342: “Whatever Comes Through Me Comes for Me First,” with Nicole Antoinette

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Welcome back Pivoters. I am so excited to have one of my earliest blog friends on the pod. Today we have Nicole Antoinette with us, who is a brilliant writer, a long distance hiker and former indoor kid who never imagined she'd wind up spending months of each year pooping in the woods. In 2017, stuck in a loop of codependency and people pleasing, Nicole set off to find her self belief and inner resilience by doing something she did not for one second believe she could actually do. The results are two adventure memoirs, how to Be Alone, an 800 mile hike on the Arizona Trail, and what we Owe to Ourselves coming out in September 2023 along with a weekly newsletter on Substack called Wild Letters. Nicole, welcome to the show.

Oh I'm so excited to be here. It was the biggest delight to see your name in my inbox with this invitation. It's been so long. I'm just thrilled. Thank you for having me.

You reminded me that we met New Year's Eve 2009 turning into 2010 and I honestly just laugh at like those early days we actually were hitting the town which by now I'd be hitting my bed. And it was a different thing blogging and communicating online than it is now. Thirteen plus years later we were Starting to talk before we hit record. But I've been curious with all this time that you spend in nature, just maybe you could describe a little bit of your current thinking on how you run your creative and work life to create this space to spend so much time outdoors.

Wow. 2009, 2010. Were we ever so young? That is.

I had bangs.

Yes, you had bangs. I hadn't gotten sober yet. I've been sober 12 years now, so that feels like another whole lifetime ago for me. It's wild. And in that period of time, yeah, what creativity has looked like, what writing has looked like, what earning money has looked like, has really gone through so many different iterations and pivots. I feel like like you, I am the queen of the pivot. And the only way that I have been able to be. Cause that was Also the year 2010, was the year that I started with self employment and oh, it has just changed so much over that time. And I would not still be self employed had I not become someone who really embraced pivoting. Ending things, big change, small change, experiment. And it's interesting to be having this conversation now because I would say at the time that we're recording this, about to enter a period of really, really big change work wise that I don't know yet what is on the other side of. So there's a couple longstanding projects. I've run a Patreon membership community for about six and a half years at this point that I am getting ready to wrap up, which feels a lot like an end of an era for me personally in my online business journey. And wrapping something up because you feel like it's time for it to end, but not yet knowing what's on the other side of it and not yet knowing where money is going to come on the other side of it is really frightening and also feels like the right thing to do. So yeah, I mean I'm happy to talk about this as much or as little as you want, but being talking in real time during a period of pivot is always something that I find really interesting because I think it's more common on the other side of things for people to tell stories when everything's more wrapped up in a bow or we can tell the story in a prettier way, which is great and fine and there's plenty of lessons to be shared on the other side. But I think that there's something, even if it sounds messier while we're talking about it, that can be really potent. Talking about things in real time 100%.

Such funny timing. You and I are friends from afar in that, like, I adore you, I love you. We often talk for one or the other's podcast, you know, but we haven't spoken in years. And we both came to the recording today saying, oh my gosh, the level of massive change that has occurred in the last seven days alone. And it's true that when you're in the change, my friend Penny and I call it a goo state. It's so alive and it's so rich. But it's such a frigging tumbleweed to go with an Arizona trail metaphor. You're just getting tumbled around left and right. You can't see which way is up, what's in front of you, what's behind you, and yet it is so rich. I think you have always been so real and truthful in your writing and your writing is so alive. And I think it's because you're willing to share some of the process, of course, probably while learning the hard way what parts of that process to keep to yourself until that's a more appropriate time. So maybe we can unpack that a little bit. Like for you right now, in the midst of this change, not knowing what's.

Next.

How do you know when it's time to close something good, be it a relationship or a part of your business or even your income, even when you don't know what's next? Because that is not an easy decision to make.

I feel like my initial reaction is that I wish I had the, like, perfect three step answer, but obviously, of course, that doesn't exist. I feel like I know how to end things because there were so many things in my past that I let go on too long. And the pain of that is something that I just as much as possible don't want to experience anymore. If I look back at my early 20s, my mid-20s, basically my whole 20s, I can think of so many examples of jobs that I stayed in for way past when I knew that it wasn't right for me anymore. Relationships, you know, romantic relationships, friendships that either didn't have the language to end them, or I didn't feel like I was allowed to end them, or there was something that I was afraid of losing in all of these different contexts that just made me stay and stay and stay and stay until to some degree I was forced out. And I really had a pattern of this kind of scorched earth change, like burn it down change, because I stayed so long that then, like something really dramatic was the Only option. It was the only way out. And sometimes that's the case, right? Sometimes we do find ourselves there. And so I don't want to say that that's an incorrect way to go about things, because there were certain things where that was the only way to get free. And I'm glad that I used whatever tool I had available to me, which was burn it all down. But I feel like I did that so much and started to learn that maybe there could be another way, or got curious about maybe there could be another way. Gosh. And as something that comes up for me, I'm divorced. I got divorced in early 2019, and it was really sad and painful, as a lot of relationship endings are, and probably arguably one of the best divorces of all time. We're still really good friends. It was more of a transition to a friendship than it was this really cataclysmic heartbreak breakup. And one of the things that my former spouse and I talked about in sort of the conversation where we decided finally, okay, yeah, divorce is gonna be the path for us, is we realized that through our families and through, you know, mainstream culture, we had both internalized this message that you only get divorced if things are absolutely horrible and you're so miserable and you hate each other. And our realization was, well, if that's the criteria for getting divorced, eventually we'll get there. But why do that to ourselves? Why not end this iteration of our relationship now before we hate each other, when there is friendship to save, and some of this is unique to our situation, that we wanted the same thing at the same time. I'm not saying this is a path that's open for everyone. And that for me, was a real turning point in realizing that the end of something doesn't have to wait until a real rock bottom moment. I felt the same way with getting sober, where I didn't have this really dramatic rock bottom moment. I didn't have the, oh, my gosh, I woke up and don't know what happened the last three days. And I've done something really horrific to ruin my life. And I just had a really profound understanding that my life would be better. Not just that my life would be better if I quit drinking, but that what I was doing was so destructive, even if it looked mostly fine on the surface, and I didn't have to wait until I had some really dramatic moment in order to get help in order to make that change. I mean, those are two personal examples, not necessarily work examples, but I think the principle still applies that over and over again, I feel like I have been shown that wanting to change is reason enough, wanting to walk away from something is reason enough. And almost always, I would say 98 plus percent of the time for me, it's not that I don't know what I want, it's just that it's easier to say I don't know than it is to say I know exactly what I want, but I'm afraid that I can't have it or I don't know how to get it it. And that often comes with ending things that I will get a sense that a certain thing, a hobby, a behavior, a way of being an offering in my business, a relationship is coming to an end point or that I want it to come to an end point. And if I can let that be true sooner, I don't know, for me, there's less pain that way.

It's such a great point that often deep down in our soul or intuition, we have a sense of the answer or just say that this is reaching an ending. And yet it is so much easier to either stay the course or say I don't know and almost hide in the uncertainty. Maybe you don't know what comes after, but there is something speaking up, saying, it's time for this thing to close and it takes a lot of courage to stop things that are good or that have a lot of good aspects to them, even if on the whole it's no longer working. So let's say with your Patreon, for example. Cause that takes us right here now to present day, having gone through so many cycles of change and loss and rebuilding afterward. On the other side, what were the little intuitive hits like, what started to speak to you in this moment to say, okay, this iteration of your business as you knew it, it's now time to shift.

Well, I've gone through a bunch of iterations of Patreon, so the platform has stayed consistent. But what I have offered to folks there and what their funding has been used to support, which projects it supports, has changed over time. So I have, let's see, one, two, three or four instances over those six and a half years of times where I felt that a change was needed, but that change could happen within the existing container. And I don't feel that way this time. I feel like for whatever reason, it's time to be done. And I realize it's probably not super useful to folks listening that I don't have a really clear this happened and then this happened. And that's how I knew that it was time. But the most honest thing that I can say is it's just a feeling. It's almost like. I think about it like if you imagine a light in your home that's on a dimmer switch and it's on its brightest setting, it's bright, it's alive, it's really vibrant. And then maybe it goes down a little bit. It goes down a little bit. And maybe you don't notice at first that it's getting a little bit dimmer. It's not completely out yet. But I start to have a sense that, like, the heat is leaving something or the light is leaving something. Maybe I'm not as energetically pulled toward it anymore, or I feel like I'm having a lot of creative ideas for things that I want to make and do that don't fit into that container, but that I feel like my commitment and my devotion to those people in that container is blocking me from being able to put that attention and energy toward whatever might want to come through next. And I will tell you that I did not want this to be the answer. I mean, first of all, because this is a huge percentage of my income, I'm taking a really big pay cut by doing this. That, in the long term, is not sustainable. I have some savings in the short term in order to be able to do this, but it's not like, oh, I'm just going to walk away from this, and every other aspect of my business is just going to swoop in to take its place. That's not the case. So there are some logistical considerations and concerns, but I don't know, for better or worse, for me, I'm the kind of person that when the heat starts to leave something and when it's time to go, it's time to go. And if I look back, I feel like I've always been that way, and I am willing to. To have less security or less certainty in the meantime, rather than do something that I feel resentful of doing. And also, I've been on the other side of other people's art or work that, you know, you can feel when someone's not into it anymore or when they start to resent it. And unfortunately, we live in a system where you literally need money in order to exist, to be alive, to get food, to have shelter, all of these things. So I'm certainly not shaming anyone who's doing something that they no longer love to be doing, because that is the financial reality of their lives. Because to some degree, that's true for all of us. But I don't know, I just have like a really low tolerance for making things that I don't want to make anymore, and I would so much rather end with grace, however possible. I'm going to host like a wrap party, you know, for the community on Zoom and that type of stuff. And I would rather, if possible, be able to do that instead of just have it be this like scorched earth thing, because I've just done that so many times.

We'll be right back just after this.

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You've articulated this so beautifully and you've put to words something that I too feel right now but haven't been able to express nearly as elegantly, which is that especially for someone like you, it's so much easier for me to see from the outside, not having it be about me. But looking at your creative career, so much of the truth telling comes from that aliveness. And as soon as that leaves, there's nothing left. Like you couldn't do what you do if it was flat, if the dimmer switch had gone all the way down. Like, I totally know what you mean. And I can relate to having a very low tolerance, in my own words, what I would call doing mundane work. Like I can't stand the thought of putting mediocre stuff out just to meet a deadline or to be consistent. That is just going to get lost in a sea of noise online. Like there's no point. I'd rather not send a thing at all, which is why I haven't sent my newsletters in six months.

Thank you for saying that. I really agree. I think it is the catch 22 of the really quirky career that I have built for myself that I have never been. And I'm still not interested in having employees or Expanding or having that kind of more scalable business. It really is, I guess, an artist business in a lot of ways, and based on some form of storytelling, personal truth telling or hosting spaces, gathering groups, retreats, stuff like that, where other people can do the same. And there really has always been this element of whatever comes through me comes for me first. And so if it's not really present for me, if the work isn't something that I feel genuinely curious about and genuinely excited about, I don't think people are going to respond to it well. And if it came down to having to continue to do a thing that didn't feel right to me anymore, I would rather work for someone else in that regard, get a job or try something else other than this. And so I feel like this is one of the bigger career pivots that I have made. And I do feel really afraid. And part of it, this could be like a whole other part of the conversation, but I am experiencing what I have realized in the last seven to 10 days is a pretty intense burnout and burnout induced depression that I really hadn't admitted to myself for maybe the last year, year and a half. And some of that comes with some self stigma of only people who work 80 plus hours a week are allowed to be burned out, or only people in caregiving professions like nurses or teachers are allowed to be burned out. And what's wrong with me where I don't work that many hours and I don't have kids and there's no reason in big air quotes for me to be burned out. And I think that that story really made it so that I couldn't see the reality of my situation. And the truth is that I'm feeling really emotionally depleted. And my theory, and again, this is incredibly real time that we are having this conversation, but my theory right now at the start of the pandemic, because I already had an online business that had created these fun and nourishing online gathering spaces for people and groups and things, it was really simple for me to kick that up into gear and to provide tons of resources and co working space and groups where people could process and end of month journaling circles. And I was offering so much stuff during let's say the first year and a half of the pandemic and that felt correct to me and I had the energy to do it and I was otherwise safe and well and I was so grateful to be able to show up in whatever small way I could show up for people. And I didn't take a break really after that, or I didn't acknowledge the ways in which I had opened my energetic container to hold space for so many people in so many ways, and then never had a moment of contraction, like a really prolonged moment of contraction to counterbalance that degree of expansion. I just kept doing it and giving it and showing up in these ways and holding space for all these people. And it's certainly not their fault.

Right?

Like, this is not something that anybody else asked me to do, but it was that. And then with the first book coming out and there was just. I felt like I had been so exposed and so visible and doing so much space holding for such a long time. And so that is the specific, like, flavor of burnout that I'm having. And so the decision to end Patreon is also a way for me to close a container that has hundreds and hundreds of people in it just to give myself, I guess, a break, if that makes sense, from that type of work.

Well, I really appreciate you sharing that. And crazily enough, you were going through that at the same time I was at the same time Tara McMullen was. We had a conversation, I'll put it in the Show Notes Episode 141 on free time, about her decision to close her community that she'd been running for many, many years for almost these exact reasons. And in my case, I shut down what was then called momentum. I shut it down at the end of 2020. I then restarted it. It's now called BFF. Off and on, but mostly on. It's been eight plus years. And I think that people don't talk about what it is like to hold space. And it is a privilege and it's a joy, but it's a lot of space for a lot of people and it's constantly thinking about them in a good way. And this is at least part of my business model. But when I'm down and I'm getting burnt out, it's hard because they're paying to be there consistently, like, they're paying consistently. So there is some pressure on the other side to show up consistently and not drop the ball on any of the commitments. And I think a lot of us who were holding space, just like you said, for communities, particularly toward the end of 2020 or into 2021, just couldn't do it anymore. It's a lot. It's just. It's a lot. Even energetically, even if you don't look at what the to do list says on paper.

Definitely. And I have never, maybe in, like, depths of other depressions where I'm like, I just want to go live alone in the woods. But I am not the type of person who wants to do all of their work in solitude. I know plenty of writers and artists who. That is their jam. And that's not true for me. I really do love facilitating online groups and spaces. Something that I did start during the pandemic is like digital coworking space called the Get Shit Done Club that has a couple sessions a year, eight to nine week sessions. And it's probably the most fun thing I've ever done in my business. And it's delightful. I love it so much. And I love it because there's other people there and because we're talking about, oh, I'm not the only one who's put off, you know, calling the doctor for six months or who hasn't taken the recycling out and instead just like walks around the boxes that are on the floor. There's a lot of humanity in that space and I love group facilitation. And for me I think part of. And we'll see, right? Like, who knows, we'll talk again in four months and we'll see what comes out on the other side of this like particular burnout recovery that I know that I need to enter into. But I think what I'm realizing for me in this next iteration is that it just can't be a perpetually open container. I have a substack which you mentioned the through line for me in these last what, 12 plus years of solopreneurship or whatever has been writing. That is the one thing that if everything else went away, that would be the thing that would not go away because that is how I process the world. Like I wouldn't be okay if I weren't writing. And so I can feel that the writing that I'm doing on substack and before substack it was other email platforms, it was blogs before that, this sort of weekly writing, I want that to be the open ongoing container. And I don't have the capacity to have another ongoing container besides that. So it's gonna be a really interesting way for me to reconceptualize what I'm showing up for. Maybe it looks like more two hour workshops or eight week co working groups that have a really set end date. It's the just like perpetual being open. Which is another big reason why I'm going to be leaving social media as well. Because there's just that perpetual openness and like the feeling of needing to Be accessible to so many people doesn't work for me.

Me either. At all. And I'm pretty sure we've talked about this even on your podcast, that it's such a. Oh, gosh, I hope. Don't even get me started on social media. It's just like I can't even. But what you said of this ongoing container, it doesn't match the actual flow of energy, like nature has seasons. But when we set up these business structures to just be this unceasing, set a bar of commitment at a certain level and rate and pace and expectation, it's actually, I've noticed for myself too. It's. It's not at all how my energy works and the people who thrive in the BFF community. I mean, I've really designed it and I've worked hard over eight years to get it to be more and more where it's many to many and they're not all looking at me or relying on me. But there are going to be periods where even I'm really active. I mean, I manage the whole thing, but like really active in the mix. And other times where I take a step back. I've had to give myself permission to do that over the years, definitely. Because without it, I just want to close the community every.

Yeah. Yes, 100%. Because you're just one person. And what capitalism asks us to do. Maybe the core tenet of capitalism is exponential growth, and that is not possible if you're not extracting. Right. So whether we're talking about extracting from the land, extracting from employees in a like tiny business, solopreneur type situation, extracting from yourself. And you asked before how I know when it's time to end something. I think that resentment is an interesting red flag for me, especially when it comes to this kind of stuff where I notice that I start to feel resentful of emails in my inbox or DMs that I'm getting. And that's a really good warning sign for me to step back and be like, okay, let's look at this a little more objectively because I don't know if I'm just lucky, but I think I could count. I was going to say on two hands. Maybe a little more than that. Yeah, probably more than that. But definitely less than 25 times in the last, whatever, 10 years have I feel. Do I feel like I've gotten a request from someone that was just like so outlandish to expect that a stranger on the Internet would do this for you? It's really been pretty rare. I think that people in my space are respectful. I think that anytime that I am setting a boundary, almost everyone is honoring and acknowledging and respecting that boundary. And so when I start to get resentful, I'm looking at, okay, this person isn't asking or doing or saying anything that I haven't made myself available for. Like, this is a me issue. This is a way for me to take responsibility for how have I set up my business? And what are the ways in which I have equated accessibility to. With value? Right. Like, what are the ways in which I believe that my work doesn't stand on its own two feet? Or that the work alone, this piece of writing, this book, this workshop as a closed container offering that I think that's not enough somehow. So therefore, in order to make it valuable, I have to be the product. I have to be available. I have to answer people's questions, I have to do one on one things. And like, this is like a deeper issue, but there's something in that of being able to create some separation between who I am as a person and like my energetic availability versus what the offering is that I'm giving to the people. And that is my work to do. It's not someone else's fault that they used the contact form on my website for like a very reasonable thing. Right. I put the contact form there. So that also was an indication for me that I was resentful of like, nice emails in the inbox. Right. Or like supportive DMs. It was just too much. I felt too exposed. And so I think there's some nuance here to talk about, because the way that I have heard some of this talked about before, it almost seems like it's putting the responsibility on the audience or on the readers or on the consumers or on the customers, which sometimes, sure. But also it's up to us to define the ways in which we are available to people.

Absolutely. And it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Ann Patchett. She said to Jonathan Fields, I'll put the link to their podcast in the show notes. Everything I could ever have to say is in my book. Don't text me, don't call me. I'm not gonna do interviews. Although she did do that one. She's like, anything I had to say is in the book. Go read the book.

And what do you do if you are not successful enough? That the book is enough money.

No. And are married to a doctor. Which she also has.

Right. Like, that's where this comes up for me that it's like, that's cool if you're Elizabeth Gilbert and you can put out the number one New York Times bestselling book and like, that's gonna be your whole livelihood. But part of what I am hoping to explore in my own period of creative recovery coming up and recovery from burnout is looking at what is not just a more sustainable business model for me, but hopefully a more regenerative business model too, where I don't want to be having this same issue every like three to five years. Not to say other issues won't come up, but I feel like I've identified something that has been true in a lot of ways for a long time. And when I am at my most mentally and physically and spiritually, well, I can handle it. But it doesn't mean that it's what's best for me. And so part of how I'm feeling is just a lot of curiosity to see what could be possible on the other side of it. Because also I will say as a loving reader and listener and consumer and watcher of other people's art, it's a lie, right? I'm probably subscribed to too many substacks, right? There's so much more amazing art and things happening in the world than I have time and space to read and internalize and that I have the financial resources to support. And so people that are just putting out more and more and more work, like I'm even questioning, is that necessary? I don't want to be posting on substack three times a week. I don't want to be receiving a substack that posts three times a week. I don't have the bandwidth for that. So I also think there's something that's shifting in terms of what we think enough is the ways in which we need to show up in order for other people to pay $5 a month or you know, whatever the subscription is. So I don't know. I have a lot of questions around this and very few answers. And I feel like very much in a place of surrender and faith and like trusting that whatever is supposed to come up on the other side is going to come up.

We'll be right back just after this.

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Hasta nuevas.

Well, the questions are where so much of the gold is. You said this brilliant line that I resonate with so much that whatever comes through you comes for you first. And I've always felt that way too. Like I just somehow get on a struggle bus for a year or two. I'm like upside down, topsy, turvy, can't handle it. And then I come out the other side. I end up reflecting, synthesizing, systematizing, doing my thing, and I share it. And it's usually just one or two steps ahead of where, let's say, a larger quantity of people will go through that certain trend. And then in other times, I've been early to a trend or a situation. Like I was very sensitive to social media and really drained by it early, before all the research was coming out of how bad it actually is for you. And I just knew that my system was like overloaded. I couldn't take it, it was not sparking any joy and I needed to stop. And then of course it's like proven a few years later. And sometimes I'm early to something and things work out and sometimes I'm too early. So that's a long rambling way for me to ask you. Maybe this ties into what you were saying about larger trends that you're seeing, either in the creator economy or otherwise, of what do you think is kind of coming for you? Or even for us? Those of us who are are a little more highly sensitive to trends and shifts in the marketplace of what's coming. And the last little bit I want to just add because maybe it will tie into what you're saying. I find I'm getting discouraged around content creation because I am overwhelmed. Like I have a trillion newsletters as well in my inbox. Then I got delighted by the Substack app as a reader experience. And yet now that's crammed, overflowing, and I genuinely respect and love and adore so many of the writers. And yet I can't keep up with a single one. So it does make me question as well, my own contribution, because I'm like, I can't even consume anything. It feels weird to create into that noise.

I feel exactly the same way. And I will say I don't have, to my knowledge, any other artist, writer, creator friends who aren't grappling with the same thing. This question of, am I just adding to the noise? Does my work matter? Does my voice matter? There's so many bigger, larger problems. Shouldn't I be doing something more important than like, writing an email on subsect every week or whatever? I do think that there's a lot of doubt that's inherent in any sort of creative process and that I think that it is compounded by exactly what you're saying. And I think some of this is always the case, regardless of what the medium is of the day. Right. The technology of the day. I think this is part of making stuff, is some of these fears. And I also do think that there's an extra layer or some added stuff from the pandemic because there are so many more online offerings than there were in 2019, at least. I mean, I have no research to back this up. Just anecdotally, my experience, how many people either moved offline businesses online or expanded online things. And there's way more cool workshops or online classes that I would be interested in than I have the capacity or the financial resources to take. And so what do you do as things get noisier and noisier and louder and louder? And you asked what I think is next? I'm certainly not like a trend forecaster, right? But from my little corner of the Internet, as both a. I don't even like the word consumer because I feel like part of my burnout is like, I don't like feeling like I'm being consumed by people. So I don't know, maybe that we need a different word. But as an appreciator of other people's work and also as a creator of things, what I think might be next or what I am seeing resonate most in my spaces is something that actually feels like digital togetherness, where it's not just there's 300 people on like a Zoom class and it's one to many. Although in plenty of situations, that feels appropriate. But for me, I'm more interested in, like, there's like 25 to 40 people we're showing up. I use the coworking example. We're showing up twice a week, most weeks, for eight weeks. And you actually get to chat with each other and see each other and have some sense of like, okay, we're all real people in this space together. That I think of myself much more as a facilitator than a teacher. And I think that whatever is next, like, that's the thing that I feel like I want from spaces that I'm a part of is some sense of shared humanity and going through things together and not just this rapid fire consuming of content. So I'd say that's one thing. And then I feel like the other thing that I am craving from both sides of the coin is simplicity. I feel like I'm much more interested in using substack as an example, paying for a substack where someone sends a thoughtful email once a week, once every other week, even once a month. And that's enough for me. I think there has to be a recalibration of what enoughness is. I love the people that are like, I'm taking the summer off. I'm still thrilled to pay and support them because I want them to be well. I want them to take breaks. So I think being able to, for me, align my values with my own behavior, that I'm thrilled when other people do less. I'm thrilled when other people take breaks and aren't on this, like, constant churn of content. I love when people give me the chance to miss them as writers, as podcasters, as artists of any kind of. But I often don't give myself the same grace. And so I think there's some fear, maybe some narcissism in that of, okay, cool, cool, cool, like, Jenny gets to take a break, but, like, I'm not allowed to take a break. And there's something in that that feels like a misalignment between the world that I want to live in and what I'm actually allowing myself to do. So I think digital togetherness and simplicity and a slower pace is going to be for me the only option because I can't sustain something else.

Another thing you mentioned in There was real people sharing real experiences. And one of the things you and I have often talked about, even before we hit record today, was how much polish there is online, especially in the business realm. Now when I think about that, I think part of it is because no business owner who is at all worried about money is going to put out the bad days, the worst days, the whole client horror stories, the bank account balance hitting zero when it's not like perfectly polished into a TED Talk opener because none of us want it to become a self fulfilling prophecy. Like if I talk about that, if I say it out loud, I'm gonna like, will it into existence and then everything will really spiral out of control. And yet you have always been on the edge. Like you have always been out in front sharing what's real, what's true. I'd love to know what you see, like what you're sick of in terms of the shine. And how do you think people can be more honest without shooting themselves in the proverbial foot? People being me, you know, FYI.

Okay, okay. I feel like I genuinely have no good advice for this because I have never been able to do it another way, like from the very beginning. The ability to tell the truth in real time. And that doesn't mean that there aren't things that I keep private. I think one of the misconceptions that people have in parasocial relationships online with people like me who have shared so much personal stuff, is people think they know me a lot better than they do. And I get feedback a lot from people that are, oh my gosh, how can you share such vulnerable things? I would be so nervous. And the misconception is it's actually not vulnerable for me. The truly vulnerable things I'm not writing about on my sub stack, I'm not talking about in a podcast. I'm talking about that with my therapist. I'm talking about that with my partner, with like a friend over like deep, long, you know, 15 minute voice notes or whatever, that it's just because I am honest about things that other people would feel uncomfortable talking about, that there can be a little bit of a misconception there. So I will say that right off the bat that I think part of it is just this is how I'm wired. I don't know another way than to talk about this stuff because I think, and maybe some of it is family related. Like I come from a family of origin where a lot of really important things weren't talked about. It was very much a, like, shove the things under the rug. And that caused so much pain and so much harm that I don't want to do, that I'm not willing to do that. Which doesn't mean that I haven't kept secrets or harmed people or like, obviously I have. I'm not putting myself on a pedestal in any way. But from the very beginning, I was unwilling to build that type of business. It's even interesting hearing you say all of the shine out there, especially in the business space. I know that that's true, I know that that exists and I don't follow any of those people. So I think some of it has been like a very intentional curation of that has always fallen a little bit flat to me. Which doesn't mean that people that operate that way don't have great information to share or that it's not worth paying attention to. But there's something that I have always been, I don't know, put off by in some ways by that. And I don't know, I don't know what that means other than that I have never tried to do it that way. And also I'm not interested in building a huge company or growing in some of the ways that I think the online business world like tells us that we're supposed to grow. My interest from the beginning has been I want to make things that feel good to make. I want to be creatively fulfilled in as much as that's possible. I want to be doing work with peers and students and clients and basically an ecosystem of people that I enjoy spending time with, whatever that time looks like, whether it's in the comment section of a substack or at a retreat or in like a peer mastermind or something. And I want to have a very clear idea of what enoughness means for me personally, money wise and to be able to earn enough and then stop. It's funny, I remember when I first started in the self employment space, you know, you and I were on a very similar timetable, so I'm sure you remember this too. All the conversations were around building a six figure business and now I feel like the conversations are around building a seven figure and an eight figure business. And I, I'm honestly just like laughing to myself that I'm like, okay, so there's just no such thing as enough and again capitalism. But I'm deeply uninterested in that. And so I think enoughness has always been for me something to come back to and to challenge myself to be able to define for myself. And how much money is enough is going to change depending upon, oh, you've had a child, enoughness changes. You move to a more or a less expensive city, you have a health complication, you're supporting an aging parent. Right. That there can be an accordioning of that over time whether you have access to familial wealth or not. But enoughness in all of these areas is for me the touch point. So I guess if I had any advice it would be I'm really trying to be a recovering advice giver. But since you asked, I feel like it would be examining enoughness not just when it comes to money, but in terms of all of this stuff like status, ego, certain metrics. How much work do you need to do to feel creatively fulfilled? Is there a point at which you then start over giving and the well is running dry? And being in an ongoing honest conversation with myself about enoughness has for me been the thing that, at least so far has not led me astray.

Beautifully said.

We'll be right back just after this.

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On the content creation side, we talked about the side of the spectrum. That's the shine, the polish. Here's another question I have for you, and I'm curious to hear your take. I also feel that there's been a trend the last many years, especially as people write long essays on Instagram, of performative vulnerability. And maybe it's wrong that I even call it performative. Maybe it's straight up vulnerability, but it seems like one could also get pulled in the opposite direction of My life is such a mess. Let me talk about how messy my life is. The more people come follow me for the mess, the more of the mess they want to see and the more I need to always constantly reveal more and more and more and be even more vulnerable until there's like, there's no end. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, does this resonate at all?

Yeah, I'm like nodding fiercely. Yes.

It's almost like there's the shine on the one side and then the mess spiral on the other side. And it seems like that's also a race to the bottom if you try to say I'm going to be the most vulnerable truthful writer online. Okay, well, there's a lot of people doing that, and for some people that is their raison d' etre to like be a hot mess. But it also feels like that can escalate quite quickly as to how to keep the attention by writing, speaking, thinking in that vein and only that vein. It's as one dimensional as the other side.

Yeah.

What's your take? Over to you?

My take is yes, I agree with you. And I think in all of this stuff, unless we're talking about like someone in particular that's somehow doing harm with like what they're sharing or the way that they're pretending to be perfect or the other side of the spectrum, maybe it's like very trauma porn or whatever. I'm always interested in stepping back and looking less at the people and more at the system. That it's like, what is it about this phase of late stage capitalism that we are the product to such a degree that we're like cannibalizing our own lives for content and that if we don't show up in like more and more extreme ways, whatever that is, like extreme perfection, extreme mess, extreme political beliefs, that the algorithm is not going to favor us. And I think that maybe I'm speaking in generalizations a little bit, but part of this for me is looking at, like I said before, what are the ways in which I am expecting myself to be the offering and like that feels like a really tricky space to be because I can't separate out the fact that since I am a one person business and I am the one writing the books and doing the things and hosting the offerings and whatever, that people have to like me or trust me or be interested in my point of view in order to sign up for those things. That is just in general the case. I feel like we're probably not going to go on retreat with someone who we're like, oh, I'm not interested in that person. Right. Or we don't share values. So there's nothing wrong with wanting to do business or be a customer of someone because you like them and relate to them. I think relatability is great, but I think that, I don't know, it can be like a fine line between that and than making yourself the product or putting yourself in what I think of as an identity cage. Like one of the biggest wake up calls for me in self employment. As you know, used to be a runner and was really into running for some years after never having been a sporty person at all, never having done like little pee wee soccer or anything, like literally never doing anything athletic in my life when I started running and my story that I shared really publicly of having been such a beginner and becoming a marathoner seemed to be really relatable to a lot of people and it led to a former running coach And I joining forces and creating a beginner's half marathon training program that was for like real beginners and was not just the training, but was also the emotional support of doing something like that, or like the emotional support of making big life changes and all of that. And it was really successful. And what happened for me was I fell out of love with running. And it was this real crossroads of like, talk about the dimmer switch going down where I wasn't running anymore and therefore wasn't interested in talking about running anymore and helping people with running anymore. It was just the heat had gone out of it and I was stuck with this business that I had backed myself into where I was known as like a capital R runner. And I was like, oh, this idea of like monetize your passions for me is actually a real mistake. And so I wound up having to shut that down and everything that I have done since. A real guiding question for me is like, is this offering or this iteration of the business a large enough umbrella to hold my whole humanity and to not turn me into a one dimensional caricature of myself in order to earn enough money to buy groceries? Like, that started to feel like really gross to me. And I know that's not the case for other people. Some people have like lifelong passions that they then turn into their jobs. But I change so often that I don't want my personal hobbies or lifestyle choices to determine whether or not I can earn income.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I learned that with life after college because by the time it was coming out, I'm like, I'm over this. But I had the blog and I got blogged to book deal and that was all well and good, but I'm like, God, how long can I talk about this one phase of my life? And so then pivot, I figure, okay, I can always hang my hat on change. Like it's almost ironically built into the title that I knew my audience would embrace whatever pivots I did next, because that was the whole point. And so I try to think similarly, expansively. It is also a little bit of a catch 22, because what I find is I have oscillated between the topic and then I need to take a break or I'm going through my thing. And my last year, that was as difficult as this one was 10 years ago, my apocalypse year. And this one is personally fulfilling, but as professionally challenging. And what's hard is that before you know the next topic area, what's left? You, me, me, Jenny, Blake, and I also get hives at the thought of people following me or like anything about my life, anything having to remain the same, including myself. And I don't want to monetize myself, my name, my face, me as a brand. Like you said that cannibal capitalism, as my dad calls it too. And yet it's like, well, in a time of transition, when the rest of the topics fall away, that is, what's standing, what's going to shepherd in, what's next. So it's like kind of embracing, I guess, these ebbs and flows of like having topics and interests and then those fall away. And then now I'm just me standing out here on a limb, you know.

So much of this, I think can be boiled down to a. Like a financial thing, because if I had the resources or if one has the resources to essentially go offline during those interim periods of time. Right. It's like, I think about, maybe this isn't true anymore with just everyone has to be a brand in every way. But I think about years between novels being released or between like music albums coming out, where they're in the studio, where they're working on things, like they're not putting out mini songs on substack. Right, right.

Or what it's like to write a song while writing a song, while then recording the song, you know?

Exactly. And it's sort of like I'm, I think, a really intuitive decision maker, but also a systems thinker in the way that you are as well. So what is the real question here that I'm asking myself? Right, Because I'm about to be in that period of time or like am in that period of time now. And so the question is like, okay, if here is the pie at all the different pieces of the pie that have to be met in order for me to be well, then it's okay. Well, I need a certain amount of money, I need connection with other people, I need rest, I need creative fulfillment. I need to be making things right. There's like all these different things. And if I am expecting too many of these things to come from one very specific job or offering or career, like that's a problem. Because what happens when that changes? And so I don't know the answer to that. But if there were abundant resources, then you could, in between topics of interest, just disappear in a way, right? Or at least like in a professional, public, visible capacity. And like, in some ways, to me that's the dream is to be able to be visible when there's something that you're excited about and talking about and want to offer and you're well resourced for. And of course that is not overwhelmingly the system that we live in. And so some of this for me is going to be looking at, like I said, I'm taking a really big pay cut in order to wrap up my Patreon. And so it was really crunching numbers, right? Okay, what's in my emergency fund? What can I scale back in terms of my expenses? How can that work? How long of a break from this can I give myself if I'm also doing subset? Right. Like some of it was numbers, math, and there's no perfect formula to it. But I am willing and able, right? Like I said, I'm not supporting someone else. I am able to have some lean times financially in order to hopefully rest and recover.

And in that model, I want us to give ourselves permission to. It's like with so many apps and sites, there's this expectation that if you start a substack, it's now you're married to it forever for the rest of time and it's somehow a problem if you shut it down and then start another one. And I do think, like I call it, the business police on the one hand are like, oh, you just keep starting from scratch instead of getting any traction or momentum. Madeline Doerr was on free time. She wrote a book called I Didn't do the Thing Today. And she put it so well. Which I think you've done really beautifully, which is that you're not going anywhere even if you close down a project because it had a natural end. A podcast, a topic, a book, anything. It's okay. It's okay to pause and start a new one now with the caveat of financial being able to have that Runway. So I would love to continue this conversation on free time. We'll check in in a couple months and see how your thinking has evolved and your recovery period, your R and R. To wrap up this pivot conversation, which I'm so grateful for all that you've shared with us. If you could give people one little experiment for the next week or two based on everything we talked about, what would it be? It could also, of course be an experiment to stop something.

I don't know if this counts, but it's what came up, so I'm gonna just say it anyway. And it sort of follows on what you were just saying about. Just cause you start something doesn't mean you need to do that thing forever. Something that I feel like I am perpetually working on. Is breaking out of the all or nothing mindset, like black and white door one or door to all these false binaries. Those are my only options, even to the point of okay, this burnout period is a lot worse than I expected. My options are either keep everything the same or shut everything down. And I think sometimes that's just reactionary thinking. But I have been really trying to be more creative almost in my breakdown of the answer isn't door one or door two. Like, what about door three? What about door seven? What if you turn around and like there isn't a door but there's an archway or like a window to go through? And to be a little bit more specific with that, for example, I'm going to keep writing on substack during this. I mean we're recording at the beginning of summer right now, so during this summer and I haven't made a final decision, but I am considering having a summer series of posts that's only for paid people because part of my feeling of a little bit of overexposure, I'm craving writing to a smaller audience right now. I don't know if I'm actually going to do that, but I offer that as an example of, you know, maybe the experiment can be, if you were to shift it by 5%, 2% could perhaps make you feel more free, more supported, more comfortable, more safe, more fulfilled. And I think it's really easy to glorify huge changes. And sometimes huge changes are necessary, but sometimes they a aren't necessary or B aren't possible immediately. And so is there something that you could do or try to change that the container to change the way that you're showing up to change the number of people you're showing up to and see if maybe that can give you the relief that you're looking for.

I absolutely love that. Thank you so much, Nicole. I could just listen to you all day. Thank you for keeping it real. You even have a whole archived podcast project called Real Talk Radio with Nicole Antoinette. Where else would you like to send people? We'll put your substack wild letters in the show notes anywhere else.

No, substack's good. It's funny, we didn't like the whole other side of my life is that I spend a lot of time long distance hiking, walking in the woods. But if that is a thing people are interested in, all the book stuff is at backpackingbooks. Com. That's kind of my like current home base situation. But that has literally nothing to do with anything that we just talked about. So if people are interested in adventure memoirs, that's a good place. But I would say Substack is the best place.

And the funny thing is that I spent the last three days fully immersed in in how to be alone and reading about your day to day. There was so much I wanted to ask you about, even what it's like recording your thoughts. So we'll have to do another one. We'll have to do another one anytime.

Jenny.

Clearly I feel like these topics, it's like you and I saw each other and then instantly they just asserted themselves like, hey, listen, this is what wants to be talked about.

And I always trust that. My thing being a podcaster for a really long time is wherever the conversation's supposed to go is where it's going to go. And I feel amazing about that.

It's that dimmer switch. It's like, yes, these are the topics that were like putting that switch up off the Richter scale. You know, I always mix metaphors incorrectly. But not that the hiking isn't super exciting in and of itself, but like this is so present and alive for both of us right now. I just appreciate you talking it through with me and by extension, us.

I appreciate it too. I feel a little better. This is like the first time I've really tried to talk it out with someone. So thank you for being patient with whatever word vomit I just did at you and your listeners.

Well, it's a treat. It's as if you were reading my own mind. So to be continued. Thank you so much Nicole and big thanks everybody for being here listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter Ennyblake.

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