The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell. We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality, and embrace the and not the or, so you can turn everything you love into a custom built career that's as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel that one path may not be your only path, and you call yourself a human bend diagram, then you are in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. What do I do now? With all that's going on in the world. There's a good chance you've asked yourself that lately, or it's close cousin, where's the restart button? We hear you, which is why today we're doing something a little different. We're offering up some of the best TLDNY advice for fresh starts, restarts, changes in direction, or entirely different road maps. That's right, a lot of us are going through transitions right now, and the good news is this podcast is all about transitions. We've pulled together some of our favorite advice from recent guests on mindsets and strategies that will help you get going on the right foot. Inspiration and brass techs for days. Christina, you know I'm here for that. So what are we waiting for? Let's jump in, Let's do it. From episode one oh three. This is Stephanie Pereira, the director of the New Museum's incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design and technology. She explains how she found her way in arts administration after realizing there was more out there than a cubicle. I talked to a lot of college kids, and I always impressed this upon them. I'm like, you know, you're the a path that life hands you is not a path, it's just where you happen to be um and when you start to make choices along that path and how you make them, Like, the most important thing is that you're making choices that feel good to you. And so the thing for me is it wasn't until I found myself actually in grad school and studying ourts administration and understanding that there was this whole um sort of business field related to this world I really cared about that I started to actually be super intentional and how I moved through my career, and I at that from that point on, I've been actually quite on point. But yeah, it was really just kind of lazy and random up until then. But I love that realization too, that you're sort of like, am I lazier? Am I just not connecting with this thing that's in front of me? And that when you do stumble on that thing that gets you fired up, all of a sudden, you're doing the work, You're showing up and making the choices and it's not hard because it's exactly what gets you out of bed in the morning. Yeah. I mean I went from being like a barely passing anything student to Dean's list, getting straight as every semester. Yeah, So it's really once I once I found the thing that was for me, and that was a heat. That's like a huge lesson for me as someone who marches to the beat of my own drummer. Um is that I really did spend a lot of my early you know, like high school and even the beginning of college, thinking that I was something was wrong with me. And it wasn't until I found the thing I cared about and completely made this one eight because I was applying myself in a different way, in a way that was true to me and who I am and how I like to show up that I was able to be quote unquote successful. That's so inspiring, it really is. I think recently I had this great revelation that I hate to sit at a desk, Like I'm just not made to sit at desk. I hate them. And the only reason I realized why I think that I should have because in school, I you know, got in trouble for sitting on the floor or for standing up at lunch. And it was just this like huge lightbulb moment that was like, oh my god, like there's nothing wrong with me, it just didn't fit that way right like that, that was it. And for you to to share that stuff, and he is so inspiring because you're right, Christina. We so often call like not the right fit that we often blame it on things like laziness. Sure, I mean, I think this is true for anyone who who feels like they don't fit in into whatever circumstances environment, school, um job that they're in where they're like, I don't fit, So it's probably me that's the problem. Yeah, Yeah, when in reality, I think we have enough data points between the three of us, and however, many guests we've had on this show to be like or maybe it's just not the right fit for you and your work. Should you choose to accept it is to to do the zig zag until you find the place that is the right fit. So I left to go to Chicago for grad school. I saved for a couple of years, and then I came back to New York and I came, um, sort of engaged in a job, and then like literally the day one, crying in my cubicle, kind of like, wow, I made a huge mistake. Um. And then but you know, I'm I'm someone who you know needs a paycheck, and so I sort of stuck with it. Yeah, So I stuck with it. Um. And so three months in, it was New Year's Eve and I was hanging out. It was you know, classic New York City, New York New Year's Eves. Or at a moment, I'm like in a loft and everyone there is like so fascinating and blah blah blah, and I'm like, New York is amazing. What am I doing in this cubicle where I cry every day? And so I gave myself twenty days to figure out some way to make enough money to like at the time, I was like years old, and I, you know, I didn't have any debt, I know, luckily had no credit card debt. I have no cars, I had no mortgage, I had no kids. I had nothing really like holding me back from being a little broke for a while. And so I gave myself till the I wanted to give two weeks notice on January fourteen because I wanted to like start fresh on February one. So I gave myself the beginning of the month to figure out a way how do I just like pay rent and feed myself like the most basic food. Um, And I did it. And I have to say I spent the next eighteen months doing the most random weird stuff. I mean, I volunteered on a festival. I was like an educator at the New Museum where I now work, which is really funny. Um. I worked in public schools. I was a researcher, I was a grant editor. I did all this stuff, and it was all in service of figuring out, you know, a New York is again. It's amazing, how do I make the most of my time here and not just like drudge dudge through some job that makes me cry, but also be like, what do I want to be? How do I want to show up? What is my profession? I had been doing this work. I did a complete one eight in my career. I'd become this accidental professional in like arts education in public school and I was really good at it, and I you know, I was speaking at conferences, I was co authoring papers. It was happening. I was on this path, and I'm like, I don't want to work in public schools. I mean, I think they're important, but it's not for me, so I you know, but eighteen months in and then it really it took a year and a half of being poor and eating homemade taco is not fancy five dollars until I've really found the thing that was calling to me and was able to read that myself for you to say like, I'm just going to have this exploration phase, in this fact finding phase. You know, I think so much of the time we feel like, oh if I don't have it figured out again, going back to what we were just saying, I'm behind, something's wrong with me. I don't know what to do. So I've just got to keep driving forward in this kind of, you know, mildly unhappy, frustrated state, rather than say, I'm going to give myself this block of time and I'm going to use it in this specific way, and I'm going to eat, by the way, great food choice, some homemade tacos and really pare down. Then you're like building in this structure that I think in the big wash of life can feel really hard to find when you're uncertain and remembering like two data points does not equal a line, right. I think I struggle with this personally a lot, which is if I make this choice and I'm going off in that direction, is that the new future for myself? Like is that forever? And you're like, it's just two data points or maybe three, or maybe it's a line for eighteen months, and then you're going to zigzag again. Right. It's not like, oh my gosh, I made this choice and now I am off on this other path and I can never change it again. Right. It's like the seasons I'm gonna do this for a while, I'm gonna learn what I can, and it's going to give me the things that I don't know, and that will tell me what to do next. I mean I do this now. In my full time job, I write down what are the five things I want to get done and not get Rather than getting caught up in the day to day, I'll just write like, in the next six months, I want to do these five things, and you know, every once in a while just making sure I'm checking those five things off, meaning that like I'm not getting sucked into the sitting at my desk or you know, the drudgery of checking my email. We hear people talk about this all the time, how your your job or your career became almost like the administrative tasks of executing on your job rather than the thing you care about. Actually, last year I was at a festival and they had this thing where you could send your post self a postcard one year in the future. And I just got my my one year later postcard, and it was so good because it was like Stephanie knowing you, um, you've either done a lot and in the past year and you're not patting yourself on the back, or you're totally upset that you haven't done all the things you want to do and don't worry, you probably worked really hard. It was like such The best note from the path and it was crazy about the note was that I actually did do a lot in last year, and I feel like I did congratulate myself. Where so I also grew so much in that I have a different person than I was a year ago, and that I thought that I would. That's fantastic treated myself. Well, well, kudos to you. I'm glad to hear on both of those counts. Yeah, I highly recommend setting yourself the postcard one year in the Future activity from episode one seventeen, artist and chemist Tyler Thrasher fills us in on how he shifted from animation to becoming a full time artist with just a three month runway, based on a strategy that earned him an f in school. He also opens our eyes to loosening our grip on the importance of location in what you do. I was going to school for animation. I was miserable. I just didn't want to spend my time working on school projects I know no one would care about after I graduated, so I was like, I have to fill my time with other things. So I would spend every weekend hiking. I went to school in Springfeld, Missouri, so there's a lot of really good hiking. Eventually that led to me exploring a lot of cars topography. It ended with me inside of caves. Like pretty quickly, I would spend every week and crawling through a cave, exploring caves, mapping out caves. Missouri is called the Cave State. Did not know that, neither did I. There was a cave within like a two mile radius of me at any point when I was in Springfield, Missouri, and just this odd thing that I was doing outside of school, like caving. I was very aware that I was doing something most people in Springfield were not doing, and I felt this disconnect from the rest of the world. But I was still basking in fascination and curiosity while I was underground miles away from like other people. This separation kind of forced me to fall in love with nature and pull away from things like school and other people that were kind of distracting me or making me miserable. And I thought, I got to bring this into my artistic practice. I don't know how, but this is fueling me, like, this is fueling this fire inside of me that I didn't know I was there. And so I started working gyms and minerals into my illustrations and to my animations have a slight chemistry background, and I thought, what if I just grow crystals? And that wasn't enough. I was like, I've seen that thousand times. What haven't I seen? So I went through the list, and crystals on insects was one of the things that I just couldn't creatively like picture in my head. And if I couldn't picture it in my head and I couldn't find it on Google, then I was like, this thing has to happen. I have to make this. So I did, and it went viral online like pretty quick. I would believe that because crystals on insects. I don't even know where to start with that. I mean, obviously we've seen your work, it's beautiful. I would never in a million years thought crystals insects. Let's see what happened. I mean, Tyler, were you doing a kind of nature association game where you had to running lists and you were like, let me pick, let me pick crystals and something from this list, Like how did you How did those two things intersect for you? While I was spending time hiking, I was looking at a lot of insects and I was approaching life like a kid for the first time in a long time. Everything, look at it, observe it, and I was like, adults, just do not do this anymore. I was really into in sex, so I was drawing them. And then I was like, man, I'm really into this geometry and I'm finding my roots back in science. So I was like geometry, nature equals crystals. So I had two different schools of science that I was working into my bringing into my artistic practice. Falling asleep, I was like, you know what, I have a lot of things I love doing. I need to save some time, and why don't I just start combining some of my fascinations. I've always had a knack of, like loving doing a bunch of different things, but there's not enough time. So I've made a habit of combining my different fascinations to kind of cut my time in half. So I was like, crystals, insects, drawing art. Maybe if I just lump art and insects and crystals altogether, I could say myself time on my fascination. That's incredible. Being able to be a full time artist and not having a day job to support you. How do you make that work, like, let's get real. Yeah yeah. At first, it was very much out of my control. Right. I was three months from graduating and I started when one of my professors was asking us to make a four or five year plan, and I said, here's my five year plan. I'm not animating. I'm going to be a self employed artist. I got an f on that project. I detailed my strategy, and my professors like this just sounds more hopeful than anything, and I was like exactly. That was another stage of doubt. That was like okay, well, good luck with that, and I was like thanks, um, yeah, we'll see that. Crystal work went viral about three months before graduating, and right as I was graduating, people were wanting to buy it. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I thought I'd have to get a day job or do something. And I was like, I'll move back to Tulsa. My wife was like, Tulsa's up and coming, like you should come back, so I did. The cost of living is very cheap and Tulsa, so I had the sort of cushion to explore whether or not I could sell this crystal stuff. I would sell some pieces, those people would share their pieces, and then there people would be like, oh my gosh, I have to have this. And so I watched this bubble expand and expand, and before I knew it, I was traveling from my work. I was doing online drops, holiday sales. I was struggling to figure out how to manage all this while I had hundreds of people, thousands of people clamoring for some of my work. And I was like, I was not taught how to handle this in school, and I had to do. I had to mess up a lot of times. I had to take a lot of notes and jump a lot of hurdles to land where I am now, where this has been my full time job. I've learned what works. I've learned that people will wait in line for two hours to buy a piece from me, which is insane. I cannot comprehend that. That's incredible. Yeah, it's crazy. And I've also learned people don't want to support my art, but people want to support what I'm saying. And I believe in what I'm saying, and I believe in how I live creatively and how I create, and a lot of other people turns out look up to that, and so people started supporting that, and I just realized, I guess I'm doing something right. I want to know what it's like to be a working artist in Tulsa. I am not from Oklahoma. I did grow up in the Midwest, but I would not have thought of Tulsa as a creative hotbed. What is the creative community like there. Do you find it's easier to be a working artist where you you know, have a lower cost of living and are in a smaller you know, metropolitan area or is it harder because you're not, you know, on the coasts in these kind of big visual art hubs. Oh man, we live in a time creatively where your location does not matter. You don't have to live on the coast to be successful at creating art. You don't need to be surrounded by big galleries, and you don't need to be surrounded by big artists to be successful at creating at all. My work took off in Springfield, Missouri, the like middle of the country and these small cities. I think having the Internet, having social media and learning how to navigate that with your art is the only tool you need. I don't know, you could be an amazingly successful artist like Anchorage, Alaska, or anywhere in Greenland. It doesn't matter as long as you know how to reach people who would like your work online. With that being said, I do have friends. I've talked about this with another artist that you know. They tell me like, how are you like a full time self employed artist? You know, I live in l A And I'm paying four thousand dollars a month from my like studio apartment. And I'm like, well, there's your number one problem when you're paying the whole salary of every year to live in like nothing. So living in a place with the low cost of living that's good for anybody, but it works best for art because you don't have to rely on your location to make and sell art at all. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're not looking at some of the biggest, most successful artists on social media, who most of them make their income on selling work online. That is just a simple fact your location amatic. From episode one oh eight, microbiologist and educator Dr Sabria Stukes shares how she got herself out of a rut and discovered a new path after finishing her PhD. While a radical sabbatical may not work for everyone, she has some great tips on how to capture some of the benefits in a lighter touchway. I actually had a really challenging time transitioning out of graduate school. I think a lot of things came to an end for me as it pertained to how I saw myself as a person in the world. After I graduated with a PhD. My partner at the time decided that our five year relationship was not something he felt like continuing. I would say so many words, but also maybe lack of words. Um. Not only did like the idea of me being a scientist kind of end, but then this very long relationship ended. I had already moved out of my apartment and like moved some stuff into his apartment, so I also didn't have an apartment, and I'm completely unmoored, super unmoored, and all I have is like this piece of paper that says I have a degree in bimedical sciences, and so to hang it out exactly and and um, yeah, it was just really challenging because for me, as a Capricorn, you know, I plan things. I like to know what the next step will look like, even if I don't know all the steps, And so for the first time in my life, I had zero plans. You know, what do you do when you don't have a plan. You book a flight to Seattle, UM, and then you like have a two and a half week road trip down the West coast, stopping kind of wherever you want and hoping that by the end, when you drop off the rental car and Palm Springs, you will have some answers. I had zero answers. I had a very dusty car. At the end of that, I just started telling people. A friend of mine used the phrase radical sabbatical, UM, so that's kind of what I started telling people, and interestingly, people really connected with that. I was really fortunate enough too, when I was telling people that I was doing this, and I said, hey, I'm you know, I'm looking for work. I really don't know what that looks like. Here's what I'm good at, or here's what I think I'm good at. Two friends separately reached out to me and said, hey, you know, there might be these kind of three month positions that we think you could be good at. Why don't you take them? Weirdly, I went from having zero jobs to having to full time jobs, and then I also decided to take a part time job with the science startup that was based on the West Coast, because I was like, well, like there's a time difference, so I can figure this out. And it was not a very good decision, one because I was not doing good at either of the jobs. And two I was not doing a good job at taking care of myself, almost to the point where my parents came to visit me and they said that if I didn't get my act together, I would have to move home. It was how old were you at this point, um, like thirty three, So they're they're issuing the ultimatum even at thirty three, because you are clearly in a place that says I'm not making good decisions. Yeah. I think that's an accurate summation of everything that was going on. I understand the instinct of like having this total blank canvas, right, like this groundlessness and this wipe out too then like fill it with opportunity, especially when that comes in, it's but of almost like physics, right, it's empty, and then you have this flood coming in, and then it sounds like what you're saying is you went, whoa too much flood? Yeah? And I think it really also was like I have to afford to live, you know, I need to pay my rent. I had kind of made an enormous dent in my savings just by not working and being on the West Coast and driving wherever I wanted, and you know, ordering broom service when I wanted, and and I think I just wasn't such a state of I mean, I think it was really utter sadness that the only thing I could really look towards was being quote unquote busy. I really started leaning into therapy, so I um around that time, I was doing group therapy, which was phenomenal for me, just to get grounded again. You know, I was exercising all the time, I was going out with my friends all the time. I was making some decisions that I look back on now. And and so it was around this time too that that it was when I got the job offer, and I had a gut feeling that saying no in that moment was the right thing to do, even though it was very scary because this was like a full time job with health insurance. Again, I just didn't want to put myself in a situation where I was letting not just myself down, but someone who was relying on me to do something. And so what kind of advice would you give to listeners who say, you know, I need a radical sabbradical, I need some space. I recognize that maybe I'm making the wrong decisions, or I'm burnt out, or this doesn't fit me anymore. But I can't take three months off. How could they maybe get a flavor for that space without having the safety net or even the ability to, you know, have other people not depend on you for a period of time. I think for me, the thing that I valued the most was just the quiet moments that I allowed myself to have, whether they were a ten twenty minutes to really say, okay, well what is like can I identify what I'm really struggling with? UM? I know that there's a conversation around affordable therapy for all UM, and I think it's so important that, however you define therapy, whether that's talking to someone a professional, talking to a friend, going for bike ride, like trying to carve out, you know, small moments for yourself to to really identify, you know, well, what is causing my anxiety? What is you know, what am I really struggling with? Really helped me and so I know that, as you said, and as I've said, not everyone can just press like a pause button on their life. Because even when I did, like it was still quite stressful because I was still like, well, am I going to pay for the stuff? Or like, you know what, am I I still have to find a job I need. I didn't have health insurance, And so I know that there are people that have to take care of their families, have to take care of children, and so it can be really hard. But I think just learning the language of how to verbalize what is really going on when you are having these moments of kind of feeling overwhelmed of needing help. It took me so long to learn how to ask for help and not just say I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Allowing people to take care of me, I think was really a huge shift for me um during this time in my life. And so I would say that, you know, there are obviously people who are approaching burnout and still have to go to work. Do they have relationships with their bosses or other employees where they can say, like I need to take half a day, I just need to recharge. Are their friends that on the weekends, they can say, look, I just can you babysit? Or can you watch my kid? Can you help out? Like I'm financially strapped right now, So to really allow the compassion that I'm sure like people's friends have for these situations, to really sit down and say, you know, how can I work with the people that I have in my life in a way that is productive. It also sounds like you really made this, Like you said, whether or not it felt like a conscious decision, right, but you made this choice to really find moments of slowing down, to stop this full on, busy speed momentum that it's so easy to get into. I know I myself have many times, you know, to just find like even pockets of stillness, whether that looks like a group therapy session every week, you know, once a week or once every other week or whatever. And also I love the questions that you started asking yourself to really try to get to the heart of what was really going on. Yeah, And I think the other thing too is you know, as you were saying that, I was kind of like, you know, running through a few scenarios in my mind. It really was just telling people that I wasn't Okay, that's so hard, I know, but I like, I am not good at that statement. Well, I think for me, it also boiled down to the fact that even if I was saying I was okay, I didn't look okay. It took work. I mean, like it was actual mental emotional work to say to my friends like, I know you see this happening, and I know I don't know how to ask for help, but I know that I need it. And so it wasn't just the work of saying that, but then of not being dismissive of my friends when they offered the help because I didn't know what it looked like, you know, I was just like, you know, for so long, I was like, oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I love that. I think you made such crucial points there that it's both a skill to figure out how to ask for help and to be able to do that and then be to also than receive that help. But those are things that don't come naturally too many of us at all. And those are not small things either, you know. I think Christina, you and I have talked about this. I'm I'm increasingly aware of how often I present as everything's okay whenever thing's not. And that's not even intentional, you know. I Mean you could say maybe it is on a subconscious level, but that's often what it is is just this like it's in my my upbringing my DNA to just like stiff upper lip, you know. And then I wonder why people aren't checking in on me, because I don't think they have to, you know, Christina, I know that we've already had these conversations with our guests, and we've listened to them many times in post production, but I swear to you it was like hearing their advice for the first time. With so many people going through transitions right now, us included, it's so helpful and reassuring to hear their perspectives again. Absolutely, It's like, no matter how many of these transitions I've had in my zig Zag career, they never get more comfortable, you know, there's always that little lump of fear in my chest that makes me worry I'll never figure this out and everything will come crashing down. And of course, with our world in transition, it also feels like that. But to the power of ten yep. But you know, remembering that all we can really do is put in the work, take it one day at a time, and continue to find inspiration through other voices and people who have been through it. All of that, I think really helps to shake off some of that fear and just keep us moving forward a little bit at a time. It's not enough to get rid of all of the fear, but but a little bit of just enough that it doesn't weigh me down exactly. So, are you going through a transition right now? Tell us about it. We love hearing from you. You can reach us on Twitter or Instagram at t l d n E pod, or you can email us at hello at t ld n E podcast dot com, or you can leave us a voicemail at eight three three Hi t l d n E. That's eight three three five three six three ven dial oh three will link to the full episodes for each of these clips in our show notes, plus some resources we've relied on to get through transitions. You can find all of those at t L d n E podcast dot com slash one. Thanks so much to our producer Maya Coole and to you for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. If you like what you heard. It really helps us get the word out to fellow human ven diagrams. Until next time, Remember, the Limit does not exit. Best The Limit does not Exist is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah

The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell. We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality, and embrace the and not the or, so you can turn everything you love into a custom built career that's as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel that one path may not be your only path, and you call yourself a human bend diagram, then you are in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. What do I do now? With all that's going on in the world. There's a good chance you've asked yourself that lately, or it's close cousin, where's the restart button? We hear you, which is why today we're doing something a little different. We're offering up some of the best TLDNY advice for fresh starts, restarts, changes in direction, or entirely different road maps. That's right, a lot of us are going through transitions right now, and the good news is this podcast is all about transitions. We've pulled together some of our favorite advice from recent guests on mindsets and strategies that will help you get going on the right foot. Inspiration and brass techs for days. Christina, you know I'm here for that. So what are we waiting for? Let's jump in, Let's do it. From episode one oh three. This is Stephanie Pereira, the director of the New Museum's incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design and technology. She explains how she found her way in arts administration after realizing there was more out there than a cubicle. I talked to a lot of college kids, and I always impressed this upon them. I'm like, you know, you're the a path that life hands you is not a path, it's just where you happen to be um and when you start to make choices along that path and how you make them, Like, the most important thing is that you're making choices that feel good to you. And so the thing for me is it wasn't until I found myself actually in grad school and studying ourts administration and understanding that there was this whole um sort of business field related to this world I really cared about that I started to actually be super intentional and how I moved through my career, and I at that from that point on, I've been actually quite on point. But yeah, it was really just kind of lazy and random up until then. But I love that realization too, that you're sort of like, am I lazier? Am I just not connecting with this thing that's in front of me? And that when you do stumble on that thing that gets you fired up, all of a sudden, you're doing the work, You're showing up and making the choices and it's not hard because it's exactly what gets you out of bed in the morning. Yeah. I mean I went from being like a barely passing anything student to Dean's list, getting straight as every semester. Yeah, So it's really once I once I found the thing that was for me, and that was a heat. That's like a huge lesson for me as someone who marches to the beat of my own drummer. Um is that I really did spend a lot of my early you know, like high school and even the beginning of college, thinking that I was something was wrong with me. And it wasn't until I found the thing I cared about and completely made this one eight because I was applying myself in a different way, in a way that was true to me and who I am and how I like to show up that I was able to be quote unquote successful. That's so inspiring, it really is. I think recently I had this great revelation that I hate to sit at a desk, Like I'm just not made to sit at desk. I hate them. And the only reason I realized why I think that I should have because in school, I you know, got in trouble for sitting on the floor or for standing up at lunch. And it was just this like huge lightbulb moment that was like, oh my god, like there's nothing wrong with me, it just didn't fit that way right like that, that was it. And for you to to share that stuff, and he is so inspiring because you're right, Christina. We so often call like not the right fit that we often blame it on things like laziness. Sure, I mean, I think this is true for anyone who who feels like they don't fit in into whatever circumstances environment, school, um job that they're in where they're like, I don't fit, So it's probably me that's the problem. Yeah, Yeah, when in reality, I think we have enough data points between the three of us, and however, many guests we've had on this show to be like or maybe it's just not the right fit for you and your work. Should you choose to accept it is to to do the zig zag until you find the place that is the right fit. So I left to go to Chicago for grad school. I saved for a couple of years, and then I came back to New York and I came, um, sort of engaged in a job, and then like literally the day one, crying in my cubicle, kind of like, wow, I made a huge mistake. Um. And then but you know, I'm I'm someone who you know needs a paycheck, and so I sort of stuck with it. Yeah, So I stuck with it. Um. And so three months in, it was New Year's Eve and I was hanging out. It was you know, classic New York City, New York New Year's Eves. Or at a moment, I'm like in a loft and everyone there is like so fascinating and blah blah blah, and I'm like, New York is amazing. What am I doing in this cubicle where I cry every day? And so I gave myself twenty days to figure out some way to make enough money to like at the time, I was like years old, and I, you know, I didn't have any debt, I know, luckily had no credit card debt. I have no cars, I had no mortgage, I had no kids. I had nothing really like holding me back from being a little broke for a while. And so I gave myself till the I wanted to give two weeks notice on January fourteen because I wanted to like start fresh on February one. So I gave myself the beginning of the month to figure out a way how do I just like pay rent and feed myself like the most basic food. Um, And I did it. And I have to say I spent the next eighteen months doing the most random weird stuff. I mean, I volunteered on a festival. I was like an educator at the New Museum where I now work, which is really funny. Um. I worked in public schools. I was a researcher, I was a grant editor. I did all this stuff, and it was all in service of figuring out, you know, a New York is again. It's amazing, how do I make the most of my time here and not just like drudge dudge through some job that makes me cry, but also be like, what do I want to be? How do I want to show up? What is my profession? I had been doing this work. I did a complete one eight in my career. I'd become this accidental professional in like arts education in public school and I was really good at it, and I you know, I was speaking at conferences, I was co authoring papers. It was happening. I was on this path, and I'm like, I don't want to work in public schools. I mean, I think they're important, but it's not for me, so I you know, but eighteen months in and then it really it took a year and a half of being poor and eating homemade taco is not fancy five dollars until I've really found the thing that was calling to me and was able to read that myself for you to say like, I'm just going to have this exploration phase, in this fact finding phase. You know, I think so much of the time we feel like, oh if I don't have it figured out again, going back to what we were just saying, I'm behind, something's wrong with me. I don't know what to do. So I've just got to keep driving forward in this kind of, you know, mildly unhappy, frustrated state, rather than say, I'm going to give myself this block of time and I'm going to use it in this specific way, and I'm going to eat, by the way, great food choice, some homemade tacos and really pare down. Then you're like building in this structure that I think in the big wash of life can feel really hard to find when you're uncertain and remembering like two data points does not equal a line, right. I think I struggle with this personally a lot, which is if I make this choice and I'm going off in that direction, is that the new future for myself? Like is that forever? And you're like, it's just two data points or maybe three, or maybe it's a line for eighteen months, and then you're going to zigzag again. Right. It's not like, oh my gosh, I made this choice and now I am off on this other path and I can never change it again. Right. It's like the seasons I'm gonna do this for a while, I'm gonna learn what I can, and it's going to give me the things that I don't know, and that will tell me what to do next. I mean I do this now. In my full time job, I write down what are the five things I want to get done and not get Rather than getting caught up in the day to day, I'll just write like, in the next six months, I want to do these five things, and you know, every once in a while just making sure I'm checking those five things off, meaning that like I'm not getting sucked into the sitting at my desk or you know, the drudgery of checking my email. We hear people talk about this all the time, how your your job or your career became almost like the administrative tasks of executing on your job rather than the thing you care about. Actually, last year I was at a festival and they had this thing where you could send your post self a postcard one year in the future. And I just got my my one year later postcard, and it was so good because it was like Stephanie knowing you, um, you've either done a lot and in the past year and you're not patting yourself on the back, or you're totally upset that you haven't done all the things you want to do and don't worry, you probably worked really hard. It was like such The best note from the path and it was crazy about the note was that I actually did do a lot in last year, and I feel like I did congratulate myself. Where so I also grew so much in that I have a different person than I was a year ago, and that I thought that I would. That's fantastic treated myself. Well, well, kudos to you. I'm glad to hear on both of those counts. Yeah, I highly recommend setting yourself the postcard one year in the Future activity from episode one seventeen, artist and chemist Tyler Thrasher fills us in on how he shifted from animation to becoming a full time artist with just a three month runway, based on a strategy that earned him an f in school. He also opens our eyes to loosening our grip on the importance of location in what you do. I was going to school for animation. I was miserable. I just didn't want to spend my time working on school projects I know no one would care about after I graduated, so I was like, I have to fill my time with other things. So I would spend every weekend hiking. I went to school in Springfeld, Missouri, so there's a lot of really good hiking. Eventually that led to me exploring a lot of cars topography. It ended with me inside of caves. Like pretty quickly, I would spend every week and crawling through a cave, exploring caves, mapping out caves. Missouri is called the Cave State. Did not know that, neither did I. There was a cave within like a two mile radius of me at any point when I was in Springfield, Missouri, and just this odd thing that I was doing outside of school, like caving. I was very aware that I was doing something most people in Springfield were not doing, and I felt this disconnect from the rest of the world. But I was still basking in fascination and curiosity while I was underground miles away from like other people. This separation kind of forced me to fall in love with nature and pull away from things like school and other people that were kind of distracting me or making me miserable. And I thought, I got to bring this into my artistic practice. I don't know how, but this is fueling me, like, this is fueling this fire inside of me that I didn't know I was there. And so I started working gyms and minerals into my illustrations and to my animations have a slight chemistry background, and I thought, what if I just grow crystals? And that wasn't enough. I was like, I've seen that thousand times. What haven't I seen? So I went through the list, and crystals on insects was one of the things that I just couldn't creatively like picture in my head. And if I couldn't picture it in my head and I couldn't find it on Google, then I was like, this thing has to happen. I have to make this. So I did, and it went viral online like pretty quick. I would believe that because crystals on insects. I don't even know where to start with that. I mean, obviously we've seen your work, it's beautiful. I would never in a million years thought crystals insects. Let's see what happened. I mean, Tyler, were you doing a kind of nature association game where you had to running lists and you were like, let me pick, let me pick crystals and something from this list, Like how did you How did those two things intersect for you? While I was spending time hiking, I was looking at a lot of insects and I was approaching life like a kid for the first time in a long time. Everything, look at it, observe it, and I was like, adults, just do not do this anymore. I was really into in sex, so I was drawing them. And then I was like, man, I'm really into this geometry and I'm finding my roots back in science. So I was like geometry, nature equals crystals. So I had two different schools of science that I was working into my bringing into my artistic practice. Falling asleep, I was like, you know what, I have a lot of things I love doing. I need to save some time, and why don't I just start combining some of my fascinations. I've always had a knack of, like loving doing a bunch of different things, but there's not enough time. So I've made a habit of combining my different fascinations to kind of cut my time in half. So I was like, crystals, insects, drawing art. Maybe if I just lump art and insects and crystals altogether, I could say myself time on my fascination. That's incredible. Being able to be a full time artist and not having a day job to support you. How do you make that work, like, let's get real. Yeah yeah. At first, it was very much out of my control. Right. I was three months from graduating and I started when one of my professors was asking us to make a four or five year plan, and I said, here's my five year plan. I'm not animating. I'm going to be a self employed artist. I got an f on that project. I detailed my strategy, and my professors like this just sounds more hopeful than anything, and I was like exactly. That was another stage of doubt. That was like okay, well, good luck with that, and I was like thanks, um, yeah, we'll see that. Crystal work went viral about three months before graduating, and right as I was graduating, people were wanting to buy it. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I thought I'd have to get a day job or do something. And I was like, I'll move back to Tulsa. My wife was like, Tulsa's up and coming, like you should come back, so I did. The cost of living is very cheap and Tulsa, so I had the sort of cushion to explore whether or not I could sell this crystal stuff. I would sell some pieces, those people would share their pieces, and then there people would be like, oh my gosh, I have to have this. And so I watched this bubble expand and expand, and before I knew it, I was traveling from my work. I was doing online drops, holiday sales. I was struggling to figure out how to manage all this while I had hundreds of people, thousands of people clamoring for some of my work. And I was like, I was not taught how to handle this in school, and I had to do. I had to mess up a lot of times. I had to take a lot of notes and jump a lot of hurdles to land where I am now, where this has been my full time job. I've learned what works. I've learned that people will wait in line for two hours to buy a piece from me, which is insane. I cannot comprehend that. That's incredible. Yeah, it's crazy. And I've also learned people don't want to support my art, but people want to support what I'm saying. And I believe in what I'm saying, and I believe in how I live creatively and how I create, and a lot of other people turns out look up to that, and so people started supporting that, and I just realized, I guess I'm doing something right. I want to know what it's like to be a working artist in Tulsa. I am not from Oklahoma. I did grow up in the Midwest, but I would not have thought of Tulsa as a creative hotbed. What is the creative community like there. Do you find it's easier to be a working artist where you you know, have a lower cost of living and are in a smaller you know, metropolitan area or is it harder because you're not, you know, on the coasts in these kind of big visual art hubs. Oh man, we live in a time creatively where your location does not matter. You don't have to live on the coast to be successful at creating art. You don't need to be surrounded by big galleries, and you don't need to be surrounded by big artists to be successful at creating at all. My work took off in Springfield, Missouri, the like middle of the country and these small cities. I think having the Internet, having social media and learning how to navigate that with your art is the only tool you need. I don't know, you could be an amazingly successful artist like Anchorage, Alaska, or anywhere in Greenland. It doesn't matter as long as you know how to reach people who would like your work online. With that being said, I do have friends. I've talked about this with another artist that you know. They tell me like, how are you like a full time self employed artist? You know, I live in l A And I'm paying four thousand dollars a month from my like studio apartment. And I'm like, well, there's your number one problem when you're paying the whole salary of every year to live in like nothing. So living in a place with the low cost of living that's good for anybody, but it works best for art because you don't have to rely on your location to make and sell art at all. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're not looking at some of the biggest, most successful artists on social media, who most of them make their income on selling work online. That is just a simple fact your location amatic. From episode one oh eight, microbiologist and educator Dr Sabria Stukes shares how she got herself out of a rut and discovered a new path after finishing her PhD. While a radical sabbatical may not work for everyone, she has some great tips on how to capture some of the benefits in a lighter touchway. I actually had a really challenging time transitioning out of graduate school. I think a lot of things came to an end for me as it pertained to how I saw myself as a person in the world. After I graduated with a PhD. My partner at the time decided that our five year relationship was not something he felt like continuing. I would say so many words, but also maybe lack of words. Um. Not only did like the idea of me being a scientist kind of end, but then this very long relationship ended. I had already moved out of my apartment and like moved some stuff into his apartment, so I also didn't have an apartment, and I'm completely unmoored, super unmoored, and all I have is like this piece of paper that says I have a degree in bimedical sciences, and so to hang it out exactly and and um, yeah, it was just really challenging because for me, as a Capricorn, you know, I plan things. I like to know what the next step will look like, even if I don't know all the steps, And so for the first time in my life, I had zero plans. You know, what do you do when you don't have a plan. You book a flight to Seattle, UM, and then you like have a two and a half week road trip down the West coast, stopping kind of wherever you want and hoping that by the end, when you drop off the rental car and Palm Springs, you will have some answers. I had zero answers. I had a very dusty car. At the end of that, I just started telling people. A friend of mine used the phrase radical sabbatical, UM, so that's kind of what I started telling people, and interestingly, people really connected with that. I was really fortunate enough too, when I was telling people that I was doing this, and I said, hey, I'm you know, I'm looking for work. I really don't know what that looks like. Here's what I'm good at, or here's what I think I'm good at. Two friends separately reached out to me and said, hey, you know, there might be these kind of three month positions that we think you could be good at. Why don't you take them? Weirdly, I went from having zero jobs to having to full time jobs, and then I also decided to take a part time job with the science startup that was based on the West Coast, because I was like, well, like there's a time difference, so I can figure this out. And it was not a very good decision, one because I was not doing good at either of the jobs. And two I was not doing a good job at taking care of myself, almost to the point where my parents came to visit me and they said that if I didn't get my act together, I would have to move home. It was how old were you at this point, um, like thirty three, So they're they're issuing the ultimatum even at thirty three, because you are clearly in a place that says I'm not making good decisions. Yeah. I think that's an accurate summation of everything that was going on. I understand the instinct of like having this total blank canvas, right, like this groundlessness and this wipe out too then like fill it with opportunity, especially when that comes in, it's but of almost like physics, right, it's empty, and then you have this flood coming in, and then it sounds like what you're saying is you went, whoa too much flood? Yeah? And I think it really also was like I have to afford to live, you know, I need to pay my rent. I had kind of made an enormous dent in my savings just by not working and being on the West Coast and driving wherever I wanted, and you know, ordering broom service when I wanted, and and I think I just wasn't such a state of I mean, I think it was really utter sadness that the only thing I could really look towards was being quote unquote busy. I really started leaning into therapy, so I um around that time, I was doing group therapy, which was phenomenal for me, just to get grounded again. You know, I was exercising all the time, I was going out with my friends all the time. I was making some decisions that I look back on now. And and so it was around this time too that that it was when I got the job offer, and I had a gut feeling that saying no in that moment was the right thing to do, even though it was very scary because this was like a full time job with health insurance. Again, I just didn't want to put myself in a situation where I was letting not just myself down, but someone who was relying on me to do something. And so what kind of advice would you give to listeners who say, you know, I need a radical sabbradical, I need some space. I recognize that maybe I'm making the wrong decisions, or I'm burnt out, or this doesn't fit me anymore. But I can't take three months off. How could they maybe get a flavor for that space without having the safety net or even the ability to, you know, have other people not depend on you for a period of time. I think for me, the thing that I valued the most was just the quiet moments that I allowed myself to have, whether they were a ten twenty minutes to really say, okay, well what is like can I identify what I'm really struggling with? UM? I know that there's a conversation around affordable therapy for all UM, and I think it's so important that, however you define therapy, whether that's talking to someone a professional, talking to a friend, going for bike ride, like trying to carve out, you know, small moments for yourself to to really identify, you know, well, what is causing my anxiety? What is you know, what am I really struggling with? Really helped me and so I know that, as you said, and as I've said, not everyone can just press like a pause button on their life. Because even when I did, like it was still quite stressful because I was still like, well, am I going to pay for the stuff? Or like, you know what, am I I still have to find a job I need. I didn't have health insurance, And so I know that there are people that have to take care of their families, have to take care of children, and so it can be really hard. But I think just learning the language of how to verbalize what is really going on when you are having these moments of kind of feeling overwhelmed of needing help. It took me so long to learn how to ask for help and not just say I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Allowing people to take care of me, I think was really a huge shift for me um during this time in my life. And so I would say that, you know, there are obviously people who are approaching burnout and still have to go to work. Do they have relationships with their bosses or other employees where they can say, like I need to take half a day, I just need to recharge. Are their friends that on the weekends, they can say, look, I just can you babysit? Or can you watch my kid? Can you help out? Like I'm financially strapped right now, So to really allow the compassion that I'm sure like people's friends have for these situations, to really sit down and say, you know, how can I work with the people that I have in my life in a way that is productive. It also sounds like you really made this, Like you said, whether or not it felt like a conscious decision, right, but you made this choice to really find moments of slowing down, to stop this full on, busy speed momentum that it's so easy to get into. I know I myself have many times, you know, to just find like even pockets of stillness, whether that looks like a group therapy session every week, you know, once a week or once every other week or whatever. And also I love the questions that you started asking yourself to really try to get to the heart of what was really going on. Yeah, And I think the other thing too is you know, as you were saying that, I was kind of like, you know, running through a few scenarios in my mind. It really was just telling people that I wasn't Okay, that's so hard, I know, but I like, I am not good at that statement. Well, I think for me, it also boiled down to the fact that even if I was saying I was okay, I didn't look okay. It took work. I mean, like it was actual mental emotional work to say to my friends like, I know you see this happening, and I know I don't know how to ask for help, but I know that I need it. And so it wasn't just the work of saying that, but then of not being dismissive of my friends when they offered the help because I didn't know what it looked like, you know, I was just like, you know, for so long, I was like, oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I love that. I think you made such crucial points there that it's both a skill to figure out how to ask for help and to be able to do that and then be to also than receive that help. But those are things that don't come naturally too many of us at all. And those are not small things either, you know. I think Christina, you and I have talked about this. I'm I'm increasingly aware of how often I present as everything's okay whenever thing's not. And that's not even intentional, you know. I Mean you could say maybe it is on a subconscious level, but that's often what it is is just this like it's in my my upbringing my DNA to just like stiff upper lip, you know. And then I wonder why people aren't checking in on me, because I don't think they have to, you know, Christina, I know that we've already had these conversations with our guests, and we've listened to them many times in post production, but I swear to you it was like hearing their advice for the first time. With so many people going through transitions right now, us included, it's so helpful and reassuring to hear their perspectives again. Absolutely, It's like, no matter how many of these transitions I've had in my zig Zag career, they never get more comfortable, you know, there's always that little lump of fear in my chest that makes me worry I'll never figure this out and everything will come crashing down. And of course, with our world in transition, it also feels like that. But to the power of ten yep. But you know, remembering that all we can really do is put in the work, take it one day at a time, and continue to find inspiration through other voices and people who have been through it. All of that, I think really helps to shake off some of that fear and just keep us moving forward a little bit at a time. It's not enough to get rid of all of the fear, but but a little bit of just enough that it doesn't weigh me down exactly. So, are you going through a transition right now? Tell us about it. We love hearing from you. You can reach us on Twitter or Instagram at t l d n E pod, or you can email us at hello at t ld n E podcast dot com, or you can leave us a voicemail at eight three three Hi t l d n E. That's eight three three five three six three ven dial oh three will link to the full episodes for each of these clips in our show notes, plus some resources we've relied on to get through transitions. You can find all of those at t L d n E podcast dot com slash one. Thanks so much to our producer Maya Coole and to you for tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. If you like what you heard. It really helps us get the word out to fellow human ven diagrams. Until next time, Remember, the Limit does not exit. Best The Limit does not Exist is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah