Enriching Your Enclosure

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Enriching Your Enclosure"

Bewildered Podcast with Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Release Date: July 29, 2026

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Main Theme & Purpose

In this rich and laughter-filled episode, Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan take on a surprisingly radical topic: hobbies, and why reclaiming them is an act of revolutionary self-care in a culture that values productivity and conformity over personal enrichment. With characteristic humor and depth, they explore how cultural voices and industrialization have eroded our instinct for joyful, purposeless engagement—a phenomenon that leaves many feeling bewildered, numb, and uninspired. They argue that reclaiming hobbies is not only personally healing but a vital, even subversive, act that can help reinvent society as a more joyful, equitable, and interconnected place.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hobbies as Acts of Resistance

• Opening Banter ([00:21–01:31]):
  • Martha and Rowan jokingly frame “having a hobby” as a seditious, radical act against oppressive systems, underscoring how the culture around us undervalues nonproductive pastimes.
    • Quote – Rowan [00:22]: “If you want to fight all the oppressive systems, this is how to do it. We’re talking about it today. It’s going to blow your freaking mind.”
• They reflect on how engaging in joyful, non-commercial activities reconnects us to our true nature and disrupts the cultural imperative to remain “blankly available” for advertising and productivity.

2. Personal Anecdotes & Enrichment in Everyday Life

• The Recycling Story ([01:33–07:54]):

  • Rowan analyzes household garbage routines as symbolic of family dynamics, with lighthearted teasing about Martha’s enthusiastic (and sometimes inappropriate) recycling.
  • They poke fun at how “shoulds”—cultural pressures around even recycling—show how the drive to please external authorities (even the recycling man) can supplant personal judgment.
    • Quote – Rowan [05:36]: “Karen loves this man so much that she’s like his defense attorney in our house.”
    • Recurring Joke – Martha & Rowan [07:51]: “That’s gross to him.” (Referring to what the recycling man will or won’t accept.)

• Bird Calls and Tomato Plant Stories ([08:04–14:49]):

  • Martha describes her obsession with Merlin, a bird identification app, leading to sleep deprivation from early morning birdwatching—a new hobby.
  • Rowan details pollinating tomato plants with an electric toothbrush substitute (her finger and a red-bellied woodpecker imitation), resulting in hilariously awkward noises and “gross out” moments for Martha.
    • Memorable Moment ([09:03–12:38]) – Comedy and intimacy around translating natural acts into human settings, complete with raucous laughter and playful disgust.
  • The conversation underscores how everyday acts of curiosity and care for the natural world—no matter how “weird” they seem—enrich our daily enclosures.

3. Cultural Devaluation of Hobbies

• Historical & Cultural Roots ([17:05–24:14]):
  • Martha describes how Indigenous and pre-industrial societies did not distinguish between “work” and “hobbies”—life was made up of activities we now consider hobbies (storytelling, decorating, gardening, etc.).
    • Quote – Martha [19:25]: “They managed to survive for 6,000 years… and they didn’t have jobs the way we have them today. What they did to live are the things we say we will do one day…”
  • Industrialization and modern schooling have trained people to conform and suppress their natural curiosity in favor of blank, obedient productivity.

4. Why Hobbies Matter—Psychologically and Politically

• Loss of Enrichment Leads to Numbness ([29:00–32:24]):

  • Both hosts discuss how societal pressure to conform leads to emotional numbness and spiritual malaise, referencing music (Ani DiFranco, Pink Floyd) and psychological studies.
  • Rowan invokes “enrichment of your enclosure” as a metaphor, inspired by rat park experiments—without active engagement and joy, even humans become numb, miserable, and prey to unhealthy coping mechanisms (compulsive scrolling, escapism, addiction).

• Hobbies as Take-Back of Attention ([33:01–36:45]):

  • Hobbies are described as “seditious” because they reassert agency over one’s attention span, redirecting focus from passive consumption (the “scroll”) to the active nurturing of personal interests.
    • Quote – Rowan [34:49]: “A really great hobby… they’re raging passions.”
    • Quote – Rowan [35:27]: “You’re the active one shaping your own algorithm. And I mean that literally and metaphorically.”

5. Hobbies, Monetization & The Paradox of Selling What You Love

• Creativity Stunted by Payment ([42:18–47:45]):
  • Research cited: Creative performance drops when people are paid to do something that started as a hobby or passion—externalizing creativity for money kills the joy and flow.
    • Quote – Martha [43:05]: “It levels your creativity to be paid for something.”
  • This is why so many find their passion dries up when they try to make a living from it; the pressure and expectation activate anxiety and “Sunday scaries.”

6. Ways to Reclaim Hobbies and Enrich Your Enclosure

• Sneak Attacks Against Inner and Outer “Culture” ([55:00–58:15]):

  • Martha: The best way to reclaim your mind is sneakily—by prioritizing small, joyful acts “a tiny bit at a time.” Even five or ten minutes a day can reignite creativity and life.
  • Tracy Stanley’s Radiant Rest is referenced as a model for making time for personal restoration even in the direst situations—each small act is “enrichment.”

• Community and Interdependence ([64:01–66:44]):

  • Rowan and Martha celebrate how community, not rugged self-sufficiency, is the true context for enrichment. Doing what you love need not be monetized or fully self-contained; it thrives through interdependence and sharing (e.g., trading skills at retreats, group creativity).
    • Quote – Rowan [64:01]: “It’s never supposed to be self-sufficiency. It’s always supposed to be interdependence.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Hobbies as Rebellion:
  • Rowan [00:22]: “If you want to fight all the oppressive systems, this is how to do it. We’re talking about it today. It’s going to blow your freaking mind.”
• On Numbness:
  • Rowan [29:59]: “They just went numb to what they like and what they want and what fascinates them.”
  • Ani DiFranco lyric quoted by Rowan [29:59]: “Numb is an old hat, old as my oldest memories. See, that one’s my mother and that one’s my father, and the one in the hat, that’s me.”
• On the “Culture’s” Co-opting of Enrichment:
  • Martha [17:16]: “I think there’s an inherent natural need to have these things, and it’s been scraped out of us by culture.”
  • Rowan [24:14]: “The culture wants all our attention all the time…what we’re meant to be is blank availability.”
• On Refusing Monetization of Joy:
  • Martha [43:05]: “It levels your creativity to be paid for something.”
  • Rowan [43:58]: “‘You could be selling that’…it seems like it should be the solution. That’s how you circumvent the system…But when people try, they just go dry.”
• On Community:
  • Rowan [64:01]: “No matter how autistic and introverted we want to be, we are…back in community.”
• Recurring Joke:
  • “That’s gross to him.” — Whenever the topic strays to something the “recycling man” would reject, or when discussing personal or cultural boundaries ([05:36], [14:46], [48:41]).

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• What Are You Trying to Figure Out? Household Garbage as Metaphor: [01:33–07:54]
• Hobbies as Radical, Seditious Act: [17:05–21:44]
• Industrialization, Schooling & The Loss of Enrichment: [21:44–29:00]
• The “Numbness” Phenomenon & Psychological Consequences: [29:00–32:24]
• Enrichment as Active Reclamation (Scroll vs. Hobby): [33:01–36:45]
• Art Toad & Creativity vs. Monetization: [36:45–47:45]
• Practical Advice: Sneak in Joy and Creativity: [55:00–58:15]
• Community, Interdependence, and Group Enrichment: [64:01–66:44]

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Takeaways

• Hobbies—when pursued for their own sake—are vital expressions of true self, wildness, and personal agency.
• Modern culture’s obsession with productivity, monetization, and conformity suppresses joy and leads to emotional numbness.
• Actively seeking and protecting small pockets of joy—even in difficult circumstances—is a form of inner and outer rebellion.
• Reawakening curiosity, play, and passion is not just personally healing; it cultivates the soil for a kinder, richer, more resilient society.
• Interdependence, not self-sufficiency, is the true path to enrichment in our “enclosure.”

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Martha Beck [21:44]:
“Let’s put that right in our own lives by doing the things we love…We all need more hobbies.”

Rowan Mangan [35:27]:
“You take on the agency of a person with a hobby and all of a sudden you’re the active one…You’re shaping your own algorithm.”

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The episode fuses wild laughter, introspective depth, and a subtle call to arms: Fill your life with more of what’s “uselessly” beautiful—not just to heal yourself, but to enrich the whole world.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[B]

And I'm Rohan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people trying to figure it out.

[A]

Yeah. And today we're talking about something that is really heavy. It is. It is seditious, it is radical. It is heavy duty stuff. It is

[B]

hobbies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Have a hobby. Listen, if you want to fight all the oppressive systems, this is how to do it. We're talking about it today. It's going to blow your freaking mind.

[A]

We're not joking. Actually, this is this.

[B]

Do I look like I'm joking?

[A]

You always look like you're joking. Let's do a podcast on Bewildered.

[B]

We have a lot of conversations about finding our own true nature, and we enjoy that a lot. But talking ultimately can't compare with the lived experience of sharing space and time with kindred spirits and actually doing it. Every year, Mari and I bring Bewildered to the Costa Rican jungle for our pure wild self retreats. We call them a culture cleanse where you can wash off all the shoulds, learn directly from Martha how to hear that wise voice of your true nature. And we laugh and play and eat amazing food and make lifelong friends. If this sounds like something your soul longs for, listen to it. You can learn [e-mail] hope to see you in the jungle.

[A]

So what are you trying to figure out for real?

[B]

I have got a theory, and I'm trying to figure out for real if it's for real. What if the way that a household deals with its garbage is some sort of, not metaphor, but like, key to the dynamics of the household and the players?

[A]

I'm with you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I'm with you. I don't know where you're going, but I like it.

[B]

Well, so it's a. It's an interesting way for me to. I don't know what you'll say about me in this, but, you know, I have two partners. One of them's you, one of them's Karen. And I feel like our approach to garbage is very, like, telling. So for you, for instance, we have a recycling bin. Obviously your decision making process about should something go in the recycling or not, I, I believe goes something like this, this item in my hand. Can I imagine a way in which, in any world, in any universe, this kind of thing could be recycled? And because you are very bright and have a wonderful imagination, almost always you will go, yes, again, I can think of it. And in it goes. And it is the most, like with love, honey, it is the most random

[A]

shit that goes in my defense, forget imagination. I have eyeballs. There's the little three arrow symbol, and I can find that on almost anything.

[B]

I'm sorry, The. The cellophane that surrounds an item like a box.

[A]

Well, that's just an accident.

[B]

No, I think maybe you've gotten better. But there is some I have had to get better.

[A]

I think you're going to get to this in a minute. I have been forced to get better. Better they call it.

[B]

So we believe in supporting small local businesses. And one of them I shouldn't mention. I should mention the name, but I shouldn't mention the name. Yeah, probably not because I want to give him like advertising. But I also don't want to say bad about him

[A]

because you're a.

[B]

He's great. He's great. No, I'm really not. It's just that he's like a real go getter and he's like one guy with his truck. And he will come right up to your house instead of having to take it down the road. We have a lane. And he will come to your house and he will do it. But.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

You know, and it's reassuring that it's really getting recycled because you can recycle so few things, according to him.

[A]

So few. And in. It has to be in mint condition.

[B]

Yeah. And. And so. And it makes me think like, how much stuff in our lives have we thought we were diligently recycling that was just getting chucked in landfill and this. So it's like a two edged sword, right? Because on the one hand I'm like, yeah, this is really these two things, right?

[A]

Two things a week, but actually qualify getting.

[B]

But the thing with Kare, and this is what I'm really talking about, is that she lives to serve and this go getter with his truck has really stolen her heart, I think to the point that when there was a lot of snow, it was hard for him with his truck to get up to our house. So she's like, don't worry about it, I'll bring it down to the road. Even though our neighbors, the whole point of them recommending him was that you don't have to take it to the road. And then I said to Karen, we don't have to take it to the road, there's no snow. And she's like, oh no, it's just easier for him.

[A]

Yes, she'll start taking it to his place of business very soon now.

[B]

But then the best, the best thing was not long ago when we were having one of our periodical discussion. Not periodical Periodic discussions about, we could

[A]

put it in a magazine. Why not?

[B]

It's that interesting about what gets recycled and what doesn't. And it's so funny because Karen loves this man so much that she. She's like his defense attorney in our house.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

And Marty's like, well, but this has the number or whatever you said, like, I can put it in there. It's supposed to work. And Karen goes, I swear to God, he doesn't like that Marty. That's gross to him. That's gross to him. And it's like. Like he's. He's. He's chosen to go into waste. What did Tony Soprano supposedly do? Waste management. He's chosen to go into waste management. How? Like, trigger happy is his gag reflex, you know, like that when she was like, that's gross to him.

[A]

Yeah. I don't even remember what it was. It was something like if you put in a. That's what it was. If you put in, like, a soda can and it hasn't been thoroughly drained and washed. What?

[B]

That's gross to him.

[A]

That's gross to him. Don't crush the can. That's gross to him. Now you make a solid point, though. I had not thought about the fact that he may be in, you know, air quotes. Waste management. In other words, maybe he's just in the mob and he has to do this as his role. Maybe he's not a made man yet and he has to gather recyclables.

[B]

I feel like the mob would be less picky, you know, I don't know. It's interesting anyway. It's interesting to sort of see the lens of what goes in the recycling, how Karen, like, tries to help our garbage men be a garbage man.

[A]

And it's interesting in light of our whole theme on this podcast, you know, away from culture to nature because our leftist leanings make us want to recycle. That's sort of, you know, regarding nature. Yes, But Karen is so slavishly devoted to the recycling man that she's taken it all the way around and become highly acculturated. Like, we have to do everything in the world to please the recycle man

[B]

and not to gross him out.

[A]

And not to gross him out to keep his.

[B]

Sorry, Carrie coo. It's funny. It is funny.

[A]

It is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Would that you were as picky about the things that are done to you. Yeah, well, she'll let anybody. She'll give them a pass on almost anything. But don't. Don't cross the recycle Man.

[B]

No, that's gross to him.

[A]

That's gross to him.

[B]

I'm gonna have to make a tagline or something out of that. It just delights me so deeply.

[A]

Well, sticker.

[B]

Yeah. So there you go. That's what I'm trying to figure out. What about you? What on earth are you trying to figure out?

[A]

I'm exhausted and I'll tell you for why. Okay, Merlin, here we go. It's your fault.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Yes, you have introduced me and y' all, your bird watchers out there already know this, but I just recently found out about the app called Merlin.

[B]

We know we're late to the party, by the way.

[A]

Yes. You turn it on, you put it in a place where there are birds singing and it will identify the birds that are singing for you. And oh, the first time I turned it on and it's spring in upstate New York now and all the migratory and like, it suddenly like one bird after another starts popping up on the screen. It's just delightful. So now the birds wake up so damn early, right? Like 4:30. And I'm like, is that a chickadee or a towie? What is it? Is it a dark eyed jungle? I've got to get up and see. I've got to get up and see.

[B]

This is so you to turn this into a. I started wearing earplugs because

[A]

I'm lying there exhausted. I'm like, but I have to know if it's a red shouldered hawk, you know? So that's been happening. And then, then I was. It was terrifying to me, especially in my sleep deprived state, to hear the call of a red bellied woodpecker inside our house. Oh God, the house is melting to begin with. We've talked about that before. No offense to the house and those who built it, just showing its years little. But I didn't want a woodpecker inside it. Woodpeckers once grounded the space shuttle. Those buggers can really.

[B]

They can pack, they can peck wood. They can, anyone can. It's them.

[A]

That's true. So I'm like, oh my God, there's a bird in the sunroom where Ro is growing all her tomato plants. Her vast tomato plants. And I mean they're not just big. Really vast is the only word that really describes them.

[B]

If I was not cutting them back on a near daily basis, we would not have.

[A]

We would have to move out to give them space. So I'm like, oh my God, there's a red bellied woodpecker in the sunroom. I Have to deal with this. And it's night. Like, what am I going to do? And I go in there, and there you are standing, going. Or some noise. You're making a noise that is, I swear to God, the call of the red bellied woodpecker. And what are you doing? You are. Let me use the. Let me find the right word. Stimulating the blossoms of the tomato plant, which you used to do with an electric toothbrush.

[B]

I'm supposed to do it with an electric toothbrush, but it was upstairs. And so I was trying to, like, emulate the electric toothbrush with my finger.

[A]

The stimulate. Just the way you're holding your finger now is really disgusting to me. That's gross.

[B]

If you're gonna try and stimulate a plant with your finger, you have to

[A]

go

[B]

so that it thinks it's Merlin.

[A]

That's. Yes,

[B]

But this is like, you don't think you're being watched when you. Or that you're gonna have to, like, face a deposition.

[A]

You have to make the noises. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you have the visual, just the sight of Ro. Like, look, like fingering the tomatoes and going. Or whatever you're doing. Yes, you can. It's an easy.

[B]

Pretend to be an electric toothbrush.

[A]

It's a conflation of our hobbies. You have this, like, grow enormous plants all over the house as well as outside the house, and also, you know, manually stimulate them. Manually stimulate what God meant to be done with an electric toothbrush. And I. Then you give me Merlin, which turns me on to the call of the red bellied woodpecker.

[B]

Turns you on, does it?

[A]

Then you're the red bellied woodpecker, my woman. I've never called you my woman.

[B]

That was. I mean, I enjoyed it.

[A]

You can keep going, my good sir, but you're not. So I had to get my pronouns right.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Yeah. And it was. It was disturbing because now. Now I could. You know, it's going to cut off my sleep at both ends, hearing these. These bird calls and then getting up and finding you doing things that leave me with disturbing images.

[B]

Listen, you. You being, like, raised fundamentalist. Like, it's just the birds and the bees. That could be either. Actually got a lot.

[A]

Speaking of which, have you ordered a box of bees by mail lately? Different episode, folks listen to it.

[B]

I just think that you take natural stuff.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And turn it into weird stuff. And I just think you need to, like, let go of the culture in your own mind that sexualizes what is natural and beautiful. Like, did you or did you not call my Rhubarb. A hemorrhoid.

[A]

I did, but not the part that you eat. Something's growing on those things that should not be found in nature.

[B]

Babe, it's a flower.

[A]

It's someone's face, but it's not good. It's not a flower. Have you touched it?

[B]

Have you touched it?

[A]

Yes, I've touched it.

[B]

Why look?

[A]

Because it looks like a hemorrhoid, and I thought the plant needed help. It looks like a part that shouldn't be displayed in the opening.

[B]

Every listener is like, this is so gross to them.

[A]

Have you looked at the rhubarb? No, I'm fundamentally. That shit is fundamentally wrong.

[B]

No, disagree. Hard disagree. It's just God's glory just showing itself, coming out of our earth. It's beautiful.

[A]

Well, I dare you to decorate the table with it or anything. It looks like something that it looked like. It looks like something in heat. Like a baboon in heat.

[B]

You know, we might get approached by Preparation H to start doing ads for them.

[A]

Influencer ads.

[B]

Because I know that las culturistas do Preparation H ads.

[A]

Oh. So if I'm, like, crouching by our rhubarb hemorrhoid and going, and I'll be like, ro, remind you of anything, and you'll go, not anymore.

[B]

I use Preparation H. I think you should just rub some on the rhubarb and see if it. See if it helps.

[A]

Helps shrink swelling of hemorrhoidal tissues caused by inflammation. That's a quote from.

[B]

That's gross to me.

[A]

Oh, me. Okay, it's gross to me, too. Let's stop. Let's do a freaking podcast.

[B]

Hi there. I'm Ro, and I'll be your podcaster for today. Do you know how to tip your podcaster? It's actually pretty easy. You can rate our pod with lots of stars, all your stars. You can review it with your best superlatives. You can even subscribe or follow Bewildered, so you'll never miss an episode. Then, of course, if you're ready to go all in. Our paid online community is called Wilder A Sanctuary for the Bewildered. And I can honestly say it's one of the few true sanctuaries online. You can go to wildercommunity.com to check it out. Rate, review, subscribe, join, and you all

[A]

have a great day now. So we talk a lot on the podcast about coming to our senses, which sounds like you could do it by yourself, but weirdly, it isn't.

[B]

No, you actually can't do it alone. And I think especially right now when everything out there feels very polarized and overwhelming and noisy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People really often don't have a place where they can just go and be completely themselves.

[A]

Yeah. So. And that's why we started Wilder, which is our online community. And it's for people who really want kindness and connection and belonging without the strident, divisive argument that seems to be everywhere these days.

[B]

Yeah. In Wilder, we explore a new theme every month to help us stay in touch with our true nature. And there are all these live events on Zoom that are so fun from, like, body doubling, co working parties, meditations,

[A]

teachers meditations and classes.

[B]

Marty does Earth School, which is brilliant, and frequent meditations that we do together. And it is just a group of people who are the best. So if you've ever listened to this podcast and thought, I wish I could go deeper with this, or I wish I could talk to more people about these kinds of ideas, Wilder is where that happens.

[A]

It really is. So if you want to come join [e-mail] we would love to see you there.

[B]

So, actually, hobbies. Yes.

[A]

I was just talking about, like, some

[B]

of the things we were just talking about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Are kind of the topic for today.

[A]

Yes. I wanted this topic because I am of the opinion that we all need more hobbies and that it is a fundamental.

[B]

Like.

[A]

Like it's a gap in our lives, because I currently have, like, four hobbies on the go. And by hobby, I mean something with which I am truly obsessed. Something that makes me so deeply happy. And we've talked sometimes about people we know who don't seem to have anything like that. And I want. I think there's an inherent natural need to have these things, and it's been scraped out of us by culture.

[B]

Okay. So a few points to bring up.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[B]

Started to think about the fact that I used to, like, spurn the very notion of hobby. And then the thought that came to my head was, it's partly because the word sounds so stupid.

[A]

It does.

[B]

And then I thought, that's the fault of the hobby lobby. And then I thought, oh, my God, I've just landed on something. Hobby lobby. Isn't that a store?

[A]

It could go political or it could

[B]

go mercantile, and in this society, it's gonna go mercantile, and then it'll go

[A]

mercantile and need a lobby. So it'll.

[B]

Irony is that if the lobby did its job, the word hobby would be changed. It would no longer rhyme with lobby.

[A]

It would be like a jobby lobby. The opposite of a hobby is a jobby okay? And we have way too many jobbies and not enough hobbies.

[B]

Okay. In some cultures, jobby can mean other things. But that's fine. I can it.

[A]

Oh, that's right. No, it's fine. That's where you end up starts. It does not stop. Oh, well, I might not know that. I have learned things here today. Now, let's talk

[B]

jobbies. Let's talk hobbies.

[A]

Okay? Here's the deal.

[B]

She tries to claw dignity back. Listen, I'm Martha Beck. I don't know if you know this,

[A]

but I know Oprah.

[B]

And I'm not talking about jobbies. I'm talking about hobbies.

[A]

All right? So I have a little soapbox, and I may have climbed on it before here, but I'm gonna climb up on it again. Cause I think it's worth doing wherever I go in. Like, I've moved around the US Quite a bit.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And I like to find out what the orig. The first nation people were that lived there and learn about their culture and learn how they. I just. I'm fascinated by that. And it grieves me so horrified, so horribly what happened with colonization. But anyway, I remember going when we moved to California and reading all about the people that were in our area and how they had lived there for 6,000 years, that they were sure these people had been there. And their daily lives consisted of things like fishing, hunting, gardening, making music, telling stories, decorating their clothing and their living spaces. And I was like, wait a second, they're doing hobbies. And they managed to survive for 6,000 years having a really beautiful culture, and they didn't have jobs the way we have them today. What they did to live are the things that we say we will do one day when we have a long holiday or maybe on weekends. And the reason is we evolved to like those things because that's how we were meant to. To survive. And then industrialization came in, and before industrialization, you just sent me a meme or a thing on Instagram. Ian McGilchrist, my absolute obsession. My boy toy. He's a very distinguished Oxford professor. Please pardon that, sir. Ian. Obviously, sir. Or not. Never mind, I'll take it up. That's gross to him.

[B]

Gross to him.

[A]

No, but the thing is. And then these occupations came in, and McGilchrist was saying, before industrialization, people were not destroyed by their jobs, by what they did to survive. They had more interaction with the natural world. Their hours weren't horrifying like factory hours. And since industrialization, things have gotten really ugly. So I'M like, let's put that right in our own lives by doing the things we love, even if we can't do them as a job or as a centerpiece to our life. We can do it as a centerpiece to our attention or something. I just think we all need more hobbies.

[B]

It's funny that hobbies are so like, there's something unserious about like. And that's sort of what I was getting at with the hobby lobby. Like, it's, it's like, it's not for serious people. It's. It's for people who have too much time on their hands. Too much time on their hands. Right. There's so much cultural judgment loaded into it. And I do, I do think the word does disservice. And where does it even come from? I don't know. Should ask Siri. Marty asks Siri, literally this, this tiny brained robot who can like at best convert Fahrenheit to Celsius. And she's like, hey, Siri, like, what is the true nature of reality?

[A]

It's worth asking.

[B]

She's like, I can't access that while you're driving. So we don't know where the word

[A]

hobby comes from, but it doesn't do service to these, these things. What should we call them? Because you're right, pastimes. Pastimes. But again, now that's still.

[B]

No, no, no, no, wait, hang on. Yeah, but pastimes is okay, better because it's only culturally that we judge something as a pastime. I was thinking about like, truly things like, you know, knitting and whatever. There is a component that is during times when we can't be like outside running around, we can do these things.

[A]

Although, like, if you're bird watching one of mine, you are outside running around, right? So you have a hobby. It's not defined by that. What it's defined by is, does the culture see it as central to the continuous production of material wealth? If, if it sees it that way, it will say, that's a profession and that is respectable. If you have something you love to do that takes a tremendous amount of brain power and sophistication and skill and know how and can provide things for people, but it's not part of that core, like industrialization, post industrial, whatever, then it gets pushed to the margins and called a hobby or a pastime or a little game or something you do when you're too old to function anymore or too young to function yet it's a plaything and it's not worthy.

[B]

Yeah, And I'm just trying to think, I'm trying to like, figure out where the issue is with the culture. And I think, I think the culture wants all our attention all the time. And the idea of having things that you do and you're interested in, and I don't think it's just like someone we know knits and they've said to us, you know, it was, it used to be a hobby. Now it's just a fidget because they're so good at it and they've done so much of it that it's just muscle memory, you know, brain power involved sort of thing. But I think when something's a hobby, especially when it's relatively new, it's something, at least to me, that it's not. It's not just something your hands can do, it's something that you're embracing, that you learn about. Yes. And that there is, is a certain novel complexity to it that you're trying to get new knowledge on board. And I feel like there's ways that we are discouraged from learning new things once we're done with formal education. And so that alone makes the hobby dangerous to the culture. But I think about it shouldn't be. There shouldn't be any challenge there. But there is. And I think the reason is that what we're meant, the state we're meant to be holding. Yes. Is blank availability.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And what are we available for? We're available for advertising, basically.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In one way or another.

[A]

Tell me what to do. Tell me what to buy.

[B]

That's right. And if, if we're like, you know, hyper fixated on something and down a rabbit hole. Even if we're using the culture's and the cultures, wormholes and everything and tubes, we're still off on a mission of our own devising. And not in that blank space where advertising is pinging at us. Because. Because it's a mindless scroll. It's not a mindless scroll anymore.

[A]

That's really true. And the whole thing, another soapbox of mine. How the. The way I was schooled. I think schools are working hard to break this now, but when I was growing up, it was a system specifically designed to create factory workers. Put all these same size kids in same size desks in a row, have everybody do the same task even though it doesn't need doing, because they're all learning to wash away everything else from their attention. Because the way children learn best, the way we all learn best, is outside, moving around, using all our senses and creating something that's meaningful to us, then

[B]

what they're learning is to sit still.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And answer questions that the teacher already knows the answer to.

[A]

I remember taking my oldest child around to schools when we moved from Utah to Arizona, which. That's a whole different story. But I remember going around to different schools and the teachers saying, almost universally. Well, it's not the children who are interested in the subject matter who really do well. So don't think you'll do well just because you like a certain subject.

[B]

It's the.

[A]

The children who are able to conform best and who don't do anything. They do everything they're asked to do. They dot every I, they cross every T, and they don't do anything else. And I remember just thinking, well, number one, it was not the right place for my kids. Another story. But I remember thinking, this makes no mortal sense. Like in terms of actually educating a human. They're making a machine and. Exactly right. They don't think of a kid, doesn't show up as a tabula rasa, as John Locke said they did. They show up as a full, vibrant, excited, individual part of nature, and they are turned into tabula's rasa.

[B]

There's an attempt to turn them into that.

[A]

Yeah. And it's. Once you're all the way through high school, but certainly all the way through college, you've learned to go blank, I would say.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then do what you're told.

[B]

It's interesting, isn't it? Like we have the blankness thrust upon us in order that we.

[A]

I mean, think about. And I wonder if people listening to this can remember going slowly numb. There's a kind of tragedy for me about. Because I've coached people so much, and it's like they just went numb to what they like and what they want and what fascinates them. And sometimes they can track it backward to the place where they stopped being joyful and passionate and interested and started being good and right and appropriate.

[B]

This is going to blow your mind.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There's an Arnie DeFranco lyric about this.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God. I didn't think she'd written one, one or two songs.

[B]

No, seriously, there's just to this.

[A]

Blow me away, baby.

[B]

Do you want to hear it?

[A]

Ani, we love you so much.

[B]

Do you want to hear it?

[A]

Yes, of course I do. Honestly.

[B]

It's cute. It's one of the cute ones. They stick in my mind. Okay.

[A]

Numb say all stick in your mind.

[B]

They all stick in my mind. She says numb is an old hat. It's old as my oldest memories. See, that one's my mother and that one's my father. And the one in the hat, that's me.

[A]

Oh, wow. And Pink Floyd's song I have Become Comfortably Numb. That is a horrifying, beautiful.

[B]

Well, that song's about hard drugs.

[A]

I know, but it's a brilliant. But that's the thing. If you are in a system that is trying to turn you into a machine and you are not allowed to act out and you're not allowed to fight your way free. There are the famous rat park experiments that actually aren't famous, but they were some of the most famous, deserving to be famous experiments that were never publicized is when they took rats out of cages. They were heroin addicted rats taken out of cages and put into an enclosure where they could be happy rats. They had grass and they had leaves. I've talked about it before. And they were given a choice of heroin in the water or water without heroin. They all went cold turkey and dealt with the withdrawal. They were fine not being comfortably numb when they were in the place they were meant to be. And then they put them back in the cages and they numbed out both I think with heroin and probably with whatever else a rat has at its disposal to numb itself. And like I think the culture requires us to go numb or else we will be miscreants. We will be, we will run off the page and into the margin and we'll be uncontrollable.

[B]

And I think it's, it's so interesting. Like I think one of the online. There's this meme that I've encountered a few times that's about sort of about that very thing of, you know, am I depressed or is there just not enough enrichment in my enclosure? And I. And it's so funny because it's bone chilling, you know, it's.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

People feel like rats in enclosures and, and that, that we're, we can get, we can reach a point if we're too much in like, like most people stuck in working to so much that you just can scrape by. There's not time and energy for enrichment in your enclosure. And so things, the scroll, you know, or the tv like, it's like you're

[A]

so exhausted and they help you tolerate a state of numbed exhaustion. They help you not just start running screaming for the hills like it feels like a checkmate. In the culture, you're barely, you're underemployed, you're barely making enough money to support. You're not Even making enough money to support your family, you're scraping by your paycheck to paycheck and all your life energy is going into this. And how do you tolerate it? With substances? With brain numbing, scrolling with, I don't know, rage. People do what they can, I think.

[B]

So here's where I reckon we can really dig into hobbies are seditious, right? Or are the revolution? Because if I'm. This is going to come across a privilege statement and we can like unpack that. If I'm waiting for someone else to put enrichment in my enclosure, I've got to hope that I'm one of the rats in the rat park experiment. Right?

[A]

That's all you can hope. Yeah, that's it.

[B]

You can hope. But if you can get really interested in gardening and you can train your algorithm to just be chickens dancing, and this is yours. Oh my God.

[A]

This is your latest. You've always got an obsession going.

[B]

I know, always. And that's, that's why the man hasn't caught me yet.

[A]

That's right, that's right.

[B]

And right now it's chickens, chickens and my garden.

[A]

Still, do you have to do anything with chickens and an electric toothbrush? Because I don't want to be there.

[B]

Oh, oh, that's it. Listen, we'll talk in the car on the way home. That's a whole thing. My God, where do I begin?

[A]

So I feel I have stumbled onto something horrific.

[B]

No, no, it's fine. That's fine. Someone posted a cute picture of their chicken in a Facebook group and the first comment said, I don't want to worry you, but that's exactly what my chicken's butt looks like two hours before it died. Chicken, like chicken groups are no joke.

[A]

Yeah, but that's the thing. A really great hobby. It's not. We give it these infantilized names, but in fact they're raging passions.

[B]

Right? So, so get this. So this is my thing. The scroll or the like, if you take the scroll, you take the, the drugs, like the sedating drugs, you take the, you know, anything that is, is available to put in to you, right. To top you up and your attention up. That's the easiest thing and so understandable. But if you can like find something in there that is more interesting than the other stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then you take on the agency of a person with a hobby and all of a sudden you're the active one. You're not the passive one receiving advertising, you're the active one shaping your own algorithm. And I mean that literally. And Metaphorically.

[A]

That's so cool.

[B]

Right? We should do an episode about, like, shaping your algorithm in a three dimensional world.

[A]

Absolutely. And I feel like that's what's happening to me because, you know, we went through this long, hard winter, and a lot of what I have spent my time on since we moved to this house is house work. It's either keeping the place moderately clean or actually working on the house in some degree. And I finally unpacked my whole art studio, and I've never had an art studio before, and set it up for painting. And then I was like, well, I guess I should paint. And so I'd been unpacking boxes literally for five minutes a day just to get so many boxes got stuck in there because it was the sort of random room. Right. So I went in and I started painting. I didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for it at the beginning, but I start, like, putting something on the canvas and then I'm like, Then it starts to, like, catch, like a fire that you're starting to light. And then I'm like, oh. Then time disappears. Then Art Toad comes up. I am. If you haven't heard of my Art Toad, that is my, like, that's her alter ego. My alter ego.

[B]

It's three years old.

[A]

It's Mr. Toad from the Wind in the Willows who's, like, obsessed with driving a motor car. Like, he's like, I am the Toad. Watch me drive. So Toad grabs the wheel and I start to paint. And it's like the joy. It makes me late for all my appointments and it makes me tired because I, like, I would go in there and not come out for a long time. Well, then I thought, well, I also have my piano. I haven't touched the piano for a long time. I never really learned to play it. I thought, I'll just do it five minutes a day. Then I'm like, oh, I had that weird phenomenon after you've learned a language and then gone, like, not spoken it. And then you go to the country and weirdly, you speak it better than you used to. I've had that with a number of languages. And that's. At first I was like, I. I can't even find the notes. And then it was like, oh. But suddenly I can, and, oh, that chord structure makes sense. When did I start thinking about chord structure? So I am obsessed. And I'm never. I'm too anxious to ever play in front of anyone. My dog used to come into the house and I would fall apart because I would be so worried about him judging my piano playing.

[B]

We've spoken before about the time when I was in the house and you thought I wasn't in the house and you were playing Bridge Over Troubled Water and you threw yourself to the floor.

[A]

I did.

[B]

In horror.

[A]

One down on my face in shame. I'm still not over it. But the thing about my piano now is it's an electric one and you can plug it in and put earphones on and nobody hears you. And like. And then. Then Merlin comes and there are birds. Birds. And I was obsessed with birds when I was a kid and I'm obsessed with it. Like I'm traipsing around the woods at five in the morning, going Baltimore oriole. How did I get so lucky? And that's just three things. And I am on fire. Like, I am tired. But my life feels so rich and full and nobody's gonna pay me for these things unless somebody wants to buy a damn painting.

[B]

Hint, hint.

[A]

I mean, that's the only thing I could even conceivably do with it. That's part of the culture's value system.

[B]

And we should talk about that. But I just want to like, point to again just this thing of you can hope enrichment will reach your enclosure or you can enrich your enclosure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And in it. And it's such a re. Re Balancing of the scales when you. You take it on as like, oh, I'm interested in this. And yeah. You know, it's. Then you use the. The master's tools against the master by shaping your algorithm and watching a lot of chicken videos on inst. I use that hypothetically. And so, yeah, all of a sudden you're the master of your destiny.

[A]

And I have to say, it's not that. I mean, definitely I'm living a life of incredible privilege. But it's not like I just had an empty day. I didn't have time. Like my day was fully leveraged every day. Try to find an appointment on my calendar in the next month. Good luck. Right. I am fully leveraged time wise. Or so I think thought. But it's. I started sneaking it in, you know, sneaking in little. And I thought if I just touch it every day now, if I start writing a book, it's all over. Ro. I'm never going to come to the surface.

[B]

Here's the thing. I think it. I think it's the culture that tells us that these things have to exist in time because we know perfectly well that you can do six things at once. That's the only reason Women function in. Women stay alive in the world. So what I'm getting at is it's not like I'm thinking about chickens right now. Now, some would say I'm doing a podcast. Not very well, but, you know, some would say I'm doing a podcast, but, no, I'm literally thinking about a video about chickens that I saw this morning.

[A]

And you know what I'm doing? Swear to God, I didn't make this up or anything. I can hear this song I was learning this morning, and I was learning to improvise. Like, not just play the melody line, but improvise. And I'm sitting here and my fingers are twitching as I, like, hear it in my head. They're looking for the chords. And it's not like I'm a pianist. I am a beginner. Right.

[B]

But, Marty, pronounce it the right way.

[A]

Beginner.

[B]

Pianist. Pianist.

[A]

Pianist. In Utah, they're pianists because pianist sounds like something you don't want to talk about ever. It's that joke where the man comes into the bar and says, six.

[B]

Yeah. Twelve inch. Yeah, yeah. So you were talking about, like, money before and making a living and how do hobbies fit into that? And it is, like, a puzzling one.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. It's a puzzle, because everyone knows who has a hobby. The first thing that people say to you when they discover your hobby is, do you have an Etsy shop?

[A]

Shop, that's right. How much could you sell it?

[B]

Yeah, always. Yeah. You. No, no, it's usually. You could be selling that. That's the compliment.

[A]

Selling that. Yeah.

[B]

And then. And like, in fairness, as someone who says that to people all the time, I do, too. It seems like the solution. It seems like it should be the solution. That's how you circumvent the system is by doing what you love and paying for your food and shelter with, supporting

[A]

your family with the thing you love. That's everybody's dream.

[B]

What's the problem with that, Marimo?

[A]

The problem with that is the moment when they do studies in creativity. What they have found with monotonous regularity is that if you give people creative challenges, like how do you use these objects to accomplish a certain task? And you have to be quite creative to make it work. And people will sit there and figure it out and get quite interested, like little kids figuring stuff out, they're quite happy. And then you say, if you get it right, I'll give you five dollars. And they fall apart. It's not just that they can't come up with a good Solution, they can't even. They just freeze. Like it levels your creativity to be paid for something. So over and over and over in my own life, in my kids lives, in my clients lives, it's like I tried doing the thing I love for money, and I just went dry. I couldn't do it anymore. I don't know what happened.

[B]

And how do some people make money doing it?

[A]

I think it's because, I mean, I was able to do that with writing, which is, to some extent, I get lost in it the same way I get lost in art.

[B]

But it's not something that you. You wouldn't be sitting there writing self help exactly.

[A]

Oh, no, no, no, no.

[B]

Respectfully,

[A]

that shit. And I didn't start out that way. I started by writing what I thought would be a novel turned into a memoir. And that was really like me. I remember trying to write my PhD dissertation at the same time. I did write it at the same time, and the PhD was like, kill me now. And then I'd go to the novel and be like, oh, I've forgotten what time it is. And I'm up in the middle of the night, full of energy. It just made me happier. Anyway, here's the thing. I never prized writing the way I prize a hobby. It was like a functional thing I could do, that I could always do. And I tell my clients, it's like whatever you could do falling off a log, easy. That was what that thing was for me. And so I was able to kind of crowbar in some creativity once I had it in a place where, okay, they're gonna pay me for this. How do I make it not unbelievably boring? Like, how do I fit my passion to what I'm now doing? And I think some people are able to do that with their jobs. They love people, they're a people person. And so they're working with people and they don't like the job, but they like the people they're working with.

[B]

Right, but that's not what people are testing. We're talking specifically about creative.

[A]

Yeah, I'm talking about doing what you love and getting paid for it.

[B]

Right. Okay.

[A]

So some people can do it. Just. I mean, you and I are both qu. Introverted. But if, like, if you watch the Office, which is that this brilliant.

[B]

Everyone knows what the Office.

[A]

Yeah. About a paper company. Nobody there is passionate about paper. They're just. It's about the relationships with the other people in the office. And a lot of people who work in corporate America or whatever, corporate world, wherever have that. So there are these ways that you can put your. The joy of your heart and the joy, the part of your brain that's creative, into the culture, but it's lame and it pulls your time away and it always involves jobs that are horrible. And if you try to go off, like I'm going to leave the whole scene and go off and be an artist, then you run dry again. It feels like a checkmate. So I think there's got to be a way to find. So I wrote a book about anxiety, and what I found was that we all know, I mean, everybody in the literature knows that anxiety will kill your creativity. My question was, does creativity also kill anxiety? What if you start by being creative and see what happens then? Because we know the two seem to be toggling one way. And so I experimented with people who'd come on these large 100 to 1,000 people on Zoom, and I'd say, what's your anxiety level? Then I'd have them do creativity exercises. Then, what's your anxiety level now? And it would always go way, way down, often to absolute zero. So then I'm like, okay, if you can find a way to put your creativity and your hobby in the center of your heart, in the center of your attention, as you said, even if your time is taken up by the culture, can you begin to get that space and create that excitement that you're talking about, that little bit of wiggle room that means you're controlling your internal. The enrichment of your internal environment. Enclosure.

[B]

Enclosure, yeah, yeah. How far back to those studies go that you're talking about, about creativity?

[A]

I think the 60s was when, like

[B]

a long time ago about the ones where, like, doing creative stuff for money. Okay, so I've got a theory about it which is so part psychology, you know, is, is just a way of like a lens that you can, can use for understanding like, that we contain multitudes. Yeah.

[A]

We all have different parts. And yeah, part of me wants to do this, but part of me doesn't. Okay, two parts.

[B]

So what if what stops you from doing your creative joy for a living isn't you don't dry up at the desk, you dry up on the way to the desk. So your art toad does not give a shit whether or not he gets paid. No, he, he doesn't.

[A]

That.

[B]

That doesn't look like anything to him. That's gross to him. Like their very question. That's gross to him. He's just like making colors and pretty. So I'm just so interested in this, like this process, this moment where we're walking to our desk where what we love and we're telling ourselves it's time to go to work. And I think about, do you know the Sunday scaries?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, like just that Sunday afternoon comes and you're. The pit in your stomach starts to grow. And maybe it's that we start thinking about anything that makes money as being an enclosure. Right. With no enrichment in it.

[A]

Yeah. And often it is. I mean, that's justifiable, right?

[B]

Yeah, no, for sure it is. But maybe what I'm saying is maybe the enclosure is how we're walking to the desk, not what we're doing at the desk.

[A]

And you said something that is very telling. You said we're telling ourselves it's time. Because the part, it's all the prefrontal cortex, but on the left side predominantly you get language and time tracking. On the right side you get creativity. Generally. I know I'm, I know I'm simplifying.

[B]

She thinks everyone who listens to this

[A]

is neuroscience about it. On an interview last week. And I knew, all right, anyway, when you tell yourself it's time, you have opened the lock of the enclosure, stepped in and thrown away the key, you tell yourself it's time. If you stop talking and you stop timing. Well, here's what happens if you let the Jill Bolte Taylor would say the part of your brain that is the adventure, the creative adventure, if you let it go play, then it doesn't talk and it doesn't tell time it. So what I have to do is I use the left side of the brain. I create a space that I'm going to dedicate to my hobby. And at first, like when I said I'm going to start painting again, it literally was five minutes. I'll go in there, I'll make a mark, I'll leave. And then somehow I've learned this skill and I used to do it with writing too, but I'd have to stay up all night to do it. Here is an eight hour period. There will be no interruptions. I will not sleep that night. But I will fully dive into the process of writing. I will not be doing it, as you know, checking my watch and seeing will my editor like it. I am going to tell a story now because that's the only way this is going to be interesting to read, right? So it's this. You have to have these careful little mental gymnastics to create an enclosure. You can create an enclosure that is barren. You and serving the man culture and that's what they teach you to do. Or you can insist on even the littlest space where you're going to create the enclosure where you. It's. It's like all outdoors. It's wild. It's. I mean, when I think this morning when I woke up and the birds were singing and I wanted to ID them and I thought, I'm gonna. I'm gonna play that song on the piano that I learned yesterday and I'm gonna paint it. The word was wild. And I just said the world was wild. And this is bewildered because we're talking about being wildered. And I had this overwhelming sense of going wild this morning. But then you can create an enclosure for the wild thing the way they do at really good zoos or restoring

[B]

a habitat or like a kind of

[A]

spa where you go for a week.

[B]

Like something that you can voluntarily get out of.

[A]

Well, yeah, but like, I don't want

[B]

to use a metaphor of a zoo. It freaks me out, makes me feel anxious.

[A]

Oh, I'm just thinking. I'm thinking of a restored habitat where you just don't let anyone come in with the wrong stuff you've created. You go into the game preserve, you're not allowed to hunt. Right. And it's not a cage, but it's a habitat that you hold sacred and you have rules around it. I remember reading in one of my how to Write books when I was in my 20s about a woman, I think it was an artist, actually. And she put a sawhorse in the middle of the lane that went to her house where she was. And when she was working, she would put a sign on it that said, get away from here. I mean you. Because that's how ferociously she was guarding it. I kind of think that's how it should be.

[B]

I agree with you. And I also think we have to guard it from the parts of ourselves that are going to. Because we've been acculturated. To think what I do to earn money makes me feel like. And that's. Yeah, that's the equation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I feel. I go here, I feel like shit. Therefore, I get money. If I. Then I will then project that fluorescent light awful environment onto my greatest love.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Of course. That fucks it up.

[A]

Oh, yeah. You're shoving your wildness into the cultural enclosure and killing it because you can't live in captivity.

[B]

Right. And what if we just. What if, like, what if the. We've been talking, you know, in our lives about how to get the culture or the pyramid shape to use the language that you use out of how we are actually living and finding all the places where we have our blind spots around where the culture is unknowingly shaping our expectations and our thoughts. And I think this is one of them is I approach the thing that I make money doing in, like, I get to say. I get to be the agent of how I approach it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And so if it. The fact that it brings money, I can reframe that to be a joyful thing. It's only the culture, man. It's the man. It's the man who makes working for money a disgusting proposition because he's milking

[A]

your labor to make excess, which is not how nature works. And I think I totally agree with you. And I believe that the best approach to it is kind of a sneak attack not only on the culture itself, but on the culture in your mind. So I've been reading this book. I love this book. It's called Radiant Rest by Tracy Stanley. And she is a brilliant. She's a yoga teacher. And it's about these deep forms of yogic rest that are. I mean, it's a fantastic book. And one of the things I love most about it is she is not writing to people of privilege. She is writing to everybody. So she'll say things like, if you're incarcerated, try it this way. You know? And I'm like, oh, my God, so many people are incarcerated in this country. Of course I should be writing to them. Why wasn't I thinking that? Actually, I often think about that. Somebody told me once when they tossed the cells in this woman's prison, they found copies of my Oprah columns in there. And I've always. Anyway, sorry, distraction. But see, that is a way I sneak. If I put the person who's there and I'm writing to them from heart to heart, that's a way I sneak past the barrier and I'm in a communion with a person. And that's wild to me.

[B]

Anyway, I think that's different. I don't think you can equate because we're talking about hobbies, and I just don't believe you're writing these like you're writing for sure, like, as a hobby. But I don't think you're writing to those people as a hobby in that category. It's very good that you do that, but it's different.

[A]

Yeah. I'm talking about a way of dodging the enclosure in my brain by making it something I'm doing for another person, you know? But then it's a Cultural caretaking thing, especially for women. That's a thing.

[B]

Joy. Joy has to be the track, right? Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It's interesting how I keep sliding into different cultural tracks, because here's the thing. Tracy Stanley says in this Radiant Rest book that I really am taking to heart. She's writing to people who have no time, no money, terrible jobs, lots of people to care for. No time, no energy. And so she, very expertly, she doesn't assume you're going to a yoga class for two hours ever. She says, if you're on a bus and you have five minutes, send your mind and body to this place. If you are. If you're outside having a cigarette break, do this. Try this if you want. And for her, it's this incredible kind of mission she has to get people arrested, which I think is. That's a whole different podcast, but is wildly necessary. But that's how I've always sneaked my hobbies into my life a tiny bit at a time. Like this morning, I couldn't paint. I didn't have time. I photographed the painting I'm working on, which is large, printed it out on our printer and doctored it with colored pencils so that when I go back to the studio, I can cut through. I won't have to dick around as much. I've done it with a colored pencil on a printed page. So I was able to do that for 10 minutes, but it kept me alive. It kept the joy alive.

[B]

Yeah. And so we're taking it out of. I have to. And this is one of my challenges is I have to be in the exact environment and the exact. Everything must be exactly a certain way to. And taking it to. Where can you bring the enrichment with you wherever you are?

[A]

So if I were to talk to you about poetry, which is. It's almost a vocation for you, so it's not really the word hobby doesn't do it justice. And yet the culture would probably consider it one. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How do you like. Yes. You have a desk to do it. You have probably a bespoke quill or something to use. A poet's blouse with puffy sleeves. I don't know.

[B]

Yes. Yes.

[A]

Is there a way. But by and large, you haven't had a lot of time to write poetry or.

[B]

I haven't taken.

[A]

Yeah. Is there a way you could enrich the enclosure just as a test case for this?

[B]

Yeah. And it's so interesting. This is such a helpful conversation for me because I'm. I'm, like, looking for all these hacks I'm looking for how we can game the system. And one of them is like the reframing of the thing, even if you're making money from it, into exciting mode, not Sunday scaries mode. And then the other is actually follows on from that about money and what if ever we have to trick ourselves, we have this psychology that doesn't, that is, you know, in some cases, like anachronistic for our environment and all of that sort of thing. So we're always trying to hack our own psyches in a way, right? And I remember when I was trying to write a book and I was talking to a friend of ours who's a writer, and I was saying to her, like, at this moment, at this moment now, what is it that is pushing you to your desk to get this book finished like every day? And she looked at me and she goes, well, I'm really looking forward to getting paid. And it was such a great moment for me because it was such a. Cut the bullshit, like cut all the highfaluting stuff. And so maybe part of the hack, you know, is to set it up to. Because as we, I'm sure, have discussed on Bewildered before, money is points. And if you can get your little pac man part of you engaged in money, it becomes like,

[A]

well, I love this. And I think one way of tricking it that way so that you can move toward the money thing and not get stopped by the switch into like panic. I have to do a job now is you can start by just making something, anything. When I'm anxious or when I feel like I have to make money, I have to make things happen or whatever. I am completely without ideas. And I've tried to get blood out of a stone, squeeze the stone to get ideas. It doesn't happen. But if I start to make anything and there's such resistance, my brain is like, no, no, I have to fix my life before I make something. But if I start making anything that requires engagement, especially with my hands, what happens is your brain, literally, this is not a metaphor. It literally calls on parts of your brain that can't get too involved in anxiety. It goes to the right hemisphere, it starts to solve problems that can only be done by creating neuron connections in that hemisphere. It, it pulls electrical energy away from the part of the brain that's anxious and time bound and obsessed with reward and counting and grasping. And it goes into the part that's like, huh, what? That's interesting. I wonder what bird that is. You know, what if I Get an app that shows me which bird. I could go up and build a bird blind. Like, the moment you start making anything, your whole brain changes.

[B]

So part of the hack can maybe be exploiting the fact that we are different people in different moments. Right. The part psychology thing is that while we're creating, we're not making money. That's absurd. Art toad can't make money. Art toad doesn't know what money is.

[A]

Art toad could give a flying fuck about money.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's not anything. And so let's say no problem. That part is for someone else on a different day. And I don't. I mean, I know this is not true for everyone, but for me, if I'm in the right mindset, I can creatively engage with packaging up something, you know, making it look pretty to sell it.

[A]

Yep. And that ends up being what you have to do anyway because like, to write a book, I have to create a little island where I can go in and be a storyteller, which is. It would be harder for me if it were my passion. It's not. So I'm not that upset about it. It's a job I do, but I go into a space that's more creative and that's fine. And then I know that when I send it to my agent, I have to become a completely different person. I have to become an editor and a marketer and all kinds of things that are not very particularly natural to me. But. And so I call on a different

[B]

part of myself and, and I think this is important. You call on other people.

[A]

Oh, so do I do.

[B]

Right? You know, like part of. There is like a part of you that has to sort of sell and, and show up and do interviews. And it has just like, it's so like wonderful for me that you happen to be really good at talking as well as writing, because a lot of writers aren't and that you can show up really well for that. But I just keep thinking like, those people who someone says, do you have an Etsy store? You could sell that. That would be amazing. Like, it doesn't have to be you. You can be the one who makes the thing. And someone in your community like me who enjoys like photographing the thing can do that part. And you know, this is this thing that we keep landing on. No matter how autistic and introverted we want to be, we are. We just keep landing back in community. And it's, it's never supposed to be self sufficiency. It's always supposed to Be interdependence. And this. It works, is you can have a part that makes the art, and you can have a part that does other stuff, but you can also externalize that to actual other people. And we can help you each other. What a concept. And that's part of what the monetization of everything makes us forget is that it's not. It doesn't have to be a transaction. It can just be a favor.

[A]

That is so good. I'm remembering, as you say this, I remember this seminar that we did in Costa Rica called Pure Wild Self. This gorgeous place in the jungle. And we were there, and there were like, 25 people. And Liz Gilbert happened to be in the neighborhood, literally. So she came one day, and the whole thing turned into people sort of rejoicing in each other's genius. And I remember seeing person after person connecting with someone whose joy was helping would help them make their joy into something sustaining for themselves. People were trading passions, they were trading specialties. They had, like, training. And it was this little village of 25 people, and it was just big, bursting with. With interdependence.

[B]

Well, it makes sense, right? Because we. If, like, we're part of nature, we're not separate from nature, and nature works on ecosystem symbiosis. Of course, someone can step in and. And do that for you, and you can step in and do that for someone else, and everyone's paying it forward in a thousand directions.

[A]

It's the. It's the mycorrhizal network of the forest, the mushroom and fungus that goes underneath the soil and sends sugars to the right plants, which makes me laugh because we went to a class last. I forget what day, but it was a mycology class, a fungus class taught by someone who is so passionate about fungus that you just wanted to sit. And I was like. I was gripped by the whole thing. Like, I was cold. I was also freezing cold. But he was so. He got such joy out of it. It was definitely his hobby and his passion. Passion, yeah. And we were all there wanting to learn. And I was like, you go and learn which mushrooms are poisonous by trying them. Because he seemed really bent on doing that. And I was like, good, you come tell the rest of us about that. And it was another reminder that there's somebody who's passionate about things that you wouldn't necessarily be passionate about. And that is literally, and here figuratively, the ecosystem of how we survive and in fact, how we stay wild.

[B]

Thanks for being a bewildered listener. I want to take a moment to formally invite you to join our online community, Wilder, which is where Marty and I can go when we need to come to our senses. Wilder is the best place in the world to connect with other people who are trying to live by their true nature and not by the culture. Find [e-mail] Meanwhile, Bewildered Podcast is recorded at Upstate Podcast Studio. It's edited by Scott Forster and only exists because of the incredible team at Martha Beck, Inc. Please rate us, review us, join the Wilder community and don't forget, Stay wild.

[A]

Hello the lovely peoples. This is Marty Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called Five Paths to youo Purpose. Probably the most common question I get from people is how do I find my purpose? Why don't I feel that I'm on purpose? Well, it turns out there are certain things you have to do to find your purpose, and I broke them down into five and I made a little masterclass about it. So if you'd like to see it, just go to marthabeck.compurpose and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all.