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I Put on Makeup. That's The Big Win. · You're Not Too Much

• 0:00
  I have makeup on my face that is somewhat of a victory
• 0:03
  because I have not done that in a while because I've just wanted to sit
• 0:07
  in a comfy hole of my blankets. I do not want
• 0:11
  our children to have a preferred parent. That said,
• 0:15
  all of the dogs should like me better because I am better.
• 0:18
  Can you go away for a minute? Hey, stop bullying me. Stop. You're bullying me.
• 0:22
  I don't like it. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren
• 0:26
  Howard. I go by L2. Yes, you can call me L2.
• 0:29
  Everybody does. It's a long story. It's actually not that long a story, but we'll
• 0:32
  save it for another time. Welcome to Different Not
• 0:36
  Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that. That
• 0:40
  there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken, and the
• 0:43
  reality is you're just different, and that's fine.
• 0:47
  So we took a little bit of a break, which doesn't reflect the
• 0:51
  episodes that have been posted, because if there's one thing I'm fairly good
• 0:55
  at, it's talking. When you put a
• 0:58
  microphone in front of me, I tend to just do that. And so we had
• 1:01
  a backlog of episodes so that we could post. But I took a bit of
• 1:04
  a break because the last couple of weeks, months, years, this year,
• 1:08
  past year, five years, decade, something like that. Every
• 1:12
  time I try to quantify what part of my recent life has
• 1:16
  been wild, I keep having to go back further. Last
• 1:19
  month, well, probably the last two months. Mostly this year.
• 1:23
  Well, since 2016, it's kind of
• 1:27
  hard to, like, figure out what the stopping point is. But we did take a
• 1:30
  break, which, if you have the capacity to do, I highly recommend doing it
• 1:34
  because it was good to have less to think about for a short
• 1:38
  period of time. And let me be honest, like, less to think about is like
• 1:42
  saying there are fewer drops of water in the ocean. Like,
• 1:46
  by magnitudes, not that much. But it did take a couple of
• 1:49
  things off my plate and also turned off the part of my brain that is
• 1:53
  constantly generating things. Like, once you start. If you've created content,
• 1:56
  you know this. Once you start creating content, everything has
• 2:00
  the potential to be content. And then there's just a part of your brain that
• 2:04
  is, like, constantly mining for it and just being able to say to that part
• 2:07
  of my brain, like, take a nap. Did release
• 2:10
  some stuff, so that's good. But I will be very honest, and
• 2:14
  I think it's probably important to say this, because I'm sure there are
• 2:18
  other people in very similar situations. Maybe not with podcasts,
• 2:22
  but with jobs. And responsibilities and family
• 2:25
  and all the other things that are probably more
• 2:29
  important than podcasts. I was not ready to come back this morning. And
• 2:33
  by come back, I mean walk down the stairs to where I keep my
• 2:37
  makeup and put that on my face and get in front of the microphone
• 2:40
  and start recording. I was not ready. But I also
• 2:44
  knew that once we started, I would feel more like myself
• 2:48
  and I'd really like to feel like myself. That'd be so great. Oh, my gosh.
• 2:52
  So I really had to, like, push myself hard. I've pushed myself hard for
• 2:55
  many, many things. I push myself every day with work because I always have
• 2:59
  way too many things to do. But I'm also not a person
• 3:03
  who, like, deeply dives into this idea
• 3:07
  of, like, you can do things scared, but that doesn't mean you have to do
• 3:10
  things you don't wanna. Like, if your gut's telling you not to do something,
• 3:14
  if your body's screaming at you and you're trying to do something, maybe you don't
• 3:17
  need to do it. So I fall somewhere between there. So not to say that
• 3:20
  I have not forced myself to do many things that I need to do as
• 3:24
  a grown up adult in my life, but the fact that I was able to
• 3:27
  see through the fact that all I wanted to do was lay in bed, that's
• 3:31
  all I wanted to do. The other day I was walking upstairs,
• 3:35
  it was Friday night, and it had been a really long day. And I said
• 3:38
  to my kids, I'm gonna go spend some time with my best friend. And
• 3:42
  my oldest said, your bed? And I was like, yes.
• 3:46
  So even my kids know. But the fact that I managed to pry myself away
• 3:50
  from my best friend in the world, my bed, and come
• 3:54
  downstairs and put the war paint on my face and
• 3:58
  get here to yap into this microphone for
• 4:02
  whatever reason. And to be clear, I have zero idea what's coming out of my
• 4:06
  mouth today. None. There is never a plan.
• 4:09
  Which is kind of impressive when you consider how much content I have
• 4:13
  recorded without a plan. That really shows you my capacity to
• 4:16
  just run my mouth into the ether and hope that somebody listens to it
• 4:20
  eventually. But there is no plan. But we are back.
• 4:24
  Because these are small steps to get back to
• 4:28
  feeling like my normal self, who,
• 4:31
  regardless, all of the shit I like to talk about her, I kind of like,
• 4:36
  this is just one of those things. So if you're still here. Thanks, man.
• 4:40
  And if you've been listening for the last couple of weeks while I've been on
• 4:44
  self imposed silent hiatus that you didn't even know about.
• 4:47
  Thanks. Appreciate you a lot. And we have a lot more
• 4:51
  cool stuff coming up, but also, like, we're gonna talk about some
• 4:54
  tough stuff because first off, I know I'm not the only person there.
• 4:58
  I won't pretend like I ever have any idea what episode is coming out
• 5:02
  when, like, I literally just run my mouth into a microphone and
• 5:05
  then forget that I did it. And until I listen to the next
• 5:09
  episode, which I actually do. And I can't believe I do, but I actually
• 5:13
  do, because if I don't, I don't have any idea. Like, I have
• 5:17
  zero recollection of what we recorded or what was said.
• 5:20
  So much so that I'll be listening to it and I'll be like, oh, man,
• 5:23
  I really wish I said this after the thing that I'm saying currently.
• 5:27
  And then immediately say it and go, oh, like, good job, me. Good job. Past
• 5:30
  me, who? I have zero recollection of doing this. We were on the
• 5:34
  same page when things come out. I don't know. But
• 5:38
  we're here, and we're doing it because we can do things scared and we can
• 5:42
  do hard things. I have makeup on my face. Whether you can see that or
• 5:45
  not. That is somewhat of a victory, because I have
• 5:49
  not done that in a while, because I've just wanted to sit in a
• 5:53
  comfy hole of my blankets.
• 6:00
  Two nights ago, I'm laying in bed, and Odin. Odin
• 6:04
  is a very sweet dog, and he will take affection from everybody, and he is
• 6:08
  very, very snuggly. But he is bonded to my husband.
• 6:12
  He is bonded to my husband in ways that I am not bonded to my
• 6:15
  husband. Like, that is his person, and
• 6:18
  so he will come hang out with me. But the second my husband comes along,
• 6:22
  he's like, fuck you. I'm out. And he runs away, which, like,
• 6:26
  I've just gotten used to. Whatever. It's fine. I can. It's not fine.
• 6:30
  It breaks my heart every time because I say this a lot. I do not
• 6:33
  want our children to have a preferred parent. They should know that
• 6:37
  they can come to both of us about everything, that we're both there for them,
• 6:40
  that we support them unconditionally, that we love them unconditionally. There is
• 6:44
  no difference in the quality of parenting that they will
• 6:48
  get from either parent. I want them to know that. And we spend a lot
• 6:51
  of time working on that. That said, all of the dogs should like me
• 6:55
  better because I am better. The dogs should like me better.
• 7:00
  I am the superior person. The dogs should like
• 7:04
  me better. So it Breaks my heart every time that this dog runs away to
• 7:08
  my husband. And for everybody who does or does not know, Odin is
• 7:12
  175 pound Great Dane. So you don't passively
• 7:15
  snuggle with Odin there. It is a contact sport. But
• 7:19
  he's a very sweet boy and we like him a lot. So anyway, all that
• 7:23
  to say he never, never comes to me first if he's looking for somebody to
• 7:26
  snuggle with, he's like, where's my dad? And then if he doesn't find Kyle, he's
• 7:29
  like, all right, whatever, man. The other night I was laying in bed. This is
• 7:32
  like two nights ago. He runs upstairs without stopping,
• 7:36
  jumps up on the bed and snuggles up to me, which does not happen
• 7:40
  usually. It's like, if he jumps on the bed, he's like, where's my dad? My
• 7:44
  dad's not here. All right, let me see if
• 7:48
  I can get comfortable on this king size massive
• 7:51
  fabric that I, as a dog, should not be allowed on. But I get three
• 7:55
  quarters of because I'm a giant dog. So he has to, like, decide where his
• 7:58
  spot is. He has to get comfortable. He. And sometimes it's like
• 8:02
  he's, like, laying on top of me, but often it's just like,
• 8:06
  you are. You are the substitute human, and it's fine that you're here, but
• 8:09
  I need to rest. Right? Except that is not what happened. He ran right
• 8:13
  upstairs, jumped on the bed, snuggled up right next to
• 8:17
  me, like, on, like, next to me. Like I needed to protect him
• 8:21
  or like he had been waiting for me all day. Would this does not happen.
• 8:24
  So I was like, well, that's weird. But also, I was tired and I
• 8:28
  didn't think that much of it. And then he was next to me, like, basically
• 8:31
  on top of me the whole night. So I didn't really think anything of it.
• 8:34
  And then last night I went to go to bed and I was like, well,
• 8:37
  where's the dog? And he was doing the thing where he was like, I definitely,
• 8:40
  like, he was definitely looking for my husband. So I was like, well, I guess
• 8:43
  I'm old news. Whatever. So Kyle happened to walk in and I was like, do
• 8:46
  you have any idea why Odin was, like, all in for Snuggles last night and
• 8:50
  acted like he had been looking for me? And he goes, oh, yeah. I got
• 8:53
  mad at him because he was eating the other dog's food and he ran away
• 8:55
  scared. And I was like, oh, oh, so I'm the one who
• 8:59
  protects him is what it is. And he was like, no, Definitely. He was looking
• 9:02
  for protection. He was. He was scared that he was in trouble and he was
• 9:06
  being a chicken shit. And so he ran upstairs and jumped in bed with you.
• 9:10
  I was like, oh, so technically he does like me better.
• 9:14
  That's fine. I'll accept that. Everybody in this house comes to me when they're in
• 9:18
  trouble because I'm supposed to get them out of trouble. They come hide underneath the
• 9:21
  covers of me because apparently I am the protector of all small things
• 9:25
  and my husband is the enforcer.
• 9:30
  Having Great Danes is an experience. Like, obviously, they're giant dogs. They're human
• 9:34
  sized dogs in the house. So that is an experience. I tell people, like,
• 9:37
  imagine you're walking through your house and at any moment,
• 9:41
  like, a transparent knee wall pops up and
• 9:45
  you just. You just go knee first
• 9:49
  into something that was not supposed to be there.
• 9:52
  And all of a sudden it's there and it doesn't move. It doesn't respond,
• 9:56
  it doesn't react. It does no damage. It just, like, looks up at you.
• 10:00
  Like, that's what it's like having great dates. Because they have no spatial
• 10:04
  awareness. They have no idea where you are in reference to them.
• 10:08
  They have no sense of urgency for anything. The only time
• 10:12
  they get scared is when, like, something. Well, they get scared all the time, I
• 10:15
  think is more the point. But it's always, like, stuff that shouldn't scare them. Like,
• 10:18
  if they see the neighbors, they get scared and bark. And I'm like, what are
• 10:21
  you gonna do? What are you gonna
• 10:24
  do? Like, you, you. You would get close to that person and be like, can
• 10:28
  I have your pets? Like, why are you barking?
• 10:33
  Why are you alerting me that the neighbor is there? Because
• 10:37
  you're gonna protect the house. That's not gonna happen. You are the last
• 10:41
  thing in the world that is gonna protect the house. You can't even protect yourself.
• 10:44
  Who are you gonna protect? We had a bullmastiff when I was a kid, and
• 10:47
  this dog was huge. He was like 160 pounds. My dad used to say that
• 10:51
  he got so big because they had the same attitude about exercise,
• 10:55
  which is that if you get the urge, just roll over until it passes. He
• 10:58
  just, like, got bigger and bigger. I will never forget. We moved into a new
• 11:02
  house and this repairman came over and the dog ran down the stairs,
• 11:06
  took one look at him and was like, nope. And ran up to the third
• 11:09
  floor and was like, nope. So that's our guard dog, right? But these dogs, like,
• 11:12
  they will. They will at least go through the show of barking and Then I'm
• 11:16
  like, what are you gonna do? There is no part of you that is a
• 11:19
  guard dog. You might be an alarm, but you are certainly not
• 11:23
  gonna tear anybody up. That's our 160, 175 pound dogs,
• 11:27
  right? The 30 pound dog will read you for
• 11:30
  filth and tear you to shreds. We've had so many shar peis
• 11:34
  that I've been like, you probably shouldn't be allowed around people. Let's go
• 11:38
  move you away. They're mean. It might be why I like them, but
• 11:42
  they're mean. We had one dog who passed away last year that if anybody knew
• 11:46
  how many times he had bitten people, I would be uninsurable. Our
• 11:49
  homeowner's insurance would just nope out. They'd be like, nope, get rid of the dog.
• 11:53
  That dog lived with my brother for an extended period of time. There was
• 11:57
  a time period when he saw my brother when he wasn't living with us. He
• 12:00
  saw him at least weekly, but likely much more
• 12:04
  frequently. He was very well acquainted with my brother and he
• 12:07
  still bit him every time he saw him. So anyway, if you want a guard
• 12:11
  dog, not the big ones, make another choice. But if you want a dog that
• 12:15
  will run to you when it's scared and is scared 97% of the
• 12:18
  time, something over 120 pounds will probably do it.
• 12:24
  And now we'll go to Alison, who has this week's
• 12:27
  small talk. We have a question from Talia in Berkeley,
• 12:31
  California. I feel grief for versions of myself I never
• 12:35
  got to try careers I didn't pursue relationships I
• 12:38
  avoided risks I didn't take because I was just trying to survive.
• 12:42
  What do you do with that grief when there's no one to blame? Why do
• 12:46
  you need to blame anybody? That's the point. There's nobody to blame. Sometimes
• 12:50
  life is life. I'm in a group with some mentors and I have
• 12:53
  bonded really well with one of them specifically. And we were texting the other day
• 12:57
  and I was talking about some consulting work that I have gotten lately and how
• 13:00
  consulting has changed so much since 2023. Beginning of
• 13:04
  2023, when Ukraine was invaded. Basically,
• 13:08
  like instantly all of the venture capital money dried up or it became much
• 13:11
  harder to get. It went from being like, we're gonna go raise capital to like,
• 13:15
  is anybody gonna be able to raise capital? And people still have. But it
• 13:18
  has really changed the space that I exist in as a professional
• 13:22
  because it has changed completely. Changed what
• 13:26
  contracts look like, what engagements look like, the length of contracts, the Amount of
• 13:29
  contracts, what people are willing to contract for, how long people
• 13:33
  are pre revenue, how long. You know, that basically means how long people
• 13:37
  don't have money for and can't afford somebody who does what I do.
• 13:41
  It's just totally different. And I was saying to her as we were
• 13:44
  chatting, I was like, this is just. It's really hard to go in and
• 13:48
  do this every day knowing that it's so different. And
• 13:52
  it was like this before, and now it's not.
• 13:56
  And she just looked at me in my face and said, why does this matter?
• 14:00
  Like, why does it matter? Why does 2023 matter? We're not
• 14:03
  there anymore. We're now in 2026. Why beat yourself up over something
• 14:07
  that you had no control over? Like, sure, it was that way before. Things
• 14:11
  change. And so, yes, you absolutely. You can grieve that version of the
• 14:14
  life that you thought that you would have, or you can grieve the things that
• 14:18
  didn't come to fruition. Like, that's. That's valid. Grief is
• 14:22
  a real thing. And not especially in those situations, but I think in those situations,
• 14:25
  we're kind of taught that, like, you're silly for having feelings about it. And the
• 14:29
  reality is, like, you're probably honoring yourself better by letting yourself have
• 14:33
  the feelings about it. But just because it didn't happen then doesn't mean it can't
• 14:36
  happen now. It doesn't mean you can't find new opportunities or new things that you
• 14:40
  can engage in now. Also, like, who knows what the outcome
• 14:43
  would have been if you had done those things. If you believe that life
• 14:47
  is a string of events that all lead to one another and that
• 14:51
  everything's a little bit random and also somehow connected.
• 14:57
  You might not be living this life at all if you
• 15:00
  didn't have that life. You know, what happened in the past matters in that it
• 15:04
  gives you experiences, it gives you
• 15:07
  expertise in things, it gives you
• 15:10
  stories to tell. It gives you memories. In some cases, it gives you trauma that
• 15:14
  you get to keep all for yourself. It's like a gift
• 15:18
  from the universe. But the fact that it didn't happen then
• 15:22
  doesn't impact what is happening now. What you're in
• 15:25
  control of now, what you can do now. Those words which she said ring
• 15:29
  in my head constantly. 2023 doesn't matter. We're in
• 15:32
  2026. I always want to go back and like, well, it worked before. Let me
• 15:36
  try to do it again. And then if it doesn't work again, I feel like
• 15:38
  I've failed. And it's like, well, it worked before, so it's not a failure. Maybe
• 15:41
  other things have changed. Maybe the universe has changed. This is sort of the
• 15:45
  opposite of what you're asking, but it's something that sticks out in my head as,
• 15:48
  like, the way the universe, or if you're a faithful person, how your
• 15:52
  faith kind of drives you in that direction. But my dad passed away in 2016.
• 15:55
  I ran his practice for, like, 10 years before that. And we.
• 15:59
  For the last couple of years of his life, he did mostly consulting, mostly
• 16:03
  forensic consulting, utilization review consulting, helping other people build their
• 16:06
  practices. And we built a really, really successful practice doing that.
• 16:10
  We still had a handful of patients, but we. You know, it was getting harder
• 16:14
  for him to go to the office every day, but he still wanted to work.
• 16:16
  His brain was still working. So we built a different kind of practice. Obviously, I
• 16:20
  was sitting around grieving for my dad, but I was also grieving for, like,
• 16:23
  this practice that we built that was. That was very niche. I
• 16:27
  don't know that anybody else could have done it based on the opportunities
• 16:31
  that we had come to us, based on the people who we had interacted with,
• 16:34
  et cetera. Like, I don't know that anybody else could have done it the way
• 16:37
  we did it. And it was super successful. I was really hung up on the
• 16:40
  fact that I didn't get to do it anymore now that he was gone, because
• 16:43
  I really enjoyed what we did. I always make friends or colleagues with clients
• 16:46
  so that when they know, when they need something, they just reach out to me
• 16:49
  and I'll have it for them. And so I had fairly good
• 16:53
  relationships with the people who we worked with. We would chat, they would
• 16:57
  check in. Within probably between four and
• 17:00
  six months after he passed away, all of the programs
• 17:04
  that he worked in generating all of our revenue for the company
• 17:09
  closed or changed status in a way that we would not have been able to
• 17:12
  do them anymore. And I certainly would not have been able to, like, open a
• 17:15
  new practice with someone else who could do those things. Literally
• 17:19
  every single service line that was paying our bills through the work that he was
• 17:22
  doing changed. Some of it was insurance changes. Some
• 17:25
  of it was one of the companies just shut down their review departments.
• 17:30
  They were all gone. And so it was like the universe was saying,
• 17:34
  like, it's time to move on. This isn't an option anymore. We're moving
• 17:38
  in a new direction. You can't fight with that. Do I miss it? I still
• 17:41
  miss it. To this day. I still. It was some of the most fun I've
• 17:45
  ever had in my career. Doing that work, working with attorneys all over
• 17:48
  the country and building out cases for them and building out practices for people. It
• 17:52
  was a blast. But things end. Things don't happen the way you think they
• 17:56
  will. People die. Not only did we close down our practice because my
• 18:00
  dad died, but within four months, the way that we were running our practice anyway
• 18:03
  would not have existed. We couldn't have done it. And
• 18:07
  I could have stayed there, stuck and sad that we lost all these things, or
• 18:10
  I could have taken it as the sign that I think it was to just
• 18:13
  say, like, time to move on in a new direction. And
• 18:17
  now it's been almost 10 years, which is terrifying,
• 18:21
  horribly terrifying. And we do new things now. If there's
• 18:24
  something back there that you want, go get it. Otherwise,
• 18:28
  that doesn't matter. You've got today. Thanks for being here,
• 18:32
  guys. Have a good day. Love you, Mina.
• 18:37
  He knows I'm talking about him, so his head's, like, right underneath my microphone right
• 18:40
  now. Can you go away for a minute? Hey, stop bullying me. You're rude. Stop
• 18:43
  bullying me. Stop. You're bullying me. I don't like it. You're loving me
• 18:46
  too much. Hey, I love you a lot, but I also want you to go
• 18:49
  away, which is how you could define every relationship I've ever had with any
• 18:53
  living being. Somebody needs to come get this
• 18:56
  dog.