Welcome to Virtual Expat, where we investigate the interplay between living overseas and living online. What happens to our online presence, our online persona when we change countries? Does anything happen? Does one support the other? Does one conflict with the other? I don't know. But I wanted to find out, so I'm going to interview a lot of expats in order to get to the heart of this question. Is there interplay between our online selves and our geographically varied selves? I did want to give a special shout out to Damon Castillo, who graciously offered his Mess of Me album track for the Virtual Expat Podcast. It is my extreme pleasure to welcome Joe to the show today. Jo is a fashion professional who has been in Shanghai for over a decade and has basically built her adult life here. And her experiences both on and offline are interesting and inspiring and very conscious, methodical, and mature. And I mean that in the most respectful of ways. Had my conversation with Jo. I really sat down with the questions that I asked her and I thought about the things that we talked about and I reworked the question. She was my first interview for the change in the podcast or the magnification of the podcast prior to this episode for the previous 60 episodes. The podcast just kind of kept building and building and building upon itself. And there are good things that came out of that. The Expat Rewind podcast is one of those. Please feel free to check that out. But the other thing that came from it was that I kept bringing up the online part of our expat existence, and that's where Virtual Expat is going to go from here on out. And Joe definitely helped me see the way and what I was trying to get at and what might be some of the questions I wasn't asking and all kinds of insight that I had not anticipated before meeting her. So thank you, Jo. You have really, really helped me form this podcast into something I didn't even realize it could be. Without further ado, let's get into the conversation that I had with Jo. Thank you for coming today. I'm really excited to do this. So do you want to do a brief introduction? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So thank you. I am so grateful to be part of this. So my name is Joanne Shikovna, and I have lived in Shanghai for 10 years now. And I first came over for six months. I've been working in the fashion industry all that time. And have now got to a point where I've kind of started some independent crashing projects, one of which is life in breath. I met my husband here and I have a son and about to have a daughter. So I feel like my life has my adult life has kind of happened in Shanghai.
SPEAKER_04It sounds like it has. Now do you go by Jo or Joanna or either of both? Uh Joe. Jo, okay, cool. Can you briefly give us a timeline of your overseasness? Where have you lived overseas for how long? That kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03I've always lived in Shanghai. I'm slightly embarrassed to say I probably always lived in the one square mile of Shanghai. Um and basically I before that I lived in London. So I'd always known I wanted to work in fashion. Originally from Manchester in the north of the UK, and then had moved to London, and my boss said, Do you want to go to Shanghai for six months? Because I had decided to take a night school course in Mandarin just as something to do. And then I went for six months and I loved it just mainly because I felt very connected to what I did. I didn't want to sit in an office in London in a different time zone negotiating to somebody faceless about a price. I wanted to really understand how my industry worked. So I came over for six months and I was like, this is my place. You know, I can like be here and I can learn so much. And it was like really so exciting for me, especially back then, because it was such a more of an undiscovered place, and the personality of the people who came here was very dynamic. So yeah, and then I stayed, and now we're ten years on. And I stayed with my first job for five years, and then now I do something similar for a very big clothing retailer. Yeah, it's been a good journey. Very cool, very cool.
SPEAKER_04Before you came to Shine High, where did you exist online? Like where did you post stuff?
SPEAKER_03What did you do online? Facebook. So probably ten years ago there was only Facebook, I guess. Um there was some things like MySpace or those types of things, but Facebook was my kind of only go-to, and I probably had more of a presence there. So when I first came, Facebook was kind of just about to be blocked, and I kind of went through that and was kind of like, oh, my social media is really changing, and that became a little bit difficult because the way I would keep in contact with friends or family had to change. But yeah, just Facebook mainly. Okay. How long was it after you arrived before it was banned? About three months. Three months, okay. I needed to keep in touch, and then I also wanted to share my experiences a lot because when I went back to the UK, I found not that people were ignorant, but they were very stuck in a way of oh China, it must be like this, and it felt very outdated and very uninformed because life here was so exciting, and we were doing so much, you know, they had a very dark ages approach, and I really wanted to show that actually, wow, this life I was leading was amazing, and I was getting all these opportunities and experiences that I would never have got in the UK.
SPEAKER_04Do you think people had a lack of knowledge about China or about living overseas or both?
SPEAKER_03About China, I would say. Yeah, because I think ten years ago people had a certain view of China and its development that was very outdated unless you had been here. You know, I think that at the time China was undergoing such a radical transformation for the positive, and actually that's never really reported in the right way in the UK or in global media. So they were just kind of saying, Oh, you know, like you must have to eat this, or you like you never be able to do that, and actually it wasn't true. So I really wanted to find some way to share that. And I'd started to do small projects like blogs because I was very interested in this, but I was very untechnical. So I started a few things like you know, Shanghai Lady in the City or Shanghai Secret Shopper, or these types of things related around what I was doing as my day job, but also my experiences in China. But I found that I didn't really have the momentum to continue them. How long did you do them for? Uh probably about six months. That's a pretty long time in the blogosphere. Yeah, but I would say they were quite infrequent and they were mainly linked around a business idea, so like you know, secret shopping tours or discovering something uh new in Shanghai, that type of thing.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Is your audience then like somebody coming in as a traveller or as somebody moving here?
SPEAKER_03Probably somebody coming in as a traveller. I think I just felt there was so much potential to do something here, and I needed to catch the crest of that wave. And I probably didn't do it because my language skills were not as strong as I wanted them to be. And I felt a little unsure about starting a business here when I had a really good job. You know, it's not something that I had to necessarily do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I think I didn't necessarily do it for the passion of doing it, I did it because of it should become something else. Why should it become something else? I think here there is a a feeling, and more so now than back then, that you can achieve anything here. So if you want to start your own company, you can do. Especially back then, there weren't so many people who you know spoke English. Uh, could you know in my job I would bring buying teams here and I would show them around and I would show them all these shops and stuff, and they were like, This is amazing, it's better from Hong, better than Hong Kong. And I felt there was potential there to make that into something that could earn a profit. And I think that was the not the downfall, but a reason why there was a pressure and it didn't become something that was made out of love, it became oh well, it should be something bigger.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there's an itch in the market, I should feel it, that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. It's really funny that you mentioned the opportunity, and I heard also heard competition because I kind of feel that in Shanghai. Yeah, but not as strong as the locals that I meet on how they feel the competition. I think they feel it stronger. I listened to a ridiculous amount of podcasts, and and there's a new one from Mike Shaw called Migratory Patterns, and it's really interesting because he interviewed a Chinese woman who lived in the US for about 10 years or so, and I'm gonna get that slightly wrong, and then she came back to China and she was talking about how much opportunity there was in the US compared to China for her, and he was talking about how much opportunity there was, he's an American, how much opportunity there is in China compared to the US, and they were both like so it's always the other, it seems to be the other place that has more opportunities for us than our own.
SPEAKER_03Which is interesting. I wonder whether that is true or whether it's just our thought process and mindset, right? You know, I wonder if I'm moving to the UK, my current project, I really feel I would continue. Like Shanghai gave me the passion and momentum to start it, but I think if you really believe in something, you can make it succeed anywhere. But you maybe see opportunities in a new country because you're seeing everything new for the first time.
SPEAKER_04I agree, I agree. For me, I think I could I could continue them creatively, but time-wise, I think I'd be pressured because in the US right now our job market is getting so crazy. The the little vacation time we had is going away, the medical system is getting worse, like there's all these things that are getting worse, and so I'd have less time to be able to work on them, and that's a huge factor for me here as I get to work a little, make enough, and do a lot of my own thing. And that doesn't really exist in the US unless you're rich.
SPEAKER_03I would totally agree because also I think here you have the convenience of almost everything you can get takeaway to your door, you can get a driver to your door for such a small amount of money compared to in a western country, so you're not having a long commute, you're not waiting on a taxi. So, yeah, I definitely agree. But I I hope that I will carve out some time, but let's see.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so so far we have you kept going with Facebook when you came to Shanghai, then you had some blog. Were you posting anywhere else, like Instagram or no?
SPEAKER_03I'm still quite new to Instagram. You know, I I wish I was better at it. And I kind of fell off Facebook. Mainly, I guess I didn't want to share so much. I would start then just to do, you know, his six months of pictures at one time. Mainly because things took so long to upload. Yeah. But I kind of fell a little bit off the social media wagon, and I potentially that's because WeChat came on board and it became much more focused around uh social media in this country and locally. You definitely have a website now, Life in Breath. Was that the next yeah? I experimented a little bit with Twitter. See, I tend to go in very enthusiastic about these things and be like, I'm gonna do my Twitter profile and not really understand how to work any of them. And I feel like I'm such a big technophobe, which has probably stopped me doing anything to a certain level online. And it's probably only because I approached this in a very different way that I've succeeded in doing it, because there was probably three to four months where I didn't do anything because I didn't ask for help, I didn't reach out and say, I don't know what how to do this. So, yeah, there was a time where it was just a little bit of a desert, and probably that was because I was having such a good time here. Yeah, I was very focused on Shanghai being my home, and you know, we talked briefly before a little bit about you know, I came here for six months and then I decided I would stay, and I stayed with the intention to make this my home. I had a lot of friends who kind of came for the experience and left, and I said that I have to change my mindset and my thinking to adapt to my new country because this is where I'm gonna stay. And I think sometimes you don't write about what it's like at home. Home is your your normal, your everyday, so it doesn't become the novelty. Yeah, and I think that's what happened uh probably after the first year that was like this is where I'm gonna be. I don't need to share that experience because the people around me know that experience. But potentially I became a little disconnected to back home, but it helped me settle by not pointing out the differences.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, I get that, and that's a really good point is that that balance between online and offline. You don't want to be well, you can be so offline that you're enjoying just the online. Wait, no, I think I said that backwards. Like it's it it feels natural to be just offline and to enjoy where you are, but if you're just online and not enjoying where you are at all, that seems off kilter. And if there's some sort of balance between the two, that seems okay too, but yeah. Um it seems natural to want to plug into where you are physically, not just electronically.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I think very much felt like I was in the right place, so I didn't feel I needed to look for something else online. And I think that was a great thing. And I met such interesting people here that I would never have really connected to back home. So my life was very much based around you know having a good time here. And then I would, you know, when I would go back home, I it would be for visits and I would catch up with people face to face.
SPEAKER_04So when you were doing the blogs, were you looking to inform people, or were you also looking for people to connect to during kind of maybe a culture shock state when you first moved to?
SPEAKER_03I was kind of looking for people to inform, you know, to kind of say, I'm a fashion professional out here. If you come, I can help support you. I think that was more the intention with the early projects. I think with the culture shock, I just kind of surfed the wave a little bit because I think I came with the intention I'm not going back to the UK. Right, you were in it from the long haul. Yeah, uh, you know, I'd um spurt with a partner, I'd come here, and I was like, this has to work. There is no like going back to a nice little shop or place in the UK, and yes, that could have been an option, but it was very much a mindset choice. So I just rolled with the culture shock, and I had a couple of friends who were like, Oh my goodness, like I have this issue at work, and uh you know, the culture difference really added to that, and my view was I have to change myself to fit in with the new country. People aren't gonna change their point of view, and why should they? And I think that really helped. And whenever I've had times where I've struggled here, it's because I thought, well, my view is the right one actually, it's not, you know, and I think that's also informed a lot of my approach in what I'm doing now, because my project now is much more around connecting people, regardless of where you're from. We're all human. So I think that's been an interesting journey for me as well. That I would never have got to that level of understanding had I not moved away.
SPEAKER_04Wow, okay, so it's it sounds like Shanghai kind of brought that out of your.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think I was living, not it sounds quite sad to say I was living a half-life. I would I wasn't, but I hadn't grown emotionally or into an adult until I moved to Shanghai. Because you have to, you know, you meet people and you're like, oh my goodness, you speak English. And I would chase people down the street if they spoke English, because you know, I couldn't read a menu, there was nobody else who spoke my language, and then you become friends with people that you would never ever interact with in the UK. And you sometimes have to filter yourself and kind of say, Okay, well, where's the point of connection? Rather than potentially in your home country, you might be like, Oh, we're slightly different. So I think that's been a very uh good thing for me. I wonder how I will cope going back to the UK, whether I will see certain attitudes reappear.
SPEAKER_04Re-entry is hard. We tried it twice since I I think what do I when did I leave? Leave. I don't think I count my backpacking as having left because it was only a few months at a time, and then I come back for a few months and go back and forth. So let's count when I first moved for a longer stretch since 2003, and um both times I've tried to re-enter and re-establish back in the US, it's just been like the UK could very well be very different, but it was it's very difficult to leave a lot of the things that you've learned and seen and experienced and accept just what's there. Yeah, do you know what I mean? That that variety of people, that variety of mindsets, the tolerance for differences is often not always there, even in cities in the West. And sorry, San Francisco, but it's true.
SPEAKER_03I totally agree, and I would say that's when I'm on social media and I pick up with that type of an attitude, it does shock me and it does make me think, okay, potentially this is why I haven't been on social media for a while, because I really enjoyed having such a wide network of friends, and those have all moved on now. Yeah, um, but it definitely grew me as a person.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I have even like the people that I was that I went to university with, but that was prees, do we even have email? Yeah, I think we just started to get like hot mail, but we didn't have any social media yet. So I've I've lost a lot of people there because I I could go look them up and track them down, but I'm like, ah, okay, whatever. The people that I kept in contact with, I did, and the people that didn't, it's fine. I don't need to be a social media friend only. But the the people that I was on social media with at the beginning, a lot of them have kind of fallen away, or I'll see them occasionally on LinkedIn, but there isn't a lot of contact because there isn't a lot in common anymore. Yeah, yeah. And it's not a bad thing. I mean, I think that probably happens no matter what we end up doing in life.
SPEAKER_03And I also think there's a a big tendency, especially now, to filter your life versus social media. So it's very rare that you actually see an honest and authentic view of what a person is dealing with. You see their, you know, face tuned, Photoshop, beautiful photos, and everybody posts, you know, like their holiday snaps and says, isn't it great? But you know, you lose the real connection, and I think that's uh we need to re-establish that in some way, the honesty of what it's like to be human rather than How the heck do we do that?
SPEAKER_04No, I I agree with you completely. Like I've I've always shared like just little clips and bits of my daily life to try to get people back home to understand that I'm not always traveling, I'm actually working and living in a place, and so I'll include like just like pictures of cafes or like what cool license plates, because they're in a different language and stuff like that, and they're like, Oh, it sounds like you're having a blast every minute, and I'm like, no, the point is I'm not, I'm having a normal life just over here. Yep, and it doesn't seem to register that that's possible. So, how do we get a fuller picture of ourselves online?
SPEAKER_03I mean, this is what my current project is delving in and experimenting with. So, Life in Breath is basically a community for people to share their stories. And my view is that we all go through challenges, but rarely are we the first ones to face those challenges. There's somebody who has been through that experience before. And if we shared that and we were very open about how it felt and you know the good and the bad times, potentially it could really help people, especially in quite dark times. So it's a community there for people to post something that they're passionate about and they want to share with others that is very non-judgmental, there's no side ulterior motive for it apart from the fact that if you're having a bit of a crap time, you could read somebody's story and you could say, Okay, well, I can see how they got through it, there's hope for me. Yeah, and you know, I feel like I wouldn't have started this had I not come to Shanghai, and potentially now I'm slightly older and had some more experiences to write about, and seen different people like coaches, like executive coaches, holistic coaches, and had some experiences which were worth sharing. Yeah, you know, and I think I've just written a post recently about postnatal depression, which is one thing where people are kind of like, you know, you should no, you should keep the myth of how great motherhood is, but you don't read very authentic points of view on on if you've had a tough time.
SPEAKER_02Right, right.
SPEAKER_03And the reaction that I've had to that has been outstanding in terms of people have shared it globally, so in Australia and Sweden and the UK, and people have really kind of said thanks so much because it's difficult to find something that's written authentically and from the heart. And for me it was very difficult to share that, but I thought actually the point of what I'm doing is to say, we're all human, we all have these experiences, we have to be more open about them. So, yeah, I think that's really my motivation and why it's important. And since then, I've had a lot of people come to me and kind of say. I was very depressed, I was suicidal, or I had uh eating disorder, and now I feel I can open up and share. And my goal is to get those people to write about that experience and kind of say, Okay, it was the worst times, but I had I found strategies to get through this. And I think that can resonate wherever you are in the world. Yeah. Because we can all feel alone, whether we're an expat, whether we're surrounded by our family.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03But if you don't have anybody to talk to, if you can go to an online resource which is written in a way that's from the heart, it's not preachy, it's not judgmental, then you maybe feel that you have a friend. No, that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_04To get people to to to create that space where somebody can do that.
SPEAKER_03Is there is it in only an online space now or is there an offline space? Only online for the moment. Um it's a very new project, so I don't know what it could or will become. And it's mainly online so that it can reach out to as many people as possible, and it's been interesting to see how certain articles have been shared uh globally. And I think it's we all have common issues, you know. Somebody wrote a blog about financial freedom, there's one about postnatal depression, you know, there's one about interactions with your partner. So, you know, wherever you are in the world, yeah, I think those resonate. And I think when I think would it go offline, would it be a book or could it be a podcast? I think podcast yes, but I don't know whether how it could evolve, and I think that's the exciting thing. Maybe somebody will see it and they can see a way that it could evolve.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could see it going into a podcast and then maybe a book, but just a book first might be too static.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and potentially coaching sessions. Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the great things I feel about Shanghai is that you have such a diversity of people and access to them. So I've worked with some executive coaches, some health coaches, which I could never have maybe afforded in the UK. I wouldn't have thought were appropriate for me. Whereas now I'm kind of like, we should seek help from you know these people who come into our lives. So it could be something to do with that because you know, if we can coach people through things and mentor them, they can find the answers for themselves.
SPEAKER_04Are you enjoying this conversation about our virtualness and our geographicness colliding? Me too. Hey, I would love to interview you. Do you live in a country that is not your home country? Let's talk about your experience. Let's do it. Contact me at Steph Puccio S T E P H F U C C I O at Gmail.com. Or you can hit me up on any of my social media platforms. I am Steph Puccio on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. So contact me. Let's line this up. I would love to get your opinion into these questions. Out into the world. Let's do it. Do you think it's easier for people to open up online because it is slightly removed from the real life risk and vulnerability?
SPEAKER_03I would personally I think it's high at risk. I found, especially with this article, I found it more high risk because online you're very faceless in terms of the comments that you leave. So if you write an article and you allow people to write comments or you share that article with strangers, people can have any opinion on it. And the feedback that you get can be hurtful if it's misinformed or it's not meant in a good way. You know, you can put your intentions out there and say, I want to do this in a non-judgmental way and I want to help people. But how people receive it, especially if it's a very different type of person, you have no idea. So I was quite fearful in some ways about putting some of these things online, especially when they were so personal, and I thought, you know, my kids will read this, my mum will read this, but then I thought, well, am I doing it from a place of helping others? It's not gonna harm anybody. Will there be a benefit to putting this out there? And I thought yes, and that is why probably why I had a long time that I didn't do anything on social media because I just felt there's so much content out there, and what is the point of adding to it? What do I have to say? And for a long time I didn't have anything to say, yeah, it was just adding content. Um and then this is the first time where I've thought actually there's a value to this because I can see the other side of this picture perfect, Instagram, everybody looks amazing, and when you're sat there not feeling that way, where do you go? Right, right.
SPEAKER_04It almost makes there there are actually studies and stuff, right, where they talk about people seeing all of that happiness and being like, why don't I feel like that? And it makes them feel worse. Yes. Is there any danger in now? Let me preface that in some reality. I had a female surgery when I was in Iowa before grad school doing a PhD I purposely did not finish. About, let's see, I've been here a year and a half. That was my first year of school, so it must be about three or four years ago. And I was in a very, very small town with a very, very small group of people around me who were very, very focused on school, and I did not feel like that was the place to share everything that was going on medically. So when I found that website and that had the forum that literally would like put people by their surgery date and we would share our experiences the whole way through our recovery together, I was like, this is it. This is how I process this experience, and so I followed it. I think we went like three months and then we could stay on there longer, but people started to drop off because they could do their real life again kind of thing, and that was one of the most powerful online experiences I've ever had. However, I there were some women on the boards that I felt like I connected with on more than just uh we're going through the same pain kind of scenario, and I felt like all they knew about me was the pain, and I felt like it was kind of like the other side of seeing too much only happiness. Is there a potential for seeing only the sadness?
SPEAKER_03Yes, I mean first of all, I would say I think it is wonderful that you had that environment, and I think we need more online environments that are secure and open and it's gonna sound awful, but not that give you like a security or a cuddle, but that you feel safe in because there's too many where you can go in and actually uh not get there. Yeah, and I think with this blog, with everything that I try and do is to yes tell people the real side of it, but also to say, yeah, it's painful and it's terrible, but this is what I'm gonna do about it. So when I wrote this most recent article, the first part was like sharing my experience of postnatal depression, and the second part was I'm 38 weeks pregnant, I'm about to have my second child, how am I gonna cope with this if this happens again? So it was like eight points of you know, these are the fundamental things that I will build into my life to stop it happening again. Or if it does happen that I've informed people and that I have my action plan, and I think that's important. I think it's when you have environments where you do just dwell on the pain, I don't think those are positive necessarily. I think you should feel comfortable to share it, but then you have to feel like you have this tribe of people who can really kind of say, I've got your back, and you know, I'm gonna help lift you out of this. Yeah. Um, so I would always say that there has to be the other side of it. So we should be authentic, but it shouldn't ever just be so negative because also I think that's really depressing to read. It is you know, so I when people read it, I kind of want them to go, Okay, I understand where this person's coming from, and I can believe in her authenticity because you know, I empathize for what she's saying, but ultimately the second part of the article I find more important because it's like, okay, I mean none of these are very new, but you know, try and meditate, eat well, you know, pick something that's really gonna get you out of bed in the morning and have those strategies and stick to them. And often we can find all that stuff on the internet very easily, but it takes a voice to kind of say, I've been through this, and these were the things that helped. For me, it's the online environments that provide a solution. But you can't just go and say, you know, life is a bit crap because that doesn't move you on, it doesn't grow you, it doesn't get you anywhere. It's kind of saying life's a bit crap, but I did XY and Z, I got over this, I went on to live in a great place and do all these wonderful things.
SPEAKER_04So and and the women on that board, to be fair, were not they're they weren't stewing in it or refusing to move on. Actually, as as soon as uh things got easier for them, they just they kind of fell off the board because they started to do other stuff.
SPEAKER_03And I would just say, you know, the interesting thing for me in hearing that is also the time that we write about the experience. You know, a lot of the experience I write with hindsight, which are beautiful things, because I have a lot of clarity. Yeah, whereas it sounds like your environment, people are in that situation. Oh yeah, yeah, and you can't sometimes be positive when you're going through a lot of pain because you don't have the energy to do that. So I think that's also an interesting thing about online because it's a snapshot of time for certain people. So I think it's very natural if you're going through a really tough time at that time, you can't always be positive. Sometimes it's just focus on am I gonna live or die? And you have to put your strength in other things. So I am very lucky to say a lot of things I write with hindsight.
SPEAKER_04That's a good point. Like if they did an anniversary of that event like five years later, and go, okay, ladies, now not for three months but for three days, we'll write about it now. Yeah. What's happened since then?
SPEAKER_03That would be and you would probably find that the experiences that you had shaped you into stronger people. Oh, for sure. And many of you would look back and say, actually, I'm really glad that happened because it gave me a resilience that I wouldn't have found had it not happened to me.
SPEAKER_04I don't know that I would be glad that that happened. I do think that there's positive things to come from nearly everything, but I would never wish to repeat any of that.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I do, I definitely uh agree on it. And I say that uh about eight years ago I had a I was hit by a motorbike when I was in Malaysia, I was crossing a road and it broke my both legs in several places and um I didn't know whether I would live or walk again. Um I didn't know if I would have my legs. But what came from that experience was I felt very humble. Yeah. And I felt like I've done that, I can kind of get through anything, and that's why for me some of these experiences experiences, although horrific at the time, I'm not you know, I wouldn't choose to be run over again. Yeah, but I would, you know, I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to learn an emotional resilience that potentially I wouldn't have had before. Right. And I guess that's what I mean to to your experiences. You will have got something from it that probably you use in different situations without maybe realizing.
SPEAKER_04Oh, it's definitely made me of a tougher person. For a certain age, it feels like everybody's had something. Yep, and it's it's more a factor of how did we deal with it? Yes, uh, did we ever get past it and learn from it versus did we get stuck?
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I exactly what you say, you know, you go through life and that's what makes it rich, is that you you know you have these great times, but there are also challenges. And it's just about just kind of saying, Well, how did we get through it? Or are we still stuck in certain things? You know, I know I'm definitely not perfect. There's certain things where I try and keep a journal on and off, and I reread it sometimes, and I look at my 18-year-old self and say, I still write the same thing, and I'm 36 now. But that's where I I am trying to find some way to go forward, and I think that this blog is just part of that.
SPEAKER_04Okay, wait, I think I missed the progression from the blogs, from the fashion world and the blogs to life and breaths. What was was there any one thing or person or something that that led you to start this?
SPEAKER_03That is a very good question. So I had my son two years ago and I struggled heavily with becoming a mum. Um, I didn't necessarily feel I had the support network I needed here. I felt like everybody was putting on that wonderful face of isn't thinking aren't things brilliant? And I was like, no, they're not, and I didn't have the close relationships here where people were necessarily as authentic as I needed them to be. You know, like if you have friends at home, they'd probably be a bit more honest and kind of take you for a glass of wine and it would all be fine, but here I didn't have that, and it's not to say it doesn't exist, I just didn't have it. Yeah, so I rushed back to work and I started on a very new project which was totally different to what I was doing before, and it really opened my eyes in terms of how we live and design things. So it was designing a creative space for a big multinational organization, and it made me think about okay, the interactions that we have, is it important where we have them and how we have them? And that made me think much more about how we connect as people. So, for example, if we're sat in a coffee shop, is this a different conversation that we're having versus if we were sat in a library or an office? So I was kind of in this frame of very much creative thinking and challenging how we do things. Should we be working nine till five? Is that how we're most productive? So I had all this kind of going on in my head. I was also reading things like The Minimalist Podcast, which talks about uh you know living with less, uh use things, love people, that type of approach, which as a shopper I had that was new to me, but that's come into my life. And I was just kind of thinking, do you know, we have so much stuff in our life and you can start to feel like a bourbon. So one day I was on their website and it went through how they made their blog. And it was like, you know, here's the idiot's guide to making a vlog, and I was like, Do you know what? I am just gonna do this. And it was very much the reason why I started it was because I'd gone to a conference in Manchester when I was on maternity leave about age and how we perceive age and challenging our ideas about getting older. So the blog started to do with redefining age and ability, and also after my accident, I'd thought if I'd ended up in a wheelchair or had prosthetics, would people have thought of me in a different way? So it's about age and ability. So I thought that's where I'm gonna start. Followed this easy plan and then put it up there, and then I was like, okay, I've done this now. What do I do with it? And then kind of paused because I didn't feel I had the IT knowledge to take it any further, and I kind of didn't know what I wanted to say, so I just kind of said, Oh, you know, like here's a fashion post about somebody older who's been featured in a campaign, and then it went silent. And I made the decision to reach out with the lady who had done my template.
SPEAKER_04So I bought a template and I kind of said to her, I've never thought to do that, it's really cool.
SPEAKER_03Like, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you help me? Yeah. And she sent me a tutorial that you know it was online, I could have found it, but she sent it to me. Yeah, and I just thought, you know what, there's somebody there to help me if I need it. And potentially what it just needs is a bit of time. So I just spent a couple of hours on it, and then I wrote down any questions, and she helped me. Yeah, and she was like, Here's an online course, and it was very easy to understand. She did it in a really cool way, it was very down-to-earth, no uh technical language, which is perfect for me. And that was the start of me kind of saying, Okay, I can do this, I can put a post on a web something, and even now it needs so much work doing to it, but I felt like okay, I I have my person, yeah, and then it evolved mainly just because I would think about things, and I was like, I'm just gonna write about it, I'm just gonna have an article about it. So I would do things about I wrote an article about the power of touch, how important it was to give somebody, you know, a power, a touch, because it for some people that's really a key thing, and for others they're like, no way, and just exploring that dynamic of it, and then I started to talk about it to people because you know people were always like you have to make these things manifest themselves, talk to people about it, and then from that people started to uh contribute, so I had a couple of contributors, and then I asked somebody who used to work at my organisation and had left, and I really valued her opinion, you know, she was a role model I aspired to, and she actually said, you know, I've been thinking of doing something similar, I would love to contribute, and that was the kickstart. And her first article, she wrote about the fact that she had type 1 diabetes and her journey with that, and she said, I will do a series of articles, and she was so honest and vulnerable and wrote from the heart that I thought, wow, she's put into words and into life what I've been trying to do, and that really has inspired me to write more from the heart myself and to put it into something bigger than it being about age or ability. So now when I talk to girls, I say, you know, just please write about what you're passionate about. And people always say, Oh, but I'm not a writer, and I said, Neither am I, I'm just like sick, I'm not a writer. If you're passionate about something, that's what will show. And everybody who's been a contributor for it, their stories have always been so powerful that I think you know that's really been the key thing, and the blog will change based on who contributes to it. So it could be about finance, you know, for one week, or it could be about you know medical conditions like diabetes. It's very wide, and I think that's the fun thing about it at the moment.
SPEAKER_04Is it important where and how we have those conversations?
SPEAKER_03I'm assuming your answer was no to that, or was for me when I was doing this project at work, I really thought it was important. You know, when you sit in a blank white room and it's very austere, do you really have the meaningful conversations versus if you're sitting in a coffee shop? And the reason I saw it is because I felt a lot of colleagues would, you know, go outside and pay 30 quai for a coffee because they didn't want to be in the office, and I wanted to create a space where it felt like I want to hang out here, I want to be here. And all of the you know, new companies evaluate like Google or Apple or LinkedIn, their offices are very relaxed. So for me I felt like it was hugely important. And there was a quote that always stuck with me from Winston Churchill that said, We shape our spaces and therefore they shape us. And my husband's an architect, that's what he does, and my dad has always been in construction. And I thought, well, yeah, if you're somewhere where you feel comfortable, and this could be online or offline, you can tend to be more open, you know.
SPEAKER_04So it's more a matter of is it a comfortable space on slash offline than is it online or offline? Yeah, yeah, so it's that yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, for me, the my work project was a physical space, but what I want to create is almost a space like that online, you know, and I think it's difficult because also people have different experiences with technology, with spelling, with writing, that you know, they're not comfortable in writing because they maybe have dyslexia or something, that can be a barrier. Yeah. So, how do you have tools that help them? Like, I think podcasts are a great thing because you can just sit and listen to people.
SPEAKER_04I hadn't even thought of a lot of these things. It's funny, I've I stumbled into podcasting. One, because I listened to too many and it eventually just came out of me, and two, because I had eye issues for a few years and it's use it's easier to talk than it is to write and edit, edit, and edit and edit. So it's it's easier on the eyes. And so I was like, okay, well that makes sense, I'll just use the recording feature. But yeah, there are people with blogs and websites who would struggle with communicating with the reader or even just spending that much time on a screen.
SPEAKER_03Because to them it's a chore, you know, it's reading, it's something can be something difficult. Whereas I have now got into audiobooks. I feel like a grandma was saying that, but oh my goodness, like I've been listening to Harry Potter, which I never would have done had it not been on an audiobook. And I find it really accessible and very honest, also, because you can hear a tone of a voice. So potentially that would be a way to evolve also what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, for sure, for sure. No, Harry Potter.
SPEAKER_03I did the entire series in audio. Amazing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Now I actually lean towards audio for I I look for audio first because of my eyes, but honestly, I used to do both. I'd come home from libraries with like a stack of books, audiobooks and magazines, and my back would hurt, but it'd be so much fun just to have that kind of variety of different things, and depending on what I was doing. If I wanted to sit in a coffee shop versus go walk around the park, I would have different stuff to listen to.
SPEAKER_03Definitely, and I listened to a great podcast by a doctor in the UK called Dr. Chatterby. And I would probably never have read. Some of the if they'd been written down as as articles because he can be quite in depth, but what I've learnt from just actually hearing his 40-minute podcasts are amazing about you know how our body works, our mental health, how it's linked to what we eat. So I think it's also a great way to learn in a more comfortable way than having to sit in like a quite a heavy textbook.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, oh yeah, no, and there are some things where you do need to do the grind of books and paper, but a lot of stuff you don't.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_03And I would say, especially with things like education opening up in terms of online courses. So I've often thought, should I go back and retrain or do some kind of certified course? And I've realized I can do that for free, and I can dip my toe into certain waters without having to commit to quite a heavy financial burden or long-term course. And I think that's very exciting when it starts to open up that way too.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no, no. That was that was the only reason we tried to reintegrate back into sorry, why I went to grad school back in the US is because we were thinking it could be a pathway, not just to get the degree, but to get back into the US because it takes some time to get back in, to buy everything you need, to get a community around you and that kind of thing. But here we are.
SPEAKER_03I would also say, just on um thinking about that, there was also a couple of online courses which I did which really helped influence the blog. So there was the science of wellness, the science of happiness, and one about positive psychology. So I had all those swimming about in my head thinking I can't remember the statistics, but the majority of what we read is about negative medical conditions like depression, these types of things. You don't read a lot about what causes joy or what how you can have practices which help with happiness. So true. And it's quite a recent field of research compared to more negative psychology. And I really felt like this is part of the blog is to say, okay, when you're dealing with something like depression, are there ways that you can, without medication, if you choose not to take that, have practices in your life which will increase these feelings of well-being or happiness? And I'm very grateful that there was an online platform to do that because I don't think I would have had the access to information any other way.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, apart from having to sign up and go to a certain college or school.
SPEAKER_04I'm so glad you're saying these things because I I I am I've I often growing up I really really really found a comfortable space in books. And when the in as the internet grew, I found that that was the not instead of, in addition to that that also had some very comfy, comfy, interesting spaces with interesting people. And so when people say the internet is bad, technology is bad, mobile phones are ruining our fill-in-the-blank, our attention spans, our social circles are I'm like, well no, it's it's how you use the tool. Yes. Yeah, so it's that thing of how do you find those spaces that nurture you, not torture you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I am struggling with that. Especially with my partner, because you know, when we were both at work, I'm on Mat Leave now, but we would come in tired, we would put our son to bed, and we would both be on devices on different couches. And you know, now I'm off Mat leave, and that also we both highlighted that to each other that actually when we've stopped communicating. We're just in our own worlds, we're not even watching a film together. And when you have a phone in your pocket and you have all your notifications on it, and an email comes through, your attention is distracted, and I think that is very difficult for a person who really wants you to sit and listen to them, and it does affect that closeness that you have with somebody. But I think it's like you say it's about balance and how you use them. It's fine to have that time, but if it's interrupting a conversation every three minutes because you get some notification, you can't have any you know meaningful conversation with the person across from you. Yeah, they always feel like second best. Yeah. And you know, some of the studies, if you have a phone on a table, the person across from you automatically feels like you know, you're not as engaged in that conversation.
SPEAKER_04Um it frustrates me though, because I I take notes on my phone now too.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and my husband does that, but I just I go crazy.
SPEAKER_04It's so hard because I'm like, I want to give some full attention. I will turn my phone off, I'll turn the silencer on, I'll put it in my bag, but sometimes somebody will say something and I'll be like, I need to make a note of that. I want to look at that some more later, I want to read that book, I wanna look at that film, that kind of thing, and or I want to contact that person that you're reminding me of right now, and it won't stay in there because things don't stay in my brain anymore. They just stay in my external brain, my phone.
SPEAKER_03And he says the exact same thing. But for me, I don't find the taking notes a problem. You know, if somebody was to write that down on a pad of paper, I would be like, Great, they're listening to me. It's the fact that probably when you look at your phone, you might have six notifications like Instagram, uh, Facebook, Outlook, and before you've even got to open your notes page, your mind's already thought, okay, I've got these six notifications, I need to find out what they are.
SPEAKER_04This is the one area where I think the VPN comes into play and helps me because my I my main email is Gmail and it doesn't do anything when my VPN's off. So I've I've now keep my VPN off. And even my WeChat, if I'm not in it and like I close everything down, but the phone's on silent but it's still there, it won't tell me there are notifications until I sign in. So I like go in there, I can send myself an email, I won't see it because it won't come through. Or I'll make a note somewhere in some file or something, but I don't see the notifications yet. And I'm like, okay, that's one good thing about VPNs, is that I have to have that to access all of my all of my own VP things.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's a great tip, you know. Like I said, um inspired by this Dr. Chastie, and now I am reading his physical book, which I enjoy because it is a physical experience of reading a book that I've not had for a while. And he just says, you know, turn off all your notifications, you know, and I think if you do that, that's fine, you know, we can use technologies in in different ways. Um, but for me, often I feel like okay, I can um be talking to my partner and they'll be like, I'll go and research this. Yeah. You know, one of the things was like, for example, this morning we're talking about the star signer for my unborn daughter, because I really want her to be born soon. Yeah. And we I was like, but what if she's this star sign? And he was like, I'm just gonna go and research it. And I thought, well, what did we do before that? Before we had everything at our fingertips. We would have had to go and look at a book and have that physical experience with a book or with an environment. And that has changed for us all now.
SPEAKER_04Are you enjoying this conversation about our virtualness and our geographicness colliding? Me too. Hey, I would love to interview you. Do you live in a country that is not your home country? Let's talk about your experience. Let's do it. Contact me at stephpuccio at gmail.com. Or you can hit me up on any of my social media platforms. I am Steph Puccio on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. So contact me. Let's line this up. I would love to get your opinion into these questions. Out into the world. Let's do it. But if you did go, like if the books were in the room that you were having the conversation, you went to go look at the book. Is that any less distracting than working on the internet?
SPEAKER_03Potentially not. But would it be a shared experience? Would you look at that book together or you know, and I think that's the tricky. Nobody really knows how technology will influence our uh behavior in the future. I'm very pro technology, like AI, AR, but I do think it's really important to keep those social connections. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and maybe it's just uh a dinner table when you're having a dinner, you know, there's a phone box and those phones go away and you can have an hour of meaningful conversation. Because it's rare sometimes that you you get to speak to somebody unless they have their phone. I've not been to like a dinner party or out for dinner where somebody hasn't been on their phone. Like with a table of eight, somebody is you know checking, and I think we we've lost that little.
SPEAKER_04I I agree, but the other thing is it's there's so many things happening all the time.
SPEAKER_03But that's a big stressor for us as humans. Yeah, you know? Yeah. Where's our time where we just don't have anything happening? And what would you do if things weren't happening? Yeah. Would you pursue your passions? Would you have time to do things that you really wanted to do? Or would you have something online? I'm not the person to answer that question. But potentially would you think about the things that were online? Or would you are you reacting to what's important? Or are you thinking about the things that you want to put online? And I think that for me is the the challenge with technology. Often when we get a notification, it's not really so important, but it's there and it's weighing us on us and we'll reply to it and we'll answer that. And then the things that are really important often don't get the time that they need because they might be bigger things that we have to deal with. So I wonder that's is technology a distraction sometimes? And I I I'm devil's advocate on this. Yeah. You know, I don't know what is the right answer. I don't think there is a right answer.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I don't, and I don't think it's the same for everybody. No. I definitely don't. People that grew up like I got my first cell phone in my what 20s? 20s, early 30s. I think mid-20s. I had a beeper. I did that route because I was I am that old.
SPEAKER_03Um I used to date somebody with a beeper, so you know that was uh No, it was a pager, and then you could have the pager certain amount of um Oh no way, so I couldn't even do that.
SPEAKER_04I think I had that, then I had the yeah yeah, so I went through the the whole progression, but it was quite a while before I had my first uh mobile phone and then it was only what 2012 when I got my first smartphone. So having the internet in my pocket is a very new experience for me. Versus kids who grow up now and they're like you know, seven, eight, nine, ten years old, and they always have everything right there. We're gonna have very different relationships with what we do online, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And what our comfy spaces are. Definitely. Like my son is two, yeah, and he knows that Peppa Pig lives in the iPad. And his first words when he wakes up are not good morning, Mummy, it's Peppa Pig, and I've had to fool him that Peppa Pig is still sleeping in the iPad, but he's like, No, Peppa Pig is awake. iPad, iPad, and I'm like, okay, how do I manage this? So I definitely feel not that I'm a dinosaur, but I have entered technology at a point in my life where maybe I have certain questions around it, but I think actually my uh children will just think this is a normal part of life, yeah. But I hope they have a balance that they um appreciate how important it is to connect with people physically and face to face, yeah. Because unless we are authentic online, they may only experience a certain side to be human. And I think that for me is the danger. If everybody online is perfect and great, if they don't feel like that, I want to make sure that they can have a conversation with somebody, especially of a different culture, and say, okay, how do we connect in a certain way? Yeah, that authenticity. Yeah. How do we get you've got me thinking about that.
SPEAKER_04How do we get that more well-rounded version of ourselves visible online? Do we need to have that visible online?
SPEAKER_03And I think it's very much about being vulnerable, which is a very hard thing to do on or offline. Yeah. You have to say that potentially things aren't perfect all the time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And maybe it's not even saying that. A lot of the articles are just around people's opinion about um one lady wrote about how important it was to have financial freedom. Sometimes it's just about giving advice, but it's I do think it is important that we aren't all face-tuned and looking great all the time, that we do have some touch of reality, and I don't think this is new to online at all because I've seen it ever since uh I can remember in fashion magazines. They've always been photoshopped, yeah, and that's what sells. And I think online is just another media to do that. Yeah, so I definitely don't blame online, but to be very realistic and it not be a trend because I think that's happening at the moment where a lot of models are looking more unusual, but it's a trend.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and they're still glamorized in a way that is just not obtainable. Yep, for 91% of us, if not.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you know, in the UK we had things like Big Brother or um these types of uh media projects, that was a TV programme. Oh yeah, um but that you could become rich very quickly by not doing very much. And I think that was a whole culture created around this, and then people kind of thought, oh well, why do I need to work hard? Why do I need to go to uni if I can earn a quarter of a million by going on a TV show? Or can I become an influencer? Yeah, if I'm a blogger, can I make money from this blog? Um and then I think you know, right if you can, but there's hundreds of people who can't, and we kind of glamorize the people who do. Yeah, and maybe we should be glamorising the people who are plumbers, our construction workers, who are nurses and doctors and those types of things.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we never really have.
SPEAKER_03So that there's no poster child there.
SPEAKER_04No, there really isn't. And there really should be. Because man on man, I we would we would be seriously. I have so many things I'm trying not to say with everything. So many uncomfortable situations that we would be in without those folks.
SPEAKER_03You know, like doctors, teachers, you know, all these people, they are the bread and butter of what keeps our societies going. And the glamour and the attention is put onto the most beautiful or the most people with the most followers. And that is where my struggle with technology a little comes with.
SPEAKER_04With that attention to glam and superficiality, why would people use the internet to look for something so authentic to help them through a tough time?
SPEAKER_03That is a very good question because I think we're drawn to the to the beauty. Um, but I think it's only when you're at a state where you're ready to look for help and you realise that that actually could be part of the issue. I don't think people are gonna search for a blog that isn't beautiful and is not nice to read. You know, I try to make the aesthetic of my blog very appealing, that people would want to visit it as a destination. Um, but I think it takes a certain amount of uh walking through a journey to actually understand I'm not really happy with how I'm feeling, whether it could be appearance or anything, and that could be because of all the social media that I'm seeing. Is there an alternative? And what I'm trying to do with this project is just to provide an alternative, it's not to say it's right or it's better, yeah. It's just to say that you know, if you don't want to see the most beautiful version of Kim Kardashian, then you can come and just read a story about what it's like to, you know, yeah, to do something else. You know, it's just providing a different uh sharing of ideas which I don't think exists enough. You know, it's I feel like there's 80% of the internet which is so beautiful and so great, and we get comparison fatigue sometimes. We always compare ourselves to these perfect lives, and yes, there's a 20% of people being authentic and realistic, but it's a quieter 20%, and sometimes you just need to create that so people have it. Yeah, it's not to force it down their necks, it's just to say it's there if you want to see it.
SPEAKER_04Sometimes I have a struggle with humanity because I think of when I was growing up and just absorbing books left, right, and center. If I knew then that the internet was going to exist, I would have been like, oh, I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait. And then, you know, fast forward to now when it's ubiquitous, and even in developing countries, you have people with mobile phones in their pockets because that's easier technology than laptops and desktop's mobile map. Wi-Fi is omnipresent, blah blah blah, and what people do with the internet slightly frustrates me sometimes. I understand that there's entertainment in it, but people are curious, yeah. And yet, do they take that curiosity into a Christian online and like learn a little bit of something or just look something up or read a little bit of something, listen to a little bit of something about that thing that they're curious about? Because I'm convinced everybody's curious about at least one thing. Yep, and yet I don't think it always transfers over into using that computer in our pocket to do those things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think that can be because you get distracted by the the addiction of scrolling or you know what comes first. But just to go back to your question before, you know, why would people look for a more authentic image on the internet? I would say it's so rare that we actually see it. You know, when people do the you know, here's the before and after Photoshop celebrity, or here's this person without makeup. Often when the person's without makeup, it's quite negative, but also we don't see it, we don't see people not looking their best. So it seems a little bit alien to us and not like it's a good thing. And I think just to normalise how people look and what is a normal size for somebody, you know, that's very much into aesthetics and beauty, but I think it's also with the emotion that we just need to normalize it a little. It's two skewed one way, yeah. And I think that's they work people don't look because potentially they don't realise that people don't look that way. How do people find you? I used to be very open and talk about the project I was doing, yeah. And then friends have connected me, which is how we met, and people sharing the articles. Um so I tried to do a short list of people who I really respected and to ask them to contribute. And most people, in fact, everybody I've asked has said yes. A lot of people have said I'm not a writer, and I've just reassured them to say don't worry, I can edit it, or I can do it as an interview. But everybody has said yes, and I think the first person probably had the idea of doing something herself, yeah, and then she had something in her back pocket that she could write about, and that's really been the catalyst to getting more people. And sometimes I read people's articles and I will ask them, Can I share this in my mom? But it's definitely come from just interactions. I haven't gone out and really sought people that I don't know, but I think that will be the future to reach out to maybe people in the public eye or people whose stories that I hear and kind of say this really resonated with me. Would you mind sharing? Yeah, yeah. Are you tempted at all to have a Facebook page to go with the website? I do have a Facebook page and I have an Instagram page. I post more on Instagram, and what I post about Instagram is more positive images of older people or abilities to challenge that status quo to kind of say okay, this is what 50 looks like, this is what 90 looks like, and that's where my comments fall um is um is really focused on, you know, to say actually this is could be what you look like at 90, somebody fabulous, or you could look like you know this other person. So I do a lot of that on Instagram. I could just send those images over to Facebook. I do sometimes I don't other times I think that might change if I moved away just because the ease of being able to get that here.
SPEAKER_04They do have um a function within Instagram where you can just kind of click. Yeah, Facebook. I don't use Facebook, but you could there's like a Facebook, Twitter, and Twitter thing. So you just as you're posting it, you you write the thing and you can like click, click, click all things or whichever ones you want.
SPEAKER_03And I think the reason I didn't do that at the beginning is because I was so focused on what's the purpose of the content I'm putting out. Am I repeating this content by posting it on Facebook and Instagram? Yeah, what's the benefit of generating it again? And maybe that's for a reach for an audience, but I've never really thought about the audience of this blog. I've just thought that by putting this out there would I help somebody? But isn't that the audience? Potentially, but there's no, you know, people are kind of like, oh well, is it a woman in her like who's 35? Is it a woman who's struggling with aging? It's really for anybody. So there's an audience there, but there's no demographic. So you know, the reader at the moment I think would be mainly female, and I actually think that's something I want to push not against, but I want a male reader to come here as to the to the blog as well. Yeah. So we When I'm putting content out there, especially on Facebook and Instagram, I'm maybe not thinking, is this image gonna resonate with my audience? I'm kind of like, does this image resonate to me? And I think that's been the biggest difference with this project, it's a passion project. Where I'm thinking, do I think oh you know, this is a really great thing to share? Yeah. So yes, I think I will probably start to share it on Facebook, but I would like what I'm putting out there to have a point of view in terms of you know, I want to spread this out to more people because they should be seeing these images, or I should put something different on Facebook than I do to Instagram. Yeah, yeah, good point. You know, why duplicate the content? Should it be something different, or do you miss the people who only look at a Facebook page versus an Instagram page? Right. Because often you can if you look at both Facebook and Instagram, you end up just seeing the same pictures.
SPEAKER_04People tend to gravitate towards one more than the others. Like I swore on Facebook a long, long time ago. It got weirdly creepy. A lot of people I haven't seen for years would fringe me, and then suddenly I would know what they're having for lunch every day. And I was like, this is a weird kind of intimacy that I just whoa, we skipped like 500 steps. And it just felt odd. And suddenly they were like asking me all these questions about that. I'm like, I haven't talked to for 20 years. Yeah. And people that I just met in person would would have this similar experience. Like instead of slowly getting to know them in person, I suddenly we knew everything about each other, and I it it felt weird.
SPEAKER_03So I got off Facebook a long, long, long time ago. And I think it's also when you're putting things out there to realize that anybody can read them and anybody can do anything with that content. So, for example, my husband won't let me put any pictures of our kids on there. Yeah. And I agree with that, and I don't really, or very rarely do we actually put anything personal image-wise on there on our own personal account. So when I'm thinking about the blog, I also think about you know, is there is it is there a greater good to doing this, or is it just generating content to get more people to like a page? Well to like or to know that it's there. Yeah, but yeah, are they gonna do something with it in terms of they can like it or they can you know visit it, but are they gonna read the article and is it gonna make a difference to them? And that's for me is the purpose of it doesn't matter whether I get a thousand likes, even though internally I'm like I wish people would like this more. It's actually are they gonna read it and is it gonna make a difference? Yeah, because the rest of it is just noise, yeah. Unless it really somebody can say, actually, I read this, it made me feel better, I shared it with a friend, and it helped me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, it's tricky, it's tricky because I have seen people do the same thing on all platforms to to spread out, to spread the word of what they're doing. And in some sense I get that because I do think people gravitate, but in the other sense I'm like it is the same exact thing everywhere.
SPEAKER_03But then and if I thought of it as a business, I would take it as a different approach. Yeah, I would probably share lots of I'd share more content more times a day on every platform I could. Yeah, but for me it's more that the quality of the content is there. So when I look at how often you should post, like Instagram, you should post 35 times a day to be an influencer. 35? That's what generally I've heard that somebody somebody would do that.
SPEAKER_04Um because I guess when I do three or four, I'm thinking okay, this is a little too much for TV.
SPEAKER_03I follow this great uh person called Ava Chen who works at Instagram and she gives a lot of um tips and things, but for me it's very much about is the content there for me to put out? Yeah, and that might only happen once a week in terms of an article. So I'll put that article out once a week, but then every two to three days I might find a great image of an older person or something to do with ability that I want to share and kind of say, like, Madonna was 60 the other day, you know, like to kind of review how we feel about it.
SPEAKER_04She really is.
SPEAKER_03So, like, you know, Madonna was 60, Adele shared a post on uh postnatal psychosis. You know, there'll be somebody who's 90 and still modeling, you know, these types of images, and when I see them, great, but just generating content for content site just seems like a never-ending machine.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't think I've ever done that. If anything, because China is like cheating. Like I'm doing some stuff with like language, so I'm taking pictures of stuff that I'm seeing, signs and and and things and and and what and sometimes just pictures of China itself. And it's like I walk out the door and three blocks later I've got ten photos, and I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna post all of these today. Like I have to kind of hold back because there's so much content all the time here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I would also say, as living here, yeah, it is like content creation paradise. And if you wanted to, like just 20 minutes walking down a road, and you could have an Instagram account with you know probably 20,000 followers because of the amazing place that the city is and how challenging in some ways you things are when you see them. Yeah. You know, I always my first image of being here was I'd walk down Nanjing Shilu, which is like a very expensive shopping street, I'd pass Gucci and there'd be a woman in her pajamas taking her poodle for a walk. The poodle will have like green ears and an orange tail, and that's normal. Yes, you know, we walk past that and we're like, oh yeah, she's out again. Somebody else would see that and be like, oh my goodness, like that's so unusual. Um but then on my personal account, I'm very aware not to post too much of that because it can come across like look at my fabulous life, you know. Um so it's interesting because also I think well, if I ever did go back to the UK, all of the images that you see here, I kind of want to try and capture them in a way that I can keep with me, especially for my son who was born here, to kind of say, This was where you grew up, you know, in your very early years.
SPEAKER_04So is there anything that has surprised you about working on my breakfast?
SPEAKER_03What surprised me is that the amount of people that want to share their story. So when I've asked people to contribute, everybody's kind of said yeah, and I'm really glad you asked me because I've been wanting to do something like this for a while. Yeah. So yeah, I found that a really great thing is that it's feels like it's helping people to achieve something on their journey, and the positive reaction to it. So putting things out there and actually people saying, you know, this did really help. Um, one of the reactions I had to the article on post-natal depression, somebody shared it with a family member and they said it's the first time she's ever spoken about this. I she said, I never knew, and she opened up and she just cried and said, you know, was very open with her experiences. And I had a lot of old friends who also said, you know, I read this and I cried, and I felt like, you know, I really thank you for sharing your experience. So the fact that we are on some base level, we're all very similar. Um, whatever the topic is, you know, because we I've had some great comments also about the financial pieces that we've done. And the fact that people do want to connect. People have all kind of said it's really good that there is this platform here. So I think that's surprised me. Um, and the need for it, you know, like when you put something out in the world and you're like, how will people respond? And will people become yeah, the fact that people have been like, yeah, this is something that I want to keep an eye on and see what happens to it, and that I want to be part of it, a lot of people have said. And probably my most uh impactful experience in the in the past week is that somebody shared it on a WeChat group, and then somebody from the group PM'd me and said, Can we go out? You know, can I meet you? And I was like, Yeah, great, thinking she'd want to be a contributor. And then she actually shared with me that she had a very severe eating disorder and she didn't know what to do. And I was like, I am totally unprepared to give you advice on this, but I'm gonna try my very best. And it was the fact that she felt she had somebody to reach out with that was so important, and I managed to connect her with somebody I knew, and I don't know if the there's no quick solution to anything like that, but the fact that somebody had read something and said, Okay, I can approach somebody else, because also she talked about the fact that she her friend network here, she didn't feel she could talk to, um, and I think that was a very powerful thing, because then you actually think, okay, if I can help one person, if that other person can help one or two people, that's how you start a change. And a lot of the things that we struggle with at the moment are really big issues, and actually if it takes one or two people and just kind of being kind, being authentic, then I think that's really worth the fact that she can not only admit it to herself but then reach out and show up in person and say that out loud, that's really powerful and it did take such bravery and courage, and I was so thankful to her that she felt she was able to do this and really, you know, just felt like okay, there's somebody here who is vulnerable enough to ask for help. I need to help that person. So, and I just thought that's one blog which you know when I was going through that was very detrimental feelings at the time and hard for the family and stuff like that, but out of it came good. And I think if we can take those experiences that we have, whether they're global experiences or or not, then we can do good things.
SPEAKER_04That is so terrible. I part of me wants to ask if you're leaving fashion to do something similar to this, or coaching or something in that arena.
SPEAKER_03I think probably that's my future, yeah, because I also got to a point with the industry, especially in the company that I worked with, which was one of the biggest retailers, that I was kind of like, what's the benefit to this? You know, I got into fashion because it was a craft, and you know, back in the day 20 years ago when I started it, it was something to aspire to. You know, you could fast fashion wasn't everywhere, you know, and to be able to wear something that you really wanted was a very new thing. Now it's everywhere, and we sell t-shirts for like 39 quai. And when I look what that does to the environment, I feel immensely guilty and responsible. And I think with any industry you have to do it in a sustainable way. And I'm really thankful my organization does as much as it can, but we're still generating product for product's sake. And I think that's why I got into the minimalist, which kind of started me off into the doing my own blog. Is that do we need all this stuff? Are we compensating for something else? If we're buying it because we're feeling a bit down, let's look at why we're feeling down. And then if we can feel less down by connecting online, great, but don't buy the t-shirt for 39 quai. That's probably damage in ocean. You know? Yep. Um, so yes, I think I would either get into sustainability in my industry or I would change to do something more around this. I think there's a lot to be done about health in the workplace and sustainability, especially in fashion. You know, there's some really great champions out there, but there's still a need for us to consume more. And I think there's nothing essentially wrong with that because I'm at an age where I've probably consumed more than my fair share, and I was 25, I want to be able to buy that great t-shirt or whatever. But can we do it in a more sustainable way? Because if it's going into landfill and it can't biodegrade or it's being shipped off to Africa and damaging their economies, that's not a good long-term solution. Right, right.
SPEAKER_04I was big, I turned into a really big fan of like brick stores, second stores, that kind of thing. And a friend of mine who now lives, used to live in Beijing, she lives in Hong Kong now. She was telling me about this American company who was selling uh used clothing online. Yep, but now they've stopped selling, they've now stopped uh shipping to China. And I'm like, I was just gonna start doing you know, because I can't find brip stores in uh in Shanghai. It's still a fairly new thing in Asia. In Japan, I found some when I was living there, but it was very like very like 1950, like going back a long time, almost like the vintage kind of like that kind of cool, kind of very, very older stuff. And I was like, no, no, I don't want that. I don't want to make a statement, I just want to have clothing that we don't have to throw away. Yes, that kind of thing. Do you see that happening in China at all?
SPEAKER_03I think now I'm my uh knowledge might be wrong, but my understanding is that they have stopped importing secondhand clothes. And for example, somewhere like Africa is they've had second-hand clothes, but you get so many, it's actually a quite a big problem. It's nice when you can go to a thrift store or a vintage store and it's all edited and it's good quality.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but I'm not sure of the legislation if that opens it up to just even the stuff that's within where people can go jump it off and then it can be sold, or even if it's like a charity shop or not, or a business, or what have you, just so there's some place for that to go.
SPEAKER_03And there's a lot of organizations doing that, so you can put your clothes into the recycle bins. There's retailers like HM, uh, there's also a lot of restaurants who will have like clothing bins, and a lot of them will decide can it be worn again? If it can, they tend not to destroy it and they will send it on to be sold as secondhand. Can it be broken down and made into a new uh fabric and then it can be remade? So, for example, some companies their denim is actually just a closed loop, so there's a lot of um focus now in the circular economy that we use something but then we can recycle and close the loop. So it's happening more and more, uh, and I would say there are places here to do that, but the infrastructure of probably a lot of the western um countries where you have like charity shops or vintage stores doesn't exist so much here. I think that's also a part of the progression of the country. People don't think it's cool necessarily to buy second-hand clothes, you know, around the hygiene and things like that. So I do think there's a long way that the industry's come, but there's still a lot of production of unnecessary things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's where my uh struggle with it is, you know, if I could see the rise of vintage stores globally going up and people really buying a lot of things, then greatly awesome. But I think the problem is that people are actually aren't buying as much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, we're not spending much. Yeah. But when you do need new stuff, it'd be nice if there were other options other than exactly. Yeah. And I think the solution for a lot of companies is that it just we just need to be quicker in getting that product and we just need to sell it cheaper. And therefore people will buy more stuff. Right? And for me, yes, that's the solution, but also should we just buy one thing, one really good thing, right? That less for a little while.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But sadly, I don't think that's the way that the industry is necessarily going.
SPEAKER_04No, no. I just watched I don't I'm not into terribly into fashion, but I somehow stumbled across um these. I do watch a lot of stuff on YouTube, and I found this comparison between this uh Swedish woman and this French woman, they were comparing fashions between the two countries, and then I followed the French woman over to her channel, and she had um a whole video devoted to like how to get out of cycle fast fashion and how to tell if a piece of clothing would last, and the things to look for in the clothing before you buy it, to know that it you will be able to keep it for a while, that kind of thing. And she went into like great detail, and it was very cool to see that exist in the world. I was like, yay, not to- I mean I do because of where I am and because of my lack of knowledge on things or lack of access to certain things, I do buy fast fashion. This is um, but um but I also keep it a lot longer than I think most people do. I keep it till it falls apart, not just until it's the end of the season. Yep.
SPEAKER_03Um and I think that's a good thing, you know. For me, I have no problem about fast fashion. It's when we buy things, we maybe wear them once and then we throw them away. And that happens so you can afford to do that because things are so cheap now. Oh my god. You know, it's costs the same as the price of coffees to buy a t-shirt. And when you look at the statistics of actually how much of your wardrobe you wear once to three times compared to the 1950s, I mean it's it's extraordinary because we just we just yeah, sometimes it's it's zero times, we just consume, yeah, and then you know, we don't buy things to last. And I think this is also where social media comes in because there's always a strive for newness. You know, as humans we want something new. So when we look at all these great posts and they're like, oh, they're in the latest such and such stress, we want that and we can achieve it because the price isn't high anymore. So the thing that we bought two weeks ago now seems old and redundant. So to many customers, this is the case, you know, and I think that's where it's part of a big cycle because the more that you generate newness, the more that you have to deliver it in a quick way at a price people can afford. But it's what you do with everything else that was there before. How do you close the loop on that? And it is happening, but it's just it's a difficult process to do, you know, it's to break down some of these fibres and turn it into something else.
SPEAKER_04So before you mentioned the newness and the superficiality of the online, the potential of online, and there being just a huge amount of that.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and and we're talking about the consumer culture and stuff.
SPEAKER_04Do you think there's it feels like there's a connection? Clearly, we're in a coffee shop. Do you think there's a connection with our personalities and in general wanting new and just just abundance of things, whether it be online or offline?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I think that's how we're designed as humans. You know, there's a lot of research studies that you can go to. We crave uh newness, you know, we get a kick out of it. So whether that be fashion, whether it be a newness of an Instagram notification, that's how we're designed. And I think we often build on that in our society, so it's just something that but it's how big companies fulfill that, you know. Ultimately a company is there to make a profit. So they have to keep delivering newness, and when we think about the resources that we take to do a lot of the fashion items, great that some are renewable, but not all are, and when you go back to you know, if you look at cotton, for example, the cotton farmer really needs to get the best yield on their cotton. So the seed supplier can sell them certain seeds to increase their yields. Yeah. But there's you know, there can be issues around this if you start to dig into it. So it goes back right to the very beginning about the agriculture that's being used, and it the industry is one of the most labor-intensive and most consuming of uh resources in the world. And yes, we need clothes, and um, you know, we have a crave, but a crave for newness, but is it a positive thing in the way that it's going?
SPEAKER_04Are you enjoying this conversation about our virtualness and our geographic and it's colliding? Me too. Hey, I would love to interview you. Do you live in a country that is not your home country? Let's talk about your experience. Let's do it. Contact me at stephpuccio at gmail.com. Or you can hit me up on any of my social media platforms. I am Steph Puccio on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. So contact me. Let's line this up. I would love to get your opinion into these questions. Do it.
SPEAKER_03Reading it over into the online space. And I would say online, the probably one of the reasons why it's become this way is because it's so accessible now. Ten years ago we didn't necessarily have online retailers.
SPEAKER_04Oh, not just online shopping, just content online, things online, videos online, pictures online, just that that craving for more and more new, new, new, always new. Is there a way to to satiate or to slow ourselves down online? Do we need to?
SPEAKER_03I think that's a great question. I think um if I was to redesign it, I would say our crave for newness comes, could come from a lack of personal connection. It's very instantly gratifying to look through and An Instagram feed and to get a snapshot of how a friend's life is, versus having to pick up a phone and have a conversation, invest your time. I think it's part of our modern society that we always feel we have to be doing things. So we're always active and doing, we're never very still, like we probably were centuries ago. We're always like, oh, we're gonna go to the gym or we're gonna do this. We never have time where we just tend to sit unless it's even in front of a TV or listening to something. I think it really takes us to understand what it's doing to our health and relationships. I don't think it will change until something serious forces us to change.
SPEAKER_04There's a comparison I have made, and that is um China is a growing economy, and the comparison of certain Western countries, and when we went through our initial industrial growth, and that that comparison has has been clear. The internet growth and abundance and just almost glut of stuff that's available online, I haven't actually brought that into the fold of the comparison. And will we reach a point where we want more depth than just the amount and quantity?
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I think the interesting thing will be how it goes with things like AI. So if AI, artificial intelligence, can start to do things for us, then we will have more time, and it will be interesting to see what we will do with that extra time.
SPEAKER_04Well, it it already has on some level, and we some of us already do some of them not. Um the problem is time unemployed and with no money and desperate and in our survival state, or a time where we can peacefully think of things, other things.
SPEAKER_03Do you know what I mean? Yes, but I would also would say I think there's a certain level that they have benchmarks. I think it's about 70,000 US dollars a year. If you earn more than this, it doesn't increase your happiness. Right. So yes, I think if you're very privileged, potentially you have the lack of stress of not having to worry about where your next money comes from. But is that offering you a deep sense of stillness and satisfaction and um resonating on an emotional level? Does that have to equate to money? You know, and I would also say that's something where I'm trying to explore with my blog. You know, if I do change career and go for something where I get a paycheck to not having any money or any income, is that gonna change my state of happiness? Is it gonna be higher or lower? Will I be worried about certain things? Right. So I think that's also quite interesting, and I think it's very much about learning how to be still and content within yourself, regardless of your situation. You know, a lot of things that happen to us could be good or bad, but again it's about the mindset. Yeah. And can we cultivate a mindset?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's independent of finance, but I think social media can give us a mindset of scarcity, like we don't have what they have. I don't know if it gives us uh abundance because we need to buy the things that are online, right? Maybe we have an abundance of content, but is that adding a value to us or is it just kind of killing time because we don't have anything else to do? We can't sit in a coffee shop by ourselves and just not do anything. We want the companionship of a phone or an Instagram scroll.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it's interesting to, you know, think if we could compare this with an experience of somebody who's in their 90s, what advice would they give? You know, would they say, Oh, I wish I'd had the internet earlier so I can spend my time on there? Or would it be more giving advice to spend the time to connect to people?
SPEAKER_04Or somewhere in between.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because I I'm somewhat convinced that it's it is somewhere and in between. I don't think that it's purely a bad thing, and I don't think that it's purely a good thing, and we should just dive in and kind of get lost in that 100% online world. There is a lot in in-person connections that you can't get.
SPEAKER_03And I would say it's because the online world is so addictive, you know. There's just so much information. Yeah, there's so much information. There's all you know, when you have this endless scrolling, there's always another post to see. It's very rewarding. See these things for your brain, you know. But how do you edit yourself when to stop?
SPEAKER_04I have no idea. Like I said, before the internet, I would go to the library and basically take away anything I could carry. Yeah. So I had no control then, I have no control then. But the the difference would be that the library would have a closing time. And they would have a limit on how many of each medium I could take out.
SPEAKER_03Whereas we don't have that for the internet, especially when it's in your pocket all the time. Well, there is yeah, no, but if you put your own locker in it, fine, but it's that's something that you have to do yourself. Whereas I feel like, you know, if you had a conversation with a friend, there would be the time of the last bus, or you know, the evening would end, or something. There would be something that's you know stopped a conversation. No, I know what you mean.
SPEAKER_04I think for me, because I have things on and offline that it's how much time do I have, what do I want to do, and then I pop online. I think because it's so easy to get caught in the rolling of all of it. I think I have to think about. I used to do little post-its. I I used my phone more than my laptop, but I used to have little post-its right next to my laptop, and I used to have to I used to make myself write a list of the three things I wanted to do when I turned that computer on. Because if I didn't do that, it'd be like hours later and I'd be like, what where I haven't gotten any of these done when I've done it. But that's coming to the internet as an adult.
SPEAKER_03But I would also if you were set in a coffee shop on your road, would you spend the time having the coffee just set by yourself, or would you get out your device? It depends on what I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_04I have done both. I also have a lot of studying material, I'm studying Chinese, so I also have a lot of paper material for that. Sometimes I'll break that out. Pre-internet, I used to sit in coffee shops with a pack like a notebook, and just as I was thinking about stuff or C stuff, I would write that down. Yep. So I'm I've always been in a cycle. I feel like the cycle of information and the cycle of input has always been the same for me. It's when there's more of it online to overwhelm me and what I want to see and do and learn.
SPEAKER_03And are you focused when you get online to go to the destination that you wanted to in the first place? But you know, if you're like you say, right, I'm gonna I've got five minutes, I'm gonna do some language learning, or do you get into the like rabbit hole of oh but there's something on social media, I'll just spend five minutes doing that, and then actually that takes up your time and you don't get to the initial task.
SPEAKER_04I do the initial task first now because I've never not done those so many times before. Which is again sort of the the the blessing of the VPN because the fun stuff is generally over there behind the wall. Uh WeChat is mostly the in-person groups and they go one-on-one meetups and things like that, and and colleagues and work stuff and stuff like that. So it that is that is distracting because it's conversations that we're going back and forth all the time, kind of thing. So I need to reply to those, but it's not a string of stuff generally speaking. But the Twitter and the Instagram and the the email and all of that, that's behind the wall.
SPEAKER_03But do you think if you move back to your own country you would have the um determination to create that wall for yourself, or do you think you would end up lost in the rabbit hole? Well, it it's never a perfect system.
SPEAKER_04And I have been back. I've been in and outside the wall. Literal. The internet going viral. Um and even on vacations, I'm I don't I don't have it. Like we were in Thailand last month and we just had we got a Tyson card and we had it to the internet the whole time. And even still, I was like, I just wouldn't turn my phone on unless I needed to do something, I wanted to do something, I needed the time to do something. Because I knew if I just as we were sitting in a cafe, if I started, yeah, I would tune out. So I just didn't, yeah. But it it took getting burnt to do that. Yeah, it takes discipline. Yeah, yeah. It does. It almost feels like it almost feels like there needs to be some sort of like internet restraint training exactly to kind of teach you that so you don't have to get burnt a few billion times before you reach that state. And it's sort of like like I was teaching first-year writing in the US, which is such a weird picture, but it's just how to write academic English, freshman year, 18 years old. And the kids that were coming to me, and this is in the early like 2012 to 2013, the kids that were coming in, the American students, they came in. Teachers stopped teaching computer skills, they stopped teaching typing. I took typing on a typewriter when I was in high school, that's how old I am. And they they didn't teach any of that. So the students were like pecking away and doing this stuff or just doing this stuff with like two fingers, and and they couldn't type fast. So they couldn't get their ideas to be the speed of their fingers, they didn't have like computer skills even within just Word of PowerPoint. Yeah, like the teachers that they had assumed that they had computer skills because they could use a tablet, they could use a mobile phone. Well, they can scroll so they know computer skills, so we don't need to teach those anymore. But it's like, ah no, reclaim it, they might go back. That's very true, huh? Yeah. So I feel like we need to add that back in because we do need those skills. There's things in those menus that make life a lot easier, and then restraint class. Maybe.
SPEAKER_03I think that's such a good point, especially with the skills, because I think there's so many tools out there to help your online experience. Um and the devices that we use are so intuitive now, like the iPhone, there's no instruction manual with it, you know, you just turn it on. So with the software, it's kind of the same, you know, and I know I miss out on so much, it's like with Instagram, I don't know half of the features because I don't really know how to find that out. Yeah. Um, so I'm not using any of the devices or the platforms to their best potential. Yeah, no, me neither.
SPEAKER_04I've I've just I got I kept getting kicked out of I was a Twitter girl for years and years and years, uh, and I found like groups in there that I really liked of people I like to follow and stuff like that, and so I just stayed there. And they started to lock me out. I don't know what was happening, I might have gotten Twitter hacked a few times, but literally every month this year I've gotten locked out of Twitter for security reasons, and they'll email me and tell them, and I'll be like, wait a minute, what? This is not good, and because that's my my stream of news and information and things I'm learning, and I've got my Chinese language group in there, I've got my expat groups in there. I'm like, what do you mean you've shut off that whole world? What's happening? And so I accidentally moved over into Instagram because I can still post on Twitter without actually being on there, and then I started to see people do different things. There's videos now, and there's um live streaming, and you can do multiple videos or multiple pictures in a row and all these things, and you can like pay like a few dollars to advertise so that it'll show up in people's feeds and all this stuff I'm watching, and I'm going, I thought it was just still a picture, yeah. Like 2018, and I was like, I thought Instagram literally was still just a picture. Next a picture, next a picture, and I'm like, when did all of this happen?
SPEAKER_03So I'm just learning by watching people things, yep, and I I'm exactly the same. I still mainly use it as a picture, and I'm like, there's so much more I could do. Yeah, and I I really to be honest, I probably just need the time to to learn it. But then I'm kind of like I could put that time into it doing some.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03See, I I have uh I have a husband, but I don't have children, so I have a lot of free time. But when I think about it, it's not even that I would put it into like uh family time, you know, is it that I would put the time into writing an article? You know, almost online do you need to market yourself? Um you know, do you need to have the the pizzazz around what you do to be able to market it for people to visit it? You know, if your Instagram feed isn't up to date and looking great, are people gonna visit a blog? And I think that's uh also an interesting thing of is it the wrapping paper or is it what's inside the present?
SPEAKER_04It's more like a library for me because I find people that are doing similar things and I get ideas from them. Or yeah, I get a lot of like I interviewed this guy about language learning and he was talking about like bookstagram. It's this hashtag on Instagram where people post pictures of books they're reading, bookstores, libraries, all these things, and I'm like, really? And oh my god, the places they post are crazy cool. And I'll just I'll be sitting there going, I need to go to grade today. And there's also StudyGram is another hashtag, and people will literally post pictures of what they're studying.
SPEAKER_03Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I'm like, so every night when I go to do my HSK homework, I'm like, okay, I'm done with that. Oh, I can prove it or I can track it, I can then later I can go back and see what I did just by going through my Instagram. So I just take a picture and I put it on StudyGram, and I'm like, it's like a kind of a really, very quick account accountability tool.
SPEAKER_03I didn't know that existed. But I also like the idea that you can be accountable within these online platforms. Yeah, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I mean they're to be fair, those two are rather big, so they're not like a small community where everybody knows each other.
SPEAKER_03But you feel a sense of accountability to put it on there. I do. Which you know, you might not have somebody around you to be able to do you know, to to hold you accountable or that you could have so I think that's also so it's how we use these online platforms I think is very interesting. Yeah. Because if you use them in a positive way and you know, they actually fill not a void, but they fill something that potentially you don't have access to. I think that's such a positive thing. It is, it truly truly is.
SPEAKER_04And again, I found those from word of mouth from somebody who is studying the same language that I was, and he's like, Well, haven't you flaw on this thing? Or I went to this thing, and I was like, wait, pause, what did you just say? Like, need to go there. I didn't even know there were communities. I thought it was just it individual accounts. Yeah. Again, Instagram has changed. Like, what just happened? And I'm sure there's way even more than that, because it's only been a few months. But there's just there's just groups. Yeah. Humans are crazy. We create goodness and craziness all together, and we're supposed to know how to sort through all of it.
SPEAKER_03Exactly, and self-manage. Oh my god. You know, I think that's my biggest uh questions that I have about all these online platforms or tools, you know, nothing is good or bad, you know, it's all about how you use some game, but having the education to self-manage, even knowing what the the tools can do, is one thing. But when you're addicted, you know, when you're kind of addicted to just the joy of scrolling, how do you then kind of be like, no, I'm gonna use this in a very positive way? You know, that whole dynamic is very interesting, and because we've come into it halfway through our lives, yeah, we've had to learn how to to put on that filter. You know, we're still learning, we're kind of saying, okay, how much is too much? What is positive scrolling versus like how could I use this to be accountable to my study group?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Whereas I wonder whether kids coming into technology now through experience at a younger age will find these uh internal tools of how to manage this, and they won't have any of the dilemmas that we feel they will have, you know?
SPEAKER_04Younger expats, please contact me. I'd like to interview you on this topic. Seriously, I do wonder that. Because I got very, very lost in books at a young age, and there are very real limitations. The books end, and then you have to go against more.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Like there there's only so much, or you got really I got really tired, and my eyes for it. I was just like, oh, that's it. I'm just I need to stop for today kind of thing because of very physical reasons. But you don't need to with the online stuff now. You really could keep going very with videos. You could literally just like get a whole bunch of them set up and just have constant videos going all the time.
SPEAKER_03But will this be a dilemma that we see or will it be something where somebody who's always had technology would automatically self-filter and be like, no, okay, I know when I've had enough time. Do you see what I mean? Do we see it's always been available so it's not a new shiny. Yeah. It's you know something where okay, I know after two hours I'm I'm tired of looking at iPhone. Yeah. Whereas we think, oh, do kids have too much screen time? Do kids actually know how much screen time? Right. You know, do they get that from their own experience? Do they maybe have three hours and think, oh, my eyes felt tired and it felt like too long or not? It's it will be interesting to see how new generations cope with their access to technology. Will they self-filter and say, oh, actually I felt I missed out on like football practice or something because I wanted to stay in and watch a video.
SPEAKER_04That's a really good point. What are you going to teach your children on how to use this?
SPEAKER_03I try my best to have some rules. Yeah. So Peppa Pink doesn't make it into the house until 5 30 on a weekday. At 8 a.m. No PM. Oh, okay. So PM, you know. Uh but at the weekend she does make an appearance early on. It's also difficult nowadays when you're sat in a restaurant. So and I've seen this in many different countries. There'll be parents and the kids will be on the iPad, and I before kids I would be like, I will never have that. And I find we do it, you know, not regularly, but there's occasions where we do do that. Yeah. Because sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's just the practice of okay, you're gonna sit well in a chair, and that's what's important to us rather than having a meltdown and we all have to go home. I will try and teach my kids that you know that it's a very good place, that there's lots of great tools on that, especially, you know, I'm dyslexic. I wish I had those tools when I was younger to help me learn in a more dynamic way. So I feel that in terms of education it's a lot more interactive, but I think it has to be balanced with a physical interaction of a teacher or a parent also helping. Um, but I would also try and encourage them to invest in their personal relationships and things like sport. Probably my biggest concern as a parent is them meeting somebody online and what you can say in a faceless way online. That's also with my blog when I was saying I worry because people can just say anything. If I write something, I don't personally feel you're hurt if you need it.
SPEAKER_04Oh, another good podcast. I want to get the name of this right.
SPEAKER_02Ah sorry.
SPEAKER_04Because he did something that I'd never even thought would anybody would do, but it's like conversations with people that hate me, I think is the here it is. Yeah, conversations with people that hate me, who hate me. And what he does is he takes he started out with taking people who wrote comments on his uh website and contacted them, asked them if they could talk in person, and he'd record it, and they'd have the conversation about the things that he said that triggered them, and they'd try to not necessarily agree with each other but find some sort of understanding. Yep. And he always says the thing of just remember that there's a person on the other end of the screen. Now he's branched out and he has people who have people reacting to their online things, and he'll get both of them together, and he'll talk to one person separately, one person, then he'll bring all both of them together, and they'll kind of try to navigate the conversation. But it's a brilliant, brilliant podcast because it's like, oh yes, thank you. People think before you write them these mean things because it's just it's easy to write four or five mean words, but that is a person, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I will definitely check that out. Yeah, because I think when you're disagreeing about a topic, that's one thing, but when you're saying the person who wrote the topic is this or the this that is when it's very hurtful and damaging because it becomes very personal, and that's my biggest fear with unrestricted access to the internet for my children, is I have no idea what communication they're getting from other people. Um, and I think words are so important, and I've only realized that in my later life that a sentence to somebody at a certain time can really affect how they feel, and they can really hold that. Um but otherwise I think the internet is a very positive place, you know. I know my son's language skills are Good because he watches TV, and many parents will hate me for that, but there's certain words where I have never taught them those words, nursery hasn't taught those words. But he can have a conversation in coffee shop about dinosaurs because there's a dinosaur on Pepper Pig. And I don't think we should see that TV is bad, or you know, I think it's a balance. So independent play, I think, is really important. Uh nursery, those types of things. But actually, if he's learning languages and he's learning too, you know, his only um exposure a lot of the time to Chinese language is our Chinese TV. Yeah. So potentially that's a good way. When I ask adult language learners how do you learn, they're like, I watch foreign films. Yeah. So I think it's just about making sure that it's it doesn't become a babysitter. Yeah. You know. And I think sometimes it can, it's natural because kids enjoy it, you know, but as long as you you know you have a balance, I think it's fine. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. No, I watched a real amount of TV as a child. Um and I would say the only difference between TV and technology is TV is very, you know, you sit there and you look at a screen. Yeah. With technology, if he runs off with an iPad, I'm like, this is not your iPad, this is Mummy's iPad, and Mummy can take this off you, and then physically trying to remove something that he feels is his is a very different dynamic because you know, to him, you're taking away my friend. I see you're taking away pepper from me, you know, and this is mine, and he'll say, Mine, you know, this is this is Arthur's. Um, whereas the TV is static in a house, and we can all sit on devices, but we'll be sat in the same ring.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I think that's also an interesting dynamic. Interesting, because I was thinking, I thought you were going to say is that the with the iPad it can be interactive.
SPEAKER_04But you went in a completely different direction then.
SPEAKER_03And I would say a lot of uh he's very young, so a lot of the interactive games, you know, will play together. Yeah. Um and yes, I think there's a great thing about that, but it's more of the fact that I want him to know that that's not his piece of technology that he can access all the time and do what he wants with. That at his age, because he is so young, you know, there's somebody who's gonna give him boundaries. See? But yeah. Yeah, um, but definitely when he's like, where's the iPad? Or he'll pick up my phone and be like, Arthur's phone, and I'll be like, no, mommy's phone. And then you have to chase him around the house, and he'll be like, you know, put the TV on, or but let's let's um bring this back to the external side.
SPEAKER_04Well, you mentioned that you might go back to the UK at some point.
SPEAKER_03Do you foresee yourself keeping uh life and breaths going? Yes, I do, and I actually feel that it could become the thing that I give up a career for, and I don't think it will ever be a career for me because then I think it would change the nature of it, and I do ask a lot of people when you turn a hobby into a career, how is that? But definitely because I think what I've learned is that generally humans are the same the world over, and the topics that I'm writing for will resonate wherever I am, and actually going to another country just opens me up to many other contributors. And I think there's also scope for me if I did go back to the UK to get into things like coaching because I've had some great access to coaches here, or to get into a wellness field, and I think there's more opportunity to do that here, but I definitely think that the experiences and the people that I've met to bring that mindset back to potentially quite a small town, not a city, would be really beneficial. I don't know how people would react, you know.
SPEAKER_04I was just thinking, would they be open to having that?
SPEAKER_03To be honest, I don't know. And I when I've spoken to people, they've said a lot of things in the UK. If you think about meditation or a lot of the practices uh that I look into it, it's very much based around um wellness. Yeah, is this gonna have a benefit to me or my body? It's not very linked to spiritual, and I found here there's a very big spiritual community. So I think people want evidence in Western countries that this is gonna work for me. Yeah, so I think that will be an interesting thing if you want to do something like crystals or you know, those types of things. People might be like, this is too hippie for me. But I definitely think I will continue to write the blog because it gives me a sense of purpose, yeah, and it fulfills something in me that I think I will still need regardless of where I am. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know in terms of readership who you know, who or where it will be, and possibly whether the contributors I get in my home country will be want to be as open, right? So I think it'll be an interesting dynamic, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Such a tricky thing, such a tricky thing. It's because you the vulnerability is powerful, but then people have to live their daily lives, and some of them it's very, very personal and they don't want you don't necessarily want that many people to know that. Yep, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But then sometimes you just don't you can write under a pseudonym, you know, because many people have said actually it's really cathartic to have written this down. Yeah, and if you don't want to share it under your own name, you don't need to, you can share it under another. But for me, I just felt like I can't ask people to be authentic unless I can be real and honest with my own experiences. And what am I protecting by not saying that it's me who's written it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03An ego or you know, potentially my the feelings of my child. But I would hope that he would then see if he did choose to get married and have kids that actually this is something his wife or he could go through. Uh so I hope he would also appreciate that the benefit of being that vulnerable, because also in the end I say, you know, actually what got me through this was then to realise how awesome this human was and to see him grow, you know. So that was the only thing where I kind of thought, would I feel would I ever regret sharing it? But I don't think I would. But I think people have different levels of being comfortable with that, you know, and it's also the topics, you know, when you start to talk about things like domestic violence or or things that um could be very sensitive. I think people can write under another name. It's for me, it's the question of is the act of writing this and sharing it with others going to benefit you and them. If it's detrimental to either one, then potentially it's not something to recommend. But I found that actually a lot of people have said I'm really glad you asked me because I've been wanting to share.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes me really sad that they say, you know, I'm not a writer, because it's just writing, I know we have labels for people that do professions, but writing is just something that helps us communicate. And it's it's it's a refining thing. You you get it out, then you fix it. And a lot of people, I think, still think you have to when it comes out, it needs to be perfect.
SPEAKER_03And it's like, oh my god, nobody, literally nobody can talk about it. Yep. And that's why with a lot of the pieces, I know there's grammatical mistakes in my own work. I know that you know, potentially I use the wrong words for things. And that article I had my husband read it, and that's also what I do by putting something out very sensitive. If I mentioned somebody in the article, I would always let them read it and give them you know the um the respect to actually say I don't want this up there. But you know, he'd be like, You've used like you meant this word, but you you need another word. But I think it's just about actually saying that's okay. Yeah, the the point of it is just to be real, and you know, yes, I'm dyslexic, there will be spelling mistakes. I use a spell checker, I try and edit it the best I can, but I think that's also what makes it authentic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03When people say they're not a writer, they worry that actually they can't express themselves. And I do also think when you're writing in another language, that also can be tricky for people because oh, you just had me.
SPEAKER_04Sorry, I just thought of something. There's all these different stories that I've heard that just connect to all kinds of things. Elizabeth Gilbert, unfortunately known for E Pre Love, which is a fine book as a person and as a creative person and as a writer, I think what she writes about creativity is very interesting and very touching. And she has this book that I'm not gonna remember the name of, but I'll put it in the show notes. And chapter five of this book that I can't think of the name of, damn it, um, is um she delves into uh getting comfortable with creativity, and she talks about this one author who I do not remember the name of who was having a really she always had a really hard time writing. It was always excruciating, she would always have to lock herself away, and she would just it was a really painful process, and she was like, you know what? I'm gonna try something different. And so she rented a beach house, she uh hired two of her friends because they were working, so they knew, you know, they're like, look, I'm gonna pay for the weekend, I'll pay you to be my assistants. She's like, I want to just tell you stories. And so she'd like make kind of an outline, and they she would tell them a story, they would ask her questions, she'd make notes of their questions, she'd go in the room, she'd she'd write some more, and then she'd get the next story ready, and she did this over and over and over again, and they had food and they had drink, and then we did this conversation over and over and over again, and she said it's the quickest she's ever gotten through a book is because she focused on the stories and she got her voice into it more because she was having a conversation about the story and all that kind of stuff, and it's that I think we get caught up in the written forum, yes, yeah, and I would say with a lot of articles I've thought about writing them in my head many days if not weeks.
SPEAKER_03And I think sometimes you just have to commit to just writing it, and you can go back and self-edit, you know. Um, if you think about the perfect start to something, I don't think you'll ever make it because there is no perfect start. I think it is just about saying, okay, you know, I I start the that post with this is probably the most difficult post I'll ever write. You know, that's not a great start to any post, but it's just I feel it's like I just have to start in some way, and actually then it will flow. I think it's the you need sometimes the momentum, and if you worry about the the editing and being perfect, it's difficult to get that momentum.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, Big Magic is the name of the book, it finally came into my brain. Chapter five. That chapter is my mental.
SPEAKER_03But I just say that I have taken to having a notebook in my bag, a physical notebook with a pen, yep, um, that I just write in. Yeah. And it won't be about things for the blog, it will be like you know, today I did this and then I felt this way, and then I try and do five points of gratitude at the end. Well, that's beautiful, but just to physically write something, and maybe that has been a a support for me in then writing an article online, just the fact of being comfortable with writing. Um because probably it's you know, we write emails and we write in quite a formal way, but with things like social media and television, and it's not often that you just write for writing's sake. You tend to write for a purpose, you know. Something you want to tell people something, you want to show people something. Yeah. Yeah, and I think if you work especially for a corporate company, there's always a certain style of that writing. So, you know, writing if you don't write in a journal, actually, do you ever get a chance to just write for the jury of writing or to write to tell something, somebody something that isn't in a professional way, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But I guess my question is how often do we actually write from the heart? And I think that's where my approach has been of just gonna write from the heart. Yeah. The grammar might be terrible, the words might be wrong.
SPEAKER_04But it's about it's about the message. Yes. Meaning, meaning is conveyed. Yeah, mistakes are mistakes, who cares? We make mistakes when we speak to each other all the time, and that's why we have things like what did you say this? I don't get it, what's that? You know, that's why we have those phrases, is because it's about the message, not in how it's exactly thank you for sharing all of this. You gave me some definite things to think about about the our online stuff and that the freedom that can come with living overseas, even using the same online space that you had used in a different place, there was still your offline experience catapulted all this other stuff. We think often in online and offline ideas, but they're so interlaced in some way. Totally interconnected. Yeah. So who knows what'll happen with all of this, but it's fun to ponder. So thank you for pondering all of this with me. Thank you for having me. Listeners, I'll put all of the links and whatnot to what we talked about in the show notes. Alright, well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Virtual X Cat. And special thank you again to Damon Castillo for the music and to our special guest this time. If you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, just send me an email or contact me on social media. In the show notes, you can find all my information, or you can just jot it down right now. Are you ready? You ready? Here we go. Definitely Fugio, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O, Gmail, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. There you go. Contact me. Oh, LinkedIn too. You know what? I keep forgetting about that one. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to your questions, comments, feedback, any information, and volunteering to be on the podcast as well. Thank you so much and have a wonderful, wonderful day. On or offline.
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