Curating the Curious
Welcome to Curating the Curious, the podcast that celebrates staying curious in life and never settling into a box.
This show is for the creators, the seekers, the explorers, the truth tellers….and the forever students of life.
No matter what age or stage you’re currently at, this is not as good as it gets and it is never too late to begin.
Join me as we explore all of the questions that come with the idea of curiosity. A place where the possibilities are endless and you can always start again.
We expand our lives through curiosity. One of my greatest passions is finding ways to encourage and inspire others to keep pushing, sharing, living, and making things for the world to see.
Curating the Curious
Day 1 -We're in This Together...Let's Turn This Sh*t Into Something Beautiful!
Welcome to DAY ONE of our new 30-day project where we make something with our hands every day to improve mental health during difficult times. We all know that creativity heals...it's time to put that knowledge into action.
I'm going to publish an episode to follow along with several days of each week (I'll take breaks on Fridays and weekends in order to give you time to catch up as needed). These episodes will exist here, marked with the days numbered, in order for you to follow along at any speed that you like. Miss a day? Doesn't matter. Just pick up right where you left off and keep making things. These episodes will give us all some accountability, but if you need more, pair up with a partner. It really does help.
Join our creative community by making something today, whether it's for five minutes or several hours—your brain will thank you. Let's do this thing together and turn all of this sh*t into something more beautiful!
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In a time of hate, love is an act of resistance. In a time of fear, faith is an act of resistance. In a time of misinformation, education is an act of resistance. In a time of poor leadership, community is an act of resistance. In a time like this, joy is an act of resistance. Resist, resist, resist. By Lauren Brantz. So my daughter has read that on a different episode here, but I needed to open up this 30-day project with another reading of that poem, not just for you, but for me. I, like so many of you I'm sure, have been really struggling very, very hard with my mental health over the last few years, but definitely since November, if I'm being honest, this last election in the United States. I know that I have a lot of listeners in different countries, but our last election in November of 2024 rocked my world and I know I'm not alone. And I'm saying this merely because I want everybody who feels this way to know you're not alone. I've had a really difficult time getting my head in the right place to come back to this podcast, and it's been very upsetting because this is something that means a lot to me, but also, at the same time, I don't want to be some downer that is coming and talking about all the things that I'm upset about. Now my Instagram stories are another. That's a whole other story. That's where I just let things fly. But here you know, I sift through things before I come and speak. But the one thing that has saved me through all of this pain is my commitment to staying curious and to keeping my mind open and to asking questions instead of just deciding, oh, I've got all the answers. The one saving grace I have had through these years is curiosity. Keep my mind open. And so over the years, I keep telling myself you can't close your mind like a vault. You have to keep it open. You have to stay curious. You cannot let this just make you hate people or make you despise this or that or decide that you've got all the answers. I am certain of nothing, nothing. And that's scary, but it's also comforting and it's also something that helps you keep your ears open for new information. And, just like the poem says, in a time of misinformation, education is an act of resistance. In a time of poor leadership, community is an act of resistance. I want this to be a community where we gather, we stay curious, we ask the questions. It doesn't matter how angry we are about what's going on. We stay open to new information that comes in Now.
Speaker 1:I started this 30-day project many, many days ago. I started recording episodes from day one back then and so I'm opening this up right now. But everything that I'm going to play after this was recorded a few weeks ago and I hope that's not too confusing. But I had originally recorded a different opening to this project and so today I'm coming back right now with this different intro just to tell you that in these few weeks I ended up leaving social media, erasing it completely off of my phone. I switched to only reading news which I'll get into in later episodes, you'll hear and I cut out everything that was bringing strong, strong emotion into my life and just decided to stick with facts and education and information. I'm still calling my reps, I'm still into protesting peaceful protesting I'm still educating myself and reading, and all of that. I just cut all of the social media and the news out.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to come with a really, really clear mind, at least compared to what I was like two weeks ago, and tell you that this is working, this project is working, and this is not some like oh hey, come and do this project and then you're going to buy this product from me. I'm not doing that. I really just want to be in community. I would like to have this creative community with all of you who listen. So if you listen to the first few episodes, I can't even remember at this point what I recorded. I know that I kept myself together and was not, you know, going haywire anything, but I was not in a good place. And if I sound like I was in a good place, I was pretending or I was having a good moment, until the episodes where I tell you that I left social media and then my mental health started improving significantly and I kept doing the project and I kept working with my hands and so on. And here, a few weeks later, I feel like a different person. So now we will get on with what I had previously recorded, whether I love everything that I said or not. I'm just going to air the episodes and hopefully we all do this together.
Speaker 1:And now that I have left social media, I don't know. I don't really know how I'm going to deal with that. Who cares? Just leave me. Leave a review. That would be great. Nobody has left me one in a long time, so that would be. That would be fun to receive a review, a rating, something I don't know. You can email me if you really need me. It's all available out there. But okay, here we go.
Speaker 1:Here is my first episode of our 30 day project. Wrap yourself in light. Then give yourself away with your heart, your brush, your march, your art, your poetry, your play, and for every day you paint the war. Take a week and paint the beauty, the color, the shape of the landscape you're marching towards. Everyone knows what you're against. Show them what you're for. By Andrea Gibson.
Speaker 1:I was reminded recently about the force field of light that I spoke about with my daughter in that no Cherished Outcomes episode months back, and I forgot about it for a little bit. I got caught up in what is going on in this world and, quite frankly, this has just been a tough, tough time, not just for me, for so many people. I don't feel like a victim one bit, but I want everyone out there to know that you are not alone. I also believe that it is high time that I return to this podcast with something that we can do together. Some of you may remember, some time ago I did an episode about the effort-driven reward circuit in our brains and basically what that is. It's a neural pathway in our brain where physical effort particularly when it leads to tangible and meaningful outcomes something done with our hands it triggers the release of neurochemicals associated with pleasure and satisfaction. So, to put it very simply, making things with our hands makes our brains happier.
Speaker 1:So what is this episode about? It is about a 30-day project that we are going to do together where every day for 30 days, we will make something. It does not matter what it is. We're going to make something with our hands. It doesn't matter if it's the same type of thing every day. Like, if you want to choose an art project for 30 days, that's great. If you want to choose a cooking project for every day, that's great. If you want to do cooking one day, art the next, writing the next, pottery the next, it's all up to you. But we are going to check in every day for the next 30 days and I'll have other little things to talk about here and there, but this is all just going to be an accountability thing and hopefully we can work with our hands and make things and change our habits, our daily habits, and get to a better frame of mind together.
Speaker 1:This project each day. You can devote five minutes of doodling, or you can devote two hours of some elaborate project. Whatever time you have on hand project. Whatever time you have on hand, make use of it. It could be five minutes, it could be an hour, it could be four hours, you choose. You see what you have room for in your own life.
Speaker 1:I could cheat and say that making these podcast episodes each day would be my project because, to tell you the truth, this alone helps my mental health so much. But I'm not going to cheat. I'm actually going to do a thing, and today's project is working with my daughter to help create her vision board. We've never done one together. I love doing them, but I kind of fell off of it. It just I don't know. It wasn't feeling great, but I bought a little kit for her and we're going to put that to use and we're going to get creative. We're going to cut and paste, we're going to use stickers, just all of the things that make both of us happy.
Speaker 1:And I want to be sure to tell you that this in no way has anything to do with toxic positivity. I am not engaging in any spiritual bypassing and I am more than aware of all of the horrendous shit that is going on in this world. I don't have my head in the sand and I don't intend to, but I do believe that if we're going to be informed and we're going to have the spirit keep up our spirits to fight for what we care about and what we love in this world, we have to keep our souls nourished and protected, and what better way to do that than through art? And what better way to do that than through art, than through creation? Art is a vital, vital connector of the human experience, and I have never felt more disconnected from so many humans in my entire life. I'm just not willing, I'm not willing to allow myself to be swallowed up by anger and hate, and I don't want you to be either. I do believe that the creators, the artists, the creative ones whatever you want to call this will be the ones to change the world, and I do believe in the power of art to bring us together. Art is not frivolous, it's vital. We keep hearing this from so many people out there. It's time to really take it to heart and get to work together.
Speaker 1:For all of you book nerds, I have a book to recommend on this topic and it's called your Brain on Art, and this is a book that leads you through all of the latest science on how art transforms the brain and the body, and it just gives clear demonstrations in all the ways in which art is just essential for our things like healing, joy, creativity, and for building connections and neural pathways for mental health. It's nerdy. It's packed with information. It's not one that I've just sat down and read cover to cover, but I read little bits of it every now and then. Also, I got myself back into reading fiction instead of all of this information, and it's really done something for me. It's opened up a whole new thing in my brain.
Speaker 1:I started with Demon Copperhead, which is very heavy. I had to put it down for a year. I read half of it, put it down for a year because it was too heavy for me. Then I decided I wanted to get back into fiction again and I finished it pretty quickly, loved it, but it's heavy. I fell in love with Barbara Kingsolver through reading that, and so my next book was Flight Behavior, and that happens to be about monarch butterflies, which you know well. Most of you know that I've been raising monarch butterflies for I don't even know maybe five years now. It's one of my favorite things to do, so I love that book. It's a little bit slower, but I loved it.
Speaker 1:Next I dove into one of the best books I have ever read in my life, and it's the Nightingale by Kristen Hanna. It's historical fiction which I did not think was going to be up my alley and now it's my new thing. So I highly recommend that flipping book, my God. Next, I was on a road trip. It was like an eight-hour drive from San Francisco and I started the audio version of the Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which was recommended to me by my friend Cynthia when we were in Morocco a few years ago, and I always kept that written down. I really, really liked it. I don't love doing the audio experience as much with fiction for some reason, so I need to. I'm like halfway through that book, I need to get it as a book and stop the audio. But I started the Women reading it as a book, and that's another Kristen Hanna book. Amazing, everybody's talking about it. I'm loving it. I think I'm a little more than a third way through of that. So that's my book roundup for right now.
Speaker 1:I can honestly say that adding fiction into my routine has changed my brain. It's building this layer of like, not empathy. It's not like I need more of that, but just the ability to walk in someone else's shoes for a while, get out of my own head and construct these worlds in your imagination. That's been written for you. It's something that I desperately needed. I was taking in too much information. I have this propensity towards taking in information and it's kind of like drinking out of a fire hydrant. The whole fiction thing is a great addition if anybody's looking to kind of calm your brain. Slow down. I do it before I go to bed, laying in bed, and I highly recommend it For anyone who maybe spends time scrolling on their phone in bed. Replace it with fiction books. Highly, highly recommend. Okay, so that's it.
Speaker 1:Today is day one. I apologize for the sound here. My microphone broke. I'm using my headphones to speak into the little mouthpiece thing and it sounds horrible, but that's all I can do and I wasn't about to let that stop me from making an episode. So hopefully I'll buy a new mic soon, if not just get through it. It's only 10 minutes so far. Sit down, do a project today, doesn't matter how long, doesn't matter what it is. Do something with your hands, see how it feels and join me tomorrow for another episode. I'm thinking that each day I'm just going to feel a little different and expose a little bit more of where the hell I have been for all this time. So catch me each day to see what I let out. There's so much to explore, so so so much, but anyway, I'm really hoping to reconnect with so many of you that I've lost touch with over these years, where I've been in and out and I haven't been loving social media too much or interacting very much. I hope to hear from you In the meantime. Stay curious.
