Follow the Tingle with Justina Blakeney

Hello Pod Squad, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. This is the last week of January, settling into a new year. And I think by the last week of January, we have all realized that every one of our resolutions were bullshit and that we were in fact, never going to do any of those. And we might begin to wonder why we resolved to resolve only to be defeated by ourselves by the third week. So if that is you, welcome back. We too are with you on the journey. So instead of resolving to change ourselves, because that has worked exactly zero times, why don't we resolve to not change ourselves and just get to know who the hell we are underneath all that we desire to change. So here's the deal, getting back to who we are, which is where we were always going in the first place. Let's start there, okay? And one way to get to know who we actually are, if we are brave enough to trust it, is to trust our delight. That is a big clue to us. The thing that taps and makes us feel like maybe that was like a little tiny baby itch of curiosity, of creativity, of delight, of what our guest today, the remarkable, delightful, Justina Blakeney calls the tingle. When we have lost such touch with ourselves that we're not real sure how to get back in, the tingle is a great clue for us, okay? So we wanna get closer to our wild, we wanna sense our tingle, we wanna trust it, because our tingle tells us what we desire, what we want, what we love, and those are the things, incidentally, that we will be very good at. Justina talks about her design life, her creativity, her home as an extension of herself. Each object is a story that makes her life more beautiful. She shares ways to bring more joy and meaning into your spaces, to get to know your creativity and bring more joy and meaning into your life. She respects herself so greatly, she respects her creativity greatly, she brings it out of everyone else. She is a designer, but also has designed a damn good life. Please listen and be inspired and please track your tingle with our conversation with Justina Blakene. All right, so real quick, Justina, since I first met you, I think we've only been in rooms together a few times. I just, I feel like you are someone to me that feels like you live very close to your wild, like meaning not wild, like I think what sometimes people think of that as like necessarily loud or, no, just I mean wild like your truest self. You seem like a human being who lives very from the inside out and not from the outside in. I can feel it in how you create and how you speak and how you dress and how you parent and you're always that. What I want for everyone listening is just to be more of who they are. And so what I try to remind myself when I'm around you is not that I need to be more like Justina, but that I need to be more me. But I don't know if you remember this, we sat in a room together at like a really cool thing we do with a bunch of other women and we're supposed to go around at the end and all say what our grave goal is for the future after this get together and everybody was saying things like for their companies or whatever. And I said, my goal is that I'm gonna call Justina and ask her to be friends with me. I of course did not do that, but here we are. Hi. Can I tell a brief little quick story about Justina and I's first real meeting? Yeah. Do you remember this Justina? Yes, I do. So we were doing this exercise of, I don't know, it was like an opening up. There's many women there. This is the first time we've met all of each other. And we had to go to a stranger and stare into said stranger's eyes and thank God, Justina was my partner for this. And it was right after COVID and I hadn't been in front of anyone's face at all. And anyway, it was pretty wild. And you and I, we have a closeness now because of this eye staring contest that we got into. And I just wanna say it was super awkward and weird and then now knowing you, it's like, oh my God, that's hilarious. So I just wanna say that because I think that it's perfect. Justina, tell the pod squat. How do you like to talk about yourself? Like how do you introduce yourself? Who are you? Hi pod squad. I like to describe myself as an artist. I like to describe myself as Justina. I don't know. This is a weird one. I think that when I think about what I try and exude, it's self-expression is really important to me. And something somebody said to me recently is ringing in my ears. She said, it's good to be known. It feels good to be known. And not really resonated with me because I feel like that's what my life is. That's what my art is. It's like trying to share my knowing and be known and it feels good. It feels good to be in the presence of it, whether it's through your art or through your brand or through your being in a room. It feels really good. It feels really good. So I have a lot of things I wanna talk to you about. The first one is belonging, okay? Because I was talking to my kid recently and they were asking me, your little ones, I think 13, right? Almost 12, yeah. Almost 12, okay. So they get to this point, Justina, where they start asking you questions about your decisions you've made and it's a really good time. And one of my kids asked me about why we moved so much. This is like, we moved like 13 times in their childhood. It was one of those things where I kept thinking, I'm just like one move away to finding belonging. Like I know I'm gonna find it and I'm gonna feel comfortable in my own skin and feel connected and it just never happened. I've heard you talk about belonging when you were little, feeling like you didn't fit in anywhere simply. But you said something that blew my mind in an interview once you said, the message from your parents though, even though you didn't fit in, was that that meant you could be anything, anywhere. Can you talk to us about the role that belonging has played like this desire, feeling like maybe you don't fit in anywhere easily? Does that where the desire to be known comes from? Like, how does this all play out in your life and where do you belong? So yeah, I grew up in a very multicultural, very big, foistress, loud, raucous family and we grew up in Berkeley. So there was the spirit of kind of individualism in the sense that everyone was sort of allowed to be themselves more in Berkeley, I think, than in a lot of places in the world where it's sort of celebrated. But I think growing up multiracial and I'm Jewish and I was raised Jewish, I always felt a little bit, a little bit like an outsider in different places. And we traveled a lot. And what I noticed when we started traveling was that my sister and brother and I, we could go places and so many different places in the world, people thought that we were from there because they just didn't know. They couldn't tell and were sort of ambiguous in that way. And I think that's one of the reasons why I have a good ear for languages. I sort of started picking up different languages and really being able to kind of just figure out how to blend in into different places so that I could feel like I belonged. And that was almost like a hack for me to sort of feel a belonging in different circles. And I think that what that orientation did for me as I was growing up was it started to make me feel comfortable not fitting in and being okay with standing out more and having just a general sort of comfort with people staring at me or feeling like I didn't totally know what was going on or didn't belong in that way. And so, yeah, I think there's always the balance of the ricochet between, oh, I feel like I fit in here and I feel like I belong. And oh my gosh, I feel like a total outsider and I feel like there was a lot of ping-ponging between feeling both of those things. But I feel like my parents made a pretty concerted effort not to put any kind of identity onto us as we were growing up. And so in part that hindered some of my feelings of belonging in the sense that I didn't necessarily grow up feeling like, oh, this is what I am. But on the other side of it, it allowed me the freedom to be on a journey to figure out what that meant for myself. It's so interesting because it was one of my kids I was talking to about this. And it's like this feeling that a lot of us have that I don't belong anywhere ends up offering us this freedom to belong everywhere that, because like I wonder if you feel belonging right away because you fit in somewhere, then isn't that in itself kind of a default inclusivity or exclusivity? That must feel really good to feel like you have a belonging in one group, but doesn't that necessarily mean that you don't belong anywhere else? It reminds me of the Maya Angelou quote that I sent to my kid after this conversation where she said, you are only free when you realize you belong no place. You belong every place, no place at all. The price is high, the reward is great. And more and more, I belong to myself. I'm very proud of that. I am very concerned about how I look at Maya. I like Maya very much. It reminds me of you. Oh my gosh. Thank you. I'm really honored. I keep on looking at Amanda on the Zoom screen and I'm just giving you such a big hug and it's so beautiful to see you. It's so beautiful to see you. Just haven't said hi yet. It's really wonderful. And I want the pod squad to remember that you are the queen who directed us to do everything for the good of the realm. OK, does everyone remember that episode 230 that just blew my mind for a solid trimester where that self-sovereignty that you have, and I've wanted to talk to you about it ever since, but in that lunch, I was just thinking about it the whole time but not asking you about it. So this is the story where they didn't have any dairy options at a lunch we were at. And I got very nervous about it because that meant you couldn't eat anything. And so I was feeling very apologetic on behalf of the situation. And you said, no sorry's, self-sovereignty. And then you just waved your arms open and said, it's for the good of the realm. That's what I do. When it's good for me, it's good for the realm. So I know I'm not feeling deprived. I'm making a choice. Can you teach us how to do that? We so often take a punishing approach or deprivation approach to entering what is good for us instead of a, this is of my own dignity and sovereignty that I'm doing this thing. Like how the hell did you get there? I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few years because I feel like in the ether, we are talking a lot about self-love and self-care and something that really hit me hard that I don't feel like is as much part of the conversation as self-respect. And it's an angle on self-love that I think about a lot because you can love in so many different ways. And sometimes loving can look a little bit too much like smothering or loving can look too much, a little too much like spoiling or indulging. And I think sometimes for me, I can get into a place where that's true for myself as well. So one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about and that helps me get out of that sort of deprivation feeling, if I'm trying to be more conscious about what I'm putting in my mouth or how much I move my body or how much time I spend in front of a screen or any of these things is this idea of self-respect and this idea of what is good for me is good for the realm and that that looks different from indulging at every moment, like what that might mean sometimes is restraint and just finding that in between place in that. And temperance is something I've been thinking a lot about lately because I can get into a state of overwhelm or I can get into a state of go, go, go, go, go, go and everything's, you know, and so I have to like pull myself back and breathe and practice temperance and remind myself self-sovereignty, not just for my good, for the good of the realm, the higher purpose. So it's just these little reminders, these mini mantras and things that help me and bring me back when I'm not feeling grounded or when I feel myself starting to go into, yeah, being like, oh, I'm so deprived, like I can't have that dessert because I'm not eating dairy instead of that. It's like, oh, actually this is an opportunity to practice self-sovereignty. It's just a way of making myself feel respected by myself that I think is really important. Oh God, because the flip of that, what we usually, I'll speak for myself, what I usually do is go straight to shame. When I'm in my bed and I need to go to bed, I'm exhausted and I know that's for the good of myself and the realm, if I just fucking go to sleep, instead of scrolling for the next hour and stuff, I literally don't care about it. I don't care about it. I don't know why I'm doing it. And then I heap the shame. Like, what's wrong with you? What's like, why would you do that? You should just go to sleep. The flip side of that is like self-respect. It's like, baby, your time is so important. You are such a sweet thing and I care about you and I want you to go to sleep. I want you to feel good tomorrow. And this isn't feeding you. You're too good for this. It's a very different way of approaching it. Absolutely. And it's an encouraging voice. It's a kind voice, you know, but it's a voice that'll kind of whoop your ass a little bit in the sense of like, yeah, girl, what are you doing? You know? Yeah. And it presupposes importance. That's what I love about it. You can self-love and all that. The feeling is different. It's like, you have a realm. Yeah. Every single person that is listening, you have a realm. You have people in your home. You have people outside of your home. You have people you're gonna walk by on the street today. You have people in your office and every bit of your energy affects everybody, your realm. So like, when Justina's talking about honoring herself and her decisions for the good of the realm, it reminds me of the way that you treat like a queen, like a bunch of people. We gotta keep her together because every decision she makes affects the realm. It's important. Your life is important. This is so interesting to me thinking about the self-respect piece because I've never attached it to self-love. I've never thought of whether or not I have self-respect for myself. And I think that at least for me, I could be really tough on myself. I have kind of a very critical voice. I think probably a lot of us do. And thinking about this self-respect piece, it's like, oh, if I think through that lens of needing to have respect for myself, automatically that voice softens a little. It's a lot less critical. It's gonna hold me accountable, but it's not meanie voice. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. And so how did you come to this idea because I've never thought of this. And what does your inner voice sound like? Oh yeah, I like that. I have a question. Not that we're gonna copy it directly, but we're definitely... I am, I'm sure of. It would be too difficult, I think, for me to trace back exactly where this idea of self-respect came from. I've been doing a lot of, I don't know, whether my husband, we're unsure if it's a spiritual awakening or a midlife crisis, but it's something between those two things. Yes, very close on the food chain. Tell us about that. Tell us about that. But whatever's been going on, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff. And my inner voices, I think, you know, I have many as I think we all do, but I think overall, she's pretty dope. Wow. I think she is pretty loving and kind and respectful to me and others. And I think that she has high expectations and that is sometimes where I think other voices come in and have to sometimes tell her, like, it's okay to relax, it's okay to rest, and it's okay to disappoint people. 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During the new year, new you sale, when you use my code, we can do hard things at checkout and select bundles are on sale for up to 45% off. Visit bioptimizers.com slash we can do hard things and use code, we can do hard things to get the best deal on mass enzymes and all bioptimizers products. Start 2026 with a stronger gut because better digestion and more energy starts in your stomach. I've listened to you a lot talk about a time in your life when you were ignoring all the messages. We're in a collective midlife crisis. So a lot of the things we've been talking about are how our lives and our bodies are always speaking to us about what we want and we need. And then because of a lot of things we ignore that and then we wonder why we're fucked. So talk to us about how meditation brought you back in touch with yourself and what that looks like now. And also, could you tell us how you knew, how you could tell that you were stuck? I remember a conversation I had with a dear friend a few years ago. I said, and this was sort of right after COVID and right after we went through and lived in a whole big house renovation and I was just not in a good place and working a lot. And I told her, I said, I don't have any free time. But if I did, I'm not even sure what I would do in it. I remember telling her that. I was just like, I don't know what I do for fun anymore at this stage in my life. I'm just not sure. If I were to go away by myself for a weekend to like Palm Springs or something, like I don't know what I would do. And that thought really scared me because I've always felt really clear about sort of my passions and my purpose. And I just felt, yeah, really unsure and really run ragged. And I wasn't feeling good in my body and I'd been dealing with years and years of like a nervous tummy and just, I just wasn't, I wasn't in a good place. And I knew, I knew I wasn't in a good place. But I mean, I'm gonna get real with the pod squad. I think y'all can handle it. But, you know, I'd had diarrhea for like five years straight and just sort of ignored it and just was like, oh yeah, well, you know, this is how my tummy is. You know, and I never really did anything about it or paid any attention to it. And one day I was on the throne and my tummy was just feeling so bad. And I just heard this voice coming from inside and it was just like, you are not listening. You are not listening. She kept saying that over and over again, you're not listening. And she said, I've been telling you everything you need to know for so long and you're not listening. And that was a real turning point for me. I was like, okay, okay, I'm gonna start listening now. And I did. And so that was really the beginning of my meditation practice, which I was very resistant to. I'm an Aries, I have like, go, go, go energy, all of that. So the idea of like sitting in quiet stillness, I was like, can I at least like sing, you know, I really like wanted to be active in some way. Can I read a book while I meditate at least? Can I listen to an audiobook while I meditate? My therapist recommended I take a class and that was really helpful. I don't think I really would have been able to get into it the way that I was able to get into it without the class. So I took a meditation class and started meditating and literally just started with five minutes a day. And I was in somatic therapy. I was just starting with like very, very small sensations, just like feeling what I feel in my feet and feeling, you know, the tingle or the rush or whatever. And just starting to pay more attention to the sensations, get out of my head and into my body more. And did meditation for about a year before I really started to feel like the messages that my body was sending me were just getting a lot clearer. And I started to like heal my digestive issues and just went through a whole process of like really listening. It was like, oh, you know, at first it was like, I couldn't hear anything, you know, I just felt bad. That's all I could hear was just like, I just don't feel good. But slowly, slowly over time, it just started to become so much more clear. Like, oh, I'm thirsty, I need water, I need to stretch. I need to go on a hike, I need to move my body. I need to dance, I need to sing, I need to make love. I need to have a deep conversation with somebody I care about. It just started to become more and more clear. And now like three years in, I am so much healthier, just and so much happier and so much more clear on the things that were hurting my body, the things I can't eat, like dairy, and really just that mindfulness piece, which, you know, before going on this journey, you hear people talking about mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness, and it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Meditation, meditation, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But actually practicing it, you're like, oh yeah. Ooh, yeah. Game changer. It's so interesting, because it's like, we know if there's a person in our life that we want to get to know better, that we want to hear from, we have to spend quiet time with that person, right? If I wanna get to know you better, I can't be like, all right, so you talk, and I'm just gonna be on my phone, and then I'm gonna go on, we're gonna take a trip, and we're gonna do some errands, and we're gonna, whatever. Like, we know that knowing someone is about sitting with them and listening and giving our full attention. And so it of course makes sense that in order to do that with ourselves, it would take that. It would take a stillness and a full presence to be able to listen and know ourselves better. Has it in these three years, that introspection, I think it's called introspection or something where you can actually feel things. Interception, and we're gonna get my recovery. Yeah, introspection. I'm my therapist is always saying I need more of it. That's all I know. The thing where she's like, feel your toes, turns into, I can feel I'm hungry, or I can feel like I need to talk with someone. Are you at the point now where you can feel answers to things? Like you can feel, like you have to make a lot of decisions in your business. A lot of partnerships, a lot of do I open this door, do I close that door? You have a huge business. Has that translated to that where you can feel like yes to this, no to this? Or do you get signs in your body? Yes, that's awesome. So much. It's actually that work has made running my business. Actually, I'll say it this way, possible for me right now. Wow. Because it was starting to not be possible for me. The way that I was operating previously, things come to me much stronger now. I was doing a lot of burying, I guess, of just everything. And the last few years have been about allowing the feelings of all kinds and all stripes. And there's a destabilization that happens when that process begins. And I still feel like I'm at the beginnings of that. So sometimes it's a little destabilizing, because I'm like, oh gosh, these highs are really high, and these lows are really fucking low. And also no one is used to any of these, so buckle up sisters. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But I think that the decision is definitely just everything has become more clear for me. And Amanda, you've talked about this before, but I think about life force a lot, vitality, and life force. And that's something that I can actually feel in my body very clearly. My aliveness, and I can feel when it's being drained from me, and I can feel when it's being added to. And that is the measure by which I'm currently evaluating all my business decisions. Is it giving life, or is it taking it away? And that might be with people who are sitting across from me, and I'm having an initial conversation with them, and I gauge my vitality at the end of that conversation. It might be with a design project that something's about it, or sound compelling, other things, maybe not so much. And I just try and gauge, is this giving me life? Am I excited about it? Can I not stop thinking about it, and you feel that gurgling? And it's the physical sensations. And so tuning into that has been enormously helpful for me. And so I've been making a lot of changes in my life and in my business in the past a little bit. And it's really incredible once you start being financed by life force. Life force is what, when I think of you, I think of vitality. I think of life force. I think that, I don't know how to explain any of this, but I'm going to try. I think that through this last year of Recovery for Myself, I have learned that much of my anorexia, control, rigidity, was about suppressing life force. Like, you can see it. You can see why am I so attracted to Junglo? I look at your writing, your clothes, your Instagram account, and I'm like, what? And it's real. It's like, there's something about white lady culture that I was raised in and lived in that is about rigidity and no color and no, it's about control. I mean, my mom has looked at my closet and been like, we call it jail colors. It's just 30 different shades of things that you'd be given in jail. Okay, so you're painting now. You know I love your paintings. Interestingly enough, I was recently listening to an interview with you years ago and you said, I do home design, but lately when I go to museums and look at art, I feel tingly. So tell us about that. So you felt the tingly. Is the tingly the life force? Is that what you're going towards? And is following the tingly how you do all of your next creative decisions because you're oozing creativity. Thank you. Yeah, I am just trying to follow the ting. Aren't we all just trying to follow the tingly? But you can't know the tingle. A lot of us are not. A lot of us are not. A lot of us didn't believe tingle existed, but we're starting to believe. We need more tingle, y'all. Yeah, we do. It's so easy to get caught up in everything else. Right, everything else. But I think that when you feel that tingle, it's like for the good of the realm to follow the tingle. That's right. That's so good. I actually have this wacky woo-woo theory that if everybody in the world was following their tingle to their most tingly-est tingle, that the world would be perfect. That that's what is missing from the world, is that people aren't allowed to just be who they are and follow all of their hearts and just express that for themselves. It's everyone feels so scared, scared to follow the tingles, or the tingles are so buried underneath that they don't even know how to begin. Yeah. What's tingling now? I want to know what's the next tingly thing. And then also, the home design business is unbelievable. And then you're like, no, now I want to also paint. How do you keep, because your painting is incredible, and there's shows now, and it's everywhere, how do you keep that something to me about the tingly is that it's intrinsically motivated? And for me, the second things start to be judged from the outside, I can't maintain it. What if the luck's, it's very lucky to me, and I'm not even saying this as a joke, I seriously believe it, that no one likes my paintings. I'm not saying that. It's true, it's not good, but that helps me, because I love it. I actually love them, and I love doing it, and I'm at no risk of it becoming so successful that it loses its magic. How do you maintain the intrinsic motivation when now people are looking at it and consuming it? Do you know what I mean? I think you're wrong, Glen, about your paintings, and I haven't even seen them. Well, there you go, that's why. No, no, but it's you, it's an extension of you, and so they're beautiful, and so people who love you are gonna find them beautiful, and I truly believe that. That's exactly right. They are beautiful. And I think that when we talk about art, we're talking about perceived value, and we're talking about such different tastes across the whole world, and for me, if my art makes one person feel good about themselves or one person finds it beautiful, that's a bonus, because I'm doing it for myself anyway, and it feels beautiful to me, and it's a joy to watch myself love my paintings more, the more I paint, and it's no longer mine once I put the art in the gallery, it's for everyone and for myself, and I hope people can experience my work and it can make people feel something, but it's also okay if people don't like my work. It doesn't have to be good for everyone. I don't like everyone else's work. It's a good point. 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So if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. ["Faces"] Faces, this is a passion of yours and a lot of your design and your art and all of your treasures that you collect. I want to like roll around in your house is what I wanna do. You guys have to come over. Oh, God. What is it? I mean, it could be anything. So why Faces? What are they doing for you, for your life force? Or why? There's an, I don't know element to this for sure, but I wanna say something about self-expression and yes, expressions on the faces and about how, what that means when you read someone's expression and you feel it and it touches you. And so for me, drawing, painting, illustrating faces creates an immediate connection. You know, like on magazine covers, they always try to have the models on the covers looking at the camera because when you look at the magazine cover, she's looking back at you. And there is something very powerful about that gaze and about that connection point. And so for me, trying to capture that in my art is just something very compelling. And I really like hearing people talk about, oh, it looks like she's feeling this or thinking this. And, you know, it's yours. It's so personal to you that is what it is for you. And so I think that's part of it, but there's still the, I don't know element to it too. How do you balance creativity and discipline? I think sometimes when you see people who are wildly creative, you just think of them as just, you know, throwing it all to the wind all the time and living in the moment. But here you are doing all of that and running a business. You started blogging, I did too. We started like doing whatever the hell it is we're doing at a similar time. And we both did it in the same way. We were both bloggers. And I heard you say that you started and had a rule for yourself that you were gonna do it five days a week where you had a certain amount. I started the same way and had one rule for myself. That was that I was going to write for an hour in the morning and then press post no matter what. And it was my way of beating my own self doubt and not letting perfectionism keep me from expressing myself because I knew it would. I knew I would screw myself because I would look it over and think it sucked and not do it. And so how does discipline play a role in your life now? And how do you avoid becoming too rigid or too wild? I'm not at risk of becoming too rigid. I definitely lean in the other direction of the too wild. I think that with my creative work, I don't feel I have to be disciplined. If anything, I might have to be disciplined to get other things done when I'm in the flow of being creative. So mom stuff or work stuff or all that, sometimes I'm like, okay, and I'm toggling back and forth because I'm trying to stay in my creative flow. So I don't feel like I need a lot of discipline around that. I need to discipline more around the other things to do things that I maybe have avoidance around. And routines help me a lot with that and getting into just more regular flow, which is something I'm really working hard at. I need that routine to help me with the discipline of the stuff that I may have more avoidance around than things like painting where I'm kind of squeezing it in wherever I can. And then you'll know, you'll know if you're craving it because you'll be in touch with your body enough to feel the craving of that thing. So then you'll be able to create that in the moment as opposed to living from some outward discipline or outward set of guidelines or rules for your day, right? Like you can tap in and what kind of rituals do you keep? So I have a pretty solid morning ritual that includes my meditation. It includes the morning pages from the artist's way, but I oftentimes do my own thing with my journal and my pages. I actually have been doing Elizabeth Gilbert's Dear Love prompt that I heard here on this podcast and it's been really powerful for me. Dear Love, what would you have me know? Dear Love, what would you have me do? That's been really beautiful. So yeah, I spend about an hour in the morning doing my meditation and my journal and my writing. Sometimes I draw in my journals too. And I also pull Oracle cards. And then I have some favorite Oracle decks and have my tea on my patio and listen to the birds sing. So besides that though, I don't really have any. That's good. Besides that- That's good. We'll rent you out for a round. That's the only one then. You listen to our stuff episode, which I'm just trying to imagine you of all people listening to our stuff episode. Because that's amazing. And I feel like you imbue this sacredness on things that really has me rethinking everything and that self-respecting, like respecting what I love and stuff. I love a lot of my things that are inexplicable to a lot of people. Like a lot of stuff I got from Goodwill. And I'm like, I'm imbuing the same respect to it that I feel like you're having with your beautiful things. So can you talk to us about stuff and what it does for us and surrounding yourself with it and just tell us your theories? Yeah. So as an artist and a collector and someone who likes to surround myself with beauty, I love stuff. And I love beautiful stuff. And I love finding treasures. It's a real joy for me. It's the tingle. Finding something really beautiful that speaks to you and calls to you. For me, it is akin to going to a museum or going to visit somebody's art studio or something like that and taking something from that experience and bringing it home for me makes my home be the story of my life. And I love that feeling. And I love experiencing that, not just with myself, but with others. Like I was recently at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, where it's her home. And just walking through Frida Kahlo's home and seeing where she cooked and seeing all the beautiful pots and pans and just imagining her life and the care that she took to choose out all these things and what they say about her and looking at her books and looking at her paints and her paint brushes and her wheelchair in front of her easel and the bed with the mirror. It's just like just seeing her home as an extension of who she is and being to understand so much more about her and her life and the beauty that she brought to the world through that experience was so meaningful to me. And I think it also just clicked for me. One of the reasons why I enjoy having a home be an extension of myself in that way, it's that same thing it feels good to be known. I just wanna express myself. I want people to be able to experience it and feel it. And if it makes me feel good, I'm curious to know if it makes you feel good too. And it might not. I don't know, that's okay. But it's about the like finding the resonances. So I go through different phases of living different things and cycling different things through my home. And I have different sculptures or different art pieces and I'll look at them and we'll have a little conversation and it'll make me smile. I think about when I found it, who I bought it from, what they told me about the item. So for me, it's very similar to reading a book or something like that where it's just, it's stories. It's beautiful stories. You describe it as like music for your eyes around your house. Like it's like you have music on in the house and that makes you feel a certain way and what your eyes fall on makes you feel a certain way. And the importance of beauty and how personal that is. It's very personal. I totally understand people who are like, I need minimalism. Like I just have a lot of noise in my head and I need it to be visually quiet. It's not that I don't get that. I totally do. It's just not what resonates with me and it's not what sort of ignites my imagination. What are you struggling with lately? What do you wrestle with these days? What are you working on? I'm struggling with something like, I feel the tingle for a certain thing, for painting or for music, but my whole life is set up for other things and where and when and how sometimes do I allow myself to just follow the tingle and how and when and where sometimes do I do the thing that sometimes feels like the responsible thing or the thing that's maybe better for more people. And I think that's just probably something that is never gonna be 100% clear, but I'm trying to find tools to help me with it. And I think that I'm also just candidly struggling with just keeping my body healthy. I went through this two year gung-ho, all in eating super clean, exercising a lot, like I was in it and my head's just not in it the same way that it was five or six months ago. I'm journaling and I'm like, my head's not in it. What should I do about that? And I think it's because I'm pretty good at kind of goal setting and reaching that goal. But when I get to the goal, I have this now what kind of feeling and where I was at with my health where I was trying to reach certain goals with my cholesterol and get my cholesterol down and do all this stuff. And I hit the numbers, I wanted to hit and all that. And I'm like, oh, shit. Now I gotta keep it here forever. Oh. It does not feel tingling, just a forever job with no reward. Like keep it here forever job is not super terrible. So I'm struggling with that. I'm struggling with that, honestly. That's been something that's been appearing in my journal a lot lately. And I haven't figured it out. And I probably, the figuring out of it probably just means that getting more comfortable with never figuring it out. But here we are. God, I relate to that. It's like, it's different energy, man. It's like, give me a challenge, all right? You tell me I'm fucked. You tell me I'm anorexic. You tell me I've got trauma. You, I'm on the journey. I recently said to my therapist, all right, what am I gonna work on now? And she said, I don't think you should work on anything else, just relax. And I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna get another fucking therapist. Then what do you mean? What do you mean? So now I'm just supposed to maintain being a healthy human being. What does that mean? Maintenance energy is very different than challenge energy. Maintenance energy, that's exactly right. I struggle with maintenance energy. And so yeah, I really think that's a big part of my work right now is that not sprinting thing. And it's just like, it's okay to walk. It's actually great to walk. And it's the same kind of energy with my health. And it's the same kind of energy in business, which we recently closed down our online shop, which was a big move for us in the business, but it was about many things. But for me, one of the main things was about harnessing a slower rhythm for myself because slowing down just helps me to listen more. It's really hard to feel the tingles when you're moving really quickly and just trying to get more comfortable in that maintenance energy. And maybe we should find a sexier word than maintenance because that might help. Yeah, yeah, I'll work on that. You can work on that too. Because you like the word. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I am a former Olympian, although you're allowed to say Olympian forever. I've done all the things physically that a person could do in the soccer world. And never not one day in my life have I ever wanted to go work out. Never not once. And so I say this to you as hopefully some relief. And I don't even know if we're talking about working out, but the eating well and working out, to me it's maintenance energy. And I have no answer for you, but just to know that you have somebody also that struggles with maintenance energy, and that person was an extraordinary athlete. And that's the mindset that I had my whole athletic career. So no fix here, but just straight up with you, with you hardcore on this. I think we need to add a tingle. I think we need to add a tingle to this. I think we're gonna have to figure out. Yeah. Some, I know you already did the gymnastics, so that can't be the thing. But what could be like a cool workout thing that gives you the tingles? Like maybe we're gonna do some acrobatics. Maybe we're gonna do some pole stuff. People like the pole stuff, I know that was 10 years ago. But maybe we're gonna learn how to cook something really good. Maybe someone's gonna come and teach you how to cook, then you're learning something, it's a goal something. I just feel like it's not gonna, you're not a maintenance person, look at you. That face wasn't made for maintenance. That face was made for something else. What gives you the tingle now? And like what dreams do you have still lingering? Like do you still have manifestations of yourself that you can imagine but haven't happened? What do you still envision? Yeah, so I'm really excited about two things. The first is that I'm working on a book right now with my mom. Nope. Who's a developmental psychologist? This woman was raised by two psychologists. That's why she likes herself and her voice is so nice. God damn it. Yeah, so very excited. It's about halfway done, but it's called Grow. And my mom's doing the lion's share of the writing, but it's about moving through difficult transitions. And it's gonna come with a card deck because I do my Oracle card practice and it's been so instrumental for me. So that project and working on it with my mom and I'm doing all the paintings and illustrations for the cards and the book and just collaborating with her on the concept. And so that's been just such a beautiful soulful project where it's kind of encapsulating a lot of these different activities and things that I've been doing for the past few years to kind of get myself unstuck and then layering on her 40, 50 years of experience as a psychologist. And so that's an extremely exciting and fun and different project for me. So that's beautiful. And then the other thing that I'm really excited about, I'm starting song club because I love to sing. And I always thought I was gonna be a singer. That was my thing. I'm a singer and I haven't been doing that in the world for many years, just sort of by myself at home with my little family and we all play different instruments and like to make music together. But I've been doing different book clubs for the past couple of years and getting so much out of the book clubs and love them so much. So I decided to start a song club. So meeting with a handful of friends and family this weekend to just sing together. Yes. So that is something that I've been working on and saying I was gonna do for a long time. So finally doing it. And so I'll report back or if you guys wanna come. We have a kid who's a singer. We have a kid who's a singer and in her high school, she started a club called Chords and Conversations. And they just sing and talk about albums and music. Beautiful. I think it's so incredibly healing to sing in community and I used to sing in all kinds of choirs and I feel like it's instant harmony. It's instant harmony and it's embodied. It's so beautiful and I can sing by myself all I want but I can't get the harmonies by myself. So I'm really excited about that. You are a beautiful song. I love that we're ending on harmony because I have been thinking about how all of your philosophies about how to create a beautiful space like texture and focal point and rhythm. It's like how you make a beautiful space and how you make a beautiful life and harmony is part of all of that. And so it's just, I think there's a lot of parallels of what you're doing and it's not just about spaces. It's about making your life express who you are and having harmony in it. And I think that's, thank you because your work is really, really special. Thank you so much. The feeling is very mutual with you guys. So yeah, it's so beautiful. We love you, Podswad. Go check out Justina. You probably already know her but if you haven't just trust me and she just makes you come to life a little more. We love you. We'll see you next time. Bye. We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram and at We Can Do Hard Things show on TikTok.