Bec and Nat open by talking about how they discuss everything with a
certain intensity…even eyeliner. Bec asks Nat five questions to help
listeners get to know her better. They branch into their topic: new
things are hard! Bec’s hard new thing is running a solo business and
just doing art in general. Nat feels like teaching is back to being new
again. They do a NEW thing on the podcast with their first call in.
Listener Nicole asks them to reframe the notion of the essential
reworker and how they’re viewed, which sends Nat and Bec down a path of
asking why we as a society have already forgotten our essential workers.
And should we even be calling them that if we don’t treat them as such.
Is it really just essential "work" we're talking about? Nat suggests
that art and books, in particular, are a great antidote to capitalism
and the hard stuff, aka newness. They end by deciding that everyone
would gain from finding a work of fiction that feeds their spirit.
The quote Bec can't quite find is from Austrian poet Rainer Maria
Rilke, who has much to say about newness and fear. Here are two good
ones: "It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not
able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning." And another:
"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only
waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps
everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something
helpless that wants our love.”