Not quite two years ago, writer John Roedel, author of the Hey God, Hey John poems that have gone viral online (and the collection of the same name) joined me to talk about how he ended up “talking to God” and what he’s learned from that experience. (If you haven’t heard it, you’ll want to check it out.) I asked John to come back and tell us how he’s shifted into helping people discover their true selves and write authentically from the heart.
John and I talk about everything from the way improv has influenced that decision to what happens when we connect from our authentic selves and the stories that made us. We also delved a little into how that kind of small, empathetic, interpersonal connection might help to mitigate our current societal malaise.
Show links
John’s website
John’s Facebook
The Hey God, Hey John Facebook page
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Transcript
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, where we explore the inner workings of the creative process. I’m your host, Nancy Norbeck. Before we get started, I want to take a minute to talk about National Novel Writing Month. If you’re not familiar with nano, it’s basically a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in November. Lots of people set out on this noble quest, but only about 10 to 15% make it to 50 k. To help those who are jumping in in just a few days, I’m offering a National Novel Writing Month power hour on November 13th. We’ll get together on Zoom and write for an hour, and you will get writing done. I promise, mid November is the perfect time to be sure you keep your momentum up for the challenge.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:52]:
If you’re a writer who’s not participating in Nano, or a Nano rebel who’s using the challenge to work on an existing project, or using it in another related way, you’re welcome to join us too. And the same goes if you’ve never written anything in your life, but want to try some of the writing you’re going to hear about in this episode, or some other kind of writing. You’re all welcome to this totally judgment free zone. The power hour is free, and you’ll find the link in your podcast app. I hope to see you there. Not quite 2 years ago, writer John Rodell, author of the “Hey God, Hey John” poems that have gone viral online and the collection of the same name, joined me to talk about how he ended up talking to God and what he’s learned from that experience. If you haven’t heard it, you’ll wanna check it out. I asked John to come back and tell us how he’s shifted into helping people discover their true selves and write authentically from the heart.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:48]:
John and I talk about everything from the way improv has influenced that decision to what happens when we connect from our authentic selves and the stories that made us. We also delved a little into how that kind of small, empathetic, interpersonal connection might help to mitigate our current societal malaise. Here’s our conversation. John, welcome back to the show.
John Roedel [00:02:12]:
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for asking me. You know, usually, when, someone ask calls me back after one of these, it’s because they’re mad. And the fact that you asked me back is amazing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:22]:
I can’t imagine anyone being mad at you. But
John Roedel [00:02:26]:
Not they’re maybe not mad as much as they are. You would you like to go back and change something you said while you were talking? And then I’m like, no. I’m okay because usually what I’m gonna say you know, I I’m speaking from the heart, so, I like to lay it all out there. So, no. No. The fact that you called and asked me to come back on your show, I I was so thrilled.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:47]:
Well, I think you’re the first person that I’ve ever done a second show with.
John Roedel [00:02:50]:
Oh my gosh. Alright. Well, then that’s even more more pressure than ever.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:54]:
Because, yeah, no no pressure at all. No. Yeah. The the Paul McCann interview was 2 parts because we just talked forever. But Right. You know, I I think I think this is the first time. So Yeah, a couple years ago, 2 years? It’s just about 2 years. Yeah.
John Roedel [00:03:09]:
Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:11]:
Yeah. So for people who might have missed the first time, I was hoping that you could give us, like, the quick version of your story, how you got started with writing, all of that kind of stuff.
John Roedel [00:03:24]:
You bet. And, it’s kinda changed a little bit over the last since we first talked. In fact, I I you know, what has been mentioned is you were one of the very first podcasts I was ever asked to be on, and quite a bit has changed since that first, time we spoke. So when we spoke, I I think I’d own I had, I’d written, hey, god. Hey, John.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:46]:
Mhmm.
John Roedel [00:03:47]:
And we were kind of talking about a piece from there. And I wrote, hey, god. Hey, John back in about 2018. I I wrote the book. It’s based on all these posts I put on Facebook between about 2016 and about 2018 in which I was having a faith crisis, a spiritual crisis, an emotional crisis, a mental health mental health wellness crisis, a financial crisis, whatever crisis one could suffer through. I was kinda going through a hurt like a self doubting crisis. And so I went on Facebook, and I’m an improv performer. I I prefer to make people laugh and be on stage.
John Roedel [00:04:28]:
And but I knew I was unwell, and I wasn’t feeling great. So I did what any well adjusted middle aged man would do. And I just started having these taped conversations with God on Facebook, kinda just poking fun at the whole thing. Poking fun at, you know, everyone who is telling me, oh, just pray about all your troubles, and they’ll go away. I was kinda poking fun at that because I was a lifelong Catholic. I, in fact, I worked at a Catholic church 5 or 6 lifetimes ago, and I kind of assumed all these good boy deposits I had put in the in the well of faith would be there for me to withdraw when the poop hit the fan, and that wasn’t happening. So I was kinda mad about that. And then I was reading every self help book I could find in the world, and none of that was really clicking for me either.
John Roedel [00:05:14]:
So I took all this angst and kind of a little snarkiness and anger, and I took it to Facebook to kinda just poke fun at myself and poke fun at self help and faith and all of it. And what started happening was I started having these little conversations with God, and I I mean, God is like I don’t have I’m not an evangelist. I don’t have an axe to grind. It was kind of a nondenominational buddy God who, in my mind, was sitting down having coffee with me. And we would have these, dialogues on Facebook where we would talk about what was on Survivor the night before or how to perfect risotto. And every now and then, we would talk a little bit about my own personal life, but it was always kind of supposed to be kind of lighthearted and funny and just kind of poking fun at things. But as it went on, the more I wrote, I started accidentally leaving these little bread crumbs about real truths in my life that I didn’t even know I was going through. In fact, the very first time I ever acknowledged that I was living with depression was when I typed it out in one of these conversations.
John Roedel [00:06:18]:
Wow. And so the more I wrote about these things and the more vulnerable I put myself and and wrote honestly about my life, The more people started following, and it wasn’t just my friends and family giving me, sympathy lights or whatever. The more I was doing that, people started following along and saying me too. That’s my experience too. And I was doing that for years and wrote enough posts that I put it into a book, called Hey, God. Hey, John. And then I kinda thought that would be the end of the entire thing, and I would move on with my life. And then from there, those conversations kind of just spiraled or sprawled or whatever the word we wanna use into poetry.
John Roedel [00:07:01]:
And that’s kind of what I’m doing now. And the whole conversations I was having with, quote, God, unquote, and myself have now just kind of morphed into just pure poetry. And both of those things are surprises to me. I didn’t ever set out to be this kind of writer. I didn’t set out to talk about emotions or my feelings. I didn’t set out for any of this. And the poetry I’m writing now is beyond. I didn’t read poetry.
John Roedel [00:07:27]:
I didn’t study it. Any English teacher, whoever taught me at any point, and, unfortunately, for them would indicate would have indicated to you that I had no, ambitions or ability to understand poetry or write it. And now I’m kind of immersed in it. In my late forties, it’s kind of emerging from me like a wildflower in a sidewalk. So I I write in real time all on Facebook. I don’t write to publish, but after I’ve posted it, made a written enough pieces, I go back and then I put them in in books just as people ask for it. But I’m kind of a weird writer who who doesn’t write things only to publish. I write in real time and put it in Facebook as soon as I’m done working on it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:12]:
So does that mean that you don’t edit at all?
John Roedel [00:08:14]:
Right. Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:15]:
Okay.
John Roedel [00:08:16]:
That’s and and there’s a couple of reasons for that. One, I’m a terrible editor. I have the editing skills of a brand. So that should be you know, I don’t wanna sound like I’m this you know, like so, yeah, that’s the number one thing is I I just have no skill at it. Number 2 is if I don’t post it right away, I will overthink it, and then I will worry about what my uncle thinks or what some stranger I used to know in high school who happens to be my friend on Facebook will think. Or I will start to worry about what I will think. When I wrote that first poem, post about depression where I was having this conversation with god, I remember typing it out, and it was blinking back at me. And I thought, I can’t put this out there into the world because if I do, what will people think about me? I like to make people laugh.
John Roedel [00:09:02]:
I like to be on stage. I like to do funny, silly things. I don’t want people to think that I’m broken. I don’t want people to think that I have a hole in me or something that’s going on because, you know, I I I subscribe to the Instagram filter and, you know, Snapchat filter. I want everyone to see the no wrinkles. Everything’s perfect in my life. And I remember fretting about it, and then I had this compulsion just post it. And as soon as I did, about 10 minutes later, it wasn’t my friends and family, you know, checking in to make sure I’m always okay.
John Roedel [00:09:32]:
It was strangers saying, hey. Thank you for writing that because I think I feel the same way. And so, yeah, I don’t edit, because I’m afraid that I will start trying to impress people. I don’t edit. And then the other third part is it helps with group group, group editing. I get tons of messages from people who are much better at editing and proofreading, who will write me and say, hey. You know what? I think you need a semicolon here. Hey.
John Roedel [00:09:58]:
I think you used this wrong. Hey. I don’t understand that. And I don’t have to pay for an editor later when I go back and I, put them into books.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:06]:
You know, I think there’s a great deal of wisdom in that because I think it is so easy to overthink things. I mean, I know that I learned from my high school writing classes on, you know, your writing will never be perfect. Yeah. You should go back, and you should edit it, and you should make it as good as you can, but it will never be perfect. And I kind of, I I mean, it is definitely the trap that that a writer, and I’m sure other forms of artists can fall into so easily, is that you want it to be as perfect as it can possibly be.
John Roedel [00:10:41]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:41]:
But at a certain point, you need to recognize that if you keep going, you’re just gonna make yourself crazy. And you may even start making it worse because you will overthink it, and you will just completely lose all perspective on it. And, you know, so so at a certain point, you kinda have to abandon it for want of a better word. And, you know, I was just thinking the other day how in my MFA program, when my group got to our last semester, we spent our final full residency at Goddard just looking at each other and saying, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough.
John Roedel [00:11:20]:
It just
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:20]:
has to be good enough. All I have to do is make it good enough. And it was such a relief to say it just has to be good enough.
John Roedel [00:11:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s what is the expression the, enemy of the enemy of good is perfection?
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:36]:
Yeah.
John Roedel [00:11:37]:
Is it you know, if I am not a robot. I am an imperfect. My wife and I have been married for 24 years. We’ve known each other since we were 13 years old. She will tell you I am as imperfect as a human as could possibly exist, and that’s okay. I mean, robots are gonna be doing everything in the future in the in the future. Anyway, you know, I want my to be distinguishable from from the robots who will be like, oh, yeah. No.
John Roedel [00:12:04]:
That’s certainly a little that’s got a couple rough edges to it. That’s great. I have a couple of rough edges to me. When it comes to moving posts that I write and putting into a book, yes, I I I get another glance over. I hire someone to do it. But even later, even after professionals have looked at it, even after I’ve looked at it and it’s been in a book for a year, every now and then, you’ll still find another little, beauty mark in there. And at first, it used to mortify me, but now it makes me feel, hey. Part of the human race, it’s good to have a couple of little blemishes here.
John Roedel [00:12:39]:
It’s not not perfect. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:41]:
Yeah. I like I like that you call them beauty marks.
John Roedel [00:12:44]:
Right. That’s great. Only only because I have a lot of it. And so I guess, like, it’s either it’s either, you know, freckles or I call them freckles or beauty marks just because they’re sometimes, there’s quite a few of them. And that and that’s totally it’s okay. It’s okay.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:00]:
Well and, you know, I I think that we hear this all the time, but it’s hard to understand sometimes and hard to really picture or imagine being willing to be vulnerable about, you know, our foibles and our shortcomings, and I’ve been reading Peter Davison’s book, the actor, from Doctor Who and All Creatures Great and Small and everything, and and he has always kind of struck me as that sort of self deprecating British guy. You know? But there are so many stories that he tells in this book where he actually goes into relative detail of how, you know, he walked into a situation and proceeded to do completely the wrong thing. And then when he realized that he had screwed up, to somehow screw up even further on top of it. And and the thing is that and some of it is the way that he tells the story for sure. But but he’s just so and then I did this about it that it ends up being hilarious.
John Roedel [00:14:15]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:15]:
And it’s my one of my favorite things about the book. And you hear things like that all the time, but it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier when you’re the one doing the writing to say, excuse me. Let me show you this flaw. This delightful flaw over here that most of us would just pretend wasn’t here and try to hide. Let me just peel back the curtain and show you the whole thing. And yet, I think that there’s an awful lot of truth to the idea that we are more prone to connection and even in a way endearing when we do that.
John Roedel [00:14:55]:
Yeah. No. So my I mentioned my background is in improv. So the idea of that is you get on stage, you don’t know what you’re going to do. You ask the audience for suggestion. I might have something really hilarious in my mind that I want to do, but then all of a sudden, I am, you know, George Washington on the moon milking a cow, and then you just have to say yes to it. And you just say the biggest yes you can, and you dive into it, and you become the best, you know, dead president on 0g that you can be, and you’re just doing it. And that has affected my writing.
John Roedel [00:15:29]:
Like, I didn’t set out for any of this. All I’d have done is said yes to it. And when you say yes, when I perform improv, 50% of the time, it’s an abject failure. You know, it’s just like you’re going to like, they’re gonna get a suggestion that is so crazy that it’s never going to work out, But that’s the fun of it. Half the people are there to watch you try to do it, and the other half are there to watch you fail. It’s like watching someone on a tight tightrope. And that has kind of informed me at writing. I don’t I write with the very much by the seat of the pants.
John Roedel [00:15:59]:
You know, there’s the plotters and the panthers. I write from the pants because I write from emotion. I write how I’m feeling at the time, what’s going on inside of me at the time, and I just let I say yes to that and I just let it carry me where it needs to go without worrying about, oh, does this make sense and what’s the flow look like? And, you know, I don’t worry about that. I just make sure that it feels true and honest to me, and I just keep saying yes to it until I reach the shore. And I know I can’t go any further, and that’s when I know I’m done.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:31]:
It’s interesting that you brought that up because I was thinking that your improv background seems to fit with the idea of not editing. You can’t edit improv. You know, that’s that’s the whole nature of the beast. You can’t go back and say, no. No. No. Sorry. I meant this other thing because that will kill improv dead.
John Roedel [00:16:48]:
Right. Yeah. You can’t say no to anything. That’s the only rule in improv. You can’t say no to something. If I’m on stage and I’m George Washington and my castmate comes out who has been suggested to be a talking moose, they come out as a moose and say, oh, no. You’re not a moose. You are the pill is very doughboy.
John Roedel [00:17:05]:
And all of a sudden, it’s like, woah. What’s happening? There’s this disconnect.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:08]:
Mhmm.
John Roedel [00:17:09]:
No. And I can’t have that in me. I can’t have part of me saying yes to it. My heart can’t say yes. My brain say no. All of me has to say yes to all of it to work together because if there’s a conflict in me, if I’m I’m worried about my ego, if I’m worried about writing something that seems like, oh, man, most 40 year old men are not writing about this. I live in Wyoming, which is cowboy culture. We wrap ourselves in barbed wire when we have injuries and just get on with our day.
John Roedel [00:17:37]:
We don’t talk about mental health here. We don’t talk about those things. But I grew. And if I stopped and my ego and my pride said no to those suggestions, then there would be a, traffic jam on the page. So the goal is just to say yes wholeheartedly to it and to put it out there. And, it’s like little messages in a bottle. I just write them and put them in the bottle and I throw them into the ocean and maybe they reach somebody who needs it in a doctor’s office while they’re sitting there or the grocery store line or either at home in bed. And that’s the terror and the beauty of social media is, you know, we have people right now, it’s middle of the night their time.
John Roedel [00:18:17]:
I could write something and I can get to them 3 in the morning where they’re maybe having a rough night. Or I can write something, and they’re waking up in the morning. They get it first thing. I just trust the timing of things that I’m writing to get to at least one other person to try to to try to let them know that they’re not alone because that’s why I started writing, I think, to find out that I wasn’t alone. As soon as I started writing about mental health and emotional things like this, got connected to a lot of other people to say, hey, that’s me too. And that filled me because, oh, I’m not alone. I’m not alone on this journey. And they feel, you know, it’s it’s a I I find the reader writer relationship a two way street.
John Roedel [00:18:56]:
It is not a hierarchy where I’m, oh, I’m this wise, smart person, and I’m giving out all these great answers from this mountain down below, and, you know, I’ll I’ll come down and visit you later. No. I’m down there as well just kind of, like, handing out pamphlets from the valley with everybody else. So it is very much a two way street, where I try to let other people know that they’re not alone with what they’re going through. And very much, it helps me to know that I’m not alone.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:20]:
Which is something that could never happen without the Internet and social media.
John Roedel [00:19:24]:
At least. Right. That’s the terror and the beauty of it. I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg had this in mind, when he was creating the app to, pick up women in his college. That was not why he created it to have some 40 some year old man have some, you know, in 2020 have some sort of emotional breakthrough with writing like this, but I have weaponized it for those purposes. And and that’s just surprising to me and everyone. That’s the kind of the journey I’m on. But it’s that improv, yes, and I’ve just said yes to it until the day I, you know, there’s nothing left to say yes to.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:00]:
Do you see a connection between, I’m trying to word this in a way that makes sense because I don’t know if if it will make sense. But Right. But as as you’re talking, and we talked last time about kind of living by yes, and, and you seem to be doing that more than most of us. And I’m just wondering, you know, when you put that into getting on stage and doing improv and on the page or the screen as it may be, has it filtered into the rest of your life?
John Roedel [00:20:39]:
Yeah. And and more than I thought it would. And it’s filtered it’s it’s had me reflect on parts of my life where I was already saying yes and and I didn’t know. Even 20 some years ago, our son was diagnosed with autism, our our firstborn son, in 2002. And when he was die he was our first child, and I we did my wife and I didn’t we didn’t really know what signs to look for. Had he been our 3rd child, we would have been able pick up that there was something going on. But our he was our first guy, so, you know, about 2a half, 3 years old by the time we got him diagnosed. And I remember being in the doctor’s office.
John Roedel [00:21:15]:
They kinda they gave us this diagnosis and said, you know, he will never live independently likely. He will never have a lot of the experiences, you know, you and I take for granted in just living life. And it was kind of a it was a very somber appointment. And I remember driving home from Denver, Colorado to where we are about a 2 hour drive. And I remember I remember grieving the loss of my son who was right behind me. And he was, like, right I could see him. I could touch him. He could sit on my lap, and I’m grieving this relationship and this family that I thought we were gonna have.
John Roedel [00:21:47]:
Now it’s completely different. And my wife in that moment so I was stuck in the doctor’s office, like, 90 miles behind us. My wife was already saying, okay. We’re gonna do this and this and this. If that doesn’t work, we’re gonna try this. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll call this person and do this. And this is back in 2000 2 when there wasn’t a ton of resources, certainly in my community for autism. It’s it’s it’s blossomed so much in the last couple decades.
John Roedel [00:22:09]:
But in 2002 in Wyoming, there wasn’t a ton of infrastructure to help kiddos like this. But my wife was saying yes to it within 5 minutes of the diagnosis and here were what we’re gonna do about it. I didn’t. It took me about 2 or 3 years to catch up. But once I did, we all as a family just said yes to it. Okay. Our family is going to look different. Yes.
John Roedel [00:22:32]:
And here we go. Yes. We might not we might not have the life that we thought he was going to have, and we still love him. I mean, it was all these crossroad moments. And, eventually, you know, it it just kind of I’ve looked back and it it it filtered into everything in my life. I’ve had so many jobs that I’ve said yes to without any kind of experience just to try it out. I was a crime reporter for a while. I have done all sorts of things that I’ve said yes to, but I think and this was my son be diagnosed with autism before I ever started doing improv.
John Roedel [00:23:04]:
So he was my first kind of lesson in improv and why the importance of saying yes to the reality of things that are happening. Yes. That’s all I can control. I couldn’t control that he had on this. I couldn’t control that my heart was broken, but I could control what the and was going to be. And so that is what we focus on, our reaction to that. And that has been kind of the story of my life. I mean, writing poetry is a yes, and.
John Roedel [00:23:32]:
In fact, you know, I’ve done some things this summer. I I I went to writing retreat centers and hosted retreat centers, which I have no business doing because I don’t have any background in teaching or doing any of that, but I said yes to it because I was invited, and it was an amazing experience. In 10 days, I’m going on a 8 day raft canoe trip through Southern Utah in which I’m leading riders on this kind of 8 day riding retreat on the water for, you know, 8 straight. I’m an indoor cat who loves air conditioning and hotel rooms. I’ve said yes to that. And I have no doubt it might be uncomfortable. I might not really enjoy it, but I have no doubt there’s gonna be an end from that experience that might shape my life. And so I’ve been saying yes to so many things and very rarely in my, do I do I regret it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:23]:
Wow. I’m I’m trying to imagine an 8 day canoeing writing
John Roedel [00:24:30]:
trip. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I, I can’t remember the last time. In fact, I’ve been practicing building a tent because this is we have guys. I am not on the I’m not leading this trip. I I am merely, the bait to get people to come on the trip. But, you know, I’m leaving kind of prompts and writing exercises during the day and night, kind of gentle, nothing super intense.
John Roedel [00:24:53]:
But, you know, I I’ve seen the Blair Witch Project. I know what happens out there in the wild. I am this is terrifying to me. I am terrifying of it, but I also knew when they asked, it was it it was something I had to say yes to. And, you know, it goes back to that hard ride years ago when you’re confronted with something. Say yes. Just say yes to the adventure of it. Don’t close yourself off.
John Roedel [00:25:18]:
Don’t say no. Had I said no to riding this way, connecting with my heart, I think I don’t know how my life would be. I think I would be a gnarled old tree stump by now. So saying yes has changed my life and every time I say yes, it’s like a new chapter.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:35]:
Oh, I’m sure. That’s a great way to to think about it. And so the the reason that I asked you to come back is that I was actually at a session that you did online a couple of weeks ago, and you mentioned that you’re you’ve been trying to work with people to help them find their true selves and express themselves authentically. And I was so curious about what that means, how you got there, what that looks like, and I I wanna let you approach that whatever way makes the most sense to you. But please, please do tell.
John Roedel [00:26:11]:
Okay. So it has to do with those, I got invited to go to the Art of Living Center in Boone, North Carolina, this summer to kind of do they wanted me to come in and do a writing retreat. And I said, well, I am not a New York Times best selling writer. I am not one of these writers who’s going to sit down and say, here are your 15 steps for you to get an agent. Because that’s never really I I I have no interest in any of that. I like I said, I don’t write to publish. I just, you know, write in real time. So I was like, this is not what I want.
John Roedel [00:26:42]:
I I don’t think I could offer because I’ve been to writing conferences and retreats, and a lot of it is geared towards here’s how you can be professionally successful as a writer. Mhmm. And I write on Facebook, and I’m a poet. And those aren’t things that necessarily you indicate are professionally successful writers who can pay their mortgage doing it this way. So I was very concerned about it. I said, I don’t think this I think you have me confused with somebody else. And they they invited me to kind of think about it for a little bit longer. And the more I thought about it, I said, the only thing I can offer is to talk about what happens when we share our lives and our story authentically and without any fear of what anyone else is going to think about.
John Roedel [00:27:23]:
And it goes back to that little anecdote I told you when I wrote that post about depression. It goes back to that. Those voices in our head that are there editing us say, hey. Why don’t you calm that down a little bit so people aren’t going to perceive you in this way? Whatever it is. And it’s not and when I say it’s writing retreats, majority of the people were there were for writing. But there were ad execs there for marketing firms. There were people there who wanted just to learn how to write lyrics for songs. There are people there that wanted to be able to sit down at at their table and talk about their lives unafraid with their family members without worrying about, oh, I need to censor my story so I don’t make my grandma upset.
John Roedel [00:28:04]:
And these writing retreats and these storytelling retreats are kind of about the power of when we share our lives, freckles and blemishes and beauty marks and all, when we share them authentically, we give permission for other people to do it. And it’s not because I’m this great writer who who understands the English, you know, the English language better than anyone. I I’ve never been trained in writing. The one thing I have been able to do is to write vulnerably and to write authentically about my life. And it my you know, I’ve had quite a bit of success over the last couple of years. I had a post I wrote last year that I was writing in the middle of a panic attack that went incredibly viral, shared millions of times across the world, became a dance in 3 or 4 dance companies. It’s taken on a whole life of its own, not because it was particularly this great piece of literature, but because I wrote something that people could identify with, because I wrote something that was real for me. And it’s the idea of if if we hide ourselves too much from the world, if we hide the things that we survive and the things that we’re overcoming from the world, we’re denying someone else to learn from us and give them a chance to be saved by it.
John Roedel [00:29:21]:
And that’s not, like, this ego things like, oh, I’ve written so many things that have saved a life. No. I have just written things that have let other people know that they’re not alone, that they don’t feel that what they’re feeling is not just happening with them. There’s this penguin shaped dude in Wyoming who’s feeling the exact same thing. And in doing so, then I hope that they are willing to share their life with somebody else in whatever form that they need to to help somebody else down the line know that they’re not alone. It’s kind of like the circle of, lighthouses. We are in a storm. We get we find a lighthouse that brings us to shore and we become a lighthouse for somebody else to bring them to shore and we just keep that circle going.
John Roedel [00:30:05]:
So that’s kinda how the writing retreat goes. I talk about the power of what happens when we share and how it’s kind of our responsibility as storytellers to not hide our life from the world, to let other people see it so they can have the courage to share their life and start their own ripple.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:24]:
How does that tend to go over, especially when you’re in a group like you were describing earlier where you had, you know, marketing people and ad execs who might not have been there expecting that kind of a presentation.
John Roedel [00:30:38]:
Well, 2 things. 1, I was very, very clear that all the language for the program had to be, this is not the writing retreat that you think you’re coming to to get technical writing skills. This is not that. This is going to be a safe environment to show. And a lot of the authenticity that I talk about and being real and all that, being unafraid, really has to do with emotion. Like, that for me is, like, we are so guarded with our emotions. We don’t want you know, men are guarded with showing often any kind of suffering or woundedness because they’re afraid that, oh, that would make me less of a man. A lot of the women I’ve talked to are afraid of ever showing anger because then they’re gonna get typecast as a a shrill angry woman.
John Roedel [00:31:25]:
So they have to tamper all that down, and we bury ourselves under all these filters that we we cannot have real authentic relationships with one another unless we’re real with each other. That doesn’t mean that we show up and we scream at our guard you know, someone who’s helping us mow our lawn or we scream at the person at the restaurant just because we’re mad. Here you go. Here’s my anger. No. It’s more about when we talk about our story and our lives to say, you know what? Sometimes I’m sad. I’m a 48 year old man, and sometimes I get sad, and that’s okay. And I hope another 48 year old man out there who is not afraid to even think that way because they’ve been conditioned to think that way are able to soften that and say, yeah.
John Roedel [00:32:06]:
You know what? I’m sad too. And then when you kind of go into that sadness and you dig into it a little bit, you can find all sorts of little beautiful nuggets in there. Even the negative emotions have beautiful little truths and miracles in them. As long as we allow ourselves to experience them, let them have their 5 minutes, and then let them go like birthday parties. Don’t hold on to them. I mean, that was my experience. I had all this poison and kinda angst and anxiety and depression inside of me. And once I let those emotions come out and I spent time with them, then they were able to leave.
John Roedel [00:32:39]:
It was almost like a haunting when you watch those old eighties horror movies. You have a ghost in the house that’s just trying to tell you something. They’re banging on the cover. They have a message to say, but if you’re not gonna listen to them, they’re gonna start manifesting themselves even crazier. They’re gonna start throwing dishes around. They’re gonna start making, you know, paintings bleed or whatever crazy Halloween horror stories would do, and that was my expression of my emotions. I was hiding them from myself, from the world, and then I was afraid of how they’re gonna I mean, had I not bumped into this way of writing, I’m afraid of how they would have manifested themselves in me. So all those folks that came on the writing retreat, by the end of it, you know, the re reviews were really good enough that they’re asking me to go back.
John Roedel [00:33:19]:
I’m I’m going to, Kripalu in Massachusetts, and I come to do the same retreat. And then I’m going to Omega in New York next summer to run the same kind of retreat at these kind of yoga recenders because it’s talking about the power of connection and how we get connected with one another is we share our stories with authenticity. So marketing executives, I would tell them, and I told them this, is I and even if there were fiction writers, it wasn’t all just emo, you know, poetry workers. It was I was telling them the center of it all is emotion. If you don’t have a story that doesn’t have any emotion or anything to it, it’s gonna just be cold and boring. Emotion for me has to be the center of any good story. I need to know how they feel. And so let’s focus on that.
John Roedel [00:34:06]:
And because how I feel when I agree, it’s ex I have a lot of people, I might disagree with politically on about a 1,000 different issues in which, oh, man. This person we have divisions drawn in the sand against us. We’re supposed to be enemies. We’re supposed to not to like each other. But I know what it’s like to grieve, and someone who’s my supposed enemy knows what it’s like to grieve. We know what it’s like to lose somebody. We know what it’s like to have our heart broken. That’s a common quintessential human experience.
John Roedel [00:34:36]:
So let’s start from there in this emotion and build this bridge of the shared emotion that we all go through. We all know what it’s like to fall in love. We all know what it’s like to grieve. So let’s experience that and find those connections between us.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:51]:
Wow. It’s interesting as I’m listening to you talk, there were, like, so many ideas coming together in my head, which tends to make it difficult to try to explain them. But Right.
John Roedel [00:35:03]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:04]:
One of the things that that keeps coming up for me, you know, since we were talking about editing earlier, is that in a way, what you’re talking about doing is not editing yourself anymore. You know? Like, there are all of these ways. I don’t wanna upset grandma. I don’t wanna, you know, rock this boat. I don’t wanna get in trouble at work. I don’t I don’t wanna whatever. And that we, you know, we are the ones
John Roedel [00:35:42]:
Right. Right. Right. No. I you know, we’re all the I I think, you know, not to get too woo woo here, but I’m looking at us all as we’re all, however we arrive in this existence, whether it’s through science or through science fiction or through, spirituality. I am not smart enough to know the answers to any of that. But all I know is this, each one of us are unique. We each have our own story.
John Roedel [00:36:07]:
We each have our own perspective. We each have our own experiences. Each of our lives are a singular event in the history of the cosmos. There will never be another you. There will never be another me that had these exact same experiences with these parents, with these people in our lives. We are a singular note that will be played once in the symphony. So it is incumbent upon us to play that note as full and unashamed as we can because it’s only here once. And so if we’re editing ourselves and we’re so worried about, yeah, perception and expectation and all these things, then we’re just gonna make a note that sounds like the note we saw on TikTok, or I’m gonna start writing like the writer I saw somewhere else, and it’s not gonna be me.
John Roedel [00:36:50]:
It’s not gonna be authentic. And then I’m just talking something. And what a waste of this little brief experience that we have. We are singular events, so let’s let’s treat our our you know, in my way, I’m treating my writing like that. But, you know, dancers, even accountants, for god’s sake, to be the most unique accountant you could be, embrace the history of your life, embrace your perspective, and just be yourself because there’s only one of you and it sounds so cliche and trite, but it’s true.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:21]:
Yeah. And I’m I’m kind of alternating between wow. You know, the only time this note will ever be played. What was that we were saying at the beginning about no pressure or cut? No pressure there. But at the same time, you know, what it seems to me is and I’m kind of surprised now that I’m thinking about it that I hadn’t connected this with what I said just before, but we’re editing ourselves because we don’t think we’re good enough for all of these other people. We don’t think that who we are is okay.
John Roedel [00:37:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. It starts with self loathing. It’s it starts with this part. It’s like, I’m not I you know, I I often in the world of poetry, as a person who stumbled into poetry, I run into that all the time. It’s like, oh, I don’t even call myself a poet half the time even though I’ve written 500 poems in the last 3 years. I don’t like to refer to myself that because you put things on a pedestal. It’s like, oh, no.
John Roedel [00:38:22]:
That’s a poet. Oh, no. No. That’s a podcaster. Oh, no. I’m just someone doing it on my phone, you know, and I I don’t I’m not as good as those people. No. I’m not as good as them being them, and they’re not as good as if they were trying to be me.
John Roedel [00:38:36]:
Like, we are. When I say they’re right, there’s a little pressure to say, hey. There’s only one of you. Get it right. You don’t have to get it right. Just get it. Just get going. Don’t worry about being perfect.
John Roedel [00:38:46]:
Again, the enemy of good is perfect is this idea of being perfect. Let go. I’m going to be imperfect, you know, all day long. 23 hours of the day, imperfection, shine, but that’s okay because I’m being myself and I’m being human. And I recognize that in other people and it makes me more empathetic towards people that sometimes I might have been judgmental about or sometimes I might have clenched my fist and gotten angry at them. One of my last experiences as a journalist, I was at a I was at a rally. And at it, you know, I’m in a small community, and so I would see a lot of these people at these political rallies, and I’d have to cover them. And, you know, I don’t know if people picked up on this, but there’s a lot general just distrust of the media out there.
John Roedel [00:39:27]:
And I was at these events, and oftentimes, it’d be confrontation. And I’m not Anderson Cooper. I’m not out there, you know, trying to get any but I’m just trying to get quotes so nobody gets sued. Right? I’m just trying to get things right so my boss was not gonna get sued. I was I didn’t have an axe to grind. I was just but, oftentimes, me just showing up caused so much anger and angst between just me and the people I’m covering that it made me uncomfortable. And, you know, a lot of times people scream at you, yell at you, spit at you, things like that. And on my last day, when I was covering my last event, I remember telling these folks, you’re not gonna see me anymore, so there’ll be a new person replacing me.
John Roedel [00:40:02]:
And they kind of opened up a little bit more now that I was getting taken off the reporter hat. And I was talking to these folks that I vehemently kinda disagree with the way they interpret life, but that’s okay. That’s what makes it exciting. And we’re having this conversation, and I said, you know, remember when you, 2 rallies ago when you spit on me? Do you remember that moment? Do you remember what caused that? And they said, I I remember that, and they apologized because I was afraid. And I said, oh, yeah. I know what it’s like to be afraid. I’m afraid too. And I know what it’s like to not feel like I’m in control of my own life and things are beyond my control.
John Roedel [00:40:39]:
I might react to that fear differently than they do. I might take my fear and grab a cup of coffee and and write some emotional poetry. They might make a sign and go scream at a government building. It’s still fear. It’s just reflected in a different way. And in that in in the way that I’m doing this now, I see their fear as not something for me to be angry about. I see their fear as my fear, and it’s kind of that what I was talking about before, that bridge that connects us. We all we all experience these emotions the same way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:12]:
Yeah. 2 things occurred to me while you were talking. The first one was every single one of us, as you’ve said, with no pressure attached whatsoever is totally unique.
John Roedel [00:41:25]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:27]:
Which means I have to think that there is no way for us to be anything but perfectly ourselves unless we try to turn ourselves into somebody we’re not.
John Roedel [00:41:39]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:40]:
Which I don’t think I had ever really thought about before. Like, it should be the easiest thing in the world to be perfectly yourself.
John Roedel [00:41:45]:
Because I think it probably was 20 years ago, before we had screens and Instagram filters and everything that we Instagram accounts, we could look at things and see what other people are doing. It’s like, oh my gosh. I mean, I I will speak from experience, and this is not something again, I’m not speaking from on top of the mountain, looking down, casting pieces of wisdom. I’m still struggling with these things. I’m a 48 year old poet who writes on social media. I mean, my teenage children must want to enter, witness protection soon because and this is the idea, like, you know, I I can be on Facebook. I can write a poem that, oh, that’s really thank you. That’s really impact.
John Roedel [00:42:26]:
And I can scroll a little bit, and and then I bump into someone I went to high school with who has a timeshare in Cabo. And here’s all their beautiful children. Their hair is perfectly combed, and they’re eating this gourmet meal. And the sunset is setting in just a perfect way possible in their background. And I think to myself, oh my god. What have I done with my life? I’m barely making my car payment. I’m barely doing these things. And here he is with a second timeshare in a foreign country.
John Roedel [00:42:53]:
What’s wrong with me?
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:55]:
Mhmm.
John Roedel [00:42:55]:
And then, you know, I as much as I use social media to get my work out there, it’s also made us so competitive with each other and and trying to emulate one another. I mean, it’s not even just just past the stereotypical of our kids looking at, you know, the celebrities on on on their screens and be like, I need to be like this person because that’s what happiness is. So, yeah, there is so much pressure for us to be like other people, and it’s easy to lose our individuality. It’s easy to lose our purpose. It’s easy it would be easy for me to be like, I need to get a better job than writing poetry so we can have an easier life. And I but I tried that for years. I tried to be somebody else for years, and it made it was like poison inside. It wasn’t until I embraced who I was and these things going on inside of me that I kind of really felt like I connected with why I’m here in the first place.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:52]:
Yeah. That makes total sense to me. Because the the second thing that occurred to me when you were talking about, you know, when you were a journalist and and going to those events, there and and I don’t wanna get too far into the weeds with this because the details aren’t necessarily important. But, I was listening to an interview last week with a guy named Tom Nichols, who has written a lot about democracy and and why we seem to be having issues with our democracy. And and one of the points that that he made, and I don’t think that there’s any way if you can measure the veracity of this statement, but it made an impression. He thinks that we not only have had such a long period where we haven’t had any major international strife, you know, we haven’t had World War 2 or Vietnam or anything like that going on, And we are now spending so much time staring at screens, staring at the people next door who suddenly look so much better than they probably are because you’re only seeing the pretty pictures on Instagram.
John Roedel [00:44:59]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:59]:
That he thinks that we’re bored. And, therefore, all of this stuff that’s going on is a way to kind of fill that hole. I think that we might be bored, but I I think he’s got it slightly wrong. I I think that there’s a lot, and I think a lot of it is fueled by stuff like social media. I think a lot of us feel really empty.
John Roedel [00:45:25]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:26]:
And so we’re looking for meaning wherever we can find it. And if it looks like venting our fear at somebody, which is probably not actually bringing meaning to our lives, but we’re looking for something to fill this space. Yeah. You know? And and it seems to me, just as we’re talking, that if we could step back and really engage with ourselves and get to know ourselves for ourselves again and say, hey. You know what? I’m a little quirky about this thing over here, and I think that’s cool. I like being quirky about that. I may be completely, totally boring about, like, you know, balancing my checkbook, if we even really have those anymore, you know, stuff like that, or or my job. But I have the coolest, quirkiest wardrobe you’ve ever seen, and it’s my pride and joy, and it it just makes me feel alive, and that’s awesome.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:23]:
And so I’m gonna run with that. I’m gonna say yes to that and see what the and is. Yeah. You know, I I think we’re so busy thinking that we have to be all of these things that we’re not, that, like, we have to hide the cool quirky wardrobe. You know? Right. And and dress in a suit to go to work because that’s what they think I’m supposed to be.
John Roedel [00:46:43]:
Right. Right. And I I think it’s really interesting when you talk about our people board. I think people want to win now, and we don’t have anything to win. Mhmm. Like, there’s no, you know, there’s no great struggles to win as, like, a society anymore except against each other. We need to beat the other side into submission. I need to win an argument on Twitter so I can let my friends know I won an argument on Twitter.
John Roedel [00:47:08]:
We are so competitive with people on the other side, whatever ideological side that we’re on that that becomes our job. In fact, I know somebody whose entire job is to be on Twitter, and they’re paid really good money. They have 100 of thousands of followers. Their job on Twitter is just to get people riled up, and that’s their job. And because people are maybe have this they don’t we don’t have this, you know, existential crisis as a society. We had a chance with pan the pandemic. That might not have been something we were ever gonna win or get through. But I kind of at the beginning, I had hoped.
John Roedel [00:47:44]:
It’s like, hey. If we overcome this pandemic as a world and a community together, my gosh. This is the win we need for us all to come together and say, you know what? All these petty things, let’s put it behind this because when we collectively work together, we can defeat something like this. I don’t know that I think that happened by the way that I fully looked at it, But I think it’s true. I think we’re so invested in be in winning right now and being and and winning these little fake competitions that that’s become our lifestyle. And there are people who are preying upon that. We’re you know, just like advertisers prey upon us not feeling good about ourselves. You need more acne cream.
John Roedel [00:48:22]:
You need to look better in clothes. All these things they prey upon. I think there’s other people who are preying upon our need to win these little arguments between each other. And, you know, at some point, I hope we get bored of that. When you’re saying people are bored, I my with with their what Nichols was saying, I think I can’t wait for people to be a little bit more bored with all that so they can become interested about themselves. We we don’t have we don’t have a ton of interest when it comes to we’re we’re plenty narcissistic. And as a narcissist, I’m speaking you know, I know what it’s like to be self involved. I’m not talking about that.
John Roedel [00:48:57]:
I’m talking about being interested in our very nature, being interested in how to build community, being interested in just these big, I questions that we should be asking ourselves is like, how did we get here? What happens later? What is this miracle we’re all involved in? Is it a cosmic 1 in a 1,000,000,000 chance? Or is there something to it? Let’s be curious about that. Let’s be bored enough with all that other crap so we can become interested in this. But I don’t know.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:26]:
It sounds good to me.
John Roedel [00:49:28]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:29]:
Yeah. And I think you have a really good point about needing to win. I I think we’ve become really competitive in that way, and it’s, you know, sometimes sometimes I look at people. It’s like, who who do you think you’re racing against? You know? There’s Right. There’s nobody there’s nobody else here. And that’s as true, you know, on Instagram as it is, you know, with that super competitive guy that you know at work. You know? It’s it’s like, what’s what’s the battle? What more to the point, what do you think the prize is?
John Roedel [00:50:01]:
Yes. Yeah. What do you what’s the trophy at the end? If the trophy at the end of it is that everyone thinks you’re a winner, I’d rather be thought as a person who is kind than a person who always won. Now that’s different than the answer I’ve given, like, 20 years ago, because I bought into the whole idea. Oh, I really want people to think that I’m successful and I’m amazing and I win. The the grayer I get and the more, you know, the more wrinkles I form, the more I realize that it’s not no one will remember you for DAS. No one will remember that. They will remember what you did when you were with them 1 on 1.
John Roedel [00:50:34]:
They will remember the conversations you had. You will remember the the slight kindness that you might have shown. So that’s winning for me, but, yeah, it’s interesting.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:44]:
It’s very interesting. So since we have a couple of minutes left, Yeah. Wondering if you have some specific suggestions for people who wanna try to dig into this kind of writing or introspection, however they might wanna go about it.
John Roedel [00:51:08]:
Yeah. So, this is what I I tell people. So, when I say I write in real time, I really mean it. Like, I treat writing, like it’s a dream journal. Like, I you know how if if you were if you were to write about your dreams, you’re supposed to keep a pad and paper next to your nightstand. When you wake up in the middle of the night, grab it, and then write so you can get it all when it’s fresh and real. And so you don’t wake up the next morning and be like, what is a purple sunflower? You know? No. Write it all.
John Roedel [00:51:35]:
Write in the write in the when you wake up, get it all out immediately, and then go back to sleep. When I feel something, when I feel whether it’s be it’s triggered from a song or because I saw something just in my everyday life walking down the street or a conversation I had with somebody. And, you know, you have those moments, probably happens 2 or 3 times a week. You get something that stirs on you longer a couple seconds after the moment passed. Maybe it was a beautiful sunset. Maybe it was you saw a stranger crying about something you didn’t know what they were crying about. Whatever it was that stirred that little energy, that little spark inside of you, I stop what I’m doing unless I’m driving a car full of children or nuns. I sit down and I write about it immediately about how I feel.
John Roedel [00:52:22]:
And I let that just guide me from that moment, how I feel. And I’m not doing an autopsy 48 hours later when I’m looking back. It’s like, I was sad on Tuesday, and here’s why I think I was sad and, you know, list it like that. No. I’m writing from the trend. If I’m having a moment where I just got done laughing hysterically with a friend about something we talked about, nostalgia or something like that, I might have that lingering, but I wanna write about the power of nostalgia and write about that while I’m still feeling it, while it’s still inside of me living. Because I think emotions are these wonderful living miracles that when they happen inside of us, it’s proof that we’re not robots or rocks. So when I’m having it, I wanna feel it.
John Roedel [00:53:03]:
I wanna write about it while that charge is inside of me. So that’s the first thing. Write about it when it’s happening, if you can. Don’t write about it later, try to analyze it. Don’t try to impress anybody, even yourself. Don’t try to write something like, oh, I I gotta make sure this is really impressive. Who cares? There’s some there’s always gonna be somebody more impressive than you or me. There’s always gonna be someone who’s going to write something that’s gonna be, oh, that’s that’s really well written and better than anything I could ever do.
John Roedel [00:53:33]:
It’s presumably because they were just writing about their own perspective and it makes it look that way. They’re not trying to write the best writing comes from people not trying to impress anybody else with their writing. So that would be the second thing. And the third thing I would say was even if you’re not going to write for anyone else to read, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write. Write it even if it’s just for yourself. Journal every day, connect with yourself every day. There’s a lot of things there’s a lot of truths we hide from ourselves that only the pen or the flashing cursor seems to kind of, leech out of our hearts when we need them to. So those are the 3, kind of, quick things.
John Roedel [00:54:16]:
And then, you know, it’s a little bit counter to the third point. At some point, share yourself with another person. Share these connections you’ve made in your heart. It doesn’t mean you have to write a blog and share it with everybody. Doesn’t mean you have to, you know, do a podcast, share it with the world. Doesn’t mean you have to get on stage and sing your song. But find somebody else out there and give them that little piece of your life and give it to them because there’s nothing better than to give somebody to let somebody see your authentic self and say, This is me. And for them to say, I understand, and then give them a chance to say, here’s me, and take a little piece of themselves and give it to you.
John Roedel [00:54:54]:
And I think that’s why I like writing on Facebook. As awful and as a sludge pit as it can be, oftentimes in the comments section, I’ll write something that might be heartfelt and true for me, and then inevitably people will start writing and putting their own experiences in the comments section about their life. And it’s the shared storytelling back and forth that I really, really value. And I really think all the things we’re talking about about the problems these days and the way we’re treating each other and this lack of, you know, common decency we sometimes feel towards one another and this idea of winning all the time. I think what combats that is empathy and listening to one another and recognizing that, sure, this person who’s maybe reflecting their anger and fear in a way I don’t understand, I might never forgive them. But, you know, if I just sit and listen to their fear and listen to what’s going on with them, I’m going to soften my heart a little bit. And I’m going to maybe not agree with them and maybe certainly not, appreciate the way they use that fear and anger. But I can empathize with it because I feel the same way.
John Roedel [00:56:00]:
So that’s kind of a long winded answer for my thing. Three quick points and then make sure you share yourself with at least one other person. Don’t go to your grave with your, with your story in a shoebox under your bed. Let somebody else know it. Even if it’s just one other person, share your life authentically with one other person.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:19]:
I think you probably, at first, wanna be pretty choosy about who that person is.
John Roedel [00:56:23]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Because that’s why I say I don’t tell people to do what I do. What I have done is reckless crazy. I write myself and just put it out there. People copyright it.
John Roedel [00:56:32]:
Sometimes people use it for nefarious purposes. I I I would never say just start writing about your real life and putting it out there. Who cares what the world thinks? No. Right. You there’s a real world in that. Your boss might care. It depends on your job. Your, your spouse might care.
John Roedel [00:56:47]:
No. But there’s a there is a power in sharing yourself authentically and finding a safe person where you can share your life authentically with. And that’s how I you we know who our soul friends are and those people that we’ve met that we’ve I must have known you somewhere else before you got here on earth because we clicked like we’ve always known each other. It’s those people. It’s those folks that you can give a piece of your heart to and then they give a piece of their heart to you. And I think that’s how we I think that’s how we survive these times.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:17]:
I I agree. And I’m really glad too that you mentioned not just the importance of sharing, but the importance of listening.
John Roedel [00:57:25]:
Oh, yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:25]:
Because I will tell you, this is you know, I’m coming up on the the end of my 4th year doing this podcast. And if I have learned nothing else, and boy did I learn it in a hurry, I learned how much we devalue listening and how much we don’t really listen to other people.
John Roedel [00:57:43]:
You know,
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:43]:
when I’m having a conversation with somebody like you, if I’m not really listening, the conversation is not gonna go very far, and it’s not gonna be very interesting. And, you know, it it is amazing to me how much we have learned to tune everything out, including each other and including ourselves.
John Roedel [00:58:01]:
Yep.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:02]:
So I love that, you know, I I love all of your three points and the idea of sharing and listening to someone else. I think they’re all things that will only benefit us individually and collectively the more of us.
John Roedel [00:58:15]:
Yeah. I’m I’m definitely not the smartest person I know. I’m probably in the bottom 10% of the smart people I know. So the more I listen to people, the smarter I get. And even if it’s a completely 180 degree how I see the world, but to listen to them explain it as long as, you know, they’re not you know, writing the anarchist cookbook or, bringing back MINCOM, I’m willing to listen to hear your story. I’m not really interested on your opinions. I wanna know where it comes from. What’s your story? Like, how did you form this? Where did you get this? Who are you? How did you get to this point where you might have a really hard and chiseled you might have turned your tongue into a spear, and you’re killing people with it.
John Roedel [00:58:57]:
How did you get there? What were you like as a child? Let me know your story up until this point. That’s, for me, much more interesting than I ever wanna hear about someone’s politics. I wanna know how did you get to your politics? That’s for me is the most interesting part.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:13]:
Yeah. That’s a very good point.
John Roedel [00:59:16]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:16]:
Yep. Well, this is, as always, been a fantastic and fascinating conversation. And thank you so much. That’s this week’s episode. My gratitude to John Rodell for coming back to the show and to you for listening. Please leave a review for this episode. There’s a link right in your podcast app, and in it, tell us about a time when you connected with someone else. If you enjoyed our conversation, I hope you’ll share it with a friend.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:44]:
Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you, don’t forget to get in touch on any of my social platforms or even via email at [email protected]. Tell me what you loved. And if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, and you haven’t yet signed up for my free email series on 6 of the most common creative beliefs that are messing you up, please check it out. It’ll untangle those myths and help you get rolling again. You can find it at fycuriosity.com, and there’s also a link right in your podcast app. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:29]:
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. Thanks.