because I will just walk forever.

It is more a celebration of being up in the morning because I’m not a morning person. That’s fair. So I’m like, look at me, I got up today. 

Nicole: Yeah, I, you know, I got up, I wanted to stay under all the blankets because it’s cold for California right now. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: The other thing I’m trying to be really cautious about when we’re discussing how to celebrate is, you know, I don’t like the idea of withholding something that I love from myself so that I can dangle it as a reward.

Like, I love going to the beach, even just to like walk around, it’s, it’s, it’s a place that refills spell slots for me. I don’t want to withhold that joy as a way of like, forcing myself to meet some, what is ultimately arbitrary end point or arbitrary goal, like that doesn’t feel good to me. And like you mentioned earlier, I also don’t want to have rewards that are just like furthering participation in capitalism, like just acquiring more stuff just because I did something.

I don’t need to go out and purchase a thing to celebrate. As much as that does give a dopamine hit sometimes. So in thinking about how to do this though, like, I mentioned I’ve been working on, you know, photography, wanting to take pictures more. And specifically, like, a lot of this is not getting posted to social media.

I’m, I’m not using it as a way of kind of social currency and stuff. So what, what do I do with this? And one of the ideas I had is maybe Maybe I’ll get some frames or something and hang up some of my pictures that I am personally proud of. And that’s how I celebrate this thing that I am doing. It’s a small celebration, but I then put it up and I get to see it and enjoy it.

And hopefully you do too. 

Patricia: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love this idea. I think there is a big question floating around this entire episode that we haven’t answered yet, which is why? Why do any of this? Why recognize and celebrate wins and do the things? Well, for one, it can help us be more comfortable with being learners if we take a little celebratory pause along the way.

The bigger answer, though, I think, is that it is up to us to shape our own lives. Recognizing and celebrating wins, helps us find joy, and give meaning to this whole weird, bananas experience of being human. And I think that’s a good enough why. 

Nicole: Yeah, just celebrate being here and doing the weird little things we do.

Patricia: Doing the weird little things we do. 

Nicole: This has been one of our longer episodes now. We have covered a lot. Should we do, like, a little wrap up? Like, what are the big takeaways? 

Patricia: Well, one of the first ones is about the gathering of information or items or supplies and think about if you’re doing these things in service of procrastination and if you are really being curious about why you’re procrastinating, like, what is actually holding you back from doing the thing, because I promise it’s not because you don’t have the right notebook.

Nicole: Well, and I think a big takeaway alongside that is, like you said, the technique or ability trumps instrument. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: Like, nothing is gonna make you better at doing the thing than just doing the thing. 

Patricia: Yeah. Also. That because you don’t need special items or expensive items to do most things, you can start most anything at any time, although I will tell you that within the past few weeks, I came across a newsletter that had a cited a couple of studies talking about how actually psychologically, it might be better to start things at the new year or at the beginning of the week or at the beginning of the month or a certain day or a certain date.

This is also mentioned in a book that just came out called Feel Good Productivity. He cites a study where if there are significant or anchored dates, they might be better for starting. 

So. 

Nicole: So you heard it here, folks. Science says you can’t start something on a Tuesday. 

Patricia: Uh, urgh, like, you can. But it might be better if you started at the beginning of the week. 

Nicole: Mmhmm. Yup. Yeah. Tuesdays are not for starting things. 

Patricia: Oh my gosh.

But you know what you heard here is that I got some knowledge and I am changing my way of thinking about things. So trying to lead by example. I think one of the other takeaways, though, is, as always, self compassion. Be kinder to yourself. Be gentler to yourself. If you need to imagine it is your child self in you that is learning things, and that you would be nicer to them than you would be to your adult self, then do that.

Let yourself learn. 

Nicole: And the other big takeaway from this is learn to recognize and celebrate your wins and along those lines, tell us, how are you celebrating your wins? Because we would love to hear it. What are you doing to celebrate the things you’re doing that are awesome. Email us, tell us on Patreon, tell us on Instagram.

We want to know!

Patricia: So, I know we’ve gone really long today, and I still want to offer a resource, and it’s going to be a short one. So. This resource is justwatch.com. That’s J-U-S-T-W-A-T-C-H dot com. If you are a person that watches movies or TV on various streaming services, but also maybe YouTube or Canopy, which is the free streaming service through a lot of library systems, and you want to find a show.

You’re like, oh, where do I watch this thing? Where do I have the service that has this movie streaming on it? If you go to justwatch.com, you can enter the movie or show and it will tell you where it is streaming. It’ll tell you if it’s also available for purchase or rental, and it will tell you everywhere it’s available, if it’s anywhere. 

I went and I searched for the 1982 classic film, The Flight of Dragons. And I can actually rent it on Amazon for $2.99. Might be able to, I think, watch it on YouTube as well for $2.99. Nicole’s looking at me like I’m insane. I know the movie was before you were born.

Nicole: I know. Yeah. 

Patricia: We’re gonna have to watch The Flight of Dragons. It is a masterpiece. 

Nicole: It’s older than Nicole. 

Patricia: Classic. So justwatch.com. I’ll link it in the show notes. 

Nicole: Before we get going here, I gotta ask Patricia. What’s filling your cup?

Patricia: Right now, or recently we had an unexpected little trip and it was still within California and we took the opportunity to go to a new to us library and get a library card for yet another library system.

And I also renewed my library card for the place we used to live. So now I have two new library cards 

Nicole: ooh la la 

Patricia: and yeah, I know live in large. What’s filling your cup, Nicole? 

Nicole: Part of that unexpected trip did involve getting to see some family that I haven’t seen in several years for a variety of reasons and reconnecting with some of those family members and in some ways in new ways, ways that I had never connected with them before has really kind of, I guess, filled my cup.

It’s, it’s warmed me up a little bit on the inside and I’m, I’m trying to hold on to that. 

Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com, and 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 are 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 podcast ratings. It goes really far in helping other people find us. And you should all strive to be more like our new friend, Marathonreader, and leave us delightful reviews.

Patricia: I’m going to print out that review and hang it on the wall. 

Nicole: Right? 

Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep the 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, look out a window, and we’ll be talking to you soon.

Nicole: I still think we should get some party hats to celebrate.