Happy New Year! Lauren and Rachael are glad to be back and are thinking about loosening their adherence to certain labels that they’ve stuck with for far too long. This discussion was inspired by Lauren doing something that she had previously written off as not her thing and is all about revisiting the stories we’ve been telling ourselves. Do they still ring true? Are we unnecessarily closing ourselves off to new, beautiful experiences or facets of ourselves? The hosts share areas in which they personally feel more curiosity could work wonders and invite you to do the same!
Happy New Year! Lauren and Rachael are glad to be back and are thinking about loosening their adherence to certain labels that they’ve stuck with for far too long. This discussion was inspired by Lauren doing something that she had previously written off as not her thing and is all about revisiting the stories we’ve been telling ourselves. Do they still ring true? Are we unnecessarily closing ourselves off to new, beautiful experiences or facets of ourselves? The hosts share areas in which they personally feel more curiosity could work wonders and invite you to do the same!
Episode Mentions:
The transcript for this episode can be found here!
Lauren: Are there any of those labels that you're unnecessarily holding onto that maybe you could peel off, gently peel off with some Goo Gone or some hot water.
Hello and welcome to Chaotic Creatives, the show about embracing the chaos that comes from living a creative life.
Rachael: We are your hosts who self-proclaim Chaotic Creatives. I'm Rachael Renae. I am an encourager of folks to prioritize play, to live a more fulfilling and creative life full of confidence.
Lauren: Great. And I am Lauren Hom, better known as Hom Sweet Hom everywhere on the internet. I am a designer, lettering artist, muralist, and most recently chef.
Rachael: I'm really just spiraling in my brain thinking about how I said confidence and I was like, confidence.
Lauren: You're good. You're good. It was great.
Rachael: Perfect. It's a good segue into the topic that we're going to talk about today, which is kind of self-perception, labels, kind of the boxes we put ourselves in.
Lauren: Yeah. We're entering the new year. This is the time of year where even if you don't subscribe to resolutions, new year, new me, all that bullshit, you still tend to be a little more reflective and think about, okay, this is the time where we're setting ourselves up for how we're going to proceed for the rest of the year. This is the time to challenge maybe pre-existing systems you had built for yourself. This is your framework time where it's like, okay, you mentioned I'm going to read this many books, or I would like to do this this year, or this is the direction I'd like to go in.
And a conversation that we had recently inspired this episode because I recently started going to the museum as a self-proclaimed for let's say the last decade, not a museum person. I'm a bad artist. I don't go to the museum. I would say that it was boring, it's overwhelming. I used to just speed run museums. I'd pay my 30 bucks speed run the museum and then just feel like drained or I didn't get it, too quiet. Just all this stuff that didn't do much for me, and I have turned a new leaf. I live not too far away from a museum here in Detroit. I'm trying not to give away my address by saying this, but it's fine, whatever.
Rachael: Also, there are a lot of things that are close to that museum.
Lauren: Okay. Yeah. So I'm located within walking distance of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which a lot of people are.
Rachael: Yeah, and what's cool about the DIA is that everyone in the three counties gets free access to that museum.
Lauren: Incredible. Yeah. And so because of that access, which is something that we as taxpayers vote on as a millage where we fund the arts and we've voted for the last couple elections to fund it. It's just a little tax levied. Because we get free access, I realized I could go and just look at one exhibit for an hour and then leave. It's inconsequential. I didn't have to, we've talked about this in previous episodes with my maximizer Jess Bezos brain. I'm like, "okay, paid my $30", especially coming from New York, museums are so expensive.
Rachael: Totally.
Lauren: I would try to squeeze as much juice out of that experience as possible, almost like overeating at a buffet and then you're like, I feel bad.
Rachael: Why did I do this to myself? Yeah.
Lauren: When in reality, one or two exhibits is enough and you have to just kind of cap it at that and be like, that was good.
Rachael: I think I was talking about this the other day. It reminded me of the parallel with sort of telling myself that I don't have time, and I think this is something that a lot of creative people do. We have an interest and we say, oh, I don't have time to learn that new skill, or I don't have time to paint every day, and I think it's something that I was doing. I mentioned this I think in a previous episode where I hadn't been to this ceramic studio in a couple months, and I sort of built up this story in my head that I needed a full day of no plans to go to the studio and get stuff done, and I never have a full day with no other things I need to do, and I also probably don't want to spend 12 hours at the ceramic studio.
My hands would hurt. I would-
Lauren: So dry.
Rachael: So dry. Lose, so dry, I would lose steam. I would lose inspiration, and so it's partially that I think of the, oh, I don't want to devote my whole day to this because I'm not a museum person and this is not how I want to be spending all of my time. But then recognizing, okay, I can just go and take what resonates and then ditch the rest. I don't have to walk the whole museum just because I got my ticket to get in here. I think that's one really beautiful thing about having the free access is you could go look at one painting and then leave, or there's a cafe in there. You could go get a cup of coffee and just see a cool statue, walk up the marble stairs and then leave.
Lauren: Yeah, like baby stepping your way into a new identity, into a new habit, I think is really powerful. The way that I baby stepped my way into the museum too is Kristle texted me and was like, "Hey, I'm taking my niece to the DIA. Do you want to join us because you're nearby" and with an invitation from someone else, I might not have gone on my own. And when she invited me, I was like, "yeah, sure. Why not?" Since the theme, I think of this, one of the themes of this season is personal growth, exploration, trying new things. I'm in a season of change.
We started the season with talking about seasons of change, and I was like, yeah, I'm currently at a place where I'm open to that. I'm no longer, the roots are not as strong in my identity of fuck museums, and I don't know why I felt that way. I became the same way that a lot of creatives and designers are like, I don't do sports, sports ball, ha-ha. And listen, I fall firmly in that camp, which I know you don't. I know that there are certain things where if you asked me to go karaoke with you, I'd still say no because it's still like a visceral, I feel my body like tensing, but when Kristle invited me to the museum, I was like, "yeah, sure. I'm open."
Rachael: I love that curiosity too because I think that that's so critical to personal growth. And I do talk about labels and identities in the Prioritize Play workshop. It's one of the first exercises I make people do, tell me what your titles are. You say them at the beginning of the episode, you say, "I'm a muralist, I'm a chef, I'm an artist, a letterer." Those are the titles that you most resonate with, but you've also, you added chef in the last year. You were not stuck in those. You're willing, we all have a lot of titles, but the first handful that we say, or that my participants say that the folks who do the workshop, that's how we see ourselves.
Do we introduce ourselves with our job title? Do you introduce yourself as I'm a mom? Those are the things, and rightfully so, they can be the most important labels in your life, but are you also giving yourself the closed off labels of I'm not a museum person, I'm not a sports person, and why? Why are you not those things? And maybe you thought that 10 years ago, maybe there's a way for you to learn something about yourself or realize you're missing a whole opportunity of inspiration. You told me about so many things you learned about that one exhibit.
Lauren: Oh my gosh. I know. It's like you are depriving yourself of all these really rich experiences for no good reason what you were saying, "why am I this way? Why have I taken this label and this is the hill I'm going to die on. I'm not this kind of person just because."
Rachael: And it's okay if you try again and still recognize that it's a no. The karaoke example is great. I also feel pretty anti-karaoke-
Lauren: My nightmare activity.
Rachael: I will absolutely go hype you up from the crowd, but I will not sing. I would have to be so comfy and maybe in a karaoke room with my friends, one of the rental ones. Not even that. Okay. No. Okay. Well, so karaoke is a for sure no for you. And I think I have stuff like that. You guys went to a jazz thing last night and we tried to go to a jazz thing previously, and I went, and then I got there and I was like, I want to go home. And I did, and you both respected me, and I really appreciate that.
I feel that level of comfort in our friendship that I could be like, actually I changed my mind and you still invited me. And I appreciated it. And I was like, no, I would like to be in bed at 09:00 PM. So yeah, you're allowed to have those views of like, nope, that's not for me. But if you have some that have been long-standing like, I don't cook. I'm not a museum person. I think it's beneficial to us to challenge those every once in a while to see does this still apply? If yes, that's okay. If not, maybe there's an opportunity for growth or for a new experience or learning something about myself.
Lauren: Yeah. And I think there's also so much space in between a hard yes and a hard no. Going from not a museum person to being a museum person doesn't mean I have to go every day or even every week or become a donor to the museum right away or make it my entire personality. It might just be that I go a little more often or I now understand there's a portal here available to me to experience the richness of an exhibit that I want to see or whatnot. Or for you with cooking that we've talked about, you don't love cooking, but there are some recipes that you're like, oh yeah, this works for me. Or I can meal prep on this day. Or I like this style of cooking. There are ways to explore different facets of a craft or an activity where you might've just been completely closed off to it before that could actually lead to some really valuable creative insights or even just some quiet time.
Rachael: And I think when we tell ourselves these stories and we continue to self-validate in that way, I don't like cooking. I say it all the time, I joke about it, but the more I talk about not liking it, the less open I will become to liking it.
Lauren: It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rachael: Totally. And I think that that's true with a lot of things. Like I'm not an artist. I'm not creative. So then you tell yourself that so much that you don't even try and you don't think, someone said you weren't creative when you were in elementary school and you did a painting that someone said was bad, and then we never challenge it because some authority figure taught us that when we were a kid. So we never thought to challenge it.
It's like the more that we say it, the more we believe it and the more we are unwilling to challenge it. So I've actually started in my head, I mean, I still say it and I'm working on actively changing language because I think how we talk to ourselves and what we speak out loud is actually really impactful to us. I think instead of saying, I don't like cooking, I'm starting to say, I'm trying to find ways to enjoy cooking more because I'm never going to love it. I'm never going to be like you where you're excited to experiment and make things, but I can find a new recipe that I maybe am excited to eat, and that's more exciting than spending $50 on takeout that's going to be cold by the time it gets to my door. So I think understanding the labels is the first step and then practicing challenging them.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. Something that came to mind when you said that was thrifting because we recently went thrifting together and you and I both love that shit.
Rachael: Oh man. Our cart was full. We shared a cart, which is good, a good strategy, but wow. Can we fill up the cart fast?
Lauren: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. But it reminds me of, I think a lot of people love the idea of thrifting. Not everyone likes thrifting. It's an overwhelming environment. You kind of have to have a plan. You and I go thrifting, and we walk into the store and we separate. We go to our stations, and then we meet up 30 minutes later once we've done our pass. And then we might do a little bit of socializing shopping, but we'll meet in the homeware section.
Rachael: It's really funny because I was actually thinking about that, how we walked in, and then I was like, "all right, I'm going to go look at this." And you were like, "okay, I'm going to go back to this section." And even though we were hanging out, and I think that's why I used to be, I won't go thrifting with a lot of people because of that. I want us to just be able to go hunt on our own. And then, yeah, the common space is the homeware-
Lauren: And then drag our spoils together.
Rachael: Yeah. And then review. We did a really good review process of do we need this or is it just a novelty and this is exciting.
Lauren: Yeah. You put back a cool but boring serving dish. I put back a microwavable egg poacher.
Rachael: And the egg slicer.
Lauren: And the egg slicer. You know me, I'm not a big fan of the single-use kitchen tool. They are so, the novelty lover in me wants it so bad, but the finite amount of kitchen space that I have says, no, don't do it. And so those are the-
Rachael: Proud of you.
Lauren: The angel and devil on my shoulders.
Rachael: Yeah. And we also both said no to some orange ceramic set, but there was only three bowls.
Lauren: Weird amount of dishes.
Rachael: Which is probably why they ended up at the thrift store because someone broke one of each. And I have a lot of weird amount of dishes, but I have three sets of bowls that I've made myself, and those weren't going to replace those because mine are special.
Lauren: Of course. Yeah.
Rachael: Obviously.
Lauren: Sorry to take us off track, but I love it. Yeah, you were one of the only people I really enjoy thrifting with because you get it, and you also have a car, so you get to drive me to the thrift store.
Rachael: I'm honored to. And then I made you go get ice cream.
Lauren: So good.
Rachael: Right?
Lauren: I know.
Rachael: Lauren had her first Dole Whip yesterday.
Lauren: I did. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachael: I'm a Dole Whip hater.
Lauren: After you were talking trash about it.
Rachael: I really was. I was trying not to skew your opinion, but I couldn't even explain how it tastes because I don't like them.
Lauren: It tastes so good.
Rachael: I think I had an expectation of it being pineapple flavored, soft serve, like pineapple on top of vanilla.
Lauren: I see.
Rachael: But it's not that.
Lauren: See I like- This is going to turn into a culinary podcast.
I like that dense, icy, like pink berry fro-yo texture in soft serve versus the fluffy soft serve. But I think that's just because growing up in Southern California, once pink berry hit in my hometown, game over, that's where all my hard-earned high school job money went. I worked at an ice cream store to go spend money at the competitor ice cream store.
Rachael: Oh, man. That's really funny. I had never tried. We're really going down a tangent. Great. When are we not?
Lauren: We're good. I got it. I got you.
Rachael: When I first moved to Detroit 10 years ago, it was the first time that I had ever had the fro-yo place where you weigh it.
Lauren: Oh, yeah.
Rachael: And so I'm like, I can add whatever I want. I can try all these flavors-
Lauren: For $40.
Rachael: It was so expensive. But we had so many of those and now I don't even know where to find one of those where you can weigh them. They really kind of had a wave, and I miss them. I love classic soft serve, but I sometimes want a lemony fro-yo.
Lauren: Yeah, I agree. Think we got to bring back the way, pay, weigh it and pay it, style of dining.
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren: I think our invitation to all of you listening is are there any ways of being labels that you've clung onto for, let's say for me not being a museum person was decades. We'd go to the museum in art school and I'd just be like, eh, I'm bored. And I just kind of adopted that label. And I think the contrarian in me too was like, I'm a designer who doesn't like museums and sure, whatever. That's maybe younger me trying to be different, but museums are cool. Our invitation to you is are there any of those labels that you're unnecessarily holding onto that maybe you could peel off, like gently peel off with some Goo Gone or some hot water. There are-
Rachael: We love a peel.
Lauren: Are you depriving yourself of some rich experiences or new perspectives unnecessarily too? Especially now that you and I have been friends for eight years now and we've grown up a lot too, and maybe there are some new things you want to try and like you were saying, limiting beliefs. Maybe there are some things you are closed off to unnecessarily because you just are clinging to your identity marker. And I think that's one of the flip sides of labels, and we were talking about this before we recorded, but in the digital, the internet age that we came online and started promoting our creative work in, unfortunately the setup of the hashtag, SEO, like keywords, incentivized us to reduce ourselves to these phrases and terms in order to communicate to people who had no idea who we were.
And I understand that language is a way for us to communicate quickly and succinctly, and we were just doing our best to find those labels. But I think what plagues a lot of creative people online now, 10, 15 years later, is over-identifying with the label and having to perform the label of like, I am lettering artist, I am calligrapher, I am stationery store owner because we now are part of these communities online, and there are expectations and aesthetics and ways of talking, and it can be very overwhelming. So if any of that isn't serving you anymore, rip the fuckin' label off.
Rachael: Yeah. I mean, I think we've talked in previous episodes and maybe even last season about how the advice used to be to niche down, niche down, niche down, get really specific, and that is valuable to create a container and hone in on your skills. But also we are all multifaceted creatures and we have so many interests and little bizarre ways of approaching our lives that it's authentic to show other sides of yourself. It's authentic to have multiple labels. None of us are just one thing.
Lauren: Exactly. And honestly, from my own experience, most of the turmoil of performing the label, can I take it off? What will people think is in my own head, no one is like, "how dare you post anything but lettering." When I started to slowly expand five years ago, it was me being mean to myself in my head being like, "you post anything but inspirational, hand lettered quotes, people will revolt."
Rachael: Will buy it.
Lauren: They will.
Rachael: I mean, I think another good example in terms of that actually happening is when people like us who are friendly and bubbly and enthusiastic on the internet talk about politics, and then people are like, "stay in your lane. I came for the lettering." No one has ever said that to me. And if people are mean, I block them on the internet.
Lauren: Don't be an asshole.
Rachael: Yeah, yeah. Our internet presence, our online portfolio, all of those things are our spaces and they can represent the various facets of ourselves.
Lauren: You can mostly post about one or two topics, and yeah, it's human to deviate once in a while and you can just get back to it. You do whatever you want. It's your page.
Rachael: And you can also do that without getting away from the internet analogy. You can do that in your personal life. You can explore and step into, do I want to be a museum person? And then realize, nope, lettering is where it's at for me, or cooking is where it's at, or I really like being a dog mom and I want to focus all my attention on my dog. And that's great. You don't have to, just because you step outside of the labels that you've stuck to in the past doesn't mean you can't go back to them.
Lauren: A hundred percent. Wow. That just jogs something in my memory of one thing I wrote in my journal when I was thinking about leaving my full-time job 11 years ago. My advertising agency job, my very first job out of college, I had journaled. I was 23 at the time. I was like, okay, "if I go freelance and I leave this job and it doesn't work out, I can always go back and get another entry level advertising job." The difference between getting a junior art director position at 24 versus 23 seems kind of negligible. So I may as well go for it.
Rachael: Especially now that we're in our thirties, I'm sure it felt big.
Lauren: And that's a really good point of like, you can always go back. If I wanted to go full culinary with my content online and then go back to full lettering, that's fine. People can come and go as they please. I think that's one thing I've been reminding myself of is just like someone unfollowing you isn't like a condemnation of who you are. We all have agency to curate our feeds. We talk about training our algorithms because we're all very sensitive and everyone wants to curate their own tiny screen experience. That's completely valid. If someone isn't interested in what I'm posting anymore, I want them to leave, because then they're just going to be an asshole to me down the line. But they can always come back. It's free to unfollow and it's free to resubscribe.
Rachael: I have absolutely done that where something that someone was talking about, maybe it was just something with their personal life, was just reminding me of something that I didn't want to think about in my own life, had nothing to do with them, and then I circled back, grew, whatever it was. I can't think of any particular examples, but I know that I've done that where I used to follow this person and then I didn't, but now I'm ready to again.
Lauren: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Rachael: Yeah. We can change our mind about anything, live in the gray area. One thing related to museums that I wanted to bring up, because our last episode was the play questions. Sorry, silly questions, no.
Lauren: The last episode was about goals.
Rachael: Okay.
Lauren: For the-
Rachael: Yes, you're right.
Lauren: Reflections.
Rachael: Okay.
Lauren: From goals from 2024.
Rachael: So a couple episodes when we were talking about our silly questions. One thing that I am recognizing as we're having this conversation is when I go to a museum, I often feel like I don't understand the art because I have no formal art training and I don't know what to look for and what to examine or analyze. And then I've had to reckon with that and realize like, oh, I can just like like this one because it's pretty, and it feels nice to look at. That's all it needs to be for me. And once I started kind of giving myself the permission to be like, I like it or I don't like it made, it a lot less stressful because I know I've shared with you in casual conversations.
I still sometimes don't feel valid as an artist. I don't feel like I belong in the creative community, even though I am absolutely a part of it in my own way. But sometimes in spaces that are more formal, like networking events or a museum, places where like in my head everyone else is a professional and I'm a novice and they know that, that's when I decide to lean into that. I'm not a museum person. I'm not a networking person. And I found myself doing that last week-
Lauren: As a protective.
Rachael: Yeah. Like oh, I just don't like networking. So that's why I'm having, I didn't have a bad time. I had a great time, but I felt uncomfortable in that situation.
Lauren: Rachael's referring to a creative networking event we went to.
Rachael: Yes. Sorry, we didn't say that.
Lauren: A more formal creative networking event. And I know we've talked about networking before in season one, about like, it's like making friends. This was very much more like a rubbing shoulders kind of event.
Rachael: It kind of felt like a, who's who, what are you doing? And everyone that we talked to was lovely. No one intentionally gave me that feeling, but I just went into it being like, do I belong here? And so I've been thinking about that a lot. And I think in museum spaces or formal art spaces or even art events in the city, I still sometimes am like, do I deserve to be here? And then I see 40 people that I know and then we gab about whatever, and that's all it is. So I think leaning into those labels of I'm not a networking person is a protective mechanism.
And then the other thing I wanted to say is back to the silly questions. One playful activity that I like to do to kind of get out of my own head when I'm at a museum is every room that I go into, whoever I'm with, say I have gone alone and I still do this in my head. So if you and I went to the museum, I'd be like, "Lauren, I need you to pick out which part of the painting is me and which one is you and why?" And so you have to pick a character from the oil paintings, and it's just a funny thing to completely take you away from the intention of the painting and the history and all of that, but that's okay. You're allowed to have fun. So I would say, "am I the parrot or am I the statue?"
Lauren: Getting to interpret the art through your own lens. It's like those art history memes. Have you seen those?
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: They're hilarious.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. So you're allowed to make an experience that could feel a little stuffy or I know you don't like that it's quiet in museums. I love it.
Lauren: I just put my headphones in and it changed the entire experience for me. I went alone, and I think that's another thing is I had always gone with a group and I felt like it was rude. You can't put your headphones on with a group. I went alone. I went for an hour and a half. I put my headphones in, put on a playlist. I had a great time.
Rachael: I love that. I like going to museums alone or doing the thing that we do at the thrift store where I'll go with someone, but I just walk my own way and we bind each other eventually.
Lauren: Together. Apart.
Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. I love it.
Lauren: Yeah, it was good. Yeah. I have started. I feel similar to how you feel about, I think art comes with the assumption that, oh, you need to understand the theory and the context and all this stuff. And I am like, color's pretty good.
Rachael: And that's how I approach cooking and eating. I'm like, yum, yum. Or I don't like it.
Lauren: Yum. Yum. Yuck. Yuck.
Rachael: It's fun. I have so many people in my life who do cooking and flavor profiles and stuff, and so I'll go out to dinner with you or whoever, and then there's the tasting like, "ooh, I think I taste a little bit of this", and half my plate's already gone and I'm like “Mmm mhm it’s like really good.”
Lauren: This is really making me reflect on the ways in which I turn away instead of towards something with curiosity versus the protective turning away from something with wine. As a food person, I can talk about the complexities of food because I know it. I think having information gives us the language to be able to discuss it, even if none of us are fucking right like taste is somewhat subjective.
Rachael: Absolutely just like art.
Lauren: Yeah, but with wine, my go-to, even though I'm a food person is I will walk into a nice restaurant and a shitty restaurant, a dive bar, whatever it is, and I will say, "give me your house red, whatever the cheapest red is on the menu." That sounds great. Because it's the easiest way for me to place an order and get something that I, it's going to be fine, because instead of getting curious about like, oh, this is drier, lighter, full-bodied, I don't actually know what those mean. I'm just like, I am a ding-dong about wine, so just give me the slop.
Rachael: Which is interesting because I feel like also the wine scene could be potentially, is often very pretentious, but I have had really lovely experiences with pals who know their stuff or it's okay, you don't need to know that. And then it's like,
Lauren: Oh, like Omy.
Rachael: Yeah. Do you like to taste it like this? Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. I think the reason I have that response to, I don't know anything about wine, give me the house red is because of my preconceived notion that wine is fancy and you have to have a refined palette, and instead of turning towards it, I just turn away and which really given me something to noodle on. Maybe I should be more curious about it.
Rachael: And I think it's like you are allowed to be mid interested. That's something that I'm so passionate about is you're allowed to be like, I like a dry chilled, little bit fizzy red. I don't know what that means. I don't know where those grapes came from, but I know that that's what I like. I like a chilled red, and I've then learned certain types of wines that I probably will like, and generally good people are not going to gatekeep that information. They're not going to try to make you feel inferior, maybe at a fancy wine place. I dress like this sometimes going into fancy places, and that's someone else's problem if they're going to be condescending or gatekeepy toward you.
Lauren: That is true. So much of art, whether it is culinary arts, like wines, fashion, I think a lot of that is markers for class as well. The knowledge about that stuff. If you are knowledgeable, it says something about like, are you in the ingroup or in the-
Rachael: Know. Yeah. Just thinking about the class conversation. We talked about art and class a little bit yesterday in the museum discussion, but I also, I've been taking French classes. That's been a goal for me. And my teacher and I were talking about how French has a lot of rules and so many, the French language has a lot of rules, and so many of those rules were made up. The first dictionaries were made up so that people could distinguish from class so that women and poor men were not able to communicate with the same grammar.
Lauren: Wow. Yes. And that's what I learned at the museum. That's what I was going to say is on my way out of the exhibit, there was another exhibit that I just kind of browsed through about Greek and Roman pottery where I saw that disgusting thing that we'll definitely link to in the show notes, but this isn't about the disgusting thing. It was talking about how the different Greek pottery with the orange and black motifs, this is a good ceramics throwback too, because the different necks on the vases were either for water or wine or mixing because in high society in Greece, it was uncouth and uncultured to drink wine straight. You were supposed to mix it with water, which you would be called a heathen. Nowadays if you poured water into your red wine-
Rachael: People make fun of people who put an ice cube in their wine.
Lauren: Yes, and I think that that is what you said about French, the language and this thing about the Greek, ancient Greeks and water and wine is a perfect example of everything is made up, and so go into it with curiosity. It's all made up anyways. Anyone who's an asshole to you about, it's a good filter for who shouldn't be your friend.
Rachael: I think with the language thing, we all learned grammar rules, and I think I would've made a great editor because I catch grammar errors very easily when I'm reading something, when people use different or quote unquote incorrect grammar, I used to correct when I was a teenager or something. And I've in the past, I don't know, decade have started to learn that as long as the point is coming across, especially as I'm trying to learn a second language for the first time. As long as we can comprehend each other, that's what matters. The grammar is literally made up to distinguish classes.
Lauren: Yeah. When you learned more, you loosened your grip on the I'm a perfect grammar person.
Rachael: Yes.
Lauren: People love to say, "I'm a grammar snob. I'm a grammar snob", but what does that really mean and why are you holding onto it so tightly?
Rachael: Right, and are you providing any benefit by correcting someone, especially if English is not their first language, all you're doing is making them feel bad when you still understood what they were trying to say.
Lauren: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Rachael: And so that's what my French's teacher has been saying. If your goal is to be able to communicate, you can do that now. You might sound a little bit silly, but someone who's a nice person will understand and help you get there.
Lauren: It's like when people are arguing in Instagram comments and someone corrects someone's grammar as a last ditch effort to zing someone.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: “It's actually ‘there.’”
Rachael: Yeah. And it doesn't quite hit like it.
Lauren: No, you look like an asshole.
Rachael: Yeah, because that person doesn't care.
Lauren: I know.
Rachael: Oh, man. Anyway.
Lauren: This has been a lovely eye-opening conversation. I hope it has been for our listeners.
Rachael: I really love our winding road conversation.
Lauren: I know, it's lovely. Is there anything you've been working on that you're excited about?
Rachael: I am. I started a new quilt and I'm realizing, all I've been thinking about is this particular quilt block. I think it's called a sawtooth. It's like a four-sided star, so it's like squares and triangles make up this block, but I've seen some that have steeper angles on the teeth part, and I think I love quilting so much because I like seeing it and then trying to figure out how to cut the pieces appropriately and sew them back together to make this shape.
I don't often use patterns. I kind of just ad lib, and that part is so fun to me. I was listening to a webinar today and I was just doodling because I comprehend information well when I'm, when doing something else with my hands. Yeah.
Lauren: Brain open, hands busy.
Rachael: Exactly. And so I was doodling and trying to figure out, okay, I don't want the teeth to be at a 45. I want them to be more at a 60. How can I make that happen while not wasting fabric and cutting a rectangle into the proper shape, and I think I figured it out, and that's what I'm going to go do after this, is go try that.
Lauren: That's exciting when you have a, I think I figured it out breakthrough and now you're going to go test it out.
Rachael: Yeah, so that part, I mean, I was talking about quilting last night with one of my friends. I often don't finish the quilts. I really enjoy the piecing together and then the noodling part of it, and it's okay.
Lauren: Yeah. You showed me some of the pieces you've made, and I think I asked you, I was like, I want to buy one of these just as a pre wall hanging for a friend, because one of them really looks like my friend Zipeng’s aesthetic.
Rachael: Yeah. I will finish that one, and you can do that. Yes. Thank you for that reminder because I forgot.
Lauren: Of course. Yeah.
Rachael: Anyway, how about you? What are you excited about?
Lauren: I'm staring at it right now. There's a half paper machete, giant strawberry in the corner of the studio for everyone because you can't see it. Even if you're watching the video, it looks like a dinosaur egg. It's like if Lauren paper machete around me-
Rachael: And Rachael's going to bust out of it.
Lauren: And I am crinkled up. Yeah. Yeah. We'll snap a photo and put it, we'll snap a photo and yeah, put it in the video on YouTube, which you can watch if you're listening via audio if you're watching. Great.
Rachael: What's your timeline?
Lauren: This is good incentive to get it done by the time this episode comes out.
Rachael: There you go.
Lauren: I think I can do it.
Rachael: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. I think I'll be home for most of the month.
Rachael: Yeah, you literally leave tomorrow.
Lauren: I was going to say the reason I'm excited about it is because I set up the project to work on months ago, and I just never did. I was like, I'm going to have it ready for our photo shoot for season two. It didn't happen, but the reason I'm excited about it is because I think all the chaos people will resonate with this. Okay, here I go. I made it-
Rachael: It's filled with mayo.
Lauren: It's actually filled with mayo bottles that I wash.
Rachael: Did you save your trash? Oh.
Lauren: It is. So the armature is made out of the paper printouts that I used to transfer all the artwork for my mural workshops all summer, so I couldn't throw that away, and I am so happy I was able to repurpose that. The paper pulp, I have a link on my blog to a recipe for this paper clay, if anyone is curious they will put in the show notes. It does take forever to dry, but just put a fan on it. It'll dry a lot faster. This dried in 24 hours. I was storing paper pulp in my freezer for a year and a half thinking, I'm going to use this paper pulp because it's wet. So I was like, either I have to dehydrate it or freeze it, so I chose to freeze it, but it was taking up so much space in the freezer and now I want that for food projects. I do have some dehydrated paper pulp underneath this workbench we are sitting on too.
Rachael: Oh my gosh. You're the queen of...
Lauren: I was able to use all of that frozen paper pulp and now the studio freezer is empty.
Rachael: Yes.
Lauren: And I have a dinosaur egg.
Rachael: And you have a dinosaur egg, which I'm excited about. That rules.
Lauren: Thank you.
Rachael: Sustainability queen.
Lauren: I know, and it's just I'm turning into my grandma. I am hoarding junk that could be art supplies in the future, and I'm trying to do that thing where I finally use it. So similar to what you were saying, just the satisfaction of, I think I got it, and then running with it.
Rachael: I think also the mental load of knowing that you have the paper pulp that you need to use-
Lauren: Every time I open the freezer.
Rachael: Yeah. Look, I feel like those types of things take up space in our brain.
Lauren: They do.
Rachael: And to be able to use it or clean it out or throw it away, even if you're not also a sustainability queen, making a dinosaur egg, strawberry. Even if you clean it out and ditch some of the art supplies, give it to a arts and scraps type store. Having that physical space cleared, I think is beneficial for making space for more creativity, like you said, for more food projects.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. Or even what you said in episode one of the season of just making more space in your calendar, having downtime and some space to dream, explore, whatever it may be, breathe. It is similar to your physical space, like clutter. As a chaotic creative I'm used to a little bit of chaos and clutter, but too much of it, especially day in, day out, walking by that thing you pulled off the side of the road in your garage. It is a little demoralizing. Yeah, because reminded of the thing you said you were going to do that, you had so much energy to do, that is just not getting done, so I'm proud of you for jumping on your quilt.
Rachael: Thanks.
Lauren: I'm proud of me for clearing out my freezer.
Rachael: I'm also proud.
Lauren: Thank you.
Rachael: I think we can probably end there.
Lauren: That sounds lovely.
Rachael: Great. Happy New Year Chaotic Creatives.
Lauren: Happy New Year. Hope your 2025 is off to a great start.
Rachael: Thank you for spending the first week of it with us.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. We're thrilled to be doing this with you.
Rachael: Bye.
