This episode features Eli Chen, one of Campfire’s Fellows. Eli Chen provides her answer to the Season 16 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 Eli Chen on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/eli-chen/.
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 February 2018, produced by Andrew Warshauer, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
This episode features Eli Chen, one of Campfire’s Fellows. Eli Chen provides her answer to the Season 16 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 Eli Chen on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/eli-chen/.
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 February 2018, produced by Andrew Warshauer, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
Steven Harowitz: 0:08
Hi, I'm Steven Harowitz, the Director of Campfire. You're listening to Campfire at Home. It's our way of bringing the live 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, I 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 gonna be listening to Eli Chen answer the Season question, what happens when we let go over the plan? We were lucky enough to catch up with Eli for a post-Campfire interview that I'd love to share with you now. It's my pleasure to have Eli in the studio with me.
Eli Chen: 1:19
Hello.
Steven Harowitz: 1:20
Hello. Can you just, to kick it off, give us a small overview of your Campfire?
Eli Chen: 1:26
Okay, so the this the question I was trying to address was what happens when you let go of the plan, and the plan, ah, that was, I guess, at the most forefront of my Campfire show was the plan that I tried to execute with my ex-boyfriend. Um and this was someone who, this was my most serious relationship. I was with him for two and half years, and basically I had all these big plans to, um, you know, start a life together with him, and they kind of just fell apart. So that was what it was, um, mostly about. But it also included some connections with my family and how they influenced, especially my dad, influenced the way I feel about plans. And we have a very complicated relationship as I revealed in the show, but basically my dad had this, like, you know, grand plan for me to grow up and make a lot of money and, um, and be, you know, secure and stable. And I try to reject, reject that as much as I could and, um, create my own plan for my life.
Steven Harowitz: 2:38
Did you have a specific answer to the Season question?
Eli Chen: 2:43
It's interesting. I never really thought about, um what was happening when I let go of ah, the plan I was trying to make with my ex. Um, it was because what happened essentially was was chaos, and I wasn't really sure what was going on. And at a certain point, you know, I tried or try to get organized during the chaos, and I try to make new plans. Um, and, you know, I let myself kind of, you know, when unexpected, you know, things happen, I can I try to go with it and, ah, and, you know, make new plans and move on with my life.
Steven Harowitz: 3:24
Thank you for sharing that. So, prior to being a Fellow, how did you feel about the concept of plan?
Eli Chen: 3:31
Well, I used to think that planning was something that only really required me, even though they, you know, getting the job that I, you know, I've always wanted, you know, in public radio does require other people to say, "Yes, you can do these things." Um, I I thought for a really long time that I could only really rely on myself. And now I think of planning as something that's, um, it's more like of this weird, like interpersonal Tetris, where you're trying to figure out what like works, um, as people are also trying to impose their plans on you.
Steven Harowitz: 4:09
That's real. So thinking about planning, maybe that you hadn't thought about this exact question in this exact way and having now gone through this process, why do you feel like this question is important for people to think about?
Eli Chen: 4:24
There's so many times in our lives when we make big plans for ourselves, ah, and they just don't work out. We think that we're going to end up with this one person for the rest of our lives, but we can't really predict what will happen, or we think that we'll follow one career for the rest of our lives and we find that we're actually unhappy and need to go in a different direction. So, you know, everybody needs a contingency plan for, you know, when that big plan falls apart.
Steven Harowitz: 4:52
Yeah, that's a really great point that if you have that conversation with yourself or with others, and you talk about what happens when you let go of it, it's not that you're talking about what your next plans are gonna be, but almost like what your reactions will be to when that happens. Because it's almost inevitable, at some point, in some facet of your life, a plan is gonna collapse on itself.
Eli Chen: 5:10
Yeah, and I consider myself a pretty anxious person when it comes to trying to make plans. You know, I'm always worried about, you know, the worst case scenario. Um, and part of that is because I also build pretty high hopes for, you know, um, for a relationship or for like a job to work out. And there's been, you know, so many times in my life where I've been, you know, very disappointed. And it's like, how do you emotionally prepare for that?
Steven Harowitz: 5:38
Yeah. Feels, I know for me, I always have a vision. I end up being a little too maybe not present in the future. And so when I have a plan like this is what it's gonna look like, and if the plan falls apart, that vision has to go too. It's almost harder sometimes to let go of the vision because it's such a lovely place to live inside of.
Eli Chen: 5:55
Yeah. Especially when you invest so much into that plan. Because, say, with my ex partner, for example, I, you know, um, in the course of, like, two and half years with him, I, you know, I spent a lot of time with his family. I went through some pretty serious stuff with him, like I I supported him when his dad passed away from lung cancer. That was pretty early on our relationship, but that there were just so many things that, like, made it difficult to kind of, you know, detach myself from this person. So, you know, when I, you know, in splitting up with him, I was, um, you know, I felt like I was also really kind of tearing up like the plans that he'd made to be with me, so that was really difficult.
Steven Harowitz: 6:41
Yeah, that is definitely very hard. So building off that a little bit, when I've talked to other Fellows, especially because the process that you go through is kind of multi-week and, to some degree, multi-month, when you think about the question, did you talk about it with yourself, friends, family? Did you have any of the discussions, or how did you even reflect on it?
Eli Chen: 7:01
Um, it's interesting. Even though my family was a major part of this story, I don't I didn't really discuss, ah, the question with them. And I think the reason for that is, you know, pretty clear, because I don't really have a a strong relationship with them. And, you know, we fundamentally disagree, fundamentally disagree on, you know, my my life, my my life's direction. So I did talk about this with other ah friends to some degree, who I told, yeah, doing this show. And I know that's a little unusual, but its interactive, and I have to address this question with my life experiences. And, um, I got some, you know, interesting feedback or some thoughts from people who have kind of gone through similar experiences. Like I had a friend who went through a divorce pretty recently, and, you know, she had been with this person for, I think, 11 years, and, um, she's in a great relationship now, but, you know, she spent a lot of time with this person, and then, you know, there's other people who I've talked to who also just had to make, you know, sudden career changes because things were just not working out. And, um, you know, there's so many, I think it's a question that a lot of people can relate to because, um, often times we're just having to change direction because it has to happen.
Steven Harowitz: 8:26
Yeah, life tends to seemingly be planning and replanning over and over again. So I think something that got brought up through this process. Kind of building off that conversations that happened in the space during your Campfire, you had a little bit of call-and-response. You got to hear from people in a number of ways. I'd be interested to know what you heard that was interesting to you.
Eli Chen: 8:48
Yeah. So I asked people a number of things. Ah, I think one of them was has anyone ever, you know, made plans for you? And I think people really, I think there are a lot of people who really related to that because, you know, parents, for example, you know, they want to, they they want to do, um, what's best for you, but their ideas may not be the best for you. And I was thinking about that. There was, like, an older man who was off to the side who talked about how his mom's signed him up for, like, every sport. And I thought that was really funny. Um, cause like, sure, I guess, you know, you want your kid to be active, but is signing up your kid for a bunch of sports really the answer, you know.
Steven Harowitz: 9:37
I think, did you ask the follow-up questions of like what sports did your mom sign you up for?
Eli Chen: 9:39
I think I said, I think I said something like, "So all the sports?" And I I was just like what, what does that mean? Um and then, uh, I think, um, along the way also asked other questions. I think the most serious question came when I was talking about the ride home, um, from the from the film festival where my ex and I fought quite a bit and, um, I asked people, you know, um, have you ever, you know, questioned the truth, and, ah, you know, when the truth, you know, comes in direct conflict with the plans that you really invested in? And in, you know, there was I think, you know people, um, people really responded to that as well. And, um, you know, I was, oh, it's it's interesting how you build a rapport with, you know, a bunch of strangers, and and, um, I wasn't sure whether or not people would be comfortable enough like opening up about that kind of thing. But I think at that point in the show, people is kind of, um really kind of rallied around that question.
Steven Harowitz: 10:48
Yeah, I think you did a lovely job of modeling almost like what's the right kinda appropriate depth level to sharing so people were really willing to give back to you, which was seen, I think, also in your facilitation around the breakup secretary. I think some of the responses on the sticky notes were amazing. And even at the end of the event, the answers that people were putting down were so meaningful. And I think a big part of that's how you led the the audience there.
Steven Harowitz: 11:14
Sure, that breakup secretary activity was so fun. I think, um, it was so funny to see people interacting with each other, uh, about about what they put down, cause I remember when my friend Emma came up to the stage with her with her, um, post-it note, it said something like, "Do something safe but safe but violence, violent, but safe." And like somebody somebody raised their hand just to follow up with, "What does that mean exactly?" And they wanted to have a conversation about it.
Steven Harowitz: 11:47
That that might be the first time in any of our Campfires we've ever had the audience so into the moment of wanting to just shout out their stuff, that it became not something you were necessarily facilitating but you'd started and the audience were like, "We're gonna carry this for a minute, and we're gonna do it together." We've never had where it's just a non-constructed, like shout out your answers and they just did it on their own, which I think was wonderful. They were so into that moment was really, really cool to watch.
Eli Chen: 12:16
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think that's, you know, that's a sign I think that the show was successful and that it encouraged those sorts of dialogues between people.
Steven Harowitz: 12:26
Yes, I agree with that. So, post being our, post your Campfire specifically, has your view on plan changed at all?
Eli Chen: 12:37
I think that, um well, it there I was aware of the issues that I was having with my ex, and I knew that I didn't want to repeat that with, um, other relationships that I would have in the future. And if anything, um, doing Campfire, it made me think about that a little more. And, you know, and maybe the thing is is that it's always it's always so hard to like, the thing is, I'm I'm going through, like, a phase in my life right now where I'm going on a lot of, like, you know, really terrible, like, first dates, and and, um and the thing is, is that I I'm trying to be careful not to, like, end up in a situation again where somebody is attaching themselves to my plan. And I might end up being unhappy because, you know, this person doesn't have a very strong foundation for themselves. So that's something that, you know, I've been thinking about more, um, after I've done that show.
Steven Harowitz: 13:36
Thank you for sharing that. So those are all the questions that I have for you. Um, I do, I want to say thank you for being a part of it. And to your point about it being a successful show, I think that that's underselling it. I think it was a wonderfully amazingly successful show. The things that I think the audience were sharing back to us and what even some of the people on the Campfire team were hearing just in conversation amongst and then in the next level with those answers. I was in an email conversation with somebody, and they had printed out one of the answers that we'd put on Facebook from it and, like, put it on their wall.
Eli Chen: 14:12
Oh, wow.
Steven Harowitz: 14:12
And so you did such a beautiful job of leading the audience that you kind of sparked these cool waves out into the group that then rippled even further beyond. And I just want to say thank you for doing that.
Eli Chen: 14:25
Yeah, I love that people are, you know, thinking about that question on their own too.
Steven Harowitz: 14:29
Yeah, Yeah. Thank you. And now let's head to the stage a KDHX to hear Eli's Campfire.
Eli Chen: 14:42
Hi, I'm Eli, and I make science stories on the radio, and hello. Hey. And I'm here to tell you how my feelings towards planning has changed in my life. It was December 2014 when I met this guy who, for this purposes of this story, I'm gonna call Adam, and I was 24 years old, and I had just started as a science reporter at the NPR member station in Dover, Delaware, and there's not a whole lot to do in Dover other than maybe go see a NASCAR race or go to the museum at the Air Force base or drink at the bar at the Olive Garden. If you've never gotten shitfaced at the Olive Garden bar, you're really missing out. But it was really hard to meet people. And so I started using this online dating app, and along the way I started messaging with Adam, and Adam and I decided on our first date that we'd go to the State park along the beach, and for some reason we decided to meet first at this movie theater parking lot, and I got out of my car and I went to look for him and he rolled up in his white Dodge Dart and I opened the door and I saw this guy in his early thirties with round eyes and dark hair. And I said hello, and I got inside. In hindsight, probably not the wisest decision just to get in the car with someone I've just only been talking to over the Internet. You know, like that probably would have given my parents a heart attack if they knew about that because, after all, Adam could have been some random crazy guy who wanted to take a girl the woods and, like, knife her to death. So I just want to ask by a head nod. Have any of you looked back in a moment like this and thought, "Wow, that was really not smart?" Yeah, there you go. But I didn't get murdered. I am alive, etcetera. The date it actually started off pretty awkwardly, which is pretty typical of how first dates go. Adam was really quiet and awkward and reserved, and I detest silence. So I started talking about all kinds of nonsense, like I talked about this bat scientist that I interviewed the week before, and at the time, Interstellar had just came out and I talked about how much I really hated that movie. I thought they rushed the astrophysics, and Matthew McConaughey is really fucking annoying. So that's how the date started. And we parked the car at the at the beach and, and we got out and started walking towards this bluff where there was like a picnic table and a really great view of the ocean. And I remember we talked a little bit about our families, and when it got a little too cold to stay out, we decided to go somewhere to get pizza. And it was when we sat down that I finally got a really good look at him, and he was really good looking, actually, and, uh, rail thin from years of waiting tables without much of a break. And I remember he wore this white collared shirt under a black sweater, which end up being the most dressed up he'd ever get in any one of our dates. And I thought, you know, he was really nice and not annoying. So when he dropped me back off at the movie theater parking lot, I kissed him and I said it'd be nice to hang out again. Honestly, I really didn't think that much about him at first. I liked that he seemed attracted to me and wanted to hang out. So we went on a few more dates and he started to do really thoughtful things for me. He would check the tires of my car to see if they deflated overnight. He'd fix up my bike. Every year, he does this thing where he goes off to Europe during the slow restaurant season, and he decided that year to go to St. Petersburg and he'd write me these wonderful emails about all the landmarks and all the museums he was seeing and how much the train really sucked going from there to his friends in Lithuania and how much he really looked forward to seeing me again when he got back, and I really didn't expect to hear anything from him. Honestly, I expected to hear nothing. But I felt really warm and cared for when I got these emails, and there was just something so honest and sweet and genuine about them that I really felt like I connected with someone, and eventually Adam became someone who I wanted to make plans with. He was my date to my first journalism awards ceremony. I was his date to his best friend's wedding. I supported him when his dad passed away from lung cancer, and I started having dinner every Sunday night with his mom, and some of our friends treated us like we were going to get married. And I thought, "Hey, that's maybe not such a bad idea." Honestly, I never thought I'd ever want to get married to anybody and let alone make any long term plans with any person as an adult. But now I know it's something that I want, and these days I'm making a lot of small short-term plans, hoping that one of them will pan out and I'll find that person to make the big plans with. My complicated relationship with planning has a lot to do with my parents, and I'll explain why. So while Adam was off in Russia, I decided take a solo trip to D.C. And I remember I was waiting at this restaurant and I decided to call my mom. I rarely talk to my mom, ah, the reason being that it's really difficult to have a conversation with her. Part of it is because of the language barrier. She often misinterprets words, but she's she has trouble kind of listening and being present, and when she does listen, she often finds things to be overly concerned about. It interferes with my plans. So when she calls me, I ignore them and then she leaves voicemail messages that sound kind of like this. "Hi, Eli. This is your mommy. I haven't talked to you in a while. I just want to know how's everything going for you. We are doing fine at the beaches, and the Daddy is loving the birthday gift you give, a lamp. Um, yeah. We're doing fine. Uh, nobody sick so far. Hopefully, they continue. Hopefully, you are healthy too. Ok, talk to you later. Bye." lt always kills me that she starts her voicemail messages like this all the time. I could easily fix it by just calling home more often, but I really don't. And so anyway, back at this restaurant, so I had to call my mom, and something told me that I should tell her about Adam. Seems like a pretty significant life event, you know, a new relationship. And I started to tell her about what a great guy he was, and instead what she heard was that I was dating a college dropout who was waiting tables for a living. Somebody seems to get it over there. Um and then the next day, I was driving back to Delaware from D.C. and my dad called me and he said, "Mom didn't sleep last night because I think you told her about some things in your life," and the vagueness in what he was saying and he was also sounding kind of menacing at the same time, I I started tense up a little bit because I knew what was coming next. I knew he was going to tell me I was screwing up my life again. Just to paint a picture of my dad, he's this this skinny, um, sharply handsome guy, um, always has kind of like a serious expression on his face. And he came here in the 1970s to study engineering in Chicago. Eventually, somewhere along the way, married my mom, started a family Chicago suburbs. Um, I am on the left with the Disney shirt. He was a really great provider in the material sense. We had a really nice house. We had could afford nice things. He saved up college tuition for me and my sister. But growing up with him was kind of a tense situation. Me and my sister and my mom always bracing ourselves for the next time any of us did anything to set him off. He had a really bad temper. So we would, for example, hide our report cards from him. He really didn't like bad grades. And he did this really bizarre thing around the dinner table where he'd give us math equations or words to spell. I was in the spelling bee when I was a kid, and if we struggled to give him the right answer, he'd just start yelling and going off the rails, and my mom would try to tell him to stop. But her efforts were pretty useless. And eventually she and my sister would kind of back away from the table and disappear off in their bedrooms, and I'd just sit there until my dad was done being angry with me. When I was six, he signed me up for piano lessons, and he was really obsessed with getting me to play the Pachelbel's Canon in D. Give me a wave if you know that song. Yeah, so it's for those who don't, it is it's a wedding march. This was it was this eight page song, and he requested this. He requested to my piano teacher when I was seven or eight that I start playing it, and remember she had to cross out a bunch of the notes because my hands were not large enough to reach the octave chords. And I would continue to play the song actually until I was 12 or 13. The Campfire folks suggested we play this song, but I didn't really want that. I fucking hate it. Um, whatever beauty that my dad heard in this song, I've never felt it. Whenever I hear it, I just wanna curl up into a ball and disappear. If I was having kind of a bad night where I was playing the song or was practicing it and, the song and I, were not just getting along, I was making a lot of mistakes, he'd come downstairs from the study, and he'd just quietly appear in this armchair right next to the piano and he'd wait for me to stop playing and then he'd go on this whole tirade about what a worthless human being I am. The thing is, is that my dad really wanted me, my sister, to be successful. For parents who immigrate to this country, I think this is pretty common thing, actually. You know, in return for putting the work to make a living here and, you know, adjusting to a whole new culture, your kids should study hard in school. They should get accepted to a good university. My dad wanted me to go to law school, become a tax attorney, marry someone with equal or higher education status. The only part of that plan I really agreed with was that I become successful, but I wanted to do it on my own terms and not theirs. So I want I ask you all if you ever had someone try to make plans for you, whether it's a parent or someone who felt like they had a say in your life, and I want you to think about that just for a moment. When I was in high school, I wanted to become a novelist, uh, or a poet. And the future I expected for myself is that I'd live kind of like this spinster writer in a big city. I was a really weird kid growing up. I didn't make a lot of friends, and I didn't date until I was 20. And you know, I never thought I'd ever get married or start a family, and I thought that was kind of kind of future that other people would get to have, but not me. I think that some of the hurtful messages I got from my father early on in life, you know, it made me feel like I didn't deserve that kind of future. And so I started my adult life basically afraid to interact with people because I thought I was really a waste of people's time and space. But that's really not how I feel anymore, thankfully. Living away from my parents for several years really helped with that and going to journalism school helped too, and so did meeting Adam. It was with Adam that I started to see life in a more optimistic way, and I started to make plans that were really meaningful. So when I got the job in St. Louis, everyone knew that he'd come with me, and they really celebrated that. I remember the last dinner that we had with his mom. She said something like, "It's really time that Adam move on Rehoboth Beach," and as we pulled out of the driveway with the last of our stuff, she cried, actually, and I asked him if she'd cried before because I knew that some years ago he had followed a girl to Poland and he said, "Everyone knew that I was coming back." And that just validated for me that we were heading somewhere kind of big and important. And when we got to St. Louis, I figured that in a year we'd get a dog. We'd name the dog Laika after the first dog the Russians sent into space. Uh, Russian space history was one of our favorite topics. We'd make one attempt for Adam to meet my father, and if that didn't work out, we just go to the courthouse and get married. Whatever. That was a meeting actually that never happened. But our lives in St. Louis started out seemingly good. Adam was starting to take classes at the community college and in effort to try and get a degree and get himself out of working in restaurants. And I really looked forward to being a science reporter in a city. But things over the next several months became really stressful, and I went into this weird depressive state because I was struggling to produce stories that I felt were meaningful. And Adam, to some degree, was not enjoying school because he was having to take classes with kids who were basically half his age. And he was also working nights at this dysfunctional restaurant that was run by this abusive asshole. And so when I'd come home and complain about work, he'd basically say something like, "You know, at least you have a job that's in your field. You're not having to start over in your thirties like I am," and that just made me feel really guilty that he was having to deal with all of this because he moved here for me. And our time together was becoming less and less enjoyable, and we'd be out at some restaurant or bar or event, and I'd be really worried that he wasn't having a good time. But I realized later that was me. It was me who was unhappy, and there were things that started to bother me. He had this friend who came up from New Orleans to watch a soccer game with him, and I remember that we were sitting around this table having a beer, and we were talking about his friend's wife was finishing up graduate school, and Adam asked if she'd consider taking a job outside of New Orleans, if he'd follow her if that happened. And his friend says something like, "Yeah, you know, I'm just along for the ride," and Adam said, "Yeah, me, too." I don't remember what I was doing the time. I don't think I commented on it, But that moment really bothered me, and it made me wonder if Adam wanted anything in his life, if he wanted to accomplish anything. I knew that if he hadn't met me, he wouldn't have left Rehoboth Beach. He probably would continue to wait tables along the boardwalk. Really early on in our relationship, he says something to me about how I aggressively go after the things I want, whereas he just kind of goes with the flow, and I asked if that was going to be a problem. And he said, "No, it's just something to notice." And then there's this other thing that happened. So a couple months before the end of our relationship, I started hanging out with this friend who initially I thought was just a friend, and I have, like, quite a few male platonic friends. I actually have a herd of bros who I talked to on a regular basis. So I thought I know how to just be friends with a guy. But that was really foolish thinking because there was this one night that this friend and I were just hopping between a few places in town and we end up at this diner after midnight. And I remember I was having a really great time, and it just felt so easy to talk to him, and and I was not stressing out about how he was doing. And on top of that, I also realized I was really attracted to him and all that together just really fucking scared me. And it just unraveled my unhappiness even further. The future that I thought I was seeing with Adam was already starting to become kind of blurry at this point. And at this point, it started to tint and go dark. Emotionally, I was already letting go of the plan. It felt like I was trying to claw myself up this cliff that was already crumbling and not being in control really started to make me feel angry. So shortly after, Adam and I were headed to Columbia to go see this documentary film festival, and we had planned a few weeks in advance to go to this festival, and I asked him to take the day off. But I didn't make any plans for what we see or do once we got there. And Adam really hated that. He was also really stressed out that weekend because he had some papers he needed to finish up for school, so he actually brought his homework with him. And I remember that I I left him at a coffee shop just surrounded by these, like, pretentious film art school types who were just, like, really not his crowd, and that annoyed him even more. And I remember that I went and sat ion some bench near this intersection in Columbia, and I was just feeling distressed, and we eventually got something to eat later, and he said something to me like, "I'm really not having a good time." And I said, "I know. I'm sorry." We only had time to see one documentary that day, and I decided that we go and see a secret screening, and that was one the really great things about this festival is that you could go and see a film that had not premiered before, and you couldn't talk about, and I thought that was kind of cool. But Adam really did not like not knowing what he was getting into. And so anyway, we got out of the theater and I remember the film being really awesome, and I was talking a lot about it, and Adam just kept saying, "Oh, yeah, I thought it was all right." And something in my brain just like snapped right then and there. You never want to start an argument at the beginning of a two hour drive home, but I did anyway. If you've ever taken that drive from Columbia to St. Louis at night, you know that it's pitch black and you're just surrounded by the emptiness that is mid-Missouri. Adam had planned for us to go to New Orleans to visit some friends, and I remember I started the conversation by saying, "I don't think I want to go to New Orleans with you anymore," and he asked me what I meant by that. And I said, "I'm just really not sure about us right now," and again he asked me what I meant by that. The answers were really clear in my head, but I had trouble getting them out of my mouth, and it reminded me of just those really suffocating moments I had when I'd be sitting at the dinner table with my father and I I'd have trouble answering his questions and I would say nothing because sometimes I felt that saying nothing was better than saying the wrong thing. And back at that car with Adam, I wondered if I was wrong, if I had been living so far deep inside my head that I was just making things out to be worse than they actually seemed. And you know, it's a weird thing is a weird feeling when you start questioning the truth, especially when the truth comes in direct conflict with your plans. So I wanna ask you to reflect on a time that you might have felt this way, that realizing something would really mess up the plans you was so invested in. I want you to think about that. If you feel comfortable sharing it, turn to someone next to you and just talk about it.
Eli Chen: 41:46
I hope you guys had some good conversations, reached maybe a deeper level with a friend you came here with or got to know a stranger. So the ride back to St. Louis was mostly quiet and tense. And as we got closer to home, we made some really pathetic small talk about some of the billboards we were seeing. Yeah, that's how that went. And then we got back to our apartment and got back into bed, and Adam said, "So do you want to break up with me?" And I just burst into tears right then and there, because I knew that answering the question in one way would really sever his plans of going back to school and starting a life here with me. And so I said, "What would you do?" And he said, "I'd be sad, but I'd be fine." The next day, I took like, a three hour walk in the park, and I called one of my best friends, who was living in Brooklyn, and she had told me about some of the issues she's had with a long-term relationship, and so she advised me actually to just really take the time to think about what my relationship to Adam means to me. And I had to mentally start confronting this paranoia I'd been having for some time, that I had just been in this relationship to prove a point to my parents that I could be happy with someone who didn't meet their standards. And for much of that relationship, I really was happy. But then somehow that happiness turned into complacency, and I started mixing up one for the other. And when I realized that I needed to do something about it, so a few days later, he and I broke up. Adam was devastated, so I gave him the space to pack up his stuff and move out. He really wanted to go back to Delaware. I slept on friends' couches for a week. I remember at one point I re-entered my apartment in the middle of the night to grab clothes and toiletries and things so I could how up showered and dressed for work every day. I remember one point I went out apartment hunting, and I realized that I was missing my checkbook, and I thought, "Oh, shit. I have to, like, go and have this awkward encounter with him." So I parked the car near the apartment, and I saw him come out with an armful of his stuff and go into one of those pod shipping containers. And I thought, 'This is great because he's gonna be in there for five minutes, just like rearranging stuff. So I'm gonna go in," which I did, "grab my checkbook, and dart out." And as I did, I got back into my car and Adam, at that moment, came out of the pod and back into the apartment, barely acknowledged a thing. I thought, "Fuck, yeah, I am like, a breakup ninja. I just got away with it." So I want to ask if anyone's ever experienced, like, a weird moment of joy going through a major breakup like that? Give you a wave. Yeah. Anyone feel comfortable sharing what that moment was? Raise your hand. You in the back.
Audience Member: 46:09
I after after breakup, I ended up spending, ended up living at my mother's house for two months. Well, my my ex-girlfriend moved out of our apartment and, um, we broke up. I broke up with her on and that was like a Tuesday and I should've, like the next day on Wednesday, like, "Oh, yeah, well, let's talk logistics." That did not go well. You do not show up the next day to just talk logistics. I'm kind of that person. I tried again on Thursday to show up again. Okay, so now logistics again. And that went worse. And I got yelled at in a Panera. Not a good experience. They were closing. And so on Friday I did the actually good and reasonable thing and took the day off work. And while I knew that she was at work, I had a friend take me over and we midget into my house and, I think about 20 minutes, grab all of the things that I thought it might need for, like, two months and like, shove them into her car and got out of there. And my moment of joy came when we get all the stuff packed in my friend's car, and it was like, ok, before we go back to my mother's house, we got to get something to eat. "Thank you so much for doing this. I'll buy you dinner," and we went to Which Which on the Loop, and we were like, hiding. Just they have a stairwell. You can eat under the stairwell there, not in view of the door. And I was paranoid looking over my shoulder, and it was actually fine. And I had this moment of absolute joy and contentment at Which Which just like, actually, it's gonna be okay. And then but we were totally off plan. We just kept figuring it out.
Eli Chen: 47:55
Great. Wow. Thank you for sharing. Um, Which Which at the Loop?
Audience Member: 48:03
Which Which at the Loop. It's a very wonderful place. Their manager's very nice.
Eli Chen: 48:03
Okay, Very good. Thank you for sharing. Um, I'll give anyone else a chance to share if they want to. Mmm mmm Mmm Mmm. Mmm mmm. Oh, you in the front. [Inaudible.] You know that's important. Your cat is important. You didn't get the cat. I hope you win the cat. Thank you. I so in the aftermath of the break up, I had just a lot of trouble, you know, making plans for myself. And, um, the thing was, I knew that what I had done was a good decision, because I actually didn't miss Adam at all. There's nothing in me that wanted to reach out or talk to him despite having spent two and half years together. And I had just enormous guilt over having had someone move across the country for me, so much so that I had trouble eating and sleeping. And one of my friends did this really kind thing for me where she got these post-it notes and just started making these these bullet notes of things I need to do, like, get a therapist and make dinner plans. So someone's going to distribute some post-it notes around the room, uh, because this person, I like to think of her as my breakup secretary, because everyone needs one of those when you're going through a really hard time to help you plan things. So, um, I'm gonna give you the opportunity to be your own sort of breakup secretary, or if you don't feel comfortable with that, um, you know, make a list for somebody who might need it. If anyone wants to share their list, feel free to come up. I see you in the aisle. You're edging out. You. Okay. Never mind, then. Hey, Emma. Do you want to come up? Yeah. Give it up for Emma. Emma's actually participating in my storytelling event in a couple weeks, called the Story Collider.
Eli Chen: 51:23
Um, all right, so I have ere: bathe regularly, uh, crockpot chili, uh, smoke a lot and masturbate. Yes. This is for adults. So yeah, I did at least once. Read favorite childhood books. You want? What's an example?
Audience Member: 51:49
Um, so when I was a kid, I would read these Tamara Pierce books about like, yeah, there's always there's always one lady, like lady knights and mages who could talk to animals.
Eli Chen: 52:03
That's very you. You know, um uh, take long walks. I agree with that. I call it lurking. Uh, call people you love, uh, exercise, and do something, what is that say?
Audience Member: 52:17
Safe yet violent.
Eli Chen: 52:20
Oh, wow. This is this is actually really good. This is good to transition to the next activity, but you'll find out in a second.
Audience Member: 52:26
Safe yet violent, guys. Yeah, that's my list.
Eli Chen: 52:30
All right, give it up for Emma's breakup secretary list. So, in addition to the list of things that my breakup secretary had me do, a coworker had suggested that I throw a party to celebrate my freedom. She was very feminist and believed that women do not need need men. So she was like, yeah, um, and have a party. So, uh, yes. So and I thought of a really good activity for it, actually, because Adam had left a whole bunch of things that I'd given him for Christmases and birthdays, sort of like his pile in our living room. And when I regained the apartment after he moved out, my immediate thought was, "I'm gonna burn some of the shit." So I had actually what I called my effigy party. We, like, set up a fire in my backyard, and we just started feeding things into the fire. It felt, uh, felt pretty good, actually. I mean, obviously didn't resolve all of my feelings. Um, but at least it was fun, right? Yeah, I don't know. I'm a strong believer in burning things, but here's the thing. Uh, we can't burn things here at KDHX. That's probably not something that's safe, but we can do other things. And so not everything made it into the fire, and, uh, I kept some of the cool stuff. Like, I got Adam, I got Adam a drone for one Christmas. Of course, I kept that because drones are cool. But I also kept a couple of books, and, um, I have here with me this book that he'd given me on our third date, which was around Christmas. And it's "What Should We Be Worried About? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night." Yeah. It's like a bunch of essays that experts wrote about things like global warming or nuclear war, things that we really should be worried about. And I thought, this is a really thoughtful gift. But the thing is, is that when I'm grappling with really complicated feelings, I have to destroy something. And I'd like your help in doing that. So I'd like to call up maybe like, two or three volunteers, uh, to tear this book part for me, and, well, who wants to do this? That person that person is volunteering. Here you go. You can come as well. All right? You, okay? Um, you're not coming up? Yeah. Come join the party. Okay, so this is the book. I'm also gonna take an Instagram story of this because, you know, it's, all right, hold on. Hey, we're at Campfire. Gonna, these nice people are gonna rip up my book that an ex-boyfriend gave me. So start. Wow, you guys have some issues to work out. Stay here. Um, how did that make you feel?
Audience Member: 57:04
Oh, I'm kind of sad for the book, but it felt great.
Eli Chen: 57:07
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, it's good experience. So that's what, uh, careful there. Um, so that's what happens, uh, when I let go of the plan. I am uplifted by unexpected moments of joy. And I rely on lists to get me back on track, and I destroy vestiges of my past. Eventually, I began to feel that better after the break up, and I started to to make plans again, and that felt good. But things don't always return back to normal when you go through a major breakup like that. And I had a hard time sitting at home, um, just being there by myself. So I started to feel restless, and I started really over-planning my nights and weekends so that I wasn't sitting around just processing my feelings. I know that no matter how much I plan or how well I plan, my feelings are always gonna have their way. You don't plan to lose your love for someone and you don't plan to develop feelings for someone else. And you don't plan how long those feelings they're gonna stick around. They just are what they are. And when I let go of the plan, there's chaos, but you make new plans and you move on. I really struggled to make plans for a long time because the way I was raised by my father and meeting Adam really forced me to rethink the way I planned my life. And now I'm on my own. I'm just figuring it out, kind of like the rest of you might be. And, you know, life is just this continual process of revision and trying to be okay with the fact that sometimes I'll be disappointed with the way things don't work out and trying to appreciate the moments when they lead somewhere unexpected. Thank you.
Steven Harowitz: 59:47
And that's a wrap. I'd like to thank Eli for answering this Season's question, what happens when we let go of the plan? A big thank you to Seth Schroeder, our Narrative Architect. Jenni Harpring, Facilitation Director, Grace Lutrell Pettit, Community Engagement Director, Andrew Wareshauer, Campfire at Home Producer, Bonner Williams, Director of Operations, 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 St. Louis. If you want to learn more about Campfire and the work we do, please 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 helps out. Until next time.