When Craft Paper Dreams Become Real Life with Emilie Wapnick – SMJ 005

You're About to Learn …

• When trusting your gut on big life moves beats careful planning.
• How to expose your kids to values without creating mini versions of yourself.
• How one couple turned a pandemic into a cross-continent family-building adventure.
• The difference between challenging someone and pushing beliefs on them.
• A fresh perspective on how astrology shaped civilizations for millennia.
• How the mosaic of your identity shifts and surprises you over decades.
• If non-ordinary states of consciousness are available without psychedelics.

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Podcast (surprise-me-joel): Play in new window | Download

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Resources and Items Mentioned in This Episode

Websites

• Alive Edges
• Trish Blain
• World Domination Summit

Resources

• Quantum biology
• The Astrology Podcast
• Hellenistic astrology
• The Kindness of Strangers and Trusting the Universe (Emilie Wapnick's Northwest Quest)
• How to Figure Out Your Overarching Theme

Where to Find Emilie Wapnick Online

• Better Sweater Productions
• Puttylike
• The Puttyverse
• Instagram

Timestamps and Topics

• [00:02:22] How trusting your gut on big life moves beats careful planning.
• [00:05:25] Listening for the place that's calling you – and actually going.
• [00:08:05] Sketch your dream life on craft paper and watch it materialize.
• [00:09:36] Turning a pandemic into a cross-continent family-building adventure.
• [00:14:37] Exposing your kids to values without creating clones of yourself.
• [00:18:09] What raising a child with gender freedom actually looks like daily.
• [00:24:00] Why going hyper-local might matter more than chasing global ambitions.
• [00:33:22] The cost of holding back on beliefs that could help people.
• [00:44:04] Non-ordinary states of consciousness are available without psychedelics.

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Transcript

Joel: Welcome, my multipotentialite friend. Are you ready to talk about all the things?

Emilie: Of course. All the things. All the things any day, any time.

Joel: To be, do, and discuss all the things – all in a short amount of time. It's an aspiration. All right. Before we started recording, you were giving me a fun life update and that made me think about a cool place for us to start wandering in conversation together. You used to live in Portland, Oregon. Then you thought, okay, we're going to move to Canada – but specifically the islands outside of Vancouver. Salt Spring Island, you were on Cortez for a while, and now you're in Victoria. So you kind of bounced around. I may have known this at one point in time, but I've forgotten. How have you and Valerie, your partner, your wife – how have you decided at each moment in time when it's time to move and where to move?

Emilie: Valerie and I are both pretty intuitive in that we know what we want often. If one of us is confused about a life decision or something, it's an odd thing and it's like, what is going on? Each of those moves, there was a different reason or a different incident that led to it. But once we make a decision, we're all for it. We're like, let's do this adventure, let's go.

Emilie: I was living in Portland for six years, hopped around a little bit, but mostly Portland. And we got married in 2016. I'm not going to get political, but we definitely were like, okay, I'm a Canadian citizen. Canada – BC is pretty beautiful. It's still in the Pacific Northwest. And we also had this idea of a more rural life. What could that look like to be just surrounded by nature in terms of our health, our mental health? So we ended up on Salt Spring Island, which is a large island. It's kind of like a little city on an island. And then an opportunity came up to move to Cortez, which we already had a friend there.

Joel: That's a pretty small population.

Emilie: Yeah. It's pretty small. I think there's about a thousand people year round. And then in the summer it balloons because of all the tourists, the summer people – there's about 3,000 on island. We lived there for seven years and we were very happy. And then we had a kid and we were like, we need more stuff to do. Also, Valerie wanted to do more career-wise, so she kind of lit a little spark there and then I got excited about the idea of Victoria and we went for it. We've been here for a year and a half.

Emilie: Sometimes in a partnership – or even on your own – you just get an inkling, a feeling of something else that you're looking for or some place that is speaking to you. I had this with Portland too in 2011 when I moved out there. I was like, there's this conference, the first WDS –

Joel: World Domination Summit?

Emilie: Yeah, that's the one. And I was like, I'm looking for a place to move to and I'm going to this conference and maybe I'll just stay. I was just getting good vibes from Portland. I was at a different phase of my life, you know. But there is something there with listening to yourself and to what you're looking for in life. What's calling to you? What are you turning into?

Joel: You described yourself as – a feeling of confusion is rare for you. You're confused by your confusion. You normally have a lot of clarity. What do you attribute that to?

Emilie: I don't know. Okay, so part of me wants to get into astrology now and be like, it's because I'm an Aries.

Joel: Sure, let's go there. You know me, I'm a super Virgo with – what do I have, five? What do I have five of?

Emilie: I think you have seven planets in Virgo.

Joel: Seven planets in Virgo, okay. All right, yes, we'll get into astrology. We'll get into anything. So get into it.

Emilie: I mean, Aries energy is just like, jump in. Got an idea? Let's go. Let's start it. Not always the most follow-through sign, but I've got an Aries sun and my wife Valerie has four planets in Aries. So we have a lot of that fire – starting, initiating projects, initiating adventures. A lot of that energy. And I think if it were up to her, we'd be moving every two years, but I've been like, okay, now we have a kid. Also, for my own sanity, I can't be moving every two years. But definitely someone gets an idea, we talk about it, we get excited, and then we do it pretty quickly from time to time.

Joel: I am familiar with your last 15 years of personal history because we've been friends for around that amount of time. And as a rather public figure, you publish lots of blog posts on Puttylike about your Northwest quest and other things that you've done. What have you and Valerie done – do you do shared quests together? Do you design quests?

Emilie: I mean, our life –

Joel: Your life is a quest? A lot of quests?

Emilie: I would say so. Like we were just talking about with the moves. I don't know how much we sit down and sketch things out. Occasionally we do that sort of thing. I have this memory of, gosh, back when we were in Portland, getting this big piece of that brown paper that you used to wrap stuff in sometimes, you know –

Joel: Craft paper?

Emilie: Yeah, a huge piece of craft paper, and literally sketching our dream home. Valerie was drawing – we're like, we'll have a big table, a big wooden table for projects. And it's not like we're living in that home exactly, though I could see similarities to our house on Cortez. But we will do this from time to time – just some very exciting brainstorming thing. And other times it's more just in the background. But I do feel like our life has been mostly intentional. Of course things come up and things happen.

Emilie: And then there are some specific projects. I mean, there was a project of making our child, which was probably – unlike your standard heterosexual couple, our project was a project. It was like, let's go on an adventure across the country during COVID. Let's do this whole thing. It was a big thing and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Joel: Well, I hadn't really thought about you literally going across the continent during COVID for that.

Emilie: It was like our COVID project. And I feel a little guilty saying that because so many people had horrible pandemic experiences. We were like, let's take this opportunity and do something that we've been wanting to do anyway. And we have the benefit of being – well, I'm a dual citizen. Valerie's got the ability to cross borders. And also, we got some government money, as many people did, especially in Canada. We were like, let's take this opportunity and see if we can make a baby.

Joel: And you did. How have you integrated your kiddo into the way that you and Valerie design your life or where you're going – whether it's literally where you're going to live, maybe it's in a city or a part of the city? How have things changed in terms of you designing adventures with a kiddo?

Emilie: He's become a big reason. He's the main reason we moved to Victoria. We were just like, Cortez is beautiful. It's a sweet little community. There's nature, there's beaches, it's awesome. But we need more stuff to do for him, with him. We just need more activities and more school options – a gymnastics class he could take and music, whatever he's interested in. So that was one of the big reasons that we moved down to Victoria.

Emilie: And now as we think about where – we're trying to move within Victoria right now. And the big consideration is we know where he's going to be going to kindergarten. We want to be closer because right now it's quite a drive. So that's a factor. He is a factor in everything. Luckily, he's a Sagittarius, so he's got the fire too. He likes doing stuff. He likes stimulation. We went – I took him to the carnival over the weekend. It was so loud for me. He was just loving it. He's such a sensory seeker. He loved the rides, not bothered by the loud music. Oh my gosh, he was so into it. The city is great for him. He loves nature too – he's at nature school – but I think Victoria offers that balance of ocean, green stuff, and also culture and activities.

Joel: Yeah, so I gather he's not sitting down with some Scrabble tiles. I was just thinking – your dad is named Joel, so I think about that from time to time. Fun fact for people who don't know – he was the 1999 world Scrabble champion.

Emilie: World Scrabble champion. Yeah. He was in Australia for that world competition. And he's been doing high-level Scrabble competitions my whole life, before I was born.

Joel: What are you trying to hand down through the generations to Wiley? What way of being, way of seeing the world, hobbies or activities – are you trying to pull from the past and bring it into Wiley's future in some way?

Emilie: I don't know that I'm trying to pull from my parents' generation past, but there's values. There's certainly values that Valerie and I share and that we wish to impart. Kindness is a big one. And it's really actually very funny because he has clearly picked up on this. If somebody does something that he doesn't like, he'll be like, that's not kind. He's four, right? For anyone listening. And if we're going to a store and it's closed – that's not kind! We clearly have done a good job of being like, when he does something kind, you're being so kind. That was so kind that you took our dog's leash off.

Emilie: So that's one value. And certainly the arts – we are a pretty artsy family. Valerie really loves painting with him, and I often get my guitar out and play music with him. I think the trick is you don't want to push too hard because that can backfire. I want it to be a genuine interest when he wants to pursue something, but I do like exposing him to different forms of art and music and that sort of thing. And then just seeing what he gravitates towards.

Joel: Yeah, the push and pull of parenting is really tricky. I've been a little too firm in trying to push my children to adopt a certain set of values or a certain way – like, go out and know your neighbors. For example, after we're done talking, I'm going to go outside and I'm going to be handing out block party flyers. And of course for me, when I do a block party, it's not just the 30 people who live closest to me. I'm doing a neighborhood-level scale block party. There's 1,300 people that live in my neighborhood according to the City of Edina. And I'm not going to literally invite every single one of them, but most of them.

Joel: I get a lot of joy going outside, being the barefoot weirdo, knocking on someone's door, ringing their doorbell, and being like, hey, what's up? I'm Joel. I'm your neighbor. I'm down the street or a few streets over. Do you want to come to a block party? My kids have not been interested whatsoever in doing that for five or six years. And it bums me out a little bit because doing life with your neighbors is something that's incredibly important to me. There's a lot of things that make up that phrase, doing life with your neighbors, but we won't get into defining all the various elements right now.

Emilie: Yeah, that's a really tricky thing – to expose your children without demanding that they become some form of clone of an aspect of you or a piece of your identity. I do think that leading by example can go a long way. Just letting them see you do the things that you believe in and sort of infer the values behind that. In the long term, your kids will probably have witnessed you doing that sort of thing.

Joel: I like how you said that because there are a number of things that I have become as a result of my parents or my neighborhood that were not apparent until I was 25, 30, maybe even 35 years old.

Joel: Yeah, some things just take a while to percolate through the years or even through the decades before they show up and you're like, oh yeah, I remember being exposed to this as a kid. Or, oh, so that's why I have this tendency – because of this experience when I was younger.

Joel: Yeah, I like that. And that comforts me – that it's not like biologically you're done growing. At least, you know, mostly physically by around 17 or 18, and your brain is pretty well developed by then, although not fully formed until closer to 25 or 28. There's so much growth that happens at a later stage in life. I try not to press too hard because I'm like, hey, you're going to be who you want to be. And also, if you want to circle back to something that you were exposed to in your youth, I'm here, I'm for it.

Joel: What is coming up for you based on what we've been talking about so far? Is there some idea or some story – something that what I've been sharing reminds you of from your youth or your experience or how you see the world?

Emilie: Well, the only thing that is also coming up as I've been thinking about values and what we want to pass along is things that maybe we want to do differently. And for me, one of the big things is gender and the conversations around gender, but also leading by example. I'm non-binary and we use he/him pronouns for Wiley, but we've always been very intentional. We will change the pronouns in books if it's always he, he, he – sometimes we'll say they, we'll vary things. And we're very careful not to stereotype. We try our best.

Emilie: I want him to grow up not immediately categorizing people into one of two things, because I think that's just how so many of us do it. And I'm just like, how freeing would it be if you didn't do that? And instead you got to know the person and see their individual characteristics. And also for him to just be whoever he is. I feel like there's a lot of this stuff in our world – even at a young age, kids learn girls are like this, boys are like that. He'll get some of that at school for sure. But that is one thing that we've intentionally tried to do – just hopefully he'll end up feeling more free and more accepting.

Joel: I'm trying to be accepting of my oldest son, Grant, playing basketball in the front yard as I'm recording with you and wondering if the sound of the basketball hitting the pavement is actually being picked up.

Emilie: I can't hear it in my microphone right now.

Joel: Oh, you can't hear it? I'm wondering, do I close the windows right now? Because one of my values is letting as much of the outside inside. I have my windows open so a little bit of wind can come through and a little bit of sun can come through. And I'm evaluating in real time which values win – shouting out the window, hey Grant, would you mind stop dribbling and playing basketball for a little bit? Or, I don't think it's that important, I'm going to let him keep going.

Emilie: Well, it's awesome. I know that you also really value your kids getting outside and doing physical stuff, which I totally share.

Joel: Yeah, being outside, especially on a beautiful day like we have with the sun being out – I'm rarely going to do anything that will interrupt that for anyone, especially my own children.

Joel: Okay, I'm going to let you take it for a moment. I always have this meta-level conversation going on in my head when I'm having a conversation – am I going down the question rabbit hole? Because I can do that. I can just barrage someone with a series of questions and then all of a sudden it's an hour later and I realize I didn't really give someone else an opportunity to reflect or to ask. So I'm just going to pause for a moment here and say, what about you? What are you curious about? What would you like to explore together?

Emilie: Can I ask you questions?

Joel: Yeah, this is a conversation.

Emilie: Yeah, okay. I'm curious about your evolution, Joel, because I think it was shortly before we met that you had your – what you call your personal renaissance. And it seems like in the last few years, you've been going through another transformation of sorts. Is that accurate? With the psychedelics and –

Joel: Yeah. I don't know when one aspect of my evolution starts and stops. I joke around that starting approximately when Melinda, my wife, picked up on my personal renaissance – there was version 1.0 of me, which was pretty static for about 30 years. And now I'm on version, I don't know, 183.7 over the last 16 years or so. I mention that because I don't journal and my memory is so bad that I can't go back and be like, yep, that was the pivot point for this and how I got into that. But I feel like you are picking up on something real.

Joel: Part of it may be starting with plant medicine – Ayahuasca specifically. This was about two and a half years ago that I had my first two Ayahuasca ceremonies. And that gave me a knowing of love and gratitude that I didn't know existed. I didn't know that could exist. It raised my baseline level of patience and goodness and maybe even kindness, which has huge ripple effects. You are a very kind person. Wiley is clearly a very kind person. How that makes all the other things that are associated with it – patience, for example. When you're kind, you can be really patient with people. That's an act of kindness – to give someone the verbal runway they need or the time to think and process and act and absorb.

Joel: So I feel like I'm kind of dancing around what you said, but yeah, I think there's two things. One is Ayahuasca specifically. And the other one is being able to actually be more offline. That's something that I wanted even before COVID kind of forced it upon some of us. A lot of us went online during COVID because there was nothing going on offline. But when I couldn't do in-person things with a lot of people during COVID, that – as the giant extrovert I am – really sucked for me. I was like, I want to be less online. I'm doing way too much online.

Joel: So I've been on this slow, steady trajectory of continuing to do more and more of my life outside and hyper-local. I'm no longer trying to be some kind of global entrepreneur and author or speaker fancy pants. That was a previous era of me that fortunately has come to an end. And now I'm just really focused on – can I be a good father? Can I be a good husband? Can I be a good neighbor? And then some other things are almost like the cherry on top of the sundae.

Emilie: I love that.

Joel: I still do lots of things online. We're online right now. And the Puttyverse – the community of multipotentialites that you and I have been active in for over 14 years – is still dearly important to me. The way that I show up is changing, though. I've never really enjoyed writing things, whether physically with a pen or pencil or typing things out at people.

And now we're at a technological point where I don't have to do that as much. I can use where I'm most expressive and effective, which is typically with my voice – whether it's audio only like we're doing now or with the video element. Everyone's so used to having all these different mediums in which to communicate. I can kind of pick and choose more of what I do, and that is very enlivening to me.

Joel: Have you noticed your communication style change over time as the tools that we use to communicate expand?

Emilie: I think that I have over the years just done more of the media that I enjoy and been cutting out the things that I really don't care about – namely a lot of social media. At the beginning when I started Puttylike in 2010, social media wasn't even a huge deal then. I was doing all the things, trying to be everywhere. And now, similar to you but different obviously, I'm like, what parts of this business, this work – what do I enjoy? What can I do more of? What do I want to do less of?

Emilie: Similar to you, I was also craving more in-person community. And actually, right now I'm at a coworking space. I've been doing a work trade here where I'll help out making coffee, tidying up little things, welcoming people in exchange for getting to use the space. And I realized that is giving me something that I was missing because I've had an online business for years and years. So I often work from coffee shops or work at home alone, and I've got online community which is great, but I would see Valerie with her coworkers joking around and telling me about conversations she had at work today and I want that.

Emilie: So I'm getting that a little bit here, just being in this coworking space. People will hang out while they're having lunch, sometimes people will pull out a board game. There's a gym and a little library and a meditation room. I feel like that's the sort of thing where I'm like, do I have space in my life to bring something in that would give me a little bit of what I'm missing?

Emilie: But yeah, in terms of communicating online – I stopped vlogging. I was enjoying it for a while and then I wasn't, and then I brought in some other writers. After that I took the hundreds of blog posts we'd already written and scheduled them out into an autoresponder for new people who found Puttylike. I feel like I'm always asking, what am I enjoying here? What am I not enjoying here? Is there something I can tweak if the timing is right?

Joel: How much of your identity is as a writer? Because you've written so many newsletters, you've published so many blog posts, you've been doing script writing for – get a TV show! Come on, anyone listening to this, if you want to see a Felicity reboot, please let us know because I want to see Emilie and Rena and other people create a Felicity reboot. But yeah, script writing. What part of you is like, I write things?

Emilie: I do think writer is a part of my identity. And it's also the easiest way that I can introduce myself when someone's like, what do you do? I often go straight to writer. Or sometimes I'll say the easiest way to explain what I do is just to say I'm a writer. And that gives them a clue that I'm a writer but also there's maybe other stuff going on. As a multipotentialite, that's my solution – here's a thing, also maybe there's other stuff.

Joel: Yeah, a writer of what? I mean, this thing that we call writing is such a massive umbrella. You can say you're a writer and everybody knows what a writer is, but there's a hundred different types of writers.

Emilie: Right. So yeah, I'd say writer is a pretty big part of my identity at this point.

Joel: What about the other aspects? What are the words or phrases that feel like they're central to understanding you?

Emilie: Parent is an important one at this point. You just see the world differently. People who aren't parents – there's just things that they're never going to get. And I've been both now, so I understand that. And parenting a young child is just such a big part of my world. I love being a parent, so that is definitely a big part of my identity.

Emilie: In terms of the label conversation – I think of myself almost more in adjectives. I think of myself as a thoughtful, curious person –

Joel: You are.

Emilie: Oh, thank you. And then I also think about what sorts of things I care about doing in a broader sense. And for me, a lot of my work revolves around helping people feel seen and helping people see their uniqueness or weirdness as a strength. I think my Puttylike stuff fits into that. A lot of my screenwriting could fall under that umbrella too. It's almost like my mission is – it's okay to be a quiet, weird, interested person, or whatever that is for you.

Joel: Yeah, I mean, these are all tidbits, right? Until we can telepathically and reliably communicate with each other or get inside each other's brains with some kind of mechanical interface, all we have are our words and aspects.

Joel: The concept of a mosaic has been with me the last month or so. I'm redoing my personal website and it's been – I should have done that five years ago. So much of the stuff on there, I look at it and I'm like, wow, the words that I use – that's so 2016 Joel. 2026 Joel does not talk or think like that. And the concept of a mosaic – all these different facets and pieces, some of them are really shiny and they reflect the light in cool ways.

Others are more for absorption and are internal. I've been really playing with and enjoying that aspect of just presenting the mosaic of me and letting people see which thing that glimmers catches their attention. And then do you see how that relates to this piece and that piece?

Emilie: I like that. I also see the world a little bit through an astrological lens. When I think about myself, I think about my birth chart and I'm like, okay, there's this part of my chart and there's this part of my chart and this placement, and all of those different things mean different – yeah, it's also how I've interpreted them. I think people who are into astrology tend to bring – or at least be more conscious about – like, oh, that's my Mercury placement right there.

Joel: When are you going to fully own this aspect of you, the one that's informed by astrology? I hear it in the tone of your voice and the look on your face. When you bring it up, it's like, oh, are we going to have the astrology conversation?

Emilie: Yeah, we're going to have the astrology conversation. It's because I know that listening is an audience with mixed perceptions of astrology. And I guess that's fine. But I think the fear is I don't want people to just discredit me or think that I'm an idiot because I'm into astrology, which I think sometimes happens.

Joel: Even though the majority of human civilization has had astrology be a prominent part of their civilization for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Emilie: Yes, even though that is absolutely true.

Joel: The Chinese, people in India, Zoroastrians in Persia – yes, it's mostly an Eastern thing. Perhaps it's because you and I live in a Western context. But even Western tradition goes way, way, way back.

Emilie: Yeah. People don't know that history. They think it was invented in the 70s or something.

Joel: Do you have a tidbit or two that you love to share with people? Being like, okay, you don't understand how this is woven into the fabric of our society, but it is and here's how.

Emilie: I don't really like trying to convince people, especially of this topic –

Joel: Okay. We're not convincing, we're educating.

Emilie: You're educating. I'm listening. But I'm learning too. I don't know much about it. Yeah. I mean, the kind of astrology I'm really into is Hellenistic astrology, which is ancient astrology from Alexandria. Way, way, way back. And I will just point you to resources. If you want to learn more about that, Chris Brennan is the one. He's got the Astrology Podcast and he's just a wealth of information in terms of the historical stuff and where astrology came from and how it was developed over the years. And yeah, it's been a huge part of humanity for millennia. But anyway, okay, so sure. I will stop being apologetic.

Joel: Well, don't do it for me.

Emilie: No, I mean in this conversation.

Joel: Okay, cool. Where else do you find yourself holding back? Not necessarily with me, but just in general.

Emilie: I'm not sure. I know about myself that I probably – because of some childhood bullying – I definitely am aware and worry about what other people think. That's something I've worked on a lot. I'm sure there are times when I hold back – not in a situation like this, though I am aware that there's an audience listening, but more in groups, particularly groups of people I don't know very well. I'm sure there are times I hold back and don't say something that I would have said, with that in mind.

Joel: That's a good question. I find myself holding back constantly. I like to claim – and I think it's generally true – that I'm just very open. What you see is what you get. And sometimes literally people see a little bit too much, like when I was taking my walk earlier today. I'm walking around the neighborhood just in my shorts again – barefoot and bare-chested. People would like to actually see a little bit less of me around the neighborhood.

Joel: But I'm such an open book, and that's generally true. But when it comes to quantum biology – how light, water, and magnetism impact all life on this planet, always has, always will – I hold back significantly because there's some deep science and it's matters of life and death. I'll just give one example. And I can almost anticipate some people listening to this being like, what? You're super wrong, Joel, because conventional wisdom or whatever the scientific literature that I know can't possibly be that wrong.

Joel: But skin cancer is one thing. I want people to celebrate the sun. They don't necessarily need to worship the sun like me, but the sun is the most life-giving force in our solar system. That is both intellectually true, but I also feel it from a primal, intuitive way as well. And so I want to get into conversations with people all the time about the sun and the role that it plays, or artificial light and how that's disruptive to a biological entity – humans that have evolved with the Earth's magnetic field and the sun as being the primary batteries to drive us. And you might be thinking of food. Well, there's no food without the sun as well – photosynthesis, it's all about the sun.

Joel: So it's hard. It's hard for me to hold back because a lot of me – I almost hear myself the way other people hear me, or I see it in their eyes. Like I'm just a total crank. Like I've fallen into some conspiracy rabbit hole. And I'm like, no, I've been studying this for 10 years. And although I don't always know what I'm talking about, there are some things that I'm certain of because of the science that I understand and because of this spiritual lens in which I view the natural world.

Emilie: I mean, I think part of the thing that's going on is that it's hard to take that out of the context of where society is – that conspiracy theories and misinformation, the last five to ten years, it's been a total shit show. And so of course that's where people's minds go when you drop something like that. It's hard to separate, I think.

Emilie: But as you were talking, I was like, yeah, this is kind of how I feel about astrology – where I am holding back sometimes. I want to know that the person I'm talking to is open and interested. I don't want to have a conversation where I'm trying to convince somebody to believe in astrology. I just – I don't care if you don't, that's not what I want to do.

Joel: Are there some things worth persuading though? Aren't there some things that are so important –

Emilie: Maybe.

Joel: I feel there's something. Yeah. I guess I'll speak for myself – I feel there are things so important. I wish I had more opportunities to convince and persuade. Almost all of the conversations I have, I'm seeking to understand and I'm in curious mode. But there is a part of me that, at 46 years of age and a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge, I know some things, I've seen some things. I have what I feel like is some insight or wisdom to impart. And yet I don't often feel the opportunity to do that.

Emilie: Does that work? No, generally no. Because I feel like when people are interested – if somebody is like, oh, I'm curious about astrology, tell me more – that's great, that's different than just pushing something down someone's throat. We all know that feeling of, okay, time out, this is not working for me. We've all been on the receiving end of someone evangelical – and I don't say that necessarily in a strictly religious way – where someone is more or less a zealot. They have some value or some knowledge and they go around proselytizing, trying to convert people to their way of seeing or being.

Joel: We've all experienced that. And there is some part of me that thinks that we're too gentle in some ways. There's certain pockets, certain groups that I run in that are too averse to conflict or walk on eggshells. And I want to challenge that. A big part of who I am is someone who challenges others. And often it's in subtle ways, but there are times where I just want to very directly challenge someone. And I generally hold back on that.

Emilie: Interesting. Okay. Let me ask you one more thing. What are the recurring questions that you find yourself asking yourself or others lately?

Joel: Questions. Hmm. That's a hard one. Lately –

Emilie: I'm a question collector. I love knowing about the cool questions that people ask themselves and other people.

Joel: I'm not sure. Life has felt very full the last six months or so. I don't feel like I'm doing a lot of pondering of philosophical questions except for – is this in line with the life that I want? When we're making choices – is this in line with my values? Those sorts of things. Often lately I've just felt like there's so much to do between parenting and work. My brain has been taken up by a lot of stuff right now – a lot of it's exciting things, but I'm not sure. What about you?

Joel: I am – let's see, what's the short version of this? My friend Trish Blain has something called Alive Edges, which I'm getting involved with from a number of different aspects. And the concept of non-ordinary experiences or ecstatic states of consciousness through plant medicine – I've also experienced that you don't need psychedelics to have what most people would consider a typical psychedelic experience. Those states of being or consciousness are available in other ways.

Joel: Wait – that was me asking myself a recurring question, sorry. Let me clarify. So I've been asking myself, whether it's through breathwork or meditation or guided energy journeys – what are the ways that I can tap into different forms and states of consciousness without Ayahuasca or psilocybin or something else?

I've had a couple of experiences which are really cool, and I want not necessarily more – I'm looking for a range. I want to understand the range of states of consciousness that a human can have. And I don't even know what the landscape looks like. So it's not like I can put myself somewhere on the map and say, you are here. I could be here, but I could be everywhere. So that's something that I've been asking myself – what else does consciousness offer?

Emilie: Wow. Yeah, I don't know if I have an equivalent right now.

Joel: You don't have to. But what I would like you to do is tell folks – they can find you on a digital map pretty clearly. You're rather prominent online in a number of places. If somebody wants to experience more of how you think or what you're doing, where do you want them to go?

Emilie: Yeah. I mean, the easiest place is Puttylike. And then the Puttyverse, if you – I'm assuming a lot of the people listening know about the Puttyverse, but it is our community of multipotentialites. So you can go to theputtyverse.com. I'm also on Instagram. I don't post a lot, but I'm there. And then I've got a newish website for my TV writing partnership with my partner, Rena.

And that's bettersweaterproductions.com – which was our little writing name. So you can learn more about those projects. I haven't talked much about my TV writing on this call, but that is something I've been super focused on recently. And that I find very frustrating because it's like – building my own business, that was just so much of it I could do myself. And with TV writing, there's just this whole system that is very opaque and very hard to break into. But the writing part of it I love, and the business part – hopefully I'll figure out.

Joel: I would like to help design your celebration party when you do actually get one of your TV scripts produced. It's going to happen. And I want to be a huge part of the celebration. I mean, obviously I want to watch a show on TV and see the credits and be like, oh snap, that's Emilie's name there.

Joel: Yeah, I guess it's not guaranteed to happen, but you have been working so many different angles and writing some amazing scripts for years now. I want this for you so badly.

Emilie: Thank you, thank you. I would love for you to plan that party.

Joel: All right, tell me when it's time to start. I'll get going.

Emilie: Okay. Thank you, friend. This is wonderful.