We know that narrowing your focus is a great tool for curbing the creative chaos; but, is a creative niche forever? Don't fret! Rachael and Lauren talk about the "Niche for Now" approach, remaining engaged in your work, and and the freedom that comes with setting aside what no longer serves you.
We know that narrowing your focus is a great tool for curbing the creative chaos; but, is a creative niche forever? Don't fret! Rachael and Lauren talk about the "Niche for Now" approach, remaining engaged in your work, and and the freedom that comes with setting aside what no longer serves you.
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The transcript for this episode can be found here!
Lauren: Hello, and welcome to Chaotic Creatives, a show about embracing the chaos that comes with living a creative life.
Rachael: We are your hosts, two self-proclaimed chaotic creative gals. My name is Rachael Renae, I'm your internet hype gal and love encouraging you to use PLAY to build confidence and creativity.
Lauren: Very nice. And I am Lauren Hom, better known as Hom Sweet Hom on the internet. I am a designer, lettering artist, muralist, and also chef. I recently graduated from culinary school.
Rachael: What are we talking about today, Hom Sweet Hom?
Lauren: Kristle told me that at the end of every episode I've been apologizing for how hard it is to spell my username.
Rachael: Oh, yeah. You do that a lot, yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: No more apologies.
Lauren: No more, no more. It's spelled how it's spelled. Today, we are going to talk about organizing some of the creative chaos in our brains. How do we, as people with lots of interests and lots of projects on our to-do lists, find focus and commit to something for a period of time, just navigating how to corral the chaos.
Rachael: Yeah. For whatever reason, when you were just describing that, the image that popped into my brain was a really full plate, and how do you decide your strategy to eat the whole thing? And what do you focus on first?
Lauren: Reminds me of... I used to be really jealous of waiters who could carry the plates on the arms as a kid. I always wanted to be a waitress, but it was one of those things where you needed experience to get the job, and I didn't know anyone who ran a restaurant.
Rachael: You can tell that we grew up in different places because I worked at Applebee's in college, and my big skillset from that experience was I could carry four soft drink cups in one hand, and then food in the other. Four pint glasses, basically.
Lauren: What?
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: Did you wear little grippy things?
Rachael: You just finagled your fingers in the right way, yeah.
Lauren: Wow.
Rachael: Okay.
Lauren: Incredible.
Rachael: That is not where I expected us to start, but here we are.
Lauren: Yeah, that's a fun fact. I settled for working at Cold Stone.
Rachael: Okay, yeah.
Lauren: Food service, but different. Yeah, organizing the creative chaos. Fun. We had discussed the topic for this episode because we were recently on a mini road trip.
Rachael: Which we realized we probably should have done an Instagram live or some sort of recording of our conversation in our two-hour car ride, and we didn't.
Lauren: But we were just talking about... You were asking me about how my conference was in Toronto. I recently spoke at FITC, getting back on the speaking circuit, and the title of my talk was Niche for Now, how to navigate a creative career as a multi-passionate person. And I think when I speak with other fellow Chaotic Creatives, it's interesting to see how even though we identify as Chaotic Creatives, we do end up finding focus somehow, whether it's just by trial and error or maybe you set a plan. We were talking about how going to ceramics class, setting aside a day of the week or a time slot is one way to do that, or just coming up with a challenge. You're doing a PLAY challenge right now.
Rachael: Yeah. I really like the idea of what you call containers, I steal that term now, because I need a little bit of guidance. I need a boundary to work within to be able to focus, and that is why I started my style challenges, and it's one thing that I talk about in my prioritized PLAY workshop as an actual strategy that you can use, and I think it's an easy one. Because you can come up with the boundaries and the rules within that container, and so yeah, I'm doing a Creative PLAY for May, and-
Lauren: This comes out in June, so...
Rachael: Yeah, it'll be done by the time you're listening to this-
Lauren: But hopefully you can glean some lessons from Rachel's challenge, and maybe create your own, or join her next one.
Rachael: Absolutely, yeah. And I was just telling Lauren, before we started recording, my personal creative challenge for me, because I didn't pick a creative practice for people to do, I wanted them to pick their own. I gave a bunch of ideas and I chose drawing self-portraits because I'm always drawn to them, no pun intended. When other people are drawing portraits of people or painting portraits, I love them. And I know that in order to be able to create the art that I'm envisioning in my brain, I have to practice. And so I was like, "Okay, I'm going to do this 30-day challenge where I draw a self-portrait every day." It can be just a sketch, it can be just a colored pencil. It doesn't have to be anything-
Lauren: Fancy.
Rachael: Fancy. It's just like do a little bit of practice. And I have resisted so much already, and we're halfway through the month, and I realized that though I'm giving myself the boundary and really having a low bar as far as the expectations of this creative practice, I'm learning that I don't like drawing. And just because you're capable of doing something doesn't mean that has to be your thing. I can draw okay, and if I were to complete enthusiastically my challenge that I set for myself, I would get better. But I think that this is valuable information. So even if you do a challenge and you're struggling to get through it, maybe that's good information. And I think for me, what I'm realizing is that I set the boundaries of this challenge to be able to get to the final product of a cool self-portrait piece. And what our whole thing is following the fun, prioritizing the PLAY, what process do I actually enjoy? And it's not drawing. So maybe if I were making a ceramic face or bust or something, maybe I would enjoy it more.
But yeah, drawing, I don't think is for me. And I used to be really hard on myself when I could never make time. I would always bring a sketchbook with me and in my head, I live in New York and I sit in the park, and I'm drawing. And then someone sees my drawing, and asks me on the date as if I were open to a stranger talking to me ever, and then I fall in love and my life is made into a rom com. Hasn't happened yet, probably because I don't like drawing, that's the only reason.
Lauren: Yeah, it's one of those things where... I remember when I was younger, I used to be surprised when people told me that they like eating but not cooking because they were synonymous in my mind. But like you were saying with drawing, you might save a bunch of stuff on Pinterest and like a bunch of drawing that other people produce online, but when you sit down to do it yourself, you're like, "Ooh, this doesn't feel right." And I think that is really valuable information to have because we might be drawn to some things, but it doesn't mean we have to do them. It's like we talked about the concept too of dating a hobby or a skill or a new medium, it's like you're just trying it out. If it doesn't work out, it's cool. It's all good.
Rachael: Yeah, first date isn't marriage, give it a chance and then let it go.
Lauren: Yeah, and you're getting valuable information. You also might... I know you just floated the idea of doing a ceramic self-portrait, but maybe you end up trying to do it through photography or some other medium that allows you to operate within the container, but it's not the original prompt that you set.
Rachael: Yeah, it feels like... I think to focus us back on our main topic, implementing some sort of boundary or challenge, and I think a challenge is really fun because it's low stakes. You can set the rules, there are no rules. You can make it a five-day challenge, you could make it an every hour challenge where you stand up and stretch for every hour of the day that you're awake.
Lauren: Wow.
Rachael: Or something.
Lauren: My garbage brain went to power hour in college where you take a shot every hour.
Rachael: Okay.
Lauren: Is it a shot? Oh no, it could be a shot a minute you die.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: I'm pretty sure it's...
Rachael: Can you tell that I didn't really party in college, I was like, "What's power hour?"
Lauren: I went to art school, we didn't even party like that but I heard the concept and I was like, "That sounds dangerous." Pretty sure it's a shot-
Rachael: That wasn't me shaming you in your college drinking days.
Lauren: It's all good. It was a part of my life.
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah, so power hour, but for maybe stretching or moving your body-
Lauren: Much healthier.
Rachael: Or maybe it's you read a chapter every day or something. It doesn't have to be creativity in the traditional sense, it can be creativity in that you're staying curious, things we've talked about in previous episodes, but I think, yeah, giving yourself the challenge is a helpful way to focus and maybe you end up with a body of work at the end of 30 days. In my head, I was going to have this cool collection of self-portraits and now I'm like, "It's not happening." I'm not even making five minutes to do it every day.
Lauren: Even though you have the five minutes, it's usually, with a chaotic creative brain, not an issue of you don't have enough time, it's actually-
Rachael: Prioritizing it.
Lauren: Yeah, prioritizing it. Because one thing I was thinking about when you were saying that was anchoring it to... You go to book club every week, right?
Rachael: Month, yeah.
Lauren: Oh, every month. Super manageable, love that. Love that. I forgot it's you read the whole book and then you discuss, not chapter by chapter, but-
Rachael: And the gal who coordinates our book club picks small books, which is nice.
Lauren: Doing it with other people can be really helpful, where you feel committed or there's comradery. Because going to ceramics class, because it's one set chunk of time, one day of the week with other people, it gets me to go more than I would if I was just like, "Friday is ceramic day," because guess what? There's laundry that needs to be done, there's plants that need to be watered. You and I always joke between us that there's nothing like, "I'll just throw in a load of laundry," to throw off your entire day.
Rachael: Truly, truly. Even just saying that, I'm like, "Is there a wet load of laundry in my washer right now?"
Lauren: Oh God, and then it's 10 times worse.
Rachael: Yeah, I think you're right. Having the accountability of other people, that's another reason why I really like this PLAY workshop that I've been hosting and will host again in June, so it will be appropriate when you're listening to this. So because you meet other people who have the same interests as you, and having people who also care about the thing makes you more excited, and putting it on your calendar might be good for non-Chaotic Creatives, but the amount of times that I've blocked off, time to rest or to do creativity, to do creativity, it doesn't work because it's just me holding myself accountable and like you said, I will always find a chore to do.
Lauren: Yeah, I think creating the containers and having the accountability, that's 100% the reason why I enrolled in culinary school last year versus just cooking at home because I do cook at home almost every day, but the specificity of needing to be in the same classroom at the same time every day for four hours.
Rachael: Unless your friend Rachel's visiting and convinces you to skip class.
Lauren: Exactly. It's something that I need in order to accomplish the result I want to achieve, which is be a better cook, graduate from culinary school, for whatever reason, it's just been something on my bucket list. And I just knew I wasn't going to do it on my own because when you are the person setting the deadline, you can also nudge the deadline and, yeah, it gets a little bit dicey. But the specificity is really important, I think. And even though I have lots of interests, I think there are ones that just naturally rise to the top of, "This feels more urgent right now," and whether it's committing money to a eight-week class, year-long class, whatever that may be, that's one way to lock your focus in for a while or just whatever feels the most fun right now. When we say follow the fun, it's not necessarily in the moment, "What would be the most fun for me right now?" It's being in touch with yourself and your creativity, knowing "What do I want to hone right now?
What pool do I want to play in?" You're not forsaking all of the other things, it's just this one is captivating you right now for whatever reason.
Rachael: Yeah. You talking about culinary school reminded me that... So I take French classes, and I think this is a really good example because I, in the past, have tried to do the do-it-yourself, buy the online course, do it at your own pace French classes, and I would never commit to it. Even if I set it in my calendar, like, "Okay, I'm going to do it once a week and study for an hour." I'm not a self-studier, unless I'm really jazzed about the thing. And French is a great example because it's something that I want as a skill, but it's not something that I'm necessarily enjoying the process of learning because it's difficult for me. This is my first... Well, second language that I'm learning, obviously, intentionally learning, and I had to commit to paying for a class and going each week, and every week that I go, I'm like, "Oh, I don't want to do this right now. I'm tired from the end of the day." And then I go, and I'm energized, I'm excited.
And thinking back to a year ago, I have progressed so much, I have learned, and so I think it's a balance of following the fun, but understanding what are your goals in your creativity in your life? What kind of life are you trying to live for yourself? In mine, I am able to speak French, and so even though it's not as fun as maybe working on a ceramics project or throwing in a load of laundry, it's something that I had to commit to and the only way that I could commit to it was paying for it and getting that sort of accountability from a class.
Lauren: Yeah, I'm sure you could have... I guess the freeway would be to get a group of friends together or organizing your local community like, "Weekly French practice meetups." But there is something nice about step-by-step guided instruction that I found a lot of value in. As someone who teaches, it's nice to be taught, I think, and led and defer to someone else, I think, for the focus. Where I think a lot of times in my life, I have said I want agency over my whole life with autonomy, but too much autonomy isn't always the best for getting stuff done. For me, the way stuff gets done is typically I'm either so excited or passionate about it, it's so fun that I want to just keep doing it, or I'm panicked leading up to a deadline. Those are the two biggest motivators for me.
Rachael: Same 100%.
Lauren: The energy is so different too. The first one is obviously better, but I think combining the two of them is where you can find this fun sweet spot of giving yourself some pressure, applying gentle pressure. A massage feels good, a massage feels good in a way that if someone pressed too hard, you would know. It's much better to get massage than punched.
Rachael:
And that is where we end today. No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah, I'm trying to noodle while you're talking on the idea of back to niching for now and how we can be niching in several things at once, but we have to commit to a couple and make progress or let it go. You can put it on the shelf for later or you can spring-clean like we talked about last time, and totally clear it out. But I feel like finding the things that you're so excited that you want to keep going back to. I find myself daydreaming about ceramics lately, I just want to get back to the studio, and so that is my niche for right now, and maybe in the future, I will drift away from that and find a different hobby that is more calling to me at that time.
Lauren: Yeah, you just know when it's time to shift focus. I think you develop it over time like a muscle, your intuition of, "This is feeling a little stale or I'm no longer as stimulated by this activity." Maybe because your skill level has gotten high enough where there's less to be curious about, you explored it not as much-
Rachael: Yeah, you're not learning as much.
Lauren: Yeah, and then once you start feeling that it's time to start planting the seeds of what the next thing might be. And I think that so many times in my life and my career, there's always overlap where it's not like I am done with lettering and I moved to the next thing. It's like a "Yes, and?" kind of thing, where the Niche for Now thing... Did we talk about this in the beginning or was it before we started recording?
Rachael: You just said that you presented and that was your topic, and I probably got us going on-
Lauren: I didn't even explain it. So the reason we decided on this episode topic was because the Niche for Now framework is what I teach or how I've distilled, in hindsight, what my process is for balancing multiple interests while monetizing them is you find a niche, something that... You try a lot of things, you see what sticks. I majored in advertising, but I ended up as a lettering artist as my niche because I started a lettering project, put it on the internet and people responded to it. Being in dialogue with an audience can give you an inkling of like, "Oh, there might be some demand for this." So I started with that, and very slowly over the last 12 years, have added one new skill or interest or medium into the mix, I'd say every one to two years, and it's been baby steps towards going to culinary school. The jump from lettering to chef seems pretty wide, but if you look at it year by year, it's not. I've been baby stepping towards this by incorporating food themes in my lettering work, and then incorporating food illustrations, doing chalkboards for restaurants.
It's always been food adjacent because that's just what I think about. The things that you're passionate about makes sense to me to dabble in, at least, to monetize because you're doing so much unpaid labor thinking about it, looking up YouTube videos, reading about it. It's like a self-study that once you have the information in your brain, like with sewing or ceramics, and you have the muscle memory that you can just pull stuff out of your brain like, "Oh, I know why that is." It starts to synthesize in a really interesting way.
Rachael: Yeah, I feel like lately, a lot of my creative practices have synthesized into the idea of this umbrella of by prioritizing PLAY we're experiencing and participating in personal growth, which allows us to connect with our perfect people, and those three things altogether are how you can curate a fulfilling life for yourself. And so we talked a little bit about the challenges that I did, and when I started doing style challenges, that was my niche for a couple of years on Instagram, just doing style challenges, sharing my outfits, and I started to feel like it wasn't fun anymore, just getting dressed. For many reasons, I don't want to just be selling people stuff all the time, lots of people commenting on my body, which I have enough barriers that I'm not bothered by, but again and again, it gets a little exhausting.
Lauren: Yeah, you got to peek behind the curtain of that life.
Rachael: Yeah, and partnering with brands is amazing, but I want to partner, and I had always wanted to from the beginning, with brands whose values I align with because style, for me, is so much about creative self-expression. So style is creativity, it's not, "How can I make money doing this, especially making money for other people?" And so I started to reach a pain point, I think, with just doing that. And it was at that time where I was like, "Okay, how do I still be the enthusiastic style gal that you know and love, and also show this broader multifaceted version of myself without alienating my audience?" Because they grew with me in this style challenge. And I think we all know when that feeling, or we maybe start to know and can start to pay attention to when that feeling is coming, and you built up the culinary school thing for years, you were preparing for it.
And I think for me, I just had to take a step back and realize that PLAY is my niche now and style is one aspect of that, but really what I care about is creative expression and creative play for my own growth and fulfillment, and I think that that is what my umbrella is. And I feel like maybe we have to try the things, you have to try to figure out what your niche is and hit that pain point, and then acknowledge it and pivot, and do something else or expand it or set it aside. Spring-clean it and do something else, does that make sense?
Lauren: Yeah, 100%.
Rachael: Okay.
Lauren: Because I think it's really interesting watching you. When we met, you were doing Hazel + Dolly stationery, you were stationery gal, and then I watched you pivot to... Not even pivot, but try something new with style.
Rachael: I feel like it's been an evolution. It hasn't ever been like, "Bye." I've overlapped a lot because, yeah, stationery stuff overlapped with style.
Lauren: Yeah, and I think that one of the benefits of being as much of yourself as you can online is that your personality becomes a sticking point and just who you are as a person. The first word in social media is social, we connect with other people that we either find interesting or see a bit of ourselves in, and it's just making friends, but with an unscalable number of people, an overwhelming number of people, which is where the pitfalls come in. But because you and I have both... I don't know how we would be anything else besides our weird selves online, that's the only way I can participate in social media is just to be weird. And that fosters connection though, and it allows you some flexibility. For all the cons of having a personal brand, it allows you flexibility because people like you and are interested in you, so you can maneuver in a way that people give you a little bit more flexibility versus... You are who you are, not just what you do in people's minds.
And I like what you said about not wanting to alienate your audience either, because I just talked about this earlier today where the Niche for Now thing, adding one new thing or taking one step this way, is also a generous way to treat your audience. Because when you have an audience or customers, you don't want to confuse them either. You have to worry about how you communicate with other people, so keeping something constant but sprinkling in some new stuff is a nice way to start to grow in another direction.
Rachael: And I think the evolution of you doing it in real time on the internet, I guess, is you being an example of the values that you talk about. I'm saying you, but I mean me and you. Me sharing, "Okay, I don't want to just do style anymore, let me talk about this in this broader sense," and sharing that evolution, that's what I want to encourage people to do, be curious always. Grow and change-
Lauren: Yeah, you're leading by example.
Rachael: Yeah, as you have more information. So hopefully, like you said, people are resonating with the person and how they're living their life, and so they follow along. And if not, that's okay. I don't expect people to follow me if it's annoying, you don't have to. Friends and family? Probably not even listening.
Lauren: Absolutely, which is nice.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: I think there's... What is the thing? It's called spotlight syndrome, where we are self-conscious because we think other people have eyes on us all the time, but everyone's worried about their own stuff. The reason it's embarrassing to trip and fall in public is only because you think other people saw it. I trip and fall in here all the time, and so it alleviates some of the stress for me when I realized no one's paying it. Everyone's so worried about their own shit, and it's fine.
Rachael: Yeah, I talk about that in the style course, about we think that people are so focused on us, but we all only care about ourselves the most. Of course, we care about our friends and our communities, but if you're going out in an outfit and you feel awesome, you might think everyone's looking at me and I feel great, people don't give a shit. I mean they do, but they're probably attracted to your confidence in what you're wearing not what you're wearing. Yeah, so I think just always remember that people are mostly thinking about themselves and you're reflecting back to them how they feel about themselves.
Lauren: Yeah, totally. And I think it can feel stifling sometimes to the general business advice of, "Pick a niche, find your niche." You have to try a lot of things to find something that works, but once you do, there's the downside of finding a niche is what you were saying with if you identify as the stationery person or the lettering person or the style person, sometimes because you're in dialogue with an audience, it can feel like that's all that you are and all you can provide, when in reality, we've talked about this so many times, you're in the driver's seat of your own career. You're the creative director, you can pivot, you can take one step this way, this way, and your audience will either... Some people might fall off, but that's good because you want someone who is at least curious about what you're up to. And all of us have lots of interest, it's just I think most of us, if you're... I'm 33, you're 34, if you're similar to our age listening, we got online... I got on Instagram when I graduated from college, so-
Rachael: I was well before that.
Lauren: I was peak professional brain, and so all of us had very curated Instagram feeds, and it was interesting, without the social media companies giving us a roadmap for how to use these things, how we self-organized and started using these things, and a culture started to emerge on different platforms. I told you I read that book extremely online by Taylor Lorenz, I believe, and yeah, every platform has a different vibe and a different set of rules, how you behave. And I was so used to compartmentalizing myself into like, "Ooh, no one's going to follow you on Instagram if you do too many things. You got to pick one thing and only do that." And even within each subset, like lettering, there was certain groups of types of lettering and with style, there's probably different kinds of style that people fall into. And once you start to feel bored of that or it stagnates, you can change it up.
Rachael: Yeah, yeah. And I'm just thinking about... We're talking in terms of audiences, but this also applies to your individual small community, your friends. I would hope that if you get jazzed about a new hobby that you're excited to try, that your friends and family and community are in support of that. And it's obviously harder to let people fall off as you are engaging with them in a more regular, personable personal level, but I also think it's important... We're not just talking about audiences here, your own people too. And we talked about that a lot in the Prioritize PLAY workshop, and I think I'm spiraling in what I'm talking about today.
Lauren: Take a long way.
Rachael: I just inhaled one of Lauren's desserts right before we started recording, so the sugar is like-
Lauren: It's hitting.
Rachael: Hell, yeah. One of the participants in my PLAY workshop, Jenna, shout out Jenna, coordinated a meetup of strangers and is now facilitating this lovely group, and it's like that is taking the initiative to create a container, find your community, and I'm sure people will come and go in this group, just like people come and go as friends, like friendships ebb and flow. Interests, they magnetize toward each other. What am I even saying?
Lauren: We get it.
Rachael: Yeah. And that's all okay, because as long as you are committing to letting your path wander and taking the long way, in the spiral way, following me down this spiral of conversation, you are listening to yourself.
Lauren: Yes.
Rachael: Does that make sense?
Lauren: Totally. One thing I've been saying a lot in my talks recently is... Because it's the reminder I need a lot of times, is before I started being a freelancer or started my business, keeping yourself engaged in your creative work is part of the job description that no one really talks about. Because it's like that societal script where if you're lucky enough to have monetized, to make a living doing what you love with your art, which is already a feat that people told you you couldn't do, you're supposed to once you find that, because you're doing your passion, you should just be happy and engaged forever. And that is the case for some people who like one thing, it's a very artisan mentality, but it's okay to change that too because you chose the niche and you focused on it, and you can choose another one or change it up in a way that is more interesting to you.
I think as Chaotic Creatives, we always need a little element of being able to learn something or there's something new to be discovered, and what we were talking about, maybe with the skill gap of if you've been doing something for so long, there's not as much to discover and maybe there are ways you can find new ways to do it, but sometimes... Now, I'm talking in a circle.
Rachael: No, no, no, I'm following.
Lauren: Okay, cool.
Rachael: If you followed me as well as I'm following you, then we're good.
Lauren: Okay, incredible. But yeah, it's part of your job to keep yourself interested in your work because it's like the chicken or the egg thing, when we talked about your self-portrait challenge, you find yourself not having fun doing the self-portraits and therefore, it makes you want to do it even less. So the feeling dictates the action, and those two things are always in conversation with each other as Chaotic Creatives, and you have to be... I truly believe that chaotic creative people who have lots of interests and things going on, you have to almost be so tuned in with yourself and self-aware where you need to know, "Oh yeah, this is a good fit for me, this isn't," because you know yourself a lot, we're very finicky. I don't know if I could do a job just for the money because I need to be interested in the work.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. And I admire people who can turn their brain off, and go and get the paycheck because you're using significantly-
Lauren: I'm laughing because the story I actually want to tell, but it's too gross that we might need to cut this out. This reminds me of the time... Oh god. Really, my true colors-
Rachael: Also, all it took was you giggling for a second and I started laughing.
Lauren: When I said I couldn't just do a job for money, a couple years ago I was home for Christmas and we were talking with my brother who... He's the opposite of us, where he's like, "I just want the job. I want the money so I can hang out with my wife, and walk my dogs, and chill on the side." And somehow this came up in conversation where I asked my brother, I was like, "Would you, for $500,000 a year..." I said, "Would you eat a piece of shit every day?" That's your only job to make half a million dollars and without missing a beat, my brother goes, "Yes."
Rachael: No. Would you?
Lauren: No... I guess unless it was like... I'm trying to think of who that would be appropriate for, a comedian maybe.
Rachael: I think we should keep it in.
Lauren: Someone who... It tickled them to entertain other people or get a rise out of other people. Because I know that's a really gross example that I used, I don't know why I came up with that when I was asking my brother because I think I was trying to...
Rachael: Think of something that... Yeah.
Lauren: Like an extreme.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: But you could say that entertainment, content creators who do gimmicky YouTube pranks and stunts and stuff are doing a version of eating a piece of shit every day. And some of them do make a lot of money, but most of them don't.
Rachael: I mean, if you think about the Jackass crew when we were-
Lauren: Yeah, that’s a great example.
Rachael: They absolutely fucked their bodies, I can't imagine how they feel now. And they were a great example of it going well and making a lot of money, we all know-
Lauren: Because they enjoy it, they genuinely were into doing all that stuff.
Rachael: Yeah, like cackling. Yeah. Oh, that's a great... I'm adding that question to my question list, did you ask your dad?
Lauren: No, I don't know why I just asked my brother. I think we were just... We have such different careers. My brother's a full-time guy, he can compartmentalize a little bit more, and this was before he got a higher paying job at his company now, and I think he was just like, "How do I get the money?" And that's the main motivator, which is cool. I think that's a way of thinking that I think we chaotic creative types could glean some info and knowledge from because it's the Venn diagram of what do you enjoy doing, and then what skills are profitable? Because we want all Chaotic Creatives to make a living and thrive, and this is the current mental calculation I'm making as someone who does a lot of things is, going into culinary school, I was 95% sure I didn't want to go work in a restaurant afterwards because I have so many friends who work in food service, and not only is the lifestyle standing for 12 hours a day, it seems not conducive to me who sits a lot.
But even though that skill is really valuable, our economy doesn't value that kind of work, it's just manual labor with food. And when I look at my skillset, I have to look at which one of these is the most conducive to the lifestyle I want to have too. And after a decade of being a designer, I think I like that lifestyle better. So now I need to figure out how to integrate food into my design world if I want to play in that container.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. It really does.
As you were talking, I was thinking about how I read... I think I've talked about this book before, definitely to you, 100 Ways to Change Your Life by Liz Moody. She talks about how our society asks children, "What do you want to be?" And so we, from childhood, are ingrained to identify ourselves with our careers and I think in some ways, that's good for people like us, like Chaotic Creatives. We want to be doing the things that we love as a career and that's lovely, but on the other side of the spectrum, I think folks can so easily identify their entire personality as their career because we're taught to do that, and that can be detrimental, I think. And so what I talk about a lot is how it's okay to have a nine-to-five and not... You don't have to identify with that. I think my day job would be so low on the list of things of how I identified myself, and someone asked in an Ask Me Anything I did on Instagram recently, what are some tools to be able to separate?
And I think a great... I hadn't thought about actual strategies, it's just something that I've been doing over time.
Lauren: Yeah, intuitively.
Rachael: Yeah, because the things that I enjoy are not... My job is great and fine and perfectly lovely, but it's not the thing that I'm like, "I got to wake up and do this job." Whereas I'm like, "I got to wake up and make something today and I'm really excited about it." And I think one step could be making a list of things that you are proud of yourself for. And for me, it's being nice, being a decent friend, being thoughtful, making cool shit. I think going to school and getting a degree and getting a job is admirable, and that's what I did, but that's not my proudest accomplishment. I think how I show up in the world is how I want to be remembered. I don't actually need people to remember me, legacy is not a thing that I care about. I know a lot of people really care about that, I'm like, "In 50 years, no one will remember who I am and I'm fine." So let that be an excuse to-
Lauren: That's actually liberating, yeah.
Rachael: Yeah, to live however you want. But I just think that think about how you're identifying yourself and do you want to change that, because you can?
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I think liberating yourself from the shackles of your career title, your job title, allows you to do more of what we've been talking about too, which is explore your interests because you're not locked into one thing. Even as someone who did monetize her creativity and found a niche for now, I have to remind myself that I can do so many other things and if anything, it's humanizing and in the direction things are headed too with so much information online and AI. I think trying a lot of things, getting a lot of human experience, will be crucial in differentiating ourselves from AI generated art and stuff.
Rachael: Yeah, connecting with other humans.
Lauren: Yeah, it's just human stuff, be so weird that AI could not even come up with that. I did an interview a couple hours ago where she was asking about how I came up with the idea for my ceramic baguette dish, which we should just bring on set sometimes.
Rachael: Yeah, with dip in it.
Lauren: It has to be filled with dip, of course. And because of that thing I said earlier, where it's like you self-study for thousands of hours in the things you're interested in. Its not like you have a plan to do it, you just naturally spend your time there. It's just the synthesis of me thinking about food, and then art, and that just came together. And because I cook and think about serving dishes, and things like that, maybe if someone typed in a prompt into a AI image generator, they could come up with that. But to even have the idea for that in the first place I think is very human because it's just like, "Oh, this is what I like to do."
Rachael: Yeah, yeah. And getting more experiences, and trying a bunch of things, and exploring all of those curiosities is only going to give you your very unique perspective that allows you to connect with your perfect people. Before we wrap up, I want you to talk about the book that you read and... Because I think that that brings us back to focus.
Lauren: Yeah. Focus in the episode of focus, okay. Yeah, so finding different containers to corral the chaos, right? I just finished reading this book called The Art of Gathering, I can't remember the subtitle, but it's basically this book about how to facilitate a successful gathering, why people gather, what elements make it good and can actually connect people. The example that I used earlier is people hate networking events because there's not a strong container for it because people just show up and hand out business cards. And what she was saying in the book was the most successful meetups, events, gatherings have specificity to them. And the beauty of an event, thinking about it in this physical world, is it's temporary and because it's temporary, people are okay with implementing more strict rules. So something like Burning Man, No Money, or showing up to a movie. No talking, no cell phone, these are-
Rachael: I sure wish people would still follow those rules in the movies.
Lauren: Yes, actually she brought up an example in the book of Alamo Drafthouse being a beloved theater chain, I guess, because they enforce those rules very strictly and they don't make their patrons self-police. There's a way to tell on people or they're very strict about people talking or using their cell phones, and you will get kicked out.
Rachael: And they have queso.
Lauren: Yes, and they have queso. But in the context of containers, if you think about interest or something, something you want to explore as, "It's an event." We've used the metaphor of trying on clothes or dating, to remove some of the permanence from it, I think, is helpful in discovering what is actually worth pursuing for yourself. Because I had someone ask me about, "How do you know which skills to monetize or which hobbies to maybe pursue a little bit further?" And I don't have a good answer for that other than do it enough to figure it out, you have to commit to it for a certain amount of time. I think dating is a really good analogy for it because you're just trying it out. Sometimes you go on a first date and you're just like, "No." So for me and embroidery, I was like, "No." You might go on four or five dates with someone and it can still fizzle out.
Rachael: That's me with leaded glass, yep.
Lauren: Right, right. I still think we do need to create some marketplace that's like, "Fuck this craft," where it's all these supplies you need to get started from something you tried and you were like, "No."
Rachael: Yeah, the supply graveyard.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah.
Rachael: And we believe in reincarnation.
Lauren: Exactly-
Rachael: In terms of the craft.
Lauren: ... I want someone else to be able to use it. But I think the gathering book was interesting because it made me... Because I love to host, I love to host so much, and getting people together in a room is one thing, but making it a successful kind of gathering. I think the specificity she was talking about relates to what we're talking about with creativity because just because you focus on something for a little bit doesn't mean you're forsaking everything else. She talks about this term called Compassionate Exclusion, which I thought was really beautiful of, if you think about it like a wedding, you might think you need to invite everybody, but excluding people from your event in the service of the people who are actually attending is actually really generous.
Rachael: Oh, that's lovely.
Lauren: And so reframing, excluding things as like, "No, it's generous to people in the room." The same way that with the Alamo Drafthouse thing, kicking someone out of a movie theater for talking or breaking the rule of the gathering might piss that person off, which it probably did, but everyone else is like, "Thank goodness. Thank goodness, it made it better." And so if we take the term compassionate exclusion and apply it to all of our creative interests and chaos, I think knowing that you're focusing on something for now doesn't mean that it has to be forever.
Rachael: Yeah, using the wedding example, you might compassionately exclude whatever hobby isn't jazzing you up at this moment, but you're not going to never see those people again if you don't invite them to your wedding, you still may reconnect. Your friendship may get stronger in the future or maybe it'll fizzle out, and you'll never see them again, and that's okay too. And so using that analogy for hobbies and creative interests is really nice.
Lauren: Yeah, she had something in there too about... I think this relates to... It happens with the creative realm, where she said with things that we have a social script for, like a wedding or a birthday party, dinner party, we oftentimes... When things get ritualized that way, we start to assign meaning to the format of the event versus the reason for gathering, and you get to define the reason for gathering. And I think that with creative stuff, the format of if you were doing something before... The format of your business, if you were like, "I'm a lettering artist, I do this," you can always switch. Don't be so married to the format of the way you were doing things. Like you were saying with the PLAY stuff, if you zoom out a little bit and realize, "Why am I doing this?" That can guide you in a better direction on how to reform the...
Rachael: Yeah, I really love this analogy, because the idea of ritualizing something so much so that it becomes societal expectation. And so you said you don't have to do your event that way, you also don't have to live your life this way, very traditionally in the way that many people do, and that's fine, but you're not wrong if you want to live your life in a different way. And just always remember that you are the curator of your own life, you're the creative director. You get to decide how you spend your time, who you spend your time with, what milestones are meaningful for you. That is why I want people to PLAY, and really reflect on how they spend their time, and why they're doing the things that they're doing. Are you going on dates because you feel like you need to get married because your parents are telling you that you needed to? Or are you going on days because you love love? There's one that's probably better for how you're spending your time.
Are you doing your exercise routine because you like moving your body, and you feel like you sleep better, and you feel more energized after you do it? Or are you doing your exercise routine because someone said that you needed to lose weight? There's good and bad reasons for every activity, just make sure you're doing them for you. And that's what I feel like I've really grappled with in the last five-ish years is, how do I want to live my life? And that is what started this separation of my job is my job, but I am me, and I control how I spend my time and what fulfills me.
Lauren: Yeah, 100%. It reminds me of... Since we're talking about containers, to tie it into containers, sometimes when you get something in your creative practice or life becomes so ritualized like, "I do this kind of thing," or you start identifying with that, breaking out of your routine... I think this is where the chaotic creative magic happens, is because you have so many interests, giving yourself permission to explore something on the side, other things, I think can oftentimes inform the main thing that you do because, because you're trying a lot of other things, you don't get so locked in and blinders on to what you were doing before. Leaving Detroit for the year to go to culinary school, when I left, I didn't think I was going to break up with my partner, but breaking out of our routine, breaking out of my day-to-day life that I would have said before I loved, everything was great, breaking out of that gave me a lot of perspective.
So I think that indulging your other interests can be a counterbalance, a way to check in with the main creative thing you might be doing. It's really just following the fun and the curiosity, right?
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. I have been thinking about this idea of just trying things and how it informs your main through line, and I like to visualize it as a braid. The braid is going out and trying things, but then ultimately it comes back into the... I look like a milking a cow.
Lauren: You look like you're pulling a mug handle.
Rachael: Yeah. Oh, that's a really nice way to say it. I'm going to put my hands down. But the braid is coming together into one piece that is your through line of your life, but trying things, smoothing them out by learning about what can inform the next decision and making sure that you're on the right track for yourself, for what's fulfilling you in the moment, and what may help you ultimately reach your big dreams and goals.
Lauren: Yeah, and I think sometimes you have a big dream or goal in mind that you're working towards, and sometimes... For me, I wanted to go to culinary school, but I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, and that's enough. That's enough to move in that direction. Whereas you know you want to speak French, for whatever reason, you just are drawn to that and you're putting a plan into motion. You're giving yourself a container to focus to be able to achieve that goal. Because like we were talking about with the portraits, self-portraits, it's frustrating because you're not good at it, but the only way to get better is to do it over and over and over again. And I think that's where being in touch with yourself and your creative process is really important, and you hone this over time. Not everyone... It's not intuitive right away.
Once the benefit of or the effort to get to a certain level with the skill is no longer worth it for you, then you know that now and you're just like, "Great, now I have so much of an appreciation for people who do draw, but it's not for me." It's like trying a piece of clothing on that you saw on someone else that looked fantastic, you might hate it on yourself, and that's okay. Style is so much about how you wear it, not what you're wearing, and I think that that's very applicable to creativity and your creative career, whatever you're dabbling in right now. My style is so much different now than it was a year ago, two years ago, 10 years ago.
Rachael: Exactly, same.
Lauren: Yeah, and reminding myself of that, it's like, "Oh, I felt like myself this entire time, but I've gone through different stages and phases and eras, and that's cool."
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. It's growth. It's like committing your style to your personal growth because I don't think it's the chaotic creative way to be a Steve Jobs uniform kind of person.
Lauren: That makes me so sad.
Rachael: I can't imagine because style is so important to me, and it feels like there are so many different facets of my personality, and some days one really wants to shine. I haven't worn a dress in a long time, today I was like, "I feel like I want to be femme today and I want to wear a dress," and if I had a uniform, I wouldn't be able to do that. And I think, yeah, being able to give yourself the opportunity to grow and change is lovely.
Lauren: Yeah, I think it's all about... I know we've been using containers, but I was thinking about the kind of people who can commit to the uniform, the Steve Jobs uniform thing. For the people who are oriented that way, that is so liberating for them because they don't have to think about it at all. And for us, it's stifling, right?
Rachael: Yes.
Lauren: So it's... I guess to bring it back to physical containers, you got to find the right container for what you need right now, it's like picking out Tupperware.
Rachael: Yeah, exactly. I just remember something that I was going to say when I got distracted, per usual. I think when you're trying those different activities, trying different outfits, whatever your current creative outlet is, one way to hone that intuitive muscle is to ask yourself after every time you do a thing, whether it's a date with a person, or if it's a creative hobby, or if it's an outfit that you wore, can you say, "Did this energize me or did this deplete me?" It's a very simple check-in that you can do. And if it's like, "Ooh, I felt really good and hype after doing ceramics today," maybe I should continue that. There's a reason that I'm drawn to that. Whereas with my self-portrait challenge, I did some portraits last week and after each one I was like, "Okay, I did it. I'm done." And it wasn't like, "Ooh, I'm going to sit here and keep going." I didn't get lost in the flow of creativity, and so I think it's a check-in that I really like. Also with relationships too, platonic or romantic, "Do I feel energized after spending time with this person or depleted?"
Lauren: That is a good self check-in.
Rachael: I feel like we are about...
Lauren: It's the time.
Rachael: At or over an hour, so we should probably wrap it up.
Lauren: Let's do it.
Rachael: Amazing. I want to wrap it up with any chaotic creative projects that you're jazzed about right now?
Lauren: Yes, so this is a fun one. For the last two years in ceramics class, at the beginning of the eight-week class, the instructors always like, "What does everyone want to make?" And I always say-
Rachael: That's a big question.
Lauren: And you don't have to have an answer, but I've always wanted to make a set of dishware. So a set of four cups, a set of four bowls, something. I always say that thinking I'm going to throw it because I wanted to be... In my mind, maybe the social artistic script was people who do sets throw, they don't hand build, it's always on the wheel. So because of that invisible rule in my mind, I always found myself at the end of class not making the thing that I said I was going to do because I'm not that good at throwing. I've tried so many times, I can do it sufficiently, but it's not... The process of it doesn't quite work for me.
Rachael: You're not energized by it.
Lauren: Whereas hand building, my new instructor... Again, shaking things up, my new instructor this year was like, "Oh yeah, you can hand build those things." And instead of trying to bully myself into, "No, to be a real ceramicist, I need to be able to throw perfectly." I relieved myself of that, and I'm hand building a set of espresso cups and coffee mugs with saucers for Crystal. And again, I think this is a good anchor where if I'm really lost in my chaotic creative sauce, making a bunch of one-off hodgepodge things, and I'm feeling overwhelmed by that, oftentimes having an anchor, a reason, some kind of thing like, "This is for someone else," a brief, basically, helps me corral in some of that energy where it's like, "Oh, okay, I get to exercise the scale that I want to practice, but it's in service of someone else." The existence of the other is very helpful for me, the same thing with community of book club or doing something with people. I think doing things for people is a really helpful container for me, so I'm really jazzed about that and it's so much easier.
There's so much flow for me hand building dishware, I just had this block of... I didn't even realize I had it until I got frustrated for a couple years being like, "Why don't I ever do the thing I say I want to do?" And it's because the way I was doing it was wrong, and now I'm just trying to lean into what I'm good at. My friend Alice, who sent me a really great DM about how she loves the podcast.
Rachael: Yay.
Lauren: Hi Alice.
Rachael: Hi Alice. Thanks for listening.
Lauren: Lettering, artist, designer also into ceramics now.
Rachael: Amazing.
Lauren: Check her ceramics out, they're great. She interviewed me one time and I was talking with... We were talking about the things we are good at, the things we replicate over and over again in our work. Oftentimes for the artist, you feel like it's your crutch, like, "I'm just relying on my thing." But she reframe that for me as, "What if it's not a crutch though, but that's actually a strength?" The thing that you do over and over again, that you're good at, that is a strength, and it depends on how you... Are you giving it a generous framing or a negative framing? And so leaning into hand building has just... It feels so much better, and that's what we were talking about with the check-in of, "Do I feel energized by this? Do I feel depleted?" Hand building's just it for me.
Rachael: I love it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: And you have that attention to detail that I think hand building requires.
Lauren: I think my prior skillset too, cooking, baking, even making... I baked a pie earlier.
Rachael: Can't wait to eat it.
Lauren: Pressing dough into molds, it's all hand building. That's what it is, rolling out cookies. My muscle memory is suited for hand building.
Rachael: Yeah, amazing.
Lauren: Same question to you, are there any chaotic creative projects you're tinkering on?
Rachael: I feel like not any that have so much meaning, that was really beautiful. Yeah, I just got back to this ceramic studio. I have had a very busy couple of weeks.
Lauren: You have.
Rachael: And I feel like my creative practice is very soothing and grounding for me, and I haven't had a chance to do anything lately, and I could feel that. And so I went to the ceramic studio last night... Sorry, and... Oh, I like how our shoes look together.
Lauren: They're like Barney adjacent.
Rachael: I love it.
Lauren: God, my toes are so fucked up.
Rachael: I hope we keep all of the cackling in here, no free feet.
Lauren: Kristle, can you blur out my toes? Or just a black bar.
Rachael: Just a black bar, and it follows where your feet go.
Lauren: Can you track each of my... We got to do it, we got to do it.
Rachael: Incredible. So hello, Chaotic Creative got distracted by colors.
Lauren: Sorry.
Rachael: No, it was me. I pointed it out. So I went to the ceramic studio last night and I really want to make a table lamp. And so how I'm envisioning it is throwing a big base and then throwing another sort of vessel that sits on top of it,, and then I'll attach them.
Lauren: Nice, so a mix of hand building and throwing.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: Amazing.
Rachael: And so I'm going to try that. But the clay I was using last night was reclaimed, and it was hard. So I was really fighting it and out of practice, so I have to rework that. But I'm excited to finally actually make that project because I've been talking about it for a while.
Lauren: You have been, and I think that's where talking about your ideas and projects with other people is helpful because when someone asks you, "What are you excited to make?" It jogs your memory, and it's like, "Oh yeah, that's the thing I've been saying I wanted to do for a while." And it's a nice reminder.
Rachael: It's like a very gentle form of accountability when you talk about it and, yeah, people follow up. So there's that. And then all my wonderful friends like to cook, and I reap the benefits of that, but I also want to be excited about it for myself. And I recently got Benny Blanco's cookbook, I haven't even looked at any of the recipes yet, but I opened it up and I was just reading the intro very casually when it arrived in the mail, and it sucked me in just how casually and how he talked about food bringing people together, which you and I have talked about, and I think we've talked about on here, and just the connection aspect, and the play aspect. The way that he spoke about it got me really excited, and I read the whole intro, and then I was reading the pantry staples, and then it got me excited. And so my friend Christina suggested that perhaps together we work through the cookbook and we make recipes together.
And so that feels like, one, a way to connect with my friend, connect with other friends who like to cook because I'm sure... Anytime I actually try something, I'm texting you like, "Oh, I have this Dutch oven bread recipe and it didn't rise, what do I do?" And you're like, "Bread's really complicated. Maybe don't..." No, you were very supportive and gave me lots of resources. So yeah, working through some recipes, who knew that I was going to say that today? But I'm excited and we'll see how it goes.
Lauren: I hope you create some chaos in the kitchen.
Rachael: Yeah, I feel like I will.
Lauren: And you know what? To tie it into everything we were just talking about, when you talked about your umbrella being PLAY, there's no doubt in my mind that you're going to incorporate PLAY into your cooking too. So I'm curious to see if there's any lessons learned or how that happens. Because if you approach it with a playful attitude, I think it could be fun, especially because you're doing it with Christina. It's awesome.
Rachael: Yeah, and I love hosting, I just don't really love cooking that much. So I think it will be a good reason for me to get excited about hosting backyard barbecues, and if I'm doing this as a challenge, the container is working through this cookbook, then I have some focus because that is where I struggle with cooking is there's so many options. And if I'm overwhelmed, the last thing I want to do is try to find a recipe to make or make a plan-
Lauren: Especially with recipe blogs and... Too many options.
Rachael: So many options. And so having this physical cookbook, and having a friend say that they'll do it with me, and then potentially really enjoying the process because of how he's written these things, as someone who likes to host and play, I think it'll be fun. We'll see where it goes.
Lauren: That's really exciting, it just reminds me that... I need this reminder all the time. When you're someone's excited about something, there's a million different chefs and cooking people to follow online, but you connect with who you connect with because of how they talk about it. We're all conduits for spreading more of the thing we're excited about. Even having Ricky as a ceramics teacher, the change up, him teaching ceramics is so different than the way Leah taught it. And neither is better or worse, it's just like, "Oh, everyone uses different language to explain a process." Or when someone's excited about something, you can just tell, and that gets you jazzed. And for anyone who... Like what we were talking about earlier, if you want to share something new or try something new with your work, but you had your niche for so long, if you just share it with excitement, people will be excited for you.
Rachael: Yeah. And I think that that's why going to a class or something, it might feel scary, but you're all excited to try this thing together and that can help overcome that fear, and also that judgment that you're putting on yourself.
Lauren: Yeah, and then you get to be in community, like a physical space or at least in dialogue with people on the same track as you. I think that's what's so disorienting about consuming other people's creative work online is, yes, you can find some community online with whatever craft you're into, but everyone's on a different timeline. And even if you intellectually know, "That person has been doing this for 10 years," you're watching their stuff and you're just like, "I suck."
Rachael: Yeah, yeah, it's really hard.
Lauren: And that "I suck" feeling is not conducive to you sucking any less.
Rachael: Right, right. You can't... My therapist calls it Should Yourself, "Quit shoulding yourself." So you shouldn't say, "I should be doing this more. I should be practicing more." Don't should yourself. And ooh, somebody shared in a newsletter, and I can't remember who it was, but SHAME as an acronym, it was like Should Have Achieved More... Something else. So if you're shaming yourself, you're saying, "I should have achieved more by now." And it's like, "No, you don't need to do that to yourself." We're all shooting and shaming and comparing ourselves. Isn't it funny? I love... The theme of this podcast is shit this week, and that's because we're gross girls.
Lauren: Yes.
Rachael: Anyway, lost my train of thought.
Lauren: It's great, let's wrap it up. Thank you.
Rachael: We're getting slap-happy, we have pie to eat.
Lauren: Yeah, we do have pie to eat. We should take a picture and we'll share it on the Instagram.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: Thank you for everybody who's followed the Instagram and the YouTube channel and left nice comments, it really means a lot to hear... Again, be in dialogue with people about the things that are trapped in our heads a lot of times. And I know that you and I started this podcast because we liked gabbing with each other, but it is nice to hear from a larger group of people that people either identify with the chaotic creative title or not. Some people have more focus and to live a more minimalist... Maybe there's something about minimalism and maximalism because my former partner was super minimalist and that brings you joy and peace. But for me, I want all the things.
Rachael: Oh, yeah.
Lauren: I want the buffet, multiple trips.
Rachael: Yeah, all the stuff. Yeah.
Lauren: Exactly. It's nice to hear from other people who identify as chaotic creators.
Rachael: It is, absolutely. Yeah, I'm grateful that we're talking about is resonating and I think had I had this podcast five years ago, I would've felt more seen. And I think that that's always my goal, is by sharing my experience and what I'm actively working on right now, if that can help someone else be like, "Oh, so what I'm feeling is valid."
Lauren: Yeah, it's not just me. Because especially... You said five years ago, that was peak... I feel like 2015 to 2019 was peak minimalism time. I have never been a minimalist, I want to try all the things.
Rachael: Yeah. I mean, when I moved into my house, every room was gray, black, and white. I styled it that way, can you even imagine?
Lauren: And I think that... We could talk for another three hours, the styling of it all, right? It's like the meme we always talk about, "It's not hoarding if your shit is cool." But there's a lot going on in here, there's a lot going on in your house, but how you personally style it all together is what makes it special. That's what makes it not a hoarding situation, is it's styled. And I think that's what we're doing with our creative interests is Chaotic Creatives is just like we're gathering all the stuff to our house and now we just need to arrange it in a way that makes sense. And that's functional too, you can't just have your cool stuff in the center of the room.
Rachael: Yeah, maybe that's what we should talk about another episode. Also, I'm going to promise we'll wrap it up, but I think that perhaps maybe not the next episode, but the following, we should ask folks to submit questions and we can answer questions. Have a Q&A podcast episode.
Lauren: That sounds great.
Rachael: Yeah?
Lauren: And depending on how many we get too, we could have a couple at the end of every episode.
Rachael: Oh, that's great. Yeah.
Lauren: One selected.
Rachael: Yeah. We can add a question box to the Instagram and start collecting. So if there's anything that we've talked about or you want us to talk about, definitely let us know.
Lauren: Yeah.
Rachael: Cool. Have a great day, thanks for listening.
Lauren: Bye.
Rachael: Bye.