Musings: “New Yearn”

We enter 2026 by trading performance for meaning, letting “yearn” guide how we make, love, and choose what matters. From a cold Tampa night that turned radiant to a creative rejection that became craft, we map how to turn longing into honest work—something more aligned than desire. 

• pressure and pitfalls of year-end recaps
• choosing meaning over performance and applause
• the power of dropping expectations at a concert
• yearning versus desire as a creative compass
• finishing a bold 4x4 artwork and starting a book
• mobile studio delays and surrendering timelines
• a storyboard pitch loss and the skill it grew
• storyboards as living maps, not scriptures
• bike metaphor for process and flow
• texting an ex, meeting the ache with craft
• turning longing into stories instead of spirals
• making space so the right story can arrive

Let us know in the comments what you’re yearning for, and if you know the visceral feeling that comes with it. 

Instagram: @tiam.podcast & @joyscout.mo

For Guest Inquiries, collaborations, and questions:

Email Mo: mo@joyscoutstudio.com

“Don’t get Deterred, get Inspired”

Chapters

• 0:06 Welcoming 2026 And The Unknown
• 0:59 The Pressure Of Year-End Recaps
• 2:56 Happy New Yearn And What It Means
• 5:15 A Night Out And Dropping Expectations
• 7:37 Yearning Versus Desire
• 10:02 Creative Wins, Setbacks, And Green Lights
• 12:08 The Storyboard Lesson And Building Your Bike
• 15:40 Love, Longing, And The Pickleball Paddle
• 18:16 Turning Longing Into Writing And Next Steps
• 23:48 Letting Go To Make Space For What’s Yours

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Welcome to 2026. The year of not 2025, of the unknown, of special things, of of hopefully lots of magic and and joy and giving and getting. And maybe just a little bit of stingy grittiness, you know, like for yourself to just make sure that you got what you need. And then you just give it back just as hard, you know? Like you get what you need and you give it back just as hard. Like like really good sex. You know, like you get what you need. Cause, uh. And it's like that, but with life and people. I'm fucking I'm ready for this day. I'm ready for whatever the unknown holds of this year. Um, it does feel very exciting in my body, so I'm I'm looking forward to whatever that means and wherever it goes. But every year there's, you know, a couple weeks before the the new year, there's recap videos online of what we do with our year, what we did with it, what happened. And, you know, and it goes in every direction. And uh it could be one of hope, of joy, of excitement, of traveling, of of friends, of starting something new, and it could, you know, it could be of loss, it could be of sadness, it could be of things not going your way. And there's so many ways to recap your year, but nonetheless, the feeling that I have as a creative every time it rolls around, I was like, oh, I have to do the recap video, and it becomes this like tight expectation, this really tight expectation of like what I'm supposed to be doing justice for, like the 365 days of the just absolute versatility that is my life. Like I do a lot of stuff, and I always feel like I need to say all the stuff that I've done, and I'm like, I don't, you don't, you don't have to, and and also do I have to say the things that didn't go well at all this year? Because there's a list, there's a list of things, and and neither none of them feel super honest because I don't really feel that I want to do that anymore, like I don't want to perform just to perform. I wanna I want it to have meaning and I think that that's something that every single person that I know is craving as like it's okay to be theatrical and it's okay to have a production, but it all is worth it when you deeply care about it and you can really use it as just a channel of like your lived and loved and learned experiences and and and I think uh the idea of a recap video is kind of like that. Like, what am I what am I saying about my year? I heard someone say you know, if you were gonna give your year a title, what would the title be? And um when someone sent me a New Year's Eve text this morning, uh like Happy New Year's, I went to text back and I have been texting Happy New Year like all day long. And yet on one of these messages, I typed Happy New Yearn, like Y-E-A-R-N. And I deleted the N and then I typed it again, and then it like it right right back, right back to yearn. And I was like, okay, this is a message that I'm meant to be seeing. And I started thinking about the word yearn. Like happy new yearn. And I was like, do I like this? Do I want this to be a year of yearning? And I realized that I'd already had a year of yearning. I had a year of yearning, of deeply desiring so much, and having crisp, finite clearance on what it is that I want and how I want it, and how I would like it, and who I want to spend it with, and making so much room for the things that have not, you know, shown themselves yet, the things that haven't arrived, but like creating such a space to just be fucking wild and weird and in love with my life and the people that are in it, and to be able to have a good fucking time. And it's so funny to me that last night we thought we were gonna be so cold because it's 45 degrees in Tampa, and that's pretty cold for Tampa, and it was a different type of crispiness. And so we just got bundled and cute, and my best friend had this like wild, fluffy just jacket with fur and lights, and and it literally glowed, it glowed. And the amount of people that complimented this jacket gave me such an identity crisis because I like attention, I cannot help it, and I wasn't getting any, and I was like, this is what you want for your friend, isn't it? And I was like, be a good friend, Morgan. And I'm just like, and I you want your friends to feel good, and she was glowing and beautiful and had an amazing jacket on, and everybody knew it. We all knew it. And I got to bask in her glowing light. And it's just funny because we thought we would go to this concert. We went to see Sophie Tucker, we thought we would get up in there, and then we thought we would just get out because we were gonna be so cold and had not have a good time. And it turned out that we had a wonderful time because the crowd was just beautiful energy, just making space, making room, and we danced and we made friends and we danced and we laughed a lot. And I think that's the beauty of really dropping your expectations. Like just have none. Have no expectations, and a lot of magical orchestration will just start popping up all over. And it's like the first year, I think, in a like a while, other than you know, when I've been partnered on New Year's, where my single brain wasn't asking, like, I wonder if I'll kiss anybody at the end of the night. That was not, I it just had not crossed my mind for and all just not at all had that crossed my mind. Because there were so many other things to be thinking about, just like my life and and what I was gonna wear, and what you know, what we were gonna do, what we were gonna eat, and and and then, you know, I got a kiss and that was fun. That was fun. We s we met people and we danced with them, and then we made out with strangers, and that that's a good life, I think. A really good life. And as far as yearning goes, like I'm okay with the yearning that I have done this year, because it might not be a super sexy word, you know, and I think it like it's like it's it's like a it's it's a fire that's wilder than desire, I think, when you're yearning for something. Because desire can be so sacral, it can be so like body and and and you know, and lusty and still good and fucking all about desire. But yearning, I think is like an alignment through your body and your mind, and your it's like this all makes fucking sense. And it's like the desire is there and the logic is there and the heart is there, and and your gut is there, your gut's saying, like, this is it, you know this is it, you knew this was it from the beginning. Even some of the stuff that just wasn't my favorite. I wouldn't change those things. Like, I, you know, I woke up a lot and I had already thought that I was quite awake. You know, I thought this year it would be just financially fucking blessed. I thought that was what was gonna happen because of just so much of the the work that I've been doing and how I was showing up and and and it was just kind of like reminding me that I was showing up for myself, that I have so much time alone this year. I had so much time to spend with me and like making sure that I knew that this was right, that everything I wanted was what I wanted. And I mean, I you know, I finished a four foot by four foot painting, and and it's it's also mixed media, and so it's and it's brave and it's loud, and it's not the type of art that I usually sway towards making because it's not for people to tell me that it's good. And I know what it's like to make art that people will think is good, and I know about that type of validation, but I really know what it's like when you do something that is a different type of good. Like it's a beginning, it's a new good that people haven't seen before. And am I not connect with every single person because it's they're not gonna understand it until it makes waves through many, many minds and many hearts, and then it'll get to them, and then maybe they'll know. But I feel good about it and feel good about starting a book and podcast. I feel good about doing hard work on a mobile studio trailer that I really thought this time last year would be, you know, I thought she would be ready, and and yet you don't get to control a lot of these things. You just you get to control the way that you feel. And if you're surrounding yourself with people that you just fucking adore, it's so easy to feel a lot better. And to latch on to all the words and the feelings that they say that make you feel good, and to use that language and those feelings inside of your own brain when you are talking to yourself, unless you don't have an inner monologue, in which case, fuck you kindly. I know you exist and I'm I'm happy. I'm happy for you and your thoughtless brain. But I I I yearned. I yearned hard, and I'm yearning vocally, and I'm yearning broadcasted, and and a lot of what I desired arrived. You know, I wanted to be published this year. I remember writing that last summer, like the not this past, but the year prior. And and I got to it got to be published in a magazine that I am so excited to fucking be a contributing writer with. Like it and it's opened my it's one of those, you know, Matthew McConaughey moments where I'm like, these are green lights, like so many green lights this year. I did a a storyboard pitch over the summer, and dude, I thought, I thought, I believed so deeply that this was gonna be my project because it was an animation and it was a a logo reveal, um, a cinematic reveal for a production studio. And so it was it was the concept was like pitched to me, like, you know, go after this project. It would be me and a couple other studios. And I remember being so excited to that it was mine. It just aligned with some stuff that was happening, you know. It was a Mustang. My first car was a Mustang. I started seeing Mustangs everywhere. Um, and then it was to pitch it, you know, they needed to see your storyboard conceptual. And um, I did a lot of work on that, which I wouldn't always recommend. If you're pitching, you know, try to try to make it look as good and concise as you can with as potentially not a lot of time, but like I really wanted this, and so I was okay with the sacrifice that that might have taken. So I handed this project off to the briefing company that that found me, and um they pitched for you. And so I don't, you know, I didn't have any, I didn't have any say in that. So I had to relinquish control and just hope that my ideas spoke for themselves. And I, you know, I didn't, I didn't get it. And I remember thinking like just taking it so personally and trying not to, but being so bummed because it was such solid work and reaching out to the pitching talent to be, you know, can you give me any like feedback or like what went, you know, what went south? And and and they were like, you know, uh, they fucking loved your work, but it just it just comes down to experience. Like they it really comes down to clients with a lot of shareholders and a lot of opinions, and they need to know that you've done this a bunch of times, which I haven't, you know. This would be I know I believe in the integrity of how I do things, and I knew it would be hard and I knew it would be good when I did it. And so that's a lot, I think, for a company who's dealing with other people's monies to take a chance on you. And I remember sitting back after this experience and being like, fuck, I really thought that that was mine, and realizing that it was mine, but it wasn't this story. Like, I needed to remind myself that I know how to storyboard. Like, that's what that was for. And I've been working on an animation and a short story that required a pretty hefty storyboard for me to know how to navigate my own story and to put it together and the characters and the narration. So there's a lot of moving elements that that anyone doing this on their own is doing on their own, which so much pride in saying that. But also like you you can cut as many corners as you need to to get the work done, but also this isn't one of those corners, and and the storyboard took so much longer than I thought that it would take. And it turns out that sometimes with storyboards, they're not forever. It's not like it's not like a um, it's not like it's not like a Bible or it's something that sometimes needs to be flexible and to adjust because sometimes wherever their hang-up is, it's in the script, you know? And so sometimes you're like, don't touch the script, the script is good, and you're like, no, actually, the script is, you know, fucking scenes four and five, because I don't know how to transition between them, and I'm the one transitioning, and I know how to transition, and this this feels like fucking impossible and really complicated and takes more time than I need. And so you start annihilating whatever that scene was that said that made that complicated, you know, and you're like, I guess I really don't need that scene, because in the end, you want to tell a story, you don't want to be attached to any of the pieces. The pieces make sense as you're going, but like the final, the final product has so many. It's like training wheels. You have to know when to take the wheels off, but when you've never built the bike before, you're not sure which element is actually the training wheel. And so you have to keep kind of navigating back and forth to be like, what is not working here? And you know when it's not working because you're not in a flow state. You're you're all you're held up, you're not looking forward to doing the work, you're procrastinating, you're asking so many questions, and no one can give you an answer, you know, because it's your process and you're figuring it out, and no one's built your bike before. They've built bikes, but yours is different. And God, I love bike metaphors. If you can't tell, I this is why a bicycle is on the cover of my podcast, because I I just love a bike, is so much it's just self-love. It is such self-love. And you know, putting a bike together, like learning the gears, like the the amount of time it takes to get from A to B, whether it's like a joy ride or for real transit, where you really have to be somewhere where you're depending on yourself to get yourself where you need to be. It's just a love story, and I love love. I really do. In fact, that's the beautiful segue that I am gonna close out today with is that I had some yearning come up today when I was sort of recapping the year and I was checking in with people. Um, and I was doing some organizing and cleaning around, um, because it always makes me feel good, especially after like a night of drinking and fun was had, but also you felt like you needed to make sure your entire life was in order the next morning. And I was cleaning out my trunk and I couldn't find my my pickleball paddle, and it's a really nice paddle. Like, if you know any, but if you know, you know. And I can't I haven't found it for a couple months now, and it's and I've been busy and I haven't played anyways, but like I want to be playing again, and I really want this paddle. And I think I left it in my ex-boyfriend's car. And so I had to text this now ex, and I was like, I don't know. Do I do do I do I text? Do I ask this? Like, does it feel like a fake thing to do? And it's like it's not fake. I really need I really want to know about this paddle. And so I I chimed in and you know, we had a quick exchange, and that was quite short and and I wouldn't say just simple and not without care, but not super caring, if that makes sense. And I felt a yearning again, and I was like, oh no, like was this really about the pickleball? Like, was this about the battle, or did I really want an excuse to to reach out? And uh suddenly I was sitting with a feeling that I now recreated in my chest that I did not want to be put there. Um and I had that like yearningslash longing for like a text message that would say the thing that I wanted to hear. And I was sitting with this feeling, and I'm like, what do we do with this feeling? Because for me, these types of these types of feelings are uh pure creative energy. Like you're gonna sit down, you're gonna you're gonna try and make music, you're gonna you're gonna make something. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna connect with a friend because when you talk about what you're feeling, you're gonna a lot of people just avoid the feeling. And that's like that's step one for avoidance is like I don't know what to do with this, so they don't do anything with it, and you know, you just try to get away from it. Not because just because you don't know how to to deal with it. And and I was like, I have to do something with this, with this feeling because I can't go down the rabbit hole, like I don't feel like crying. I'm totally down with crying, it's just that I already cried this morning in yoga. So the question was like, what do you do with this feeling? And the thing I want to leave with you is ask yourself what you want to happen. If you're like a daydreamer or a big thinker, um, or you just you think about what you wished had happened, um, the message that you want to get or the conversation you want to have, or the relationship you want to have, whatever, whatever those things are, like how you see it going in a perfect world, like what that exchange feels like if you don't want to get too visual, just like focus on the feeling. And write that story. I like that is that is a writer's mind because that feeling wasn't gonna go into a song. It like it was like it was like I don't have space to to to start something new there. Like I have stuff I'm working on and I I don't want to create space there. And so then it was like, okay, well, do I want to reach out to a friend and talk about this? And I was like, no, I feel like I've reached out to my friends and they know about these things. I don't really want to talk more about it. And and yet I was still feeling it, and I was like, I don't want to watch TV. I have already worked out today, like you know, and I just let it kind of sit there for a second, and I thought about how I wanted the conversation to go. And it was just a full, it was a story of the emerging, like a real story, like a love story. You know, I want love. I want a real, genuine, blossoming, blooming, becoming connection. And this one was a dying, this one has died. And and so I keep trying to like bring it back to life, but not because I know that that story isn't like that. That's just my story, trying to find something to attach to because it's so. There's so much life there. And um so I've just been sitting with what I want that story to be. And I'm like, well, this is that's how you begin a script, or that's how you begin a short story, or that's how you begin a poem. Uh, you know, that's how you begin something with words. Because if you know how you want it to go, you're definitely probably seeing you're seeing dialogue or you're seeing interaction or you're seeing, you know, love somewhere in your in your brain. And that's what that feeling is. And uh, I think a lot of people immediately want to fill it, that feeling with another person because they're like, okay, well, if this one doesn't work, I'll attach it to you. And then they attach it to another person and another, and it just keeps it keeps happening. And I know this because I I am I have been that person so often, like just real, genuine lover. And whenever I find myself in a new uh fling or relationship or a new just delighted, inspired time of knowing someone where you know enough that you like, and your brain just starts creating all the things that is are gonna happen that you know, it's like the it's like going to this concert. It's like don't have the expectation, just go in with the energy that you're gonna you want it to be good and that you're happy to be there, and it doesn't have to be forever. And turns out you'll stay all night long, meet new people, have fun, take great photos, feel lovely. Your friend will be literally shining and glowing all night, and you'll have a story to tell the next day. Um, and so right now I'm just I'm sitting and thinking about that story that I'm gonna tell. And I'm thinking if it's gonna, if it's like if it's if it's a maybe a short story, maybe it is a bit of a script. And because I want to protect my heart, I don't really want it to be poetry. I will say that. You know, I don't want to go down anything that's gonna make me feel as though I'm still in this, like I'm attached, because I'm I'm not, you know. I knew that relationship was gonna end. Like I knew it. And I just wanted to enjoy all that it was while it could. And I did. And so the poetry doesn't fit here for me because I didn't imagine it forever. And and poetry is like, you know, when it makes sense, it makes sense. You will know what form is calling to you because it'll just fit and it'll be like lightning, and you'll just see where it could go and you'll get excited. And if you do this a lot, you'll maybe get overwhelmed very fast because you're like, oh no, it's one more story I have to write. But if you don't do it a lot and you're just beginning to water how you get inspired and like what you use and what your catalysts are, like pay attention to the story that you want to be happening, you know, like what the why do you feel this way? Because what did you want to happen? And be honest with like what you want to happen and understand that maybe it's not with that person or with that job or with that scenario. It's just there's this really beautiful world, there's this universe of characters and and journeys in your head that want to come out, and you're so good at just putting them all across your world. Um, and this is your reminder to maybe put it on paper or to put it in a voice note, put it in an email. Um, do whatever you have to do to put it somewhere and give it some meaning and feel all the feelings that you want to feel with someone that they won't open up to and put it into a character and live through that fucking character and set that thing free so that you create space to bring in whatever's actually yours. So you can let go of that story and yours will arrive. Does that make sense? I'm trying it too, so I guess we'll see.