Musings: “The Art of Shedding”

January can feel like a trick of light—too slow, too long, and just honest enough to make you face what you’ve been dodging. We wade into that stretch with a messy mix of car trouble, online yoga teacher training, and a brand-new job in solar that drops me onto a dialer with a script, a headset, and a whole lot of resistance. What starts as a hustle for stability turns into a study in patience, discipline, and the weirdly tender art of staying with yourself when the room is silent and the stakes feel loud.

I share what it’s like to trade studio energy for at-home modules, and why self-paced learning is both a gift and a trap. We unpack the solar landscape—good programs, bad actors, and how to keep ethics front and center—then zoom in on cold calling as a crash course in shadow work. People-pleasing, fear of no, the urge to abandon your point just to be liked: it all shows up. The script, surprisingly, becomes a life raft. Memorize your foundation, and you get to improvise without losing yourself. That lesson echoes in performance, sales, and any creative pursuit that asks you to hold steady while you learn in public.

There’s a softer thread too: crying as a reset, resilience as repetition, and the eighth house of astrology as a map for transformation you can’t rush. Think year of the snake—shedding skin that clings in places, moving slower than your ego wants, trusting that relief arrives when it’s ready. If you’re navigating a season of becoming, this conversation offers practical footing and emotional company: show up, choose again tomorrow, and let gravity do its quiet work.

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Instagram: @tiam.podcast &  @joyscout.mo 

For Guest Inquiries, collaborations, and questions:

Email Mo: mo@joyscoutstudio.com

“Don’t get Deterred, get Inspired” 

Transcript

Car Crashes & Personal Agency

Online Yoga Training And Accountability

Fear of Time

Art Of Sales, Scripts, And Resilience

Crying As Release And Emotional Stamina

Speed Dating, Creative Mornings, And Connection

Astrology, The Eighth House, And Patience

Year Of The Snake And Shedding The Old

SPEAKER_00 0:09

You know, I could have called this podcast This is a simile because of the amount of times when I'm editing that I realize that I say the word like. It's like like like it's like a lot. It's a fair amount. It's more than I'm comfortable with, given that I paid a pretty penny for my college education that was focused on the English language. But it's fine. It's fine. This is a metaphor. Since we are at the end of January. Oh my, I saw I took a screenshot of a threads post where the a girl was like, I need everybody all together to stay up all night tonight and to make sure that tomorrow is in fact February 1st and that it's not gonna be January 32nd, you know, because time is slow and fast, and it teases you. And January has just been such a I think because the weeks have been so long, because we've gone through a lot. And I feel like the idea of the end of the year being at the end of December is always a bit strange to me. Because growing up I thought that it meant that we had two winters. I was like, why would we do it so that we had two winters? Because we have one at the end of the year and the beginning of the year. Why won't why wouldn't you do it so you have two summers? I think it's an adorable way to think about it. An accurate way? No, but adorable. Nonetheless. I guess January has just been really slow grinding, and you don't get to make it go any faster. And there's a part of me that's like, I don't want it to go any faster anyways. Like, what am I you know, because I don't know what's coming. I don't know what's next in February. I want it to be really good stuff, but I don't know, and so I'm not in any rush to get there. Like I deeply kind of appreciate that it has felt as slow as it has felt, and yet I still think I wanted great amounts of positive change to have happened by by this time. And I don't know that that's any different than any other month that I've ever experienced where you start the month and you go into it hoping and thinking that magic is afoot and and fate is aligning, and and sometimes I think that does happen. At the end of the month, you were like, wow, this was a good month. Um I would I would love, I would love, I would really like uh if February was like that because it just really want that for myself. Not having a car has been emotionally just like tired. I'm like tired in ways that I didn't know existed. Just from planning how to get to places and you know, depending on people, ew. Ew. Definitely another month in which I feel very grateful, but wow, wow. The I didn't think that my year would start this way, but like why would you? Why would you think that your year would start that way? Best not to think about how things start and how they end, because they will do that without your thought. I would say that I've had a great amount of hermitage happening, um, more than any other month this past year in all of 2025. I've just been sitting down to study. I've been sitting down to learning a new job. Um, I'm sitting down to work on a short film. I'm just sitting down a lot, and I it's hard. It's hard. It's a different type of hard when you like to be active and to be in pursuit of things to sit down. I think I've just been asked to do it. I've been I've been demand it is being demanded of me, and I have to surrender to that demand because I can't escape it. You know? A lady turned into me and she broke the car, and I can't use the car because insurance is being a bit of a fuck. And it's easy for me to to be a martyr. Um because I mean a lot of shitty things happen to people, and I would say a fair amount of shitty things have happened, and yet a martyrdom doesn't serve me so well. Um so I have to take that look at it, and I'm like, what is how is this happening for me? Like, what could happen in this moment? And some stuff has come to light, and I think that's just like sitting down and showing up for me, myself, and I. And why would you hate that? You know, why would you not be willing to to sit with yourself and your ideas, and obviously the claims that you've made towards bettering yourself, um, getting your yoga teacher training like I'm doing, that is all online, and it is a different type of hard. I will say that you're not going to be in a studio learning, immersing yourself in the rhetoric and the mentality and the literal environment of yoga. Um, it's a different type of hard to show up and do it online because it's easier in the sense that you choose, and that's what I wanted. I wanted choice. Like I need to be able to choose to do it when I want to do it, but also you have to hold yourself so deeply accountable because you're like, you have to choose it still. You don't get to not choose, Momo. You have to still do it. And if you were gonna be in a studio or a retreat getting your 200-hour teacher training, you would be, you know, you'd be in Costa Rica for two weeks and it would be done, and you would be learnt, and then you would be teaching. I mean, in a perfect world. Or if you were in a studio, you would be giving up your weekends for like the next six months. And that to me was like, no, that sounds terrifying. I just, I just like knock someone straight out of me that type of that type of commitment. Um, and my my whole body just got tense in saying that. And yet, something about this is a different type of is doing it online and holding yourself accountable and really making sure that you're paying attention. I mean, it's a lot easier when you love what you're learning about, but still, it's a body, it's a body practice to be sitting upright at your computer, it has a little bit of absolute absurdity to it, I think. And yet I'm really proud of myself for for doing it and and also kind of feel like someone up above or some great conversation is happening around me that's saying, you don't actually you have to do this. You have to. You said you were going to, shut the fuck up. You sit right there and you learn and you take notes. And I I just started a new job, and um I don't know if this thing's gonna work out, but it goes right in line with this great lesson of of January, um, about putting in the time to do the thing and to not be afraid of time, and I'm so afraid of time. Like I'm so afraid of how long something will take me and how long you need me to be this thing. How long do I have to be defined as a student? How long do I have to be defined as a newbie? Or like, how long am I gonna be in the discomfort of unknowing, of not having the certainty of what I'm talking about? You know, I after this this accident happened at the beginning of the year for me, I, you know, I have a couple of clients, but life takes a lot of money. And if you're going after a renovation and hoping to open a studio, like there's quite a bit that I want to be making to be in order to do this. And so I'm asking myself, like, how much time do I want to set aside to go after clients, to put into pitches, to to how much money do I do I want to just keep feeding back into what feels like a system that really isn't serving me? And what if I put something to rest for a second in and go into a different type of modality of learning and to do a new profession altogether? One that I literally never thought I would be inside of. And yet, I already know that I'm learning so much. A friend of mine had posted about a job that, you know, made great money. Like, let me know if you're interested. And I was like, okay, what's the job? And and it's in solar. And if you know, if you know anything about solar, which I am learning a lot about solar, it's that there's a lot of people in solar, and there's a lot of solar companies that are really not in it for the right reasons. They're in it to make a bunch of money, and then a lot of you know, sometimes they go they go bankrupt, and you know, they abandon the all the homes that they sold these systems to, and then like it's it's um an industry that you have a lot of newcomers in who are not in it for the right reasons, and yet there's a lot of different ways to do it. There are different programs, there are government programs for how you can get solar and how you can be saving all this money on energy that you're otherwise going to be giving to these massive you know corporations who hike up their rates again and again every year. And it's like a lot, it's like a lot, a lot that these companies are hiking up their energy rates, and it's kind of insane. And I feel grateful for learning something that I didn't think I would learn at all. And yet the job is to know as much as I can know about how they do it at this company, and then to be on a dialer system and to call people, and so I'm not I'm some version of that person who's calling you, and you're like, How the fuck did you get my number? And that's been happening a lot, and I can tell you how much my shadow is being brought up through this experience because I I am my need to connect with people is so vast that I have done it at great costs to myself again and again. And so that sometimes requires you going belly up, you know, like you you want the other person to know that you want to connect, and so you like fawn or you smile or like you play, you play a part to get them to like you. And I've done a lot of different things, I think. And it's not lost in me that those are have been some parts of my personality over the the course of my life, but I also know that I can be sassy as fuck. Like if I am given the reason, I can just say, I can say some shit. And yet in this moment, that amount of confidence exists entirely on what you know, and so I'm calling people to talk about this program, and which I, based off of what I'm learning, is a really great program. And why would you not do it if you could do it? And I have to sort of transcend this feeling to this person who does not want to be talking to me, and I have to see myself through this lens of annoyance, and it is breaking me. I am breaking, like I am not enjoying doing it at any way, and yet I have felt this way about most great moments in my life where I was going to be breaking a mold that no longer served me. And this is one of those moments, and I know that I, you know, I don't know that it's gonna end in me being a great-I mean, quite potentially a great salesman, however, it might because art is my great pursuit and art at every fucking avenue, every corner of this universe has an art to it, and they call it the art of sales for a reason. And when you are in an environment where you're listening to other people pitch and make calls and and really develop a trusting relationship with people that they genuinely are connecting with, you realize that it doesn't even matter how many no's you get, it doesn't matter how many people pick up this phone, hear you for a second, and you know, need to get off the phone immediately. None of them matter because you're just waiting to connect with the person who legitimately really does want to hear about getting a new system because they're tired of this rate that just increased by like 50 bucks or or you know, it was 75 dollars two summers ago and is 250 this year. That seems that seems kind of high, but still, what I'm trying to say is that it's hard. I'm like realizing that I have this tendency to want people for people to want to like me in order to connect with them. And I am learning through this experience that that isn't required at all. It's to be human and like the moments where I have connected, although I haven't gotten the outcome that you know one would want, which is basically to just set an appointment to have a real conversation about whether or not you're a candidate for this program that would give you a free solar system, essentially. You I have to be able to be real with them and also not abandon the post at which I am learning from. And as someone who needs who wants to be better at like memorization and to be able to quickly like read a script and to be able to hopefully perform that script at a comfortable and confident level, like this is such an interesting opportunity to be handed because it's basically like if you can memorize this script, and you know, you have a script and you can make it your own, and you can make it mean what you need it to mean in order for your version to come forth in a cold call with someone that you've never met about a system that you're newly learning about, like it's so fascinating. It is so fascinating, and there's a part of me, probably my giant ego, that's just like, what the fuck are you doing, Morgan? Why are you here right now? And yet I haven't been handed another opportunity. And so I know that this one is for me in a way that's gonna show me like there is a part of me that has been making so many calls in my life. This is a metaphor, so many calls in my life that I am so aware is in the room with me when I have been making these calls, like these literal calls, because she is so uncomfortable when it has to do with being like first of all, there's a deeply rebellious nature to me, which I've been reminded of this week, and I'm deeply grateful for the person who said this to me. I don't like to be told what to say. I deeply care about I deeply care about my freedom of speech. I deeply care about your freedom of speech. And in order to in order to say something at that of which I don't agree with, it would have to be for a greater meaning. Like the expression beyond the words would have to be so real for me. It would have to be like, oh, can I say that? Like, what if I did say that? Or like what happens if I do say that, you know? And even if the script doesn't feel like me, like, can I make some version of this real for me? And and so I'm being like asked to do that, and I'm squirming every time someone answers this call. And you know, I know at some point in this training, someone is gonna be like, so here are the recordings of your calls, and I'm just gonna be humiliated. And at the same time, I am just so fucking grateful because I like, man, the other night I was making some of the first calls after, you know, training with some of the guys on the team, all of which who have been in this sort of industry for a while and they really know what they're talking about, and they can talk circles around you. And I I cannot. I cannot at all. Um, so being around them and hearing them pivot and hearing them like just keep going after your intention for the call, which to it's just to book an appointment with someone who was a candidate, right? And like every single person you call probably isn't, and you're gonna know that very soon, and they're gonna know it, and they're gonna be adamant about it. So let that go. And I like the resilience and the persistence of that because that's teaching me something more about what I believe in, and I believe that I can do it, and it's not about this job, it's just about showing myself none of the no's matter. You're just trying to quickly get to the yes, and you will do that with the more time you can set aside to do it. And it's such a scary type of industry because it's a 100% commission. And so, and I think a lot of sales environments talk this way too, where they're like, it's big money, it's life-changing money if you can do this. And you know, it potentially could definitely be life-changing money for people who understand the art of it. But otherwise, it's just I mean, it's a super brutal beginning, and you're not really losing anything because you mean you're not, you're not, you're not gaining and you're not losing. You're really just exercising a muscle that you get to decide how much you're gonna exercise it, and it will get better, and you will start seeing the different hallways and paths of how people resist, including yourself. How you resist, how you're how willing I am to just step aside and and falter and just be like, Yeah, you're right, I'll you know, I'll call it a different time. And I just see that that shadow of myself. And I'm like, how often have you just stepped aside so that someone else could be comfortable because you didn't want to look as though you didn't know what you were doing, or like feel foolish, or or because you don't want to be here. And there's this feeling of like, make it like I want to I want it to end immediately. And this happened in improv, which is why, you know, I was like, wow, this is the beauty of improv, because it's really bringing up this little voice that has probably in retrospect saved some version of your life or your identity because it wanted to to recoil and to socially adjust and to say the appropriate thing or the thing that would make you not look awkward or foolish or uncomfortable or or persistent or loud or or a know-it-all or aggressive, and you know, and and that is all those things for me that are that are popping up in this this great this great learning opportunity, and it's really been quite unfortunate as far as my emotions are concerned, because I yeah, I could feel myself I mean, I'm a crier. I'm a crier and I need to cry quite often. I think I've said that on here before, and it is the reality of the situation. I have to be able to cry, or I have to very quickly understand another method of release for that emotion. And I just feel like when in doubt, do as babies do. Cry, laugh, sleep, you know. Obviously, other things they do, other things, but that is not really the point. It's like I think crying very much keeps you young, and it keeps you young because you're not compounding all that discomfort and fear. Like you just like let it go immediately, and so the next thing can kind of you can have a reaction to it and like let it go, and have reaction and let it go. And and I think I just was feeling my total discomfort at having to do this and knowing the more I do it, the better that I'll get at it. And I felt this when I was doing stand-up too. Like I would get up there and I would start fawning the moment I lost place of where I was in my comedy, like in the in this in this story that I'd prepped. And you know, everyone on my team right now, on this new team that I'm on, is saying, like, you just have to, you really have to get comfortable with the ins and outs of the script because that is your that's your foundation. That's that's the thing that you're gonna keep coming back to, and just been toying with that in my head. Like, what else in this life of mine is also this this foundation that I have not memorized, that I've really not gotten comfortable with enough to know. And it's me. That's what this is about. This thing is about me. It's like, what part of myself have I not gotten comfortable enough with? I not gotten secure enough with? Have I not truly sat with and like embodied so that I can have that foundation and not want to jump outside of my skin in moments of, and I like I don't know what the word is, like I don't know what it is, but when I can name it, that will be really something because I don't know what that feeling is that will make me just kind of like shift and want to. I mean, I just I just say it showing, I I call it showing your underbelly, and it's it's fawning or it's freezing and or it's running, but like this specific feeling has been calling so many shots and far less than ever before, but like when it really boils down to the thing that I want most, which is to be myself in moments of performance and theatrical expression. I think to not lose sight and feeling of myself, it's like I'll quickly abandon myself and look at what I'm doing versus feel what I'm doing. You know, because when you look at what you're doing, you can see it from other people's perspectives, and you can quickly judge and critique and slap away the motion or the movement that you were doing, and you're like, well, that's bad. That's clearly not the right thing because you know I don't like the way they responded, or they didn't they didn't like that, therefore I'm unsafe. And so it's like to stay with it and to stay with it, and and I guess that's just what what January kind of has been for me is I know if you take a step out of this moment and you look at a lot of these pieces with the car and and with this this weird pivot of of experience and and these projects that that I feel like I'm bouncing from one to the other and and I still can't quite get to the finish line of of any of them, of fucking any of them, and the dis total discomfort of just being like, why can I not? And it's not because you don't want to, because I want to, but it's just that I can't jump ahead, and I don't want to abandon it either, and so you just have to stay, and that's what it's asking me to do, is to just stay in that the the discomfort of becoming, and um, and it's a good place for me to to end today because I didn't know that this would be a a half hour of of thoughts, but nonetheless, I met a a girl a couple nights ago speed dating. Um I'm not swiping right now, and I thought it would it would bring me out of my my deep learning hermitage and that I could just be fun and flirty and get my charm on, which I enjoy doing, which I did. I did it a lot, and I had a great time, but I ended up chatting with one of the girls when we did a weird rotation and you know, people didn't have people to sit with. And she and was just like, I she's like, we've definitely met before. And we like met over the summer, and and it was such a delight to me and kind of a horrible reminder that I just don't know that I'm as good at remembering faces as I thought that I was. Kind of horrifying, kind of uncomfortable with that, with knowing that about myself, but like her energy is very familiar, and and we had met over the summer at one of the creative mornings that happens in like St. Pete in Tampa, and you might depending on where you're listening, creative mornings happens like all over the world, and they're really cool. They happen like Friday mornings usually, and some deeply successful or inspirational creative human gives a quick presentation on their life or what they believe in or what they're doing, and you meet and you have coffee, and a lot of people show up and you just learn, and and they're always uh just a wonderful way to meet people in your area who probably have some sort of interconnecting interest with yourself and to make new friends. And and so she and I cross paths again at this at this speed dating, and she was talking about her energy is so interesting to me because she had this ability to ask interesting questions, and yet I feel like if I gave an interesting answer, which I would be amused by, her reaction was delayed in how she responded. And so there was a part of me that was like, does she not like what I'm saying? Like, does she want to be in the conversation? Yet it was like a processing, like she was like buffering this information every time, and her response would always be one of interest, and so it was just a weird like delay that I was watching and wondering like what it meant, um, which could mean a lot of things, but I've chosen to kind of look at it through the lens that I think is the most fitting, which is astrology, because she's an astrologer, which came up in our conversation, and so her sun sign is in her eighth house. Now, the eighth house is the house of transformation and of death and rebirth and other people's money, and so there's it's a really fucking interesting house because what the fuck does any of that mean? And and I really love all the different interpretations and insights and meaning that so many people have on the eighth house. There are 12 houses, we're not gonna go through them, but her son is in the eighth house, and so that is a place of it's a really hard place, I think, for your son to be because your sun sign, your star sign is your body, it's your ego, it's your it's the bright consuming type of of energy that is how you show up in the world and and how you you know you kind of protect all these other parts of your of your identity. And you know, you're great protector, and yet to be to be in the eighth house, it just feels to me like it would be engulfed in a bit of that. I made me think of like a rising sun and then a setting sun, a rising sun and a setting sun, and just like this constant sort of constant transformation, constant, constant new day beginning, like absorbing the information and and then processing and then like like just an interacting with her. This is how I'm feeling, and this is this is this is how I think and this I process when I meet people. So so it was of a lot of interest to me because I have so many placements in my eighth house. I have six placements in my eighth house. Um, did I say it was a house of death, sex, and rebirth? Yeah, okay, and then other people's money, right? And so it's just a fascinating fucking place, and I really love to talk with people who have placements there because of how it maybe has like shown their world. And something she said, which is why I brought this up, is that she was like, one of the things about eighth house placements is to have patience in the transformation, and to really have to learn to have patience in that great transformation, because you know, you can and my I believe you can transcend quickly in this house, you can become other something more, um, something less quickly if you allow, if you surrender to death, and then you know, and the becoming and then the recognizing of something new and of letting that go, and like how quick that process can be, and also how slow it can be. And with this being the year of the snake, which if you're in any part of the internet has probably come up for you, but January has felt like this great skin has been shedding. It right now it's just kind of stuck on me. And I don't know, maybe you're having a similar experience, but I think of like there's like like it right now, it feels more like like a straight jacket type thing where you're like, I can't, and just kind of stuck, and you can't, and you can't get it off because like your arms are still in it, you know, or like when you're trying to pull off a too tight turtleneck or something, and you're just stuck in it, and you're like, oh no, oh no, this is this is how it will be for the rest of time, and and someone's gonna have to cut this off of me, and you just kind of have to relax for a second, maybe adjust, but you probably need help, you probably need assistance, and you can't really rush the process. You just have to like take a second and know that it feels like you've been stuck for 20 minutes, but it's been like two seconds, so we're gonna get you out of there, and that's how it feels right now in this great long month, and possibly this great long year, and possibly the last three and a half years. Hard to say, but we're almost to the end of that shedding skin, and I don't know what that means. It could be a very good thing, but also I can't I can't name it and I can't call it before I'm out, because I'm I'm still wrapped up in some dead skin over here, and um underneath it is some super smooth, super sexy, scaly skin, but I am so ready to just show off, and I'm sure that you are too. But until then, keep lathering up with lotion and think prosperous thoughts, and let go of whatever timeline you think it's supposed to be happening on, because I just don't think that's the way dead skin works. You know, you can't rush it, it's just gotta fall off by the sheer gracefulness of gravity. You sexy scaly motherfucker.