Times are tough and things can feel really bleak. In this episode we dig into how we’re feeling and how we can move forward and look for joy, even when we know so much bad is happening.
And some bonus joy - Rowan’s coffee shop is officially open! If you’re in the Toronto area, make sure to check it out. They’re at 505 Church Street.
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Links
Rowan’s new coffee shop!
Transcript
[00:00:00] Lara: I am here for the fight, but I’m here to remember what I’m fighting for, and that means whenever I can, letting some of that in to remind me what it feels like and why it’s so important and why everybody deserves it. Welcome to unboxing it. I’m Rowan.
And I’m Lara.
[00:00:39] Rowan: And if I sound a little tired today. It’s because I am, not only because I am opening up a coffee shop and at the time of recording am in the final stretch, like we are in the last few days of absolute chaos, as we get everything together to do this, my partner, Dani and I and our, team of contractors and designers and everybody else involved.
But, in case you haven’t noticed, the world is pretty terrifying right now. There is a lot going on again at the time of recording, and I don’t think it’s really going to matter when you listen to this. At the time of recording, it’s mid-January and some really bad stuff just went down and is still going down in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Iran is in the midst of a revolution and there are still wars, other wars going on in the world, other things going on in the world.
And. A lot of us, I think, are feeling exhausted just from that. I don’t wanna say just, but what I mean by that is on top of all the other life stuff going on, work, family, illnesses, you know, job losses, like anything else, mental health stuff, whatever else is going on in somebody’s world. on top of that is this heavy layer of worry.
And I think just anxiety. I don’t know. Lara, what do you think?
[00:02:17] Lara: Yeah, it’s so heavy. There’s anxiety, there’s worry, there’s honestly a bit of despair.
[00:02:24] Rowan: Hmm.
[00:02:25] Lara: That. This is what the world looks like right now. And it, can be all consuming, but it can also be something that makes it hard to feel the good stuff, right?
Like this is one of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation is when everything is this heavy. How do you still let in the joy? How do you still feel like it’s okay to be happy and to do things that feel good when so many things are terrible? And It is a tricky thing to navigate, but I think it’s also an important conversation to have because if we all fall into the depths of despair and can’t.
Operate anymore. That’s not gonna be better either.
[00:03:10] Rowan: Right? It makes me think of something that I read by Dr. Brene Brown, who I think most people know who she is, but if you don’t, she is a shame and resilience researcher. She’s, share some pretty good stuff and, picks a lot of brains , on these things.
She studies what it takes to be resilient. She studies how shame is the opposite of resilience. How shame really depreciates humans and stops learning and stops us from feeling worthwhile and strong. But one of the things that she said at one point, and I’m not quoting directly here ‘cause I don’t have any of her books at the ready, but she said that.
We all try to numb ourselves against the bad feelings. So, maybe if I am thinking of how scary the world is, well I don’t want to be scared, so I’ll distract myself. I’ll numb myself. Maybe I’m numbing myself with things that a lot of us use to numb our ourselves tv. Like any kind of technology, playing video games.
Maybe I’m eating too much, or I’m drinking a little too much, or I’m doing drugs, or whatever it might be. Say that I, might be doing to numb the pain. That also numbs my ability to feel things like happiness and joy. So everything becomes dull when you put the armor on as she puts it to shield yourself from what feels bad.
You also shield yourself from what feels good. And I will say that I think that’s true for me right now because I think there’s two things going on in my mind. One is for sure. As a trans person living an hour away from the US border who works in human rights and sees all the atrocities that are happening and have been happening for a while to my community and to other marginalized communities, but definitely it’s increased.
In loudness and intensity lately, I have had to turn some of those feelings off as much as I can. Right? Like I am not letting myself, I think, get quite as afraid as I could. And I’m using whatever I can, like I’m not drinking too much or doing too many drugs or whatever. But, what I’m saying is like I’m definitely doing things to distract myself and not pay as much attention.
But also I’m not getting as excited about opening a business, for example, as I would be normally. It’s like there’s a part of me that goes, I think I should be happier about this. I think I should be more excited about this. Like, I know that I should be more of this. And I wouldn’t say it’s depression or anything like that.
I don’t think that’s what’s going on. But. I do think it’s that numbing. So I think that’s one thing. And the other piece is psychologically it is much harder for me to want to get excited about something going on in my life that would bring me a lot of joy, knowing there’s so much fear and desperation and despair going on in the world.
It’s like, what right do I have? To be happy when everything seems to be falling apart. Do you know what I mean?
[00:06:30] Lara: I have whole bunch of thoughts, so, I’ll try to hit a couple of them.
[00:06:35] Rowan: I’ll strap in.
[00:06:36] Lara: Yeah. One of them is that, and I’ve seen this with myself, I’ve seen it with lots of people when things feel really hard.
But you know other people have it even harder. It can be really difficult to acknowledge your own hard, you’re like, who am I to think this thing is hard when over here people are dying , over here People are starving and yeah, I mean, it’s true that that’s a harder, hard. But it doesn’t take away from what’s still hard for you.
And if you don’t let yourself believe it’s hard and you try to ignore it, and you try to pretend it’s not going on, and you try to just push through without helping yourself in a position that feels really hard, you’re likely. To just feel worse and worse and worse and worse. Like we can’t measure our hards and be like, I don’t deserve to feel bad about this because other people have it harder.
I think that’s important to remember. It doesn’t diminish that we understand how terrible and harder it is for other folks, but it just means that we don’t. Tell ourselves we’re not allowed to feel things just because other people have even worse situations.
So that’s one thing I was thinking and now I don’t remember what the other ones were, so we should just keep going from there and it’ll all come back to me, I’m sure.
[00:07:56] Rowan: That is the way that I think a lot of us are feeling right now. we had a health inspector in yesterday and he was asking what days of the week we’re open and what hours we’re open.
I was getting my days of the week mixed up. I was saying Thursday when I meant to say Tuesday, and then Dani and I went for lunch and the server asked if we wanted water or coffee. And we both ordered water. And then he said, would you like cream or milk with that? And I looked at him and I said, with my water.
He said, you asked for coffee.
I’m like, I did? And Dani said, yeah, you asked for coffee. Yeah. So, this is how worn out my mind is now, again, I have a lot going on in my own life, but with that extra layer on top of it where I never just get to shut off anymore, that depletes me.
It just completely fries my brain and my body. And I know a lot of people like that, and they keep telling themselves that. They should be fine because at least they’re not in Minneapolis right now. At least they’re not in, just pick the place where there’s some kind of conflict going on where people are in a lot of trouble, where people are fighting for their lives or people are being, disappeared off the street, whatever it might be.
And they think, well, you know, what do I have to complain about? I’m in Canada, for example, and. I don’t want to minimize what’s going on in far, far, more dangerous places right now, because again, I know how bad that is. I’m keeping up with it as much as I can. But that doesn’t mean that we’re living with no worry.
I think that in Canada right now. Every week or so we’re hearing the leader of the free world, just, I don’t know if that fits anymore. talking about how he wants us to be a state, he wants to take us over and, you know, then Greenland’s right next door and that’s getting pretty serious and then like.
Just the other day in Toronto, there was a Canada first rally that was all about, you know, anti-immigration and, along with that, like that isn’t bad enough. You know, anti L-G-B-T-Q anti, you know, I was on the bus on my way back home to record this podcast and I almost had to step in because this man started yelling at a woman because she didn’t understand , what he was asking her.
And it was actually quite hard to understand what he was asking. And then when she didn’t understand, he called her an Asian slur.
[00:10:40] Lara: Ugh.
[00:10:40] Rowan: And then he sat there and cranked up a bunch of alt-right videos so the whole bus could hear his shitty takes on things reflected in YouTube videos
we did what we could to get her away from him without escalating the situation. But these types of things are happening everywhere and. When we don’t let ourselves feel those things, and I’m guilty of that to some extent right now, they just pile on. They don’t just magically go away because you’re not dealing with them right now because you just go, Nope, not gonna feel that, that doesn’t leave the body.
It stays in the body and it compounds. It just, kind of sits there until we release it. Right. So, I am, concerned. That a lot of us are taking on these emotions, not processing them either because we don’t want to or because we feel like we don’t have the right to feel them. And that’s going to really catch up to a lot of us soon, it’s going to get worse.
This is gonna be a long haul thing. This isn’t gonna go away overnight. I think for a while people are going, well, when it comes to the stuff in the US you know, the midterms, the midterms will take care of it. Well, we don’t know that. there are so many other factors and we know that, the administration is not following the rules when it comes to Congress, taking things to the house, taking things to the courts, listening to the courts, et cetera.
So we don’t know, and I think that we really need to be honest with ourselves and maybe stop living in denial that the world has drastically changed and there’s a grief there. There’s a fear there that we now have to factor into our lives on a daily basis.
[00:12:31] Lara: Yeah. There’s so much going on. So much is changing.
I don’t think we can ever go back and just accepting and grieving that what we thought would be is really not, and that we don’t know what will be is scary.
[00:12:48] Rowan: Yeah.
[00:12:49] Lara: So there’s two sides of it that I think we need to keep remembering. One is they want us to be scared, right? Everybody who is not on our side, right?
Like the folks that are changing things in a way that I really disagree with, they want us to be scared and they do not want us to have joy. They do not want that. And so in that way, refusing to let them scare us to the point of not having joy anymore is letting them win. So if you’re looking for like a spin on, right, like Joy is fighting back and it’s important to remember that fighting back doesn’t look one way
the other part is we can’t be all the things right? Like I’m not in Minnesota, I can’t go out. And do the things. There are people out there playing loud instruments and drums and trumpets all night long outside of hotels to try to keep ice agents awake. Like people are doing things in very different ways.
But I’ve been seeing stuff where, like, the silliness of it, I don’t know if you’ve seen protests where people are like wearing the big inflatable costumes and running around with signs. Like they’re like the ridiculousness of it. Takes away some of the charge, right? Like be scared, everything is bad.
You are terrible. Why are you, fighting with us when you should just be listening to us. And then they’re dancing around in a frog costume being like, right. There are a lot of different ways to fight back. And we can’t be all the things. We can’t do all the things. And it’s really difficult for some people, and by some people, I mean me too, to think that I can’t do all the things.
It’s simply not possible in all aspects of life. Like I know that in so many different aspects of life, I can’t do all of the things. And just because I’m not doing all the things that I see as good, doesn’t mean the things I’m doing aren’t good. And we fight back in the ways that we know how and we can, I think both you and I, a lot of the fight we’ve already started.
And been doing for years is to try to keep talking about inclusivity, is to try to keep teaching people that some of the things they’re afraid of aren’t so scary. And I think humanizing and telling stories and just slowly helping people see things in a different way has its value. Also, if I was in Minnesota, I would probably be.
Outside on the streets, I’m not. and I could be doing more, but again, we only have so much capacity. And to your point, I don’t think as much as I wish, I don’t think this is ending soon. And if we all burn out now, you know, we need people to take the next shift.
[00:15:48] Rowan: Mm, that’s deep. Yeah, you’re right.
[00:15:50] Lara: And then you are creating a space, right?
So it’s not open yet, but it’s going to be open soon and you’re creating a safe space that is, again, it’s fighting back and creating a space with joy and safety and inclusion is fighting back. Fighting back doesn’t always need to look like screaming and anger. It is changing minds. It’s helping people who are scared.
It’s making sure people know where we stand, and that’s certainly one, thing for me, right? Like I’ve been trying to, for years speak up even if as a business owner, people are like, no, no, we don’t talk about politics. I was like, I need people to know where I stand. I need people to know where I stand.
I’m going to talk about it. It doesn’t mean that I have to break down and not do anything anymore, but I’m gonna keep talking about it and that is fighting back. So, yeah, that’s a whole bunch of things, but I think making sure that we remember joy and fun and silliness and safety is all part of. How we keep moving forward, because without those things, I think they do win.
[00:17:01] Rowan: Yeah. There was something that made the rounds on TikTok recently, and I’m going to end up misquoting it. I’m gonna feel like a bad gay, but it’s in relation to the AIDS crisis back in the eighties and there was a saying. That went something along the lines of, we bury our dead during the day and we go dancing at night, and, it was more profound than that.
But essentially it meant that we recognize that people are dying in our community and we also recognize. That we can’t constantly live in grief and that we need to get our energy back to fight another day. And so we have to dance and we have to love and we have to sing and, I think those things are true.
[00:17:54] Lara: I went and found it. Hang on.
[00:17:55] Rowan: Oh yes, go ahead.
[00:17:57] Lara: During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning. We protested in the afternoon and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn’t look like we were going to win then, and we did.
Doesn’t feel like we’re gonna win now, but we could keep fighting, keep dancing. That was Dan Savage.
[00:18:17] Rowan: There we go. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s the truth of it I was pretty young when that was all happening, so , I knew people who had lived through it, but I hadn’t really experienced it myself.
but I, it’s something that I think is very true. You know, gay culture. There is a lot of partying in gay culture, but a lot of it, I think, is to balance out the awfulness of having to live through things like, you know, police raids and brutality and being seen as illegal and immoral, and then having to deal with illnesses that nobody wants to really look at, and they kind of think you deserve.
Right. So I see that and I see. How important that is now, which leads me to this topic that I bring up all the time. Probably people are sick of me talking about it, but I am actually going to push back on it a little bit today. It’s the topic of privilege, and this happened a lot in the early Twitter days where somebody would, during a tough time.
Or even not during a historically tough time, but maybe it was a tough time for somebody responding to this person. So the person would maybe go like, oh, you know, I took the day off and I went for a hike and I came home and I read a book or I made a piece of art, or whatever it was, and the response would be.
Must be really nice to have all that privilege to be able to take that time off. Do you know what I did today? I had to do this. Do you know what other people had to do? There are people suffering in the world right now, and this is so tone deaf that you said that you took this time. Like we don’t, all get to do that.
Some of us, when we take time off work, if we’re even lucky enough to have a job. You know, Some of us, when we take time off work, we don’t get paid for that, and it would just be some version of this on repeat over and over and over. That’s the shame part of the whole, Dr. Brene Brown thing. But, how is that helpful, first of all, and we all deserve that.
Whether or not we all get it is different, but we all deserve to have that time off. So I will be the first person to bring up privilege. I’ll be the first person to bring up privilege. I’ll be the first person to point it out in myself that I have a lot of it. And there are other areas where I don’t have much of it, but overall, I’m a fairly privileged individual.
I also think that. I beat myself over the head with that for a long time and would not allow myself to take needed breaks when self-care with the concept of self-care, the terminology, self-care first came on the scene. It was. Well embraced. People are like, yeah, self care, like taking care of yourself.
This is wonderful. Like this is what we should all be doing, and then it became a thing that we said only privileged people could do. And is there some truth to that? Yeah, absolutely. The more privilege you have, probably the more opportunity you have to take care of yourself. I don’t think there’s an argument there.
If I’m working three jobs and I’m a single parent, I probably don’t have the means to go to the gym or you know, much time for leisurely reading or the opportunity to take a spa day. Very often. No, of course not. So I do think there’s some truth there, but I also think that. Self-care has kind of been, given a bad name because there are many ways to get self-care and you know, it was things like right before I did this podcast, I went to YouTube, which was free as long as you have internet of some kind.
And I did a five minute meditation at my desk in between an extremely busy day of running around for my business and recording this podcast because all I have is five minutes, and I was like, I gotta center myself. It cost me nothing but five minutes of my time and it helped centered me and I’m here.
That’s self-care. But I really wish we could talk about self-care in a different way sometimes because it, it’s a lot what you said, Lara, where. We need to take shifts. We need to switch off and give each other rest. Some of us are in a good position to do a lot right now.
Some of us are not. And then the ones who are doing a lot right now, will probably need to step back and other people need to be ready and willing to take their place. Right. this to me is a lot like. Self-care is just maintenance. It is mental, physical, emotional, sometimes spiritual maintenance.
It’s like you can’t keep driving a car if you don’t give it an oil change, if you don’t take it to the mechanic from time to time, if you don’t fill the tank up, right, you can’t keep driving the car. Well, it’s the same with a body. You can’t keep using this body, this mind, these words, everything without taking care of it.
So self-care sounds a little bougie, right? But really, self-care is just maintenance and it’s something that we all have to do to some extent. So, I think I need to start using the term maintenance because every time I think the term self care, I start thinking of. These elegant, relaxing days to myself, which is just not what I get, and it’s not what I necessarily need.
I need those five minute breaks. I need that good night’s sleep. I need that time off my screens to read a book. I need that nap sometimes after work. That to me is self-care, a walk with my dog, a coffee, that’s self-care. And all of that is very needed right now. We shouldn’t deny ourselves. That opportunity.
[00:24:15] Lara: I wanna come back to that Dan Savage quote, because the thing that stood out to me, the most of it was the dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.
[00:24:25] Rowan: Yeah.
[00:24:26] Lara: And that’s part of what this is. What we are fighting for is the ability to still have joy. What we’re fighting for is the ability to have freedom.
It is the ability to be ourselves. It is the ability to be there for one another and to protect one another. Right? So we need to keep remembering. What it is we’re fighting for. And part of that is the good. That’s why we need the good. And I agree. You know, I think self-care started to feel like go to the spa.
And that’s not what it is. It’s really just finding the ways that you can take care of yourself. It’s. put the oxygen mask on yourself before you can help everybody else in the plane. Right. If you don’t take care of yourself enough to be able to fight the fight, then that’s not helpful either.
[00:25:23] Rowan: Yeah, self-care for me it’s, taking my HRT every day. It’s taking my blood pressure medication and my anti-anxiety meds. My SSRIs, it is finding some kind of workout and maybe that workout because I’m so busy is that I’m walking from one place to another and I get my heart rate up a bit. Right? It’s making sure that at the end of the day, I just unwind and watch even half an hour of TV just to relax, like all of those things.
And I am really big on joy. It’s one of the things that is the most important to me, being able to demonstrate queer joy, trans joy. I think doing that is what I provide to the world. It’s a little harder these days because things are a little harder these days. But I still try to do it because sharing those genuine moments of happiness, those are reminders for other people.
They’re glimmers of hope for other people. And it also helps me, I’m more inclined to notice them and to remember how important they were when I share them again. one of the things that I have encountered in my 10 plus years of activism is I have met a handful of activists who don’t ever seem happy.
They just seem angry all the time. Now, please don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to be angry about. There is, but. I feel a little bad for them. I do because it’s like, what are you fighting for if you’re just miserable all the time? What is it that you are getting out of this? If you’re just angry and you just hate the world and you hate people, and I’m not exaggerating this, like I really have had conversations like this with some other activists of various stripes and.
I know that this work can be really hard and now suddenly a lot of us are in it who’ve never been in it before. You know, you have, , white moms who are out protesting every single weekend, or, standing outside their schools in the US a whole group of them with neighbors, little old ladies, , so that.
If ICE pulls up and starts looking for families, they have a much harder time finding them. Right? So, like, I know that activism can be really scary and it can be really frustrating. You can feel like you’re not getting anywhere and it can make you a little bitter. So I really think
having these moments of joy in prioritizing, seeking them out is important to maintain that balance
[00:28:03] Lara: because the dance is what we’re fighting for,
[00:28:05] Rowan: because the dance is what we’re fighting for.
[00:28:06] Lara: it’s struck me so much, I’m gonna just keep saying it.
[00:28:09] Rowan: Yeah.
[00:28:09] Lara: But that is what we’re fighting for. And don’t let them. Take it all away from you. I am going. I really, so first I wanna say, I was really gonna try to not talk about this today, but I’m gonna do it anyway.
[00:28:26] Rowan: I think I know what you’re about to say.
[00:28:27] Lara: Absolutely. Because it’s 90% of my, personality so far this year.
So let’s talk a moment about Heated Rivalry.
One of the reasons that I think that it has taken off so much is because we need joy, and this show is queer joy. It has a happy ending, which you know, isn’t always the case in representations of queerness.
Has a happy ending. But also one of the things I think I’ve heard, I don’t know entirely, but I feel like possibly one of the reasons that it’s taken off so much like globally is because we all do need an escape.
So for your like, oh, I still take myself, you know, 30 minutes once in a while to watch tv. I’ve watched many more. Amounts of time than 30 minutes, but it is, it’s a safe space to go when other things feel hard and sometimes we need that right there is that, that level of escapism, that level of. I need to believe in something good.
I need to believe in something happy, and I need to remind myself of that. And when I look over here, that’s what I see and that’s what I want in the world. So maybe it’s not the dance I’m fighting for. It is queer television. I don’t know. Um. So I’m just trying to justify the amount of time that I’m watching this show, but it doesn’t really matter.
I think ultimately these examples of joy, these examples of how you can lift yourself back up again, how you can think maybe nothing has been like massively solved, but I’m filling my tank back up with hope. That’s a lot of what people are doing and some people are going to be angry and they’re going to tell you off for it, but I think that they’re wrong.
I think they’re wrong and. I don’t say that often, right? Like I’m not like adamant a lot, but we get to choose how we can take care of ourselves, and I think it’s good to believe that you can have an impact. I think it’s good to believe that you’re able to make change. I think it’s good to think about how you can help, and even if that’s, you know.
Volunteering at the furniture bank like it doesn’t need to be. I’m going to drive to where these folks are and be like the first ones in front of the conflict. We need helpers everywhere, and you can figure out your way in every moment. And then just keep acknowledging your capacity, because like I said, we can’t be everything all the time.
[00:31:13] Rowan: And it also means accepting help.
[00:31:17] Lara: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:17] Rowan: Because sometimes the ones that worry the most about others are also the ones who are. Deeply struggling in some other way. My mom has always said to me, the poorest people tend to be the kindest. And I think that there’s some truth to that in the sense that people who have struggled know what struggle feels like.
And so a lot of the people that we see out protesting generally tend to be people who. Maybe don’t have a lot of money and maybe. Have family members who have been disappeared by ICE or maybe are queer people or parents of queer people I can kind of go on.
People who are disabled, people who are just already dealing with a lot and are like, i’ve got nothing more to lose. Like I’m out here and that’s why it’s so important that we’re seeing many more types of people with more privilege out there as well. But check in on your neighbors. Check in on your fellow activists, check in on your friends, but also let people check in on you.
Because if you are somebody who is taking a lot of this in, who is really feeling this, it’s impacting you. And so let people take care of you too. Maybe you have someone who’s like, you know what? I’d really just like to come over and cook for you. Let them come over and cook for you. Or, hey. could I come over and clean your house?
Like, do you need a night off from the kids? Maybe you need to go see your doctor. Maybe you need an extra meeting with your therapist, I mean, there’s, so many ways to accept some help and get filled back up a little bit. It also can be really hard, especially because a lot of this is happening in the winter right now, in our hemisphere anyway,
it’s dark, it’s gray, it’s cold, and it can be hard to wanna go out and see people. But just going out can do a lot of good. I make myself go for walks almost every day, even if it’s with the dog for 10 minutes because it’s really good for my mental health to get a break from the house, but.
We’re seeing our friends a lot less than we used to. And that’s been a thing since the pandemic. People are not going out as much. Maybe make a point of going out. It doesn’t have to cost a lot either. It can cost very little. It can even be free to just go take a walk with somebody or, meet people at the library for a free group or something like that.
But get out. Get out and remember. What it is you’re fighting for, what this is really all about, this life of ours, right? This life that you’re creating, this community that you live in. The wholeness, the one of all of us. I think just getting that feeling back can give us something to fight for.
[00:34:02] Lara: I agree. It’s okay to feel joy and to do things that we enjoy and that we all get to do that. And stay on top of what’s going on. Right? Like, it’s a balanced thing. You need to understand how much you can handle without falling down to the point where you’re not gonna be able to step up when it’s your turn.
And so when we can figure out that balance, I mean, and of course it’s not gonna be easy. Of course there’s going to be times that that’s gonna feel wrong. Of course, there’s gonna be times where somebody’s gonna tell you you’re being frivolous, but I still think remembering what we’re fighting for and that we’re fighting are both true.
Right. I am here for the fight, but I’m here to remember what I’m fighting for, and that means whenever I can, letting some of that in to remind me what it feels like and why it’s so important and why everybody deserves it. it’s not a simple time, like no matter what, we’re not saying.
Just to be happy. It’s fine, right? Like,
[00:35:09] Rowan: yeah. That’s all it is. Everybody , just be happy.
[00:35:12] Lara: It’s fine.
[00:35:13] Rowan: It’s fine,
[00:35:14] Lara: but there is room to still find joy and happiness. There is room for many things at once and when we think. It has to all be one thing. It just blocks us from so much of what we need.
[00:35:30] Rowan: What brings you joy right now,
[00:35:32] Lara: Rowen, It’s Heated Rivalry.
[00:35:35] Rowan: Okay. Gimme something else though.
Aha. Hmm.
[00:35:40] Lara: Unfortunately. It is mostly Heated Rivalry, but Heated Rivalry in many formats. So I’ve enjoyed the TV shows, I’ve enjoyed the books. I’ve enjoyed the, internet memes and write-ups and media about it, and I’m just trying to allow myself to be okay with that because a lot of the things that generally do give me more joy are feeling harder right now.
So art has always been a big one for me. The only new piece of art I’ve been able to make in the last month was a piece of fan art for Heated Rivalry. Like I’m just letting it be true. Like there is certainly some embarrassment about my attachment to this fiction because like,, it’s not only like, I don’t think I felt like this since I was a teenager.
I’m not entirely sure I have ever felt like this and. It’s strange and it’s very inexplicable, but a lot of the things that usually help me are feeling more difficult, so I’m not. Going to deprive myself of the thing that feels good. I’m still doing other things. I just started up my line dancing lessons again.
[00:36:46] Rowan: Oh cool.
[00:36:47] Lara: Went out and did the line dancing and it was fun.
so remembering that, and will put it back to you in terms of what brings you joy, but. As you are opening a coffee shop, I wanna remind you that no matter what the stress of opening a coffee shop would mute a little bit of the joy until you get to the place where you’re actually opening.
Like the excitement can be muted by the stress of things, and that doesn’t mean it’s not still there. And it doesn’t mean it’s not gonna come but you’re doing something that’s part of the fight with this coffee shop. And acknowledging that we all have different rules and we all fight in different ways, and embracing that I think is important.
[00:37:29] Rowan: Yeah. I think for me, when I’m having a hard day, live walking distance from the shop, I mean, it’s a bit of a hike. It’s not super close, but I could definitely walk it and I will be walking it most days. I will go over there, even if it’s at nine o’clock at night. I’ll just go in, unlock it, turn on the lights.
I don’t have all the lights yet. Some of the lights aren’t installed yet, but there’s at least some light, and I’ll just run my hands over the countertops and check out the espresso machine and just remember what it’s all for. So it’s the same kind of thing as going dancing. If I just look at just the stress at the coffee shop and all of the heartache that it is, it’s so much money.
It’s so much time. I am making a million decisions a day it feels like. And there’s all this backtracking and there’s permit. Anyway, I can just go on and on. It’s, it’s a, it’s a lot. So being able to go in there by myself. Kind of look around and go, yeah, yeah. It’s happening
it might be hard. It might be taking longer than expected, but it is actually happening and it is a life changing thing that we’re doing right now that. Is about as close to joy as I can get right now. That, and I watch a lot of YouTube videos that make me laugh. things like people testing out weird gadgets or people ordering.
AI stuff off the internet to see what it actually looks like, which it’s always terrible by the way. Don’t order things that are AI on the internet. They never look right when you get them. so I think that’s the type of stuff that’s just keeping me going right now.
Can I read a book right now? No. Can I focus on anything? Not really. So that’s what I do. And the other thing I’m doing is like, actively. I think like a lot of people, it’s just second nature for me to just click on my social media apps without even realizing that I’m clicking on them till they’re open.
I don’t know if you do that, but I definitely am somebody who’s done that for a long time, and now I’m starting to learn to pause with my thumb over them or whatever it is, and go, hang on. It’s not gonna make me happy. If I open that right now and I see what’s in, my feed. Is that actually going to bring me joy?
The answer by the way is 99% no. So I don’t open it. And that in itself is a form of self-care.
[00:39:55] Lara: So by the time this episode drops, the coffee shops should be open.
[00:39:59] Rowan: God, we hope so.
[00:40:03] Lara: And I think, you know, you’ll have more space for more joy when you’re in a different place. And I think, again, reminding everybody that there are seasons, there are times when things are harder and we need to remember that they don’t need to stay that way.
It can be hard right now and you can still remember it won’t be hard all the time forever. Find your people and your community and the things that can bring you joy, because that’s what we all need to lean on the most right now.
[00:40:34] Rowan: I think we should leave it there. Thank you so much for listening, and if you have any thoughts or feelings about what we said today, please get in touch.
Let us know. Leave us a comment on substack. Send us an email, subscribe. Please subscribe. We love our subscribers, and, you’ll get these podcasts as soon as they drop, like as soon as they drop, you’re gonna get an email to let you know that it’s up. we are now at every two weeks and we’re doing that for the time being because, as we’ve mentioned about 5,000 times this episode.
I’m opening a coffee shop, so I don’t really have a lot of podcasting time at the moment. And Lara has a mail club that’s MAIL as she likes to point out. Not MALE. Makes me a little sad as I could be in the Male Club, you know. if you wanna learn more about that, we’re gonna put that in the show notes and you can go check it out because what brings you more joy?
Getting a real life letter, a little surprise in the mail.
[00:41:36] Lara: The moments don’t all need to be huge, but let’s embrace them. Thanks everybody. We’ll see you soon.
[00:41:41] Rowan: Thank you.
