Show Notes
In this episode of Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, Patricia and Nicole discuss their progress (or not) on various 2025 goals and intentions, including decluttering, therapy, and being more social. The episode wraps up with reflections on the importance of revisiting goals with curiosity and adjusting them to better serve one’s current needs.
Mentioned on the show (includes affiliate links):
- Bookshop Affiliate Storefront (links below are affiliate)
- Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
- Subscribe to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Newsletter
- Butterfly in the Sky
- Son House
- Power stations https://www.jackery.com/
- Crochet kits https://thewoobles.com/
- Octavia E. Butler: Lilith’s Brood: The Xenogenesis Trilogy
- Optimistic Hoarder
- Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want by Courtney Carver
- Sing It Out! Playlist
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
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Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [00:00:00] [Intro Music]
Patricia: Hey there, cavatappi! 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 someone the federal government doesn’t believe exists, I’m Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We’re recording this show on March 1st, 2025.
Patricia: It’s March!
Nicole: It’s March.
Patricia: Which you think is spring.
Nicole: Yeah, March is a spring month. It’s in the name.
Patricia: Spring doesn’t start for like almost three weeks.
Nicole: No, but listen to the name, March. It sounds like a spring month. It’s not cold.
Patricia: [Guffaw] That makes no sense to me, but okay.
Nicole: I’m sure there are other people that will agree with me.
March is a spring month.
Patricia: Hm.
Nicole: Have we told them about the seasons? [00:01:00]
Patricia: I think you’ve told, like, your seasons.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Your seasons run on vibes.
Nicole: Yeah. The plants are growing.
Patricia: The plants are growing. We’ll get to that later.
We recently watched a documentary, another one on a documentary kick. Butterfly in the Sky, the Reading Rainbow documentary.
Nicole: Oh, y’all.
Patricia: I cried through the whole thing.
Nicole: Yeah, it got me at the end.
Patricia: Yeah, uh, we were just talking about how, in retrospect, I was like, oh, this show has shaped so much of who I am, and on the other podcast I’m on, on All The Books, I really am just channeling my inner book review kid, like, have I got a book for you?
Nicole: Yeah, and I know it’s been said in other places, and we may have even said it here, but really, LeVar Burton is an absolute treasure.
Patricia: Absolutely. Absolutely.
I feel so fortunate to be alive at the [00:02:00] same time as LeVar Burton.
Nicole: Aww.
Patricia: Also, since therapy is a thing we talk about on the show, I wanna share that I’m going through those awkward stages of getting to know a new therapist.
My old therapist, amazing, phenomenal, wonderful, and she’s changing the way how she’s doing her practice, which is a way that isn’t going to work for me. So I have found a new person, it was actually someone recommended by my old therapist, who focuses on, um, some things I haven’t yet worked on with myself, which is my OCD.
And so, you know, getting to know a new therapist is awkward. I think there’s no timeline in which it ever feels, like, super normal for anyone. So if you are also looking to get a therapist, just know, even for those of us who have been in therapy for a long time, it’s kind of awkward. There, there might be growing [00:03:00] pains, but hopefully it’s worth it.
Nicole: Yeah. I don’t know if people know that, that, like, you can, if you’re needing to change therapists, or if you have someone in your life who has a therapist, and for, for similar things that you are wanting to seek therapy for, you can ask for a recommendation.
Patricia: Yeah! Yeah, usually therapists have, you know, circles of practice, they know other people, other therapists, obviously.
And they could reach out and say, hey, I have someone here who’s looking to work on this thing. They have XYZ insurance or, or they’re paying out of pocket. You know, and who has space and who’s up for hearing from this person or who’s available. Referrals is a great way to find a therapist.
Nicole: Yeah.
We went back to the White Elephant Sale.
Patricia: We did. We did. We went on Not My President’s Day. Um.
Nicole: Yeah. I did not come home with a typewriter.
Patricia: You did not. We looked, but you did not come home with a typewriter. [00:04:00] Not to say that there’s not a typewriter eventually in your future someday.
Nicole: There just wasn’t, wasn’t the one for me there.
Patricia: Yeah, I did get some paper for my typewriter though.
Nicole: You did.
Patricia: Got some paper, got some cute little like coffee cup sets that
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: are like very mod, like white with like a red orange kind of circular design on them.
Got a puzzle.
Nicole: We did get a puzzle. We got, we got a Hieronymus Bosch puzzle.
Patricia: Yeah, it’s the Garden of Earthly Delights in jigsaw puzzle form.
Nicole: Like, with a ridiculous amount of pieces.
Patricia: Yeah, no, I’m looking forward to doing that. You know, it was a lot calmer than the preview day.
Nicole: It was.
Patricia: There were definitely people there, but it wasn’t as frantic, and I got some sheet music.
Nicole: I got a record.
Patricia: You did get a record.
Nicole: Yeah, I got, it’s, I just tried to glance at the record shelf, but it’s put away already.
I [00:05:00] got a record of Son House, and it’s, I pulled it out and looked at it. It’s in almost perfect condition, which is amazing.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Especially for the age of that record.
Patricia: Yeah. It was like 80 bucks. Like it was.
Nicole: It was.
Patricia: Maybe one of the most we’ve spent on a record.
Nicole: But they’re really hard to find, and I think Son House has a really important place in music history.
Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. No, it was pretty cool. I liked going, and I think, like, I’d love to go to the preview sale again.
Nicole: Yeah. It was fun.
Patricia: Yeah.
Reminder that we have a Patreon, patreon.com/eedapod, where you can support us there. As well as a bookshop affiliate site, which is, the link is available through our website, eedapod.com, and up at the top you could go to the bookshop link where you can shop all kinds of books that we have mentioned on the show, and also books I’ve mentioned in my newsletter and [00:06:00] elsewhere.
Music: [Transition Music]
Patricia: So today I was thinking that we would talk about our kind of 2025 goals and intentions with the acknowledgement that it feels really weird to still be thinking about goals right now.
Nicole: Yeah, especially since it feels like it has been, I don’t know, five years since we sent those goals?
Patricia: Yeah, you know, I know that for a lot of people by this time of year, even in quote unquote normal year, goals might have gone out the window already.
And I think it’s important to remember that whatever those goals were that we put into place were or are for our own well being. And ideally, [00:07:00] if we are working towards some of them, it’s so that we, for ours specifically, we feel more connected. Revisiting them gives us an opportunity to really look at them and see, are these still serving us?
Or if they need to be revised or thrown out completely. Remember, we’re making our own rules here. You don’t have to keep something that two months ago you said you should have.
Nicole: It’s also a good time to think about if there’s something new you want to add. You know, reevaluate things. I mean, this month starts on a Saturday, so it’s a great time to start at the beginning of a month.
If something’s not working for you, feel free to drop it. If there’s something else that you just learned about in the last two months that you’re really excited about, feel free to add it to your goals.
Patricia: Well, and also, I think in the last two months, you know, things have changed and
Nicole: oh gosh
Patricia: right and people’s [00:08:00] focuses
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: may be less on some things and maybe their focuses are more on things like community and activism and things like that.
And those are things you could work into your goals.
Nicole: Sometimes when, when everything feels like chaos, chaotic, like there’s not a lot of control you have over the world, it’s helpful to have anchors and these goals or resolutions or your intentions or whatever you have decided to call them, they can act as these anchors and be kind of a something to hold on to, to bring you back to where it is you want to be going. And that’s why it’s important to think about what ones are working for you, what ones you’ve decided are less priority, and if there’s new areas you want to be focusing your intention on, feel free to set them as your new goals or intentions, so that you have that place to return [00:09:00] to when you are feeling kind of lost in the
Patricia: Adrift.
Nicole: Adrift. I was going to say stuck in the quagmire of whatever is going on.
Patricia: Well, yeah, I was going to say that I find just having them can help unstick me if I’m feeling stuck. The last couple of months I’ve been close to feeling frozen by overwhelm, but having a plan, having an idea of a plan in place helps keep me doing things that I want to do.
Recognizing sometimes the thing I want to do is rest. So sometimes it’s just like, uh, I feel stuck, I feel, you know, frozen in that doom scrolling or things like that, and having a number of things I could return to of what could I be doing now. A reminder of what are these things that either bring me joy or I want to be working towards is really helpful and I think it’s really [00:10:00] important to remember that your goals are meant to serve you.
You do not live in service to these goals. If they are not working for you, get rid of them. Find things that work for you.
Nicole: Okay, so let’s talk about some of our intentions or whatever that we set at the beginning of 2025.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: One of ours was getting our emergency packs put together and attending first aid classes.
This is still a priority and making a little bit of progress. I pulled out our, we have like emergency backpacks with some basics in them already that we’ve prepped before. I’ve pulled them out. I checked out what’s in them. We have some walkie talkies. I made sure we have new rechargeable batteries and I charged all those up.
I made sure the emergency food bars in them is not expired.
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: And also got like a second, we have these [00:11:00] like, they’re kind of emergency batteries. They’re, they’re larger battery packs where you can actually plug in USB and even they have like a wall outlet on them so you can plug in regular electronics things.
I got us a second one and we had one and it has a solar panel that we can set up in the daytime to recharge them. We get them because here in East Oakland?
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: Southeast Oakland?
Patricia: East Oakland.
Nicole: East Oakland. Uh, the power tends to go out sometimes. It goes out a couple times a year, and it can be out for at least a couple hours sometimes, and especially in the summer when we don’t have air conditioning, it’s It’s helpful to have things like this that we can plug a fan into to help us cool off.
Patricia: Yeah. It’s not only for, you know, the big, the big bad emergencies, but just like your regular, your regular emergencies, like the power going out.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Another one of the things I’ve talked a lot about is learning how to crochet, you know, that was one of my [00:12:00] goals this year. I did take two crochet classes, and Nicole, you attended the first one with me.
Nicole: I did. I made a little square.
Patricia: We both made little squares. I made a very wonky granny square in the second one, and I have a plan for continuing crochet. I had started a little amigurumi dinosaur set that I want to finish, and has like a video and a pattern and all that. You know, you’ve probably, if you are a person in the U.S., you’ve probably seen the ads for the Woobles. It’s one of those. And my plan is to sit and do that. What I’m running into is the making the time to do it.
Nicole: That seems to be like the biggest challenge for a lot of our goals
Patricia: absolutely
Nicole: is the time
Patricia: mm hmm
Nicole: aspect.
Patricia: mm hmm
Nicole: Speaking of trying to find the time for things, one of our goals, our together goals, things to [00:13:00] do together was to read an Octavia Butler series. I think the first step, which we have not fully taken yet, is to pick one.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: I did a little looking into this in prep for this show. We seem to mostly be reading her catalogue backwards. We’ve read the Parable books. We’ve both read Fledgling. We did both read Kindred, which was an earlier book.
Patricia: I also read Bloodchild.
Nicole: Oh, you did read Bloodchild.
Patricia: Yeah, we have it on the shelf.
Nicole: Oh, I should read that. I’ve looked at a bunch of her articles when I made your thing.
Patricia: Yeah, that’s true.
Nicole: But the next, if we’re going kind of in reverse chronological order, the next series would be the Xenogenesis Trilogy, which might be a good place to start.
Three books. Maybe a little more manageable than the other major series she wrote, which was the Patternist series, which I think technically has five books, but one of them was withdrawn from publication by the author.
Patricia: Yeah, maybe I think that sounds like a good idea. I think we just [00:14:00] need to figure out when are we starting.
Nicole: Yeah. When, but three sounds more manageable than four
Patricia: absolutely
Nicole: in our reading schedules, especially you.
Patricia: Especially me.
Um, you know, one of the things we talk about, I mean, we talk about it every year, but we’re actually getting into it this year is decluttering. Especially because we have a massive amount of my mother’s stuff here. You know, decluttering, whether it’s your own stuff, whether it is the stuff of a loved one who has passed away, it can be a very emotional process. And that’s one of the things that can keep people from doing it.
And I actually started a newsletter, it’s a free newsletter, I call it Optimistic Hoarder, where I’m going through my mother’s boxes, one box at a time, and trying to make [00:15:00] sense of things. She, she was that, she was an optimistic hoarder. And, you know, it, I feel like some kind of low budget, Indiana Jones going through these things.
Uh, I never know what I’m going to find and it has been a process, I think, I would like to be moving through things faster. I think the issue is not only like bandwidth, but again, finding time.
Nicole: Finding the time.
Patricia: Finding the time.
You know, like I mentioned my new therapist, one of her specialties or one of her focuses is OCD and hoarding is a big part of OCD.
You know, we have our own boxes of stuff. It’s mostly my stuff. And it’s not garbage, which I think is part of the issue. It’s not like just boxes of garbage. I’m almost obsessive about opening mail, so it’s not that. It’s not necessarily things that need to be [00:16:00] thrown out. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made of what to do with things.
Do I still like this thing? Am I going to still use this thing? If we get rid of it, are we going to sell it or are we going to give it away? If we give it away, is it going to be donated or do I give it away on the buy nothing group? But I think there are some decisions we can make at the beginning to help take that constant decision making out of the process.
I recently read a book, the title’s Gentle and I can’t remember like the, the subtitle, like the rest of the title. But it’s by Courtney Carver, who writes Be More With Less. The book just came out. I’ll link it in the show notes. And only in, part of the book she talks about decluttering stuff. And when she and her husband were doing that, they came up with a kind of parameter, which is if they could get 50 dollars or more [00:17:00] from it, they would sell it. If it was under 50 bucks, it would get donated. And so making that decision up front helped alleviate some of the decision fatigue of working through things.
Nicole: Yeah. I’m trying to think of like, would it be helpful to have like three boxes initially, like actual physical boxes set up of like, keep it, think about it, get rid of it.
And then you take the get rid of it stuff. Over to where there’s two more boxes. It’s like an assembly line then and you just like look at it and be like I feel like I could get X number of dollars or I don’t and then you just kind of split it.
Patricia: Yeah, I wonder.
Nicole: So having actually a physical place to put the things to.
Patricia: Mm hmm.
Nicole: May be helpful not and I’m literally just thinking of this on the fly right now, but like
Patricia: could be
Nicole: like a way to help process it so it’s not just unpack a box and then have to like cobble together like groups or piles of things.
Patricia: Yeah, I’ll have to think about that because part [00:18:00] of me is like, a lot of me thinks that makes sense, and a lot of me is like, I don’t want yet more boxes.
I don’t just want to be moving from one box into three boxes.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Um, but I think also setting up parameters around if I’m selling stuff. You know, my mother had been given one of these Squishmallows, the, the big plushies, and it still has the tags on it. It is perfectly, like, perfect condition. And I learned that it’s going for like hundreds of dollars on the internet, because people collect these things.
So, I think I also need to set parameters around like, if I find something, it needs to be posted on eBay or what have you within the week.
Nicole: Yeah, that is a bit of labor too though, of looking up to see if it is even worth getting that much money for.
Patricia: Yeah
Nicole: Like, cause we didn’t know.
Patricia: We didn’t know, yeah. Well, I had originally looked it up when [00:19:00] I unpacked it, and it wasn’t on the internet, and then I posted it in a Facebook group, and someone responded to me.
She’s like, you might not want to give this away. It’s worth hundreds of dollars. So,
Nicole: Which is wild.
Patricia: Which is wild.
But anyway, you know, I think either you know what you’re doing, like some people are out here, very neurotypical, like, what do you mean decluttering? You can just get rid of things or, or what have you.
And then there are some of us who just recognize the both joys and burdens of having stuff. So just, if you’re one of those people, just say, I see you, I’m with you. It is an emotional process and we’ll go through it together. And I’ll link my other newsletter in the show notes too, if you’re interested in being nosy about all these things I’m finding in my mom’s boxes.
Nicole: One of our goals was to schedule a time each month to talk about our [00:20:00] goals.
Patricia: Well, but also to look at the whole month calendar
Nicole: Yes, yes.
Patricia: And schedule the month.
Nicole: It’s also for like planning on when we’re going to work on the goals and planning for when we’re going to talk about them the next time. We set this at the beginning of January and it didn’t happen in January. At all.
Patricia: It kind of happened in January, like, Inauguration just derailed everything.
Nicole: Yeah, January kind of turned into, like, A Mess, like, capital M E S S, mess.
Patricia: Mhm.
Nicole: And that really derailed us for a little while. We, uh, we just, a lot of stuff didn’t happen for a couple of weeks.
Patricia: Oof.
Yeah.
Nicole: Gettin back to it, this is part of it, and also today is the first of a month, so we really should sit down and look at the calendar together and look at what our month is gonna be.
Patricia: Absolutely. And we should also post on Patreon our check in for everyone, too.
Nicole: Oh yeah.
Patricia: One of our really big goals that [00:21:00] actually I think we’ve been doing a great job at is being more social. And one of them was hosting guests once a month. We didn’t do that in January because scheduling was weird.
However, we have been out to dinner with friends. We did host friends in February. I went to campus and had like coffee and lunch with mentees. We went to that French vintage market and we asked our friend to go with us. And so we took her and we went to that. I think we’re doing a fairly good job at being social.
You’ve gone to a meetup.
Nicole: Yeah, I think we’re, we’re doing pretty good at it. February was really, really good at it.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: It does take some effort to, like, plan and schedule these things, but what we’re finding is that it, it really fills our cups.
Patricia: Yeah, I think what we get out of it is worth the effort
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: we put into it.
Nicole: Yeah, definitely.
Patricia: You know, I did talk about, um, one of our goals being leveling up this podcast, right? [00:22:00] Finding a way to maybe make it weekly, finding some things to add another paid tier, as well as more paid content on the Patreon. We have a long list of ideas, what we are bumping up against is time.
When are we going to do these things? What are the balls that need to drop so that we could pick up the ones of doing more with this show?
Nicole: This is starting to sound like a recurrent theme. We have more than we… More things we want to do and more goals and plans have the time and energy for.
Patricia: Yeah, and so I think it comes down to re-evaluating, like, how am I spending my time?
And not that every moment needs to be filled with productivity or things like that.
Nicole: Oh gosh, no.
Patricia: But it’s like, even if that time, like, some of these things are rest, right? Some of [00:23:00] these things I want to be doing are rest. And. If I am scrolling the horrors on my phone, is that time that could be better used?
Even just sitting here with my eyes shut, honestly, right? It doesn’t have to be like super productivity, like it could just be quiet time.
Nicole: mm hmm
Patricia: It could be singing. It could be piano. It could be crochet. Or it could be writing mail. It could be podcast stuff. But I think really looking at how I’m using my time, and is what I’m doing bringing me joy?
Nicole: Or should you delegate it to Oscar?
Patricia: Delegate it to Oscar.
Nicole: One of mine was to get more involved with the Patreon, the show’s Patreon, start making a little of my presence there. I have started participating in writing our weekly check-ins. So I am there. I think I can still make more of an effort. I’ve, I’ve not been very good about [00:24:00] participating in the comment discussions and sections, so I can try.
Patricia: Maybe that’s March.
Nicole: Maybe that’s March. We’ll see.
Patricia: You know, one of my things that I know fills my cup is learning piano and learning a song on the ukulele. I haven’t done that. However, again, I’m trying to find my on ramp. I’m trying to find a way that makes this not feel like a slog and feels more fun.
I did, you know what? I was like, why don’t I give myself an easy win with piano? So I bought some sheet music on the internet and they send you a PDF and then you can print it out. So we went to the library and printed out sheet music of some really easy piano songs, like easy songs. I’m working on taking my pencil and like looking through the music and seeing what I remember because I know just enough piano to be able to work things [00:25:00] out. If they are easy enough. So some songs I already know and really just like learning the songs and seeing how it goes.
Another thing though, is I have been trying to just sing more. I do have an entire playlist on Spotify, but I’m gonna, we’re probably going to move away from Spotify, but an entire playlist of songs I like to sing. And so I’ve been doing, I was singing while I was cooking the other day, but I’ve also been doing some of that during my breaks during the work day when Nicole’s not home so I don’t bother her when she’s working.
Nicole: Is this a playlist you made or?
Patricia: I made.
Nicole: Will you share it?
Patricia: Of all the songs I like to sing?
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: It’s not of me singing.
Nicole: I know, but maybe people want to listen to the songs you like to sing.
Patricia: Okay, it’s a lot of musicals.
Nicole: I’m sure we have musicals fans.
Patricia: That’s fair. Okay, I could, I could share it.
Nicole: This is kind of like Patricia’s Greatest Hits.
Patricia: [00:26:00] [Laughing]
Nicole: One of mine was working on an exercise plan. I was actually getting into it.
Patricia: Those first three weeks of January, you were solid, moving, but also, then you were sleeping well.
Nicole: I was sleeping well. There was one time I did some, like, I really exercised, like, I, I came up near my limit. I didn’t push too hard, but I just, I got a good, a good exercise in,
Patricia: mm hmm
Nicole: I guess.
I felt so good after, like, I, I was so mad. I had so much more energy and everything. I was so mad about it, um,
Patricia: [Laughing]
I know it seems like fake news, right?
Nicole: Yeah,
Patricia: [Laughing]
Nicole: and I was enjoying it. I did push myself too hard one time. I almost had an asthma attack. I had to climb off the bike, sit on the floor.
Patricia: I got you water and a fan.
Nicole: Yeah, it was not good.
Patricia: And I gave you dirty looks.
Nicole: Yeah,
Patricia: yep
Nicole: you did. You gave me a
Patricia: I did
Nicole: lot of dirty looks.
Patricia: Yep. [00:27:00]
Nicole: I tried. I tried too hard.
Patricia: mm hmm
Nicole: But also I’ve been working way too hard lately and it has completely been draining me and so I haven’t had the time or the energy or the will to get on the bike again. That should be getting better soon, and I hope to get back into it.
Patricia: Yeah.
One of my other goals for this year, which was part of decluttering, is to read 15 physical books. You know, I read a lot of audiobooks, I get a lot of advanced copies, both in physical form as well as ebooks. And some of the physical books we have, I want to read them so then I could get rid of them.
I could either sell them at the used bookstore. I could put them in a little free library or something like that. But I need to read them first. So I have read already maybe three or four physical books this year. I have a little bookmark I’m using [00:28:00] to track my physical books. And also part of this though is getting back to not looking at my phone after 9pm, so I could stand to be better at that. I’m kind of like 50 percent at that. Some nights I’m good, some nights I’m bad.
Nicole: Yeah, we’re working on finding ways to help with that.
Patricia: Yeah, sometimes I don’t even realize it’s
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: after 9, so I think one of them might just be like, set a reminder.
Nicole: Yeah, might just have a reminder, so something pops up and is like, stop it.
Patricia: Knock it off.
Nicole: My highly dreamed of, uh, fancy mail, um, project. I have yet to get a mail out, but I did take an important step in that, uh, I, I finally got the photo printer hooked back up and I got it set up, connected to the Wi Fi so I can print to it straight from my laptop.
And I even printed off some pictures to get ready to send, so I’m, I’m making steps. [00:29:00]
Patricia: Yeah, I had a mail goal to of write one piece of mail a week, at least, and I think I’ve averaged that. I found that I was tracking it. But I’ve actually been kind of crap at tracking it. You know, the tracking section in our planners is on a different page than like that weekly space that we have open.
You know, there’s like a habit tracker up at the front or what have you. And so I think I just need to track it on the pages we have open, right? And it’s either, you know, I have a little mail rubber stamp, maybe I just stamp the day, right? I don’t have to use the official habit tracker. Again, the planner is there to serve us, uh, we don’t serve the planner. We could use it any way we want to. So.
Nicole: What if you put the little envelope stamps on each day and colored them in when you sent the mail?
Patricia: Oh, but it’s only one a [00:30:00] week, not one a day. Oh, okay. But could do that, too.
Nicole: Yeah
Patricia: If I get good at one a week, who knows?
Nicole: Yeah.
One of mine was to hang up art around the home.
Uh, I have not hung up any art around the home. But, we did purchase some frames. So, that was a good first step. I am now feeling intimidated by the next step of picking out what art goes into the frames and then taking the frames to get glass and matting and backing and everything else. So I’ve talked to you Patricia about this a little bit about maybe this is the next step is a do it together step.
Patricia: Yeah, I think it should be a team project, especially since I used to work in a custom framing shop.
Nicole: Yeah, whereas I’m just like oh my gosh the idea of getting all these frames out of the bag and like [exhale]
Patricia: Yeah.
Yeah, no, we’ll do it together. We’ll make a project. We’ll like clean up the living room floor and we’ll lay everything out.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: It’ll be fine.
Finally, last time we talked about goals, I mentioned I picked [00:31:00] kind of three words, three themes for the year that a lot of my goals fit into, and those were connection, creation, and reclamation.
Connection, we definitely talked about not only hanging out with people in person, but I’ve been trying to text people more. I found the long text with like, were making my thumbs tired and were making my hands hurt. So I’ve actually been leaving a lot of voice notes lately.
Nicole: I, I love this idea and I want to try doing it more.
I think it’s fun getting these little voice notes, so, I don’t know, I might try sending some to friends and see what happens.
Patricia: Yeah, sure. I, you know, one of my friends, we leave voice notes back and forth, but another one of my friends will send really long texts with really big questions about things like separating art from the artist or something like that, and I’m like, you know what, I’m not gonna have this conversation, like, texting, with my thumbs. So I’m just gonna leave [00:32:00] you, like, three 40 second voice notes.
So that was connection. Another one of my words was creation. You know, when I chose this word, I was thinking like, oh, music, crochet, snail mail. But actually, where this has been popping up has been food. I’ve been making some new recipes.
I cooked chickpeas from scratch, and then I made my own hummus. I also made like a curry chickpea rice situation that you really liked. I also made Mexican rice from scratch, which one, was surprisingly easy, and two, turned out amazing. Like, rivaling any restaurant. Like, so good. And kind of dangerously easy, because now I want to make it all the time.
Oh, is this the day…? This was also the first time you made rice on the stove successfully.
Yes.
No, I made [00:33:00] the curry rice was on the stove too.
Nicole: Was it?
Patricia: Oh, but maybe that wasn’t successful. That was a little underdone.
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: That was a little underdone. Yeah, because I’m, I’m a rice cooker girl. I’m Filipino. I’m a rice cooker girl.
So, yeah, it was, it was great. I, I want to make it again already.
And the other word was reclamation. Returning to those things I used to love about myself, or those things I used to love to do. So one of those was archery, which I haven’t done yet, because, you know, time, like we were talking about. Although I did do some research and found a place to go.
But one of the ways this has been popping up is we have watched a few documentaries and I had forgotten how much I love documentaries. Which makes sense because I read a lot of nonfiction. So again, having these words, and you could pick a word now, you could pick a word at any time, but again, it helps by being my North Star.
It helps by giving me focus and direction.
Music: [00:34:00] [Transition Music]
Nicole: Ah, well. Again, that was a lot, like we do.
Patricia: Like we do.
Nicole: What do you want people to take away from this episode?
Patricia: I say, revisit your goals with curiosity, you know, not looking to shame yourself, not looking to beat yourself up, looking at them with a, huh, does this still work for me? Who made this goal? And remembering that, I’ve said this a couple times already, your goals serve you, you do not serve them.
Nicole, what’s your takeaway for this week?
Nicole: I think it’s important to remember that not all goals are successful immediately, and not all need to have even started yet. It’s okay to still be looking for your on ramp or deciding that some goals just aren’t [00:35:00] going to be quickly successful.
Patricia: Yeah, I think it’s also, you know, we didn’t mention this, but it’s also okay to say like, you know what, this one’s not happening until the second half of the year, push it out to July or something like that.
Nicole: Yeah.
Well, that’s all the goals talk. What has been filling your cup this last week or two?
Patricia: Um, hanging out with people. Friends, new and old.
Both: [Chuckle]
Patricia: Uh, it’s been really great. And as much as I tend to be introverted, as much as I just wanna hole up in our home and just curl up with a book and hide under a blanket. I’m coming to terms with how much, how good it is for us to be peopling.
And then the other thing is that the pink lemons from my tree are delicious. They’re such good lemons. I don’t know. They’re… and, and maybe I’m [00:36:00] biased. Maybe it’s just because, like, we, we got this tree when it was tiny and now we have lemons.
But I don’t know. They seem really good.
Nicole: They are really good. When you just mentioned this, my brain wanted to call them professional lemons.
Patricia: Professional.
Nicole: Because they’re that good at being lemons. They’re so good and lemony. They’re professional lemons.
Patricia: Ah, business lemons.
Nicole: No, I don’t think they’re business lemons.
Patricia: They’re not business lemons?
Nicole: No.
Patricia: Just professional lemons.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Okay.
Nicole, what’s filling your cup?
Nicole: The plants are growing, as I mentioned at the top of the show.
Patricia: mm hmm
Nicole: Which means I can go visit them and hang out with them, talk to them, pet them. I don’t know. It’s just really nice. As I mentioned, I’m working way too much lately, so taking some plant breaks has been really good for me.
Patricia: mm hmm mm hmm
Nicole: Step out and tinker with the plants, or even the indoor plants, some of them are incredibly happy [00:37:00] right now.
Patricia: Yeah, you’ve, you’ve been taking such good care of our plants, and I appreciate you.
Nicole: They bring me a lot of joy.
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. 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, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter.
You can also find us on Instagram and BlueSky at just eedapod, not dot com.
Patricia: [laugh]
Nicole: 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 or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts that allow for ratings. It really goes far in helping other people find us.
Patricia: We would [00:38:00] 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 and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: Let’s get whimsical.
Patricia: Let’s get whimsical, whimsical.
[Laughing]
Nicole: Pink lemon tree.
Patricia: [Quietley Laughing]
Nicole: We get our lemons from the pink lemon tree.
Patricia: Um, that’s one of the songs I got for easy piano, by the way.
Nicole: Really?
Patricia: Yeah?
Nicole: The pink lemon tree song?
Patricia: Yeah!