We all tend to step into our early lies with certain hopes and dreams and expectations about what we will be able to do and then But the work behind them and when something happens that stops us then only out of our control. It can be terrifying and change the course of our lives, so my two days later. Jawad was born in new york city per day. Meeting mom swiss and I'm going to the juilliard schools, pre college programme, studying double base, really thought music would be her thing for a while, then ended up in princeton and can start to leave behind music, and she thought she would start and build a career as a war. corresponding, but her plans were cut short when at twenty to show diagnosed with leukemia that lead to really

brutal four year, stand in and out of the hospital multiple rounds of chemo and eventually a bone marrow transplant and while in the hospital she began, sharing her experience online kind of as a lifeline and that led a call from the near times with an invitation to start writing a column about her experience that collar became the near times, column and emmy award. Winning video series life interrupted which was written mostly from hospital room at sloan catering, and he or she has since written report, features essays and commentary for the new times magazine, boat and pure, and so many others. So it has served on Barack obama's presidential cancer panel. The nash advisory board of the bone marrow on cancer foundation and the brooklyn public libraries, art and letters committee. She is also the creator of the isolation journals, a community creativity project founded during covered nineteen, to help

convert isolation into artistic solitude. Over a hundred thousand people from all around the world have joined her, and then debut memoir between two kingdoms, which is gorgeously written exploration. She sure so many at the moment, the people, the stories that have led her to this moment in life, so excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan fields- and this is good life project Met yet the global private aviation leader is known for personalizing every detail of your travels, because not yet standard is not just to meet their definition of perfection. It's to exceed yours discover more at net jets dot com.

So the ten percent happier podcast has one guiding philosophy. Happiness is a skill that you can learn, so why not embrace it? It's hosted by dan Harris a journalist who had a panic attack on national television and then send out on this journey of transformation and he's now on a quest to help. Others also achieve peace and happiness, and every week Dan taught you top scientists meditation teachers. Even the odd celebrity in wide ranging conversations at explore topic, psych productivity, anxiety and lightness, psychedelic and relationships. The interviews cover everyone from bernay brown to cerebral less to sam Harrison more. I love learning from his questions and experiences and incredible guess think of listening to ten percent happier as a work out. For your mind, fine ten percent happier where every listen to pot casts

good law project is supported by the economists, so the world seems to be moving faster than ever: climate economics, politics, ai and culture. Wherever you look, events are unfolding at a rapid pace and it's hard to stay on top of it, which is why I love that now, for the first time, you can get a one month, free trial of the economist, so you won't miss a thing I have literally been reading the economist I want to say for decades. I love that it covers more than just economics and finances you'll find coverage on topics from politics to science, to technology, even arts and the environment. The economist offers this global perspective with really incredible clarity and deeper analysis, so you can dive into specific issues or catch up on current events. I was just checking out this article on the changing landscape of tech, jobs for recent computer science grads and how everything is changing so fast. It was a real eye opener and with the economists free trial, you'll get access to in depth independent coverage of world events through podcasts, webinars and expert analysis. As soon as you sign up, if you're interested in subjects like this go to economist dot com, slash project for full access to the topics that matter to you, an original analysis as events unfold, that economist dot com, slash project or just click. The link in the show notes to start your one month, free trial with the economists today, because the world won't wait there. I'll tell you. I finished the book last night and it wrecked me in five ways

I mean, as a sun, husband friend, a brother father. I was just like as I'm reading. I'm. stepping into every one of them you and I'm just saying you guys having trouble breeding and each one of those on, but in a good way, didn't you hear about that? the wrecking wasn't you unpleasant so wanted. In two out into the open to all much indifferent things with you were similar and that research I grew up in and out of the new york city area in various different ways. The mai turns out of the city were a little bit shorter than yours that forty five minutes long island. Worse! U yours work! You have potentially to europe, tunisia, curious, whether whether as a kid you had the sense of being part of a number of different worlds and cultures or whether you kind of felt like well, nobody

This is one place where ground it, but I happened to step out to these other places, occasionally yeah. It's a great question, something I think about alive, so my tunisia on my mother I was born today. I have three passports which has We think that an alternate life fashion pursue becoming an international spy, but the funny thing about in a mixed kid. The greens that, unlike a multi fee multi, lingual, multi ethnic background- is that afternoon, instead of feeling later partners, many different worlds. You feel The outsides of all of them. So I. Very much turn like hemisphere newsletter a sense of the world

the word is always trying to I have a second myself into these different places and realising that it wasn't ass and so, instead of flying north american and says tunisian. I thought neither on the the thing about being a kid that often more than anything all you want is to fit in. So Had this ongoing plea with my parents were I begged them to. Let me legally change my name to ashley but say of course refused to do. You know anyway, and saw an older, probably and later in high school or even college, that I started to lean to that effect. send to embrace their to fill, answers ability or not the other makes a lot of sense. I know em for you, journaling was on it.

It's down really earlier and I pray you describe it as both a place of hiding in a place of finding was generally a part of the way that you surely processed what your memory, through from the earliest days after so I had this ritual every time we got on the plane. and we were I have to move to a new place and we moved a lot. I think you know by the time most eight or ten megan, six different schools on three different continents and benefits some plain and open a brand new journal, and I was right a kind of character sketch who, by night, become and that new place, and then the next year and so for me, the beauty of a general as its space, where we get to exist, as our most unfurnished solve,

to write and almost an evident voice and its space, where you know you can clinical? What you did that day, you right here, specialists or you can, fiction or fragments Poems or you can just play and imagine what could be and for me very much the journal. Why is this kind of place where I can kind of right into the space green no longer and not get which for me, I felt very much like the kind of defining theme of my childhood, yeah the way describe, it sounds very much like the way a grown up would describe the other children. Experience look back at it. I'm curious whether at any sense that you know in the moment. Your lived experience as I wish you hadn't awareness of sir you're writing as serving these different purposes.

nothing so! And you there's a sensitive, freedom and journaling bird hey you're, going into without any expectation of what should be here, might look like, or even if it's any good, and now that I For living, I asked try very hard. We took hold onto that sense of freedom, I found this again in the journal and it's the space where writing doesn't count and the stakes are lower and our something from me that fills incredibly liberating about that yeah, I'm is at hartfield really curious, because, I know one eyes near a writer as well, and I express myself creatively in different ways by them. I'm so focused on growth allow other times, even when I'm just doing something which I have no intention of

no one ever sharing or seeing or its entirely for me. I sometimes have trouble letting go of that of internal performance. said yeah, I mean, I think, the key for me in terms of like tapping into a sort of free flowing library that space is writing and I'm somebody with a second. I said that my computer and I open up my dark and completely frees up and so I write by hand I write, but these are very cheap, disposable, fountain pen, that I buy from the drugstore indulges in vienna that kind of have to keep moving. Otherwise, you under. The king s on the page, has it that you know, recently. When I was writing my book, I wrote my my first asked my hand because I couldn't get free sitting down at the computer and in computer. I dunno know what you mean you I have

gillian, tabs, open and fight the space were right and I'm work, and I pay me taxes and you all kinds of other unpleasant things, and because of that it's me, to find that kind of that sounds like a sort of secret mess, that can earn. Maybe showed ban were doing it right. they need an increase of endeavour. So interesting. I mean the fact that you serve You've intentionally chosen physical tools that force you to work in a certain because you know that allows your mind to go to place. It needs a guy. Can a fascinating like you, you choose these constraints to a certain extent designed optimize did almost forty to being a certain state. When you're, actually writing sitting, then to write me, and you know about you but like for me when I'm on a computer like these

How did it you at it in the kind of when I described as like the journey as lake distaste bar for me and said meaning that I'm a start taking on saturday delete and come back with paragraphs round, and I just completely lose my my centre and sound something not just about. You know how hard it is there's only so much better than you can get when you rating by hand the free cross out the interpreters and you have to start over, but also something about the kind of physicality of writing there. You know the fear of the page, Hence my palm pan, they're kind of cow that I have my finger from writing with a pen so much something about that. me

more embodied in my rating. You know so many writers have kind of extolled the virtues of writing with old fashion paper in pan, but yeah I have yet to to figure out how. How had to be that, for you, the computer. If you have any secrets, please let me know I wish I did. I got nothin for her. I know no game in also rights linked to this day right all his books, longhand with a thousand men, but you attend ngos. As your sharing this I'm a flash back to two things. One is a conversation with an patch it we had on the broadcast, live well back and she lives lead, like almost does an entire back in her head and which sits down to write. It all formed inheritors world everything just kind of pours out fairly quickly. The building that

and my head was so when I write I print you, this is pre internet. I printing cats, Gallic way before that, we consider just screaming non stop and us right really slowly and I read fairly slowly and have a past life as a lawyer and the way that used to get your grades was essentially your gun was based on a single essay task at the end of the semester, and sometimes a year and I learned that, because I write so slowly and I read slowly basically they had to write had to be as close to final as humanly possible, with as few words as humanly possible when it came out. So a lot of pressure its use. So I got into the habit of. I would read a ten page fat pattern and he liked it will end with a question which has identified. Be potential cause of action and are you both sides and who is an old? You sit there for an hour. just doing it all in my head and then

with the hand in your one blue book, whereas everyone else had they like five or ten and that process waiting for me has continued to this day, even in the context of more creative and had an editorial writing, which is kind of interesting that I don't you my head, because they have wait. You mix chaos that idea dear unpleasant notes and- I am in reading a book chapter or am writing a story all end at papering. The walls of my office, almost entirely in prison notes, have kind of ass the stone that I've devised. Similarly, I need you to kind of sea it knocked out before I consider hoping to form yeah. I love that totally resonates with me too. I do the same thing with post. It notes on a wall. I just I need to see the whole thing visually and then move it all over the place and just like throw it all up in the air and keep moving it cause. A screen will never give me that yeah

citizens should probably underwrite life project, I I one hundred percent, I actually just a literally as we're speaking. I turned in the manuscript for net my next book this week, so uncertainly pulling out of this whole process as well. Your your little bit ahead of me with a with this one growing up. I know also journaling in writing, a touchstone for the early for you, music did as well, but not in the typical way with the timid. instrument that yeah yeah gave a deadly gravitate to gas, my mom s, a beautiful, classical pianist, and, she started me on lessons were knows about, years old and end the typical spaces very strict in my head to practice every single day, I need to do my skills and I absolutely did it and when I was about eight, she gave me the option of picking

secondary instrument. so I decided to pick the instrument. In my mind,. that would most inconvenience, my parents, which was the devil, base And resources usually trying to address the you. A girl in my class, sonny interest in playing at everyone stood scrambling fur. Violence in the tellers. I still remember the first time I played the base and the alone I remembered the low expand ball as as the strings and the way it would kind of reverberate into my chest, and it just was. You know. This moment spring, you try something again, fear law. They can t paused, for example, sailor

face, it was also highly inconvenient. My parents had to get him the Van fit it into the back of our car and until he was by five years old and they don t have to carry it for me, because I'm your tiny little girl with the tyrant instrument but here I mean I grew up. ass an artist my guys literature and some professor and I grew up- in a household where we were very much encouraged to pursue whatever have creative endeavours. We wanted to sell a dance I wrote my journal. I played the base. by the time, teenager I'm pretty sure that I wanted to become a double based tire. It's about, so they set out to do Lenny you in band camp at one point when you're thirteen or so yet did you just

Jim, that low rumble thou is just an is fascinating. To me, I become more team to that's what I think later in life through the process of chanting actually yeah. I remember the berkshire my chance on, which was about twenty years ago in a man, an overly spiritual person or metaphysical. But remember sitting in a room of people and going through the three syllable out and then, when you hit them and that to me, It's really similar to what you're describing it's really low range, deeply resident thing. We're your whole body becomes like at a pitchfork and there's something that happens to you. I think when you have that residents so close,

exactly two year, yeah yeah, like that yeah you do become a kind of cuban pitchfork and also kind of fascinated by what resonances different people are drawn to, and we think that if I had kids, I would bring them to an orchestra concert or maybe play them an album and based on yeah my residence or what sound they're trying to match them with that instrument, because reverie different, but for whatever reason, the debate to me. Ass fat a kind of kindred. Spirits was the outlier if the orchestra It was Andy algae, it didn't always for them, and that was very much how I felt as a killer restored. the misfit instrument it definitely swamp. I'm curious things any you end up going to college studying near studies in french and end up in Egypt, exploring women's rights, post, client, north africa fortune

time when you are young reveal that everything in this economy, my thing: what shifted, how is that? Sixteen guy, a scholarship, turned the pre colored, profound actual yard in new york city and it was thrilled, And intimidating and so much work and The point that you knew I was practising up to six or seven hours a day. And also change gotta public school, four hours away and upsetting york, and so when I doing so. Socks that my parents agree to death is dropping out of Islam and the deal with my parents. This time I had to take a couple of classes at the college, the smaller brides college from retired drunken, where it could be a tongue. class for free and the rest of the week I would be in new york city. The double these

When I realized during that time, where's that, As much as I was growing and learning from those six or seven hours spent and the practice during the recipient, existing funding about it. I found myself hungry furthermore- and I found myself actually increasing are you trying to these curbside clusters that I'm sticking at my dad's collins I also had a really started by the funding experience, whereas, when a chair the biggest section of the networks are my neck opened up and about eight hundred double basis send that tradition, and I realize then that, even though I was a pretty talented, While these fire, I wasn't going to become like an editor mire, are women

if other students involve costs, doubleday solar less than I so admired, and that if I was likely, I might get a job in the orchestra somewhere but that that wasn't really surprising to me. I had no desire to be playing in a talk about kenya and whenever it is that orchestra, these days are kind of force to have two. Play and that I was very hungry three to learn. And to learn beyond the debates, and I don't think it was clear to me that I wasn't going to become a double these there, but I she knew that conservatory from me fella constraining and then I wanted to kind of explorer beyond music. The I mean it sounds like to a certain extent. It there's so much that you were saying no to music or even to the double baseball's gesture. The context that was later, on a view just wasn't, resonate sites like almost like. Let me not make this the focus of em,

waking hours for a moment in time kind of see what may happen You have anything goes that and it is something that you have even sixteen or seventeen. However, all levels that identified, which was that there is good at this thing, but I probably wasn't going to excel at that, that would content be unlocked to diminish. Talent or scale but it was extremely important in awareness and it was an awareness that perhaps my my efforts and my time might be more valuably invested in something else and that I was going to- for that and see how I thought I made the dude atta juilliard also is, is a whole different universe years. My niece actually did that same programme for opera when she was nice gone then actually studied,

in college, but realized after graduating. It wasn't her thing but remember her describing to me the experience at at juilliard, and she also did amazon at the same time- and you know it's Julia, is the place where everyone goes to try and use its that's the place in the country, if not the world. But it is also especially when you're a young person coming up. It can be a fairly brutalizing experience and and the industry, especially the classical music industry, can, be it brutalized and culture not that it always has to be, but it was interesting to to hear your experience and also like be able to reference, and you have the shared experience of my niece as well, and it's it's. hold differing universe, it is I'm shocked. Someone hasn't made a reality. Tv show about greece, I shall yard, or more specifically, about the parents frequently schoolyard students dick advance, it's sort of way.

Competitive with cereals, subculture on beds and theirs hurt break in those highways and then those practiced ruins because you have a bunch of kids who likely were the best at, but I've already dead. In whatever town or city they came from and suddenly there surrounded by hundreds, dozens of other kids who are just as good, if not you're young better, and it goes brutal so much of what I learned from like the discipline that it took two you said yourself down in practice. For that amount of time. The dedication and the like, in many ways and much within that competitive environment you have, Figure out how

going to show how you are going to interact then that competition, if at all, is such that I still cannot carry with me now. It's it's one of those things that I think it it. It always stays with you. The experiences. The. Not yet. The worldwide private aviation leader is known for exceptional service, for personalizing every detail and elevating every flight. Because not yet standard is not just to meet their definition of perfection. It's to accede. Yours, all by providing the custom curated luxury experiences. You deserve explore net, yet premium travel solutions at net jets, dot com.

The good law project is supported by a master class, so I have been writing books for over a decade, but I've never written a novel, and lately I've been feeling like. I actually have a thriller in me and David Baldacci is one of my favorite writers in that genre, and I was thinking, wouldn't it be so cool if I could literally learn from him, which is why I was so excited to discover. I actually could, and so can you on master class, so with master class. You can learn from the best in so many different fields to become your best anytime anywhere and at your pace there are over one hundred and eighty classes, and not just writing- is literally everything from the science of better sleep, with Matthew, walker to cooking with Thomas keller, that's thomas keller, gardening, with RON Finley to relational intelligence, with astaire, parallel and just new classes added monthly, and now that David baldacci class, for example, I learned so much like how to find an idea using his writers prism or how to outline that idea and how he builds suspense using red herrings and plot twists and cliffhangers and what he calls ticking clocks. It was like I got this incredible peek behind the curtain and learned so much to help me start thinking about my own writing and the whole time I kept thinking. How much will it cost to take one on one classes from incredible instructors who are literally the best in the world at what they do? Well, master class annual memberships start at only ten dollars a month, and that includes unlimited access to every class. Every instructor. It's really just incredible. I pretty much want to take every class they offer and I just might so get unlimited access to every class and right now, as a good life project listener, you can get fifteen percent off when you go to master class dot com, slash goodlife, that master class dot com, slash good life for fifteen percent, off an annual membership, master class, dot com, slash good life or just click. The link in the show notes.

I brought it is supported by indeed okay. So we all know the hiring Hannah gets a bad rag for being pretty challenging because well a lot of times it actually is. But maybe all you ve been missing is a hiring partner that can help you rise to the challenge with ease, and that is indeed so, indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract interview and higher. All in one place. Save me you time and unnecessary stress indeed actually streamlines the hiring process with these powerful features like instant that the tool that gives over eighty percent of employers quality candidate the moment they sponsor job according to induce- u s data, but what I love about, indeed, is that it does the hard work for you showing you candidates, whose reza maize on indeed fit your description immediately after you post, so you can hire faster, so join more than three million businesses worldwide. That use indeed to hire great talent fast start hiring now, with a seventy five dollars, sponsor job credit, to upgrade your job post at indeed dot com, slash, good life, offer good for a limited time, so claim your seventy five dollar credit now at indeed, dot com, slash good life, indeed, dot, com, slush, good life terms and conditions apply need to hire. You need, indeed

So you end up in college at some point, starting to think maybe war. Correspondent is the thing that you want to go out and do cause you're deeply invested in issues. You end up graduating in paris it sounds like that's where they were hints of your body, starting to sort of betray you to a certain extent before that, but everything really starting to fall apart. There yeah, I mean the beginning of things is always so much harder to pinpoint than the other. am I it's easy for me to look back now and to see that in ways I wasn't fully aware of, I was probably sick, my entire senior year But it is only right when I got to paris as like this reason. Graduate and working as a paralegal, which is job, is very grateful not my dream job that I think

and to understand that my fatigue was different to the fatigue of my twenty one, for you're old friends who were also very tired because they were working in going out dancing until five a m, and I think too, be sick at any age, but certainly he is wearing very much feel invincible, and were, unless probably isn't something that's eminently the kind of landscape of possibilities bears so disorienting- and you know it when I started to think that something like this seriously wrong with me. This made all the more disorienting by doctors who were operating, hundreds with something which was that you know in wise, healthy looking twenty two year old woman.

probably have something seriously wrong with her and so I found myself on this hunt for answers- and it was kind, as investigative reporting promised us that Lastly, when I got my diagnosis, trays of acute, my way to kenya thought of course devastating, but also like a really Because after spending so long, not knowing- It's wrong wondering if I was like making shut out the fibers, Imagining things are from the text things. It was so clarifying and separately to have a diagnosis that I could actually hold onto I mean that such a powerful statement. You know effectually saying that this

in turkey that came along with simply having an answer, it's almost in a relief compared to the truth of what the diagnosis was, which is something I think so many of us grapple with. We are really bad at being in that liminal space for any level of time it kind of is, can be massively destructive to our psyche, let alone us dealing with. You know something that actually is really deeply challenging us physiologically the cycle out part can be brutalizing as well. Yeah yeah. I think they struggle to find our finding an answer. Nineteen percent- something

that we're all struggling with right now, where the possibility of illness fills in the net for for all of us yeah, it has expanded. I mean it's sort of the fabric. It's the air, we breathe through a certain extent right now, I'm quite literally a hum. You end up back in new york at mount Sinai. This and sloan kettering, a legendary institution sort of like under the care of the ass to the best year, and still this is a brutal diagnosis. You know there there's a moment where the doktor essentially new, gives you and your family, your art, which is you know Not good you, you know, and you move immediate fairly immediately into treatment and came out in the early days. Things don't go well me, while you're twenty to twenty three years old, your eye

a young person in the world that everybody else it you know is out there living there lies you you right at one point in the world is moving forward and I'm stuck and that stuff miss, for you doesn't end after a couple of days or weeks or even months. This becomes a year's long experience real yeah yeah. I mean I was interviewing a friend of mine recently, who spent the last twenty years incarcerated, and he said something to the factors like We can survive, as long as we can see the horizon, and I think for me, the ongoing ass, my illness, us with something that was so. Yeah. I mean I don't have one extra this: is it felt unendurable in moments, It was fun thing to now. Ok,

the deal this treatment for six months and it's gonna fuck that's can be brutal all. But then it's gonna end the kind of shifting goalposts smiling treatment kept getting extended with. I think one of the most trying parts of that experience wasn't the physical, pain it wasn't? The sign of it was do not knowing her and your sharing this in the context of cancer, diagnosis and and treatments, and sit here, failures and successes, sensors and and and new treatments, and then saying like this- is working yet here you'll have ex days and then showing up on like the x day and realising note now you have twice that, So there is really no. Then you were having this context, as you just are shared in the cut the conversation in the context of

just life and what's happening around us in the world right now, nearly the world is living in this state of perpetually moving goal posts and fear I wonder you know. when you went through this, not going to talk about it as if you like it, it's a through thing and it's over for life, because we will talk about that more. But you know you sort of like in the thick of this during that that four years or so, and you were kind of feeling to a certain extent, You know this is me in my. You could add one point you just read: it isn't conservation, curious whether moving through the the what we're on our way through suicidally, right now and globally, Whether you feel that any of what you felt in any way shape or form is Or relate above all, to people who haven't been through something that extreme

I mean I think that sense of stock- and this is something that we're all living, but there were stuck only working remotely our having to go to work are any numbers constraint, son, limitations that make whatever it that we're doing and just generally going about our lives more difficult. for me that first year and treatment I rise then, medical isolation- I spent much of that year in a very one hospital room tat. It was too late. revenge is to walk around the hallways and the rest of the time. I was stuck at home, in writing. Lt bedroom and I remember like going social media and seeing for those of my friends like starting jobs dating travelling, the road and

feeling that distance between me and them just kind of growing by the day and and at times even feeling in a deep envy and like a kind of nostalgia for a life that I had known as an underground spent of my energy in my time preparing for, but that likely basin, but the doctors for telling me I wouldn't be able to live possibly ever, and I was so difficult in his soul Angry and I think, for a long time, you know I kept trying to unstuck myself by grasping for things that would have made sense in my pre diagnosis life

and the dog. I describe how I ain't golden creative writing class, but only ever made it to the first day, because those authorized. I would note that these ambitious goals for myself and I had a big stokas books and my table that I, of course never ended up reading, because I'm too, hired to read and I found myself increasingly frustrated and therein doing lies researching the long lineage as baxter, again, artists and brighter. some time that I found ways to I found ways to make of that space of confinement- something Creators and you saw anything beautiful. I like to frida kahlo, who started painting in the aftermath of

the automobile, excellent you isn't over to matisse, who his entire approach these are after he was bent bound by his uncanny darkness and say: look to virginia was, and so in a way now, you know a year into this pandemic we all had to make that it there's the there is a trend alone in the early. seizures of isolation, where I remember I like in the first six months when everything went, lockdown breeding to those plans social media, about the sour. Don't we're going to sir. Again where the new, how do you think we're going to take up and gonna, believe there's drop off and there is a kind of. Exhaustion and tour. That starts

make itself known when something lasts for longer than we thought it dead into me. it's like the most critical point and And the most interesting point when your color brought down to your most savage south away. When you realize that, but you stop perhaps might happen or what you thought you could. You isn't going to happen and you have to find within your staff and resources and activities pursuits that fit within your limitations. In that nourisher, and so that for me, was like very much progress, and just navigating the unless another kind of logistical and bodily aspects of that, and that was really my name focus and my preoccupation is how

do. I get myself exists centrally unstuck. When it looks like I'm going to be stuck physically listen in this body and soul, ass firm, I for one And how do I find a sense of joy and nourishment and purpose regardless? I found my circumstances are. Yeah. I know you right at one point: what scared me more than the transplant more than the debilitating side effects. It came with it more than the possibility of death itself was thought of being remembered as someone else's sad story of unmet potential, yeah average really speaks to what you are just sharing you after having a match with your brother, actually moving through transplant, which is part of the reason you're in isolation. So much cause have, after a federally annihilate your immune system, and it takes a very long time and a lot of trauma to start to return in any meaningful way.

He performed, and at some point you also made the decision to share where you're going through you're in the early days is forward. a blog and then in class faced with the near times through the life interrupted series, which also brings video into the equation and brings alive notoriety to what you're doing along the way, but not after the fat in real time and cure what you. On the one hand, you ve got this really powerful channel of expression and people. Writing bacterium and you ve got away to serve, you know, break the seal of the bubble without having to step outside of it. I'm curious. how it was for you, to share both as it as it certainly come an ongoing creative act, but also As an ongoing on active relationship of socialization

yeah. I knew it was terrifying. you have never been published before I'm never written for any help Listen, honey, newspaper and sure I buy us having to turn out this way We installments from my hospital bed for the new york fucking times, which you know that follows profoundly honoured and. Are you going to have a job to do other than being a patient, There was the reality as that, figuring out how to write period, never written account for how to kind of russian my energy throughout the day in order to meet these deadlines. There's a photograph of me in the translation that I have a family

bucket under one arm- and I have my laptop- I mean yes, and I'm crying that because of this terrible either scary transplant tourism, but have the bigger than light from identifying- and I think that was the suddenly healthy for me and allow me to comment channel all the fears and the anxieties of my health protection, into something that felt productive, but more than that after a year, spent in isolation and opened a kind of port of war and the outside world before and I started to receive responses and messages and letters from all kinds of people. Surprise me where's that

britain is calm in real time from the trenches, with the help of it being hopeful arising to other people who were also living with cancer, but I was amazed by how badly people interpreted the idea of a life interaction and it is kind of Blasted my my and my world wide open and you're? It was, A reminder, I think, if everyone diversion the only one struggling with these struggles. Was the only one living a kind of private grief or pain, and it can force me to look outward

there remember. We had an set out katy, Camilla wretches, gorgeous children's books and we'll talk In them- and she certain there really- that is always stayed with me, which is what was that for her if she is beautiful writer, but she said the creative act isn't done, entail a child reads. What is written or apparent, read it to a child. She said for her. The final act of creation is actually in that connection. I am curious how their lands with you I mean we ve talked endlessly about memoir over the first person. I said kind of navel gazing, genre It's me. The power of the first person, when you do it from a place, unvarnished honesty. Vulnerability and general

Instead, he and sat the I very quickly becomes a wii and a you and to me that's the only reason I write in the first person ever as with that sort of objective in mind, could I think, there's no great our guests ass, a writer but more than anything a reader when you read it three. You read it back and better. It's nonfiction fiction and you feel a sense of recognition and speeches, and that's why you, but I strive for the I think that can happen in fiction in the more had a different things. Harriet the spy right, we're just gonna. Do that so many people and by them, but there is. Is it fascinated by the notion of writing not to give people a place to escape, to or something to aspire to, but simply do it is again

that and also to hopefully allow people to know that they are not alone. Yeah yeah, and we were talking about reverberation, sing and frequencies in the context of a meal the same, was true afraid. I think when they can show up. In our writing an italian varnish troops. There is ever vibration that he gets four vibration and other people, began to share their own unfurnished truths. Nice thing that you know I saw that happen without disrupting the com in that happen as a reader my own life, when I need something anything. Now I didn't know, you were upset that I'm indians, interestingly, the two men a hero, that part of what the I agree and then there's something which says here: there's it

I wonder if there is also a real difference between music and writing in that some someone who's done both my whole life. Also, I play guitar get banned as a kid now the staff and have been writing for much my dont life. and I agree that there is the opportunity for residents with both of them, but I accept It is so differently in one really important way, at least for me, I'm curious whether you do also, which is the synchronous nature of the residence so like when you're playing music and there's people around you. You know in the moment you ve feel it in the moment, and you can also adapt. You know you can kind of go where you The other room needs to gather so that you're all their together with a writer. Cannot let your flying blind and hoping and praying that you're getting there yet your fine blind and alone, and it's pretty terrifying yeah, and there is that you know long gap. When you're writing a book like the tommy,

writing to run. An actual humans were not tied to you by wider obligation. Can breeding had to be many years and those this hope both like. Ok, I'm sending this into the void, and I hope I helped in summary, I hope it lands someone. But you don't know that. I do feel reverberation that happens in me. When I know I'm not just me, The truth is that, like the truce beneath the truce beneath the truth that to me ass. My kind of guiding pitchfork. and when I saw scared and I saw resistant, where are I under my lunch today this and so it's a different yeah. It's a different kind of problem, I don't know if you have that experience yeah, I actually,

I do- and I was curious with you also. I literally started physically shake the weirdest thing. When at and I love how you described it as the truth beneath the truth beneath the truth that's what it is and. You don't know it until you hid it, but when he hid it, I mean at least for like yes, my body can't contain it yeah yeah. I mean I often junk like my first drafts are full of wise. Maybe an exaggeration, but don't like the love of half truths are even aspirational. Untruths, when I often do, as I have pointed out, I do have read for bolster red flies and not lies, of course alone, eventually advocating that make life and telling myself because again- kind of want to do that. The excavation that's necessary to get that deep returns Yeah, it's like reading it to see where you're hiding yeah exactly.

the project is supported by noon. So it's that time of the year, where a lot of folks start to think about their fitness goals, getting their bodies moving myself included. I actually recently started paying a lot more attention to how I was fueling, my body and also really came to realize that I was carrying a lot of inflammation in my body and potential disease risk in the form of weight. So I wanted an intelligent and sustainable and supportive way to increase my health, lose the weight and inflammation and just feel better and noom is just a great solution for this one that I have turned to numerous times over the years to help me accomplish wellness and when it makes sense, weight management goals as well. So noone uses science and personalization, so you cannot just intelligently manage weight for the long term, but also really learn from their psychology based approach that helps you build better habits and behaviors that are easier to maintain and the best part you decide how newman fits into your life, not the other way around, based on a sample of four thousand two hundred and seventy two numerous ninety eight per cent say: noom helps change their habits and behaviors for good, and that is because noone actually helps you understand the science behind your choices and why you have certain cravings. So if you feel like you've been lacking the knowledge to make the changes, you want to see, try out noom, so you can start making informed choices and start to really change the way that you think about weight, loss and weight management and wellbeing. Take the first step and sign up for your trial today at noon: dot: com, that's n, o o m dot com to sign up for your trial today or just click. The link in the show notes.

we live in a world it's more digital than ever, with nearly every want or need just a tap away in so many of our favorite digital services seamlessly meet the physical world when their deliver to your front door, but until now that has been true for crypto digital currencies have been tied up online, with no easy way to bring them into the real world that why were so excited to share that you can now cash in and out of, select digital wallets at participating, money, grand locations without a bank credit card or debit card flex. Your finances, using the only digital wallets, with real cash access activated by money. Graham learn, more money, grandma com, slash, stellar, wallets, winded life start getting so complicated. Buying a home, complicated home finance is certainly not a walk in the park raising kids. She half it's a lot, then there's insurance where's. My policy does not cover this or what, if I have to make a claim in the middle of the night, good news state arm is air for europe. What if you can reach them? Twenty four seven, while a claim on the state by mobile, app or simply call your agent ass anything. So even life gets tricky. Insurance doesn't have to be like a good neighbour, state farmers there. How I got

eight farmed outcome for a quote today. The. You eventually emerge from this season are, to a certain extent in our four years or so where you're starting to feel different you're, starting to feel like you participate in life, more you're, you're kind of stepping back into the world, but you know, and now you've got this question yeah, which is, actively. How do you live when you spent the last four years trying not to die? Yeah yeah, I mean one of the first and kind of, Her desk lessons I learned when I was emerging from treatment. Is that is a massive difference between surviving and living, and that I was an expert and survival

I might add, that there is a way in which you know those survival. Scandals are useful in certain context. They help you make it through whatever difficult passage your end, but they don't necessarily work as well, but there tied to normal everyday life, and Beyond that the work of learning to live again, ass. I realized that I couldn't go back to the person. I've been pre diagnosis, I was no longer insufficient, but I also had no idea the guy, and so those two questions who I am How do I actually start losing my life and what is that look like were terrifying. And I mean also, you know- had your your frame of reference compared to the average twenty seven year old young person who hadn't just has husband us,

for five years. The way you had, I would imagine that it was wasn't necessarily the easiest thing to relate to your peers, sort of like at a similar point in life as well. Yeah yeah, I mean definitely as MR there I wanted to I myself in a place where I could you know pursue a full time career that would require me to sit at the dusk, because I wasn't well enough to do that. I couldn't Have the desire to give the parties Anderson dislike very wrong place rifle you know vulnerable and killed open to the world what I did was that I ended up realizing that if I didn't do something drastic and if I didn't have expressed myself back. to the world and try to answer some of those questions that I would end up living this kind of very small, isolated

because that was what a noun, and that was that I was comfortable with, and so I decided to go on a road trip and to visit some of the people. Who'd been responding to my column over the years, but first of learn how to drive, which has its own life are terrifying. exercise for anyone who has grown up around the city that Alex city? Kids? Don't you? licences until they absolutely have to hurry. But very often hidden there, twenty. If at some point yes, a united this hundreds, no or so day. Rigidly fifty does miles around the country also visiting a number. The people who had been contact are reaching out responding to your life interrupted column, over the years and Eurasia.

Thirdly, that so many relationships and semi at the moment and and while our listeners her to read some of that towards the end of the trip you you up in one conversation at meeting one person who had been in early conversation with you goes by the market logic you who, as yet, sounds like has ever been secondary in his life, but. is in an experience which is profoundly different than the life you ve lived profoundly different at the moment you are in yet in really, ways similar yeah, so lucky q s side. who has been on death row. The time he was eighteen years old and he's now in his early forties, some worse than half his life, and he was one of the first strangers I received a letter from, and there was one line in particular

That must give me a fence in further go. Then he said you know. I know that our experiences are different, but Thankfully, he described how we were both in isolation and insult. her confinement me and my hospital room and we repulse faced mortality in these different ways- and I was so stand by that letter. Remember lying my hospital bed in new york city and try picture. the man prison saw and taxes and I was dizzying I was intrigued, I he'd for into me. as intrigues about those how strange parallel the two my experience, as you said, iron described, makes in closing in conservation of sorts

course sooner without reducing those parents, the thing s eye immediately pretty much when I got that with our thought. Oh, if I could ever travelled the system, one I'd like to sit down with his face to face and speak to one day and so for the end of that road trip. I found me in texas sitting down the pen speaking to him through a taxi glass, here and. There is so much that we know about this conversations that woman forever being printed on my heart bag His you know at some point in the conversation he asked me what I did to kind of endure all that time I spent on a hospital bed and when I told him that I got really really good at scrabble. He responded me too, and

explain to me how he in his brain. Ah then, the neighboring prisoners would make one games out of scraps of paper and and play together. They can carry out their place through the kind of metal thence in their stalls and a thing for me like one The big things that I took away from that experience is the sort of a stolen doing. Resilience of the human spirit I dont use that word resilience lightly. It's a word. You handed them. So overused to the point of needing absolutely nothing but our ability to truly adapt to any circumstance. send to the credible creativity that it takes to survive document. Creative acts

I think to me, survive all requires. Perhaps the greatest of creative acts. Yeah, what's really resonates, you know given every creative act, as is an act of stepping into the void without any promise of an outcome. You- and this is the ultimate yes survival- is the ultimate creative act. If you look at them, Yeah yeah there's a sort of a team in, and it certainly did up in your birthday the notion of these two kingdoms, whether living in the kingdom of the dying and a sound like you know, and you come back from that as you slowly start a process of reintegration and trying to figure out. What does me look like me? if our, what is the world? What is my rub of like moving foward part of your awakening through all the experiences you've had and you've you've you've now in the intervening years spoken about this taught about destiny, really gone deepen

That is the maybe the fallacy between the notion of of there being any sort of defined border between those kingdoms, yeah yeah yeah and were so serfs cheek and you're thinking, by their yeah you're, trying to find their place in like the geographical. answering control sense or whether you're trying to figure out where you that, as a healthy person or as is sick. person in some ways you know it's taken me thirty something years tour. I should ask even I've always sort lived in that luminal space, but that there's something very empowering about, abandoning those fine areas and living in the wilderness in between

I'm an allowing things to be met and when and allowing yourself to elude easy cabin position addition when, I think about the two it's funny- my miser went to a place where they won't. I, I must wonder if it's an over simplification of the model too. In that you know, you had the physiological state of tending towards health or tending towards on this he had the psycho emotional state of feeling of alive ness, Ursus, stifle their or or tending towards death And part of our work on the planet is to learn the skills and the practices to be able to dissociate the two, which is,

a brutally hard experience, but people who I have known, who had been the most nourish the most alive, no matter what happens to them from a clinical physiological standpoint are the ones who have seen tend to really live their lives hm yeah and and when she said by the idea of of that association cause, I think for me it's felt very much like an actor Integration, in a sense, as you know, there have been times when I've been generous, physically, that I've ever been and the most you know inspired all american towns and I've been healthy and strong ass, a human could be and in such a state of despair, and I, like the kind of good, take a student that I

was raised be have a hard time holding two things that seem like. They are in opposition and the same palm oil but living into those that's kind of paradoxes and living in to the kind of possibilities that they invite has also been my work. It's probably our work, especially right now, where we see people for example, who have had covered and who have survived covered and who are living with the importance of that experience? Yeah- I think the notion of on holding two opposing things at once at a very early in experience having especially to.

and mine. It comes more naturally to an eastern mine, although it still jen very often takes decades of war and practice, I'm certainly not there. Like I, I study the philosophers and buddhist and and the ideas and the ideals, and I and the few people that I've met who have seemed to be able to access this ability to be fully present in whatever is going on physically with them and in in their own body and in their immediate circumstance, and yet also an acknowledge it and not deny it and not pretend that it's different and somehow still be able to access something that allows them even the slightest. The experience of grace that's an aspiration of mine for sure and image, and I've seen it in in a a small number of others enough times that I believe that it's available, I don't know

at there, but but it it it's a deep fascination of mine. Let me know when you, when you find out ever reminds me of something that someone on the road trip told me manning bridge, I say that in california and he said that when we take a trip, we actually take three traps there the trooper preparation, there's the trip actually on for me at that moment, researcher and then there's the term but remember the key is to in the terms that you're on death for me my practice, meditation and a lot of chocolate no meditation, alarm chocolate and completely that's a substitute pisa for meditation. I think it's a complete, equivalent experience

you wanted to sneak in one other one of the questions that you run over the last year, or so I guess you know you started this really cool project. Isolation journals tell me where I came from, and is it it's: it's amazing sort of like creating expanding on what you've done and creating this idea of like when we get interrupted. Maybe this is a really fascinating, creative prime for all of us yeah I mean, if you know the Journalists is very much an extension of my own country, they find journaling practice, but more specifically, a hundred day projects that my family Friends my undertook when I was in treatment and the consequent super simple, which was that, It's going to do a creative act every day and for me my creative act, destroying and as you in the early stages of the stages in the pandemic

to me that so many of those beings of isolation and interaction interruption, things that we were all kind of now living within a global scale, and I thought I wait. To extend this idea of andrew day project to it your audience that, instead of just like telling people to go journal everyday four hundred days, which thought even for me lecture lying. At that time, I decided to invite some friends Ass mine, artists, writers, that EU leaders to offer our words, inspiration and a prompt, and so that community has grown to over a hundred thousand people. It's been a while and beautiful and to me a lesson and how, in times like this, we have the past. Ability of converting Isolation

to a kind of christ, what you do anything: a possibility of collection and community and actually one of our common problems is from little jijiu and whose execution date has been set for dismay. She's, just some other action by. to be able to share his There are two share crops from all kinds of people living all kinds. as realities from me feels like the coming together, like so many aspects of the bark than a curse if the people in power and that had been trying to do after this last decade- yeah, it's a really it's a beautiful project. It feels good.

For us to come full circle as well so sitting here in this container of good life project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up to live a good life to me is to manage a free life. And freedom for me is less that freedom from any sort of outward for says, but freedom from ego, trang expectation from. Consult, impose constraints and hence the freedom to live creatively whatever. That means.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening and thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes and while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself. What should I do with my life, we have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at spark: a type dot com, that's s, p, a r K, e t, Y p e dot com or just click, the link in the shadows and, of course, if you haven't already done so be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app. So you never miss an episode and then share share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode, that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation, because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold, see you next time.