OK. I have to agree with that. That’s very good. So anyway, but I’m, I’m, I’m just, I’m at a moment that I’m so much more protective of all of that. Yeah, because it’s survival, but it’s also my happiness and my kids’ happiness. And when I recognize, like, I’m a goer, I’m a doer, I’m a runner. I I like. Busy schedule. But in reflection, these last few months I ran a lot because I didn’t want to be home, because I was miserable. It was your avoidance tactic. Now I’m not miserable, right? I’m happy. Yeah, you were looking for things to get you out of the house because you didn’t want to be there. And now I’m happy. And I just want to like. Hang out with me. Hang out with my best. Hang out with my my person, kiddo And that, like, that’s what I want. So all these other like these other negative expectations that pop up in things that you’re just doing because you’re kind go all over me and I I I really try to always operate from a spot of kindness. Like I I’m not a condescending person. I don’t. I really try. I mean, everybody, everybody messes up. But, like, I really try to always come from a place of understanding and positivity and everything. So when other people don’t, it’s always a little bit of a shock to my system, especially when it’s like, hold the phone. Like, right, let’s let’s just stop and look at what everybody else is doing around you. Like, come, Right. But you have a worldview. And as an educator, I think that’s just a part of it. And yeah, people who live in their own little bubble. Yeah. And it’s just recognizing and going, oh, you’re one of those. Yeah. Than being able to 

brush it off. And yeah, yeah, 

wow. Expectations. Yeah. Well, I think what people don’t realize is what it makes you do is to go okay, I’m pushing that person away. I’m going to push that person away because I’m not going to deal with that. But you, I mean, well, I think what I have found also the priority for people, please. Yeah, I’m a people pleaser too. But at the end of the day, the most important person I have to please is me. Yeah, so that I can do, so that I can do for my kids. And yeah, I mean, I have been really bad about doing self-care in the past. I’ve put everybody before. Well, I think it’s and I think all three of us can say that is kind of how we ran our marriages. Oh yeah, is we are we are at the bottom tier and our husbands and our children came first and it was making making trying to make that work. Especially as things started to implode. It was working overtime to try and figure out how to make it work or employing the let’s be a workaholic case. It’s how can I not be there, right. And that was a subconscious but I had that too and I I recognize that at a certain. Point when it got everything was kind of really bad. I did not want to go home. Yeah, I had to. I had two kids. I did not want to be there. See. And I did that as a I did that and then it was like, but don’t you think that. Yeah. And I feel like that for me it was part of doing that was also a part of trying to save the marriage because I was at my wits end. I was done. I had no idea what else to do. So maybe if I really busied myself, I’d just look up one day and things would be done. I think that ended up. Being my means of separating because he wouldn’t leave my house. Yeah, that I just stayed gone. And I I mean, I would not separate you. I came home, but I came home late at night because I didn’t want to be there with him in the house. And that I, I, I again, I recognize in retrospect, I did all these subconscious things before I was ready to say this is over. Like, right. But. That was my again, it was my mechanism of of I guess of separating truly. So 

that’s good. Yeah. So moving forward expectations, you’re working on setting boundaries. Yeah. The truth is I mean I I have a big job. My job is huge and it’s very demanding and. 

I really have to make sure that I’m meeting the expectations of those people first. Like it has to be, and I mean obviously of my kid, but like those are the only people that I owe any kind of expectation to, are the people that employ me and the person who depends on me to survive and see, I think my boundaries. You know, going back to work in this industry and kind of learning it over again. I now have about a year and a half under my belt and I feel like I have things kind of clipped along. I do have to meet my boss’s expectation, company expectation, but what I tend to do as a people pleaser is answer my phone because they all have my phone number at all hours of the day and night, and I have consciously stopped answering the phone Friday after 5:30. To Monday morning at 8. Now if they have an emergency they know they can text me or they’ll leave me a message and I’ll get back to him. But I used I was wide open there for awhile and that will that will really cut into your piece and your me time and exercise. I took calls on the AT Red X Hey I took a client on the way home from my knee surgery. Literally on the way. So now I have my boundaries for me to guard my off time. But you know, and that’s how I’m working on my expectations of, you know, ’cause I still haven’t said no to a client yet, but we’re working on that one too. 

I’m just working on setting some expectations that are realistic for me. And I guess really it’s not setting expectations, it’s deciding what direction I want to go In was telling Beth I saw a job, I saw a job that looked great, the city away. But I but I don’t know that I would necessarily want to move to another city right this minute. I do. I do. I want to write, do I want it? Like I’ve got to figure out exactly. What it is I want to do and then I can plot my expectations. I I think you need to do art shows but you don’t need to have them back-to-back to back-to-back because yeah, that kind of work. A huge expectation of how many paintings can you get done in the next. Yeah. And that and that kind of that kind of diminishes the enjoyment of it and really of the and and am I really creating worthwhile art if I’m just trying to fill a space right. And you you could like you could go out of town every weekend if you wanted to like. You could just, yeah. But what would I do? That’s just it. It’s like, yeah, but what do I want to explore all of these things? Yeah. I mean, the world is open. I could find a job on the other side of the continent. I could actually, actually, I could find a job going to work overseas. I could teach overseas if I wanted to. But do I really want to do that? I have a really great job right now and I enjoy it. I mean it. But you know, but I don’t. It’s just one of those. All of a sudden I have all of this freedom to just go do whatever I want. So I just really need to spend this But like I I just kind of always imagined that for myself that I would just go and do this other. 2nd Career in the arts in whatever. Like whether it’s singing with a jazz band or going to work on films or going to direct a show or that it’s it’s going to end up being sort of this menagerie of things. So what did you always sort of imagine that this moment would be? Well, I guess that’s the problem is that I I graduated with a degree in English to teach English. I mean I and 

I and done me wrong. I absolutely loved teaching English, but it was kind of an accident. Because I started in elementary education and hated it and so then changed to English education. Or not English, Not English, just English, just in straight English degree in art. Because I loved doing art. But then and I did English because every time I failed a class or didn’t do really well in college I’d take two English classes to make up for it. Like I took every English class South Alabama offered. And so in the end it was so easy to touch, get an English degree if my dad was like, what you going to do with that English degree? Be a secretary. Oh yeah. So I was going to do art, but then my art teacher in college looked at my palette in painting class and said, oh, you’ll never make it as an artist your way too organized with your palette. And so it just kind of crushed my spirit at that moment and was like, OK, And so I kind of fell into, I’ll just be an English teacher. And I was, and I was great at it and I enjoyed it. And then I tried, and then I was a librarian for a year and a half, but I never really had a plan. After that, when I got married, the expectation from my husband said I was going to stay at home with our kids. I wasn’t ever going to work, you know? And then I got a job, you know what I mean? So it was like, I really. So I guess my expectation was I will be happily married with children, and as the children get older, I will throw myself into my art and it will become whatever. But it doesn’t matter because I’m being supported by my husband, which is a very 1950s mentality. I get that. So I never really took the time to dream about what that would look like. And so I’ve I, you know, I thought about, I wanted to write novels and I have probably 3 unfinished novels stuck up in my computer somewhere. And I, you know, and I enjoy writing and all that, but I really, I have never. It’s almost like it’s now it’s time to decide what it is I want to be when I grow up, like all of a sudden. And so I’ve never had that. 

Girl, you need to make a plan. Yeah, I know. I need to make a plan. This is a big moment. I know. Yeah, but it means it means the whole world is open to you. That’s right. That’s the most. Yeah. Unlimited. I’m getting goosebumps. I know. Thinking about it. That’s so great. That’s the most exciting. It’s very exciting. Like you can do anything. I know. But what is that? What is it? And that and that whatever it is I decide I want to do. I have to take make a plan. And do it. Yeah, you know. So it’s just if it’s writing, we need, I need to be finding time during the week to actually execute the writing. If it’s painting, I need to be working on painting. It’s, you know, whatever it is, I need to figure it out. I need to commit to it and I need to run with it. So anyway, I don’t know. But maybe and I want to and this. But also here’s the other this is this is again your type 7 and ENFP friend talking. Just have fun and change your mind as much as you want. You know, as I say, you might decide on one thing and if that doesn’t work out, but you had a great experience and you can do something else, yeah, yeah, and the best thing is. You don’t have somebody telling you nobody can tell you what to do, nobody can tell you what to do. Yeah, that’s that’s the other reason that that ******* expectations will get to you. Because we’ve had control freaks for years telling us exactly what they thought we should do or not do. And and I grew up always thinking that my my dream was that I was going to be happily married. Yeah. OK, scratch that. I don’t. And I, you know, and I and I I’ve wanted to and I’ve wanted, you know, I guess in the end I would love to have someone that I fell in love with, that I felt a connection with and all of that. But I don’t feel that need for somebody anymore like I did. No. Yeah, totally. I totally. I don’t feel that need. I just unless. Unless they are the person. I mean, God is pretty much gonna have to smack me upside 

the head with a man. I wish. I wish that I could go back and tell my like. Previous self that because I OK. Complete opposite. I did not grow up with the expectation that I was going to be happily married and like I’m I grew up with with my parents saying get your education you don’t need a man like you Oh my parents said that but I still wanted to put it very tale Princess thing. I put it on myself so I I really thought I don’t know that I thought that I would never get married but I thought that that my art would always be first. And it turns out it really has been. It turns out that what I do career wise has always truly been first. That I I will not deny that. But so I don’t know. Now on now on the other side of that, I wish I could tell myself unless it’s somebody that you want to that literally that you love being around all the time, a best friend all the time, or that you can be okay without being around them all the time. Yeah. You can have separate lives but that you that you but that you can do. You can do your things but that you can do like that it complements you completely. Well, like best friends, that’s the ones where you can have time with half time without you. That’ll have to be about each other. There’s only way to choose that and I wish I could go back and tell year old Lauren. No. Yeah, well see and I would want to think harder. My ex-husband and I didn’t have to be together. Like we were opposite. We were not. It was my mom was like, y’all don’t even. I mean y’all are OK being apart. Are you sure you’re going to be OK, Mary? I was like, yeah we’ll be fine. But we were OK being apart and you know and I was almost like I just want a little something better. That’s OK Like I like the idea of being able to do separate things and the rest And then yeah, my ex like didn’t like doing anything apart. It was got to go to the store together got to do and like. That’s a little tedious, you know. So anyway, were you about 

to say that Yes, you had a comment, you had a comment, you had a big hand raise because you said my art came first. Okay. I don’t know how our audience is gonna. React to that. But I was sitting here thinking, you know, if a man said that my job came first, yeah. Nobody would bat an eye. No. But if you’re a mother and a wife or exwife and said, oh, I wish I had put my career first. My career came first. My passion came first. People, people throw like, Rotten Tomatoes at you. Yeah. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. It’s like it’s a whole different thing, the man. And the woman. And I don’t think that that has changed that much. You know, you said your expectation was to be a wife and a mother. That was your expectation. You know, I think people my age and you’re right behind me. I think we were sold 

a bill of goods. The Disney Princess, the the guys going to come in and save you. I’ve always been fiercely independent. Yeah, me too. Fiercely independent. So I didn’t know that any guy would ever even want to say like, I don’t think they even saw me as the damn. I don’t think I presented the damn damsel in distress. But I had that expectation though. Y’all know I got accepted to dental school at age 30. I walked in cold and took the DATI didn’t study and I and I was accepted and that’s what I. Had always wanted to do and then I met my ex. Expectation was my ex’s expectation of me was completely different. And he said his mother worked. He didn’t want a wife that worked and I gave it up like a dumb dumb. That’s my only really big regret in life. But I I just think when you said that, I thought we’re sitting here and now me in my late 50s. Now I am reinventing myself every once in a while. I don’t like the fact that I’m reinventing myself because I feel like I’ve done it at every stage of my life. But at the other point, listening to everything, I’m thinking what a gift. We get to reinvent ourselves, yeah, yeah. We get to have greater expectations of ourselves than our younger age. All right, this this is exactly what my friend Jeremy said to me a few weeks ago. I was talking to him about the relationship I was in that had had a brief hiatus, and I was telling him how all that happened. I was talking to him about everything. And he said, but Lauren, think about. Where we are now and how much we know and how much life we still have to live. Like we’re going to live till we’re 90 a hundred. Like think about it. We’re we’re not like we know so much 

now. And I was like, that’s it, That’s great. Yeah. But I think it’s it’s a gift that we all get to sit here and decide how we want to move forward. What we want our lives to look like because I know when I was in the middle of divorce or right before divorce when you’re when you’re deciding is this what I want? Is this not what I want it. You know you have that first gut wrench like I don’t want to be divorced. I don’t this is not what I pictured my life being like. And then when you realize I think for every single one of us it was really the only choice as far as peace and. Moving forward with our lives. And now we’re at a place where we can actually do something for ourselves, for our children. And so I had this little thing in the back back of my door. I bought it when I first found out about my ex’s first girlfriend, and it’s. I love. You mean girlfriend when you were married. Yes. When same. And I love. 

I love. So far. So it said happy wife, happy life. Yeah, but now I’m thinking happy me, happy life. Right. So I need to make another sign. 

No, I I realized I don’t know through all this process that by. So being artistic is always going to be the thing I have to do. Like, I can’t imagine not being dictated by that or there being a day that I like. When COVID hit, when the pandemic happened, I was like, wait, what am I supposed to do? Like, I don’t know what to do. I’m supposed to be in rehearsal. I don’t know how not to be in rehearsal. So I painted. I painted. I played piano a lot. I played piano a lot because I don’t know how not to do those things. And then in all of this thinking, I recognized, OK, I’m an artist. Like, first and foremost that is what I identify as. And then I identify as a woman and as a mother. Like, sure, but I’m an artist above all those things. But it doesn’t mean. That the the hierarchy of the important people in my life are different. Do you know what I mean? That’s what I recognize. It’s like, no, my calling. This might be controversial audience. My calling is not to be a mother. My calling is to be an artist. I’m an artist who happens to be a woman and a mother. Does that make sense? It doesn’t decrease the love. Doesn’t change again, who’s the most important. It just kind of defines who you are. It just means that that calling that thing is always going to be what drives me. I will never be able to get away from that force because it’s just it’s. It is. Nature, you know, I wouldn’t know how not to. I feel that way about stitching. And everybody that knows me knows. I feel like I I don’t have a normal day unless I sink a stitch in. 

If I do a little stitching, then I can pretty much handle anything. Because that is, I feel the need to create, get something out there every day. Yeah. And I have days when I don’t do that. But you know what I do on the road. I doodle in my notebook. Yes, I do doodles because I can’t. That’s the biggest thing that we all share is that need to create. And I. I it’s hard for me. There are people out there who don’t have that instinct like a lot of people don’t have the instinct to create. I just you know, I don’t think that’s true. I taught a whole thing on that I think. I think you were give everybody has some kind of creative spark now you might not be able to draw but well you could do something else. But I think I think people tamp it down so far because we were taught as a society that you have to make money. Yeah, that you have to get educated and make money. And so they’re so career driven that they they draw that starving artist. Yeah, part of themselves, that really is who they are. Really anything. So I consider even athletics a form of art, because anything that’s expressive, well, I think that I think it just about any job that you have athletics is physically expressive. You’re being physically well and you have to be sometimes you have to be creative in how you execute your athletics, but even somebody. Who works in sort of the banking industry? If they’re working creative deals for people or finding solutions where nobody else is, that’s creativity that is creative. You know, if people, some people are really great people, people. Your sister is one of those people, persons who just gets people. She works in the school system and she just gets people. She just knows what’s needed and kind of understands situations. That’s a gift and can be creative. You know, so it doesn’t have to express in an actual art form. No, it’s our way. This is when I teach my theatre appreciation classes. Art is our way of dealing with our mortality. 

That’s and I didn’t. So that’s why my stitching stash is so big. So I will never die. It’s like I’ll never get through it. It’s our need to. It’s our need to leave something in the world or need to put something. Leave your mark in the world. Valuable in the world. It’s it’s the same. It’s the same need that some people have to have children because they want a legacy to leave in the world. You know see and I guess in mine in some small point is giving value just to my day. Yeah. If I don’t do anything else but I get to sit down, I find you know and and start something or plan something or work towards something I feel like I have given. And especially right now when I feel kind of lost, it’s given value to my day and it’s like, OK, well, there, yeah, I did this. I did. I did something. Cranked out some art lately. Oh, I have, I have, I have, I have. And I and I have loved it. And it’s been really well received. And that has been, yeah, very validating and fabulous, encouraging to move forward. And I’ve just really got to, I don’t know, stop a minute and figure out in what way to make it go. Yeah. But you know, when we talk about all of these things, I don’t regret one ounce of love I gave my exhusband. And I don’t regret the divorce that happened. I have decided that regret as we’re working on expectations, that regret places expectations on my past self that I can’t do anything about. Does that make sense that I just have to accept that where I was and be OK with how things turned and just. Be at peace with the love that I have. I have gifted in some cases and shared and I don’t have a regret for the people that I love and the way that I love them. I regret that I lost myself in a yes, a lot of that. Because you know, my divorce, all the times that I needed to get divorced to the time that actually happened, was ten years. 10 years and I feel like I think we’re all about, we all spent about 10 

years in our marriages. Yeah, past where we should have. That was my whole marriage. So I’m going to go ahead and say 10 years. The other the other thing, which is that I do regret it. I do regret picking the wrong guy. I wish I had waited. I wish that I had chosen differently. My only solace, because I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy. It was a very rare occasion that I felt really happy. The only thing is that I got an amazing child. You have it. I got really amazing kids. And I guess that’s that’s a unique way to look at it. I mean, I, my ex-husband, we looked really great on paper saying and that’s what I was really paper. And I was right. And I was and I was. I did love him. I was in love with him and I had tons of questions, even leading right up to the wedding day. But I brushed them all aside because. I loved him and we looked great on paper. Yeah, how could it not work out? So I guess, I don’t know. I just don’t want to spend. I guess Pollyanna here doesn’t want to spend time well. So the great on paper, just circling back to our topic great on paper is another expectation that is true. You’re expected to create a life with somebody who is comparable to you in what career or education level? And that’s so not necessarily important. Well, and I think honestly going, if I could go back and talk to myself back then, yeah, I would have asked her to speak to my exhusband about what his expectations of marriage and family were. Because it turns out we weren’t on the same page. No, but I did. I just assumed we were, you know, because we came from such similar families. Obviously, I wasn’t on the same page with my person. I thought he was an artist. I thought he was a writer and musician and that that’s what that’s the perspective person coming with, because I grew up a child 

of artists. And it meant that we ate dinner on the run, that we were constantly at gigs or rehearsals. And like, that was my normal. Like we didn’t sit down to dinner. I can’t. I couldn’t tell you a night that my family sat down to dinner because we had. Things that we did at night, because artists happen at night, especially if you’re a performer. So I thought he was coming at it from that perspective too. And it turned out that he wasn’t. Well, I’m never going to be Miss Susie. Get dinner on the table. That’s not who I am. Like I can’t do it. It’s my life won’t allow that And I didn’t know that that’s not who he was until we were well on it. Well on in it, so. And now completely other side of that, I’m with somebody now who isn’t even vaguely traditionally what would be correct on paper and it’s so much better. It’s so much more fun and and calmer and then any of that with my exhusband. So anyway it just it it tells me. 

That what looks right, or what society has dictated is correct, isn’t necessarily at all, not even vaguely so. So on this side of divorce and creating a life that we love, expectations are important, recognizing when we need to redefine our expectations for ourselves, or setting boundaries with expectations other people have of us, or creating expectations. In a new phase of life. Yeah. And breaking expectations that were bad and not being pride to do that. Yeah, 

this has been a very good, productive talk. That was great. Look what we put into the world today. 

This has been fun. Great. All right, So what are y’all doing this week to create a good life? Anything. 

I have lots of rehearsals because I have like 3 different things in the hat. I have to go see a couple of shows this weekend and I’m taking my kid to one of home, so that’ll be fun. And I’m going to see my friend who had a new baby and otherwise I’m really trying to be cognizant of, 

of working out every day, like not just sporadically. And that’s that’s. The thing that I need to fix. So yeah, Beth and I walked today in the freezing cold. It was freezing. But like, sometimes I love that because you can bundle up but you can breathe so well. I know. Like, it’s just like it clears you out. We need And I’m not sneezing. We didn’t wear enough clothes. We did not wear enough clothes today. So what are you doing this week, Bonnie, for your. Oh, my. My girl comes home on Saturday. Yay. So actually, she comes home a whole week. Yes. She comes home on Saturday. Yes. And so we need to make sure we. I have Leo this week. Leo and Natalie time. Good. So now I’ll pick her up from the airport on Saturday. If Leon wants to go to the airport with me, he could get with me to pick her up. OK, So anyway, so I’m coming up. She’ll get home on Saturday, so I’ve got, and we’ll spend some time in the house. Just kind of get in her room. Cleaned up and getting some of the house. I’m having some things in the house painted so it’s kind of a mess trying to get some stuff put away. I’ve got art show still strung from the first actually inside my car through the house, so I’ve got to get art Show put away until then. What next one in December. So I guess I’m just and I and I’m hoping to get my calendar together with Beth. 

So we can figure out, we’re gonna try and figure out the time perhaps that we can encourage each other to write like show up like schedule, schedule some of that time. And I think that is gonna help move me in a good direction. So well I started off the week going to a show with my daughter. So you’ve already had a fabulous and I had to start well I’m staying Sunday to Sunday and so. That’s something we both share a love of musicals as she sings much better than I do. But we sing musicals all the way to the musical, sit and watch the musical, and then sing musicals all the way back. So this is my life just. But this is this is what she wants to have. That’s her life. Yeah. So I’m trying to encourage that and it’s good. Mom, daughter time. And then I finished a stitch piece and I started. I did my kids stockings. Yeah, Point stockings. And if I had this one in my hopper for a long time and I’ve started my stocking. Yeah, your own stocking, yeah. Yeah, included. I’ll have one at the middle, but. And I’ll have 3 commissions, yes. And I’m waiting for the third picture. So they’re primed and ready to go. And so you’re, you’re, you’re looking at a creative week. I’m looking at a creative week. I have a busy week. I think I’m traveling four days. So we’ll see. But I think they’re all pretty early travel time, so. Hopefully I won’t get that late Friday thing again. Which kind of protect your Fridays. Protect your Fridays. Protect your Fridays. That’s what I’m planning to Good. So excellent. 

Very good. Yay. Yeah. Well, I’m from this week. I taught Sunday school. This morning we’ll be first graders. They’re so fun. They are so hilarious. I love them each and everyone so. All right. Well, shall we clink to end? Clink. Cheers. You here? Yes, y’all have a great week. See you next week. Cheers. Have a good week. Cheers.