This episode features Wendy Buske, one of Campfire’s Fellows. Wendy Buske provides her answer to the Season 18 question, “What happens when you let go of the plan?”. A Fellow’s Campfire can best be described as TED without the data, The Moth but interactive, and a sermon but without the religion. You can learn more about Wendy Buske on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/wendy-buske/.
The Campfire Fellows go through rigorous training and coaching provided by Campfire Faculty so they can share their wisdom through story for you. Our Fellows are the people next to you at stoplights or walking by on the street. These Fellows apply or are nominated by people like you, who know interesting and introspective people with some wisdom to share. The Fellows go through a unique process with our team to discover a wealth of wisdom inside themselves and then are trained on how to share the origin stories of their wisdom.
This episode was originally performed in April 2018, produced by Andrew Warshauer, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
This episode features Wendy Buske, one of Campfire’s Fellows. Wendy Buske provides her answer to the Season 18 question, “What happens when you let go of the plan?”. A Fellow’s Campfire can best be described as TED without the data, The Moth but interactive, and a sermon but without the religion. You can learn more about Wendy Buske on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/wendy-buske/.
The Campfire Fellows go through rigorous training and coaching provided by Campfire Faculty so they can share their wisdom through story for you. Our Fellows are the people next to you at stoplights or walking by on the street. These Fellows apply or are nominated by people like you, who know interesting and introspective people with some wisdom to share. The Fellows go through a unique process with our team to discover a wealth of wisdom inside themselves and then are trained on how to share the origin stories of their wisdom.
This episode was originally performed in April 2018, produced by Andrew Warshauer, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
Steven Harowitz: 0:12
Hi, I'm Steven Harowitz, the Director of Campfire. You're listening to Campfire at Home. It's our way of bringing the life experience to you, whether that be listening and reflecting by yourself or experiencing it with friends. Each Campfire invites listeners into discussions about life and how we live it. Before we get too deep into Campfire at Home, we do want to share a few opportunities to get involved beyond our live show. We offer classes and workshops that bring our expertise and style on public speaking, story construction and group facilitation to the big questions in your life or at your work. If you or your organization are interested, visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. Each Campfire Season poses a life question that is explored by our Campfire Fellows together with our audience. Today, we're going to listen Wendy's answer to the Season question, what happens when you let go of the plan? We were lucky enough to catch up with Wendy for a post-Campfire interview that I would love to share with you now. It's my pleasure to have Wendy in the studio with me. Hi, Wendy.
Wendy Buske: 1:23
Hi, Steven.
Steven Harowitz: 1:23
How are you?
Wendy Buske: 1:24
I'm great. How are you?
Steven Harowitz: 1:25
Oh, I'm doing so so nice today. It's really nice to have you in the studio and to be able to chat a little bit, post your Campfire. So if you could just give maybe a quick overview of what your Campfire was about.
Wendy Buske: 1:36
Well, my Campfire was a per-, a very personal story about how I realized letting go of the plan affected me and really, honestly realizing that plans and I don't get along very well, so that was a bit of a surprise. But overall, it was a story of my family's background and our life kind of moving from state to state and dealing with homelessness, dealing with, spoiler alert, dealing dealing with a lot of different complications that all sort of lead me towards not being comfortable with plans because I saw them fail so many times.
Steven Harowitz: 2:14
So that is an interesting lead into what was your answer to the question?
Wendy Buske: 2:19
My overall answer was not what I expected it to be, but became that plans and I don't particularly get along and that I may just be someone that does rather than plan. Um, I know that that's not always gonna work for me. But I think just the knowledge that plans and I have an uncomfortable background and relationship has been very healthy for me to understand. And this process really got me there.
Steven Harowitz: 2:46
So speaking to that, how did you feel about planning before going through the process?
Wendy Buske: 2:51
I knew that I always had some apprehension. What was funny is on the way to my Campfire event, I had never shared my talk with my husband, even though he's a fairly notable part of it. And when I mentioned that that was sort of the climax, that the culmination of my talk, he just started cackling because he's like, "Yeah, anytime I bring up the word 'plan', you're just like, 'Oh hell no, no, no. We're not talking about this.'" So he wasn't surprised at all. I was.
Steven Harowitz: 3:20
A little self discover in that.
Wendy Buske: 3:22
There was, for sure.
Steven Harowitz: 3:23
Always positive. So do you feel like, in your own mind, going through this, that the question is an important one for people to think through?
Wendy Buske: 3:31
Definitely. I I came into the Campfire process really, with the goal of learning more about public speaking, learning more about myself, trying to learn words essentially about storytelling and how I could become a better storyteller. I did not expect to come away understanding more about myself in the way that I did. And I think that the subject matter, like the idea of establishing, like, how do I really feel about a plan is incredibly rewarding. Like I've always known that I really love goals, especially like big, lofty ones, like I like to tackle them. But the word plan and I had such discomfort with each other that it was it was educational to go through the process of like, ok, why? What, what led me here? And digging through so much background and baggage from my childhood was very healthy and honestly, like, extremely rewarding.
Steven Harowitz: 4:29
Sometimes when I try to explain it to people, I say we make you the Indiana Joneses of your life.
Wendy Buske: 4:35
That's very fair.
Steven Harowitz: 4:37
I can't quite figure out the best way to explain it, so that's what I'm sticking to for now. If I if I get a better version, I'll pass along.
Wendy Buske: 4:44
Someone at another Campfire event called it emotional spelunking, which I thought was kind of a good way to put it.
Steven Harowitz: 4:51
Interesting. Was that a campfire fellow?
Wendy Buske: 4:53
No, that was an audience member?
Steven Harowitz: 4:56
Can I take that down?
Wendy Buske: 4:57
You need to.
Steven Harowitz: 4:59
Emotional spelunking. Fascinating. It's a good one. Part of your Campfire and all Campfires is the facilitation pieces, which is not typically a usual part of these types of events. It's something that we've tried to add in as best as possible, and we always get really interesting audience responses or pieces that are shared. I'd be interested in what you heard that you found interesting during yours.
Wendy Buske: 5:20
What was kind of interesting was talking to several friends and co-workers and having that realization like, "Wait, I have more to say about that than I ever would have thought," and having the opportunity to raise their hand and share it like one or two of them did. It was that, and it was a little bit freeing for them too and cathartic.
Steven Harowitz: 5:40
That's a really lovely thing for you to be able to give pieces of your story that will then enable folks to do that a little bit back, because you're right. That probably isn't a place or space that they oftentimes get to do that type of work, especially not in a public setting.
Wendy Buske: 5:53
Exactly. I mean, it's incredibly rare to get an opportunity to do something like that and feel that relief of like, "OK, I've said it out loud now." Not only have I said it out loud to myself or to, you know, a partner or a friend, but in a room full of people. Like it just sort of diffuses that feeling of like, I don't know, fear and apprehension about talking about some of the things that are uncomfortable or are just a little bit deeper. So that's one of the things I love most about Campfire.
Steven Harowitz: 6:20
Thank you. If there was somebody who couldn't be at your Campfire and maybe is struggling with the concept of plan or planning, is there anything that you would tell that person?
Wendy Buske: 6:31
I would tell them to ask people in their lives how they react whenever they say the word 'plan' around them or when they try to make plans with them, everything from going out to dinner, making plans for brunch to something much bigger, and that will be probably very telling as to how you actually react to it versus how you think you do. Um, that's that was helpful for me, Just kind of seeing it back at yourself, because when you're writing it, like when you're going through the process of creating your Campfire talk, when I was at least, every time I would go through a draft, it would be this new moment of, like, clarity that oh, okay, that that thing that happened as a child totally makes sense as to why I act the way I do now. So I would tell anyone maybe ask your friends. Ask your partner. Ask relatives. Like, you know, how how do you think I react in those situations? And then reflect on some of the situations were that they tell you and say, okay, well, why did I do that? Why did I answer a question that way? Why did I react in the fashion that I did? That would probably be very, very helpful for you to understand how you behave with plans moving forward.
Steven Harowitz: 7:45
I think you did a phenomenal job.
Wendy Buske: 7:47
Thank you.
Steven Harowitz: 7:47
Throughout the process and also with your Campfire. Also, I think your talk had a pretty good amount of facilitation that had call-and-response or sharing out loud, which not a lot of them do you. I think you handled that part really, really well. And I don't think people would've been as open with sharing if you hadn't done that work right before that and then also held the space really well for them. So congratulations. Thank you for being a part of it. And now let's head to The Stage at KDHX to hear Wendy's Campfire.
Wendy Buske: 8:17
Hi, everyone whose faces I can't quite see. But I love you. As Steven said, I'm Wendy, and I am here to talk about what happens when you let go of a plan. So for me, when I first walked in the door, I realized that when I hear the word 'plan,' I think of two things. The first is sort of this tactical to-do list, like something that brings order to chaos and maybe in a spreadsheet format, like something that just makes me feel comfortable with a goal. And I love goals, which you'll hear about as we go along through this journey together. The second reaction I have to the word 'plan' is something a little bit more like, holy shit, why? Why do I have to deal with this? I don't like plans. Plans are terrible, and they don't, they don't work. And no, just no. So a little bit different. That first reaction makes sense with how I'm built today. I am a digital producer at a local St. Louis advertising agency. Thank you all for coming. Um, and there I work in media plans and timelines and spreadsheets every day and try my damnedest to bring order to chaos. I'm also an entrepreneur. I started a small company with my husband, Adron about five years ago, called Nerd for a Living. And we have three podcasts and plan events and programming at comic conventions around the country, all focused on helping people find their nerdy career. And what I mean by that is finding jobs that they didn't know existed potentially in comics or animation, film, TV, helping them figure out how to work in the places they love. So if that name of the business wasn't clear enough, I am a huge nerd. I kind of think of myself as the more broad than deep nerd, because I like a lot of things, but I'm not terribly obsessed with any one of them. Think like Harry Potter. Westworld, Marvel. I dig all of that. Um, because this is kind of a new experience for me, I think it would make me feel a little bit better to know that there's some fellow nerds out there. So could I should see, like, maybe a show of hands? Like who, who's a nerd in the audience? Oh, this is awesome. All right. Call out any fandoms that you're particularly excited about. Something. Anyone? Yes. Whovian. Love it. Okay, I feel better already. For the record, I also kind of think of like anyone who's a sports nerd, it counts. Like you cosplay when you wear a jersey. So all of that said, I feel very comfortable with that first reaction to the plan, order to chaos, goal-setting, lists. Excellent. But that second reaction, the one that was filled with panic and a little bit of holy shit, um, that one I didn't really know about until I started on this Campfire journey. And as I dug through kind of the mire of my life to figure out why I have such strong feelings that I didn't realize about plans, I discovered that there were a lot of things in my history, my past, my childhood specifically, that that led me there. So I'm originally a Jersey girl, Italian Irish Jersey girl to be specific, because in New Jersey that matters. My grandfather told me that, uh, he had connections to the mob. So all of those cliches you hear about, like, if you're New Jersey and Italian, you must be attached the Mafia, it's all true. All of it. Um, I my parents John and Rose were extremely loving and really troubled people. They did their best, but my mom was very kind, very sweet, and intensely stubborn to the point of making some really, really bad choices. My dad was this short, kind of stocky man, very intense, and I would say about half the time he was very loving and had the best of intentions and the other half of the time was rage and self-loathing. I, as a kid, dealt with that the best way I could, which for a while was just hiding in my closet whenever their, what I thought of as, volcanic eruptions started, where they'd have these huge, terrible arguments. But then out of nowhere, everything would be fine. It was like it be dormant for a long period, and I wouldn't know when the next one was coming. And the only indication I had was when I'd see that my mom would start lying and I'd see it even at six or seven and know that she was acting bizarre. And all I could think is that she was behaving this way to try to prevent that next argument that was gonna come. So I went through this for a while and the hiding in the closet wasn't gonna work. So for some reason, I decided, okay, I'm gonna be their mediator. I'm eight years old, and I could I walked in and I'm like, I can I can be their therapist. I've seen this on TV. So I walk in and tell them what they're saying is very bad. And somehow they were okay with this, and I'm sure to a degree it was that discomfort of realizing your child knows that you're having these huge arguments, but it didn't stay that way. They kind of came to rely on it. But I know why I acted that way. But half of it was fear of, like, not wanting to hear these arguments and thinking I could fix something. But the other part of it was my brother. See my brother John, he's a sweet little guy, had this crazy, high reading ability, could read at a super high level at a very young age, but didn't really have the reading comprehension and kind of walked differently than everybody else and couldn't write his name and couldn't really use scissors. There were just all of these little things. He didn't like to be touched, and I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but I knew that for some reason it meant that I had to take care of him. So early on, I had developed this what I think of as habit, this habit of trying to fix everybody else, fix the situation and not really focus on the fact that I wasn't getting anything out of it other than maybe a little peace and quiet, and I think I still struggle with this problem. I tend to take way more on than I ever should, and it drives me a little crazy, and I'm still working on it, but it is that habit from childhood that's tough to break. And I wanna ask the audience, if you'd be comfortable, to think about that for maybe 30 seconds. Like, is there a habit from childhood that you can't break, that you can still see in yourself and it nags at you but you still do it and you want to get rid of it? So I'm gonna give you maybe 30 seconds, and then, as Steven kind of showed you, earlier maybe turn to your neighbor and share that.
Wendy Buske: 16:13
Has everyone shared?I'm so happy you shared. Hi, awesome. Thank you for doing that. I really appreciate it. So so, yes, I have this bad habit of trying to take on everyone's problems. But how does that relate to goals? Well, there was a lot of what I think of sort of a roller coaster of experiences that all played into that tendency and led me to not really trusting that that plans worked because I just kept seeing them fail over and over again. So when I was about 11, we started moving around. So, like I said, I was originally from Jersey. We moved to Pennsylvania at first, so no big deal, pretty close. But then we moved to Richmond, Virginia, and then to Houston, Texas, Chicago, Illinois and then finally to, uh, Northern California, all in the span of about five years, because my dad was raised an army brat and didn't like to sit still very much. But by the time we got to Northern California, this town called Fremont, I remember getting out of our car and seeing the palm trees and the mountains and being really, really happy that we were there and feeling at home for the first time in ages. So I was psyched. I was like, "We have a new a place. This is gonna be great. Maybe this will be the place we stay," and my dad's new job, he was psyched about, like, great new opportunity. It came pretty quickly, so when we moved out there, we didn't actually have a home to go to. But we would just stay in a hotel. It would be fine. Well, it wasn't fine, because about two weeks into being there, that job just went away and my dad had nothing, and suddenly we were in a brand new place without anywhere to go, and mind you, this is the early nineties, So LinkedIn wasn't a thing. The internet was barely a thing. There were no mobile phones, at least not in our life. So everything we did, every resume he sent was done more manually. So he would go to the library to print them out and send them with a stamp to somewhere in the country and take all of his calls at our Motel 6 room because that was all we could afford. And also, mind you, there's this volcanic little family living in this tiny Motel 6 room for the span of about three months as this went along. It didn't get better. Um, so my dad decided, you know what? We're gonna take a road trip to Los Angeles, because he knew a few people down there and thought last ditch effort. Let's see what we can do. We get to L.A. It doesn't work. It was a nice change of scenery, but we get in our car to drive back to what was now home, Northern California, even though it was a motel and we were out of money. So we spent our first night sleeping at a truck stop in our Ford station wagon, and I remember my dad waking me up. It was cold, and I was a little confused. And he woke up my brother and told us today we're gonna go to the Veterans Affairs Office and we're gonna ask for help. And I knew what that meant. It meant that we might get split up. It meant that we were going into the unknown. But beyond all of that, it meant that we had to accept the word that we had not set out loud, which is that we were homeless. So we get to the Veterans Affairs Office, which reminded me of the Death Star to give you an idea of how warm and welcoming it was. I remember sitting for hours, probably could have been minutes, but it felt like hours, and someone came out and told us we were gonna get placed in a family shelter, which was incredibly fortunate. We were going to a a building that was just specifically for homeless families. We got our own private, tiny little room with four single beds, and it must have given me some kind of semblance of safety because I didn't leave it for two days, other than to run full throttle to the bathroom to take a shower in the middle of the night when I knew I wouldn't see anyone. For two days, I mostly just lied in that bed, terrified, not knowing what was on the other side of that door, who was on the other side of that door. And finally, somehow I got the gumption to say, ok, I have to open it. I have to see. And when I did, I saw me. It might not have been someone my own age, my gender, my race, any of those things. But they all were my expression, the face of someone who had no idea how they got there. And it was oddly comforting because I knew we were all in the same boat together. For the next six weeks, we lived there, and I spent a good amount of my time at the nearby library, and I'm pretty sure that's where I really fell in love with fantasy and sci-fi because we couldn't afford to go to the movies, obviously, so I just read every movie novelization I could get my hands on, and the escapism brought me so much sanity, and I was so grateful for it. But yes, six weeks pass and my dad gets a job. Hooray. And I'm told repeatedly by everyone I encounter that now everything's gonna go back to normal. But what the fuck was normal now? I have been dealing with this for four months. I have no idea what to expect anymore. Plans have shown me that they do nothing but fail in the worst ways. So it took me a year in my new school of mostly being afraid of saying the word 'homeless' out loud to the wrong person because I was 16 and afraid of what, how I'd be judged. And finally I met some people that welcomed me in and started slowly making me feel like it was okay and I could slowly start finding myself again. That year was hard, but what was good about it is that by the end of it I started thinking I am stronger than I thought I was. The fact that I went through what I had just done in the past year, very few people have to go through that. Thank goodness. But when they do and they come out of it, how fortunate was I? So I realized that I was more resilient than I ever thought I could be. And I still hold on to that. And I am honestly very proud of myself for how I dealt with it. I didn't run. I didn't totally collapse. I just held it together. And I want to take a minute before I continue this roller coaster and embrace that thought for a second. I often feel like we don't take a minute to be legitimately proud of ourselves for dealing with some of the situations we have to go through. I I know I've talked to people that feel like it's almost boastful to say I have a little bit of pride in how I handled the situation. So screw that. I want you to be boastful. I want somebody to feel strong enough to come up here and say, "Here's something I went through and I'm really proud of how I handled it." So would anyone be willing to maybe join me on stage, like by a show of hands, and talk about a situation that they went through? It doesn't have to be nearly as heavy, but that they were proud of themselves of how they handled it. Anyone? Awesome. Please. What's your name? Dani. Nice to meet you.
Audience Member: 24:37
I don't think that my situation is not even close to you, but I've been here in United States for about three years and three months now. I'm originally from Brazil. I just work for advertising here just is as well as the strategic planning. Yeah, and my life was really comfortable. I'm 33, you know. It doesn't look like but yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had I had a really awesome life, but I had this dream of coming to the United States since I was in high school ,and for many, many years my dad was very controlling, and said, "No, you can't go," even though I have two brothers and they both have lived Australia for a while. So, "No, but you were the youngest. And you're the only girl. So you're staying." So I had this dream of coming to United States for about 10 years. And then when my life was our awesome, I was leaving the Rio de Janeiro, like Copacabana Beach, Ipanema, having all my caipirinas and everything I said, "Holy shit. I has never been to the United States. I need to go there and to experience that." Actually I have been to Disney, but I didn't, I don't like consider that the United States cause it's like another world. Um, so then I moved here, and I think that all internationals. Do we have more internationals here? Can you raise your hand? I think that we all come with like this really, it's a strong feeling. Yeah, I nailed the TOEFL. I know how to speak English. This is gonna be so awesome. I'm gonna have this awesome college experience, and then you come here and say, what the heck? I'm in the middle of the Christian belt, and I I wasn't really close to religion or anything. And I live in, I'm live in St. Charles. It's a little bit different than St. Louis, guys. Yeah, and the first people that I meet in college, they say, oh, you're part of the international Student Fellowship. You want to be part of it. I said, "No. I want to live, I want to be like, I want to live with an American. That's what I'm gonna experience. That's what I came for." So they say, "No, come here with us." Then, "Oh, and we're all Christians. Would you like to come to church with me?" And, um, I said, "God, please, are you doing this to me?" So then I went to church. It was really awesome. But throughout the entire program, I had that feeling of first I said I nailed TOEFL. It's gonna be really cool. My classes were all journalism classes and I thought, ok, so I'm gonna understand everything. No. Now you have to read this, read that, assignments, and all the the academic system is very different. I mean, in Brazi, you go to class, and people teach you. Here, you have to read everything in advance, submitting everything. When you go the class, discussion. And I'm all about discussion. And I'm always the person who volunteers. Yeah, the professor says, "Who wants to share something about the book?" I'll go. But I don't even know how to speak English very well. I I spend the entire night during stranger do my assignments. Well, my, my classmates, they 15 minutes submitted, done, and I said, well, my entire time in the United States, I thought that everything would be so much easier to make friends because I'm a very people person. I thought that improving my language. Sometimes I even go to work. And I say, "Bon dia." No, because I'm in the Brazilian mode then. And when I had my first dream in English, I said, "Ha, I got it. I nailed it." I'm driving, and I understand something that people said on the radio without even thinking about it. And then the whole problem came, well, for internationals, your visa is like a bomb that is always about explode, because when you graduate, you have to, you have 60 days to find a job within your field of study so you can stay in the United States for one more year. Then, nine months before I was suffering. I need to find a job, need to find a job, need to find a job. Then, I found a job. Then you have one more year, so you can, if you have an American diploma, then you have one more year of work in the United States. Then your diploma will expire. I'm sorry. Then your employment authorization will expire. Then the company needs to apply for a work visa, and that costs like thousands of dollars, and then the company applies for the work visa and then there's a fucking lottery because the number of applicants is higher than the number of visas. So then the lawyer comes to you and says, "Oh, I'm so glad. Let's do this," but your chance is like one in seven. So all the time you have that, "I'm not good enough. Can I make this? Can I do this?" So I remember, guys. Seriously, I'm 33 years old. I remember calling my parents and crying like a baby. "I can't do this anymore." And my parents, "Come back." I don't want to go. It's Brazil. I mean, it's worse. I mean, yeah, and I still struggle with that because on April 2nd, that's when the company applied for my H1B Visa and the answer is about to come soon for the lottery. Then they deny 60 percent of applications and then approved 40. So it's still a very bad scenario, and every single day that I've been here in the United States, since my first day, I feel that I have to prove myself and try to meet the standards. They're almost impossible to be met because I'm not American. I wasn't born here. And I know that this is a very delicate situation. Everybody has all like, all kinds of political views. And even my director, my director has a Trump picture. Huge. And Trump is on a the war tank shooting everybody and has America Great Again cap. And I said, "What the fuck is this? You gotta be kidding getting me?" All right, all right, and then the president looks at the [inaudible] says, "Well, if I take my label off and you take your badge off, then I'm pretty sure that we can have this really awesome conversation at a bar." And he said, "I have never been personally affected by immigration, uh, the way that I am now because there's absolutely nothing that I can do to keep her here, even though I want to. Can we pay more?" No, we can't. It is messy. So I feel, since on my first day here, that I this is not home. You know what I mean? Even though I try, every day there's something saying this is not home, and but it is, I mean, for Christ's sake. I chose to live here. There are more than, I don't know, like 200 countries in the world. I wasn't born here. I chose to come here, so it has to be my country. Right? And that's that's why I'm proud of myself. Because I thrive even though they're all this difficulties. Thank you. Thank you, guys. It was a long story.
Wendy Buske: 32:05
It was a great story. All right, good night. Damn, that was good. Okay, wipe tears from my eyes. Oh, my God. Okay, so my shit's not important now, but we're gonna keep talking about me. So I got through. It's seriously. So I got through the roller coaster of my homeless experience and I came out the other side feeling better about myself and prouder of myself than I ever thought I could be. I started planning again, this time for college, like all of my friends did. And it's completely normal to do whenever you're 16 years old. And around that time, everything was going pretty well. Like I said, I had great friends. I loved my school. I loved Northern California. My dad first asked his grandmother and my two little cousins to move in with us, which was fine. They were both, they were all in a situation that was not the best. So he was trying to, in his mind, do the right thing for our family. And I didn't mind this. I honestly thought like I haven't been around family in a long time. This might actually be helpful. Might be good for us. But about three weeks after that, my grandmother, um, dealt with congestive heart failure. Thankfully, she she got better, but she was still not nearly 100 percent, so that put extra strain on us, obviously. And we're all deeply concerned about her. Maybe two weeks after that, my dad said, "Hey, I got a new job this time in Texas." I was not happy, but my parents figured out the situation of my dad was gonna go work there for the rest of the year and we would stick out, you know, my, the rest of my senior year in California. Great, we could do this. So now my mom and I were mostly caring for these three additional people, including my ailing grandmother and my disabled brother. So it was a little hard, but I was overall, like, you know what, I've dealt with worse. I can handle this. It's gonna be fine. My mom decides a couple months later that she's gonna take just a weekend and go visit him in Texas. That weekend turned into a month because when she got there, he told her that he'd been fired again. And instead of saying, "Hey, I should move back to California and we'll figure out our life together," instead, he was like, "Well, I really don't like Northern California, so I think I'm just gonna try to figure something out here, and Wendy can handle it." Granted, unwittingly, I had proven myself time and again to be the one that could handle it, because I felt like I had to. I felt like it was my job, my role, and I did the best I could. I knew that again I kept seeing plans falling apart around me, but I kept kept my shit together as best I could. And overall, I didn't really see the stress building that was there until it was too late. And the thing that snapped me was not the thing I would have ever expected. In fact, it was Kool-Aid. Weird. Weird. I know. We actually have some lovely Kool-Aid packets that my fellow Fellows are gonna pass out to you just as a little memento of this story. So I'm making dinner one night and this little seven-year-old who, to be fair, was definitely a problem child with good reason, because her mother had sort of left her with us while she was having issues. So she comes in while I'm making dinner and asks for a soda with dinner. And I'm like, "No, I've made Kool-Aid, and I'm gonna make some more. That's what we're all gonna drink" And she loses it and starts screaming at me that she's going to do something terrible to me and my brother. She's seven, but for some reason this has impact on me and I lose it. Like I just start screaming some blithering nonsense that I can't remember. But I know it was loud and, mind you, I also had a Kool-Aid pack in my hand. It was open, so I start shaking it because I'm hysterical at this point. So, like red sugar dust, it's falling all around me while I'm losing it. I remember falling to the floor in just a pile of hopeless rage and tears over Kool-Aid. Granted, I know it wasn't the Kool-Aid. It was just the catalyst. It was the thing that broke me, that the balloon had been popped that didn't know had been filling up with all of this frustration and anger, and that just happened to be the moment that did it. So I called my mom a little bit later on that night, and I begged her to please come home, because obviously I couldn't handle it. This was too much, too much stress. And she did two weeks later. I was broken. I didn't know how to function, but I picked myself up and I kept going because I didn't know what else to do. And I look back at that now with a lot of clarity of the fact that while my parents, I don't think, ever intentionally tried to throw any monkey wrenches into my life, my plans, my goals didn't matter enough to them to take into consideration during those times, and that still hurts. It still stings, and to be in that situation where not only you don't know what to do next, but you realize, wait a second,tiny things can mess me up, not just the big things. That was like this whole other bizarre revelation. And when I still I actually grateful I have now, because now I kind of can see it coming a little bit better. I'm not surprised when the little thing is the thing to show me, okay, I'm not okay. It doesn't always take the big, big moments. I kind of want to ask if anyone would be willing to raise their hand. Have you ever had a moment like that? Your own personal Kool-Aid moment where you broke down or you had an unexpected event just nail you in a way that you were not prepared for. I would definitely love to hear about it, so I don't feel so lame for having freaked out over Kool-Aid.
Audience Member: 39:29
Hi. So it's really weird hearing your voice echo. Okay. I don't really remember what the freak out was, but I raised my hand because it was a very similar sort of wailing about and things flying out of your hand. So I was in college and I had been diagnosed with a low iron count. So they had put me on iron pills, which was also supposed to help with mental health and depression, and I was living off campus with my good friend and, as we all know it's, it's not that moment that you're losing your shit that pushed you over. It's everything building up. And I I was getting ready to graduate, so I'm sure it was what comes next. I don't know. I was supposed to know and I went to grab the iron pills and the cap wasn't on right and they just exploded all over the kitchen. And I just crumpled in tears and just sort of like this, you know, crazy white woman sobbing on the kitchen floor. And I remember very distinctly that my good friend Julie came in, and she'd been sort of following me very close to the eye of the storm, which was foolish. But I love her for it. Um, and she, like, froze deer in headlights as I'm just wailing and all I hear her tiny little voice go, "I stepped on one," and that helped bring me back to the present like, okay, you need a reign your shit in a little bit cause you're raining all over everyone.
Wendy Buske: 41:02
I love it.
Audience Member: 41:03
That my Kool-Aid story.
Wendy Buske: 41:04
I love it. So post Kool-Aid, we moved a few more times. Plans kept falling apart, so I kind of stopped making them again. College was on hold, and we finally landed in St. Louis and we stayed for about, well, we've still stayed. But for this part of the story, I was here for about two years with my family, started going to some community college classes, and still just maintained that "I will take care of things" attitude. I was so ingrained in it. I didn't know how to break through and break out of it. But this at this point, I wasn't as amiable about it. Like there was a lot of anger happening. And the friction between my family and I had started bubbling up more and more to the point where I was done at 20 and decided, you know what, I need to be half a country away from you. So I went to college in Orange County, California and followed through on it, actually made a plan to do it and did it. Damn miracle, and I loved it. It was great. I made a ton of mistakes, um, burned bridges I never intended to, and I learned a lot about myself in the process. It it was a very oddly positive and negative experience all at once. But the thing that I could never shake was guilt. So much guilt. Because what if my parents got sick? What were they going to do? Because they obviously didn't know how to handle themselves, and, even more so, what was my brother going to do? Because he couldn't do anything for himself. So after college, I did what you'd expect. I moved back home. But this time I thought, ok, I am, I've broken out of this pattern. I'm going to be stronger. I am more resilient. I know who I am. This isn't going to happen again. And for a while, it didn't. I I was very fortunate pretty quickly after moving back here that I met a very important boy. I I should probably call him a man. Yes, his name is Adron. And this boy-man taught me, taught me a lot about who I was and cared for me in a way I had never been cared for. But not only that, I got this added bonus of his friends who he affectionately referred to as the Armada. A few of them are here tonight. Thank you. Um and they taught me more than I had learned in Orange County ever about myself. They had given what I was a name that I didn't know, I had never heard before in terms of myself, which was nerd. I should have known. I don't know why I didn't, but I didn't. So there were long nights of talking about Lord of the Rings and playing board games and being loved for who I was and nothing more. And that was a revelation to me. So time goes on, I start feeling great in this new life that I've created for myself and all these wonderful new people in it. And I start saying, ok, I feel ok about making plans. You know, like Adron and I move in together and we even start talking about a wedding. It's feeling positive. I'm at work at a little coffee shop one morning and get a phone call from my mom and my dad has had a massive heart attack. Adron comes and gets me. We get to the hospital as fast as we can, but it wouldn't have mattered. He was gone long before he even got to the house. I remember such odd, specific details of that day, like everything from the look on my mom's face to the pay phone I used to call a lot of members of that Armada that not only was I grateful to have that day to help me through it, but also to help me through the next two years. See, as you kind of probably could have gleaned from the stories I've been telling so far, my parents were not good planners, and that meant they had no life insurance. They had no savings. And on top of all of that, they had never taken the time to get a diagnosis for my brother for all of his issues. So all of that together meant my mom and my brother were left with nothing. So Adron, my incredible boyfriend, and I decided, well, we'll take care of things, so we took extra jobs. We, he freelanced a ton. Like we did so much, anything we could to bring in extra income so we could support ourselves and support them, and throughout that process and journey was probably some of the most difficult times of my life because I didn't know if this was now our forever. About two years passed, and during that time we sought out a diagnosis for my brother finally, and I walked into another veterans' office, this time hospital, and finally heard the word that I had known for 10 years, which was your brother's autistic and is severe enough that he will never be able to work. And while that was hard, it was also this enormous relief because, number one, we knew, we finally knew how he could be helped. But also it meant he was going to get a very small amount of money for disability and my mom, as his caretaker, would as well. They would have health insurance. And while all of that might not be very much, it was enough, a distinctly important amount that meant that Adrian and I could move on a little bit. But I couldn't at first for a while because even though it was this enormous relief that okay, they're all right, we're not paying every one of their bills now, it's still hard to let go of that two year time period of waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the next time another plan falls apart. And that led to me just feeling completely defeated. I just didn't make commitments. I didn't try because I felt like it wasn't worth bothering for quite some time. And I learned something about myself, that that's what defeat looks like. For me, it looks like non-commit, just not committing, saying, "You know what? It's easier to not disappoint myself and not disappoint somebody else. So I'm just gonna stay in the background." And while that's really hard, it was an important learning for me to say, "All right, well, if that's what it's like, looks like I know how to combat it now. I didn't for a while, but I do now." So last time I'm gonna ask you to participate. What does defeat look like for you? Because I think everyone has dealt with that at some point in their lives. How do you feel? What do you do? It could be something as small as I stay in bed all day eating Cheetos. Or it could be something a little bit more, I don't know, impactful to your overall day-to-day life.
Audience Member: 49:16
Uh, it's kind of weird, Wendy, being in this position when everybody we know is behind me. But for me, I would say that, um, I've known since high school that I had anxiety and depression, which I know doesn't make me that unique. I'm learning more and more that everybody kind of does, which is in a really selfish way kinda nice. But, um, defeat for me happened when, I guess, so I've known since high school, and then last summer, um, on a bachelor party with a bunch of friends, I was talking to a buddy of mine that I went to kindergarten with. We've been friends forever, basically. And, ah, we were a few beers in. So we started opening up, and I kind of mentioned it to him or said something where he was like, "Are you okay, man? Like, that's kind of a fucked up thing to say," and I don't remember what it was, but, um, he said he had just seen a therapist and started taking SSRIsto help with anxiety and depression. And he was like, "I think you need to go see somebody and start taking them." So he, I was convinced. And so I kind of known for a while that I wanted to, um, or least wanted to see. And so after that, he texted me a couple times over the next couple of years to make sure I was gonna do something. So finally I did the search for a doctor thing, and I called I think the number was 25 psychiatrists, therapists, not a single one was taking new appointments. You had to go, like you had to know them already. And so I thought to myself, like I have an incredible support system. I have people who love me. If I didn't, would this have been the end for me? Because if you don't know where to go or who to turn to and even people who try to have to make their career out of that, what do you even do? So that was probably the lowest point that I can remember was almost feeling guilty that I was making it because it wasn't because of me, but because of the people around me and then this friend ended up texting me every day for about six weeks until I finally saw somebody and got help. And now I feel great. So with that at least ends kind of happy.
Wendy Buske: 51:37
Thank you. So it kind of relates to what you were saying. Friends helped me get past that defeat. That that group of people that I mentioned, day by day, every time they saw me, reminded me that it didn't have to be like this. I could move forward, and I did finally, after a while say you know what? I have to take control and start moving towards my my life. So one of those goals that I had set before everything happened with my dad did happen. Adron and I got married, which was plenty cute. And that obviously was amazing and the best thing ever. Um, but also I started my career that I had been putting off, the one I went to school for in advertising. I started taking better care of myself. I started feeling like, you know what? Things have been bad, but they can be good. We can start progressing. And for a long time I had had this like deep-seated ambition that I just had no direction for and didn't know what to do with. And I'd always sort of wanted to start a small business, but I didn't know what or why. I just knew I kind of wanted to be an entrepreneur. And thankfully, he did too. And several years later, around my mid-thirties, we decided, okay, you know what? We're gonna do this, and we started Nerd for a Living. And mind you, we we launched Nerd for a Living officially from a hotel room at San Diego ComicCon, the largest comic convention in the world, maybe the country, maybe the world. I don't know, huge. And we felt fancy, like we had our business cards. We I had a little t-shirt. I felt very good about myself in this situation. And we walked into the conference center and it was on, and for five days we had some ups and downs. But overall, it was a great first start. We met new friends and new contacts. I felt like we had taken that step towards what we had always talked about. And it was happening and I came back like on fire. I was like ready to go. This this felt fantastic. And it continued, and we started growing the podcast and growing the business. And around August of that year, that was July, so about a month, my mom calls me and she hadn't gotten out of bed in two days. And what I realized is that she had been hiding the fact that she was sick for a long time. And my brother for that two days had just been bringing her food and water. So she had waited that long to call me and say, "You know what? I actually have to finally ask for help." I called a friend, that one, to come and help me, and we moved into this new phase of life and had to push pause on plans again for good reason but really, really horrible reason. Because I don't want totally fall apart up here, I'm not going to get into a lot of the details of that three months that followed. But by October we knew things were not going to get better, and by November she was gone and I felt empty and sick and then nothing, just emotional blackout. But not only that, not only was it emotionally devastating, but suddenly Adron and I were now the guardians of a 34-year-old autistic man. So obviously plans had no choice but to change. But somehow, this time it was different. Yes, the first few months, first few years were really hard. But instead of falling apart and falling into defeat like I had before, I don't know if it was the fact that I couldn't cry at movies anymore and a lot of my feelings were just numbed, but all of my energy went towards focus and like pursuing this new goal of our business baby, our Nerd for a Living. And it was great. It helped get me through so much of that next 3, 4 years, not only because it was exciting, but because it made me feel like I was finally doing something that was for me. Even though the universe had again shoved something at me that I couldn't control, I was in control of this with Adron. We had something that was ours, and like I said, that continued for a while and we grow. We grew and we felt really good about it, but about three and half years in, it started plateau-ing, and then it just kind of stopped and slowly started to fall off. We still would get invitations to be part of conferences. We still kept meeting wonderful people. All of this good stuff kept coming from it. But the thing that we had wanted from it, which was to turn it into, like, at least his full time job, maybe someday mine, wasn't happening and it probably wasn't going to. And that obviously was very hard and difficult to kind of come to terms with. And I don't know that I totally did until last year again at San Diego ComicCon. I had organized this panel with a personal hero of mine. Her name is Jane Espenson. She is a screen writer. She wrote, has written for Game of Thrones and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And if you're a nerd, you should know her. She's amazing. Um, so here is Jane, this person I have looked up to for a really long time on a panel with my husband and five other incredible, brilliant women, and it was fantastic. It was this hour long kind of raucous discussion about writing with 300 people in the room and just this amazing energy. I loved it. And I savored every second of this, and at the end of it, like lines of people coming up to talk to him, to talk to every panelist, Jane thanking me and him for organizing it. It was beautiful. And a little while later we're walking to dinner and I couldn't shake the thought of, "We peaked. That that was it. That was the peak of Nerd for a Living. What do I do now?" And I felt like the bottom dropped out from under me. I still loved the rest of the show and damn, I love that day. But I came home with that knowledge of things are gonna change. Things have to change. We don't have a choice. But what I've come to terms with and what I'm continuing to come to terms with is that that doesn't mean that the plan failed. That while I have to let go of the initial plan of what it was and what I wanted from it, it doesn't make it what we did a failure. It doesn't make me a failure. So what all of these stories kind of lead, led me to was the fact that I have to take control of myself and learn, for one, maybe the word 'plan' and I just don't get along. Maybe I should leave that off the cards and and just be okay with focusing on goals, focusing on doing. I know good things are gonna happen and bad things are gonna happen. And I'm gonna have this roller coaster again and again. That that's life. That's what we all deal with. But I now know that from doing this Campfire journey that I have more control over it. I now know my enemy, the plan. And that gives me power and strength. I can focus on doing. So I want to ask all of you as you leave tonight, I want you to think about what a plan means to you, and maybe you own it. Maybe you love it. Maybe you pushed it away. Maybe you're like, man, you're saying, "Fuck the plan." But either way, I want you to walk away, feeling like as long as you are the truest version of yourself and you try and you pursue your goals and you do, then good things are gonna happen. Follow Yoda's rule, please. Do or do not. There is no try. Thank you guys.
Steven Harowitz: 1:0:40
And that is a wrap. I'd like to thank Wendy for answering this Season's question, what happens when you let go of the plan? If you want to, you can see the answers to this Season's question, as written by audience members from Wendy's Campfire. Visit our Facebook page at facebook.com/campfirestl. A big thank you to Seth Schroeder, Narrative Architect, Jenny Harpring, Facilitation Director, Grace Lutrell Pettit, Community Engagement Director, Andrew Warshauer, Campfire at Home Producer, Bonner Williams, Director of Operations, Ken Moore of Knocks New Media for our live event Instagram coverage, and all of our day-of volunteers, photographers, and videographers. A special thanks to KDHX Community Media for being our partners on this journey. We're so honored to host Campfire live in The Stage at KDHX and for letting us record in KDHX Studios in S Louis. If you wanna learn more about Campfire and the work we do, visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. And if you liked what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts. It really does help out. Until next time.