Trish Munn - Photographer/Journalist/Boss

This is Coffee with Cool People. I'm Chip Munn, and today I— it is rare, I don't know ever that I would say I'm with my favorite guest, but today I'm having coffee with Trish Munn. Trish, thanks for joining me.

I've been trying to get on your calendar now for like a year, I feel like, but it was stacked up.

So yeah, I'm a busy guy. Truth is, You were supposed to be the first guest, and this is just kind of how our life works.

Well, I wanted to see if it would be successful before I got involved.

I can't say I blame you. Well, if this means it's successful, then go me. Welcome to 2023. Yeah, so Trish, just like— you don't get any preferential treatment. You get same as everybody else. So Just to start off, who is Trish Munn?

Oh, that's a big question. Um, I'm a lot of different things. Um, I am a creative person who loves the people in my life who I'm closest to, who loves animals, uh, the earth. I'm an artist. I'm an entrepreneur. Um, I'm a person who cares about other people in the world and lives it every day. Even to my own detriment sometimes, but I'm here to change the world.

Wow. Well, I mean, no small ambitions, right?

No. I used to, when I was in elementary school, I told everybody I would be the president. So I've come down a little bit from there, I think.

Well, hey, it could happen.

I mean, I have no desire to be the president now.

I don't blame you. Yeah, well, I'm thinking, I think you have to be at least 35 to be president. Is that right? Yeah, I think, I think that's right. So in a few years you could at least aspire to that.

Because I'm like 27.

Exactly. So, um, you are a lot of things. I think people would be surprised to, um, you know, to know that. I think that most people know you, Trish, from your time on TV. Television. Yeah. So, so tell me a little bit about how did Where did you— how did you get here from there? So you're all these things now. Somewhere in the middle, you spent a decade on television. What was it like? How did you get to South Carolina? And again, what was that process kind of like?

Well, I don't know if you can tell from my lack of an accent, but I'm not from here. My family— I was born and raised north of Chicago in a town— I was born in Waukegan, Illinois, raised in Zion, Illinois. And in 1993, we moved to South Carolina. My grandmother was actually from Hartsville, my mom's mom. And so we moved to Columbia where she was living, lived across the street from her. And for me, it was a massive, massive change going from, you know, the world I knew up north to the world down here. It didn't go very smoothly. I've always had kind of a bit of mouth on me, and so, you know, I definitely say what I think, and I didn't realize that didn't fly in the South, you know, so it took me a while to get adjusted to it, but I stayed here because this place is beautiful. South Carolina, you can't beat it. You have the mountains and you have the ocean and everything in between. I love the weather here, and then, you know, I just fell in love with the people, the places, and I went to Brooklyn Casey High School. I graduated when I was just turning 17, actually, a couple days after I was— I was 16 turning 17. I skipped 11th grade because I hated school and I wanted to get out very badly. And then I went to the University of South Carolina, and I was originally going to major in theater because I loved acting. And I remember at one point thinking, this is not going to pay the bills, and So I also used to watch the news with my dad every night, and we'd watch the news all the time. 60 Minutes, you know, the NewsHour on PBS. And I thought, well, that's kind of like acting, you know, and I love politics, so I could probably do that. And so I switched into broadcast journalism, and that's what my degree is in. And when I graduated from Well, when I was at USC my last year, I started working for the National Public Radio affiliate and SCETV, and it was a great job. I did all kinds of things. I was a master control operator. I ran the whole weekend shows, all the stations in South Carolina, and I did the news. I even hosted a classical music show when I was, I don't know, like 20. I had no idea what I was talking about. I didn't even know how to pronounce the names, but I was like, "Coming up next, it's Tchaikovsky." So yeah, nobody said anything, so I assume either nobody was listening or I did okay.

And, um, that's kind of how I feel about the podcast, by the way.

You know if you're doing something wrong because people will tell you. So then, um, when I graduated from USC, moved to Florence because I got a job offer at WBTW, and I thought I would be here 2 years, and I'm still here because I love the TV station. I love the people at the TV station who are still like my family. And I started off as a weekend reporter/photographer and moved up to a weekday reporter with my own photographer, who is not me, and then moved up to weekend anchor and then, uh, moved up to the senior bureau chief in the PD and then decided I could not do it anymore. Because I was, you know, covering crime over 10 years, day in and day out. And I'm a very sensitive person, and I just, you know, I had everything I could take, and I just couldn't do it anymore. So it was one of the hardest decisions of my life, and I hated doing it, but I knew that I needed to do it. So I left TV, didn't know what I was going to do. I started working at the Chamber of Commerce. Thank you, Mike Miller, for taking a chance on me. I love that job. I did everything I felt like I could do there to, you know, make it an even better place for the community. And then I left to pursue my own thing because I have trouble working for other people. And then I kind of freaked out. And, you know, I was home alone by myself, and I'm somewhat extroverted, believe it or not. And so I missed people. And so I just had a freakout moment and I thought, well, I've got to go back, you know, into the business world. And I was able to get a job at Francis Marion University as the director of public relations. So thank you, Fred Carter and those folks out there. And enjoyed that job, did it once again for as long as I felt like I could. And then once again, the entrepreneurial kind of itch, especially with my photography business kind of having taken off in the meantime, I just couldn't do a 9-to-5 anymore. And so I left, not knowing what I was going to do. And 4 years later, here we are today, and that has been a crazy ride trying to figure out who I am, who I really am when you peel off all the different, you know, things that I thought I was over the years. And what I really want out of life and what I want to create. And so I am finally at a place, it took 4 years, where I feel like I'm ready for the next chapter of my life, which, you know, my photography is a huge part of that.

Well, I, before we get into what's, what's next, and I'm curious, you touched a couple of times on having to make hard decisions, you know, deciding after 10 years to leave TV and then kind of that, that you You've had a lot of transitions in the time. Now, we met when you were at the chamber, and again, thanks, Mike Miller, for that. But it was a— you've been through— I know how hard it was for you to leave television, and I've been with you through some of these other transitions. What is the— how do you make those decisions? So, and maybe they changed, it's changed over the period of time, but from the time time you left TV and until now, you've made several difficult kind of decisions and transitions. What's been the process? How do you work through those things?

Well, as you know, um, I'm very sensitive. Even my, my entire body is very sensitive, and it literally started revolting. So if I was in a job that maybe I didn't want to go to anymore, um, I would start kind of getting hives on my neck or just feeling horrible every day. And eventually you have enough of those days where it's like, why do I feel so horrible? What is the point of all this? And I literally used to spend, you know, lunch breaks thinking, is this it? Really? I did all that. I'm here. You know, I got, I got the husband, got the house, got a good job, make good money. I feel like I look okay. And now what? I still wasn't happy. And so then I, you know, had this kind of big process of figuring out, well, what would make you happy? You know, what is happiness even? And for me, every time that I felt like I was going in the wrong direction, I had to do some very jerky course corrects. And to other people it may look like flakiness or like indecision, but to me, I make very— I don't know what the word is. I think a lot about the things that I do before I do them, and so once I've made a decision, you know, I've definitely vetted the decision and the pros and the cons, and if I make a hard decision, it's because I literally can't live the way that I was living anymore, and I've had to make tons of those my entire life. But I would say it gets easier, but it doesn't. It doesn't get any easier. Every time you feel like you're disappointing somebody or you're leaving a place, you know, who gave you a chance at a job, you feel bad. But at the end of the day, I have to take care of myself and I can't take care of anybody else if I don't make myself happy and, you know, figure out how I can light up the world. So it's an internal thing. It's a— I go instinctively now on my gut. I don't listen to the chatter in my head because that chatter in my head led me down the wrong road for a long time trying to be somebody else for a lot of people, different from who I really was on the inside. And so my body just revolted to the point where it was like, "We're not going to do this anymore, Trish." And so I had to listen.

So you say that it led you to kind of be a person that you weren't. What do you mean by that? I mean, kind of the— how did that manifest itself in terms of— again, I'm not sure I'm repeating it back properly, but you're the broadcaster journalist in this family.

And don't you forget that.

You don't let me forget that. I mean, you're still on TV. It's a lot to live up to. But yeah, how does that manifest itself in terms of, you know, again, taking that expectation? Who did you feel like people wanted you to be?

The girl on TV, Perfect Patricia. Anybody who knows me knows that I don't walk around wearing a bunch of makeup all the time. I like getting dirty. I like playing with rocks. I act like a 4-year-old most of the time, and that is the opposite of kind of what you see on TV. I'm also very intelligent and very philosophical, but I completely erased all the playfulness, all the kind of realness to myself because I thought it wasn't acceptable. I'm a very spiritual person, and I completely tried to hide that, you know, because I didn't know how it would be accepted in the South. I don't know, I just, I never felt comfortable in being who I really was until I couldn't not be it anymore.

Yeah, sure. As a journalist, do you feel like that contributed to that? Does the fact that you're on TV make you feel— I know that for the one year that I was a schoolteacher, you know, I drank back then, but I never drank out in a public restaurant because I was afraid that a a student or a parent might, might see me.

Clauses in our contracts, you know, some might call them morality clauses, but you couldn't do this, you couldn't do that. That didn't mean that we didn't do it. It just means we were more careful about who we did it in front of. Um, but it's unrealistic standards. I mean, to be honest with you, thank God it has changed a lot since I left, you know. But back when I was in television If you weren't skinny, you know, you weren't on TV. Like, and so these unrealistic—

so you're saying there's a chance I can get on TV now?

Yeah, but it was— I mean, we had people who would come in and critique our appearance. I mean, imagine what that's like. You have to have some pretty thick skin because not only do you hear crap from people on the outside who think they know you and can tell you anything they want to tell you, but you have to hear it from you know, a person who's an expert, quote-unquote, telling you what to wear, what not to wear, what makeup to do, what, you know, and, "Hey, you gained like 15 pounds. What's going on?" Nobody— we know if we gain 15 pounds. We don't need somebody to tell us. So that was just weird. That whole life was weird. And anybody who's in television knows that you're expected to be, I don't know, otherworldly. You're expected to live up to a standard that's not really human. And that doesn't give you a lot of wiggle room to be who you really are. And a lot of that too was me, you know, I've always kind of put out a facade that everything's great, and I didn't really understand this about myself until I was older, but everything's not great all the time. And so I just had to get comfortable with reality and being more real. I was always, I always made a point of trying to be the exact same person on TV that I was when I met people in terms of how I treated people, how I talked to people. But nobody would have known that, like, for instance, that I'm obsessed with, like, rocks and crystals. Like, I didn't tell people that, you know, because that doesn't fit the mold of, you know, the Patricia person that I was. I mean, for goodness sakes, I called myself Patricia. My name's Trish. Everybody's called me Trish. But I thought it was too like, I don't know, I needed something more that made me sound older and, you know, more sure of myself, so I went with Patricia. It was just all these different things, but it's just unrealistic and like I said, thank God the industry seems to be changing a lot. It's more inclusive of what people really look like because people aren't a size 00. That's not natural. And to expect every woman to be like a double zero or a 2 is, you know, you better lose some weight if you're getting to a 2. It's absurd. So thank God it's changing and there's more room for everybody at the table. It's not where it needs to be yet, but it's much better than when I was in it for sure.

Well, but speaking of much better, I mean, I think that since then you've had the ability, though I think it's been a process. Of walking that back a little bit? What's that been like in terms of, again, that perfect Patricia that you're talking about to— I mean, in reality, you're as authentic a person as I know in terms of, you know, being who you are unapologetically now.

To a fault sometimes.

But that was Again, that took some unwinding. Oh yeah. I mean, it's almost a deconstruction of—

Who you thought you were.

Right. What was that like?

Horrible. It was horrible. I had like 2 nervous breakdowns.

Tell me more.

Oh my God. It was horrible. Because I really thought I was that person. And then it's like, well, why do I feel so crappy? And literally, I spent day after day thinking like, this is it? Why am I not happy? I have everything I said I wanted and I'm still not happy. And it was because there was other things that I was supposed to be here doing on Earth. You know, for instance, like anything that like actually made me happy. Not spreadsheets and not marketing campaigns. I can do marketing campaigns. I can't really do spreadsheets, but I don't want to do them. And so every time you force yourself to do these jobs that you hate, you're killing yourself. Sooner and sooner, and it was— I just couldn't do it anymore. And the unwinding process was, you know, first I had to realize that that wasn't even me, and that was a shock. That's horrible.

How did you come to realize that? Like, what was the breakdown?

You know, I've had a breakdown. I don't know any other way to put it. And I've been stuffing all these emotions down for so many years from all the different things that I've been through as a person and then had covered. You know, like I'd just been stuffing, stuffing, stuffing because I didn't allow myself to feel anything, and then it all just came out, and then I had to figure out like, whoa, where's all this coming from? Who is this person? You know, and why the heck did she make me quit my job? Because I felt like there was this person inside of me calling the shots all of a sudden, and she was reckless. Like, she was just— she wasn't, but you know, I felt like she was, and I didn't know where we were going. She was driving the bus and I felt like we were going off a cliff and she wouldn't tell me where we were going. It was insane. And I just had to, like, number one, I got help by going and getting some of this trauma stuff. I went to a retreat and worked on it with other people who had been through some serious shit. Excuse me.

It's okay. We'll put the little e. Sorry.

Well, anybody who knows me knows I cuss a lot. But we worked on our trauma and then, you know, that was the biggest breakthrough for me when I actually worked on stuff and realized that it was there. And then I started to work on different things and kind of come out of the closet, so to speak, in terms of showing you who I really was, showing our kids who I really was, because I assumed people would make fun of me. You know, for the things I believe in and the things I care about because most people don't care about those things or believe in them. And so I did get made fun of a lot, but eventually I stopped caring about getting made fun of and the amount of people that I was helping by being myself was greater than the amount of people who were, you know, talking crap about me. And so I just kept doing it and the more you do that, the more you step out and be who you really are, the stronger you get, you know. And so I just tell people like to follow what lights you up because you can't go wrong. And so, you know, I had to start from scratch. First you peel off all this trauma and kind of deal with that as best you can, which is an everyday thing. But then it's like, okay, well, who am I? Which was a whole other thing, you know, a whole other— like, I don't even know who I am. I don't even know what I like because I spent all these years trying to be somebody else to please people who aren't even like, you know, here talking to me about whether they're pleased or not. And so I just started very small with following one thing that made me happy, which was walking on the rail trail. And did it make sense that I liked walking on the rail trail all the time? Not really, um, you know, but the more I was open about my need to go out there to like have a mental health break and meditate while I walked, the easier it got to kind of unveil the next step of who I am. You know, it's like, well, I'm an artist. And I was like, oh God, I cringed saying that, like, I'm an artist, because the next thing is, you're a starving artist? And it's like, no. So in my mind, I had all these probably misconceptions about artists, you know, because I'd always been a business person. And journalist, and I had to embrace who I really was, and it was literally like coming out of a closet and not knowing who would be there or who would still want to be there when you got out of it. So, but the people who fall away are meant to fall away, you know, and you, thank God, once you got over the initial shock, you you embraced, you know, who I am. But you're still learning. I'm still like, you know, one day at a time. I know it's a lot. It's a lot to take in. But you thought you signed up for one thing and you got this other thing. But it is who we are when we're kids. Like, when we're kids and before the world kind of tells us who we are supposed to be, we are the people that we— the souls that we come into this, this world to be. We're happy when we're happy. When we're mad, you know it. We like playing. We know when to take a nap. We have all this knowledge when we're kids. We say the truth unapologetically, and we care about other people. It doesn't matter what they look like or act like. All these things. And then, you know, after about the age of 7, we start getting programmed, and we forget who we are. And so I just went back to kind of the things that made me happy when I was a kid. And once you kind of put it out there and you make fun of yourself a little bit, you start to not care if other people— because other people will not understand, you know, especially if something that you're interested in is something that they think is strange or unusual. And people make fun of or, you know, pick on or bully what they don't understand. So you have to have enough space to say, like, I understand where they're coming from and I'm not going to react to that because that's a problem with them.

Sure. Well, and it's especially true for people who've known you for a long time because I think that, you know, because I've been through some of this myself where it's like, wait a minute, I thought you were this other person. And it's like, no, I was being that person because I thought that's who you needed me to be.

Or who I thought the world needed me to be.

And it's a, again, I think it can be a big change for people because again, I think that they assume you're being who you want to be.

Yeah.

Right?

Because I'm a good actress.

But it's not just you. I think that one of the things that you ended up doing was giving yourself time and space to figure that out. And again, I know for me and for a lot of people that I know, you end up being so busy that, that you just keep doing. You know, it's the difference between being a human being and a human doing. It is that you're so busy doing that you don't— that, that, that little kid that you're talking about never— the voice isn't loud enough to get, get through all the— you can't hear the signal for the noise. And I think that that's, um, you know, again, I think that's been part of your process, whether you enjoyed it all time or not, was, uh, you know, being still and quiet enough that eventually you could, you know, you could hear it.

And I didn't really have a choice because even though I jumped off a cliff, quit my jobs, like, I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know why I had to quit my jobs. Um, you know, I was constantly asking God, the universe, Anybody? Angels? Like, what's going on here? Can I get some guidance? Because I've always felt guided, but the past, you know, the first 2 years especially, I didn't feel like I was getting much. And I had to learn how to listen. And that's the thing, like, people always ask, they pray all the time, but they don't meditate so they can hear what the answer is. They don't sit and just listen.

Prayer is actually listening too. I think that a lot of times, again, I can only speak for me. You're right. You spend a lot of time talking, not enough time waiting and listening on the answer. And so, you know, first 2 years I know were tough, but in the words of, I think it was Dory from Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming," right?

I have not seen that movie.

Oh, we should change that.

You know how I am about things that everybody watches. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to watch that.

Yeah, you're such a contrarian. Well, speaking of being a contrary rebel, now you've broken free, you've shed a lot of that stuff. And again, I think you'd agree it's a daily process, right? We're still all doing a lot of that. That's not an ending. I mean, it's literally our skin. You would know. Every 7 years. There you go. Where are you now? So you've come through the, or maybe you're on the other side of some of the wilderness, or you're on the back half, maybe.

I'm in like a valley.

Tell me, so what's next? Where are you now? You've gone through all of this, and now what?

I decided to just go all the way with my photography business, the other things that I've been working on. I became a certified Reiki practitioner and then a level 2 during all this.

Soon to be a Reiki master.

I know you love saying that.

I do love saying that.

Like I'm a Ninja Turtle.

It's like a master. The student has become the master.

I didn't even know what Reiki was, you know. I just, whatever, over the past 4 years, whatever I felt like called to do, I did. Even if I thought it was strange.

And even if I thought it was strange.

Oh, you always think I'm strange. But it doesn't— but it works, and you've seen the effects that it's had on our lives, and especially mine. And, you know, I've met some of the best people that I wouldn't have met if I hadn't done these things. And who knows what the future holds, but for now, I just decided very recently to put all of my effort, you know, into full-time having a place to go that is solely mine and where I'm not working under anybody or with anybody to begin with, at least, because I don't do well under. My mom always said this. Unemployable. Yeah, I'm unemployable. My mom always said that she knew that I would just work for myself because I didn't listen to anybody. And I was like, that's not true. I spent 10 years as a reporter and then I thought, well, I was by myself every day. I got to kind of do what I wanted to do. That made sense. She's right. It's not that I'm like, you know, rebellious just to be rebellious. I just have an inherent desire to do things differently than the way a lot of other people do things, and I can't do that unless I'm on my own, so I'm putting all of my focus on being this Trish 2.0. Maybe it's Trish 1.0 because, you know, Who knows?

Instead of Patricia 1.0.

Perfect Patricia. Yeah, the name is even hard to say. Patricia. It's very—

it sounds like you'd say something you'd say to somebody when you're mad.

It sounds like a 65-year-old lady.

I mean, that's what our kids call you whenever they're trying to get you.

Patricia. I know. Yeah, my mom too. She calls me Patricia Jean, so that's why I know I'm really in trouble. But I'm ready. I don't know where the next chapter is going. I have all these kind of weird talents that don't really go together, and I spent the past year trying to figure out how they go together, and no matter how much work, meditation, you know, time spent talking to God about it, I still didn't have an answer, and so I thought, "You know what? Maybe it's not for me to figure out. Maybe I just go." Once again, maybe I just dive off a cliff and if it's the right cliff, the universe will catch me and let me know. And I don't know how all the pieces fit together even right now to this day, but I know that I have enough direction to at least follow one of the biggest pieces, which is my photography, and kind of see where this other stuff, you know, that I've been interested in and I'm good at will fit because I have no idea. My And I would encourage other people too to maybe not spend all the time that I spent trying to figure out how to put the puzzle pieces together because I'm not like God. And so I don't know how all the puzzle pieces go together. And there could be something in my future that's much greater than I could imagine. But if I didn't step out and have faith that it would materialize, I would never attain it.

Well, it's hard to put the puzzle pieces together if you've never seen the picture on the box. And I think that You know, one of the things sometimes when we're talking about life, you don't have the picture of the box. Like, you may think that you know, but I was actually, I was putting together a puzzle yesterday because I'm becoming a little old man in my— yep, yep. But it's one of the ways that I've come into trying to get my brain to slow down is, and one of the things that I learned was, number one, you you can never finish the puzzle if you don't know what the picture is. But that's okay, because what you can do is there's a process for even not knowing what the picture is, like working toward the picture. You start and you figure out which pieces have, you know, have a straight edge. And so I think that for me, the— it's okay that I don't know, that you don't know in this case what the picture looks like. What you do do is you take the pieces out of the box and then you start the process of figuring out the edges, and then you do the next thing. And then you—

and I just— We're talking about big moves, and we're talking about, you know, borrowing a bunch of money, and we're talking about our name on the line. This is not an easy thing to do, you know, blindly following faith, but it's necessary if I'm ever gonna achieve any kind of greatness. And so I wouldn't tell people it's easy, that you can, you know, just easily do this. I'm like nervous slash excited every day.

Yeah, but I would, I would say that the greatness comes in the willingness to follow. I think that the, the greatness isn't when you say finding some sort of greatness, greatness is the willingness to take the next step because you don't know where it's going to end up. Greatness is in the moment of doing the thing, the next thing that lights you up. And so it's not the— yeah, it's cliché. It's not the journey or the destination is the journey, but in reality, that's all we've got. And so I think that, you know, it's exciting to watch. It's been exciting for me. I'm glad we're sharing it. And hey, listen, you know, roller coasters are exciting, even if they scare you to death.

Or you die.

And so again, it's been exciting to watch. Sometimes that excitement is at the top of the hill of the roller coaster, and other times it's us headed to the— or upside down, or, or one of those things. But it's, um, again, one of the things that I've admired is your commitment to the journey of just doing the next thing, even when it's hard, or even when you don't know what that is. And so I'm, I'm excited, um, and nervous right along with you about the next step.

Nervous, you know, the same feeling. Nervousness and excitement are the same emotion. We just label them differently. So anytime I feel quote-unquote nervous, I tell myself I'm excited. Yeah, you know, it's the same thing.

Well, it's on the verge of an opportunity.

Well, fortune favors the bold, and I tell myself that every day because my brain wants to do the opposite. It wants to plan every little detail and have contingency plans and backup plans for the backup plans, but it doesn't work. And I promise you that anybody who ever achieved anything where we know their name on a first name basis, they went for it.

There was a— like Jewel?

Like, no, like Steve Jobs. Like the people like I look up to in terms of— Ye? Yeah. Isn't he like Yeezy now?

I don't know.

I can't keep up with it. Uh, I would say Elon Musk, but he's not very popular.

Diddy?

Diddy, yeah.

Biggie?

Dude, you're like going backwards. All right, so we're gonna stick with Oprah. Like, you know, if she didn't put herself out there, if she didn't go for it— I mean, she left the job that she had as a reporter to, to go and be a talk show host in Chicago when there weren't any talk show hosts, you know, females like her in the early '80s. And some people would have said that she was going to fail and lose everything, that she had left a very— a good enough job to be, you know, somebody who's just gonna— the show's gonna fail. But she did it anyway. And look at her now. She's amazing.

Well, I think it's interesting. She didn't decide to go be Oprah. She was already Oprah. She just let everybody else see it. And I think that's the— yeah, that's the cool part. And some would say that that's the— I mean, I guess it's scary, but the success is just getting to be who you are. And again, she didn't become Oprah. She was already Oprah.

Um, but it's hard to be who you are.

It really is.

It can be. I mean, especially if, uh, you are from a different country or you're gay or you are a minority down here especially, it's hard. And I don't discount that. I mean, a lot of people don't understand, but, uh, there's not a lot of open-mindedness for many communities, and so it can be really hard to be honest about being yourself. Hopefully that's changing, you know, I think it's changing like worldwide, thank God, but we're not there yet. And so it's, it's brave to be yourself and, and to know that there is the potential for failure. But if you don't try this thing, you will definitely fail. So that's right, you could stay stuck in mediocrity and you could have an okay job. And that's where I was. I can have an okay job for the rest of my life and I can go in and eat lunch at 12:30 every day and be miserable, like, doing the same stuff every day. What a life is that? You know, for somebody like me who dreams about much bigger things and thinks about much bigger things, to do the same thing day in and day out was like a slow death. I even— I remember, like, watching people with their lunchboxes, and I was like, oh my God, like, if I ever bring a lunchbox, that's it, I'm out. Like, I have succumbed to the 9-to-5 because I don't want a lunchbox. I don't know. I don't want to know what I'm going to eat every day. I like, you know, change and just different things. And that life, while it works for many people, did not work for me.

And I think that's okay. It is just, again, it's a—

I spent a lot of years trying to make myself like it.

Sure. Well, again, we all have a need for some measure of certainty. And some measure of uncertainty. And people find the ways to meet those needs in, in different ways. Some people, the certainty is, I'm going to get to eat every day at 12:30, and I know— and again, we have 4 boys, uh, we see the differences, you know, with all of that. And I think that that's— again, I think a lot of your story is figuring out what works for you and being open and willing to Yeah, to let that shine and to follow the path. We've joked before about the invisible bridge in Indiana Jones, where you just have to take the step. Yeah. And you have to be willing to keep taking the step, knowing that the bridge is there. And so, Trish, to kind of wrap up, You know, one of the questions, and it was a really insightful journalist that shared this with me and suggested it.

He's very nice. He's like amazingly funny and smart.

Smoking hot. I mean, all those things.

So is me.

Yeah, it was. Suggested, you know, kind of my final question is one that I think tells a lot about people, mostly because you told me it would tell me a lot about people. Is if you could be a fictional character, whether it's a superhero, somebody from a book or a movie, if you could pick one that you feel like best represents you, who would it be and why?

So I have two of them, and I think I'm a perfect mixture of these two people, the real Trish. One is Pocahontas, and two is Pippi Longstockings.

Do tell.

I know, right?

Um, well, not something you hear every day.

I know, I know. So Pocahongstockings, if you will.

I like it.

Yeah. Um, Pocahontas is—

I actually prefer Pippihannas.

That sounds kind of weird.

It does.

Yeah, maybe we'll just stick with the two names. So I've always loved Pocahontas. I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, oh my God, they made a movie about me. She talks to trees too. Like, there's other people who talk to trees? And I was like crying at the end. It was so beautiful. This is my movie. She can see colors in the wind and all this other stuff that people probably make fun of me for, but it's reflected in my photographs, you know, that my relationship with nature is not the average person's relationship with nature. I feel like we have the closest relationship out of anybody, like me and nature. And so Pocahontas, kind of obvious that she cares about animals, she cares about the earth, She has a dislike of authority. Yeah. And she is who she is unapologetically. Then Pippi Longstockings is just who I am as well, which is completely out of the box, finds creative, sometimes odd solutions to things that people wouldn't even think of, putting disparate ideas together. I remember watching that movie in the '80s when I was younger, and she, like, her task was to mop the floor, and she put like roller skates on or something and like put towels under, and I was like, that's genius! So that is the way, like, I always think of crazy stuff like that, and then usually it works. You've been, you know, party to it. Sometimes it doesn't, but usually it works. And the idea to have fun while you're living is something I live by. And it doesn't go over well all the time, but usually I can go into a room and change the temperature of a room by being happy and joyful instead of, you know, a miserable curmudgeon. So Pippi Longstockings, to me, just— she had a really crappy life and situation, but she made the best of it and still had fun every day. And that's probably what I would say.

Well, I don't normally do this, but since you're the professional, Is there anything that I should have asked you if you were doing this interview?

I never—

when I was a journalist, I never did that because, you know, because you were a professional.

People always go, no. And so I never did.

I know, but I know that you have a question that I should have asked.

Well, first of all, I'm really proud of you for doing these podcasts because I do not have the intention span to do them or desire.

And but you listen to every one of them.

I will listen to this one. I'm just saying. I promote them. I do what I can. You know my attention span is like a 3-year-old, so anyway. I just want people to know that, like, you can be yourself. And there's that quote about lighthouses, right? Like, they don't go out seeking ships to rescue. They just light up and then ships find the shore. Same thing with flowers. Flowers don't bloom because they're trying to attract a bee. They just bloom and the bees come to them. And so I think just by being who you are and when you do things that make you happy, you're a different person. You light up the room and you can show other people it's possible. So.

Well, yes, you do. And And I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful. Mike Miller, if you're listening, I know Mike Miller. Thank you. You know, thank you for—

we should probably explain that.

Why are we so grateful to Mike Miller? Well, because Mike is the one who accidentally introduced us when we were trying to plan fireworks over Florence, which we never—

I was in business mode that day.

You were in business mode that day, as was I, trying to figure out how to get a fireworks show over downtown Florence for the Fourth of July.

Little did we know the fireworks would then be between us.

But I'm And so, yeah, thanks, Mike, for that. Unfortunately, the fireworks didn't happen over Florence.

It was just a ruse by the universe to get us together.

There you go. Trish, thank you. I enjoyed it. I'm sorry it took so long for us to get here.

I'm not, because now I vetted you and you're successful.