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Since her first published novel, Time of the Dark, in 1982, Barbara Hambly has touched most of the bases in genre fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, media tie-ins, graphic novels, screenplays, murder mysteries, and Saturday morning cartoons. Her work has been nominated for numerous Locus Awards, and her novel Those Who Hunt the Night won for Best Horror Novel in 1989. She’s also an avid martial artist. Barbara joins me to talk about marital arts and how they influence her writing, how she plots her work, the joys of research, trying to choose her favorite genre, and more.

Episode breakdown:

00:00 Introduction
04:20 Learning new skills for writing adventure stories: research hands-on.
08:37 Creativity exists beyond making a living; people pursue passions.
12:21 Encouragement versus discouragement shapes creative confidence in childhood.
16:27 Teased for writing fanfic, Hambly stopped sharing at school.
20:59 Martial arts experience improves fight scenes and knowledge in writing.
24:13 Hands-on weapon training reveals challenges for historical accuracy.
28:37 Martial arts philosophy influences character development and approach to life.
32:08 Aikido teaches problem-solving—step aside from incoming challenges.
36:27 Hambly outlines her novels; prefers clear goals in stories.
40:08 Timelining and detailed research ensure realistic historical fiction.
44:53 Exploring world-building, food, and logistics in fantasy and sci-fi.
48:22 Hambly’s favorite projects: historical fiction, fantasy, and vampire series.
52:02 Writing across genres, balancing commercial market and creative joy.
55:24 Hambly’s creative journey spans genres, driven by passion.

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Transcript: Barbara Hambly

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Since her first published novel, “Time of the Dark,” in 1982, Barbara Hambly has touched most of the bases in genre fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, media tie ins, graphic novels, screenplays, murder mysteries, and Saturday morning cartoons. Her work has been nominated for numerous Locus Awards, and her novel, “Those Who Hunt the Night,” won for best horror novel in 1989. She’s also an avid martial artist. Barbara joins me to talk about martial arts and how they influence her writing, how she plots her work, the joys of research, trying to choose her favorite genre, and more.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:55]:
Here’s my conversation with Barbara Hambly. Barbara, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.

Barbara Hambly [00:01:02]:
Thank you.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:04]:
I start everyone with the same question. Were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?

Barbara Hambly [00:01:11]:
I was a very creative child. I was writing what I realize now was essentially fanfic about Sherlock Holmes when I was, like, eight. I was writing Oz fanfic when I was six and I was making up stories about my little my little toys before I knew the alphabet I would storyboard them. Wow. So I be I was very creative right from the start. My sister would have nightmares and have trouble going to sleep. And so from a very early age, I started telling stories. I started telling her stories after we after we would go to bed.

Barbara Hambly [00:02:06]:
So by the time I was four or five, I was learning how to organize plots, learning how to organize dialogue, and learning how to be a storyteller long before I learned the alphabet. And a very good friend of mine, the the, writer and producer Marc Scott Zicree, has a theory about types of writers, and he said one type of writer is the the writer for whom writing is your safe place. You go into your mind and you go down to the dark at the bottom of your mind and you have a wonderful time there. You know, you see all kinds of wonderful things. He said that type of writer usually starts out as a child. He said the other type of writer is the writer for whom writing is the dangerous place, and you go in the dark of your mind and you go down to the bottom of the dark of your mind and you see really scary stuff. But because you’re a writer, you have to write. You know, if you’re if you’re born a writer, you have to write or it hurts you.

Barbara Hambly [00:03:31]:
And he said those type of writers usually start later. And it was at least his theory that that was why many writers, many creative people get involved in substance abuse is because you’ve got to do it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:48]:
You don’t know why you’ve got to do

Barbara Hambly [00:03:49]:
it, but you’ve got to do it, but it scares the hell out of you. And I suspect that my late husband was the second type of writer, is that you have to do it, but it frightens you. And then you get into this push pull procrastination, you gotta do it, but you don’t want to do it. And fortunately, I’m the first type of writer. I’ve been doing this literally all my life,

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:20]:
but I didn’t know I could make

Barbara Hambly [00:04:21]:
a living at it. And I was I was just absolutely delighted when I discovered that, yes, I could make most of a living at it. You know, I always had to have a a a gig job on the side, and I spent my earlier life looking for a job that would let me have time to write.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:42]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Those those are an interesting thing to try to find.

Barbara Hambly [00:04:48]:
Yes. Yes. Particularly if you also want to socialize.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:55]:
Yes.

Barbara Hambly [00:04:57]:
But for me, because very early I realized I wanted to write adventure stories, and I was very early drawn to either fantasy or historicals because, you know, who wants to read the actual adventures of someone growing up in a suburb in the in California in the 1950s? But I realized and people, you know, people said, write what you know. Nobody wants to read about a kid growing well, maybe they do. I certainly didn’t. So to me, that meant know what you write, which meant learn how to ride a horse, learn how to shoot a gun, learn how to use a sword, learn self defense, you know, learn hand to hand combat, learn how to use a toilet when you’re wearing a corset and a bustle. It can be done, but it’s not dignified. How to do the minuet, how to I was never very good at this, you know, how to light a fire with flint and steel. How difficult is it to light a fire with flint and steel? And, you know, one of my friends could usually do it on the first crack. Okay.

Barbara Hambly [00:06:27]:
How dark is it when there’s no artificial lighting? You know, all of this stuff that to me counts as research. Oh, yeah, having sex, which is necessary if you’re going to be writing any book in which someone has sex. You know, lots lots of stuff. Lots of stuff that I felt, yes, you need to learn this. You need to have done this.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:01]:
It’s interesting how writing can become and this isn’t the right word, but it’s the one that’s popping into my head. It it kind of becomes an excuse to learn all of the things that you might have wanted to learn but never had a good reason to learn. You know, a lot of those things that you just listed are things that a lot of people might wanna learn, you know, how to use a sword, how how to how to do a dance that they would have no occasion to actually use in regular life that, you know, most of us would say, yeah, I could go learn how to do that, but what am I what am I gonna do with it? You know? But when you’re writing, you actually have a genuine, legitimate reason to go out and learn all of those things because you are gonna do something with it.

Barbara Hambly [00:07:52]:
And yet the world is full of people who do not write, who take martial arts classes, who take horseback riding. So far as I know, none of the other people in my sword class are writers. They just do it because you know, it’s, it’s like cosplay. Mhmm. And you do it because you wanna do it. You know? Go to the Renaissance Faire any weekend in April and you find a whole lot of people who are not there because they wanna use this for something. They’re there just because they like to dress up. That’s true.

Barbara Hambly [00:08:37]:
So it’s which makes it easy if you do want to use this as research. Makes it easy to find these groups that can do this. The historical recreationists, wonderful, wonderful groups of people who they do it because they want to. They do it because it’s it’s a creative part of the mind that does not involve producing something Right. Except just some really dandy costumes. Mhmm. But it’s it’s like, you know, they say in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, don’t dream it, be it. Yeah.

Barbara Hambly [00:09:21]:
And all those people who would go to the to the rendezvous, you know, it’s don’t dream it, be it. Get out there and see what it’s like.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:32]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Barbara Hambly [00:09:35]:
And that is a form of creativity. That’s a wonderful form of creativity, that you’re not trying to produce anything. You’re not trying to make a living at it. You’re making your living so you can go do that on the weekends. The people who go to Burning Man and spend huge amounts of money to make weird vehicles to pedal around the playa with no purpose except to impress and entertain other people who like to do the same thing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:11]:
It’s a good point. Yeah.

Barbara Hambly [00:10:12]:
So the world is full of creativity that is not trying to make a living out of that creativity. It’s you’re just creative because it feels so good.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:27]:
Yeah. And that to me is is the point of creativity. I just feel like so many people think that if there isn’t a further reason to it, that they can’t justify doing it, and that frustrates and disappoints me.

Barbara Hambly [00:10:46]:
Well, yeah. Yeah. Because they weren’t given permission. At some point, when they were probably very, very small, they were not given permission. You know, nobody told them, hey, this is better than ice cream. Yes. I have a nephew who plays, tabletop miniature games. And, you know, having gone to one of these tournaments, as much as the joy of playing the game itself is painting those tiny little miniatures and, you know, going on to the the Facebook sites for the people who paint these these things that are smaller than my thumb just for the joy of, look at this.

Barbara Hambly [00:11:40]:
Mhmm. Look at this. And, of course, when I was a child, I did the same thing, but it the I had, you know, tabletop games, but they had not tabletop games had not been invented yet. So I would have to draw all the little characters on paper and stick it to cardboard, and and I’d play my tabletop games in my room with the door shut. But there was, you know, there was no place where I could go to buy them. There was no play there was no commercial no commercial infrastructure. If if at that time there had been stores that did tabletop game stuff, I would never have written a word

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:17]:
because this was this was my telling stories to myself.

Barbara Hambly [00:12:21]:
Mhmm. But, my parents were baffled, of course, but they they understood that this was what I did, you know. And my my sister and I both did this, but I was the I guess I was the guiding push behind it and, you know, after she stopped doing it and I just continued to make those until I started writing more. You know, I would write and I would do this and I would draw and paint, but, eventually, writing reached a point where it it took over the functions of all of them.

Nancy Norbeck [00:13:09]:
So was there someone who said to you, hey. This is better than ice cream, or did you figure that out on your own?

Barbara Hambly [00:13:15]:
Figured that out on my own. My parents had not the slightest idea why I was doing this, but they were kind of fascinated. You know, particularly my mom was just, wow, look at that, isn’t that weird? But they never hassled us to do something else, except join the church choir. We did we did have to, you know, go to church and join the church choir.

Nancy Norbeck [00:13:43]:
Yeah. It it’s interesting. The the people that I’ve talked to over the last six or seven years, the people who were encouraged have had a much easier time doing what they love to do over time and, you know, turning it into a successful career or or successful hobby. The people who were discouraged have a much more difficult time, but it’s much better not to be actively discouraged even if you’re not actively encouraged. So in your situation, you are still better off than Yeah. You know, if they had said, what the heck are you doing that for? You should be, you know, doing calculus. Yeah.

Barbara Hambly [00:14:27]:
I was never actively discouraged. I think I was never actively encouraged because it was so far out of anything that they did or knew about. I learned very early not to tell anybody about it because I would get teased at school. Oh, wow. I got very seriously teased teased about it at school, and I quit talking about it. I didn’t tell anybody.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:01]:
Yeah. That would shut you up in a hurry, for sure.

Barbara Hambly [00:15:03]:
Yeah. It did. Yeah. Well, I was kinda kinda weird at school anyway.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:08]:
Yeah. I I often tell people, you know, when they’re starting something new, not to tell anybody about it until they’re sure that they have enough of it, that it’s it’s solid enough for them, that if they tell somebody about it and that person wants to look at it, read it, whatever, and comments on it and says the wrong thing, that they’ll still be able to keep going with it in spite of it. You know, if they’ve just written the first three pages and somebody looks at it and says, what the heck is this? That’s probably not enough. You know? And they’ll probably abandon it if they hear something like that. But if they have the first 100 pages, they’re probably gonna be able to withstand that and keep going.

Barbara Hambly [00:15:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. I know. Specifically, what I got teased about was, again, writing I didn’t the the word fanfic had not been invented at that time, but I would I was writing fanfic with the, Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series. Oh, wow. So I was writing, you know, Barsoomian fanfic, and I got teased really bad about it, and that’s when I just shut down. But I actually did write fanfic all the way through high school for the very I had a very few friends because I was pretty weird and but I did write fanfic. I remember writing Man from UNCLE fanfic and then once Star Trek hit, like me and two other Star Trek fans in the high school were, you know, trading fanfic, and actually the three of us, that’s when they steered me into they saw that they were gonna the local fencing club was going to be you meeting in the gym, in the high school gym, in the evenings, And so the three of us started taking fencing together.

Barbara Hambly [00:17:09]:
I was terrible at it, of course. But, you know, I was 15.

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:14]:
Right. I love that, though. I love that you had your own little little group, and you did your own thing, and you went and you took fencing just because you could.

Barbara Hambly [00:17:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it was the start of my lifetime attachment to martial arts.

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:39]:
Yeah. I’ve been wondering, you know, how how martial arts has influenced your writing.

Barbara Hambly [00:17:48]:
You learn how to write a fight scene. And if you’re writing adventure fiction, you need to know how to write a fight scene. There is one mystery writer whom I am very fond of that writer’s work. Wonderful characterization, wonderful background, wonderful plotting, cannot write a fight scene to save her life, cannot write an action scene.

Nancy Norbeck [00:18:20]:
Mhmm.

Barbara Hambly [00:18:23]:
And it’s like reading a sex scene that was written by a virgin. You need to have done it. Mhmm. It’s like sometimes I’ll be reading histories I I am very fond of Asian history and I’ll be reading, Chinese history or Japanese history, and the author will be talking about, you know, the local religions and go on about Buddhism. And I’m reading this and going you clearly have not gone into what Buddhism actually is. I’ll read this and go No, it is not what you’re saying. It is not a pessimistic worldview. It is not, oh, the entire world is is terrible, and I’m going, you know, for but it’s there’s a lot of things that you you don’t understand until you’ve done it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:19:41]:
Mhmm.

Barbara Hambly [00:19:44]:
And, you know, writing an action scene, writing a fight scene, it’s like, you know, reading a reading a fight scene and it’s a blow by blow description, and if you’re actually in a sparring situation, that’s not how it feels, is you’re not thinking about it until, well, then I did an upper rising cut block and, you know, this and that that’s at least in my for me, that is not my experience. That is not how I experienced when I was taking karate. That was not how I experienced a sparring match. But it’s different, and I can’t explain how it’s different.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:33]:
It makes sense to me, though, even though I’ve never done martial arts. It makes perfect sense to me that that’s the kind of thing that that if you’re not familiar with it, you’re gonna go by what you’ve seen on TV and in the movies. And what you’ve seen, you haven’t really understood while you’re watching it. You’ve just seen a bunch of things that look like a fight, and you’re gonna try to recreate that.

Barbara Hambly [00:20:59]:
Yeah. And I think the keyword there is seen. Mhmm.

Nancy Norbeck [00:21:04]:
You’re

Barbara Hambly [00:21:05]:
experiencing it with, like, two senses, and there are some things that you need to experience with your body. Right. You know, martial arts, sex, and dancing. It’s there are some things that you just gotta do. And watching it doesn’t well, watching it I won’t say watching it doesn’t count, but you get a different perception One of my nephews does it’s a form of martial arts called buhert which is fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth century European combat in armor with swords with swords and shields, which just looks like a barrel of fun, but it’s you presumably, you learn how to deal with the weight of the armor, and you you would presumably fight differently if you’re in armor. And I’m I’m just fascinated that apparently a large number of people do this and they’re not all men. It’s when I was, I was in Spain last year at a convention and there was a group that did demonstrations and workshops with medieval weapons, so I took advantage of medieval and renaissance weapons, so I took advantage to take, you know, these little fifteen minute mini classes of how do you actually wield a broadsword? And so I did broadsword and, medieval and renaissance rapier and the weapons are heavy, which is one reason why you didn’t have a lot of women doing that type of combat because a large percentage of women don’t have the upper body strength to do that, particularly as you go back in time Before the perfection of steel, your weapons were iron and they were really heavy, and so the women who were doing that kind of stuff, the Joan of Arks, the, you know, the women who would go into the Viking women who would go into combat. You would have to build up your upper body strength.

Barbara Hambly [00:23:52]:
And many women did not have that training. So that that was a that was a wonderful learning experience. It’s just how heavy is a broadsword in combat? The answer is very, and I I wasn’t even dealing with a shield. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:13]:
If you’ve got heavy things in both hands, that’s even worse.

Barbara Hambly [00:24:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. So and, you know, for me, it’s it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also research. Mhmm. The

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:29]:
martial arts have such a philosophical side to them. Has that influenced your writing as well?

Barbara Hambly [00:24:37]:
I believe that everything influences my writing. The the martial arts have a philosophical and spiritual side for those who are looking deeper than, hey. I wanna learn how to kick ass. And, you know, particularly the Asian martial arts, it’s like this is to the goal of the martial arts is perfection of character, and you can’t lie in the dojo. You can’t I remember one of the fellows, in the the the sparring team at the dojo that I trained in back in the seventies, And one of the fellows said to another, you know, the difference between us is I try to pretend I’m an asshole and you try to pretend you’re not, which was a very accurate, description of the characters of both men. But when you’re working with someone in the dojo, it’s you can’t hide what you are. You can’t hide what’s inside because it’s nonverbal communication. And in aikido, I’ve taken aikido for about the past seven years, and I hope to take it as long as I’m physically capable of doing so.

Barbara Hambly [00:26:07]:
Because aikido is not punching and kicking, it’s using the opponent’s weight to get them down so you can run away. You know, you don’t it’s it’s more it’s a little bit like wrestling. It’s a little bit like jujitsu. But so it self selects. You know, it it I believe it literally means, you know, the gentle art. It self selects for people who are not in into or who are less into just proving what a badass they are. And so there is much more of an emphasis on the developing your character. You know, it’s it’s still very much a a combat sport, but it’s the emphasis is different.

Barbara Hambly [00:27:04]:
But in any martial art, because I took karate all through the seventies and I’m in aikido now and I did weapons for a while and I did belly dance for a while, you learn how to learn. You learn that there’s always even no matter how hot you think you are, there’s always somebody better out there. And aikido is very different a very different experience for me than karate was, but it’s, you know, you learn how to learn and you learn principles. The The guiding principle of aikido is step out of the way. If somebody’s coming at you, step out of the way. They’ll go right past you. How do you use someone else’s violence? You’re not behaving violently, the other person is behaving violently, and you just redirect their energy and dump them on their butt. And that kind of philosophy, that approach to dealing with an attacker, is it goes from being physically how do you do the technique into mentally, what are you trying to do? How do you approach other problems? And it’s, was it Anne Rice who wrote in Interview with the Vampire, Let the Body Instruct the Mind? You know, you learn things for one purpose, but at some point you start going, okay, this is a good approach to life.

Barbara Hambly [00:29:00]:
It’s a good way to approach life. Yeah. I’m of the opinion that children should learn martial arts and also I’m of the opinion that children should learn dancing. You know, it’s a way of connecting with your body. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:30]:
Yeah.

Barbara Hambly [00:29:30]:
You know, of course, I never did as a child. I was a very as a child, I lived completely in my head. I still kind of do, but, you know, I’m I’m a great fan of getting children into, you know, martial arts or, you know, something to just to just use your body. Mhmm. Just get used to, you know, what you’re what you’re doing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:30:00]:
Yeah. Because an awful lot of us spend all of our time in our heads. Yeah. And and I I hear you about things you learn in one place turning into a a way to live your life. I’ve said that so many times about improv. You know, yes, and is a great way to live your life.

Barbara Hambly [00:30:20]:
In a way, in a way the martial arts is improv. Somebody comes at you, which is, you know, somebody comes at you, what do you do? Mhmm. And particularly when we get particularly young women coming in girls who are, you know, 14, 15, 16 you don’t get a lot of them. But I look at this and I go, other than learning the techniques, a lot of it is if a guy grabs you by your arm, you don’t freak out You go, I know what to do And I think particularly with girls, it really helps to not to get freaked out Mhmm. In a in a in a situation where somebody you don’t know comes up and grabs your arm. Yeah. It’s like, what do you do? And it’s like, oh, I okay. We I’ve I’ve done this in class.

Barbara Hambly [00:31:37]:
Yeah. It’s not a completely unfamiliar experience.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:41]:
Right. Because as soon as you freak out, you lose your ability to Yes. Do anything sensible in the situation.

Barbara Hambly [00:31:49]:
Exactly. Exactly.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:53]:
Yeah. And I love what you said too with with Aikido about, you know, step out of the way. So many times, that’s the obvious solution to something coming at you, and we don’t even think about that.

Barbara Hambly [00:32:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just step out of the way. Don’t engage or engage in a way that the other person isn’t expecting.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:20]:
Yeah.

Barbara Hambly [00:32:23]:
And it, you know, it comes back to improv. Mhmm. I’ve I’ve never been good at improv. It’s a it’s something I’d be interested in in trying, taking an improv class, but that’s not something that has come come my way.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:49]:
I think you’re right though that you’ve probably got a decent amount of improv out of martial arts.

Barbara Hambly [00:32:54]:
Yes. Yeah. But again, it’s it’s physical rather than mental. So it’s it’s it’s training a different, a different aspect of your reactions. Right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:09]:
So when you when you write, do you plot everything out in advance, or are you doing more by the seat of your pants? Are you more following the flow?

Barbara Hambly [00:33:23]:
I am not a seat of the pants writer. Okay. Generally well, generally, when I write a novel, I turn in an outline to the publisher. You know, when I’ve got a contract, I’ll write the novel. Every now and again, I’ll write a novel just for the fun of it and then try to sell it later. And but even when I’m when I’m writing these novels that I don’t expect are going to go anywhere, I’ll very early in the process, I’ll write the first couple of scenes just to get an idea of who the characters are, but generally I will write out an outline because personally I need to know where I’m going. I know that there are some writers who they’ll just start and they’ll write whatever comes up for them and those are not the writers that I tend to read. I tend to prefer a story where there is a clear goal.

Barbara Hambly [00:34:39]:
A story about what the hell are we doing here does not hold my interest if we don’t at least figure out what the hell we’re doing here fairly quickly. There was a television show on, God, it must be fifteen years ago, that by the second season, you know, it’s a group of people in an unusual situation and by the second season, I was going, you guys are making this up as you go along. You know, this is like the stories I told to my sister when I was five years old. I know what it looks like when you’re making this up as you go along. You know, if you’re pretending that there’s something happening behind the scenes, be a little clearer or it does not hold my interest in spite of the fact that one of the actors in that show was really hot. But I need to that’s that’s one reason why I write murder mysteries. And even the fantasy novels that I wrote, they were all puzzle stories What’s going on? What’s happening here? When you discover this clue and then you discover that clue and you go, there’s something really weird happening here. What is it and how bad can it get? And that’s the type of story that holds my interest.

Barbara Hambly [00:36:27]:
Other people, different things hold their interest, but I like to have a clear idea and for me, that’s I need to have what happens first, what happens next, what does that lead to In between those events, we put in the character development, we put in the B story, we put in why the heroine does not trust this guy, we put in what kind of damage did this person take as a child that is causing him to act in this fashion, we put in history, we put in if we’re writing a fantasy, we put in history, we put in, you know, what kind of monsters are lurking in the forest, but I need to have a clear sequence of events so that I can move the story a lot.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:26]:
I think with TV, it’s even harder to get away with not knowing where you’re going than it is when you’re writing a novel. At least with a novel, you can go back and you can revise it when you’re done writing your first draft Yep. And figure out all of the pieces. But with a TV show, you don’t have that option.

Barbara Hambly [00:37:46]:
Yeah. It’s like if you’re making it up as you go along, you know, suddenly in season three, you have to explain that polar bear in season one.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:55]:
Yeah. I would never wanna try to do that with something like TV.

Barbara Hambly [00:37:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. Which, of course, is probably one reason why I gave up watching TV in 1972.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:12]:
Oh my. Well, since you do outline everything, have you ever had a situation where you were part of the way through, you know, fleshing out your outline and suddenly something happened that you didn’t expect according to that outline?

Barbara Hambly [00:38:27]:
The closest I’ve come to that was when I was writing Star Trek novels, and there was one Star Trek novel that got tangled up in the approvals loop, and then they fired the guy who was in the approvals loop, and then so it was like eighteen months between the time I turned in the outline and the time I got the approval. So I’m starting to write this novel following the outline, and then I reach this point in the outline that says, and then these four guys take over the enterprise. I’m going, how the hell did they do that? My goodness. That was clever. So that’s the closest I’ve come to that is that taught me that when I have that idea as I’m writing the outline, please write how that happened Generally I try to have a clear idea how stuff happens. And one way that I do this is timelining. And, of course, if you’re if you’re writing a murder mystery, you have to timeline. It’s like when you find out this clue and then you find out clue number two, how many days is it before particularly historicals? How long does it take for a letter to get from New Orleans to England and get a reply back? And what happens in those six weeks? You know, there’s technology lags.

Barbara Hambly [00:40:08]:
Mhmm. And, you know, and and that’s where you get into research. You know? How long would it take a steamboat to get from New Orleans to Vicksburg, and what happens during that time? How fast how how how long does it take to ride a horse from point a to point b, which is something I’m running into in fantasies all the time. And, of course, you you try to look this up and well, that depends on how strong the horse is and that depends on the condition of the roads and that depends on this and that. There’s a couple of wonderful books that people have written. One of them is, and I’m not coming up with the names of the authors at all, One of them is called Medieval Underpants, which is about stuff that people don’t think about or write about or research. It’s like, yeah, okay, what did you wear under those robes? Yeah. Another one is called What Kings Ate and What Wizards Drank, which goes into food logistics.

Barbara Hambly [00:41:23]:
How much food do you need if you’re gonna walk to Mordor? What a good question. Yeah. Well, they were gathering berries on the on the way. What season of the year was it? Were berries in season?

Nancy Norbeck [00:41:37]:
Mhmm.

Barbara Hambly [00:41:38]:
Well, they’d they’d hunt, they’d snare rabbits. Do you know how long it takes to snare a rabbit? What happens if you’ve got a troop of orcs following you? You don’t have time to hunt. How much water do you need before you start to pass out? If you’re marching an army, where do you need to camp that the horses who were pulling your artillery wagons are gonna be able to have water. And all these logistical things that twenty first century, we don’t think about. Right. Things like, you know, all of those TV shows in the sixties and seventies where the entire episode, our hero is trying to get to a telephone to call help. Use your cell for god’s sake. Yeah.

Barbara Hambly [00:42:35]:
What happens if your cell phone connection is out? You know, in Star Trek, they oh, there’s an ion storm and we can’t contact the ship. It’s like, you know, there there was another TV show, wonderful British TV show, where in order to use the transporter, you had to have a transporter bracelet. So, of course, if the guys writing the show wanted to put a ticking clock in there, first thing that happens is you you you lose that transporter bracelet. Mhmm. And so you gotta find the thing before you can get off the planet.

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:10]:
Right.

Barbara Hambly [00:43:13]:
So these are all writer tricks, you know, but they’re all they’re all stuff you have to think about if you’re writing a fantasy, if you’re writing a historical. Which is why it’s so much fun.

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:29]:
Oh, absolutely.

Barbara Hambly [00:43:32]:
One of the one of the things I’ve had tremendous fun when I was writing Star Wars novels, I wrote two Star Wars novels, and in both of them, I went into the cuisine of that world. You know, what what kind of food are they eating? I wrote a story about the chef in the palace of Jabba the Hutt, which has to be the most terrible job in the galaxy. Absolutely. The stuff that, yeah, we’re gonna save the galaxy, but, you know, we haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast and we’re we’re what happens when you have not had anything to eat since breakfast or maybe since lunch yesterday, how is that going to affect your reflexes in a fight? How is that going to affect, you know, if you’re dehydrated, how is that going to affect the story? So that’s that’s one of the directions that my creativity takes me in, which is one of the things that makes it so much fun, that makes creativity so much fun.

Nancy Norbeck [00:44:53]:
Yeah. It is like putting a puzzle together out of all of those little details.

Barbara Hambly [00:45:00]:
In a way, except I’m really terrible with puzzles. It’s it’s all world building. Mhmm.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:09]:
And you’ve you’ve written in so many different genres and fandoms and everything. Do you have a favorite? Or is that, like, asking you to pick your favorite child?

Barbara Hambly [00:45:24]:
I have opinions about parents who say, Oh, I love them all equally. One of my favorite novels that I’ve written was the one called The Bride of the Rat God, which takes place in Hollywood in the 1920s, and it’s about a silent film starlet who is being pursued by a giant Manchurian rat demon who was only visible to her three Pekingases. And of course, nobody bought this novel. Much later, I was able to start work on a series of murder mysteries that take place in the same place and time, 1924 Hollywood, but there are no fantasies, straight murder mysteries. I really enjoy doing those. I really enjoy the the series that started with the Silent Tower. The wizard is Antrig and his computer, computer nerd partner is Joanna. And one of the things when I switched from because I started out writing fantasy and kind of the bottom fell out of that market, and that’s when I switched over to writing historical murder mysteries.

Barbara Hambly [00:46:50]:
But a lot of people who were fans of the fantasies, you like the people, or at least I do. You know, you get involved in the lives of these people and wonder, okay, what happens after the end of the story? So about fifteen years ago, I started writing you know and there’s all these old fantasy series that I wrote in the eighties and nineties. No, no publisher is gonna pick up a a busted series. But I started out on a website and then I switched over to selling these on Amazon of writing short stories and novelettes about the further adventures of these people, And I’d sell them for $5 a pop because, you know, if I was not if I was not gonna sell them for at least something, I knew that I would not have the impetus to write them. Mhmm. So these are, you know, there’s a whole bunch of these on Amazon and I also, they’re also up on Draft2Digital. And it lets me go back to because I loved all my fantasy series. I love my historical murder mystery series.

Barbara Hambly [00:48:22]:
So the further adventure stories let me go back to when I have time and right now I’m always working on something and I’m frequently behind a deadline and sometimes it’s as I have aged, my writing has slowed down and it takes longer to produce things. But so I guess the short answer to the question is I’m not sure which is my favorite because I love so many of them. Oh, and I love the vampire series. I love doing my vampire series.

Barbara Hambly [00:49:07]:
I do this stuff because I love it. I can’t really say such and such is my favorite because, you know, I love working on all of them. I did three, I guess what you’d call women’s historical fiction, these big, big cinder block books. One of them was about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln that was suggested to me by a publisher. One of them was about they suggested doing the first three first ladies Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison and I said, I’m not going to talk about the first three first ladies without talking about Thomas Jefferson’s black mistress. And the weird thing was when I started researching, I discovered that both Dolley Madison and Abigail Adams knew Jefferson’s mistress, and Dolley Madison knew Martha Washington. It’s like these ladies knew each other, you know, they interacted, and that was a fun book to write. I don’t know whether it did well or not, but it was a fun book to write.

Barbara Hambly [00:51:13]:
And then I did a novel about the home front on this during the Civil War when when all the guys are away at at the war. What’s going on with the ladies at home? And what happens if you have two of them who are friends and who are living on opposite sides? And it’s an epistolary novel, it’s an epistolary novel of the letters they’re writing back and forth to each other. They’ve only met once or twice when the brother of one of them

Barbara Hambly [00:51:13]:
no, the the one of the lady’s husbands was formerly in love with the sister of the other lady. Okay. And that’s how they these two women met and then it’s an epistolary novel of going through the war and what’s happening in each of their lives. I have no idea whether that one did well or poorly, but again, I really enjoyed writing it. But, you know, they were very respectable women’s fiction, and then I went back to writing murder mysteries. Because, you know, there was not in all those three books, there was not a single fight scene.

Nancy Norbeck [00:51:59]:
Well, we can’t have that for too long.

Barbara Hambly [00:53:21]:
Well done. And in fact, because of writing the the second one about the, the first ladies, you know, there’s a genre of murder mysteries, of historical murder mysteries, the famous historical sleuth genre, where it’s like, you know, the murder mystery is being solved by Cicero or, Charlemagne or Abraham Lincoln or whatever. And I thought, nobody’s done one of these about John and Abigail Adams. And because John Adams was stationed over in Europe during most of the revolution, we have a whole pile of letters that he and Abigail wrote to each other, and Abigail was a very intelligent, well educated, sarcastic, entertaining woman, and I thought, let’s do some murder mysteries with John and Abigail, particularly Abigail, as the sleuths. So I did three of those under another name, and those were a lot of fun too because we knew those wouldn’t sell. So I I did them under another name. But you did that anyway.

Barbara Hambly [00:53:23]:
It’s like Harry Turtledove writing, four you know, the old style, historical fiction, like period pieces. And, of course, Harry being a scholar of Greek, he wanted to write the old the old style kind of things that L. Sprague de Camp used to write, so Anna Harry knew they would not sell. So he wrote a series of four wonderful novels about Hellenistic Hellenistic Greece, about these these two cousins who have trading ships and they go go on trading voyages through the Mediterranean, and, you know, have adventures and get into fights and it’s just they’re wonderful books, but he knew nobody was gonna buy them. And actually, they’ve had a pretty good market, I understand, but it’s it’s not bestseller material. Right. And the business part of creativity is if you’re going to be selling your books, and again, this was different this was different twenty years ago, but you if you’re selling, you know, if you want to get, large sales, you have to be a little careful what your market is. No.

Barbara Hambly [00:54:55]:
Don’t don’t write a book about Abigail Adams.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:03]:
Yeah. But, you know, if if you have written as many things in as many different genres as you have, and you have so much trouble coming up with a favorite because you love them all, I think you’ve done pretty well.

Barbara Hambly [00:55:23]:
Well, I hope so.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:24]:
Yeah. I think so. I think so. And I think that’s a great note to end on. So thank you so much. This has been such an interesting conversation. That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to Barbara Hambly and to you.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:43]:
Barbara’s links are in the show notes. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, and it is super, super easy, and it really makes a difference. If you enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend. Thank you so much. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at The Spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:18]:
See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.

What do you tell yourself when things get hard? Here’s a short take on a different perspective to help keep you on track.

Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks!

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Join my free creative community, The Spark! We celebrate each other’s creative courage, and I’ll be sharing programs for subscribers and listeners there in the coming months.

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I’d love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com, or contact me on Instagram, or Bluesky.

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Transcript: Rethinking “Hard”

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. The phrase we can do hard things is really, really popular right now, especially because Glennon Doyle titled her new book with that phrase. And I want to give you a little bit of perspective on that this week. Hi, it’s Nancy Norbeck with this week’s Creative Pep Talk. And I was thinking the other day, you know, a lot of the things that we do, a lot of the things that we learn are not the easiest things in the world to learn.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:45]:
Right? This is not news probably. But we don’t think a lot of the time about hard things that we have learned before, Because now we’ve learned them and they’re second nature. They’re easy. So we kind of discount them. And the example that came to mind because I was watching a kid is learning to walk. Right? Almost all of us know how to walk. We don’t think about it. It’s second nature.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:19]:
There is absolutely no need for our brains to put any energy into learning how to walk, into where we put our next step, unless we’re like on rocky terrain or something. For most of us, we don’t think about walking. If you’ve learned to drive, it’s very similar. Right? A lot of us reach our destination and realize that we must have done it on autopilot because we weren’t really paying a whole lot of attention to where we needed to turn and which lane we needed to be in. But walking, I think is an even better example because if you have ever watched a kid learn how to walk, it ain’t fun. Right? It is a struggle. It is a lot of getting up and falling back down and getting up and falling back down. Hopefully your driving experience did not include anything similar.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:09]:
And yet once that kid has learned it, that’s it. It’s in their brain done forever. Barring some sort of unforeseen circumstance, never has to learn how to walk again. So I want you to think about how that’s similar to your own life right now. What are you trying to do, trying to learn, trying to develop some proficiency at where you maybe aren’t making the progress that you hoped you would have making it as quickly as you wanted to. And probably along with that, you’re being really hard on yourself. You know, that kid who learns how to walk does not, after the fifth time they’ve fallen, say, screw it. I’m done.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:53]:
This is clearly not for me. This walking thing is overhyped and I’m not doing it. Right? The drive is there. They pick themselves up and they try again. Mom and dad grab their hands and try again with them. Right? And even if mom and dad weren’t there, I think that there’s a drive in there that is strong enough. The kid probably would figure it out on their own eventually. But as we get older, we don’t do that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:21]:
We look at things and we say, man, this is hard. This is hard. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I’m good enough for this. And after we stumble once or twice, a lot of us decide, that’s it. I’m done. This is not for me. Now I’m not saying that there is not a law of diminishing returns.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:39]:
There are some things that really aren’t for us. But, you know, think about that kid who’s learning to walk. If you’re having a hard time with something right now, think about how many times that kid falls flat on their face, gets up and starts again. If this is your three hundredth time, and it’s fair to ask if this is really for you. Right? But a lot of things we just don’t stick around long enough to do. And we don’t acknowledge that they’re tough. Right? For us walking is easy. For that kid walking is really, really hard.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:13]:
It’s okay for things to be hard. It’s okay for us to fall on our faces and pick ourselves up and try again. That’s the only way any of us ever actually get anywhere. So if this is you, I hope that this gives you a different way to look at whatever it is that you are attempting to do right now and to be kinder to yourself because all of life is a learning adventure. So I hope you will consider that idea and I will see you next time. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at The Spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:01]:
See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:45]:
If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.

Terise Lang is a certified life, health, and wellness coach with a lifelong interest in and love of all things creative. She joins me today for a wide-ranging discussion of the power of creativity, including the way she uses creativity in her work, how our creativity is so often socialized out of us in the name of more conformity, our tendency to define creativity too narrowly and then decide that we don’t have it, the hidden creativity in fields like software engineering and cooking, how managers unconsciously limit their staff’s creativity while trying to foster it, the impact of artificial intelligence on our creative lives, and more.

Episode breakdown:

00:00 Introduction
04:21 Creativity gets socialized out, but it’s dormant, not gone.
08:16 Everyone’s unique perspective shapes creativity, even in simple family plays.
12:31 Start simply; creativity can revive with sketching, coloring, small experiments.
16:57 Software engineers, tech support, and problem-solving require creativity daily.
21:12 Recognize personal talents; downplaying strengths limits growth and joy.
25:24 Curiosity is essential—asking questions and exploring fuels creativity.
30:01 Coaching methods benefit from creativity; adapting routines yields effective results.
34:42 Tapping uses creativity; modifying it improves outcomes for clients.
38:56 Taking breaks, doing creative activities, and doodling refresh the mind.
44:14 Act your age debate; enjoying creativity is ageless and joyful.
48:13 Managers must encourage and credit staff creativity to boost morale.
52:47 Joy and growth flourish when creative self-expression is valued.
55:43 Society elevates machines, but AI can’t replace human creativity.
01:00:42 AI uses resources, regurgitates information, can’t replicate unique human writing.

Show Links: Terise Lang

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Transcript: Terise Lang

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Terise Lang is a certified life health and wellness coach with a lifelong interest in and love of all things creative. She joins me today for a wide ranging discussion of the power of creativity, including the way she uses creativity in her work, how creativity is so often socialized out of us in the name of more conformity, our tendency to define creativity too narrowly and then decide we don’t have it, the hidden creativity in fields like software engineering and cooking, how managers unconsciously limit their staff’s creativity while trying to foster it, the impact of artificial intelligence on our creative lives, and more. Here’s my conversation with Therese Lang. Therese, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.

Terise Lang [00:01:05]:
Well, thank you, Nancy. I am excited to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this for ever since we booked it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:10]:
Me, too. So I start everyone with the same question. Were you a creative kid, or did you discover your creative side later on?

Terise Lang [00:01:18]:
I was creative from the jump, and I had fun. Lots of fun, being creative. You know? Kids are creative anyway, but, I just knew. I mean, as I came alive whenever I did anything creative. That’s with words, art, you know, just doing things in quirky ways just to try

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:38]:
them out. You know? Sure. So was there a particular thing that really drew you in as a kid, or was it pretty much across the board?

Terise Lang [00:01:47]:
I it it was pretty much across the board. I did like I do did a lot of, like, drawing, painting. You know, I wasn’t great at it, but I I enjoyed it. I like looking at the colors, and my mom was artistically talented. And, I I also she taught me a little bit of the string arts, you know, little bit of crocheting, knitting, that kind of stuff. I’m not good at it. I didn’t stick with it. But I did do, things like embroidery and, and, also, you know, we as a family, like, we would do these little silly little plays, like, me, me and my siblings.

Terise Lang [00:02:22]:
Right? We’d get together, and we would just just like a couple of times, we would, put a little play together, and my parents, god bless them, would sit there and watch what we put together. You know? And but it was fun. And, I mean, we and we didn’t have much. Right? We were poor, But we were creative. Right? And, like, we used bags. We I mean, hefty bags make fantastic capes, by the way. Oh, yeah. And, you know, and boxes, and it was fun.

Terise Lang [00:02:51]:
It’s it was just and I that’s what I like about it, that as an adult, you gotta remember, it can be fun to be creative. You know? Yes. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:01]:
Yes. And, you know, it’s funny when you talk about making up shows and putting them on. I remember doing that as a kid. I’ll bet an awful lot of people who are listening to this remember doing that as a kid. I think, you know, probably more kids than not did something like that. You know, it’s not just the drawing and the writing and the music. It’s the, you know, hey, let’s put on a show, which is not just the cliched thing out of the movies from the fifties and sixties. Right? Everybody, you know, everybody’s making up their own play and putting on their own show, even if it’s just for your grandparents in the basement on Sunday afternoon, which is when we did it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:45]:
You know? I mean

Terise Lang [00:03:47]:
Poor grandparents. I I have to give parents and grandparents a shout out here for sitting through that. Oh, yeah. But they were just enjoying being with their kids, right, and watching them play.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:56]:
Right. And yet I’m also thinking it’s so easy to be the adult, which you don’t realize as a kid, sitting there going, oh, Lord, what do I have to sit through now? And yet what that kid is doing is amazing. And it’s so easy to lose track of how amazing that is as an adult.

Terise Lang [00:04:21]:
Isn’t that the truth? It really is. Because we kinda I I I call it getting socialized out of our natural creativity. Yeah. You know? And, I mean, there’s a there’s a point. There’s a purpose for structure and guidance, but then, you know, for goodness sakes, let kids dream and imagine. And it’s it is and those make the better innovators later on. Right? Because it’s like any other muscle. The more you use it, the better you are at using it, and it’s fun.

Terise Lang [00:04:50]:
I keep on emphasizing that because to me, that’s what it’s it’s about enjoyment, and it brings joy. It brings joy to you and whoever’s enjoying whatever creative thing you’re doing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:01]:
Right. And I think, you know, when when the creativity gets trained out of us, the fun gets trained out of us too. And I don’t think we realize just how true that is until we manage to do something consciously or unconsciously. You know, we end up in this situation where suddenly we’re allowed to have fun again. And it feels kind of alien when we haven’t done it for a while, and there can even be this sense of, you know, kind of looking around the room, like, am I allowed to do this? Yeah.

Terise Lang [00:05:35]:
You know? It’s how what are people gonna think? Mhmm. You know? You you have to get over that. What are people gonna think? Well, they’re gonna think what they’re gonna think. You know? You can be perfectly sensible and logical, and they’re still gonna think what they’re gonna think. So you might as well have fun being who you are.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:49]:
Exactly. Exactly. And who cares what they think? You know? We’re we’re trained to care.

Terise Lang [00:05:58]:
Well, you know what? The the teenage years, though, are particularly precarious because you got the hormones going in. You know, all the adolescent thing. Everybody wants to fit in, whatever. Not everybody, but most of them wanna fit in. I knew some teens that I that I interacted with who they loved being different. You know? It’s like, I’m I’m not like everybody else. Most of them, they wanna fit in, and they get into that. And then, of course, when you go into the working world and you are given all these rules and these standards and you have to and then it just after a while, you’d are you yourself, or you’re just a well trained drone? And so then you yeah.

Terise Lang [00:06:34]:
You know what I mean? You get you lose that. You don’t lose it. What you forget it. You kind of put it on the side. You know? And but you can bring it back out again. You can reactivate that. And it it can change your life. It literally can.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:52]:
And the trap is that you think you’ve lost it and you think it’s gone forever. It’s not. It’s still in there.

Terise Lang [00:07:00]:
It’s dormant. Temporarily dormant.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:02]:
Right. You just have to realize that you can get it back and take the steps to do that and have the faith that that it’s still there, because it is. Yeah. You know, it’s sort of sort of like, you know, my high school French teacher always used to tell me that my high school French was still in my head somewhere. You know, it’s the same kind of thing. Like, you know, you can you can get it back. And I look at French stuff every once in a while, and I still recognize words, so I think she was probably right, you know? Absolutely. And it just takes the effort to go and bring that stuff back up to the surface.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:40]:
And it it is an effort in part because you are fighting that training that has tried to turn you into the same widget as the person next to you at work. We are not widgets. We were never supposed to be widgets.

Terise Lang [00:07:58]:
No. No. That that that kills the everybody’s unique. Right. And you and you don’t wanna lose that uniqueness. Everyone is unique. And, you know, it it can be a little scary, you know, when people realize, oh, you’re you’re different. Maybe maybe you’re within a certain group, and that group’s pretty homogeneous.

Terise Lang [00:08:16]:
Right? And you you’ve got everybody kind of feels, the same way about something. But even then, each one of them feels uniquely similar about about that thing. It’s like when you have a a a still life, you know, they put it on the table. They they they’ll have a vase, and they’ll have fruit. They’ll have piece of cloth. And, you have a bunch of artists, and they’re very good artists, but every single picture will be different.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:44]:
Yes.

Terise Lang [00:08:45]:
Right? Everyone. And that’s them using their their perception and their creative take on it. And yet you can still recognize what it is. Mhmm. But it’s with with each one with their own creative flavor. I just love that. Recipes. You know? Mhmm.

Terise Lang [00:09:01]:
I I have a recipe for ginger cookies that I I started out with, like, a basic recipe, and I’m like, I wonder if I did this and did that and did the other. And every time I make those things, they’re kinda labor intensive, but people, they they’re just gone. They’re just I had a lady friend, and I said she said, can I take a couple home? And I said, yeah. She said, I ended up taking, like, a dozen of them. So, you know, because I was willing to to say, you know what? I wonder if I did this or did that. And you know what? Kitchen disasters happen. So what if you try a recipe and it’s not who cares? Who cares? On the other hand, you might have discovered something you really enjoy, especially, you know, in my field that when it’s healthy and enjoyable. Right? Right.

Terise Lang [00:09:45]:
And and you were willing to just take, you know, try a different combination. You know, go crazy. You know, put put pepper and something in there. You know? Right. So

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:54]:
Right. People don’t realize, and I’ve said this before on this show, how creative cooking is. You know? Baking, you have to be a little more precise with or your cake is probably not gonna rise. But

Terise Lang [00:10:06]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:07]:
But cooking, you can really play with. And and, you know, I I have known people who will walk into the grocery store and see some ingredients that they’ve never seen before and pick it up and say, I’m gonna take this home and try it and maybe walk over to somebody, especially like at an ethnic grocery store and say, what is this and how do you cook it? Ask a couple questions, go home and just play with it and end up with something amazing, which I frankly think is magic because I don’t think I could do that. But some people have that particular talent to just make something out of something they’ve never seen before.

Terise Lang [00:10:44]:
Or just a natural curiosity that they wanna satisfy and it works out.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:49]:
Right. And so, you know, you can you can do that. And you could end up with a disaster the time, but it could be that you were intrigued enough that you’re gonna go try it again. Exactly. You know? I mean, there’s there’s all sorts of stuff that you can do in a kitchen. You know? Those famous chefs you see on TV didn’t get there because they opened up their Betty Crocker book and stuck to the recipe every time. Absolutely. They would not be where they are because they

Terise Lang [00:11:15]:
would be like every the cookie cutter, coke. Right?

Nancy Norbeck [00:11:18]:
Right.

Terise Lang [00:11:19]:
Exactly like everybody. Yeah. And, anyways, so I think yeah. That’s fun to me is trying they have different things in the kitchen that are healthy and yet they taste good. And, and I like the using different colors, like, when they have the bell peppers and you use the different color, but bell peppers, it’s just it’s so pretty. And even when I go into a a produce area, you see all the different colors. And I can see why a lot of artists get inspired, you know, to to draw them or whatever. They’re they’re visually appealing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:11:49]:
Sure.

Terise Lang [00:11:49]:
And, you know, that’s and a lot of times, they tell people, you know, just start with something simple. Yeah. Just start with something simple. Mhmm. Just try if you kinda as, my husband, he used to draw a lot, and he says he hasn’t done it in a while. And I said, you still got hands. By the grace of God, you got hands and eyes. And, you know, I said you can start with something you like to use pastels or something.

Terise Lang [00:12:11]:
You know? Not not like like oil paints or or water paints even more tricky because it, you know, it runs down. But just try a design, you know, just sketch something out, you know. So I got him a sketch pad for Christmas, you know. Hey, you know, go ahead and sketch it. And and what’s the worst that can happen? He doesn’t like what he draws. He draws something else. You know? Mhmm. And those coloring books.

Terise Lang [00:12:31]:
Right? Those that are, you know, meant to relax, but nobody colors those the same way. You know? That’s the creativity. Right? You’re gonna take a flower or a floral kind of design and just do different things, different, color palettes. Right? And it’s it just opens every time you do something like that. For one thing, you’re using a a little more of your brain. Right?

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:55]:
Mhmm.

Terise Lang [00:12:55]:
And so it it does, like, I know some tech people. Oh, I’m I’m technical. I I’m not creative. You’re a software engineer. You are incredibly creative. You are creating things that have never done been done before. Right. I mean, right, you know, games and, or just just processes that go through a system that’s never been set up before.

Terise Lang [00:13:20]:
That’s called creativity. You know? Right. And that came from your curiosity of if I wanna do this and I wanna end up with that result, what do I do? You you have to be creative. And then two, I like creative teams. Like, you might have somebody who’s got a strength in one area and someone has a strength in another area, and they combine forces. Right. You know? And and that’s when you really get, I’d say to me, brilliant ideas. But it doesn’t have to be anything fancy.

Terise Lang [00:13:51]:
You don’t have to be, you know, there there are not, like John Singer Sargent. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, but his portraits I like his portraits. Well, a lot of people drew people, but they didn’t look at all like that. Toulouse Lautrec, completely different. Pablo Picasso, completely different. Mhmm. You know? And they distinguished themselves by just they drew what they saw, and they just they just let it happen. And some I love the paintings too that show emotion.

Terise Lang [00:14:21]:
That’s miraculous.

Nancy Norbeck [00:14:22]:
Oh, yeah.

Terise Lang [00:14:23]:
Because all you have is a piece of paper, and you just made it move. You know? So anyway, you can tell I can go. I know.

Nancy Norbeck [00:14:32]:
We we could go on forever. But and and I wanna go back for a to what you were saying about software engineers because I I interviewed a couple years ago a friend of mine from high school who is a software engineer, and it’s part of the reason that I had him on the show because, obviously, it’s a creative thing. You know? And I I worked in tech support for a long time, and you cannot be a good tech support person. And in recent years, I’ve had my more than my fair share of encounters. It often feels with people who are in tech support now who don’t seem to understand this without being curious and creative about solving a problem. You cannot just go through a flowchart of standard questions and not put any thought into it and not, you know, ask questions and be curious and make an effort to try to figure the thing out. I mean, to me, it always felt like a personal challenge. Why is this thing not working right for this person? Right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:34]:
Any kind of problem solving is inherently creative if you hope to actually solve it, unless it’s something that’s really obvious that’s come up a thousand times before.

Terise Lang [00:15:44]:
And they’ve already automated a process or they can show you what they Right. But but but then again, you might be the person who they show you that and they go, oh, that’s great. But I have a bay a way it might work better. Right. So even right? Even if it’s established, that person might say, you know what? We did something like this over there, but it we save time by doing such and such. You know? Because they were willing to be creative and look at at other ways of doing it. So, anyway, I

Nancy Norbeck [00:16:15]:
didn’t need you to. No. It’s okay. But it’s just, like, all of those things, when people like that tell me that they’re not creative, drives me nuts. I mean, I my father is an engineer. You cannot tell me that engineers are not creative, especially because he he’s a lifelong choral singer. He’s part of the reason that I ended up becoming a lifelong choral singer, and I will tell you, and and we talked about this on the the last show, there were so many engineers in my college choir that it was kind of mind boggling. There is a huge overlap between engineers and musicians.

Nancy Norbeck [00:16:57]:
And my dad is also, it turns out a great floral arranger. You know, there, there is not this, this split that people seem to think there is, oh, you’re an engineer. You are, you know, just purely left brained. That’s not how it works. Yeah. It’s not how it works. And so, you know, I I would love it if people stopped thinking that you’re either all or nothing, left brained, right brained. And I know that the brain science doesn’t strictly work that way anymore, but that’s how most people think of it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:32]:
So that’s what we’re going with here. But, you know, like, nobody is all or nothing. You have a left brain and you have a right brain, and they work together, and so do you. You know, that that’s how it is. If you solve any problem during your day, whether it’s, oh, I started this recipe and it turns out I don’t have the cumin, so what am I gonna do instead? Or I need a better filing system in my job at work where I’m an office manager. You are being creative. You are coming up with something new. It’s like you said before, you’re creating something that didn’t exist before.

Nancy Norbeck [00:18:13]:
So give yourself the credit for being creative, please. Please stop defining yourself out of your own creativity.

Terise Lang [00:18:23]:
Yeah. And I I agree with you. You know, you were talking about like a filing system. I I remember hiring a guy that we we hired him to do the filing. We showed him what we had set up. In in ten minutes, he had figured out a better way to do so. Ten minutes. Because he didn’t go in there thinking, okay.

Terise Lang [00:18:42]:
I’ll do exactly what I’m told, and I’m not gonna I’m not gonna go outside the lot. He just said, oh, boom. And my my my boss didn’t believe it. I said, ten minutes, he’s already got it working better in there. So, and that that to me is I remember that because I said, this is a creative guy, and he was creative. He was magical, and the kitchen, by the way, was like a pastry, which is not easy to cook. And, but that’s because he would do things and just go, wow. You know? He would, like, put designs and stuff, and, it would you would have a simple thing like a muffin, and he would make it look like, you know, something you’d serve the queen.

Terise Lang [00:19:18]:
And I just loved it. I just loved it. So how so much fun to see that, you know, and fun to see the look in his eyes. This is spirit enhancing. I mean, when you are in that creative mode and acknowledging that you’re in that creative mode, right, permitting yourself, it’s like, wow. The world your your corner of the world suddenly got bigger. You know? It suddenly opened up, and it it it just feels good. And that’s how you know you’re in that, that mode.

Terise Lang [00:19:50]:
It feels like, wow. This is and it doesn’t have to be the only thing you do. Maybe you’re very you’re a good mathematician. I know, well, someone amazing mathematician, and boy can he play a piano. And you can kinda see the intersection, though, right, the counting and the but but he’s just but he he creates his own musical pieces. So you know what I’m saying? That is that’s that’s not mathematical. That’s just being creative and enjoying it. So, you know and I love to see people enjoy stuff.

Terise Lang [00:20:24]:
I do.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:25]:
Yeah. I think that’s a a flow thing too. People who who improvise music, I think, tap into a flow state that I would love to understand more. Because that looks like magic to me too. And I don’t necessarily think that it is, but it’s it’s a whole level of operation that I I say that, and yet, you know, I’ve had moments of flow when I’m writing that are probably pretty similar. But because it’s music, it just seems more magical to me. So

Terise Lang [00:20:57]:
Yeah. And to people who do not enjoy writing at all, what you do seems magical. Telling you. You know, when I’m writing, it’s like, oh, I’m glad you’re doing that. I hate writing. Because it’s not, you know, it’s not it’s not for everyone. Like, I love words. I love writing.

Terise Lang [00:21:12]:
It’s to me, it’s like, oh. And some people, they they cringe. I’ll tell you something that, I don’t know if my creativity could be improved in this area, but I I, I’m not good with the sense of direction at all. Mhmm. And my my husband, you know, he said, you you just need to work at it, and I’m better at it. He’s he’s amazing. You could put him in another country, spin him around with a blindfold on, and he could find his way. I’ve never seen and he doesn’t think he’s very bright.

Terise Lang [00:21:39]:
I’m like, that’s a high level skill. And he will figure out four or five different ways, which is, to me, being creative of of getting to a point, of getting from point a to point b. And, you know, I I just I wish people would would realize recognize that what they have is is a gift and recognize the scope of their gift and stop limiting it. You might have a wider scope tomorrow.

Nancy Norbeck [00:22:08]:
Right. Right. And, you know, as you’re saying that, I I I’m flashing back to moments as a kid where I think, you know, with the best intentions in

Terise Lang [00:22:19]:
the

Nancy Norbeck [00:22:19]:
world, people hear a kid saying something like, you know, oh, but I’m really good at this, And they immediately shut it down because they don’t want the kid to get a a swelled head, big ego, you know, whatever. And yet, like, I understand that impulse, but at the same time, it teaches that kid to devalue their own talent. And that’s how we end up with people who think that they’re not creative or that they don’t have a fabulous sense of direction and don’t give themselves credit for their particular talents. And I think somehow we need to strike a better balance there. Like, you don’t want the kid who’s walking around bragging about their skills all the time

Terise Lang [00:23:07]:
because they’re downsized. Happy medium. There’s gotta be medium where they have wonderful self esteem, where they they like who they are, they love who they are, they know that they have, you know, special talents, and yet they don’t they don’t put other people down or make them feel uncomfortable if they don’t have that same kind of thing. And there is a way to do that. It’s it’s work. Right? It’s it’s like anything else. But that that it’s very easy to go into the, like you said, one or two. Mhmm.

Terise Lang [00:23:36]:
Left or right. Yeah. Yeah. And but it’s it’s easy, but is it enjoyable? I mean, does it give you dimension in your life?

Nancy Norbeck [00:23:46]:
Right. Right. You know, we all need to be better, I think, at taking credit for the things that we do well. And ironically, a lot of the people who tend to wanna grab credit for things often don’t really deserve it.

Terise Lang [00:24:05]:
Yeah. There’s that side of it too. Yeah. And then you go, okay. You know, that obviously, that’s their their perception. You know, you may not share it. But Right. But I know what you mean.

Terise Lang [00:24:17]:
I do know what you mean. And then, I don’t know. To me, if you wanna have joy in your life, real joy, then you you need to explore all you can about yourself and about the world around you. And creativity is a way to do that. Mhmm. You know? Going, being curious about things, asking questions. You know? And sometimes you ask a question. Like, when I visited London one time and I asked this, this guy about a building, He knew the whole dang history of that building, who had built it when he had built.

Terise Lang [00:24:52]:
I had no idea that he had that in him, but I think part of creativity is being willing to reach out and ask questions. And, you know, I tell people, I don’t care if you think I’m dumb for asking a question. I’m gonna ask it. Or someone says, well, didn’t I tell you that before? Uh-huh. I need you to remind me because I don’t remember. So what was the answer? You know? And by being curious and by being, just just wanting to live your life fully. I mean, why in life is tough enough. Right? We got plenty of challenges.

Terise Lang [00:25:24]:
Oh, I need to go into that. So why not when you have the opportunity to explore and to learn and to broaden yourself? It’s you know, whether or not you can do the thing that you’ve discovered, you might find, I don’t really have that. I I remember trying to make one of those, dream catchers and the Native American thing. And this one lady was tickled. She could just I mean, in, like, fifteen minutes, she had this beautiful, rather intricate design. And I had I was doing everything but swallowing string trying to help her. But you know what? If I were to stick with it, right, and work with it but I’m still curious about about you know, I was curious about the meaning of the dream catcher and also the the variety and the the beauty of of people who create them. So I didn’t lose anything by exploring it at all, and I met wonderful people too.

Terise Lang [00:26:19]:
So Right. It you know, there’s all that I don’t I hate to see people miss opportunities and to to not have everything that they can, whether or not you have money. I mean, some people have more, some people have less. That’s not the the point. The point is how rich is your life? And and by being creative, by being allowing yourself to be creative, allowing people to be creative around you. Look how your your world you know, I I was I I guess I got that from my dad because he he was always exposing us to things that, you know, from we did we couldn’t travel there, but he taught us about other cultures. You know? And I I’ll I will never be able to, thank him for that. That’s a gift.

Terise Lang [00:27:01]:
You know? Absolutely.

Nancy Norbeck [00:27:03]:
And and that’s part of why, you know, I think curiosity and creativity overlap so much. I don’t think you can Now I feel like I’m gonna make a blanket statement and I shouldn’t do that. But I was gonna say, I don’t think you can be creative if you’re not curious. You know, I think there’s there’s so much that that is fueled by curiosity

Terise Lang [00:27:25]:
in

Nancy Norbeck [00:27:25]:
the creative world. You know, you’ve gotta be asking questions. You have to be wondering about things in order for that creative spark to get the fuel that it needs to produce whatever kind of creative thing you wanna do, which is, you know, why I titled this show Follow Your Curiosity because it’s easier to follow curiosity. You can’t really follow creativity, but you sure can follow curiosity.

Terise Lang [00:27:50]:
So You

Nancy Norbeck [00:27:50]:
can. And

Terise Lang [00:27:50]:
I can. And I don’t I don’t ever regret being curious about things and asking and and watching people do things. You know, and I I, when I was in New York, I saw this guy do this painting, and I’ve never seen painting like that. I’m like, what are you using? What’s your medium? And he pointed to this can of stuff, and he said, I’m not gonna tell you what it is. It’s my own proprietary formula. But it looked like he was painting with titanium steel where, you know, you have all those different that’s what I’m saying. All those different colors that manifest. Amazing.

Terise Lang [00:28:21]:
Because I guarantee you, he’s a creative person. He allowed himself. He he probably said, well, everybody’s, you know, working with this and that. I’m gonna try this. And he probably he he might have had, I don’t know, twenty, fifty, you know, bombs before he got it right, but I’ve never seen anything like that before or since. So, you know, and that was a gift to me to see that’s like, wow.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:44]:
Mhmm. Sure. Well and it sounds to me like your parents really encouraged your creativity and your curiosity, which is a huge gift too.

Terise Lang [00:28:54]:
Yeah. They did. They did. That or let’s say it this way. They didn’t get in the way. They let me they let me me do my creative stuff, and they’re they’re both creative too. And it it took me a while to well, my mom was always like I said, she she was sculpting. She was painting.

Terise Lang [00:29:09]:
She was, you know, doing the string arts and all that and very creative in the kitchen. Oh, what a cook. And, my my dad was more the cerebral person, but he was always reading about people he didn’t know about. And he was always looking into different, you know, philosophies. And he was always, and he took us to as many, like, free or, you know, community arts things. So he was always exposing us to different creative things. So he had that yearning, I think, for that kind of creative stuff And, because he was always curious too. So maybe I maybe it’s a it’s I have the curiosity gene or the curiosity gene.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:52]:
And you’ve got a lot of exposure, which is great.

Terise Lang [00:29:55]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:56]:
Yeah. So how did all of that lead you to what you’re doing now?

Terise Lang [00:30:01]:
Well, I’m telling you right now, it it has everything to do with what I’m doing now. I I specialize as a life health and wellness coach. I specialize in tapping routines, but I and, you know, there’s a standard procedure. Mhmm. Mine’s a little different, again, because I looked to see what was like, I tried it on myself, of course, and then with others. Others did it with me. And I found that some things were working better than others. And so that’s where the creativity came in.

Terise Lang [00:30:32]:
I do it a little differently, and I ask more questions, before and and after, the process. And when I do it, I always ask them, okay. I like, I do one round and I go, yeah, how does it how did that feel? You know, we do calibration at the beginning and the end. And if if they don’t feel any difference, then I’m like, okay. I’m gonna do it again. But so far, they’ve all gotten results in the round, and I think it’s because I was willing to to look at a different slightly different ways of doing it. And also when it comes to just figuring out different ways to give messages to people who, let’s say, if you’re gonna talk to them about eating right. And, you know, like, I’m I’m in Atlanta, which is, you know, it’s the southern, foods that they eat.

Terise Lang [00:31:22]:
Most of it that puts them in the hospital. Mhmm. So how do you talk to people, right, about, yes, you know, these foods are tasty and they’re traditional and you associate them with family. There are creative, healthy ways of cooking that stuff where you still have basically the same kind of menu, but it’s and it’s done in a healthier way. And I by creating some, I said, you know, why don’t you try this? Why don’t you try that? And without spending extra money, if if you know, sometimes you gotta spend them. You gotta invest a little bit.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:52]:
Mhmm.

Terise Lang [00:31:53]:
But, that that that kind of thing. And, also, just when it comes to, you know, when I’m writing, my newsletters and I’m thinking about different topics and how I want to present them, in a way that that people will understand. They’ll get some value out of it, and they won’t feel talked down to. You know? These people don’t wanna be, you know, are you lectured to? You should do this, and you’re doing that wrong, because that’s that’s not fulfilling. That’s not life enhancing. But if they can learn and go you know? And I I invite questions, and I found that that, being willing to look at their specific take on it and maybe expand it a little bit, you know, that kind of creativity has worked for me.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:39]:
Could could you go back a little bit and explain what tapping is? Because I don’t think it’s ever come up on this show before, and I don’t know if everybody knows what that is.

Terise Lang [00:32:48]:
Okay. So it is a method actually being used by a lot of counselors and some medical doctors now. It’s it’s based on science. You have a small little, organ called well, it was a small little piece, by the pituitary base of the brain called, the amygdala. And it’s kind of an emotion center. And so what you do and I kind of compare it to when you’re in the womb and you feel your mother’s consistent heartbeat. You know how comforting that is? Mhmm. Well, you tap different points of the body.

Terise Lang [00:33:19]:
You know, there’s there’s, like, nine different points that you tap. And, actually, there’s more than that, but this is like a basic set. And you’re tapping along meridians or energy lines in the body similar to when you have, acupuncture. Right? You know how they use those meridians. Well, it’s similar to that, and you’re tapping. And when you’re tapping, you’re calming that emotion center down. And then you are you start with what you want to improve, what you wanna have, what you wanna take care of, and you do several rounds. And then you you go into, you know, you start with the negative, what you what you wanna, you know, straighten out, then you go with affirmations, and you keep repeating.

Terise Lang [00:34:07]:
And when you tap on these points, it just it calms you down. And I think what happens is when you’re you allow your body to calm down and your mind can work in the best way that it can, you start to see things differently. When you start to see them differently, you think differently, you feel different. And they they usually say, I feel different than when I started this. So it’s very powerful. And I always recommend you just work on one issue at a time. You know, you just focus on the one. And I’ve I’ve done it half an hour, basically, usually.

Terise Lang [00:34:42]:
And, it’s very it’s very effective. And when I have something that I have to deal with and I notice myself getting all upset, breathing exercises are fine, and I usually sometimes I start with that, but then I do the tapping routine. And it’s interesting too because it has a healing component that I hadn’t recognized, because this lady, at the end of a a session, she said, I’ve had a pain in one of my wrists for six years, and it just went away. So it was associated with some some emotional thing that she had going. I’d now that we weren’t even focusing on that. Right? So it’s it’s powerful, and I love to use things that where you use your own mind and body, and you use this little external, especially, like, when it comes to medicines and stuff. Right? Sometimes no. Don’t go off your medicines.

Terise Lang [00:35:27]:
Sometimes you have medicines for specific conditions.

Nancy Norbeck [00:35:30]:
Right.

Terise Lang [00:35:30]:
But when you can do something naturally that works with your and that is a true mind and body exercise. It so is writing. Just like when you journal and you’re, you know, you’re not only thinking, but you’re writing, it’s it’s kinda similar to that. So that’s what tapping is. And, I’ve done several you know, every time I do it, I, you know, I leave it open to, will it work or will it not? See, that’s another thing. Because if it doesn’t, I that gives me an opportunity to see what can I do differently to make it more effective? So I never stop being willing to, to be creative in how I do something. And that has allowed me to to find some pretty effective methods. So, I hope that hope that explains Yeah.

Terise Lang [00:36:16]:
Basically.

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:17]:
It it’s something that I’ve heard of and used off and on for probably, I don’t know, twenty years now, but I don’t know how how well known it is. I’ve I’ve heard more people mention it recently, so I think maybe maybe it’s getting out there. It’s one of those things that for me, there there’s, you know, a a category of things that I kind of falls into the, I don’t know if this works or how it works, but it tends to make me feel better, so who cares? Exactly.

Terise Lang [00:36:48]:
Exactly. Yeah. You know, the overthinking, honest to Pete. I think it calms down overthinking. I really do. I think there are things you can do that calm down your overthinking because I I I’ll be the to say I’ve done plenty of overthinking in my life. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:04]:
Yeah. I I have been a champion overthinker as many people who know me could tell you if I don’t tell you Yeah. If nothing else, it it’s a great way to, you know, take a break from whatever pattern of overthinking is happening for you and and kind of, you know, do something that grounds you in your body and and gets you out of that at least briefly so that you can kind of step back and breathe. And with luck, you know, maybe the time or the time you go through it, you know, you’re able to step back and say, okay. You know, I can look at this differently, or I can go do something else for a while, and then I can come back to it in a better spot to deal with this other thing. Either one, like I said, not arguing. They’re both beneficial.

Terise Lang [00:38:01]:
Exactly. And sometimes, you know, just sitting in a chair, just doing nothing, you know, just for ten minutes or so. Just, you know, no, rules, no pressure, and just and then go back to work because it does it clears you. You know, you you you don’t wanna, like, study, for instance, more than forty five minutes, then you take fifteen minutes for your your mind to process it. Otherwise, you’re not even gonna learn that much. You know? Yeah. So, you know, the mind is an incredible one of God’s incredible gifts, and we can do so much with it, so much. And and being aware, I know, of our body and our mind.

Terise Lang [00:38:38]:
So, yeah, I like I love doing stuff that when I can see the results and someone is like, yay. You know? Because when you don’t do stuff to to not have any impact, it’s like, what’s the point? You’ve wasted the person’s time, and time is precious.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:54]:
It’s they

Terise Lang [00:38:54]:
can’t get back, can’t buy back.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:56]:
That’s right. That’s absolutely right. Yeah. And and I think it’s so fascinating, you know, when you’re talking about needing to take a break. You know, especially in in American culture, it’s kind of drilled into us that we should never need a break because we’re like machines and we’re not machines. No. You know, thinking that we are

Terise Lang [00:39:19]:
America and Japan in particular, they are known for that. Yeah. And and and also known for an incredible amount of stress related illnesses.

Nancy Norbeck [00:39:29]:
Yes.

Terise Lang [00:39:29]:
You know, it’s not worth it. No. But taking time out to do something creative, you know, maybe get one of those coloring books and, you know, take a ten minute break and just start coloring in. You know? It calmed you down and made you happy when you were a kid. You know? You’re you you of course, you’ve matured, but that that, feeling alive and colors are also therapeutic. So it’s

Nancy Norbeck [00:39:52]:
it’s just, you

Terise Lang [00:39:53]:
know so you have the mind body thing where you’re actually drawing and you had the colors and you can see the picture forming. How can that not feel like make you feel like you are creating something? Right. And and and then if you go back to if what you were doing was creative and you kinda hit a wall for a minute, it’ll kinda loosen that up. And, I mean, I I see no downsides to doing something like that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:18]:
No. And and, you know, there is always the option to deliberately make something bad and and get out of your own way that way.

Terise Lang [00:40:27]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:28]:
You know? Yeah. Just, you know, I mean

Terise Lang [00:40:30]:
Turn off that critic. Correct.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:33]:
And and, you know, as really good. As I’ve said to people, like, maybe you don’t have a coloring book or colored pencils or anything like that handy. Maybe all you have is a couple of paper clips and a scrap of paper. That’s plenty. Oh. You can still make something out of that. It doesn’t have to be good. It can be funny.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:52]:
It can be strange. It can you know, you don’t have to understand it. But as long as you’re willing to make something out of

Terise Lang [00:40:59]:
it, you’re succeed. That reminds me of when I was creating a wardrobe of paper clip jewelry. Like, earrings, necklace. Right? It’s what I thought this is cool. You know? But that’s it’s it’s the creative process. It is the process, and allowing the process allows you to, it’s not it’s not just one thing. You can once you get into the habit of being creative, allowing it permitting yourself, that’s a very important thing. Right.

Terise Lang [00:41:29]:
Permit yourself to be creative, then you are more creative. I mean, you you are tapping into it. You it was always there. Right. But it wakes it up if you you give yourself it’s always there. You give yourself permission to use it, and then don’t forget to enjoy it because it’s fun. It can be fun.

Nancy Norbeck [00:41:48]:
Yeah. And and I have to ask you now because you mentioned making jewelry with paper clips, and I had not thought of this since I was a kid. So it’s a long time. But I remember making necklaces and bracelets out of paper clips and wrapping them with, like, contact paper or something. Is this similar to what you did? Because I have not thought about this in, like, forty years. No. I didn’t use

Terise Lang [00:42:14]:
the tape, but I I had and there’s not not only that, but I had paperclip necklaces of different lengths, of course, so that Mhmm. Perfect. I see. No. I I didn’t do that, but I you know, and then I I remember making sculptures out of those oversized butterfly clips. You know? If you Oh, wow. When you’re you see, I was I was creative, but like I said, I indulged in it. Mhmm.

Terise Lang [00:42:37]:
I indulged in it. And I was I guess I’ve been very fortunate that I didn’t have anybody crush that. Because when you were young and impressive and even if you get older and someone says, oh, act your age. Well, maturity is one thing. Being as creative as you wanna be using some of that childlike imagination and so is is another. It it doesn’t take away from you.

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:03]:
Right. Right. Right. What does act my age mean? I mean, I can be 53 and still wanna make stuff out of paperclips. What’s wrong with that?

Terise Lang [00:43:15]:
Absa well, people doodle their whole lives. Right. You know, they sit at me in meetings and doodle. Doodling’s wonderful. Right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:22]:
Right. My my mother whistles all the time to the point where my father jokes that if he leaves loses her in a store, he just listens until he can find her that way. You know? I mean, and and she’s almost 80.

Terise Lang [00:43:42]:
I see nothing wrong with that

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:43]:
at all. Right.

Terise Lang [00:43:44]:
I you know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:45]:
There’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Except for the part where she get might get mad that I just said, how old is she? But I really don’t think you know, none none of that is attached to an age, and I don’t think that act your age is an insult with any of it. You know? If I wanna go make a snow angel at my age, I am acting my age. So there.

Terise Lang [00:44:14]:
Exactly. Exactly. Absolutely. Whatever brings you joy that doesn’t hurt other people. Basic. That’s my basic thing. Doesn’t hurt you, doesn’t hurt someone else, and it brings you joy, relaxation. It brings you peace.

Terise Lang [00:44:30]:
You know? If any creative thing that does that for you, I am so for it. Right. You know? And you have happier if you manage at a business or something, you have happier employees. Mhmm. If they are allowed to bring their creative ideas to the table, you know, you don’t shut them down. You might say, well, that might not work or, you know, we’ve tried that and it didn’t work or we might have to look at it a different way. But if you allow them to bring that up and they know they have the freedom to do it, it won’t shut down their their natural creativity at work. Right?

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:06]:
Yes.

Terise Lang [00:45:06]:
And you have better, happier staff. You know, I keep saying folks, stop, you know, stop getting in the way of your own happiness or the happiness of people you work with or or meet or encounter. You know? And maybe their style’s different from yours. So Right. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:25]:
There is something really wild about asking your staff to be creative, telling them they need to be more creative, and then when they are, stomping on it every single time. And I’ve seen that happen, and it’s just like, do you listen to yourself? Oh, no. Like, what do you think you’re doing?

Terise Lang [00:45:47]:
Yeah. Because then fear enters into the picture. Mhmm. I don’t wanna be you know, I don’t want the boss calling me out for something bad or, you know, there’s there’s a punishment of some kind. I won’t get that promotion. I I they won’t see me as valuable on the team. It should never be that way. You invite the creative ideas.

Terise Lang [00:46:06]:
You invite them. You say, well, some we may use, some we may not. And but if you use someone’s unique, you know, idea, then acknowledge them for it. You know, we got this idea from Nancy. You know, she came in and she had that idea. Other people will think, oh, you know what I’m saying? It they’ll be more apt to indulge in the creative process because instead of being punished or called out for it in a bad way, it you know, they’ll be acknowledged for and and you just thank people for their ideas, period. Right? Mhmm. Period.

Terise Lang [00:46:40]:
And then say, well, some we can we can see working and some we may not or we may try it later. But if you do but if you do an absolute shutdown, and that’s the that reactivates the memory of when you were little and you had it shut down. You know? Like I said, act your age. Oh, you your your imagination is just too too wild, too crazy. You you know? You have to be sensible. You have to and, you know, yes, there’s there’s room in my life for lots of I have pretty high logic skills. So I love being creative too. You know? And that doesn’t cut it up.

Terise Lang [00:47:15]:
You know? You the there’s room for all of that. Mhmm. You know, our brain our brain’s big enough to hold all that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:47:22]:
Yeah. There and there are two things that I’m I’m hearing in what you’re saying. I mean, one one is that I think a lot of people in management positions define like, their definition of creativity is really narrow.

Terise Lang [00:47:36]:
Narrow.

Nancy Norbeck [00:47:36]:
We want something creative, but we only want something that’s new and different within this very small margin. And if you’ve gone beyond that very small margin, that makes us very nervous and we don’t like that, and we’re gonna shut it down. And also, you know, and that that confuses the people who hear it as, oh, let’s do big things. You know? But also that importance of acknowledgment, because I’ve also been in places where the supervisor gets the credit, not the person who actually came up with the idea, which is really discouraging for that person.

Terise Lang [00:48:13]:
Pet pee you know what? That’s I did emphasize that on a job. I said, think about it. If someone you manage has been managed in a way that they’ve been encouraged to be creative and come up with this idea, it makes you look good as their manager because you’re growing and developing your staff, and they’re happy. Mhmm. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:39]:
Yeah. But if you take all the credit for it, it makes them feel terrible and, like, they don’t count and, like, you don’t appreciate them. So, yeah, it’s it’s it’s the easiest thing in the world to give credit where it’s due and make everybody feel like they’re appreciated. It doesn’t cost you anything. You don’t have to go and get fancy, you know, little awards and things like that. You just give them acknowledgement in front of other people. And yet so many people don’t seem to understand that.

Terise Lang [00:49:15]:
And you increase cohesion Yeah. Because when people think it it’s safe. It’s safe to be creative. It’s safe to come up with ideas. And, if you do come up with one that they use, you it is safe because you know that you will be acknowledged and somebody will be you know? It’s it’s a that makes that is what grows companies, really. That grows companies. Everyone’s about the bottom line. Yeah.

Terise Lang [00:49:41]:
But you don’t get to the bottom line until you look at your people, for example.

Nancy Norbeck [00:49:46]:
There’s all sorts of stuff above that bottom line that goes into that bottom line. And if you only look at that bottom line, you will ignore all sorts of important things above it. And miss opportunity.

Terise Lang [00:50:00]:
Yes. You know? And it’s like, what’s the point? And, anyway so, yeah, that’s kinda you can tell that, creativity pretty much rules Yeah. How I do things and and run things. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. It definitely does. And with good reason. Very good reason. You know, I think, you know, it kinda gets back to what we were saying before about, you know, defining creativity too too narrowly and people defining themselves out of their creativity. You know, it people think that creativity just means the arts, and sometimes they think it just means specific parts of the arts, but it really is in everything. And if you don’t account for it in everything, as you’ve said multiple times here, you will miss opportunities.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:55]:
You you will miss things that could affect that bottom line. You’ll miss things that will affect your joy, which I think is something we don’t have enough of because we don’t give joy enough credit and importance either. You know? Like, all of these things are part of a giant multi multi layered overlapping Venn diagram, And we tend to think that only certain pieces of that diagram are important and ignore the rest of it. And it’s not it’s not helpful when we do that.

Terise Lang [00:51:32]:
No. It isn’t. Not at all. On the other hand, the joy and the, growth when it when you do it right, when you do allow people to be who they are and and, creatively express who they are and come up with their creative ideas. And, and and, you know, let them, you know, dress, I mean, within certain limits. You don’t want someone coming in, you know, with their birthday suit, but let them dress let them dress, you know, in a way that, like, they’re I’ve seen people have you ever seen that where you see some a woman in a an outfit and she looks stunning? You would look like you would look like a shipwreck in it. But on her, it’s absolutely stunning. Right? Because it’s her style, and it fits her creative expression.

Terise Lang [00:52:18]:
Mhmm. And, you know, that’s that’s the same thing. It’s like if, you know, you said, no. You have to wear this gray suit because because it is, you know, the way now it’s different if you you, you know, you’re flying for the airline. You’ve got, uniforms so people can identify you in emergencies, so something like that. But if they’re just wearing what what makes them feel good. And it’s it’s a very different style from yours, but it looks fantastic, then, you know and I tell people encourage people. Tell them how look how good that looks.

Terise Lang [00:52:47]:
They may not have heard that because it was it’s different, and some people you know? Or they may have heard something negative because it was different. Right. But when you tell them, hey, I love that. It looks fantastic on you, then they’re encouraged to continue being creative with their expression.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:03]:
Right.

Terise Lang [00:53:04]:
And then that then, of course, like, it it it’s the way you are in one place is the way you are everywhere. So then she’s gonna take that into work and be more creative because she’s just been told that her creativity is not only okay, but it’s it’s wonderful.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:19]:
And that she’s valued for who she is.

Terise Lang [00:53:21]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I don’t expect her to be me and Right. She doesn’t, you know, and vice versa.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:28]:
Right. Because we’re not widgets. We’re not widgets. We’re not drones. We don’t all have to be exactly the same.

Terise Lang [00:53:38]:
Exactly. And and that’s what makes for a rich world. It really does. Have you ever seen a film called, Metropolis, Fritz Lang? Oh, a

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:48]:
long time ago.

Terise Lang [00:53:49]:
Yeah. And then basically, they were talking about the, you know, running people like machines and insisting that they are. And it it leads to insanity. It leads to and after a while, that person’s spirit is gonna rise up and say, no. That’s not who you are.

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:03]:
Mhmm.

Terise Lang [00:54:04]:
You know? And, I never forgot that film because I got the message, you know, when I saw it. It may be old, but the concept was way ahead of its

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:14]:
time. Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking. It’s funny. Like, the industrial revolution is, like, mid century. Right? Exactly. And it fascinates me that, you know, the machines come in, and we’re human, and the machines are supposed to do things to make things better for us.

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:33]:
And yet, somehow, even though the machines were sort of supposed to be servants, we elevated them because they can do all of this stuff, and suddenly we have to be like the machines even though we’re supposed to be better than the machines. And there’s also this fear of we’re gonna be turned into the machines, which we see in all sorts of science fiction starting probably with Metropolis. And it’s never gone away. You know, how many movies have come out in the last ten years with the same kind of theme? And and it’s it’s fascinating to me because there’s I think it’s that that drive that we have where our society keeps trying to tell us that we have to be more like the machines, and we don’t need to take breaks, and we don’t need to sleep, and we don’t need to rest, and and whatever. And we don’t need to be creative even though that’s that’s our big advantage over the machines, at least until they do something wild with AI. And, you know, so there’s reason for that fear because we’re being driven to be more that way.

Terise Lang [00:55:43]:
And, yeah, I’m glad you brought up AI too because I was gonna say something about that. Obviously, it has uses. It has Mhmm. Very good uses. But it’s it’s not a machine. I mean, it’s not a person. Right. It’s not a person.

Terise Lang [00:55:56]:
No. I don’t care how advanced the code is. I don’t care how well you query something. Yes. You can get information. You can get, I you know, ideas, you know, generated. You can have it, you know, do things like give you outlines Mhmm. Make suggestions.

Terise Lang [00:56:13]:
I’ve even asked it for you know, tell me some places where I can get citations for a certain subject. So it’ll look it up quickly. Great. Say it’s time.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:21]:
But it’s not a person. Right.

Terise Lang [00:56:23]:
And so many times when I watch some of these videos and they have the the even though it’s a highly advanced AI voice, after a while, it’s interesting. The human brain can detect the difference. There are just certain pauses and nuances in human expression. Creative human expression, thank you. Yeah. That appeals to us. That appeals to us. It it makes us more approachable.

Terise Lang [00:56:46]:
Mhmm. And, and and AI is not it’s not going to take over for human creativity. It isn’t because it’s wiping stuff ideas that have already been produced. It’s, you know, it’s taking what’s already there. So it can be used as a tool, but you are not a machine. AI does what it does. Remember that as a human being, you uniquely and creatively can contribute what you do.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:16]:
Yes. Yes. Period. And I think, you know, people are starting to think that AI is smart. AI is not smart. It’s just taking data that’s been fed into it and regurgitating it with the appearance of intelligence, but it’s not actually intelligent. It’s good at things like looking for patterns, you know, and and things like you were talking about, but it is not actually giving you anything new. It alarms me that students now are using chat g t GPT as a search engine, which is not what it is.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:52]:
Wow. It can make up whole pieces of information if you look at

Terise Lang [00:57:57]:
the loopholes. Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:59]:
Well, you know, when you look at, like, the court cases where lawyers have used it and cited cases that don’t actually exist, and It will you know?

Terise Lang [00:58:08]:
In the absence of data, it will create.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:11]:
Right. It

Terise Lang [00:58:11]:
will create people and things and events that never happened, people that ever existed.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:17]:
And that’s alarming. If if kids are using it as a search engine, Lord only knows what it’s telling them that they’re assuming is true.

Terise Lang [00:58:26]:
The only good thing is that I noticed they do have a caveat, and it says, you know, that that it can hallucinate. It says that you you, you know, to check your facts.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:35]:
Yeah. But those kids aren’t doing that.

Terise Lang [00:58:37]:
Oh, that’s scary.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:39]:
You know?

Terise Lang [00:58:39]:
Yeah. That’s scary.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:40]:
Because they don’t know any better. They don’t have enough life experience to really understand the difference. And and even, you know, if you Google something now, you have to wade through the the result, which I’m sitting here making air quotes, is is the AI overview. And and, you know, you have to remember it’s like, don’t even try to read it because your brain wants to read it because it’s the thing that’s on the page. It’s like, no. This is probably nonsense. You gotta scroll down to get actual results that will tell you actual information because that thing is nonsense.

Terise Lang [00:59:14]:
Not only that, but I talked to a Google expert who said you do realize that some people pay more to Google, and therefore, their their posting or whatever their content Mhmm. Show up Doesn’t mean it’s the best. Doesn’t mean it answers your question. But if it’s at all related to the topic, it’ll put that because that’s the way their account is.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:34]:
Right.

Terise Lang [00:59:35]:
That that to me is like, no. I want I want to, you know, look through for real resources of real information and and still be creative when I find it. But,

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:46]:
Right.

Terise Lang [00:59:47]:
Yeah. But AI AI has thrown a little wrench into Mhmm. The creative process.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:53]:
And on top of all of this, it uses an immense amount of environmental resources. Yes.

Terise Lang [00:59:58]:
It does.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:58]:
Yeah. Which I think a lot of people who are just suddenly using it for everything are forgetting. It’s like, yes, it’s saving you a lot of time, and it’s using astronomical amounts of water and power. And Yeah. It’s not it’s not free.

Terise Lang [01:00:14]:
No. And the thing is, I guess, I don’t understand because that information’s out there. Mhmm. That is that is incredibly it’s an incredible, energy consumer. You know, I what can I say? You can tell someone that or that you can tell them, you know, be aware, read, find out, you know, before you do something. Anyway. Yeah. It could be here for all AI can be another whole thing.

Nancy Norbeck [01:00:40]:
Another whole episode. But the point

Terise Lang [01:00:42]:
but the point is it doesn’t create.

Nancy Norbeck [01:00:44]:
Right. It regurgitates. Does not. Yeah. And it doesn’t feel the same when you use it. Even if you ask it to draft a brief thing for you, it it may save you time. And for some things, you know, for things I don’t wanna write, it doesn’t it’s not the same. But there are things I want to write, And I know they’re going to take me time, but I want to write them.

Nancy Norbeck [01:01:08]:
There’s something in me that needs to come out.

Terise Lang [01:01:11]:
Exactly.

Nancy Norbeck [01:01:12]:
And if I ask

Terise Lang [01:01:13]:
creative expression.

Nancy Norbeck [01:01:14]:
Right. If I ask a machine to write it for me, it’s not gonna be the same.

Terise Lang [01:01:21]:
And they say, well, you train AI. Yeah. But you’re once again, what you’re doing is you’re giving AI the patterns from what you do. Right. But it doesn’t know you. It isn’t you. The AI will never replace you. And it doesn’t know what

Nancy Norbeck [01:01:36]:
I’m trying to say or how I wanna say it. Even I don’t necessarily know how I wanna say it until I sit down to write it.

Terise Lang [01:01:44]:
And I love it when it does the autocorrect. This would be better. It but that’s not what I wanted to say. You know, when you said it this way, that is not what I’m saying because there are those tiny little nuances, things that take away from the context. That’s not what I’m expressing. And sometimes I do I’ll write something, and it’ll start with repetitive repetitively with the sentences on purpose because I’m emphasizing. And I’ll say, well, that’s that’s not efficient. I’m not trying to be efficient.

Terise Lang [01:02:13]:
I’m expressing the emotion associated with what I’m writing.

Nancy Norbeck [01:02:18]:
Effect. And and you can always tell, you know, with there are certain terms that AI loves to use over and over again, and it loves its fancy adjectives that don’t need to be there and stuff like that. And it’s just like, oh, get out. You know, the editor in me is just like, no. No. Get out of here. This is a crappy piece

Terise Lang [01:02:42]:
of data. The good thing is that it’s just AI. You can just turn it off. Right. You can Right. You can go someplace else and just write what you wanna write.

Nancy Norbeck [01:02:50]:
So And its feelings won’t be hurt if you take out all the crappy adjectives that don’t need to be there.

Terise Lang [01:02:56]:
I don’t even care if I hurt AI well too bad. Right.

Nancy Norbeck [01:02:59]:
No. Right. That’s It’s a machine.

Terise Lang [01:03:01]:
It’s a machine. That’s all. It’s machine language. That’s exactly what it is. Created by someone who noticed patterns in words. Mhmm. For instance, the letter e is used more often than others, and it went from there. And they’ve made a science out of it, which is interesting, and it has its applications.

Terise Lang [01:03:18]:
But it is I mean, you gotta I mean, some people when I heard they were using it for diagnosis, you better back that up with cons consulting with doctors who actually know the human body, and they would know when there was a mistake. Because like I said, in the absence of the specific data it’s looking for, it’ll just make it up.

Nancy Norbeck [01:03:36]:
Right.

Terise Lang [01:03:37]:
And then it’s like, what did that AI say? Well, that sounds close. Yeah. You don’t wanna do that with someone’s health.

Nancy Norbeck [01:03:45]:
Right? Not at all.

Terise Lang [01:03:49]:
And doctors can also, and that’s how we have medical advances, by by the way, folks, and scientific advances. They are creative in their problem solving. Yes. You know? They are creative in their problem solving. And it’s like when when COVID hit, you know, and we were, oh my gosh. And they put their best minds together, and they were working with something they hadn’t, you know, dealt with before. Mhmm. It was this was a totally new thing, absolutely devastating, worked very quickly, and they had to put their you know, they had to think outside the box.

Terise Lang [01:04:27]:
The the whole thing was outside the box. Not even like outside the box because but, you know, you get the basic idea. They had to think in a different way to come up with something, and they and I imagine that the trials were, you know, going through fast. And they did it, though, but they did it by being willing to say, look. We just need to put our heads together and just you know? Mhmm. I’m sure that they did brainstorming. I mean, that’s what you wanna do brainstorming with.

Nancy Norbeck [01:04:53]:
Absolutely. And lots of collaboration.

Terise Lang [01:04:56]:
Lots of

Nancy Norbeck [01:04:57]:
Many people in there thinking in as many different ways as possible to solve

Terise Lang [01:05:01]:
this problem. How they came up with it. Not you know, they didn’t do chat GPT. How do I solve the COVID? Right.

Nancy Norbeck [01:05:09]:
Right. And I do worry a little bit that, you know, chat GPT is a little bit too much like the homework machine. And if we turn over too much of what we’re thinking to chat GPT, will will we lose the ability to do the problem solving on our own?

Terise Lang [01:05:24]:
Well, to me, you know, if I were a parent of young kids, I would have them involved in some community projects where they work with real people, and they put something together to keep that, you know, ability to, work with the team and come up with that. Hey. You know, bat together some ideas and put something together because that that keeps that going. But if you only expose them to, you know, their phone and the and the PC and the the AI all day, and social media all day, then, you know, you’re you’re, you’re doing them a disservice. You you you gotta keep the the creativity wheel going. And most kids like being creative. Let’s see what’s going on. You know? They love creative projects.

Terise Lang [01:06:08]:
I mean, do you ever see an art class that wasn’t full? I mean Right. You know? Right? Or not just art, music. Mhmm. In sports, when they’re figuring out those plays, right, ways to trick the other team so that you have an advantage, that is creativity.

Nancy Norbeck [01:06:26]:
Well and sports are great because you never know what’s gonna happen. You don’t know if that play is gonna work. You have no idea how it’s gonna go, and you have to react in the moment. So yeah. Your your brain has to be flexible to respond to that.

Terise Lang [01:06:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. And, gymnastics, I mean, there are gymnasts who came up with moves nobody had done before. Again, creativity. Mhmm. We so in other words, we all benefit from it, societally, in our communities, our bodies, with our relationships. When is it not a good thing? You know? So

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:08]:
Yeah. Pretty much never. Yeah. So million and one uses because there’s, you know, millions of us out here figuring out what to do in any given situation every single day.

Terise Lang [01:07:22]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it it makes it interesting. It really does. I mean, hopefully, you’re not trying to, you know, avert some you’re not in the middle of a crisis and a disaster and all that, but just in a a regular day where you just have the usual craziness. But but you get to, you know, you get to, I I love exercising the creative muscle. I do. Mhmm.

Terise Lang [01:07:42]:
It’s and, and coming up with something that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And and it can be frustrating, but I’d rather be frustrated trying to come up with creative ideas than sitting up there and doing, okay, chat GPT. Tell me. Yeah. You know? You’re not using your your mind as much. And, you know, we have amazing this the the mind is an amazing thing. Amazing. The brain is incredible with what it can do, so let’s use as much of it as possible.

Terise Lang [01:08:13]:
You know? Let’s like, they always say, let’s cure cancer. You know? Let’s see what we can do. As a matter of fact, a lot of the work that they’re doing now with the oncogenes, the genes that, are, you know, instrumental in breast cancer and so that, when I was working in American Cancer Society, I met some of the scientists, young scientists that who came in with new ideas that, oh, that’s crazy. But it wasn’t crazy because now, I mean, they’re using enzymes and so that are making a difference. And if you can do something that helps give people hope and more health, you know Yeah. Or whatever the the positive outcome is. Sometimes it’s just sheer enjoyment. Right.

Nancy Norbeck [01:08:58]:
Well, I think this is a great place to end. And I you know, we could go on forever because I have really, really enjoyed this conversation, and I’m so glad that you came and talked with me today.

Terise Lang [01:09:11]:
Well, I I appreciate your inviting me, and I was so excited because I I knew when I met you before, I said, oh my gosh. I can’t wait to talk to Nancy on her podcast. And, I can see why it has lasted. This has been very enjoyable. I I appreciate the opportunity. And, if anyone who was listening, keep coming back because this is a a high quality podcast with a a very good interviewer. I felt very comfortable, and, I feel that people are being served on this podcast.

Nancy Norbeck [01:09:41]:
Thank you. Thank you so much. That’s our show for this week. Thanks so much to Terise Lang and to you. Terise’s links are in the show notes. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, and it’s super easy and really makes a difference. If you enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend.

Nancy Norbeck [01:10:03]:
Thank you so much. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at The Spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.

Nancy Norbeck [01:10:44]:
It really helps me reach new listeners.

Over the years, I’ve come to the often frustrating conclusion that we know more than we think we do. I tell you why in this short episode.

Want more tips? Check out this playlist with all my previous Creative Pep Talks!

Could you leave a review? It’s really easy, and it helps SO much. Thanks!

Join my free creative community, The Spark! We celebrate each other’s creative courage, and I’ll be sharing programs for subscribers and listeners there in the coming months.

Get in Touch

I’d love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com, or contact me on Instagram, or Bluesky.

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Transcript: You Really Do Know

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to follow your curiosity, ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Hey everybody. This is Nancy Norbeck here with this week’s Creative Pep Talk. And, you know, many, many moons ago when I started working with a coach, and then of course when I worked with a therapist, I was confronted as you may have been by what I think is probably the most infuriating question you can be asked, especially if you’re feeling confused or lost, which is, you know, what, what is the answer to whatever your question is? And when you say, I don’t know, the response comes back, yes, you do. As I think about this, I think in many ways that’s too easy and it’s too glib.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:01]:
And I always found it frustrating and infuriating because if I already knew the answer, what the heck would I be doing talking to you? Right. I’d be going and doing the thing and, and we wouldn’t need to be here. But I also know from being a coach and working with people that we do tend to actually have the answers that we need. And it’s a matter of somebody coming along who can ask the right questions to help us find those answers. It’s part of why I like Kaizen Muse Coaching, because it’s not focused on telling you what the answers are. It’s, it’s really all about helping you find them with some tools and awarenesses and things that you might not have at your disposal to help things out. But it fascinates me that most of the time, we really do have the answers. Sometimes we need a little help or we need a little bit more information.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:56]:
But a lot of the time, we, at the very least, have the fundamentals of what we need to know somewhere inside us, and we can’t get to them. And I think a lot of the time, that’s because someone or something, some sequence of events or something we heard or, you know, something like that, something we observed happen to someone else, has come into our lives at some point and taught us consciously or not consciously that that thing that we know is true is either not true, not possible, not okay. For some reason, it’s out of range, is out of the question. And so having convinced ourselves that that’s the case, we proceed as if it is a complete impossibility to the point where we may not even remember that we ever considered that possibility, that we ever wanted that thing, that we ever knew how to get around whatever it is that’s getting in our way. So I’ve been thinking about this, and I just wanted to come here and mention it because, yeah, it’s frustrating and it’s infuriating. But I think a lot of the time, it’s also true. And so if you’re stuck and you’re wondering what the answer is, I just invite you to kind of peel back the layers. If somebody told you that you could do whatever it was that you wanted to do to solve a problem, to get to the next step in your career, to pursue whatever art you want to pursue, whatever it is.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:42]:
And that you didn’t have to worry what anybody else thought, or possibly even what the laws of physics were, what would you know you wanted to do? And then look at that thing honestly, and from a perspective of, is this actually as impossible as I think it is? Get your try to pull your feelings out of it so that you can really, really look at it and say, okay, is this thing possible? And if I’m really convinced that it’s not possible, is there somebody else that I should check with to see if they have a different perspective on whether or not it’s possible? And if it turns out that it’s genuinely not possible. I mean, if your thing is, I really believe pigs can fly, you might have trouble with that. But most of us, it’s not something like that. But if it’s genuinely not possible or deeply unwise or for whatever reason, you know, it’s probably not really gonna get you where you wanna go. Is there some piece of it or some related way of looking at it that might actually get you there? So, like, you know, if it’s not your best idea, what’s the best idea? Because a lot of the time we just throw out the idea completely without considering, is there a best? Is there maybe a best if best doesn’t work? And, and working our way through those options, we just toss the idea out and go look for something else when there might have been some truth in there somewhere. So think about what you actually do know that you might not be letting yourself know. I know that’s tricky, but see if you can do that and then see what you can get out of the answer that comes up. Even if at first blush, it seems like it’s absolutely not possible for whatever reason.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:37]:
I think if you start to do that, you’ll start to find that actually there are ways that you hadn’t seen before. Maybe, you know, some forking paths that aren’t quite what you had in mind, but might get you very, very close, or closer than you would have otherwise. It’s worth an explanation. Exploration. So possibly an explanation too. You never know. But either way, just give it a try. You might surprise yourself.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:04]:
And I think that’s one of the best ways to be surprised in this life. So see what happens. As always, feel free to let me know, and good luck, and I’ll see you next time. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. Next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:45]:
If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.

Writer, teacher, and humanitarian aid worker Alex Poppe joined me last year to talk about her journey from acting to teaching to writing, and how her experiences abroad influenced her journey. She returns to the show today to talk about her new memoir, Breakfast Wine, which chronicles her time teaching in Iraq. We also talk about what we each learned from living abroad at different ages and for different amounts of time, the special magic of teaching teens and young adults, and the way the arts teach us empathy and are a uniquely human way to give life meaning. Alex, who worked for USAID, also gives us a glimpse of the power of humanitarian aid around the world.

Episode breakdown:

00:00 Introduction
04:18 Teaching international students changes perceptions about other cultures.
08:16 Political divisions and cultural nuances within Iraq explained.
12:26 Americans are insulated from ongoing events in Iraq.
16:09 Motivations for living abroad differ by age and situation.
20:47 Financial reasons and curiosity drive educators to work overseas.
24:39 The emotional impact of teaching youth in conflict regions.
28:14 Teachers and students mutually influence each other’s lives deeply.
32:34 Adjusting to working with USAID and NGO environments.
36:00 Culture shock of returning to the US after years abroad.
40:26 Living abroad changes your outlook and maturity in many ways.
44:11 Encountering anti-American sentiment versus curiosity abroad.
48:09 The arts foster empathy and human connection in society.
52:28 Creative collaboration and failing exuberantly in brainstorming sessions.
56:01 The writing process of Breakfast Wine was messy and surprising.
01:03:34 Personal journey revealed through the writing process.

Show Links: Alex Poppe

Alex’s website

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LinkedIn

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Transcript: Alex Poppe

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Writer, teacher, and humanitarian aid worker Alex Poppe joined me last year to talk about her journey from acting to teaching to writing, and how her experiences abroad influenced that journey. She returns to the show today to talk about her new memoir, “Breakfast Wine,” which chronicles her time teaching in Iraq. We also talk about what we each learned from living abroad at different ages and for different amounts of time, the special magic of teaching teens and young adults, and the way the arts teach us empathy and are a uniquely human way to give life meaning.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:52]:
Alex, who worked for USAID, also gives us a glimpse of the power of humanitarian aid around the world. Here’s my conversation with Alex Poppe. Alex Poppe, welcome back to Follow Your Curiosity.

Alex Poppe [00:01:07]:
Nancy, thanks for having me back. It’s great to see you. I really appreciate your having me on a second time.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:13]:
Oh, you’re welcome. So folks who, haven’t heard your our first conversation, if you wanna hear all of Alex’s backstory, that’s where you should go for that. Since this is her second visit, we won’t do that again. But, we talked a a fair bit the first time about your teaching adventures abroad, and now you have a book that you have written pretty much specifically about that. And it comes out what’s the release date again? June?

Alex Poppe [00:01:42]:
June tenth. And it’s being released by Apprentice House Press, which is an independent press from, Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland. And I just wanna give a little shout out. I I feel like they’ve been very responsive and a great partner along the way. I’ve published now on five independent presses, and each one has its pluses or minuses. But I feel like this press has given me a lot of care and concern. Just for example, they gave me additional ARCs and didn’t charge me.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:18]:
ARCs are…

Alex Poppe [00:02:19]:
Advance review copies. Sorry. And so I think that was done because I’ve been recently unemployed with the furlough for USAID. So it’s just to me, that’s like an extra kindness that wasn’t necessary. I I very much appreciate it. So and they they also had someone do social media reels for us. So that’s been great because I’m technologically just a dinosaur. I’m GenX.

Alex Poppe [00:02:47]:
I’m not good at it. I don’t like social media, and, that was great. I have, like, 12 reels, and I’m kinda spreading them out of my socials, one per week. So I’ve never had that before from, a publisher, so that was great.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:00]:
That’s fantastic. So in about a week, you will be able to get your very own copy of Breakfast Wine, which is all about Alex’s adventures teaching in Iraq and Kurdistan. And I have to say, as I read it, I thought so often of my experience teaching international students, which is very different from your experience because I was here in New Jersey. Mhmm. And yet there were so many things that reminded me of, you know, we’re still both teaching international students. Mine mine were the ones that were away from home, where you were the one who was away from home. But, you know, those those moments of, you know, do I you know, who whose whose family member, you know, is in some high place where you think that your power their power is gonna, you know, protect you if you don’t bother to do your homework? And, you know, what influence do you think you can use here? And and, you know, who’s who’s actually here to do the work and and who isn’t? And also just who’s really, really sweet and who’s in a situation that, you know, might be less than ideal. All all of those kinds of of questions.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:18]:
I mean, my kids were more vulnerable because they were away from home, whereas you were the one who was more vulnerable in in your situation. But but so many moments, and especially, I think, one of the things that really occurred to me was the way that, you know, I think I was thinking back to the way that a lot of people in probably in any given country, but certainly, you know, especially people that I grew up with would look at different ethnic groups as all being the same. You know? And I mostly taught Asian kids, though I also had the occasional kid from Germany or Poland or Russia or wherever. And you can’t you can’t teach kids from another place and continue to see all people from different places and different ethnic groups as the same. It’s just not possible because you are interacting with those folks individually every single day, and you realize what a phenomenal myth that is. And, I mean, it is right on its face. You know? It should be obvious that every single person is a different person and personality and comes from their own background and all of that. But I think it doesn’t hit home for most people because they’re not exposed to people from different places.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:48]:
And I suspect, especially having read the book, that you probably had similar situations and moments and maybe even conversations with people from home.

Alex Poppe [00:06:00]:
Yes and no. You know, the kids the some of the kids were displaced. Like, I had Yazidi kids, and kids from the South during during ISIS and post ISIS, and they had been displaced. So we had, you know, kids that were being housed at the school. The school opened up extra scholarships basically to bring them to a place of safety and security where they can continue learning. But their families were living in IDP camps and tents and other places. And then during COVID, when, you know, there’s not a reliable Internet or electricity access, we had kids that were studying from refugee camps again. So, some of them were not in their own locations.

Alex Poppe [00:06:43]:
And and then kids that come up from the South are tend to be Arab, and the kids in the North Of Iraq are Kurdish. And sometimes those two groups don’t like each other given the historical animosity ginned up by Saddam. I don’t know how to say this. Saddam committed genocide against the Kurds. It’s really what I wanna say.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:02]:
Right.

Alex Poppe [00:07:03]:
So sometimes that would play out. And then even the Kurds were, you know, aligned along political parties. So, PUK was a stronghold in Sulaymaniyah where the university I taught in was, and, the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Barzani party Party, the KDP stronghold was in your bill where I taught at the international school. And so sometimes you’d have, like, a few Barzonis kinda sprinkled into the Soleimaniya community, and there was certain friction between those two political parties that stems from the civil war, and it stems from, Masood Ghorezani asking Saddam Hussein to pair with him and defeat the PUK, which meant Kurd shed Kurd blood. So it’s the veneer of homogeny, but there are underlying drivers of conflict that, you know, sometimes would erupt. Like, when Masood Barsani pushed that referendum in 02/2018, he really thought the international community was going to back him up even though the international community was committed to publicly to a one Iraq policy. They didn’t wanna see the country carved up into thirds. They didn’t wanna see a Kurdish north, a Sunni, middle, and a Shia south.

Alex Poppe [00:08:16]:
And, so there was, like, a nineteen hour war because of Peshmerga, the special forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, they’re allied on political parties, so they have different command structures depending on their political parties. They’re not, like, the US army is a homogeneous fighting force. It doesn’t work that way. So you had different Peshmerga forces in Kirkuk when that conflict kicked off that some followed one commander who said stand down and and one followed the other commander that said no fight or Kirk Cook because it’s where the oil was. And that added to the animosity intentions, you know, within a homogeneous group.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:57]:
Yeah. That’s that’s a lot. I mean, that that definitely, you know, is a major theme in the book, you know, kind of trying to keep track of all of the political situation. It was very clear to me how, I guess, the word is insulated. We all were from everything that was going on over there in a way that, obviously, you weren’t because you were living it, you know, in that situation with all this kid. But I was like, wow. You know? I had no idea, and I suspect that most people here really didn’t much, you know, after the fall of Saddam Hussein pay much attention to what was going on in Iraq anymore because, basically, it was over as far as news coverage was concerned. Like, I think you could have found out if you had wanted to, but you probably really had to go looking for it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:50]:
So, you know, all of those different dynamics were really, you know, not overwhelming, but surprising to see, like, the degree of, wow. You know, all of the different the different factions. You know? Like, you you mentioned Barzani and Hoa. Calavani. No. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:13]:
But there was a different name that you used.

Alex Poppe [00:10:15]:
Oh, the PUK and the KDP because they’re different political parties that have very similar initials.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:21]:
Yeah. That’s sort of like when I lived in Northern Ireland, it was like this alphabet soup of all of the the different abbreviations for different groups and very similar kind of kind of thing. But it was like, holy cow. You know, I had no no clue that there were all of these different different pieces. And I realized at one point, I was like, the last name that I remember associating with Iraq was Hamid Karzai, and that has to have been at least twenty years ago. So, of course, there are different people over there now. Yeah. Wow.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:47]:
It’s been a long time.

Alex Poppe [00:10:49]:
Yeah. You know, when I went, I went in 02/2011. And at that year, Kurdistan was on, like, National Geographic’s fifty two places to go in 02/2011, I think, or 02/2012. So there was relative peace and stability and security and a big push for investment because the North was just rich with resources, oil, natural gas, different minerals. And you had lots of contractors. You had lots of activity in the area. And our bill was trying to make itself as the new Dubai. You know? But, you know, people here in The States I remember I was waiting tables at Citywide in New York, and they would think Kurdistan was Kyrgyzstan or one of those stands over there, and then I, you know, then I would say it’s Northern Iraq, and then they would, like, thank me for my service.

Alex Poppe [00:11:38]:
And it’s like, I’m not military. I’m, you know, I’m not gonna be in any harms danger or harms way. And so it was, you know, different. And then ISIS, again, put shone shone the spotlight, I think, you could say, on Iraq. But even now, people don’t know any a lot of people don’t know anything about the Yazidi massacre. And, you know, it’s been, like, a ten year anniversary or anniversary is the wrong word, commemoration, remembrance of that massacre. And the enslavement of the girls, there’s still 3,000 girls estimated that are missing or have never been recovered, and there’s still ISIS is still active in Syria. We see it now post, Bashar al Assad, and yet there seems to be, like, a little awareness in the collective consciousness.

Alex Poppe [00:12:26]:
And I understand the news cycle moves on and especially under our current administration where it’s, you know, break things quickly and move on. There’s just a lot of information, and I think a lot of Americans tune out, because it’s overwhelming or they’re sick of the bad news or they’re worried about the price of eggs, and they’re also, it’s our kind of our cultural character to turn inward and say, I’m concerned about me and mine and not necessarily look out to the geopolitical even though it affects us. You know, there’s a significant amount of refugees coming up to the southern border that aren’t from Mexico or Central Or South America. That’s how bad living situations have gotten in the greater world that mobile and there’s such instability mobilizing migration. There’s so many push factors that are direct or indirect results of our foreign policy.

Nancy Norbeck [00:13:19]:
Yeah. I’m sitting here thinking again. We we were chatting before we started, and we’re like, we could have a whole conversation just about foreign policy if we’re not careful.

Alex Poppe [00:13:29]:
And I

Nancy Norbeck [00:13:29]:
feel like we we could do that again. But Yeah. I’m I’m also you know? And I think we talked about this last time too, but, you know, you you talk at the beginning of the book about, you know, wanting to live outside of your culture. And and I, you know, I resonated with this so much because that’s, you know, that’s that’s why I went to Northern Ireland. You know? I had always wanted to have an immersive experience in another country, and I hadn’t been able to do that as a semester abroad program as an undergrad. And so when I had the opportunity to go in a pretty unconventional way and just be a an unofficial nanny with a family over there, I was like, I might not ever get the chance to do this again, so I’m I’m gonna go. And and there was a line here on on page eight where you said, living abroad is more forgiving for those of us who have not found ourselves according to traditional American measures of success, spouse, children, and homeownership. And I I remember when I I went it was right after I turned 24, I guess.

Nancy Norbeck [00:14:39]:
And when I told people that I was going, my family were the ones who freaked out. You know? You’re going to Northern Ireland. You’re gonna get blown up.

Alex Poppe [00:14:48]:
And I

Nancy Norbeck [00:14:48]:
was like, no. I’m no. I’m not. Though I was there when the Docklands bombing happened, so that was a little bit of a moment of, hi. I’m still alive. Keep breathing. It’s okay. Docklands is in London.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:00]:
I’m over here. It’s okay. But, you know, a a lot of people who were really excited for me said, this is the time to go because you don’t have any of those things that you’re attached to keeping you from going. You know, you’ll never be in a better position than you are right now to go and do something like that. And I I I read that line, and I thought, yeah. That’s that’s so true. And I think that I think there’s also a a personality type, and this is just me going on my sample size of one, which is me, but, you know, that that is more drawn to something like that. You know, there were plenty of people that I grew up with who and and know now who have never had the desire to do anything like that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:42]:
And then there were those of us who are like, get me out of here. I wanna go see the world. I wanna go experience something different. And, clearly, you experienced some of that too. Do you what do you what do you think? Because you were with a whole bunch of other people who were doing the same thing, whereas I was pretty much on my own. Did you see that same kind of thing? I I don’t know if you even talked about it with other people over there, so I don’t I don’t know if you can even speak to that, but I’m curious.

Alex Poppe [00:16:09]:
Well, I went when I was 44. So that was, you know, that’s like I I do agree, like, when you’re in your twenties, that’s the time to go, and it’s become a little bit more culturally acceptable for people in their twenties to go take that time. I mean, there was just that article in the Times about people taking the mini retirements, like, in their thirties. Like, they’ll take six months off between jobs and go do something like that. But I went later, and I went I I mean, I say in the book, curiosity and desperation in equal measure. It was true. I was working the dead end marketing job. It was so badly paid.

Alex Poppe [00:16:44]:
I didn’t have insurance. I still had to wait tables two nights a week in this, like, very mediocre restaurant on the Upper West Side where everyone thought I was an ICE agent undercover because they couldn’t figure out why someone white and educated. And, you know, it’s working at this kind of under the radar restaurant at my perimenopausal age. You know? And it was I mean, I was, like, laying on this air mattress that would, like, sink to the floor every night because it had a hole in, like, two apartment two floors down from us, an apartment had its door kicked in because there had been so many drug buff. They just took the door off. And and then I got this, like, Facebook message from a friend who was really successful, and she’s living in, Hong Kong. She had been Advertising Age a Woman to Watch in 02/2004, and this was 02/2011. She’s like, how’d your light turn out? And I’m like, you know? And then, like, another woman that I had worked with at Mobile Oil when I had a corporate career in the, late eighties, early nineties, she was like her daughter had become an actor and taught her how to use Facebook, so she found me on Facebook.

Alex Poppe [00:17:52]:
Like, you know, what happened with your life? And it’s like, you know, I can do I can touch both walls at the same time if I stretch my hands out in this room. It’s I don’t know how to explain where I’ve derailed. And, so I went because I I just couldn’t I could I had started writing classes in 2010 at the Writers Studio in New York, highly recommend. It’s where I really learned how to be a writer, and I had a hard time affording them. And I you know, my friends were my friends my age were all, like, financially very successful, and I couldn’t hang I couldn’t afford to hang out with them. And so I was just really lost, and I met Jerry Van Dyke who became a mentor. He wrote, captive. He was kidnapped by the Taliban in in 2008 and wrote a book about it.

Alex Poppe [00:18:46]:
He’s written many books about it. Then he wrote a book about, the Latin the labyrinth of political kidnapping as he tried to figure out how he had been freed. And he I mean, he’s just like the Afghanistan Pakistan Guru for, like, sixty minutes and was for a long time consultant on Charlie Wilson’s war because that’s like he embedded with the Mujahideen in the eighties and then wrote about it, which launched his reporter career. And I met him at a book signing, and he really inspired me and gave me the courage to, like, go after this job that I had seen posted in Northern Iraq. And so I was really curious about The Middle East, and I said, I’m gonna go. And it was, the faculty at the international school were we were a mixed bag. You know, we’re all ages, predominantly American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, and Lebanese because it was a a Lebanese for profit school network. Some were married, some were single.

Alex Poppe [00:19:49]:
A lot of the Americans had crushing student debt, which I think was a motivator to go because we didn’t make a ton of money. We made, like, $2,200 a month, but your housing is paid for. So you can save a majority of that money and chip away at your loans. You know? I mean, I had just paid off my undergraduate and my conservatory loans because I was an actor for a long time before I went to Iraq. So when I I saved that money and was able to pay for my graduate degree without taking a loan, which was really helpful. I didn’t wanna get into another loan situation in my affordities. And then at the at the university that I worked at from 2015 to 2021, the faculty was predominantly American and were was, again, like, millennials to Gen Xers. So I think we all had different reasons for being there.

Alex Poppe [00:20:47]:
A lot of it was financial. But for those of us who stayed, I I think it was something else. For me, it was the sweetness of the kids. They were I say kids. They’re young adults, you know, especially at the university. They were anywhere from 18 to, like, 28. They just there’s just a sweetness there. I mean, I think students are great everywhere.

Alex Poppe [00:21:10]:
It’s the institutions around them that succeed or fail, but, you know, they they tell you they love you and they don’t mean it sexually and they’re not embarrassed to say it. Men and women, you know, they blow you parade float kisses from across the campus. They, like you know, I would throw my back out and they’d wanna carry my stuff for me, and they’re not sucking up like that. They just it’s really that’s that’s, like, the sweetness there. You know? Like, when my, father was in hospital when he was dying of COVID, I got messages from kids, like, every day. And I was teaching when he passed, and I’m I had I got the phone call. I was teaching online, and he had passed. And they were just incredibly generous and empathetic.

Alex Poppe [00:21:58]:
Like, in Trump the first president Trump’s presidency, when he had the Muslim ban, we were our program was on, like, a term break, and so I had left the country to travel. And my students were afraid that I wouldn’t they didn’t understand, I think, the ban, and they were like, can you get back to The States? Are you gonna be okay? Like, their first thought was, like, my well-being. And I was meanwhile, you know, partying in Spain, doing some research for my book about Flamenco. And their, you know, their first concern is, are you gonna be able to get back in the country? Are you okay? And they weren’t even my students anymore. These are the students from the international school years prior. Just, like, so sweet. You know? Just I mean, that’s why I stayed. And I I think if COVID hadn’t, like, in my opinion, ruined teaching or ruined the teaching experience, and if my father hadn’t passed, and if I hadn’t had those books coming out, I probably would have maybe stayed a little longer because I I I I had enormous joy in the classrooms and this real sense of purpose that I segued into working in humanitarian aid organizations, but from the communication side, the storytelling side, and didn’t really get into the field very often, just a few times.

Alex Poppe [00:23:22]:
And so I would be sitting, you know, in relative comfort in The United States. You know, electricity is all the time. Water is clean. I have heat. And I didn’t quite feel that usefulness, that sense of purpose. And, like, just like last week, I had a student email me because someone had told her about the posting I did on social media to for the book. I had a carousel post of different pictures of this of the students from the international school. And she just sent me the most beautiful email about how I had made such a profound impact on her life because I saw her and I recognized how she learned and supported her artistic goals.

Alex Poppe [00:24:01]:
And I, you know, losing my job with USAID because of the cuts is a confidence crushing experience. Yeah. And so to get an email like that is such an affirmation. Like, I did do something in my life that I’m actually really proud of. And I think breakfast wine celebrates that because it celebrates the resilience of women and youth post conflict. Like, this book only exists because the people that I interacted with in Northern Iraq were incredibly generous and kind. I’m sorry.

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:39]:
It’s okay.

Alex Poppe [00:24:42]:
I’m really grateful for the experience. I’m really grateful for the lives I got to intersect my life with for a little while.

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:49]:
Yeah.

Alex Poppe [00:24:51]:
And it it makes me really sad to see, like, someone she was a abundant cut that’s doing things like building up civil society and female economic empowerment and gender equality because those are the things that make their lives better. They make their lives safer and they make their lives worth worth living. And we’re cutting that programming, It seems just to show that we can and to be cruel.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:16]:
Yeah.

Alex Poppe [00:25:17]:
And we already have inflicted a lot of cruelty specifically on Iraq through our invasion. Sorry. I didn’t mean to get that emotional.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:28]:
It’s totally okay and completely justified. It’s completely okay.

Alex Poppe [00:25:34]:
I mean, I’m really, like I said, I’m really grateful for, for those years. I’ve learned a ton from them.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:42]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think if if you’re teaching and you’re not learning at least as much from your kids as they are from you, you’re not doing good right. You know? I mean, there’s there’s something about that relationship that that you just I I just don’t think it’s possible not to learn from your kids, you know, whether they’re, you know, from a different culture from you or not. There’s just if you’re paying attention, your kids are gonna teach you. And that’s I I just don’t think it could possibly be any other way. And, again, I have zero studies to back me up as I say that, but but I just I think if if you’re missing out on that, something’s something’s out of out of whack. And I wanna go back to something that that you were talking about a minute ago.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:36]:
You know, when when you talk about how much your students care, because I certainly experienced that too. I mean, I had one of them turn up at the last graduation that I was at my school for because he had heard that they had not renewed my contract and I wasn’t coming back. And he had graduated a couple years before, and it was it was not that long, but it was long enough that, you know, I wasn’t expecting to see him there. It took me a couple seconds to to place him. And when he told me that he came back because he had heard that, I mean, I just about melted into a puddle of goo all over the the lawn. You know? I was like, seriously, you came back because of me. Like, really? You know? And this was the same kid who isn’t a kid anymore, sent me a message on Facebook a couple years later to tell me that my student had just won the award for best writing at his law school and that it was all because of me. And I said, Shantaro, that’s really sweet, but you do realize that you had to do the work to get there.

Nancy Norbeck [00:27:48]:
Right? Like, yeah. I taught you, but if you hadn’t done the work, you wouldn’t be there. So it’s just as much because of you as it is because of me. And, you know, he was like, really? I said, yeah. Really? You deserve some credit too. I mean, I’ll happily take credit for my part, but you need to take credit for your part too. And he had apparently just never thought about that before. And I was like, no, really.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:14]:
You get to take credit for the part that you did because I can’t just pour it into your brain. You know? But but when, you know, when you talk about, you know, the the kids who come back and tell you what an influence you have. I just wanna tell anybody who’s listening. If you have ever had a teacher who made a huge difference to you and you have not told them, and especially if you have not told them because you think that they won’t remember you or you think that it won’t matter, you should go tell them because they probably will remember you, and it definitely will matter. You will totally make their day. So if you’ve ever doubted, go go do it while you have the chance because I know some people that I’ve said this to haven’t been able to find that teacher and, you know, have have wished that they could have. So go find your teacher and tell them that they made a difference. You won’t regret it.

Alex Poppe [00:29:10]:
Yes. That’s Definitely second that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:12]:
That’s my my little plug for for going and and telling your teacher, I promise you won’t regret it. So when you came back and you went to work for I hear people say USAID and USAID, and I don’t know if it really makes a a difference, and you’re shaking your head, so I guess it doesn’t.

Alex Poppe [00:29:32]:
No. I mean, they say them both. There were a couple of other NGOs in between. I didn’t come back, and I may at least start working for USAID USAID.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:42]:
So but was it a big adjustment?

Alex Poppe [00:29:45]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, just learning the massive apparatus that is USAID and then the relationship between the state department and aid, and that’s always been combative, I think, and there’s a lot of gatekeeping. And then my role was new. It had never been done before, so there was no scaffolding. I I felt like I was constantly throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what would stick. I was the STRATCOM’s adviser for a democracy and governance initiative that was 10 countries across four geographical locations. And so the idea is when a democratic reformer is elected, we would surge attention and resources and support so that that reformer could enact act on corruption measures and deliver on citizen priorities so people remain galvanized to support democracy until the democratic opening would concretize and democracy would take root and hold. And I think probably our best, most successful country is Moldova, which is on its way to EU at Ceschen.

Alex Poppe [00:30:53]:
Guatemala was one of our newest countries, and I just I’m such a fan of president Arevalo. He’s such a reformer that’s really looking to better the lives of people. He’s, there was an initiative before he was elected to eradicate all the dirt floors and replace them with cement floors, but it had gone nowhere under the previous administration. I think they did, like, five or seven floors. And in November, they had hit a huge milestone. They had eradicated the dirt floors in one entire municipality. The ambassador was out. He had some great, very informal, videos on social media just showing the impact on people’s lives because it has a huge effect on poverty and malnutrition.

Alex Poppe [00:31:35]:
And president Ravalos is, you know, working against a really kind of corrupt AG who who’s trying to block every one of his reforms, and he’s been a he was a very good partner, to president Biden in terms of anti narcotics and trafficking measures because Guatemala is such a transit country. And he, you know, he was really being a great partner, and I don’t know I don’t know how the country is gonna fare under the new administration. I you know, it’s a different it’s a different lens for prioritization. But I I I hope he can continue because he’s really doing a lot of good work for people, not for himself.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:16]:
Yeah. That’s increasingly rare, I think

Alex Poppe [00:32:21]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:21]:
To find a leader in that position.

Alex Poppe [00:32:24]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:28]:
Yeah. But returning to The US on its own must have been a culture shock too.

Alex Poppe [00:32:34]:
It always is. You know? And, like, you feel it I feel it the most in a supermarket and a hypermarket when there’s, like, so many types of cereal and so many brands of toothpaste. And the first couple times, it’s like it was it was literally paralyzing. You know, especially before I worked in Iraq, I worked in Ukraine, Poland, and Turkey, and made very little money, you know, less than a thousand dollars a month. And so just to, like, take that ticket home to see family once a year was a financial burden. And then you’re in you know, I would bounce between New York where I had lived and had friends or Chicago where my family’s from. They’re very expensive cities. And so to kind of be in that context, I always felt like it always made me feel like a loser.

Alex Poppe [00:33:22]:
Like, I didn’t belong because financially, it just was a different scale. So it’s like there’s something so odd about coming to your home country, a place you’ve theoretically known and should feel like you belong to, and feeling like I I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve to be here. I I just it it it didn’t feel like home, especially along, like, obviously, the economic lines with peers, but it also with perspective. I mean, when I came back from Iraq in 2021, I had so much support. Like, I already had a job online. I had an apartment waiting for me in November, so I got back in the September when we crashed at my mom’s. And I had my bank accounts, and getting a state ID was problematic because I didn’t have a utility in my name, and I, I didn’t have mail at her address.

Nancy Norbeck [00:34:28]:
Yeah.

Alex Poppe [00:34:28]:
And I was like, I have all this support. It was only, like, at the last minute at the DMV where I was getting a state a state ID. And I was like, oh, wait. I can pull up my payroll thing and you can see that I have a bank with an address. And so I thought, what do you do if you’re coming out of incarceration and you don’t have a job or you don’t have a place to stay? You don’t have any of these things that I have. How do you get started? Yeah. And I mentioned it to a friend of mine, and and that friend was like, I never think about that. And that’s what I mean if I could still it was really hard to come back to a context that I had previously, you know, had fit me like a glove.

Alex Poppe [00:35:11]:
I just I had changed a lot. My my viewpoints had changed a lot. It was it’s very hard to kind of be back in those spaces. I I definitely feel like a tourist when I’m in Chicago. When people say, where are you from? When I say Chicago, I always feel fraudulent because I spent my life my adult life trying to leave it, and I it just doesn’t fit. You know, when I hear people in Chicago call it Chiraq, I get very angry because our violence is our own making from our racism and our redlining. It’s not because the country came in and destroyed the infrastructure and bombed it. It’s a different perspective.

Nancy Norbeck [00:35:54]:
Yeah. For sure. For sure. I mean, it could be more different.

Alex Poppe [00:36:00]:
Yeah. And I’m grateful for the perspective, though. It didn’t I think it definitely, you know, I needed to grow up in ways that perhaps you grow up if you have children in those ways. And since I’ve never had children, I don’t know. So I feel like living in these contexts, developing our post conflict context, like, helped me mature in a way that I’m not sure I would have if I had stayed just my entire life in The US. I’m not saying you have to go abroad to, like, mature. I’m just saying for myself because I never had kids and, you know, I I’m born white and middle class. I have all these advantages.

Alex Poppe [00:36:37]:
I call them my birth gifts that I didn’t work hard to get. My father worked hard, so I have them. But I’m not sure I’m not sure I would have had had the viewpoints I have today if I hadn’t been abroad for so long.

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:52]:
Yeah. I I I think I think going abroad, I mean, I was only there for six months, so a world of difference time wise from what you did. But it definitely it definitely forces you to rely on yourself more. It it forces you to, you know, look at the world differently. I mean, I always find it so much more fascinating to look at a newspaper in another country to read American news than to read it here. You know, I I was amazed by how much more interested I was in American news when I was in Northern Ireland than than I was when I was here. And that’s still true. I mean, in many ways, I’d much rather read a foreign newspaper than read an American newspaper because the perspective is is just different and often more enlightening.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:50]:
But, you know, you also get that different perspective from everyone else. I mean, you you mentioned in in the book, you know, saying to your kids a couple of times, I think it was your kids, you know, you don’t hate me because I’m American. And they were like, no. Yeah. And and, you know, there there are certainly you know, Northern Ireland didn’t really expect people to hate me. But at the same time, you know, Americans definitely have a reputation abroad. And, you know, it it you you have those moments of especially at different times. You know, when when I was in London in 02/2005, you know, during that whole conflict, you know, you you had that that moment of if somebody asked me where I’m from, do I tell them I’m from Canada? You know, which I never did, but, you know, there were definitely moments where it was kinda tempting because you didn’t really wanna have to own up to the fact that, you know, yeah, George w and Tony Blair are good pals, and I know it’s a whole big conversation.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:57]:
Do we have to go there? You know? But, you know, it’s it’s it’s got its baggage. And and you have to contend to that with that when you’re abroad in a way that you can be completely ignorant of when you’re here because you’re not forced to confront that international perspective. So so, yeah, you’re you’re definitely you know, you’re you’re looking at that reduced selection of toothpaste. I recognize that when you said it. You know? The moment when I was standing in the grocery store just thinking, this is, you know, not not nothing, but definitely much less than there would be at Walmart, you know, or anywhere, you know, a regular drugstore here. And and just kinda going, yeah. This is this is different. It’s not necessarily better or worse.

Nancy Norbeck [00:39:49]:
It’s just different. And so, you know, adjusting to all of that. And then when you come home and you hear people talking about things that now you see differently, it’s kind of like, maybe I’ll just roll my eyes on the inside and not make a big deal out of this because it’s probably not worth the conversation. But because your perspective has changed, you you don’t quite fit the way that you did before. So so, yeah, you you grow in surprising ways when you take yourself out of the soil that you are used to and plant yourself somewhere else.

Alex Poppe [00:40:26]:
Yeah. A %. I mean, that’s the beautiful thing about curiosity. It can lead you in a direction that you would have never imagined yourself in. You know, when I was in my teens or twenties, I never thought that I would be in Iraq in my mid forties. And it I I I mean, I I worked in the West Bank, and I was down in Baghdad a few times speaking at conferences and training teachers. I I mean, I never would have thought I would have had those experiences. You know? And then I remember when when I was at the university teaching, someone from Amistansoria University came up to watch my classes, and he told me I was like, oh, so how is it? Like, how do you how do your students view Americans? He’s like, oh, they don’t like you guys.

Alex Poppe [00:41:13]:
And I was like, oh, okay. That’s fair. And then, like, a month later, I was invited down to go train teachers. And from that, like and then a lot of them had come from that same geographical region, and they were very welcoming. And then I spoke at a conference at that same university, and the director of the language department was like, some of the students wanna talk to you or your can will you give them an hour? Like, yeah. Of course. And they couldn’t have been nicer and friendlier. They were so excited that they’d never met an American before.

Alex Poppe [00:41:49]:
They were obsessed with American movies, and, like, they were so excited to meet an American. And it so it wasn’t any of the, like, oh, they hate you. I I experienced none of that. And I think I think around the world, my experience has been well, if I’m a guest in someone’s country, they’re smart enough to recognize the difference between American people and American governmental policy. Mhmm. And I’m you know what? I don’t know if we always do that. I remember after nine eleven, didn’t we start calling them Freedom Prize? Like, we don’t necessarily differentiate. But I I’ve been lucky enough that when I’m abroad, I find that people do.

Alex Poppe [00:42:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had students who had horrific experiences during the two thousand and three invasion when they were, like, 12 or 13 year olds directly on the receiving end of violence from coalition forces. So that they don’t hate Americans is amazing to me.

Nancy Norbeck [00:42:49]:
Mhmm.

Alex Poppe [00:42:50]:
Or, you know, they’ve seen, you know, family members shot and killed in home raid. There’s a misunderstanding of of culture and a lack of fluency in language, very senseless deaths, and they don’t hate Americans. And that to me is very generous. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the hyperpolarization in our own country of among ideas, not even about actual physical violence and we are so hyperly polarized. It’s pretty astounding to me. And I think I think we’ve lost a fundamental respect for human life

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:35]:
Yeah.

Alex Poppe [00:43:37]:
Which other contexts, because they’re challenging on any given day, have a little more respect for it because it’s so much more fragile for them.

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:48]:
Mhmm.

Alex Poppe [00:43:48]:
That’s just my opinion. I’m sure I’m offended somebody who’s listening, but I’m trying to figure out why we’re so kind of cavalier about the loss of life. Like, we just bombed a bunch of targets in Yemen, and we haven’t distinguished and publicly called if they were civilian or legitimate, air quote, military targets. But the death count over the weekend has already reached eighty and several hundred have been injured. And, again, it’s a country that’s vulnerable on any day of the week, lack of infrastructure, health care, portable water, food. So injuries will probably become fatalities, and it doesn’t register.

Nancy Norbeck [00:44:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of like this is so Gen X, but the image that’s coming to mind is the the light up maps at the end of War Games, you know, the movie where where it’s just we’re just bombing places on the map, and they’re just places on the map because it isn’t real.

Alex Poppe [00:44:58]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:00]:
Yeah. There’s there’s nothing more than just light light up dots on the map, and none of it’s real, except that it is real.

Alex Poppe [00:45:11]:
It goes back to this, like, loss of empathy. You know, we’re seeing foreign policy become very transactional and a lack of empathy. And, I mean, to me, that’s one of the most alarming things about, book bans because there’s significant research about reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. It stimulates the same parts of your brain as though you’re having the experience yourself, so it builds in that empathy for people who are different from us. And if we take away those stories, we’re cutting off yet another conduit to develop empathy, which the arts do so successfully. And, again, we treat art education as, like, an add on, not something that’s kind of necessary for societal and mental health and well-being.

Nancy Norbeck [00:46:01]:
Yeah. And then, you know, we we wonder why why we’re lacking in all of these things. And I I swear that I remember this ad from thirty years ago, and I have looked for it online, and I can’t find it. So it’s it’s possible that I just imagined it, but I would swear that I saw an ad for VH one’s save the music program in, like, one of the early iterations of that program that had a mother walking down the street with her relatively young kid, and they pass a street musician. And the mom says something about, oh, you know, let’s stop and listen to the music or isn’t that great or something like that. And the kid just doesn’t care at all because there’s no music education in schools. That’s the whole point of the ad. You know? And it’s

Alex Poppe [00:46:54]:
Oh, wow.

Nancy Norbeck [00:46:55]:
And it’s horrifying to watch this child just be like, no. That’s stupid. Why would I wanna do that? You know? And it’s and it, you know, was an ad that’s meant to be horrifying because why you know, what’s wrong with this kid? Well, what’s wrong with this kid is that this is what’ll happen if we cut arts funding. You know? And I feel like, you know, this is exactly what what you’re talking about. You know? We we lose the ability to see the beauty in things if we cut the arts funding. And, you know, there’s there’s that famous supposed Churchill quote about, you know, if we if we stop with the arts, what are we fighting for? And I think that that’s apparently not something that he said. But either way, the point applies. Right? Like, even if you didn’t say it, if somebody else said it, or if they made it up, like, what what are you doing all this for if it’s not to save those experiences? Because that’s what makes life so rich and and so exciting and vivid is to have, you know, a Vaughan Williams symphony or a Picasso painting or, you know, to go see a Stravinsky ballet.

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:09]:
It’s it’s that kind of stuff where to be in the ballet or in the symphony, you know, or to write one or any any of that. That’s that’s what makes life so exciting. It’s not to sit here and fight the war. It’s to be able to do all of those other things. Like, that’s that’s what makes us human.

Alex Poppe [00:48:33]:
A hundred percent. And it’s such a connector. Like, I I live in Tulsa, which you might not think is as multicultural as it is. But on first Fridays, when they have the gallery you know, the galleries are open on Friday, the first Fridays of the month, and it is so multiracial in those spaces.

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:56]:
And,

Alex Poppe [00:48:56]:
just a lot of identity lines crossing, and it’s lovely to see, and you wouldn’t necessarily see it. I think you’d see it in Tulsa, but you do. It’s it’s a very little blue bubble in this very red state. But I’m grateful that the arts are such a driver of this diversity, equity, and inclusion as is the Tulsa remote program, which is how I came down to Tulsa in the first place. They incentivize remote workers to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion in the city, and it’s had a huge economic impact on the city, which is, you know, Harvard Business, school has a lot of reporting on it. It’s quite successful, the program. But as a social integrator and connector, it’s been amazing because it is driving a lot of different types of people to this city that had been fundamentally red for a long time and has a very kind of racist history with Black Wall Street and the massacre.

Nancy Norbeck [00:49:51]:
Yeah.

Alex Poppe [00:49:52]:
So it’s it’s nice to see that at the local level, there are these pockets of hope. I feel like Tulsa is this place that is quite hopeful to be in, and a lot of that is on the strength of the Tulsa remote program, driving diversity, equity, inclusion, and on the strength of George Kaiser Family Foundation, funding so much financial support to arts. There’s so many artist grants, and he’s so generous. And the city itself, I mean, it’s half a million people. There’s so many churches around, and there are a 50 nonprofits because people recognize there’s need, and they’re willing to step up and fill that need. There’s a real kindness in that city. I’m really happy that I’ve had a chance to experience it. And it’s so inextricably inextricably linked in my experience to art programming and this this idea of of curiosity leading to the next thing.

Alex Poppe [00:50:48]:
And there’s also a huge entrepreneur kind of start up culture here. And so I went to, intro to entrepreneurship, like, a boot camp a three hour boot camp last week. It was so fun. It was three hours of collaborative creative problem solving. Like, the exercise was think of the worst idea in the world, write it on a piece of paper, pass it to the next table. Okay. You guys have to make a pitch for it, a founder’s pitch. And they were ideas like clothing for fish, designer air, and we got an electric carpet, electric carpet mower.

Alex Poppe [00:51:29]:
Wow. And so and you took it seriously. It was such a creative like, my writer brain was berserking, but it was problem solving and creativity at its best. And it it it was it was from, you know, embracing the curiosity around, okay, what are you gonna do with an electric carpet mower? We created something that could actually be a product and was certainly fun to just problem solve on. And I I I love that kind of, almost project based learning that some education systems incorporate very well and then some, unfortunately, they don’t. Mhmm. But I really think that that’s a key to experiential learning and and strengthening, the habit of encouraging people to be curious and not shutting down those brainstorm. It’s being like, okay.

Alex Poppe [00:52:28]:
Well, let’s explore this even though we think it’s gonna not work. Let’s go full in on it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:34]:
Yeah. It it’s a great it’s a great exercise to really stretch how you how you see things. You know, to force you to entertain that thing. It it reminds me of, you know, we’ve we’ve all probably sat in those brainstorming meetings in a work environment where the person in charge says, you know, all ideas are welcome. There are no bad ideas. Throw out your ideas. And somebody throws out an idea and somebody shoots it down even though it’s, you know, all ideas are supposed to be welcome. You know, something like that exercise forces you to take that idea that somebody shot down and find the value in it anyway, which proves that there really aren’t any bad ideas even though the person who said that may be the one who just shot your idea down.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:21]:
I think that’s fantastic.

Alex Poppe [00:53:23]:
Yeah. We had a really good work environment with the preemptive love, and then later when Search for Common Ground, acquired us, the creative director and director of marketing and myself, we would get in these brainstorming sessions online, and it was, we agree we’re gonna have a lot of really bad ideas before we find anything good. And so it was such a safe place to just to fail exuberantly. Yeah. We did. I did. I mean, I’m kind of known for, like I’m gonna give you a lot of ideas, and they’re almost all gonna be bad, but this is how it this is the process.

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:01]:
Yeah. You have to let the bad ones out so that the good ones can come out with it.

Alex Poppe [00:54:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. We used to have a lot of fun doing those. I will I will say that at USAID, there wasn’t, that wasn’t so much the way it went. You know what I mean? It was a little bit more, subdued in in a brainstorming, but I think in smaller groups, we were able to kind of have that creative safe space.

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:32]:
Yeah. Smaller groups, I think, are probably safer in general. But but yeah. I I have one other thing that I’m I’m curious about. I mean, when you when you sat down to write this book, I mean, you you lived all of this. So you’ve had to have had a pretty decent idea of what you wanted to talk about and how this was gonna go, and yet you all can’t see Alex, but she’s shaking her head pretty pretty seriously here. What what surprised you? I mean, as you revisited all of these memories, there there must have been surprises along the way.

Alex Poppe [00:55:10]:
Well, you know, I I started the book. I was lucky enough to, be an artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in February of twenty twenty one. So my father passed in November, and I was on a contractual term break because I’d worked, like, five terms in a row. And I was supposed to have the term prior off, but then they needed a teacher last minute, so I was teaching remotely, which ended up being a godson because when he passed, then I could I had been living in New Orleans to try it out. I was kind of like, where do I wanna live when I return to The States? And so I came back to Chicago and, you know, my mom needed some support. It was obviously her partner of sixty years. So I was able to, like, have that time off, but it was also really hard. And it and it was still, you know, pandemic, and Chicago is freezing cold.

Alex Poppe [00:56:11]:
And, Atlantic Center for the Arts is in Florida. And because they were very COVID conscious whereas the town they were in were not, we were strongly encouraged not to leave the grounds, which were on these beautiful green, like, wooded areas, and it was so restorative to my grieving state. So that was just such a godsend. And then I brought down some fiction, which was rightfully eviscerated by the company of writers. And and then, you know, we were sitting at dinner one night, and I was telling some dumb story. And Randall Silver Silvis, the master artist, was like, why aren’t you writing these stories? And I said, I you know, I tried in grad school, and I just failed. And he’s like, try again. I want you to bring in something, for the next workshop.

Alex Poppe [00:57:03]:
And so I the first piece I wrote was, like, section eight, chapter eight, but don’t say a word of stuff about Luke. And that was the first thing I wrote, and I didn’t I didn’t know what an essay was. So then I spent I know I had to go back to Iraq and finish my contract, and we were intermittently locked down and then not locked down. And so there was, like, a lot of and things were shut. So there’s a lot of time to read, and I started to read craft books on how to write essays and then read a bunch of essays, and I still was unconvinced it was going to be a book. And so I kind of I was like, I don’t have anything to write about. And my poor writing partner, Karen, she’s a saint. I don’t I’m wondering how many times I asked her, is this even interesting to anyone? Like, I was so, trepidatious about writing it, and I I know I didn’t understand in the beginning, especially how to go from the personal to, like, not always a geopolitical, but something that’s gonna resonate on a larger thematic scale.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:10]:
Mhmm.

Alex Poppe [00:58:13]:
Also, at Atlantic Center for the Arts, I had a really interesting conversation with Charlie Haley who was there. He’s a beautiful writer. He’s an architect in Florida. But he had a book called campsites, and he was talking about that book. And I asked him, like, had he looked at refugee camps? Because he has this idea of campsites as space between impermeability, that we’re always, like, rebuilding our homes and we’re always kind of, in essence, camping. And that conversation really informs, like, part chapter two and all those subsections. That without that conversation with him, I that part of the book would have not been as, I think, good. Mhmm.

Alex Poppe [00:58:53]:
So it was kind of, like, all over the place. I would think about an experience that I wanted to write about and then just try to write about it, and there wasn’t any structure. And then so I wrote, I think, chapter eight first, the one about Luke, and then I think I wrote altogether now penis, that one about teaching Margaret Atwood.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:18]:
Oh, I can’t even that one just, like oh my god. Trying to teach the handmaid’s tale. I oh lord.

Alex Poppe [00:59:26]:
And and the world’s way. And this stuff I got away with in that classroom, I would never been able to get away with and I think in a US classroom. But, that had already been a version of that had already been published and bust, I think, so I reworked that. And then I think I wrote about, working alongside of Sweden’s most notorious sex offender because the International School employed him, and then how that came together. And then I think I wrote this thing about the refugee camps and my experiences doing that. And then it was like, well, what other things that were remarkable that happened, the earthquakes and the fires? That was just like a two and a half month of intense crisis. We were constantly in a state of tension, and then COVID was another. I had written about the usefulness, utility of WhatsApp, and this mediums, the startup had picked it up.

Alex Poppe [01:00:25]:
And so then I flushed that part out, and and part the last chapter I did write last. And then so the book was finished at the end of twenty twenty two, and I shopped it. And I would get very effusive rejections, and they were all kind of circling around the same thing. So I called my friend, Ellen Kaplan. I love her. She was the director of theater at Smith.

Nancy Norbeck [01:00:53]:
And she’s been on this show.

Alex Poppe [01:00:55]:
She’s amazing. I know. She’s the best storyteller ever. I love her. She’s so funny. She’s just so alive.

Nancy Norbeck [01:01:04]:
Mhmm.

Alex Poppe [01:01:07]:
She has, like, Ellen, translate this feedback. And so she’s like, I think they mean this. So then I took the book and I rewrote it. I made it I made the chapter shorter and and section them up, and I took out, more of the cerebral stuff and put in more of the personal stuff. I had never done a rewrite like that because I start over every day, so when I’m done, I’m pretty much done. Jerry Brennan, who runs Tortoise Press in Chicago, he published Moxie. He’s a great editor. I really enjoyed working with him.

Alex Poppe [01:01:43]:
Moxie didn’t need all that much editing until the last section, and he was his comments were really made the that last section much stronger. I I loved working with him. He was a great editor. So for me to have to do this amount of rewrites was really useful because I hadn’t stretched like that as a writer. And then I finished, and I shopped the book again and found a publisher, you know, kinda quickly. Yeah. So that’s where we are.

Nancy Norbeck [01:02:17]:
Wow. That’s that’s quite an experience, but it sounds like a really, really powerful one.

Alex Poppe [01:02:27]:
Thank you. I I’ve asked late back and forth on how I feel about this book. Oh, you know what? The chapter I wrote where I talk about my dad passing that starts with being violently mugged in Italy, I think that was what I wrote after the Luke chapter. And the book is really I didn’t realize what a significant influence my father has been on my life because I was a shitty teenager and we didn’t have a great relationship. But somewhere in my thirties, I recognized that I didn’t know him very well, and I wanted to change that. And I had written in this long letter, and, my mom said when he died, she’s like, he saved this. You know? Do you remember writing this? He saved it all these years. And so I really worked on that relationship with him, and, I can see the influence he’s had on my life and the choices, you know, they make sense, which I I talk about in the post piece.

Alex Poppe [01:03:34]:
But, I don’t think I recognized it until writing the book helped me recognize it. So in in a lot of ways, it’s just way more personal. It’s also me. It’s not a constructed eye. You know, you can people always confuse to, you know, the eye narrator for the writer, and you’re like, that’s a construct. You know, people like, people thought Jack’s the narrator of Moxie is me, and I’m like, she’s a profane alcoholic who’s missing half of her face. Not me. I’m just profane.

Alex Poppe [01:04:11]:
And and but in this, in the memoir, it is me. Mhmm. And so, you know, that judgment’s gonna sting when it’s negative because that is me.

Nancy Norbeck [01:04:24]:
Yeah. But it sounds like the experience of going back through it again was was definitely a worthwhile one on multiple fronts.

Alex Poppe [01:04:36]:
Oh, yeah. I I mean, I was combing through this is so bad. When I was, when I was getting farther along in the interview process with USAID, because it took, like, four months, and then there was, like, a three two and a half, three month security clearance thing. It took a long time to get that job. I was like, I better comb through my social media and make sure I remove anything that’s, you know, critical of certain people. And so I was combing through, like, years of Facebook. And I found these posts from the students from the international school where they were like they’re like, you should come out with this sometime. I was like, they’re sick dates.

Alex Poppe [01:05:20]:
And, like, we jabbed all these memories that, like, then kind of filtered into the beginning parts of the book. So that was fun or to recover the details going through the you know, seeing the pictures that they would post, and then finding a button and, like, find like, resurrecting an old, like, portable drive and going through photos on it. And I was like, god. I took a lot of photos of them. I was obsessed with them. I was that teacher that would be on holiday and talk about my students the whole time. It was weird.

Nancy Norbeck [01:05:52]:
Yeah. Well, it’s also understandable.

Alex Poppe [01:05:55]:
They were just fascinating to me. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [01:05:57]:
Yeah. And you spend a lot of time with them.

Alex Poppe [01:06:01]:
Oh, yeah. The 10 s p class, fourteen hours a week, sometimes four hours a day, every other class. Yeah. No matter how much you start out liking each other at eight, by the time it’s 03:30, you know, my head is on my desk, and I’ve had the the my own limits. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [01:06:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But they are really your own kids for a while. You know? Yeah. They are. They really are. Well, I really enjoyed reading this book and getting to experience your adventures vicariously through it.

Nancy Norbeck [01:06:38]:
And and I think that other folks will too, so I hope that they will go out on the tenth and avail themselves of a copy and and give it a read.

Alex Poppe [01:06:47]:
Well, thank you so much for having me on and for supporting “Breakfast Wine,” Nancy. I really appreciate it.

Nancy Norbeck [01:06:51]:
Oh, it’s a pleasure to have you back.

Alex Poppe [01:06:54]:
Thanks. My hope is that reading this book will engender some empathy for folks that are being othered in our current political discourse.

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:02]:
Yeah. Me too. That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to Alex Poppe and to you. Alex’s links are in the show notes, and her new book, Breakfast Wine, is out on June 10. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There is a link right in your podcast app, and it is super easy, and it really, really makes a difference. If you enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend.

Nancy Norbeck [01:07:26]:
Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you, or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.

Nancy Norbeck [01:08:06]:
It really helps me reach new listeners.