Mom and I sat down last week and recorded this podcast. It’s a fun premise. We each got to ask the other three year-end questions. You can watch the video version on my YouTube channel, or you can listen above (or anywhere you get podcasts):
And, I did find a discount code for the Bombas socks. New customers can use this link (it’s an affiliate link) to get 25% off your purchase.
Please let me know what topics you’d like us to discuss on the podcast in 2023. We’d love to know!
And here is the podcast transcript. It’s automatically generated and I didn’t have time to clean it up as much as I would have liked, so apologies for any errors.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Julie
Hello and welcome to the Adventures in Arting podcast. My name is Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and I’m a working artist and mother to a curious toddler and my business Balzer Designs is all about helping you to live an artful life through thoughtful art education. On this podcast, together with my super special co-host and my mom, Eileen Hsu-Balzer, we ask questions of each other and our guests while discussing learning, the creative career path, finding balance, looking at art, setting goals, and why being creative matters. Our goal for this podcast is to stimulate your imagination. Hi, mom.
Eileen
Hi Julie.
Julie
How are you?
Eileen
I’m good and it feels good to be good because this has been such a winter of sickness for everybody.
Julie
Yes, that’s so true. And the theme today that I gave you is that we’re wrapping up 2022 and basically the format is: I said you come up with three questions that we both have to answer and I’ll come up with three questions that we both have to answer and we won’t know what the questions are before we start. And one of the reasons that I thought this was — I mean it’s fun to sort of like throw questions at each other, you know, a little bit. That’s always an interesting thing. I think that’s what so much conversation is about anyway, right? It’s not sort of like regurgitating information, but the second thing is one of the things that I teach all the time, like to my private coaching clients or my Boot Camp students. Or like we talked about it at this month’s group coaching — is about reflection and evaluation. It is the step that I think a lot of people miss when they make art or do anything really — write something? I mean, we joke about this because my husband right now is in school and I feel like I’m talking to a teenager when I’m like: OK, well if you finish the test early you have to go back and check did you answer the question? Do you know what I mean? And we talk about it all the time. And because there is a desire to just be done with the task as opposed to considering and so — for instance, I’m currently teaching this class, The Carve December Work Book and a huge part of that class is getting better at carving, not through me teaching you like, here’s a carving technique, here’s a printing technique, but through teaching you a framework. Or how to evaluate your work, what you liked, what you didn’t, where you had problems, and in fact, so we’re on day 23 of Carve December. And a lot of people in the class been talking about how they’re losing steam. It’s hard to carve a stamp every single day. It really is — to carve it, print it, post it, all that stuff and people are talking about how they’re losing steam. And one of the things I said is. I said: you know that’s fine, and I think what you need to do is not beat yourself up about the fact that you’re losing steam, but kind of make a note of it. Physically make a note in the workbook, because that’s important and then figure out how you’re going to stop that from happening next year. Not the fatigue. But the bad carving because of the fatigue. So for an example, one of the things you could do is say like, oh, I always tend to lose steam around like the 21st because like you know I’m preparing for Christmas or whatever. So maybe a solution is to plan out my carves really carefully in October, November when I have lots of energy so that by the time I get to those days in December, I don’t have to think. I just have to look at what I’ve written that I’m going to do. Pull it out of my pocket and do it. You know what I mean? Because I think the fatigue is not the physical act of carving. The fatigue is mental.
Eileen
You know what I’m thinking while you’re doing this? As you know, it’s not art for me, but you get fatigue from having to think up a new dinner every day. Yeah, and it’s exactly the same kind of procedure of finding a way to make yourself. Able to make dinner while you’re feeling totally blah about everything that comes to your mind so you can. Have certain things that are just your go tos you can figure out OK today somebody else is going to make dinner. You can just….
Julie
Call the Domino’s guy yes.
Eileen
Well one of the things I’ve done with you when you were a little kid was — remember when I would just say OK today we’re having lemon meringue pie or ice cream for dinner or lunch.
Julie
I do remember that.
Eileen
That’s it. I mean, sometimes you have to just change it up a little so that you or your mind gets to relax and the other thing is just like with your art thing. Sometimes you just look in the refrigerator and whatever you’ve got. You use it like this.
Julie
But I I also think like I’m a big system person and that’s why I think like meal planning or meal prepping or even talk to Steve about maybe we just have a rotation of like 6 easy meals and like when we get tired of 1, you bring in a new one, but just taking the thinking out of it because so often — I mean this is what they talk about the mental load with women — is that it isn’t even necessarily the physical act of doing the thing. It is the mental load. Of being the one who’s worrying. You know, so for instance, we’re taking a family trip in January and I’m already, you know, making packing lists and thinking about like how it’s going to go and trying to plan out if anything needs to be bought. And da da da da so it’s like it’s already stressful, even though it’s several weeks away. But I think that that’s just — that is what they mean when they say mental load, right? OK, so let’s get to the questions. So do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?
Eileen
I’ll go first.
Julie
OK, what’s your first question?
Eileen
Give me some pluses and minuses that are now in your life as a result of the COVID lockdown.
Julie
Ooh, pluses and minuses from the COVID lockdown. OK so….
Eileen
Which in your case coincides with having a baby, so it’s important to yeah, figure out where that goes.
Julie
Yes, it does, so it’s sort of hard for me to tell. I mean, the big minus to me is like. I just feel very socially disconnected. I feel like — I just I miss socializing and I feel like I haven’t made a lot of — I mean, I guess I’ve made a couple new friends from my son’s like friend’s parents, but I haven’t met anybody who’s like a “let’s go to coffee” or “let’s whatever” because we’ve just been so cautious and even a couple of times when people have reached out to me. I’ve been very scared. To like, say, OK, sure, I’ll go to a meal with you because I just you know. I mean, we’re just avoiding COVID so hard and it’s been so many years and now I feel like I’m sort of in a hermit place where I’m like just — I just have my little bubble with people and that’s kind of it, you know, and so that has been kind of. I would say the biggest negative for me. The biggest pro — and this is incredibly fortunate — thing is: I used to travel all the time, I mean there were times when I would be home five days in a month. You know which is crazy, especially when I was paying New York City rents. That was really crazy, and so I was not sure what it was going to be like after having a baby. But the pandemic basically stopped all my travelling and then the big question was, is my business going to die? Are we going to not have any money because I’m the breadwinner for our family and I just didn’t know. As a freelancer, you’re not guaranteed anything. So if I don’t work, we don’t make any money. If I get sick, we don’t make any money. If I get hurt, we don’t make any money, so I was like, gosh, if I don’t travel. Do we not make any money? And I thought that you know, I had tried to plan for a baby as a freelancer because of course you don’t get any maternity time off, right? Because there’s no boss to give you maternity time off. So I tried to like work really hard leading before the birth and I sort of hadn’t calculated how long the recovery would be. So to a certain extent, the pandemic was really lucky for me because the best thing to come out of it is that I figure that I can do 98% of my business virtually. I miss teaching in person, which is why I am teaching some classes here at my home studio in 2023 and I’m really excited about that. And if you’re interested in that, you can find all that on my website at juliebalzer.com, but it’s great to know like I can teach zoom classes. I can teach virtual classes, I can have meetings with people online. I can make videos I can, you know, share things through the membership program and I can do all those things. And still, you know, pay my mortgage and stuff without getting on an airplane. So that has been the biggest pro. So con, lonely and isolated. Pro = business works vir...
