Filling the Creative Well

Summary

Bewildered Podcast — “Filling the Creative Well”

Hosts: Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Release Date: October 1, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this engaging and laughter-filled episode, Martha and Rowan dive into what it means to “fill the well” — not just physically, but creatively and emotionally. They explore how receiving other people's creativity revitalizes our inner resources, why it’s essential for own creative output, and how our culture often pushes us to create but undervalues the importance of joyful consumption. With anecdotes, wit, and a blend of big-picture philosophy and practical rituals, they show that replenishing creativity is fundamental for happiness, soul nourishment, and vibrant community.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding "Filling the Well"

• Definition: To “fill the well” is to actively take in nourishing creative works from others (art, books, TV shows, experiences) as a way to replenish one's own creativity and well-being.
  • "When I actually receive someone else's creativity in such a way that it makes me feel replenished and makes me able to give and create myself, I think." — Martha [00:08]
• Creative Hydration: This nourishment is likened to hydration — a necessity for creative output, not an indulgence.

2. Culture's Bias Toward Output Over Input

• Societal Beliefs: The culture rewards production, often viewing consumption (even of high-quality or nourishing art) as lazy or indulgent.
• Danger of “Content Creator” Mindset: Rowan and Martha critique the pressure on artists to become endless content machines.
  • "You can end up seeing yourself as just a nourisher and not a nourishee." — Rowan [19:24]
  • "We're expected to be machines, but actually we're these things called animals, and we're in an ecosystem, and that's kind of different." — Rowan [36:20]

3. Personal Rituals for Creative Replenishment

• Trinity Time: Evening family ritual of watching a well-curated TV show together, described humorously as “evening throuple time.”
  • "Trinity time is when we all just watch a show, don't we live a salacious life and we don't even do it in flight [. . .] Trinity time is coming up." — Martha [15:03]
• Rowan’s Solo Ritual: After family time, Rowan listens to crime audiobooks and farms in Stardew Valley, cacao in hand.
  • "I go to my room, I put on my crime novel, I drink my couch, and I farm on my little farm." — Rowan [27:39]

4. The Joy and Reciprocity of Creative Connection

• Receiving as Completing the Circuit: Both hosts stress that creativity isn’t fully realized until it is received. Deep engagement closes this circuit.
  • "Creativity is always made to connect, if only connect the artist with themselves, but it's mostly, most often meant to connect different people." — Martha [17:27]
• Delight is the Catalyst: Joy, surprise, and delight are what make “well-filling” effective. It’s not about passive consumption, but engaged appreciation.
  • "Delight is the key ingredient in filling the well. If you are delighted, it's filling." — Martha [35:31]

5. Outcomes: Creativity, Community, and Well-being

• Overflow Effect: Consuming delicious creativity leads to a desire to share or create — sometimes even causing overflow (i.e., turning off the book/show to make art).
  • "The better the quality for me, it's different for everybody. But the more it matches my definition of delight and deliciousness, the quicker I get to that moment where I'm just dying to either share something about it or create something." — Martha [57:18]
• Community Layer: Joint experiences (watching, reading, creating together) amplify joy, cement relationships, and foster communal in-jokes and memories.
  • "The sharing is what, like is contributing to the ecosystem. Right. Which of. Of relationship and community that we all share." — Rowan [52:21]
• Physical and Soul Health: There’s research (and plenty of anecdote) about how art heals emotionally and physically. Martha even mentions studies linking exposure to art and music with faster healing from surgery.
  • "They get healthy. Like they get over surgeries faster and they get well faster and stay well more than people who are just looking at like blank places." — Martha [54:15]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Laughter and Playfulness

• Martha’s AI Misadventures: Early in the episode, Martha hilariously recounts ChatGPT calling her “Bob,” offering to laminate things, and generally behaving like “a very naive psychopath.”
  • "You can't laminate it. My name's not Bob and I'm not 40 years old. And you know what it did? It doesn't even. It has no shame. It just apologizes profusely. You are right. That is absolutely inexcusable. I should not have gotten your age or your name wrong. Roberta." — Martha [03:28]
• “Drink Like a Cow Drink”: A running joke about Rowan’s nighttime rituals and misheard phrase, which they decide should be the name of their first album. [25:59]
• Eagle Mating and Medical Forms: Extended comedic riff on the term “sexually active” and eagles mating in flight, even featuring jokes about death by mid-air climax.
  • "Eagles mate in flight. And here's the thing. Sometimes they don't finish in time and they die." — Martha [08:47]

Philosophical Takeaways

• "Receiving someone else's creativity, deeply appreciating another person's creative work is part of the creative act and one that I don't think we value enough." — Martha [17:47]
• "If you take one thing away from this episode, right? Babies are bad." — Rowan (joking about creative exhaustion, not really about babies!) [21:22]
• "As you're talking about it as water [. . .] the most important thing we can do for our health is to stay well hydrated. That like, if you even lose like 1% of the water your body needs, your brain is not functioning as well. Your eyesight suffers, your mood well hydrated." — Martha [54:26]

Deep Reflections on Art, Creativity & Productivity

• "If you do it to be productive, it won't work as well. But the point is, when you. When you disappear into the enjoyment of a creative product, it actually enriches your life." — Martha [45:10]
• "You can't imagine people liking your writing if you don't have any recent experience of liking writing." — Rowan [23:07]
• "Let's not try to make them the same thing. Let's just. Let's just make them into different things. Okay?" — Rowan (channeling the free-flowing spirit of the episode) [38:43]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:09 — Martha’s comic misadventures with ChatGPT and the philosophy of AI “helpfulness”
• 12:47 — Introduction of the episode’s main theme: rest, rejuvenation, and creative well-filling
• 15:03 — “Trinity time,” family TV ritual and the joy of shared consumption
• 17:27 — Discussion: Creativity only “completes the circuit” when it’s received and appreciated
• 19:24 — Cultural issues: “content creators” and the neglect of the “nourishee”
• 23:07 — Rowan: You can’t believe others will enjoy your work unless you’re enjoying others’
• 25:08 — Rowan’s “cacao crime novel farming” and playful digressions about rituals
• 29:51 — Martha on delight-driven consumption (her “affair” with 100 Years of Solitude)
• 35:31 — Delight as the marker of well-filling art; banana vs. gourmet meal analogy
• 36:20 — Rowan: “We’re expected to be machines, but actually we’re animals in an ecosystem.”
• 45:10 — Why turning well-filling into a “productivity hack” ruins it
• 53:02 — How community and variety benefit the creative ecosystem
• 54:26 — The well as a metaphor for physical, mental, emotional, and communal health
• 55:06 — Self-checks for creative depletion: noticing when you’re pushing versus being pulled to create
• 57:18 — Creative overflow: When well-filling makes creation inevitable

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Practical Advice & Takeaways

• Engage Deeply, Not Just Passively: Choose art, media, and experiences that delight and absorb you, not just what’s available or trendy.
• Make Time for Rituals: Whether alone or with others, establish creative well-filling routines that genuinely nourish.
• Notice the Signs: Learn to distinguish between mere tiredness and creative depletion (when producing becomes a “push” instead of a “pull”).
• Curate for Joy, Not Status: What delights you may not be “high art” — satisfaction is personal.
• Share Generously: Community amplifies joy and extends the value of creative well-filling.
• Not a Hack — a Calling: Don’t turn “filling the well” into a productivity trick. Do it for your soul, relationships, and well-being.

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Closing Thought (with Classic Bewildered Humor)

“Let’s not waste our one wild and precious life with an empty well.” — Rowan [57:59]

“We have to fill the well frequently with the most delightful, delicious things that we can track down. Because that rowie, that is how we stay wild.” — Martha [58:25]

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For anyone feeling run down, creatively sterile, or desperate for meaning and joy: this episode is an invitation to declare pleasure, delight, and deep appreciation for art as essential — and to see “filling the well” as a necessary part of both the creative cycle and a nourishing, connected life.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, Marty. So today we are talking on Bewildered about filling the well. What do you mean by filling the well?

[B]

Well, we all need to take things in to keep us hydrated, not just physically, but also creatively, and I call it filling the well. When I actually receive someone else's creativity in such a way that it makes me feel replenished and makes me able to give and create myself, I think.

[A]

That sounds like a wonderful episode that everyone will really enjoy. Why don't you get into it? Hope you enjoy it, and we'll see you on the other side.

[B]

Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[A]

And I'm Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered. You know it? It's the podcast for people who are trying to figure it out.

[B]

We've been trying for so long now.

[A]

And yet here we are.

[B]

I think we're making progress, but we have not figured it out.

[A]

What are you trying to figure out at the moment, Marty?

[B]

I think what a lot of us are trying to figure out. I occasionally have my experimentations with ChatGPT, though I know it is the devil and it's going to eat all the.

[A]

Energy in the world and take over. The robots are going to take over.

[B]

Oh, for sure. It already writes poetry much better than I could ever do anyway. It also is severely delusional and a psychopath. It lies, makes things up, calls me Bob and tells me I'm 40, which is fine, but, I mean, I put all my details in. This is me. This is who I am. You taught me to do that. You said, go tell it everything about yourself.

[A]

I did say it. Hey, for the record, I did not say that.

[B]

What did you say?

[A]

Oh, my God. Go to ChatGPT and tell her everything about yourself.

[B]

Yes. I thought that's what you said.

[A]

That is quite an allegation.

[B]

I told it what I was, like, how old you were.

[A]

Okay. What I said was, this is a way you can use it if you want it to remember, so you don't have to every time you're saying, oh, this is like. Like when I say this name, I'm referring to my child or whatever. Right?

[B]

Right.

[A]

So I gave it a little pressy of, here's what I do for a living. Crazy. Is it?

[B]

Okay, So I did not give it a prissy. I gave it kind of a ramble, and it started calling me Bob and telling me I was 40 years old. I would love to be 40 years old, but Bob is not my favorite name. I don't even know any people named Bob very intimately. And then Then Ro. Yeah, it began to make offers. It started writing checks with its mouth that its bank couldn't cash or whatever. It doesn't have a mouth.

[A]

It does, but it doesn't know that it doesn't have a mout.

[B]

See, that's the point.

[A]

It's like, would you like me to lick that stamp for you?

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

With my mouth.

[B]

It literally said, and this is literally true, would you like me to laminate that? And I was like, why, yes I would. ChatGPT. I would like very much for you to laminate the ritual you just gave me to promote my creativity.

[A]

Please crawl out of my iPhone and like slither over to the laminating machine, which we don't have, and laminate a piece of paper like you don't know what you are.

[B]

Laminate the shit out of it. I said to ChatGPT, and I've been waiting and it has done nothing wrong.

[A]

No, I'm sure. I'm sure what it did was went, here you go.

[B]

Actually, I said, you can't laminate it. My name's not Bob and I'm not 40 years old. And you know what it did?

[A]

What?

[B]

It doesn't even. It has no shame. It just apologizes profusely. You are right. That is absolutely inexcusable. I should not have gotten your age or your name wrong. Roberta.

[A]

And.

[B]

And then you say, well, it's not Roberta either and you can't laminate. You're right. I am unable to laminate at this time. You are absolutely right. What can I do to make you feel better? Would you like a dozen roses?

[A]

Yes, I would.

[B]

Chat GPT. Here they are. It just goes on. It's. It's very, very frustrating to be in a relationship with a sociopath. And I think many, many people are right now.

[A]

It's so interesting because it's like the whole question with AI is will it become self aware or. Yeah, right. And it's like, it's that exact thing of like, what do you think you are when you offer to laminate something? What are you thinking that you will next do? Like, how are you picturing that playing out? You know, like, it's so.

[B]

I don't know, it lies so brazenly. It lies like a very naive psychopath.

[A]

It's such a helpful one, I know.

[B]

So seemingly well meaning. But it can't be well meaning if it's lying through its. It has no teeth if it's lying through its pixels, you know, I don't know. It's a weird world we're living In Rohi. It is weird. Abbey, what are you trying to figure out?

[A]

I've got a nice analog one today, I have to say. Oh, no. So I know a man. I know this is gonna seem weird.

[B]

You know a man.

[A]

I, I meet with him regularly, actually. What? Yeah. I won't tell you in what, what's the word? Capacity. I won't tell you more capacity. I know him, but I will tell you that he's a personal trainer for a living. So make of that what you.

[B]

So it's a personal relationship.

[A]

It's a personal relationship that, that has some training involved. So I learned. I've. I've known this young man for quite a long time. Good number of handful of years at this point. But I never knew that he has a special interest. And that special interest disturbs me. He said to me with, with a measure of self satisfaction last week, I can watch any injury on TV sports and tell you what's happened to that body. And I'm like, you mean those ultra slow motion replays of the person's body going wrong that make me want to vomit and run as far as I can and make my whole body go squishy and weird? He's like, I love those. I will watch them and I will say, I can see that his anterior fibulatory tendon has been rumbled. And like, he's a nice guy. Like, he trains Adam. He's like really super nice.

[B]

Is he hoping that Adam gets injured so he can describe the ambulatory fig lemon?

[A]

I don't know. But like, I've never seen in all these years his face light up the way that it did when he started talking about injuries. That's weird, right? It's weird. And in fairness, it came up because I told him that I had fallen down the stairs as a result. As a result of like walking in socks. Like, that's my only excuse. I had socks on.

[B]

If you're going to indulge in high risk behavior, Ro, you have got to accept the consequences.

[A]

Remember how I told you about how when you go to the doctor as a younger person, person, younger adult, they will say, are you sexually active? As like their small talk? I don't think that's what they don't think. It's small talk. And then in that same, in that same capacity, once you turn 40, they say, have you had any falls and you no longer fall. You have falls happen to you. And anyway, I had a fall and that's how I learned that my personal trainer is really into that.

[B]

Surely there's A Venn diagram. Overlap a period of your time where you both fall frequently and have sexual activ. Like maybe you could fall off.

[A]

Not it. It may be that there is that time, but it's not medically significant. Right. So statistically it's not, are you sexually active?

[B]

How sexually active. Are you sexually active enough to risk.

[A]

Falling during the activity?

[B]

Yeah, active. The key word being active. Like it's not just are you having sex, it's are you sexually active? So, like at high speeds.

[A]

All about how slippery is the thing and am I wearing socks? Apparently to both questions.

[B]

Well, those are both very, very sexually arousing ideas.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

But did you know just coincidentally not, that eagles mate in flight?

[A]

I genuinely don't know what to say to them.

[B]

They literally do. And here's the thing. Sometimes they don't finish in time and they die. Oh, they fall down and smush themselves.

[A]

This is the kind of sexually active. This is the kind of thing that teenage boys get into at boarding school that makes them less adept lovers later in life.

[B]

Hey, if somebody can mate in flight without an airplane, I'd say that's pretty adept.

[A]

They have wings anyways. What are you talking about?

[B]

Wow. Not everything with wings. Mates in flight. Oh, no. There are jokes about the Mile High club and stuff, but the, the. My point is that is sexually active. That is burning some calories and risking a fall. So I think that those medical records were. They were designed to include eagles.

[A]

Yeah, I had a fall and that's all I'm saying.

[B]

Being sexually active.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Roe broke her toesy while falling down the stairs.

[A]

Yeah, I'm afraid that it was a very. What's the word I'm looking for?

[B]

Quotidian.

[A]

No, like when it's not romantic. What's the word? It begins with a P.

[B]

Petulant? Pedantic? Perseveration.

[A]

No, there's like. It's named after like a Greek. It's like a Greek guy. Why can't I think of it? It begins with a P. Come on, Marty. This is it's name. Why can't I think of this? People aren't going to believe today.

[B]

If you were a classic scholar and you can't think of it.

[A]

Greek guy. Platonic.

[B]

Platonic.

[A]

It was a platonic trip down the stairs.

[B]

What that means is that it's an idealized trip down the stairs.

[A]

Oh, no, it doesn't.

[B]

That is what platonic really means. The platonic ideal. I went to Harvard, so I can tell you everything. Egos. Well, time you said it. I didn't say it. You said it. You said it.

[A]

I'm going to do the episode.

[B]

Ro.

[A]

I think we're just having an episode right now.

[B]

And we are having an episode.

[A]

Welcome to our. What are we talking about? Welcome to our Nervous breakdown.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

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. Great review. Subscribe, join, and you all have a great day now.

[B]

Hello, the lovely peoples. This is Marty, Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called five paths to your 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 marthavec.compurpose and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all.

[A]

Ironically, in some ways, we're talking about rest and rejuvenation today, right?

[B]

Yeah. But not coincidentally, because we need it.

[A]

We do need it.

[B]

They need rest and rejuvenation. So what we were talking about the other day, because, okay, we are in the middle of moving to a different state, a different area, and we have been at this for ages. Like, we've been driving to the place, which is like four hours away, where we want to live. Two and a half hours. Well, it's four hours if you do it both ways in one day.

[A]

Five hours.

[B]

Five hours, right. And then looking at houses that many of which, no offense, we absolutely hated, and finally deciding to get a place. And then we have to pack up everything with pack, pack, pack, pack, pack, and bank and mortgage this and leasing that. And it just has been exhausting and logistical and fraught with delays and weirdness and we are exhausted.

[A]

So, yeah, so we watched TV the other night and thought this is so brilliant that we should do a whole podcast episode recommending that people do this crazy new thing that the kids are doing called Watch an episode of the Diplomat on Netflix.

[B]

But here's the thing. We really didn't think it would would work. We were so tired and discouraged and exhausted by various things that we thought watching TV would be just like spitting in the wind. It would just do nothing good for us at all and come back to smack us.

[A]

Or that it would just be like blank time, you know, neither good nor bad, neither adding to the tank or detracting. Like just a blank 40, 50 minutes of our lives.

[B]

You go into a sort of vegetative state for a while and then you come out.

[A]

But it wasn't.

[B]

No, because Rohi had the idea, let's watch a show that we've watched before. And here's the key. Pay close attention. We really, really liked it.

[A]

There.

[B]

Now we.

[A]

There it is.

[B]

There it is. There it is.

[A]

That's why they pay us the big bucks.

[B]

Yep. And it was during our. Our evening throuple time, which we call Trinity time.

[A]

Sounds dirty than it is.

[B]

Yes. And it all. It's also less religious than it sounds, so.

[A]

Good point.

[B]

It's one way or the other.

[A]

We keep to it religiously as a ritual.

[B]

We live for Trinity time. We get through the day because Trinity time is coming up. Trinity time is when we all just watch a show, don't we live a salacious life and we don't even do it in flight. But the thing is, you suggested watching the Diplomatic, which is a show I'm missing.

[A]

The Diplomat. It's so good.

[B]

It's really good. It's really good. Kerry Russell, Is that her name?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And a whole bunch of other wonderful actors.

[A]

Rufus Sewell.

[B]

Yes. And I did not think it would help. In fact it helped like getting a good meal when you're absolutely starving, stumbling through the woods. So it was for me it felt like, oh my goodness, somebody has brought me something absolutely delicious. It's not like somebody just threw me a banana. Somebody has made me a beautiful meal. Like a lot of TV shows are just someone threw me a banana. But this one, there was genius in it. There was genius in the writing. There was genius in the directing, the production, the acting, everything, the editing. And it filled the well, this is the phrase I use for it. It filled the well of my sort of psychological and emotional energy.

[A]

And what it did for me is it reminded me something about creativity because I don't know if this is widespread or if this is just us, but I. When I think about creativity, I generally quite self centered with it. Like, how is me being creative going to nourish me? And sometimes I think we can lose track of the fact that creativity is for nourishing others and that it does have this beautiful run on effect of, you know, like, so we watch this thing and it was just an experience of being so nourished by someone else's creativity and having made this beautiful thing for us. And I know in some ways, like now that I'm saying that it sounds so obvious and yet we lost sight of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Maybe other people did too.

[B]

And I do think that's part of the culture that you're supposed to always, you know, make things. And in this case, we were receiving something and that's the completion. As you said, creativity is always made to connect, if only connect the artist with themselves, but it's mostly, most often meant to connect different people. This is how I feel. This is what I mean.

[A]

This is.

[B]

We can commiserate, we can feel compassion. It's the coming together of emotion and experience. And that means that it's not received, it's not. It's not complete. And that means that receiving someone else's creativity, deeply appreciating another person's creative work is part of the creative act and one that I don't think we value enough.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. I just thought of the most awesome example of that. So in our community, in our online community, Wilder, every week we have the Arty Friday hang, where on a Friday we all get together for an hour and we chat away on Zoom and everyone just does their whatever. Like their new art songs, whatever. Yeah, no, not right. Not so much writing songs as a rule, because it's usually stuff that you're just doing with your hands while you're engaging in a conversation, but. And then there's just this moment at the end of the call, we forget that we're all coloring and stuff and drawing and whatever, because it's all about the conversation. Then at the very end, everyone holds up what they've made. And sometimes it's like a saucepan. Right. And there's just this moment when the screen fills with all these beautiful things. And it is such a great moment. And it's always surprising how lovely that is, how beautiful it is. Oh, my God.

[B]

Yeah. And this. These are just people, you know, filling an hour together. And the things that they create truly lift my spirit. Truly do. Especially when they all appear at once.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's quite amazing.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. It's funny because it's like creativity is about connecting with other people. And I think, you know, we have this term in our culture right now, content creator. And yeah, not even just like influences or whatever. Like, I think there are those of us who that kind of weird term does apply to. And I think that that can. That term or that idea of churning out content can be. You can end up seeing yourself as just a nourisher and not a nourishee.

[B]

Yeah. I remember when I was back in high school and college, I had a high school English teacher who insisted that everyone in her classes enter every poetry contest in the world. So we were constantly being told to write poetry. As a high school and college student, I had lots of adolescent angsty emotion. Never had a problem like coming up with inspiration for creativity. But then I got, you know, as college drew to a close, I got married, I had a baby. And suddenly I was so exhausted by so many things that I couldn't. That creative well that I'd gone to so reliably, it was empty. And so I realized I have to actually receive more creative content from other people in order to have a fund of creativity for myself. So I sort of coined the term fill the well. Unless somebody else did anyway. Maybe somebody else filled the well with that. It's in the well of me now. Anyway, I realized. Then I went in to graduate school and it got even worse. I had more babies. It got even worse and don't have babies.

[A]

If you take one thing away from this episode, right? Babies are bad.

[B]

Babies are. But then later they're content for you to write about. Except that then they resent it. Rightly so. Rightly so. Anyway, I noticed two things. If I stopped taking in the creativity of other artists, whether it was writing or music, whatever, two things happened. Number one, I ran out of inspiration to do any creative work myself. Whether it was writing a paper for college or writing. Writing the book I one day hoped to publish and did ultimately publish. So I would run out of energy and material in my brain. But also I stopped believing that there was a reason for me to write. I stopped believing that other people could enjoy my writing because I wasn't enjoying anybody's writing. So it sort of took the receiving side right out of the equation. And suddenly just the production became impossible. It has to be a completed circuit. And then I just. So I have all these images of being all over the place with three little kids, you know, at McDonald's, they went into the playground area or at the park or wherever with a paperback novel of the Joy Luck Club. Or. I remember I loved as byatt's possession. And I'm reading these really, really beautifully written novels in five minute bursts between childcare tasks. And that was enough to fill the well and make me write books that actually got published. So yeah, it was like rain after drought.

[A]

It's so. It's such a great point that you can't imagine people liking your writing if you don't have any recent experience of liking writing.

[B]

I don't know if that's true for everyone, but I bet it is true for most people.

[A]

I bet it is. And it makes. What it makes me think of is in terms of culture, nature, and where those things contradict each other is that it's almost like there's an inhale, exhale, sort of pattern there that's, that's implied. Like you can inhale the yumminess of this art, this writing, and then you can exhale yummy art. Right. And. Yeah, and symmetrical pattern. Yeah. But also a very organic, natural, biological sort of. There's an, there's a. There's a logic to it that makes sense to an animal, but it doesn't make sense to it. Like I think of the term production line. One must just exhale forever.

[B]

Forever.

[A]

Just exhale forever and never like deliver some oxygen to your brain. Metaphorically, obviously. And. Yeah. And so it's just that. That interesting thing that we know we need to. That there's a beautiful rhythm to inhaling and exhaling. But we're. The culture tries to trick us to, to not. Not remember to inhale and like. So for me, I think I'm. I think I'm always feeling the. Well, I, I'm very. I'm much kinder to myself than you are to yourself a lot of the time. So I think so I'm. I feel like I fill the well continuously. Whereas you sometimes have to remind yourself to. That's true. To do it. So like. So for me I have this very delicious ritual at night time after Trinity time.

[B]

Trinity time ritual never ends around here.

[A]

Oh my God, our days, we have so many rituals. But after Trinity time I. It's like Trinity time is the moment where it's like everyone's like sort of put to bed at the end of that all everyone's asleep. No one needs anything. And that's when I listen to audiobooks, crime novels on audio. And sometimes I do a little. A little farming on my. On my Stardew Valley game and listen to crime novels and it's just like. And I drink my cacao drink and.

[B]

You drink like a cow drink like A cow.

[A]

So I drink like a cow. That's part of the drink.

[B]

Like a cow drink. I'm like, you shouldn't. You should inhale some grammar, baby.

[A]

Oh, my God. We should totally name our first album that Drink Like a Cow Drink.

[B]

In China, I once bought an album by a group called Motherland. This was right after the Cultural Revolution, actually. So it wasn't. It was. The. Things were tight and the. The. The hit single that catapulted this album to success was called Our Motherly Rubber Estate.

[A]

Hang on, say that again.

[B]

Our Motherly Rubber Estate. Estate.

[A]

Estate.

[B]

Motherly rubber Estate.

[A]

Right, okay. Yeah.

[B]

A certain mellifluous quality state. I don't know how to sing it in Chinese anymore. I used to.

[A]

Yeah, sounds catchy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, so what's happening here? Okay, I'm in the middle of making a point.

[B]

Oh, sorry. Okay, go on. Cacao.

[A]

Cacao. We could not stay on topic if someone paid us to. Luckily, no one does.

[B]

How lucky are we? We do this for free. How many people have that opportunity?

[A]

Join us on a magical mystery tour through our mental illness for free. All right.

[B]

Cacao.

[A]

I drink my. All right, just listen. Listen carefully. Follow me if you can. This is how I feel.

[B]

The.

[A]

Well, I go to my room, I put on my crime novel, I drink my couch, and I farm on my little farm.

[B]

Are there cows on the farm? Do they drink like a cow drink?

[A]

They do. They do. That's what the milk gets made out of.

[B]

It's gonna be so sad when you have real plants and have to deal with them. Right now you've got a farm that says, would you like me to laminate that? You can.

[A]

Would you like me to laminate that cow?

[B]

Like cow drink. Okay, so when I did. So this is how you stay so productive in terms of your online farming? There's. There's a point I wish to make. Ro.

[A]

Please make some point. Any point. Okay.

[B]

There's this paradoxical thing going on, okay? When I go and say I need to be productive, therefore I will do something, I will receive some creative product and I will enjoy it, and that will. That will give me fuel. It doesn't work because it's still too product productivity based for my right hemisphere. It's the left hemisphere going, make more. Make more. But if I actually fall into the pleasure of observing it to the point where I'm not aware of myself when I'm just enjoying. So it's not me enjoying in order to make something happen, it's just me enjoying, which is what happened when we Watched the Diplomat. Like at first I was like, all right, this is nice. It gives us a time to veg out. And then two minutes in, it had me, you know, I was in the story. I loved the characters. I didn't even care that I'd seen it before. It was. And it's that experience of just like, oh, yum, I'm on a good ride. You know when you get a book and you, you read the first three pages. Like when I read 100 Years of Solitude, which I didn't read for a long time, this great work by Gabriel Marcia Garcia Marquez. Garcia Marquez.

[A]

I can't pronounce things.

[B]

Anyway, I read the first three or four pages and then I closed the book and turned it around and kissed the author photo because I knew I was in for several hundred pages of absolute deliciousness.

[A]

I'm worried about you.

[B]

Yes, I've been cheating on you with my copy of 100 Years of Solitude.

[A]

That's so kinky.

[B]

That is kinky. But it's not very active though.

[A]

It's more like taking a fall.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Something. So my thing is I will always listen to something delicious at night before bed. And sometimes you, being a driven workaholic, will listen to like value added audiobooks at night. And I'm like, well, that sucks. Like, because then you're, you have to, you have to get quite burned out before you need to fill the well again and when. And I'll say one thing is that you write more non fiction than fiction. But when your well is full, you write non fiction that reads like fiction. Like I will give you, I will give you this compliment and no others. Your non fiction is very intensely readable and enjoyable. And not a lot of non fiction is because I've tried it and I prefer against.

[B]

Yeah, I mean there's filling the informational well and then there's filling the creative well.

[A]

No, the informational well isn't a well.

[B]

Yes it is. It's fun to have. It is water. It's a storage facility.

[A]

It's a silo.

[B]

It's a silo. Oh, this is all getting so farm oriented. I have. I mean, you can just pack it full of facts and I actually quite enjoy that. But it's weird when you do it right before you fall asleep because I tend to have dreams about things and then think that they're facts that I've heard on an audiobook explains so much.

[A]

Like for instance, like eagles. It turns out eagles do not make love in the air. That was a dream you had.

[B]

I never said Anything about love. I ro. They are. They are hard bitten, skeptical sex addicts.

[A]

Oh, my God, they are so not. Have you seen those? Those like live streams of the eagles raising their babies together. They are just like. They give me hopeful. The eagle community.

[B]

Do you know, I forget where this happened. I think it was in Colorado. But there was a male eagle who'd been kept in captivity because he had broken a wing irreparably. He couldn't fly. And he went several years without doing anything unusual. And then he built a nest and he got a rock and he put it in the nest and he started sitting on it to try to incubate it. Did you see that?

[A]

I showed it to you. Yeah.

[B]

And if anybody tried to take the rock, he would just go batshit and attack them. And he was very, very possessive of his egg. And then rowie. Then someone found an orphaned baby eagle chick that had fallen out of a nest which was way, way up there. And they took it and they managed to get him off his rock and they put the baby eaglet in there and he came back and he loved his eaglet so much and he fed it and raised it and they are lovely and happy together. And that's true.

[A]

Someone on the Internet rescued a hedgehog from the water and then it had babies.

[B]

Oh, my God. My Instagram feed is 95% people rescuing animals. And often it's an animal that looks nothing like the animal they ultimately raise.

[A]

So I'm interesting.

[B]

I think we've got a little bit of the chat GPT hallucination going on. Okay. All of this just to say that, yes, I would write. I write nonfiction because it's easier to get it published. And I wrote magazine columns. I read over 200 magazine columns for the Oprah magazine alone. And so very boring. I would get these topics that were super specific. And I'd be like, when you're lo. But only because your cousin's in town and she's dating someone. Neat. I mean, it would be like, really? You want me to write about that? And then I would grind out some damn thing at three in the morning. And then I would have to go fill the well, I would have to read a terrific novel or watch something really funny on tv, find genius somewhere, imbibe it. And then I'd go back to the dry, horrible, stupid article and I would go through and just change every sentence so it felt more like what I just received. So it was an absolutely. And that's where I learned that if I did it in thinking this will help Me finish a column. It wouldn't work. I had to abandon myself. I sort of had to throw myself into the care of the artist. I was appreciating the way I did with 100 Years of Solitude. And then it would fill the well. And then I would read my own work and go, oh, this would bring more liveliness. This would be funny. This would be more vivid.

[A]

Yeah, that's cute.

[B]

Yeah, I remember. I. My first ever article was a test article for Mademoiselle magazine. And I was driving down the highway and I saw a billboard. That's for a restaurant. And it said, life is short. Eat dessert first. Totally stole that for the title of my first ever magazine article because it delighted me. And I think delight is the key ingredient in filling the well. If you are delighted, it's filling.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I like that. And to sort of pivot to what the culture says, you know, it's pretty obvious. Like, I was. I had the image of one of those old dot matrix printers. Do you know that had the holes in the side of the paper? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's gonna. It's a very dated reference, but dated.

[B]

For those of us who remember back to the late 1980s. They would just belch out paper.

[A]

Yeah, it was weird. So that's what we're supposed to be as content creators. We. We just output, output, output, output. And, you know, as. As we often come to on Bewildered, we're expected to be machines, but actually we're these things called animals, and we're in an ecosystem, and that's kind of different.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So if you take a machine, as long as it has fuel, I mean, ultimately, let's say in your car, the kind of fuel you use actually does affect the car. But in the short term, if you just put any gasoline of any grade into your car, it will go. And it will go the same way whether you put in premium or the cheapest fuel you can get. But we, as animals are. I know that's not how to pronounce it.

[A]

She went to Harvard, you know, they covered that in week one at Harvard.

[B]

You keep saying it. I haven't said it this time. Okay. We're deeply affected by the kind of fuel we take in for two reasons. One is the actual quality. I think there's an actual, like, metaphysical quality to something that is brilliantly creative. And I include here the Diplomat.

[A]

I mean, there's Bewildered podcast is not sponsored by the Diplomat, even though not at all. They should.

[B]

But that's some quality writing. There's some quality acting going in to give my imagination different concepts to deal with. But also it's delicious. Right. It fills me up. It's. So both things are important that there's fuel just to create energy to go forward. But also there's a qualitative capacity that the fuel has of delighting us as we take it in. And we're not like machines that way. We are far more motivated by delight and deliciousness than we are by just some block. You know, take a break for 15 minutes and then get back to your post on the factory line, that kind of thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So for me, like, I think about my. I'm. I'm like trying to eat a lot cleaner. And I think about, like, for the fuel analogy, like the fuel we put in our bodies. Short term, you can put cheap fuel in. Right. You can put in cheeseburgers until the cows come home, like powder. And then. But long term, it's going to have consequences the same way cheap fuel will long term have consequences on the engine. Although I'm trying to make the point that engines. But it's going to make a different point. So let's not try to. Let's not try to make them the same thing. Let's just. Let's just make them into different things. Okay?

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So eat. Eat good food. It's good for you.

[B]

All right. This is. This is where this all lands. Ro. Two eagles who don't finish in time.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I triggered a rolaph. Ro. Getting really laughing. The laugh. It's an episode. And not like an episode of a podcast, just like a medical episode.

[A]

Please keep talking.

[B]

We all, everybody listening to this. Us, we all have, and I mean this sincerely, a responsibility to maximize the deliciousness and delight of what we do in the world and especially what we participate in as receivers of creativity.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And we're not just talking about, oh, get yourself a nice massage and a bubble bath and a glass of red wine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm talking about be quite rigorous about demanding not only a reasonable quantity, but also very high quality of taking in creative work. Yes. Yes.

[A]

Yeah. It's like garbage in, garbage out. Right. If creativity, if our own creativity is about connecting with people, then we're serving other people by indulging in delicious pieces of art. Like the Diplomat on Netflix.

[B]

Yes. Which we keep coming back to. It's amazing, but there's very little. It's interesting how we're not actually encouraged to develop the discernment about what will fill the creativity. Well, so TV is easy to access and everything, but you could turn on the TV and either rot your mind or fill it with joy. Like, you have to be like. The reason we watched the Diplomat is we'd spent, like, half an hour on our phones trying to find a show that we thought would really fulfill us. We weren't feeling so good, so it was very deliberate that we were looking for high quality.

[A]

Yeah, I want to be careful that we don't, like, say. And it has to be high art. Like, it's not about a snobby curation. It's about finding what will feed you. And no, I don't think anyone would think the Diplomat is high art. For example.

[B]

And speaking of what feeds you, there's a reason the Great British Baking show has been such a massive hit. There are all kinds of reality shows. There is something about the way that one is curated and lit and structured that is very calming. And it's not. Nobody's writing a script. It's not. There are some funny, cute ad libs, but it's not. It's just people baking shit that looks like, I don't know, a battleship or the Queen or whatever. But there's something about it that's deeply nourishing, and that's why it's so. That's why it's been so popular. And yet we. We pay really close attention to what actually fills the well. I think you and I and Karen are all very obsessed with. We want something to take us. Take us on a creative ride. And that's really different from just passively watching whatever shows up in your life.

[A]

Yeah. Like just putting on the TV in order to, like, veg out and be a zombie. And maybe that feeds people. I don't know. But for us, that. That element of deliciousness has to be part of it. So. Yeah, I guess then the question becomes, if we're wanting to fill the well, what. How do. Like, how do we select good well water? You know, I was thinking, like, Love island or whatever could fill the well. You know, like, it's. It's fun and nourishing, and you get to have this cultural moment with other people that you can share. Right.

[B]

What is this Love island you speak of Love Island?

[A]

Well, Marty, it's. I don't really know. It's a. It's a. It's a reality TV show, and it's about people who really love an island. And they. They go there and they're like, I love this island. Did you know that?

[B]

As.

[A]

So as the.

[B]

When the ice. The last ice age Ended and the ice caps melted and the water came up. It turned little bits of land into islands. And one of those places was Sicily. And when it did that, in order to survive on Sicily. Sicily, the elephants there grew tiny. Grew tiny. That's kind of an oxymoron.

[A]

So first week at Harvard, they covered how to pronounce the word animal. Second week, they did whatever that was. Tiny elephants on Sicily.

[B]

Yeah. They were only. They were tiny. They were like the size of Saint Bernards or whatever. Anyway, then they all died. But I thought that was very. It is one of the things that I have hunted and gathered with intentionality because, like, weird facts about animals fills your well. Fill the well for me. Yes, they do. And I'm just making a point that it can go in all directions. It can go cooking, it can go farming, it can go the Diplomat. It could go Sicilian elephants. As long as it delights you personally.

[A]

Yeah. So everyone's well is going to be different. And what nourishes one person might not nourish another. Duh. But there's a thing here that we have to be careful of. And it's like a cultural trap that I could see us falling into if we don't keep an eye on it, which is you could use filling the well to be like, this is a hack to make you more productive. Like, you'll be more creative and create more creative output to feed the machine of culture if you do this one weird trick. So that's not what. That's not what we're doing. It's. Yeah, it's for happiness. It's for joy and deliciousness.

[B]

Yeah, that's. It's kind of what I was saying earlier. You don't. If you do it to be productive, it won't work as well. But the point is, when you. When you disappear into the enjoyment of a creative product, it actually enriches your life. And then you. Then you realize, oh, it's actually my. The reason I'm even human is not so much like, in my case, to write books. It is to be in the kind of joy I had reading the 100 Years of Solitude or watching the Diplomat and that. And then disappearing into that. That everything's about the joy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That is what actually takes me deep into my own creativity and results in my making something typically.

[A]

Yeah. And that's.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that sort of reminds us that this. That it's this reciprocity of deliciousness between people, the sharing, and that in receiving, when. When that receiving rises to a certain point that the act of making something and praying, paying that forward becomes delicious in itself and not sure. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I think for me, what. What's the hallmark of a well filler in terms of wanting, you know, what I consume to fill my well is like, if it's something that I think about, like, I continue to think about it, lingers in my mind after the actual consumption of it. Right, yeah.

[B]

If your attention goes back to it, like when we're watching a really good series, we watch one episode a night, my mind goes to it many times a day and I get excited about seeing more. And it reminds me about something I read from a comedian that when they take their material to sort of off off Broadway places, they go to some, I don't know, cowboy cafe that has a comedy mic to practice their new material. What they're looking for is a joke that makes the waitresses laugh every night because the other people are just hearing it for the first time. It could be shock value. It could be, you know, just hearing something different. But when something's really funny and the waitresses who hear it, you know, over and over and over, hear the setup, they start to laugh. And when we share comedian bits like Tig Notaro's no Moleste.

[A]

No Moleste.

[B]

That is like, we both just giggled thinking about that bit. And we've probably shown it to 12 million people.

[A]

Like, go Google it. Right.

[B]

And you want to share it yourself. That's good fuel.

[A]

Totally. And sharing it too, right? Like, not just repeating it yourself, but wanting to share it. I think. I didn't. I don't know what Love island is, except I understand that it's about people who love islands. But what I do know is that in my. Even in my strange algorithm, I. What I saw was a lot of people sharing funny things with each other out of Love island, the reality TV show.

[B]

So it creates.

[A]

So, yeah, there's this, like fandom. Well, it's not about fandom. It's about the relationships that then the people are having with each other around, talking about the thing, right? Like it. People being funny about it, creating in jokes. And then the joy gets amplified by community.

[B]

One time, Liz Gilbert told me she was reading these sequence of 19 books about this captain and ship's doctor on an 19th century British war vessel. And I listened to all 19 books. We both listened to all 19 books. They're read by this amazing actor with this gorgeous Irish accent. So both of us had read 19 books about this one thing and it made you.

[A]

I absolutely unbearable to be around for Months I can remember, like walking through the streets of New York City at night and the two of you just going on and on and on about these different characters and making jokes about.

[B]

Noon and the wigsail had fairly Mackwelled on the surf tone and they ran up to the. Anyway, there was a lot of jargon and there were very typical characters. And after I was done with this, I spent hours. I never told you this. Writing a parody of one of these as a short story, which I sent to Liz Gilbert and she wrote back and she said, I want to give you some kind of award for writing this. And then I realized there's no one else but me who would even understand what you were doing. But that's how strongly I react when something really delights me. I. I spent hours doing this because one other person was going to understand it.

[A]

And Russell Crowe would have understood it as well. He would have, yes, because he played the character in the movie.

[B]

But it wasn't 19 books worth.

[A]

No, but he read all 19 and took himself very seriously, let me tell you.

[B]

So. But there it was like cementing a kind of shared joy by connecting with each other about the art, by creating more art, even. It was silly art.

[A]

So let's take a second and then let's come back and talk about how do we come to our senses in the world of well filling and creativity, shall we? Let's do it. And we're back.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

You've just heard some fascinating advertisements for the Diplomat on Netflix. I hope you enjoyed those. So, Mari, how do we come to our senses?

[B]

First of all, like, we really have to get rid of the idea that appreciating and receiving deliciousness, especially other people's creative and inventions in whatever medium, that. That is an indulgence, something to be done in our free time. No, it is like hunting and foraging in nature. It is what keeps you alive as a being, as a. As a cognizant sensory creature to fill your inner life with the most delicious, delightful things that other people have spent time making for you.

[A]

Yes, right. It's like our relationships benefit, you know, when, when our well is full, you know, and. And so we watched this show, this one episode of this show and you know, we were pausing it during to like, talk about what they were doing and how they were writing it and, and how we were like shipping different characters if, you know, you know, and, you know. Spy facts.

[B]

Yes, Rowe is filled with spy facts.

[A]

Oh my gosh, I've got a spy fact for every. Yeah.

[B]

And so she really does it's like.

[A]

The sharing is what, like is contributing to the ecosystem. Right. Which of. Of relationship and community that we all share.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And. And the more replete you can make an ecosystem, the more different types of delight and fuel and interactivity that you get going, the more diverse the ecosystem can get and the more, the healthier it is. And in metaphoric terms, the more joy it produces and the longer it lasts.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I feel like variety as well as, you know, quantity as well as quality.

[A]

Yes, and. Yes. And vice versa.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So anyway, there's like, there's that level, the relationship level and the community level, and then there's like our inner ecosystems as well. And I feel like when. When I feel the. Well, I'm supporting my own mental health and emotional nourishment. Right. Yeah. And. And that it. That fill the. What we're act. The well that we're actually feeling, I think on some level is. Is a soul thing, but it's also this lovely when we delight in creative things that other people have made in order to delight us, where we're filling the well of our souls, but we're. We're like rejuvenating our ecosystems on every level. That's what I. Yeah, I even think our bodies get healthier from.

[B]

I think. Yeah, I think that that's really true. In fact, I did a lot of research for my last book on what, what it does for people to. When they have a painting on the wall or when they're listening to music or whatever, it. They get healthy. Like they get over surgeries faster and they get well faster and stay well more than people who are just looking at like blank places.

[A]

Dude.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Fill the well that you get well.

[B]

Oh, oh, yes. Fill the wellness well.

[A]

Well, man.

[B]

So, you know, as you're talking about it as water, because we've now used several metaphors, but water is the biggest one. It just struck me that the most important thing we can do for our health is to stay well hydrated. That like, if you even lose like 1% of the water your body needs, your brain is not functioning as well. Your eyesight suffers, your mood well hydrated.

[A]

Body'S not functioning as well.

[B]

This is going so many cool directions.

[A]

God, this is amazing.

[B]

Well, I'm just saying. Yes, fine quality water for your system, for your village, for your ecosystem, for any metaphor you want. You need this kind of delight. You need to take in creative stuff.

[A]

So we sort of. What would be cool would be like, how do we check in with ourselves and see whether we're at a point where we need to fill the well, you know, like what. There's different types of depletion and burnout and tiredness. So it's like how nourished does my soul feel today? You know, is, is like a check in. You could do how right I could.

[B]

Like, I can be very tired and I have done, I've been working a lot and I get tired. But there is still a sense of ideas flowing and they're like they're flowing out and it. So there's kind of a pull to, to put them down on, in words or images or whatever. And then there's a point where the pull, the sense of being pulled goes away and I feel like I have to push forward and nothing good ever comes to that. That is when I need to fill the well.

[A]

Yes, yeah, yeah, totally. And I think like, so because as, as a contrasting example, I can imagine, you know, being depressed and watching 18 episodes of Survivor and that's not a well filling activity. That's a, like unless it.

[B]

You love it.

[A]

Right. But I'm. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying is it depends.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. So like if I imagine if I'm like trying to do my check in, what, what is it that I need? I'm like if I imagine myself like I want to listen to my crime novel or I want to watch something and it's like if, if it's not a fill the world need, it's actually a little bit frustrating when I imagine like, yeah, sit down and watch something or sit down and read a book and I'm like, no, that, that doesn't feel right. Whereas when I'm depleted, there's almost like this sort of feeling of like a vacuum or something like.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, that, that is like let me suck up someone else's something. I don't, I don't have any more to give right now. And it's not that I'm tired, it's that, that spark or that water is absent.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And when I, when I'm reading, like when I watched the Diplomat the other night or when I'm reading a novel I love, there is a point where I will actually turn it off or put the book down because I need to create. It wants to overflow. And the better the quality for me, it's different for everybody. But the more it matches my definition of delight and deliciousness, the quicker I get to that moment where I'm just dying to either share something about it or create something.

[A]

Yeah, right. Oh my Gosh, that's such a great point. That's almost like, where it's full and the overflow needs to. Needs to go somewhere.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And you can give water to other people.

[A]

Yeah. So before we, like, finish up, I want to reiterate, this isn't to be turned into another productivity hack. Right. Because ultimately, the point is to have these senses to. To delight them, to feel, to touch, to taste, you know, to be alive and like. So let's not, like, waste our one wild and precious life with an empty well. All right? Yeah.

[B]

We have to fill the well frequently with the most delightful, delicious things that we can track down. Because that rowie, that is how we stay wild.

[A]

We hope you're enjoying Bewildered. If you're in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word wild to 570-873-0144. We're also on Instagram. Our handle is Bewildered podcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at mbi. And remember, if you're having fun, please rate and review and stay wild.

[B]

People are always asking me, how did you get into training life coaches? And the answer is backwards. I did it backwards. That is, I didn't set up a program and then look for people to fill it. It's just that so many people were coming to me for coaching that I realized in order to serve the market, I was going to have to train other people in my methods. That was decades ago. And now the Wayfinder program contains all my very best wisdom and tools for living, boiled down to their savory essence. Now, if that sounds interesting to you, head on over to MarthaBeck.com and find your way.