Elyssa Jakim: Letting Go Of AI Robot Writing

AI can produce words in seconds. But what happens to our voices, attention, and creative courage when we hand over the messy, human process of making something true?

In this episode of The Ode to Joy Podcast, Elena Box sits down with longtime friend, creative mentor, non-AI conversion copywriter, book muse, and screenwriter Elyssa Jakim for a conversation about artistry, surrender, motherhood, grief, and creating in the age of “robot writing.”

Elyssa shares why convenience is not the same as creativity, what it has been like to navigate a “void” season in her business, and how hyperachievement can become a survival response. She also reflects on birth trauma, financial insecurity, receiving support, and the death of her father, renowned translator Boris Jakim, whose devotion to language and literature shaped her own creative path.

Together, Elena and Elyssa explore what AI cannot replicate: lived experience, shared history, human witnessing, and the unexpected insight that can spark something entirely new.

Elyssa also shares what she is building now, including the Temple of Venus and her Own Your Artistry Salon for writers and soulful entrepreneurs ready to reclaim their voices and creative process.

This conversation is an invitation to stop outsourcing your expression and return to the beauty, difficulty, and aliveness of making something real.

As Elyssa says, “If we can’t be bad and get better, then we don’t get transcendent human creativity.”

There is nothing like the real thing.

Connect with Elyssa

Learn more about Elyssa’s work:
 https://www.elyssajakim.com/

Explore the Own Your Artistry Salon:
 https://www.elyssajakim.com/own-your-artistry-salon

Follow Elyssa on Instagram:
 https://www.instagram.com/elyssajakim

Read The Dressing Room on Substack:
https://dressingroom.substack.com/

If this conversation resonates, subscribe to The Ode to Joy Podcast, leave a review, and share the episode with a friend who is tired of the AI haze and ready to return to their own creative process.

Transcript

Welcome And Old Friends Reconnect

Elena Box 0:31

Welcome back, dear listener, to another episode of the Ode to Joy podcast. This is your friend, Elena Box, and I have the absolute joy to welcome on my friend Elisa Jakim to the show. Welcome, Alisa. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

It's a delight and honor to be here with you, Elena.

Elena Box 0:54

I'm so happy that you're here. And for our listener who is tuning in, I want you to let them know where are you joining us from?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I am joining from Middle Georgia, a small town. I have an 1830s, 1840s home, Greek revival cottage here. So I'm in a country town, and you might think I'm in the middle of nowhere.

Elena Box 1:23

Oh. And okay. And I'm so excited. Hopefully, one day I get to come see your beautiful home down there because you know I'm an architecture nerd, daughter of architects. And so we love an old home. And so for our listener, I have to give a bit of background. Elisa is also from my hometown on Long Island. We're both born and raised in Port Washington. And actually, it's kind of amazing that we haven't yet dove into a conversation here on the podcast yet. So it's so nice that you're here.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I know. And it's like over the years of creating together so many different things. I feel like we're always in conversation, like we're always in these behind the scenes moments, making of how do we do it? How do we life and woman and create today? So I'm I'm just honored to share this sacred space and sisterhood with others. And yes, Elena and I go way back, and we always say, like when we we always say, Elena was the Gwendolyn to my Cecily and the importance of being earnest in our high school production. I think it was my junior year and your sophomore year. We did many plays together, performed in some serious Brecht pieces, among others, and then we were roommates together in Brooklyn in the 2010s in very magical, iconic time.

Elena Box 3:00

Yes, when Williamsburg was really just on that edge of when Williamsburg was still cool. We knew it was over when the J crew moved in, and then it was all over. But we were there for like the last shining moments of Williamsburg. Yeah. We did her proud. We did, we did, we did. So for our listener who is just meeting you for the first time, we're gonna give them a little bit of background of who is Elisa Jakim. Elisa is a creative mentor for visionaries, non-AI conversion copywriter, a book muse, and mystical Harvard grad. She's here to help you initiate your artistry and own your creative process.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

It's true. It's true. And I didn't put in that mini bio, but I think is resonant for our connection and conversation too. I also am a screenwriter, so I went to UCLA and have a master's in screenwriting. And so a lot of what I teach and share and day in and day out, I write for thought leaders in personal development, the spiritual space, but I'm using a lot of storytelling techniques that come from our shared acting days into film studies and storytelling, and really lately inviting people to be passionate about their writing and creativity, maybe in an old way, like a way that fired or lit you up when you were younger, when you were a teenager, when we were not on so many devices, or just finding ways in so that you can be a spark of beauty and wonder and aliveness for the world.

Elena Box 4:51

I mean, so beautifully said. Yeah. And I always find it so interesting how people similar to us in this vein of coming from a performance background find our way and find our way of also sharing with the world. And so it makes so much sense, of course, that this is the work that you do. And I'm interested, we're gonna dive right into the topic du jour, which is all about the art of letting go. And I'm curious, oh my gosh. When it comes to oh, this is gonna be an interesting question. Okay. So as you mentioned, we're we're in this age of of AI when everybody, everybody in this sister is turning to AI to be this

AI Convenience And Finding Your Voice

Elena Box 5:42

speaker really for themselves, for everybody. And I've loved everything that you've been sharing on social media about sort of like these dead giveaways that it's becoming easier and easier, thank God, to spot sort of when things are not organic. And so I'm really interested from you and your perspective, especially when it comes to inviting people to remember their voice and remember, you know, you mentioned like the younger self who maybe they were just writing in their journal. Or gosh, remember way back when like live journal, when we have these online journals. What comes to mind when you think of our listener who is maybe curious to let go of this crutch of AI and almost like this? It is a tool in so many ways, but I would say my own perspective is perhaps many people are turning to AI to give themselves permission to express what they're really feeling instead of owning their own expression.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yes, completely. And I think that like a lot of tools and technology, we are used to convenience, right? We're sort of become a convenience culture, and we forget that like the difference between 20 seconds after a button clicked and three seconds is 17 seconds, right? It's something that's funny for me is that you know, I was writing day in and day out for clients, and I built a business around writing copywriting. And to me, it's a craft, and I studied it very intensely. Side note, in my writing work, structure was always like the hardest thing. Like I could dig into characters, be other people all day long, but knowing like how to plot a story or how to, you know, make it land in the sort of more like masculine forms of writing were hard for me. And so when I learned copywriting, I really dialed in like these frameworks and structures and templates. Like I became that structure person for myself because it was a challenge. So when AI kind of came onto the scene, I didn't have a need for it. I'm kind of an interesting category because I had been spending sometimes eight hours a day writing for people. So, like ironically, AI in my writing process, I think would have slowed me down because I'm also kind of a spiritual intuitive. And the more I write, the more I just feel like I'm channeling and there's sort of a flow state that happens. And I'm also a mom of a toddler and a business owner. So my time at work is so precious that I never had a desire. It's funny because a lot of people use AI to speed up their process, but for me, I was like, I don't want to learn and integrate another tool. Like, I'm not this, this isn't for me. And so a lot of my kind of like speaking out, which is funny because I'm pretty conflict. If you know me, you know I'm very like peace loving and pretty conflict averse. Um so I don't like like, you know, people are like, you're positioning yourself as an anti in this space, right? But I also joke that writing like makes me fierce, like creative, or my like persona when I'm a writer, when I'm an actor, it brings out a lot of the fire in me. So something I will take a stand for is like really to give you use the word permission, Elena, and it's really to give people permission that they don't have to add this thing into their process just because it's available to them. And it's tricky because the more I like searching for things, I'm a researcher, I like, you know, I've liked Google search, and it's so hard because I feel like I can't use it anymore in a way unless I'm interacting with, you know, with this machine, the data centers are being involved. Like, I, you know, there's so I think to kind of come back to your question without monologuing too much, it's that sort of convenience thing where we kind of want to decide, or for myself, like, can I take a moment to slow down, not go to the fastest route always, but actually like I gain time by coming back to my own process a lot of the time. Or like when you have your creative spark kindled, you're having more fun, you're accessing the flow state, you're accessing creativity. And if you're a writer or creator or an entrepreneur in the space, I firmly believe right now that your voice, when you're not using these tools, really gets to rise above because it's the quality of what how you express. And I have thoughts on voice too, but I'll put it there.

Elena Box 10:51

Well, that is something that I am really curious about, actually. And so we can we can kind of we can begin to get into it. I think what I'm curious about right now when it comes to the art of letting go in terms of copywriting specifically is do you feel that your profession right now is under threat? Do you feel that because so many people who are in the marketing space or, you know,

Copywriting In The Void Year

Elena Box 11:22

because they can quickly just put in a prompt into AI and just say, this is what I want and write it this way and da-da-da-da. Has there been an aspect of letting go for you? Where are you at in that process? Are you in this kind of like in-between moment? Are you, you know, something you you mentioned in in your intake notes was the void. So I'm curious to begin there. What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah, it's such a good question. And it's really like the question because totally. I think that copywriting as a profession, it was funny because I did like an informational chat with someone who was thinking about moving into copywriting. And I was like, oh, this is, I don't want to tell this person that's not the time to enter copywriting. And actually, there are resources, there are ways to make creative professions work for you, but I do think something I'm not seeing on Instagram and the space is like, yes, creative professions are being hit really hard right now. I like to be salty and say, I replace AI and I get hired to, you know, to come in and un-AI copy, but also my business has like really slowed down this year in terms of done for you copy work. And that was has been my main work for years. And people don't wanna don't want to pay as much for copy, they don't value it as much. And I do think that there is a an end of an era, yeah. And I think a lot of this year for me, because also in in transparency, and I will send so much love to my collaborator, Don Petron. We built a, you know, an incredible digital marketing agency together right after I had, right when I had my son, we I had this like more creative birth, and we have a podcast. We're probably we're gonna release our sort of like conscious uncoupling from agency life story. But it was about a year ago that we decided to kind of like untether that work that we built together so strongly. And it's been so interesting because in that shift, I turned to my sort of like regular work, which was copywriting, like hard, right? I booked whatever projects I could, I wanted to bring in the security. But I would say four or five months ago, I have like one amazing client who's not into AI. Shout out, you know who you are. And and it I feel like so with the void, and this is vulnerable to share, I feel like there's been a wall in my work and my business has just been like, no, no, no. And it's so interesting and uncomfortable because at the same time, I could feel that as I was booking out copy projects, that I've kind of I've graduated from being this sort of high-level executor in my work, like do like doing, and I know that I'm being called to, you know, to use the word a pivot or to more mastery, more leadership, holding space for people in different ways that are more aligned and also scare me because there's less of a sense of security in it. But it's so funny because in the last few years, I was writing in our agency, we would joke, people came to us when they were in a moment where they wanted to burn it all down, right? Like people came to us when they were like, I'm known for this. It's not lighting me up anymore. This is what's lighting me up now. Is it a smart business move or is it a smart move to like go all in on my pivot? Right. And I've been lately talking to so many people who are in this liminal space, this void space. And for me, it's hit me really hard. It's come to me in the place I probably have the most shadow around, which is like financial security. And, you know, I inwardly I kind of talked to God about this the other day. And God was like, I stopped you because you were not gonna slow down if your business didn't slow down. Like you don't take vacations, woman, you don't take a break, you've worked over holidays for the last several years. And so I guess, Lena, in full transparency, I'm sharing a bit of the sort of the shadow side of like the successful monpreneur, you know, like successful six-figure mompreneur. It's like it is very easy if you're a high-level service provider, to burn yourself out, ignore your cues. And in a way, I feel like I've been in a season of forced surrender very hard since February. And we're recording this in July now. But it's also been one of the most freeing and I know foundational periods for like what's coming next. It's like a very uncomfortable chopping wood and carrying water of showing up and believing in the unseen every day.

Elena Box 16:50

Woohoo! So thank you for all of that. There was so much beauty in everything you just shared, and so much is sparking within me as I receive this. What comes to mind when you talk about surrender is birth. And as you're birthing this new version, this pivot, and something that you mentioned also when you know, when we talk about birth and business and and all of these like connections, I'm curious how

Motherhood Birth Trauma And Surrender

Elena Box 17:21

much of your birth experience, and like that could be a whole other episode in and of itself. But for, you know, for the mompreneurs listening or just moms in general, what can you tell us about how that experience has informed where you are now and and that process of surrender, how is that helping and sort of informing what you're birthing now?

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Oh, it's such a good question. And in a lot of ways, I feel like the slow that I'm in right now is an unpacking of my birth from so my son will be four in September. And I feel like there's this unwinding of like, in some ways, birth trauma that happened, I would say. Like, and my response of like, I'm gonna have it all together, be okay, no matter, you know, like my son had a complicated and difficult birth. He was in the NICU for two weeks. And so during those two weeks, what did I do? I went back to work, you know, like I busied myself, and then I built a you know, multi-six-figure digital marketing agency with a baby on my hip nursing, right? Like at home with me. And so I know that sort of hyperachievement and doing is a survival, is a bit of a survival instinct and mechanism for me. And I see and I witness a lot of women, and I actually I write for a lot of women who work in like nervous system regulation, embodiment, or or who talk about this period of life when you become a mother and you're in a lot of our conditioning and programming invites us to want to fix things in our lives and do, and we're caretaking and fix, and there there can be an invitation into rigidity that happens there. And I feel like I really lived that experience, and so much of the untethering and the surrendering that's happening now is to be like a deep exhale, I would say, of my of my birth experience. And it's so funny and interesting because I'm holding space for an incredible woman who I do leadership coaching, and sometimes I I have the privilege or honor of working with women who are pregnant, and I was giving like some consultation about receiving the support around you while you're pregnant and this sort of invisible support that comes. And and I recognized for myself that during my pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, I think it was sort of like the post-COVID isolationist feeling. It was so hard for me to accept or ask for or recruit support. And it's funny because I like, you know, created more wealth and I created more debt at the same time, right? It sort of like evened out. And I feel like a lot of the shadow work and shadow hunting I've been asked to do in the last few years has been around like the shiny exterior. I work in marketing, right? The shiny exterior and the real challenge of momming, womaning, lifing, career today. And of course, I write for thought leaders kind of in this space. I always feel like art mirrors life, but now I've been in a season with sort of a slower business, et cetera, where I'm like doing the vulnerable work of letting people in, telling people I need them, it's gonna make me cry, like telling people I need support, not choosing to be a lone wolf anymore. And my note to this woman who is who is pregnant, or to women who are pregnant right now is like there is an invisible support, right? We don't have a village, but we do, and it's going to show up for you. So like don't let yourself be stressed about how you're gonna pay for the one in one instance, how you're gonna pay for the birth, or how are you gonna pay for parenting, right? The entire time. Like that was one of mine. And it's funny because a lot of my unwinding of birth has had to do with financial stability. And side note, I think like a lot of our sort of lineage level stuff kicks up when we become parents. So like it wasn't as present until I became a mom that this was really something for me to integrate, be with, and work with. And I will pause my monologue in one second, Alana. No, I love it. I just have a million questions.

Elena Box 22:06

I'm just like writing them down. Continue, please.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

It's almost comical to the extent where like I paid off a we paid off a big chunk of debt, we moved, had a car fire, all of our possessions were destroyed, and then like the debt just came back. So, and but what was crazy was that speaking of lineage level work, I did a family constellation around this. And my grandfather's family, I have a very crazy family background, their house was burned down during the Russian Revolution. They were like, you know, aristocrats. It wasn't exactly a hundred years before, but who knows if it was some form of an anniversary or something, right? So, like, just this sort of like, I have I'm recognizing that I'm being invited to resolve scarcity patterns on behalf of my lineage, especially as a mother. And it's been some of the most uncomfortable work of this lifetime, but it's really deep. And when I think about it, it's so, it's like very satisfying as well as being very challenging. The art of letting go.

Elena Box 23:20

It's the art of letting go on the O to Joy podcast. What a joy it is to confront all of these ancestral, wow, stories as well. And actually, you already started answering my next question, which was really to talk about your ancestors. And that was something that I was actually really curious about as you were speaking earlier. And one of the threads that I would like to pull, pull on,

Grief Ancestry And Scarcity Patterns

Elena Box 23:51

call upon with your permission, really, is to call in your father Boris, who passed soon after. I think Theo was 17 months or so when he passed. Yeah, exactly. And I'd love to hear you speak a bit about him and how perhaps he is coming through now as this ancestor and his work and how letting go of him has informed this next chapter of your life and and and and is it? And in what ways, please, I would love to hear if you feel if you feel open to sharing.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Oh, thank you so much. I'll try. Well, I won't say I'll try not to cry, but you can cry all you want.

Elena Box 24:40

And I will say this, Elisa. One of the things I love so much about you is your vulnerability and your ability to tap into the well of emotion and tears is your superpower. So please know that as we receive your story. And I know our listener is also here hearing you as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Thank you. I always tell people, like, I'm a crier.

Elena Box 25:03

Watch out.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I've got Scorpio rising. I got Scorpio rising and Scorpio moon. So there's like a lot of water right there. So thank you for that permission. And yeah, so my father, you know, it's so interesting. That's the missing piece. Like a lot of this excavation about wealth, family, finances, all of this intersected especially with my father's passing. And I think part of me thinks, you know, that's sort of the masculine or my dad kind of being internalized by me. Like I'm take going to take care of certain threads now. And I also think that some of the outward dramatic things that have happened have been me like a little bit running from my externalized like of my grief process. Like when you're a new parent and you lose a parent, I don't think, or for me, like I didn't really perhaps like take a moment to like be with the passage. I kind of came back to that familiar pattern of like more doing and making and creating. So to slow it down a little bit and take a breath. Yes, my father, his name is Boris Joaquim. He is, was Russian. His my family's Russian on on both sides, really. I'm Russian Orthodox Christian on my dad's side and Jewish on my mom's. And she, and there's like they're Belarus, I guess, my mom's family, uh contemporarily. But my dad was an I like to say he was an eminent translator of Russian literature and theology into English. So he made a lot of Soviet dissidents works available in English for the first time. He was one of the most brilliant, well-read people I've ever met, one of the best storytellers you would ever meet. He studied Gene Shepard, the radio host. Like when he was growing up, when he was a kid, he used to listen to Gene Shepard on the radio. And he told me he like taught himself to tell stories like Gene Shepherd. He was just a brilliant, kind, like warm-hearted human. And I, yeah, I I love Boris so much. There's like, I don't know, Elena, if you want to say anything, but there is like nobody like this gentleman.

Elena Box 27:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I think you're doing a great job.

Elena Box 27:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

He would like, he was so kind of unassuming, like beautiful Russian man. He died in his 70s, but he still had his like perfect head of long brown hair. He had Parkinson's in the later years of his life. And you know, his background was really interesting. He was born in a refugee camp. So his parents escaped Soviet, like Stalin's Russia. He was born in 1949, a few years after World War II. His family was pretending to be Polish in a US camp in Germany. And when he was two, they were sent to the US. So I think about my son who's almost four, and I'm like, he spent the first two years of his life in a refugee camp. And, you know, he had Parkinson's later in life. And they say actually, sometimes if people are into German new medicine, that Parkinson's like can be related. This is not anything medical, but that there's a sense of like having a double life or being an immigrant. There's some just interesting energetic there. And so yeah, he was very inspired by his mother, my grandmother, who was this incredible Russian woman who they lived in Queens in Whitestone. And they had, speaking of historic homes, they had a home from like the late 19th century in Queens with this really big backyard in Whitestone, Queens. And she was an incredible gardener. She had an amazing green thumb, and she would like grow trees from the like a peach pit, like a peach pit to peach trees. And she had raspberries and gooseberries and would make incredible jam. And she loved God. She was so spiritual. She loved Jesus. She had visions of Jesus. And she was like, in some ways, so devotional as like as a lover of God that I think my father and his family didn't understand fully that level of devotion and like probably mysticism that I kind of share, mystical bent. And I think that my father, a lot of his scholarship around theology and mystical thought and texts, had to do with like wanting to understand his mother's direct experience of the divine. And yeah, when he passed, I was working on a book project. I was co-writing my first book on behalf of an incredible writer. And I was working on that project. I was like three or four weeks from our final deadline for the book draft. And when he passed, the woman I was writing with sent me this beautiful bouquet of hibiscus and pink and purple flowers. It was one of the most beautiful flower bouquets I've ever seen in my life. And the funny thing was that my father had an experience in the hospital 10 years earlier where he almost died and he was critical. And he said that he saw himself being rebirthed through a pink flower. And then the day he left, I was getting acting, I got an acupuncture appointment and had like, we had no idea. It was a total surprise that he was leaving that day. And I had these like dream visions. I knew he was in the hospital. I knew it was sort of like something was going on, but I felt this wild transmission. We went to an antique store, and there were Matroshka dolls at the antique store, which was always a sort of like Easter egg from my grandmother and my father. And so I got a Matroshka on the day that he left. The flowers came the next day. Ironically, we had just bought an old Land Rover to replace a different car that got totaled in another car. I've had a very weird few years, Lena. The Land Rover. I got a call that my father passed at one or two in the morning. The Land Rover car shipping arrived at four in the morning. Like my father wanted to make sure, like he wanted to give a gift with the passage. Like, here you go, here's your vehicle, here are your flowers. But the thing I really wanted to say was I really felt him passing the baton with books and writing in that in his passing. He published over 36 books. He worked on so many in the humblest way. It was never about him as he was translating. It was never about him as the brilliant translator. He didn't, you know, he didn't live in the age where we have to be thought leaders around our creation. I'm an Aries, so I kind of like zen with and I write for thought, you know, thought leaders. But I really felt him passing me that baton. And it was wild because in the last, you know, six months of surrendering of one element of my business, the sort of like writer for people, which AI can, you know, is doing more and more these days. It's like becoming a writer for the people, like teaching people, like all of the things that my father like invited me and my brother and our family to care about growing up. We had stacks of books in our house. There was never a dull reading moment. There were recitations of poetry, there was always a classic film on the television. And I really feel like he has given me a lot of like new life in the mission to help people feel like beauty, I would say, in a world that is like rapidly trying to erase texture and beauty.

Elena Box 34:01

Wow. Yeah. You put words so beautifully to everything that I have been so curious to hear about from you. And just to reflect to our dear listener, your entire family are some of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life. Every single one of you is a scholar, and every single one of you is like an encyclopedia in human form. You could sit down with literally any one of you and ha have a question about, you know, anything that's sort of like within your realm of expertise, and you all share so much expertise in in very specific areas, and you would leave learning more than you more, and then here's the thing like you would leave with a more embodied knowledge. And I think, you know, what we're kind of getting at here is yes, you can do a Google, and Google will call upon all of these sources and it'll give you an answer. But how much are you actually really absorbing that answer? And I think that's where written word is so important, where storytelling is so important, where you know, reciting poetry out loud amongst people is so important. And something that keeps coming to mind as I think about you and your your whole family and what I love so much about you all. We haven't even started talking about your mom yet. I mean, it's like amazing. Is you all have such good brains. Like you guys have the good brains. And and it's something that, you know, as you mentioned right now, we're living in this world where everything that was suddenly so rich and had so much depth, and there were peaks and valleys and mountains, and people's minds were kind of coming into this place where everything is beige. Yes, paint your house beige, you'll be happy, and everything is just losing this dimension. And the thing I love most about you is you have this ability to have a good brain noodle. And I know our listener knows this feeling, and that is when you're either deep in your own thought or you have a conversation with someone, and you are my favorite co-brain noodler because it's when you still are not sure about how you feel about something, or you're you're kind of chewing on an idea, a thought, a creative idea, a vision, any of these things that you're wanting to understand more, that yes, could you go to your little chat gippity and go, oh, I had this thought. What do you think? And you know, it'll give you an answer. But what are you missing in that process? Like, what are you missing in having that dialogue with another human being who has real human memories and stories and experiences that will, if you have that actual conversation, will help inform what you are creating. And so I'm I think where I am now is as we're speaking, you know, something that I'm thinking about is when I wrote my book, you were one of the people who really helped birth and shepherd that process. And this was, it's so funny because this is only a few years ago now, but this was pre-AI. Yeah, I'm like the book came out in 2022, but this was pre-AI. And every single word that was written that is on those pages was written by hand. Not, I mean, you know, typed, typed, some written down, but like, and so much of that experience was noodling through it with you. And I think it's so important to have another person, another, a witness, a real human witness, especially when it comes to putting words to paper, putting, putting, putting something creative out there. And so I'm curious for you if if we could lead into where you're at now and what you're feeling so excited about sharing with the world and how all of this is leading into like this next chapter of your life and what you're creating.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

Thank you so much, Elena. I love the brain noodle. And it really makes me think, you know, the thing that that AI can't do, whether it's like you're a coach or a healer, a therapist, a writer, a mentor, well, it can't see, like you said, it can't see someone in their totality. It can't bring our 20-something years of history with each other into the equation. I mean, it could pull up data points, right?

Building The Temple Of Venus

SPEAKER_00 38:52

But you know, I think it can't bring like a left, totally left field answer that could light create like a light bulb or a fire start for someone. And I think that that's part of what most lights me up right now. So yeah, I will I will answer that. And what what what you made me think of was too like, I think the point of like a great education, and that's not even a school kind of education or develop a brain. It's sort of like my dad, the translator, right? And shout out to my mom, who is a retired English professor, Shakespeare scholar, PhD, the pillar of grammar in all of our lives, and just an incredible, beautiful, elegant mind. Shout out to Dr. Lori Magnus. What is like, it's not so much about like, I have these poems memorized, or I know this, or I can recall information, but it's like each of those moments we did something beautifully creative, a gesture that maybe we would have called frivolous or not that important at the time. Oh, I was 13 and I wrote a little poem in my notebook or something. Those pieces of beauty, like to me, it's like that's the stuff. Like that's the stuff we want to mine and come back to and feel like those things we actually thought were throwaway are like the fabric of who we are as creators, as makers, as people who can have interesting conversations, as contributors to this, you know, the collective. So it's less about like recall and information, and it's more about like who we personally are as synth synthesists of the field. So what am I doing now? You know, it's where is it going? Um, a big part of the pivot. I feel like there's there's sort of two strands, and I am a manifesting generator. I've always got like a bajillion, a bajillion strands. But I think a lot of this year for me has come into figuring out my own like storytelling, my own brand, my own voice. I think, you know, from being the sort of high-level service provider who's written for everybody else, like what are the things that make me as a writer, as a maker, as an entrepreneur, as a being, like, what are my through threads? What's the connective tissue? And so there's a few different sparks that have come up. And one of the big ones is, you know, and I re-record this and I'm like, two weeks from now, it'll be something. No, it's I it's getting it's getting there. My lovely friend Bess, who's an astrologer, shout out, and another book muse was like, you are literally in a void year. Like we're probably all in a void right now. I think the personal development industry is equally in a void place, and places people relied on for income are not steady anymore. Like a lot of people are in that creative pivot that does, to me, have a lot to do with AI and a lack of trust. So I, but I have now launched, I'll just say, yeah, I've been doing more of creating my own content, putting my own voice out there, like being supportive to people as a mentor, a guide for their writing process, for their book projects. I still do primarily email work for brands and launches. Like I'm an email mage, so you know, that's one of the ways I support. But I've been doing like a personal brand voice strategy exploration and kind of finally getting to the through threads of like, okay, I talk about like creativity, no AI, coming writing, coming back into our creative process, having ownership around storytelling, feeling lit up about our work, working and kind of sacred and spiritual entrepreneurship in a way that actually is aligned with our values, our your spiritual practice, your lifestyle, and your pivot, like where you are right now. So, one of the ways I'm doing it this in the main way is I have a digital vault, a digital temple of prayers and meditations, um, which I called the Temple of Venus, which is a shout out to a project that I had from the apartment Elena and I lived in 10 plus years ago. And that's a place for soulful creative types, slash ambitious people who are want to put something strong out there right now to come into and dig into their process. So I've used prayer, Yogananda's healing prayer as a cornerstone of how I create for myself, for other people's brands. So the temple space is a place where you can come in, kind of get practices, meditations, and tools before you go to do anything in your divine doing and dharma. And then with that, I have an accompanying Own Your Artistry salon, which is my course about just all things creative process, storytelling, permission setting, and writing. So yeah, that is one of the first creations from the void. Voice, and I'm talking more about like how to dig into your creative muse. People tell me they see a book empire coming through me. Like how I see it. I know it's like that's the big one, but in my void time, I'm like, okay, we're inching toward, you know, my book empire, new imprint and you know, alternative new paradigm hay house, where I help thought leaders write their books, and then we turn them into films, and it's just got all the Capricorn in my chart going with the Empire, and we're moving toward that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, big, a big one to claim, and it's happening.

Elena Box 45:13

And it's it's I mean, it's a big one to claim, but like it feels so aligned and so like, of course, of course, this is where it's all going. And we have to remember Rome wasn't built in a day. Slow and easy wins the race. And, you know, even before we began recording this episode, that and without, you know, Elisa and I haven't gotten to chat in a while. I've been in deep mothering mode. And even just getting this hour to chat, you know, means child care, means, you know, putting out a million fires so that we can even sit down. And before even starting the recording, that's what I was feeling coming from you is exactly what you just shared. And what is now I'm getting, I don't know if you heard the little bing bing. That's the like, I forgot to go on do not disturb. And it's the childcare coming through, going, hey, it's time. But it was this, this, this book empire coming through. And and what I'm feeling right now is people are starting to get really sick and tired of the AI voice. They're getting, they're feeling this dissonance that happens when they, I'm losing the word that I want to use, but but when they give away their power to the AI to make these creative sort of decisions for them. And they're missing the noodling of the brain. They're missing the putting pen to paper. And, you know, what comes to mind is I always, anytime I'm kind of like noodling on a new project, I bring to mind sort of like the patron saint. Maybe she's not, but for me, for me, I call upon Joan Didion and I think about now, I I am no Joan Didion. And the, but the way that she sort of puts together sentences and so much of it took so much care and carefully curating every single sentence and how much noodling that took, too. And how she would, you know, give her pages to her husband and they would noodle on it together with you know, cigarettes and a Coca-Cola, you know, and that's something that I think people are missing and they will be coming back to slowly but surely. Event everybody's gonna come crawling back. And I think what it comes down to also is we cannot let AI tell our very human stories. We can't. You could, but you notice in your bones the feeling of dissonance that comes through when you see the AI image. When you what's driving me nuts lately is there are all of these accounts of these fake AI elders giving this elder advice, and it's good advice, but what's wild to me is that people aren't realizing that it's AI and everyone's in the comments like, wow, you're so deep, you're so thoughtful, da-da-da. Like, why are we giving away this very important, you know, part of our culture, which is elders' advice? Like, why are we getting that from AI? But to me, I see it and everything in me says, nope, this ain't it. And so when I think about people and our human experience, I really believe every single person has a book within them. I do. I really do. I I have hopefully more books in me. And so much of it is also just giving yourself that permission to write it out. And I realized very early on I was never gonna be a Joan Didian. And so why try? I'm just gonna be me. And I think that's what we need more of right now is letting your own weird out, letting your very, very specific voice be heard in a way that is, you know, authentic to only you. And that putting running it through this filter of AI isn't gonna get you anywhere. And so that's what I think I'm very, very excited to see for you in this next chapter of your life is how you can sort of like call people back, come back home, come back home, remember what this is, remember what it is to have another person to noodle your ideas with. And I think it's coming and it might take a bit, as we said. It might take a moment, but it's it's an important aspect of literally how humans have been operating for a very, very long time, very long time since people have been putting pen to paper, a papyrus. Yeah. So I'm very, very excited that that's coming through for you.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Thank you, Elena. Thanks for seeing and confirming. Yeah, it's like chief of the creative resistance, you know? That's that's what's next for me. And building it, this came to me the other day. Build it with kindness, like build it with self-kindness. I know what it's like to build something from nervous system activation. And a lot of like what I've been kind of called into now is back to like, I think what happens when we surrender, when we let go, when we make space is we can like have a blank enough canvas to dream, right? So it's like now it's an invitation to dreaming, to baby steps, to playing with putting my voice out there in ways that they're not exactly a stretch for me, but it's just like I have to offer, I have to give myself creative clarity before I can offer that to others. And so one way we do that is through experimenting, expressing, putting stuff out there, feeling how uncomfortable that is, being, you know, like learning our process. So yeah, thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks, Boris, for that gift of I joke like my parents, like the Shakespeare scholar and the Russian translator, like I was born to, I was born to do this, literally. I was born to like take a stand against robot writing. So that we can have also more fun and pleasure in our creative process. Like, I don't want that taken from us. And the fact that writing is hard or creating or mastering of art is hard is like part of the beauty of when something clicks. It's all it's like transcendent, right? And if we can't be bad and get better, then we don't get transcendent human creativity. And to me, there's nothing like the real thing.

Elena Box 51:45

Yeah, there's nothing like the real thing, baby. So beautifully said, my friend. And as always, there's so many avenues that we can continue to go down. And in the interest of wrapping up, also because I know my small little chicken child is ready for her nap and I need to go back into mothering mode. Can you please let our listener know how they can find you? How can they work with you? And are there any other sort of like important offerings that you want to

Where To Find Elisa

Elena Box 52:16

let them know about?

SPEAKER_00 52:17

Thank you, Elena. You can find me on the Instagram at my namealisa Joaquim. That's where you can find this new Temple of Venus vault for your creative process and the own your artistry salon. So that will be, I'll send it to you if you want to put in the show notes. And then if you're curious about kind of going deeper in one-to-one creative mentorship, support for your writing, for your stewardship projects, for your business, for your leadership, I do that too. So just send me a DM and I can help assess how to best support you in your initiatory process.

Elena Box 52:57

Beautiful. And so, dear listener, all of these resources, ways to connect with Elisa will be in the show notes. And I highly recommend even just to receive her wonderful transmissions on the Instagrams that are inspirational and a major call out sometimes in the best way.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

You'll meet my salty self on there. We need it. I've got a substack too. She's a little bit under construction, which is okay. But go go find her, she's gonna be very interesting in the future.

Elena Box 53:29

This is what we like. All right, my friend. Thank you so much for joining. And it is as it's been such a pleasure to catch up with you and to share more of your voice with our listener. I know that they enjoyed it just as much as I have. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:45

Thank you so much, Elena. I loved this conversation. Same. Same.

Elena Box 53:52

All right. Well, with that, our dear listener, this has been another episode of the Own to Joy podcast.