Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 39: “I’m Not Creative” Is a Story: Make Your Life Your Work of Art

Transcript

39: “I’m Not Creative” Is a Story: Make Your Life Your Work of Art · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:26
  Polly Mertens: hey, superstars, welcome back polly here, sam pruitt.
• 0:30
  Polly Mertens: What's up, beautiful humans well, my dear, we have an episode today.
• 0:34
  Polly Mertens: That well, this week, as we we talked in a recent episode, your birthday is in the beginning of august, mine is in the beginning of September, so we're recording this around the eve of my birthday.
• 0:46
  Polly Mertens: You know it's going to come out a little bit later and, as we talked, tell us the name of the episode, because you really coined this.
• 0:53
  Polly Mertens: You coined what we're about to talk about Life as art.
• 0:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and to me, we came to that because of you.
• 1:03
  Samantha Pruitt: That's how I perceive how you live your life.
• 1:06
  Samantha Pruitt: So when we knew we were going to do a birthday episode, I was like we have to do life as art, life as art.
• 1:14
  Samantha Pruitt: You are the creator.
• 1:16
  Polly Mertens: Yes, yeah.
• 1:17
  Polly Mertens: So you know, for many, many years.
• 1:21
  Polly Mertens: I just want to insert this and then I want to go into you have some statistics that you're going to drop and just hold on.
• 1:26
  Polly Mertens: People like you know, buckle up, cause it's going to be a little nail biting here when you drop these statistics of, like, how amazing we are, that we are human in form, if you will, or soul in form, human form.
• 1:38
  Polly Mertens: It's like so many years I would have told you I'm not an artist, like you know, like I can't draw, I can't paint, I don't play a musical instrument, like there's so much inside of me that was like nope, nope, nope, not creative, not creative, not creative.
• 1:51
  Polly Mertens: And the more that I look around and I tune into what creating is, I'm like, okay, maybe I am Okay, maybe you know, and what I love is when you have people in their life, like I have you in my life, to speak positive words of influence over me.
• 2:09
  Polly Mertens: Like your life is art, Like that was such a.
• 2:15
  Polly Mertens: I was like what you know.
• 2:16
  Polly Mertens: I was just bearing witness to what was real, right, and I think we're saying we all have this or we can tap into this, right, and I think we're saying we all have this or we can tap into this.
• 2:25
  Polly Mertens: One of the things before we hit record was, like I want to open up the definition of people's understanding of creation and creativity, and art is not your traditional artist that people might think of as a painter, a songwriter, a musician, a sculptor, something like that.
• 2:42
  Polly Mertens: Right, like wide open.
• 2:44
  Polly Mertens: So let's tell them, though, before we go into the definition of creativity and creating.
• 2:49
  Polly Mertens: It's like how did we get here?
• 2:51
  Polly Mertens: How amazing is it that we have a life?
• 2:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, we have a life right.
• 2:57
  Samantha Pruitt: It's pretty mind boggling, and when I think of life as art, I think about how you use your time, your moments, your days, your years to create an expression upon the world, the planet, the people you meet.
• 3:16
  Samantha Pruitt: That's what I think of life as art.
• 3:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Some people do it 24-7.
• 3:21
  Samantha Pruitt: I believe it's just who you are.
• 3:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't know how not to do that.
• 3:24
  Samantha Pruitt: You're an incredibly creative person and it's fun to watch.
• 3:28
  Samantha Pruitt: You do all kinds of crazy things and I'm like what the hell is she doing now?
• 3:31
  Samantha Pruitt: We were just talking earlier about what you did just yesterday alone.
• 3:34
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, oh, I bought this thing, I created it, I did whatever.
• 3:37
  Samantha Pruitt: I love that and it actually is incredibly inspiring to see people like you in the world, who actually are artistic creatives in the obvious way.
• 3:48
  Samantha Pruitt: But what we're saying today life as art is that every human was created and is a creator.
• 3:59
  Polly Mertens: Mic drop right there.
• 4:00
  Polly Mertens: Boom Creators.
• 4:04
  Polly Mertens: We don't often, you know, say so.
• 4:07
  Polly Mertens: Say something about that, because I just want to like rant on where we get conditioned out of remembering that we are creators.
• 4:14
  Polly Mertens: Right, whether you label yourself a traditional artist, yeah, we can all create.
• 4:19
  Polly Mertens: We can all call ourselves creators.
• 4:21
  Polly Mertens: We don't.
• 4:22
  Polly Mertens: You know this.
• 4:22
  Polly Mertens: I'm hoping we're going to start some new conversation here with people, cause this, definitely, as you started opening me up to this idea, I was like, yeah, yeah.
• 4:31
  Samantha Pruitt: And some people think of themselves as a co-creator.
• 4:33
  Samantha Pruitt: If they are a religious person or you know, however, they might relate to how they came here and became, and so let's talk about that, because this listen, my beautiful humans, if you listen to what I'm about to say next and are not completely inspired and blown away to take back your creative life, oh, it's just amazing to me.
• 5:03
  Samantha Pruitt: So how do I exist?
• 5:06
  Samantha Pruitt: How does Polly exist?
• 5:07
  Samantha Pruitt: How do each one of us, the listener, how do they even exist?
• 5:10
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, what are the odds of you being alive?
• 5:14
  Samantha Pruitt: One in 400 quadrillion?
• 5:18
  Samantha Pruitt: One in 400 quadrillion.
• 5:20
  Samantha Pruitt: I didn't even know what the hell a quadrillion.
• 5:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, one in 400 quadrillion.
• 5:24
  Samantha Pruitt: I didn't even know what the hell a quadrillion was.
• 5:27
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I had to look it up I was like, or something absolutely bizarre.
• 5:36
  Samantha Pruitt: So one in 400 quad quadrillion that you are alive.
• 5:40
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, the universe had Okay, I'm not even going to get into how the universe exists the universe had to exist.
• 5:49
  Samantha Pruitt: This planet we happen to live on earth had to be inhabitable.
• 5:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, that's miraculous.
• 5:57
  Samantha Pruitt: I won't get into the details of that, but you know, you can study this stuff.
• 6:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Hundreds of millions of years of that, yeah, only 100 billion humans have ever existed.
• 6:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, that's really not a lot.
• 6:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Your ancestors had to have survived.
• 6:18
  Samantha Pruitt: What If you think back into the history of your family, your ancestry, and to say I love those shows, by the way, where they track people's ancestry and they tell themate, in order for you to even have the opportunity mind blowing your mom and dad had to find each other.
• 6:54
  Samantha Pruitt: That's kind of random, but it probably was pretty random, right.
• 6:58
  Samantha Pruitt: They then combined their DNA and this is how this went.
• 7:02
  Samantha Pruitt: They then combined their DNA and this is how this went.
• 7:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Females who are going to give birth moms have two million eggs.
• 7:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So a woman has two is born with two million eggs okay.
• 7:18
  Samantha Pruitt: A father is born with trillions of sperm okay.
• 7:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Is born with trillions of sperm Okay.
• 7:24
  Samantha Pruitt: One egg is released by the mother per cycle Okay.
• 7:30
  Samantha Pruitt: So she's got a couple of million.
• 7:31
  Samantha Pruitt: She released one.
• 7:32
  Samantha Pruitt: That's like 12 a year.
• 7:34
  Samantha Pruitt: You got 12 opportunities a year.
• 7:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, exactly when we say cycle 15 million that's the minimum, by the way.
• 7:42
  Samantha Pruitt: 15 million that's the minimum, by the way.
• 7:44
  Samantha Pruitt: 15 million sperm are released per encounter.
• 7:48
  Samantha Pruitt: So mom drops an egg.
• 7:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Dad brings 15 million minimum sperms to the party.
• 7:57
  Polly Mertens: Okay, they don't all make it to the party.
• 7:58
  Samantha Pruitt: That's like they think they're making it to the party, but they don't make it to the party.
• 8:03
  Samantha Pruitt: 200 on the average make it to the egg.
• 8:07
  Samantha Pruitt: So the one egg, 200 make it but one, and it takes about 30 minutes for the fastest one and 24 hours for the slowest person.
• 8:16
  Samantha Pruitt: These, out of these 200 sperms that actually make it to the egg, one makes it in and you are created and and what are the chances of them missing each other?
• 8:28
  Polly Mertens: I mean, that's like hours and days of those things like, because the egg doesn't just sit in the channel for 30 days.
• 8:35
  Polly Mertens: It's like you know, what is it like?
• 8:36
  Samantha Pruitt: two or three days maybe but what if it was a different egg or a different sperm?
• 8:41
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, so my whole point of all this is you were created.
• 8:48
  Samantha Pruitt: You are a creative act.
• 8:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Life is a creative act.
• 8:55
  Samantha Pruitt: For each of us to not think that we are creative or that our life should not be an expression of a creative act makes no sense.
• 9:03
  Samantha Pruitt: That our life should not be an expression of a creative act makes no sense.
• 9:08
  Samantha Pruitt: It's innately who we are, at our very core, at our very essence.
• 9:10
  Samantha Pruitt: So life as art.
• 9:12
  Polly Mertens: And I think you know, one of the things I want a presence to is I think the asleepness or the reawakening that I had from the sleepness was, um, a, I didn't feel like I grew up with creative parents.
• 9:24
  Polly Mertens: You know, like, like we were talking beforehand is like, oh, you know what are the chances that somebody you know takes up a sport or an art, or you know cause, I do remember, uh, being a kid and raising my hand and saying I'd like to learn how to play the flute.
• 9:38
  Polly Mertens: You know, uh, you know like to learn how to play the flute.
• 9:39
  Polly Mertens: Or you know doing drawing and you know, like I need to learn how to play the flute.
• 9:41
  Polly Mertens: Or you know doing drawing and you know different things.
• 9:44
  Polly Mertens: But I wasn't in a household where it was like art was brought into the house or lots of rich music was played, or you know conversations about those things.
• 9:54
  Polly Mertens: You know, like it wasn't fed, if you will, or nurtured and I think a lot of us, unless we grow up in that household and, by golly, if you did, what a rich environment that was for the imagination.
• 10:05
  Polly Mertens: You know, like, right you know this is we're talking.
• 10:09
  Polly Mertens: I think the one thing that was a little weaving of my life thread is I grew up in New Orleans.
• 10:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Ah, okay imagine Mardi Gras oh yeah, imagine that.
• 10:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Just the amount of creators walking around the streets, exactly.
• 10:23
  Polly Mertens: Exactly the creativity in.
• 10:25
  Polly Mertens: Well, and one thing is you know New Orleans is a hub for artists, you know.
• 10:29
  Polly Mertens: So if you go to the off of Bourbon Street and stuff like that, that whole French quarter is art galleries left and right.
• 10:36
  Polly Mertens: You know it's like a Sedona or Santa Fe or you know whatever.
• 10:40
  Polly Mertens: There's art galleries.
• 10:41
  Polly Mertens: And then the expression in Mardi Gras is creative, it's costuming, right, you know it's, it's let's dress up as something let's express.
• 10:49
  Polly Mertens: You know face painting and things like that.
• 10:51
  Polly Mertens: So now that I say that that only comes around like once a year, you know, but you're so drawn to these things, you seek them out.
• 10:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So when you travel, you go to places where artists hang out.
• 11:01
  Samantha Pruitt: You do a lot of creative expression through costume, through dance, through music, all kinds of that.
• 11:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Is that?
• 11:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Do you feel like that is just part of your DNA?
• 11:11
  Polly Mertens: I think that is.
• 11:12
  Polly Mertens: I don't think so.
• 11:14
  Polly Mertens: I would say that more so the conditioning around the family.
• 11:19
  Polly Mertens: You know my dad was an engineer Right, you know so.
• 11:22
  Polly Mertens: So civil engineer, very mechanically oriented, did well in math.
• 11:25
  Polly Mertens: My mom was, you know more, on the other side.
• 11:28
  Polly Mertens: You know she worked in human resources.
• 11:29
  Polly Mertens: Writing was her thing.
• 11:30
  Polly Mertens: So I think, coming in this you need to.
• 11:34
  Polly Mertens: You know the conditioning I got was you need to get good grades, you need to get a good job and get out there right, Make money yeah exactly.
• 11:42
  Polly Mertens: And so the flamboyance, the expression, you know I didn't see my parents living a lot of that.
• 11:51
  Polly Mertens: You know they didn't have a lot.
• 11:52
  Polly Mertens: I mean, if anything, it was through their work.
• 11:54
  Polly Mertens: You know my mom got some expression, if you will.
• 11:56
  Polly Mertens: So all I'm saying is I think my creativity went to sleep.
• 12:03
  Polly Mertens: I think, you know, it was like get a job, make money, and then, as I took care, more care of myself and I started just awakening to what is self-expression Right, you know, I think a lot of this, after my overcoming the eating disorder and stepping back into the enjoyment of self-expression and all the forms that self-expression can take, I mean, we're self-expressing right now.
• 12:26
  Polly Mertens: Oh, word art, hell, yeah, yeah, totally so.
• 12:32
  Polly Mertens: Like just being reawakened to self-expression as a term, as a concept, as a oh.
• 12:38
  Polly Mertens: I have an expression and I respect hugely, like social justice and self-expression in all humans, all forms.
• 12:46
  Polly Mertens: And then I think it just set me on a little journey to start to see all the forms that it could come in.
• 12:52
  Polly Mertens: And then you start to get in your little channels like, oh, this is, I love playing in this.
• 12:56
  Polly Mertens: Or I let you know like I'm hugely lit up by color, color, color, color, sound some, but mostly color, right, and I don't know if that's the costuming as a child or whatnot, but like the metals in your in if you're listening to this you can't see it, but in Samantha's office she has all of her metals and it's just a rainbow of colors, right, and that just lights me up.
• 13:18
  Polly Mertens: It's like it's so fun, right.
• 13:21
  Polly Mertens: So how about you, my dear?
• 13:22
  Polly Mertens: How is your life as art?
• 13:24
  Polly Mertens: How are you experiencing it?
• 13:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and I definitely didn't grow up with art being part of life either.
• 13:32
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I tried to play the violin in sixth grade.
• 13:35
  Samantha Pruitt: That was quite a moment.
• 13:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I think I lasted a couple months and I have no idea why.
• 13:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Probably one of my friends was doing it.
• 13:41
  Samantha Pruitt: It looked cool.
• 13:42
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know.
• 13:43
  Samantha Pruitt: I wanted to carry something to school in a box like everybody else did.
• 13:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Like who knows, yeah, we do so many things.
• 13:48
  Samantha Pruitt: There was always music playing in my house, you know.
• 13:53
  Samantha Pruitt: We did have music a lot and I, to this day, like music lights me up.
• 13:58
  Samantha Pruitt: I like to sing, I like to listen to music.
• 14:00
  Samantha Pruitt: It definitely influences expression of emotions and thoughts and ideas and things like that.
• 14:07
  Samantha Pruitt: But I don't play music.
• 14:10
  Samantha Pruitt: But I love to look at art.
• 14:13
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, whether it's whatever someone else has created, I'm fascinated by that and by the creator themselves.
• 14:20
  Samantha Pruitt: But for me, my expression of life as art really revolves around human connection and relationship, expression, connectivity to other humans, building connection and expressing myself in that way.
• 14:38
  Samantha Pruitt: When I think about life as art, I think about like leaving an imprint on someone, on many peoples on the world, on the planet, on the space that I inhabit.
• 14:51
  Samantha Pruitt: I think of art in that way and that's why I also feel that everybody is an artist, because we're all doing it and we can all choose what that imprint is going to look like, what it's going to feel like, what it's going to be, and I think there's so much incredible power in that.
• 15:07
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's how I think of it for myself.
• 15:09
  Polly Mertens: You know, I love that it was reminding me of.
• 15:13
  Polly Mertens: Maybe I'll touch upon this.
• 15:14
  Polly Mertens: And then I want to go to the definition of creator, because I want us to all feel a groundedness and you know creator creativity, you know the act of creating, if you will, so, as you were saying, the impact that you have on people, and I often say I want to grow up to be a big rock so that I can leave a big ripple in my pond, the people that I touch and whatnot, and the RV that I have, as you know, is super colorful, right.
• 15:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Speaking of art driving down the freeway, how many feet is the size of this RV?
• 15:48
  Samantha Pruitt: 32?
• 15:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Foot 32 foot RV, a piece of art, driving down the freeway 60 miles an hour.
• 15:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And there's Polly behind the wheel.
• 15:57
  Polly Mertens: Okay, funny tangential story.
• 15:59
  Polly Mertens: Maybe we'll tell this one.
• 16:00
  Polly Mertens: I was going to say first I'll tell the story of the the the evolution of the RV, cause I didn't buy her that way, right?
• 16:09
  Polly Mertens: So when I bought her um first year, I owned her.
• 16:12
  Polly Mertens: I just had to get used to what the fuck is an RV 32 feet.
• 16:17
  Polly Mertens: How do you, how do you do this?
• 16:19
  Polly Mertens: What, like I, impulsively, I followed the impulse that I saw in someone else and the lifestyle that they had of living in an RV and stuff.
• 16:27
  Polly Mertens: And this was before RV life and all that's our van life.
• 16:30
  Polly Mertens: But this gal was just like inspired me.
• 16:33
  Polly Mertens: I was like I'm getting one of those, right?
• 16:35
  Polly Mertens: Liberation Bought one and she was 25 years old, you know, had been well-maintained, but she was not a beauty, right?
• 16:45
  Polly Mertens: You know a picture.
• 16:46
  Polly Mertens: You know she's not one of these like flash.
• 16:48
  Polly Mertens: You know you bought a beautiful RV.
• 16:50
  Polly Mertens: I mean you had a beautiful Mercedes Sprinter van.
• 16:52
  Polly Mertens: It was a jewel.
• 16:54
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, she was sexy.
• 16:56
  Polly Mertens: Right, mine was like you know, and the more time I spent in her, the more joy I got about where she took me and the experiences that I went on and the places that I saw you fell in love with her.
• 17:12
  Polly Mertens: Well, absolutely, that's what it was.
• 17:15
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know how it's like we're so influenced by our environment.
• 17:19
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so, being inside of her, being with her, you know, I went out in her.
• 17:25
  Polly Mertens: I think it was like in the first or second year 90 days, I did a Western US tour to like 10 national parks and this big old tour solo, and it was just like fun, fun, fun, beautiful, beautiful, just all this amazing stuff.
• 17:37
  Polly Mertens: And I came back and I was going to go out on another tour that next summer and I went and I just looked at her and I went she just doesn't look as beautiful as I feel about her.
• 17:49
  Polly Mertens: And so that was like the start of the formulating and the dreaming and I was like I just want to paint her so she looks as amazing on the outside as I feel about her on the inside right.
• 17:59
  Polly Mertens: And then so that was like the start of it I was like what do I do and how do I get it paint?
• 18:03
  Polly Mertens: Can I wrap it?
• 18:04
  Polly Mertens: And it was like tens of thousands of dollars to wrap a big, large.
• 18:07
  Polly Mertens: I was like, okay, we gotta like settle down here.
• 18:11
  Polly Mertens: And then I got an inspiration of the art and really what I recognized for myself as I was driving down the road, feeling this life expression of myself.
• 18:24
  Polly Mertens: You know I had.
• 18:24
  Polly Mertens: I had I had a divorce, sold my house, kind of cut my losses, paid my ex-husband off right, quit my job, get in this RV and I've got this new life, this new expression of what I'm going to be right, or you know what?
• 18:38
  Polly Mertens: What is life about?
• 18:39
  Polly Mertens: And I was like I want more people to feel like they can do this too, like I wanted the RV going down the road an interruption.
• 18:53
  Samantha Pruitt: I want her to interrupt.
• 18:55
  Samantha Pruitt: You can't miss her.
• 19:00
  Polly Mertens: If she comes into your line of sight, you're like, but bam, okay, and then you read what she says and you go the front of her says follow your bliss.
• 19:03
  Polly Mertens: Who can argue with that?
• 19:04
  Polly Mertens: Right?
• 19:05
  Polly Mertens: The back says wander less.
• 19:08
  Polly Mertens: Right, like, just reminding people.
• 19:10
  Polly Mertens: And I'm actually in the process this month, one of the things I'm going to paint on the side of her, on the door, because on one side she has no writing.
• 19:16
  Polly Mertens: On the other side she has some writing, adventures calling and I must go right.
• 19:20
  Polly Mertens: But the one side, with the tree of life, has no writing and I'm going to write live a life you love, right?
• 19:28
  Polly Mertens: So that's the next quote that's going to go on here.
• 19:29
  Polly Mertens: But let me tell you about this thing that happened yesterday, just because this is a funny story.
• 19:31
  Polly Mertens: So, speaking of the thing that I did yesterday, so I'm on Facebook marketplace kind of looking for some I had been considering.
• 19:40
  Polly Mertens: Oh well, maybe I'll find a piece of furniture to to paint.
• 19:43
  Polly Mertens: You know, maybe that could be the way that I paint, because just like, like getting little canvases not very inspiring to me, I'm like it's needed to exist differently in the world.
• 19:51
  Polly Mertens: So I was like oh, maybe furniture.
• 19:52
  Polly Mertens: And so I got this little alert there was a dresser for free and I was like oh, so I run over there in my car and I'm like you know, you know the free, free alert.
• 20:01
  Polly Mertens: It's like there until gone.
• 20:03
  Polly Mertens: I was like, pop over there, I get over there.
• 20:05
  Polly Mertens: And the stressor I was like, oh, I'll just throw it in my trunk or whatever.
• 20:08
  Polly Mertens: I have a Honda.
• 20:10
  Polly Mertens: It didn't fit, of course.
• 20:13
  Polly Mertens: I was like, well, I'll take the drawers and I'll put it in the car.
• 20:16
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, okay, I need another vehicle.
• 20:18
  Polly Mertens: And I sat and I was like I don't have it.
• 20:21
  Polly Mertens: Oh wait, I do have another vehicle.
• 20:24
  Samantha Pruitt: You took your RV to get the dresser, so I can't imagine what the hell.
• 20:30
  Polly Mertens: These people were thinking so.
• 20:31
  Polly Mertens: And here's the other story.
• 20:32
  Polly Mertens: They live on the end of a dead end, right?
• 20:34
  Polly Mertens: Which is that's like a no-no, for well, there can be a no-no depending on the size.
• 20:37
  Polly Mertens: So I looked down and I'd already been down there once, because I went down in my car and I was like, okay, I can't really go down the four.
• 20:45
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh, okay, so I did this thing.
• 20:46
  Polly Mertens: So I started going backwards down the road to this, to you know, and when I went there and got the, I texted the woman.
• 20:52
  Polly Mertens: I said, oh, I picked up the, the drawers, I'm going to come back for the dresser.
• 20:54
  Polly Mertens: I just need a bigger vehicle, low and bold.
• 20:57
  Polly Mertens: So I'm backing yeah, not quite, you know, it's not a big garbage truck or something, but so I'm going cruising down the back of this street and I'm like looking for the house.
• 21:08
  Polly Mertens: I'm like where's that house?
• 21:09
  Polly Mertens: Where's the house?
• 21:10
  Polly Mertens: It was quiet street.
• 21:11
  Polly Mertens: It's a dead end.
• 21:11
  Polly Mertens: This wasn't, this was safe people I don't want you to think like you know and I'm just going back.
• 21:15
  Polly Mertens: Going back, and I and I look and the garage door had been opened, I don't know whatever, and there was two women sitting in there and I was like, oh, this will be funny, maybe they'll, you know, because everybody has a different reaction to the colorful bust Some people love it, some people smirk at it, whatever.
• 21:29
  Polly Mertens: So I jump out and I'm going to get the dresser and these girls just mother, daughter, you know, daughter was maybe 22 or something, you know and they're like what is this beautiful thing?
• 21:42
  Polly Mertens: And it's like, oh my God, they were just like, know, coke bottle eyes just as big as can be, like what?
• 21:51
  Polly Mertens: The?
• 21:51
  Polly Mertens: Oh my gosh?
• 21:51
  Polly Mertens: and we talked about it and so they helped me load it up into and they're just like, bye, you know, just made their day you know anyway, so that was just a little detour of how the bluff bus gets to make an impact in the world, like that's my expression what you're reminding me of is how, every moment, we have an opportunity to create and express ourselves.
• 22:18
  Samantha Pruitt: So you do some things like you buy an rv and then you proceed to paint the entire thing all these different colors and there's art all over it and whatever you know.
• 22:27
  Samantha Pruitt: You buy furniture and you paint it.
• 22:29
  Samantha Pruitt: You plant a garden from zero weed garden into thriving.
• 22:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Now you have vegetables and you're growing fruit and you're feeding yourself Like.
• 22:36
  Samantha Pruitt: These are all incredibly creative acts.
• 22:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Creation is happening in the act, and I think you're going to read the definition of creation.
• 22:48
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, let me share with you.
• 22:49
  Polly Mertens: So this is just Google, whatever it says, the definition of creator, which you and.
• 22:54
  Polly Mertens: I and everyone is a creator.
• 22:56
  Polly Mertens: A person or thing that brings something into existence.
• 23:02
  Polly Mertens: Read that again.
• 23:03
  Polly Mertens: A person or thing that brings something into existence.
• 23:08
  Polly Mertens: Read that again.
• 23:09
  Polly Mertens: A person or thing that brings something into existence, that's so good, brings it into existence.
• 23:12
  Polly Mertens: Like you know, a lot of people that I listen to would say you know the chair, that you're sitting on the room, that you're in the building, that you're in whatever.
• 23:22
  Polly Mertens: That was once a thought and I'm like, I think it was more than a thought.
• 23:26
  Polly Mertens: I think it had to be a thought to become, you know, but I think there was something even before that Right, and I think that's that inner life force, that energy that we all are Like, like you said, there's a sperm in an egg and now you're a human.
• 23:41
  Polly Mertens: I'm sorry, what the hell.
• 23:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and the odds of that one in 400 quadrillion.
• 23:51
  Polly Mertens: But yet here you are, yeah, yeah.
• 23:52
  Polly Mertens: So don't take it for granted, people, we are creators and I think one of the things that's helped me the older I get, the more wise I get, the more I tune in and allow that definition.
• 24:02
  Polly Mertens: And you, you know, blessing on me.
• 24:03
  Polly Mertens: Your life is art and everyone listening to this.
• 24:05
  Polly Mertens: Your life is art too.
• 24:06
  Polly Mertens: Right, you are a creator.
• 24:08
  Polly Mertens: Just listening to that definition, we are all bringing something into existence, and I love what you said earlier is are you bringing things into existence that are aligned with your values?
• 24:19
  Polly Mertens: Are you paying attention to what you're creating?
• 24:22
  Polly Mertens: Are you, I would say, creating deliberately?
• 24:25
  Polly Mertens: Are you creating by default, right?
• 24:27
  Polly Mertens: So a lot of my years of life were this story or this social conversation that we often hear grow up, get a good job, you know to have a family, etc.
• 24:38
  Polly Mertens: And sometimes you and I work with women and we have gone through phases in our own life where the end of a phase called, you know, a marriage or a child moving out, or a job or a career that you no longer want to be a part of, right?
• 24:53
  Polly Mertens: We get into these pivot periods and those are beautiful opportunities for somebody often to ask themselves wait a minute.
• 24:59
  Polly Mertens: What am I creating?
• 25:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 25:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly, I mean, I can think of.
• 25:05
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm 55, I can't even, uh, never mind.
• 25:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Hundreds, probably thousands of times I've gotten into situations where I've gone.
• 25:14
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't want to be here anymore.
• 25:16
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't like this.
• 25:18
  Samantha Pruitt: How did I create this mess or this dynamic or this relationship or this whatever?
• 25:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Fill in the blanks.
• 25:25
  Samantha Pruitt: You know where you live and all the different things that are called life and living, and sometimes you wake up and they're just not no longer working for you.
• 25:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe they made sense at one time and they don't make sense anymore.
• 25:39
  Samantha Pruitt: You can, at any time, start to create again.
• 25:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Start to create again.
• 25:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe you think well, I've built this whole life, you're having a birthday this week and you've built an amazing life for yourself.
• 25:55
  Samantha Pruitt: But what's really important is what is the life you're building next?
• 26:01
  Samantha Pruitt: What does tomorrow look like?
• 26:03
  Samantha Pruitt: What is next for you?
• 26:05
  Samantha Pruitt: You right, what is the creative process that you will continue to go through as the creator of your space, your time, your energy, your physical body, the relationships that you decide to?
• 26:18
  Samantha Pruitt: You know manifest like all of that is you being the creator of those things, not being a passive agent asleep at the wheel.
• 26:28
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and I think something that helped me a long time ago and I just want to remind everyone who's listening to this is you know, we can get into a job and it looks like we live out of our inbox, right?
• 26:43
  Polly Mertens: I remember my job being run that way.
• 26:45
  Polly Mertens: It was like, oh, what's on the inbox?
• 26:47
  Polly Mertens: Okay, that's what I'm doing today, Very little deliberate, like, oh, I want to go from here to there.
• 26:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Reactionary.
• 26:52
  Polly Mertens: Very reactionary and life as well, especially in the child rearing years for a lot of women.
• 26:58
  Polly Mertens: Or you know, some sort of climbing some ladder or pursuit of something.
• 27:04
  Polly Mertens: You know, if you're not deliberate, I mean you have the beauty of you get inspired.
• 27:09
  Polly Mertens: You find things in life that inspire.
• 27:11
  Polly Mertens: You're like I'm doing another Ironman, like 13 years ago was your last Ironwoman and you're like I'm going to do an Ironman and you get on this trajectory, like you're very clear.
• 27:19
  Polly Mertens: And one thing that often jumps out at me, because when I learned about these things was in the context of back in the day we used to call it time management.
• 27:28
  Polly Mertens: You know, when people in the 80s, 90s, whatever 2000s, were doing time management classes and Stephen Covey, you know oh yeah, day timers and stuff like that.
• 27:38
  Polly Mertens: Well, I'm just laughing.
• 27:40
  Polly Mertens: Flashbacks, yes, right, the little book you know the daytime or whatnot.
• 27:44
  Polly Mertens: But one of the things I got from my study with Tony Robbins was he calls it rapid planning method, which is like it looks like a day timer, like it looks very much like oh, it's like you know, it's got calendars and lists and things like that.
• 27:56
  Polly Mertens: But he took the next level and this is where I started doing this years ago and I think this is how my life now looks and I almost like it's like I'm a fish in water.
• 28:10
  Polly Mertens: I almost don't even realize that my life is the way that I've created it, because I've started doing this so many years ago.
• 28:13
  Polly Mertens: Which is, you take a grand vision for your life.
• 28:14
  Polly Mertens: You sit down with yourself and you define, sometimes from contrast, like screw this life or screw this job, or screw my body, or you know, like I'm not happy with something.
• 28:27
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, what do I want instead?
• 28:29
  Polly Mertens: And you begin to pour into through your imagination, through your suffering, through your heart, what it is you want, right, and then from that you can begin to plan a life, you can begin to design a life.
• 28:41
  Polly Mertens: You can create time, space ideas, like right now, one of the things that I have.
• 28:46
  Polly Mertens: This isn't a time management kind of thing, but I have a list on the back of my day timer.
• 28:51
  Polly Mertens: You know.
• 28:51
  Polly Mertens: I have a list of a hundred things that I've never tried before, you know, like write a poem or go on a go see a new national park or something like that.
• 29:00
  Polly Mertens: It's it's the way that I express in the world.
• 29:03
  Polly Mertens: The way I create is through inspiration, through finding what feels good for me, right, and I think for you.
• 29:11
  Polly Mertens: It's.
• 29:12
  Polly Mertens: What do we want our life to feel like?
• 29:14
  Polly Mertens: Is our core message right.
• 29:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 29:17
  Samantha Pruitt: To me it's like I said, leaving a mark or leaving a stamp based on my unique values, purpose and passion.
• 29:27
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's only.
• 29:30
  Samantha Pruitt: I have those.
• 29:31
  Samantha Pruitt: That's me, and I make those decisions and I decide what those things are.
• 29:35
  Samantha Pruitt: And everybody listening to this is exactly the same those lucky damn humans that were born right.
• 29:43
  Samantha Pruitt: So if you can take that and then go out and express it, to me that's the art part, it's that creative taking it, creating it and then expressing it out, and it can be pretty much anything in any way, shape or form.
• 30:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I do do a lot of physical activities and races and challenge physical challenges and I absolutely feel like that is me being a creative artist of my life, utilizing my body in this way, usually utilizing my time and energy and resources in that way, and then what I do is I'm creating an experience and then I create the experience.
• 30:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Nobody creates it for me.
• 30:30
  Samantha Pruitt: So even if it's me going to a race, like I'm going to do this Ironman race, I'm going to create every second of that experience based on my thoughts, my ideas, my interpretation, my expression, my interpretation, my expression, etc.
• 30:48
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, when we go backpacking and camping and we're out in wilderness, I mean, I feel so creative.
• 30:55
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, you are dropped into nature, the ultimate creator, literally the epiphany of creators, and I go out in nature all the time, just like you do, and it's it fuels that creative part of us.
• 31:09
  Samantha Pruitt: By the way, it is definitely pouring fuel on that.
• 31:12
  Samantha Pruitt: But then we go into those places and we think even differently yet again about how we are here, why we are here, what are all of those things that we want to be doing, and it fuels and elevates that creative aspect of our own experience.
• 31:29
  Samantha Pruitt: It's to me it's kind of mind boggling.
• 31:32
  Polly Mertens: I mean this is really unique to humans.
• 31:34
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and I think one of the and I don't know how this works because I don't know the science well enough but I think you know I've just done two trips and I've done three trips in the last three weeks.
• 31:43
  Polly Mertens: Each one had a let's call it trail walk or trail hike component to it.
• 31:48
  Polly Mertens: One was visiting the giant redwoods on the California coast, which was amazing.
• 31:53
  Polly Mertens: Two of them, sorry, two of those weekends had some jaw-dropping, you know redwoods that are some of the biggest trees in the world.
• 31:58
  Polly Mertens: And then just this past weekend, finding a grove of giant sequoias in California Sierras, which just the scale, like I was just moved to tears, you know, like I was wasn't even a minute on the trail and 30 seconds of seeing this monstrous beast and I was just like wow, you know.
• 32:21
  Polly Mertens: And then when I did the math, those things you know, when they get to a certain size, like like this one, they're 500 to a thousand years I was like, okay, so that was like.
• 32:27
  Polly Mertens: I was like was that 1800, 1700?
• 32:30
  Polly Mertens: I'm like no, that has like no two, that has a no, it was a thousand twenty four.
• 32:35
  Polly Mertens: Wow, I was like that's like roman empire, shit, dude, that's when that tree was born.
• 32:41
  Polly Mertens: That tree started growing and, like the roman empire and whatever, you know, I'm like, oh my God.
• 32:48
  Polly Mertens: And then here I am, meandering through my life, waves of places, I've been all around the world or whatever.
• 32:54
  Polly Mertens: And then, like I told you, there was just this happenstance and I was like, oh, I was at this certain campground and then I looked at this little sign and it said, oh, there's a grove of sequoias six and a half miles away.
• 33:04
  Polly Mertens: I was like, if something is six and a half miles away and it's a grove of sequoias, I have to go see it.
• 33:12
  Polly Mertens: You know, exactly, drove my little butt over there and it was just.
• 33:14
  Polly Mertens: I mean, I cried for like 10 minutes.
• 33:18
  Polly Mertens: I think the neurons in our body are transformed if you're paying attention anyway.
• 33:24
  Polly Mertens: I mean, like there were some people that got out of a I was just about to leave and there was a boatload of people.
• 33:29
  Polly Mertens: This was labor day, weekend, you know, people are partying, having a good time, visiting with family.
• 33:33
  Polly Mertens: You know, power to them, right, they're all having their experience.
• 33:36
  Polly Mertens: They're like collective carload of people get out talking really loudly in a giant grove of sequoias.
• 33:42
  Polly Mertens: I'm sorry, this is like church for me, sacred space, like how could you not be in awe and just you just don't want to talk, but whatever you know, so they're whatever.
• 33:54
  Polly Mertens: But if you're not aware of what you can pick up, you're just doing more of your life, right, you're just more.
• 34:00
  Polly Mertens: You know the energy and the vibrations of the people around you, whereas I was, like solo, walked into this you know grove of energy and just felt it Let it.
• 34:12
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, fill me, you absolutely feel it, because there is a real energy there.
• 34:18
  Samantha Pruitt: We're all energy.
• 34:19
  Samantha Pruitt: So hello, check into that, if you're just learning this for the first time.
• 34:25
  Samantha Pruitt: You're just learning this little factoid for the first time.
• 34:27
  Samantha Pruitt: But, additionally, when you bear witness to, like, you're fully present and you are bearing witness to your surroundings Okay, we'll just use nature as one example you are transformed into that nature.
• 34:47
  Samantha Pruitt: You're part of that nature.
• 34:49
  Samantha Pruitt: You can't just go to the edge of the Grand Canyon, get out of a bus, walk over there, take a look around and then turn around and get back on the bus.
• 35:00
  Samantha Pruitt: You need to be down in the canyon, in the nature, put the phone down.
• 35:05
  Samantha Pruitt: You've got to go.
• 35:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly it is.
• 35:07
  Samantha Pruitt: These are transformational lifetime experiences that people, human beings, must, must, must experience.
• 35:16
  Samantha Pruitt: It will absolutely change their entire body, chemistry, brain, body.
• 35:23
  Samantha Pruitt: 100 of you will be changed by this experience.
• 35:25
  Samantha Pruitt: But additionally, let's say it's not nature, let's say it's going to be present with other humans.
• 35:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe you're going to a play, maybe you're going to a concert, maybe you're going somewhere where there is a creative expression and you're bearing witness to.
• 35:41
  Samantha Pruitt: You love to go to dance things.
• 35:43
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, you're a dancing girl.
• 35:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Somebody's cooking, you know so people are.
• 35:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Somebody is cooking in the kitchen.
• 35:49
  Samantha Pruitt: You are witnessing and part of the creative act, this individual or groups of individual.
• 35:59
  Samantha Pruitt: I just watched this.
• 36:00
  Samantha Pruitt: This is so random, but I watched this Netflix docuseries last night on mariachis.
• 36:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, I did not know this was such a thing in Texas and in high school.
• 36:14
  Samantha Pruitt: The high schools have teams of mariachi players and they compete.
• 36:21
  Samantha Pruitt: This is a big thing, by the way, and I was like it was so beautiful.
• 36:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I cried watching these teenagers teenagers it's horrible being a teenager.
• 36:31
  Samantha Pruitt: It was so amazing for them to find this creative outlet, like-minded humans to make connection to, to create music.
• 36:41
  Samantha Pruitt: I was blown away, okay, and then to watch them play and do this creative act.
• 36:53
  Samantha Pruitt: So we have so many opportunities.
• 36:54
  Samantha Pruitt: So I remember when my son he was big in drama and he started doing drama when he was five, five years old.
• 37:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, first of all, he was just born a creative person and since he opened his mouth and could express himself, was always an incredibly creative person in the world Expressing, expressing His energy was just, yeah, it was just coming and coming and coming.
• 37:18
  Samantha Pruitt: So, through music singing for him, singing and then through drama, and he did dance also he found these creative outlets and to witness this okay, I birthed him, so it was different.
• 37:32
  Samantha Pruitt: But even if I wasn't the one who birthed him, but me being the one who birthed this human to bear witness to his creative journey as he evolved from five all the way through out of high school, expressing himself in these ways was incredible.
• 37:50
  Samantha Pruitt: The power that he gave himself through the creative act to become more and more of who he was along the journey.
• 38:01
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I don't everybody deserves and needs this.
• 38:06
  Samantha Pruitt: We, we have it inside of us.
• 38:08
  Samantha Pruitt: We just need opportunities to express it.
• 38:11
  Samantha Pruitt: And I really think that's what we're here to talk about today and to tell people is maybe your creative energy went to sleep.
• 38:19
  Samantha Pruitt: So I shared with you today.
• 38:21
  Samantha Pruitt: I was at the gym doing my workout, because it's 110 here and there was this older female in the studio.
• 38:27
  Samantha Pruitt: You know I was running, lifting weights and then going and doing core.
• 38:30
  Samantha Pruitt: I was doing the circuit running around the gym.
• 38:32
  Samantha Pruitt: People just think I'm insane, but I'm training for an Ironman.
• 38:34
  Samantha Pruitt: It is borderline insanity.
• 38:35
  Samantha Pruitt: So, anyway, when I would come back into the little fitness room.
• 38:38
  Samantha Pruitt: You know there are some females and they're doing their little stuff more private and all that and here's this older female you know, late sixties, early seventies or something, with her leg way the hell up on the ballerina bar in full ballerina mode with these gorgeous legs, doing these moves.
• 38:57
  Samantha Pruitt: There's no way in hell I could get my leg up there, by the way, and also to watch what she was doing, and I was just in awe of her.
• 39:04
  Samantha Pruitt: How beautiful was this woman owning her creative act of being a dancer or expressing her body in this way.
• 39:16
  Samantha Pruitt: It was a little bit of magic.
• 39:19
  Samantha Pruitt: In my everyday experience it's all around us, polly.
• 39:23
  Polly Mertens: It's everywhere.
• 39:24
  Polly Mertens: You know, and the thing that I started to get present to as you're telling the story about your son, and then also this you know the interaction in the gym and you said the word bear witness, but I I'm starting to think that there's more to it than just witnessing it.
• 39:38
  Polly Mertens: You're collaboratively creating it.
• 39:40
  Polly Mertens: Like you know that that phrase, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there, does it make a sound right.
• 39:46
  Polly Mertens: So the answer is bear poop in the woods well, okay, that's different, but but this one.
• 39:51
  Polly Mertens: Because their senses right.
• 39:53
  Polly Mertens: So, as a human being, we oh, I see through our five senses, right.
• 39:56
  Polly Mertens: So a tree falling in the forest doesn't make a sound unless it's picked up by the inner eardrum of a human right, like it has.
• 40:06
  Polly Mertens: Like that's how sound is detected, if you will.
• 40:09
  Polly Mertens: Right, makes a vibration, whatever, right.
• 40:12
  Polly Mertens: So, like my RV going down the road is like a vibration out there.
• 40:18
  Polly Mertens: Somebody sees that and they pick up on it.
• 40:21
  Polly Mertens: Right, they're receiving, they're co-creating, they're inspired.
• 40:25
  Polly Mertens: You know, like you and I, we like to ding the bells of people and wake them up, and what I'm hoping we're getting out of this if you're listening to this at this point is A, you're a creator.
• 40:35
  Polly Mertens: What you create is unlimited.
• 40:39
  Polly Mertens: Do not be limited by thinking it has to appear in a box that's called.
• 40:43
  Polly Mertens: Like you need a paintbrush in your hand or a musical instrument, absolutely.
• 40:48
  Samantha Pruitt: No, special talent is required.
• 40:50
  Polly Mertens: No, you were born with it and guess what You're already creating.
• 40:54
  Polly Mertens: You are already creating.
• 40:59
  Polly Mertens: Telling that story about the day timer is when people tell me I don't have time for something.
• 41:06
  Polly Mertens: That is one of the I love to raise my hand and go guess what time is an illusion.
• 41:14
  Polly Mertens: It's priority management.
• 41:15
  Polly Mertens: There is no such thing as time management.
• 41:17
  Polly Mertens: It's priority management, right, and one of the things you and I love to remind ourselves and people, if they work with us and just hear us, is you have a certain amount of period on this life.
• 41:28
  Polly Mertens: We don't know when.
• 41:29
  Polly Mertens: That is right.
• 41:30
  Polly Mertens: Some of us, the finish line is getting closer than the start line.
• 41:32
  Polly Mertens: Who knows right?
• 41:33
  Polly Mertens: People get diagnoses left and right, but if you don't take that pen, that, that musical instrument, that that creator's gift, whatever that is for you, into your hands and start utilizing it, prioritizing your expression, whatever that is, and if you're not sure what it is like me, like this garden that I have right now, this is like what the hell happened, you know, and I mean there's been staying with us and my husband's a big gardening freak and you're like that looks fun, I'm going to get into that.
• 42:04
  Samantha Pruitt: You went home and you're like boom garden.
• 42:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, yeah, and there's a big gardening freak and you're like that looks fun, I'm going to get into that.
• 42:07
  Polly Mertens: You went home and you're like boom garden.
• 42:08
  Polly Mertens: Well, yeah, and there's a whole little trail that that happened and I had no idea the joy and the creation that gardening is like it hadn't occurred to me, you know, in the past it's like, oh, I'll grow some vegetables or you know, some flowers or whatever, but I'm getting such richness as I layer the lens that I see my garden through.
• 42:25
  Polly Mertens: This is art.
• 42:27
  Polly Mertens: This is a creative expression and you know, we talked about bearing witness or creatively collaborating with the people that see it right, like you sit in an audience and you take in the artist's expression, right, we're as moved and joyful sometimes as the artist who's creating it.
• 42:44
  Polly Mertens: I think the Olympics was art.
• 42:48
  Polly Mertens: It.
• 42:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, absolutely yeah, I do art.
• 42:52
  Polly Mertens: I watched the documentary of Federer retiring I was like that man is totally an art.
• 42:57
  Polly Mertens: You know, like these athletes One thousand percent Right.
• 43:01
  Samantha Pruitt: So life as art, they're, they're the prime examples of life as art.
• 43:07
  Polly Mertens: So.
• 43:07
  Polly Mertens: So here's a story that this shifted for me.
• 43:10
  Polly Mertens: So my house is situated I have a small little grassy little front yard and then a little backyard in the back and I, when I moved into the house, it had two little planter boxes like raised beds.
• 43:20
  Polly Mertens: We're like, well, that looks obvious.
• 43:22
  Polly Mertens: I'll, I'll, I'll do some gardening in that.
• 43:23
  Polly Mertens: And I've been in this house for about five years, various forms of like.
• 43:27
  Polly Mertens: I'll grow a little of this, I'll grow a little of that.
• 43:29
  Polly Mertens: A couple of years started realizing I just got inundated with bugs, right, so I gave up.
• 43:34
  Polly Mertens: This year I got newly inspired after visiting you.
• 43:37
  Polly Mertens: You know Dave's like what kinds of stuff.
• 43:40
  Polly Mertens: He's the planter.
• 43:41
  Samantha Pruitt: What kinds of things you shouldn't be growing are apparently growing in our backyard.
• 43:45
  Polly Mertens: And then a friend of mine was.
• 43:46
  Polly Mertens: The story was she was like, oh, I can't grow a garden because all the ants or sorry, the gophers eat everything and stuff like that, or the deer.
• 43:53
  Polly Mertens: And I was like I'll grow you a garden.
• 43:55
  Polly Mertens: And so I moved the garden because the bugs were so bad in my backyard.
• 43:58
  Polly Mertens: I said, well, my front yard gets actually the better sun, I'll put it out in the front yard.
• 44:03
  Polly Mertens: Having no intention for this to be what it turned into.
• 44:06
  Polly Mertens: My front yard it's a big melon patch, Like part of it is a melon patch.
• 44:11
  Polly Mertens: I got broccoli.
• 44:12
  Polly Mertens: I mean it's a little chaos because I don't love neat rows of garden.
• 44:15
  Polly Mertens: Kind of like my artistic expression is it whips out, it doesn't.
• 44:19
  Polly Mertens: It's not like a civil engineer designs it.
• 44:23
  Polly Mertens: What's beautiful about this is I can sit in my dining room table and I can look out the window and I have two kitty cats that hang out on the front porch and they are the neighborhood green entertainment committee yep people love to
• 44:38
  Polly Mertens: stop by and visit my kitty cats.
• 44:39
  Polly Mertens: Dogs love to chase them, whatever.
• 44:41
  Polly Mertens: But people stop by my house and they like, look over my little.
• 44:45
  Polly Mertens: I have a little fence that's maybe like two feet off the ground just to protect the cats.
• 44:49
  Polly Mertens: And then my garden is changing every day.
• 44:52
  Polly Mertens: Like all of a sudden, a new cantaloupe will appear.
• 44:54
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, what the hell?
• 44:54
  Polly Mertens: Look at that, you know, just this giant cantaloupe.
• 44:56
  Polly Mertens: And then the watermelon's growing by, like, like I had no idea how fast watermelon grew.
• 45:00
  Polly Mertens: It's like it's just like blowing up a balloon just every day.
• 45:04
  Polly Mertens: So yesterday I had this cute and they had come by about 10 days ago.
• 45:08
  Polly Mertens: There was this gentleman I found out his name yesterday, liam and his little daughter, about three years old.
• 45:13
  Polly Mertens: Her name is Poppy.
• 45:14
  Polly Mertens: So I had, you know, invited them in and it had been, maybe you know, 10 days since they had last come.
• 45:19
  Polly Mertens: Maybe they had come before, you know, in between, I don't know.
• 45:22
  Polly Mertens: But what was really sweet is, you know, inviting them in start to get to know them.
• 45:27
  Polly Mertens: Like, these are my neighbors, you know, and I just have these little interactions with people, like people walking their dog, and especially with little kids, like the little kids like, look over the side of the fence and they're just like looking in the garden and if I'm out there I welcome them in and I say all that.
• 45:47
  Polly Mertens: It's just, it's created this really social experience for me.
• 45:48
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like I'm creating art.
• 45:49
  Polly Mertens: People are taking it in and enjoying it and weaving Right.
• 45:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Right and you're inspiring them right.
• 45:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Their exchange I was saying bearing witness to, was kind of the example I was using, but they're coming into it with you, they're a co-creator of the experience and they're going to walk away inspired and, who knows, plant a garden, or the daughter might get curious about broccoli at dinner or whatever the hell happens.
• 46:17
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what I'm saying, but it's all good.
• 46:19
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:20
  Polly Mertens: And that's where us being our most expressed self, like gardening, is an expression.
• 46:26
  Polly Mertens: For me, some of it is my travels.
• 46:28
  Polly Mertens: For us, it's this podcast, right?
• 46:30
  Polly Mertens: Whatever you your, your races and you sharing that on social people are like oh my God, samantha is amazing, I can't do that, but I can do this Right.
• 46:38
  Polly Mertens: Or or they see something and they get inspired to take a step, take an action, right.
• 46:42
  Polly Mertens: So there is no, is no time, right?
• 46:45
  Polly Mertens: It's prioritizing, it's recognizing.
• 46:47
  Polly Mertens: I want that, I want to get up to that, I want to be a person who does that.
• 46:52
  Polly Mertens: That's important to me, whether you like or don't like whatever is in your life right now, or you're just inspired to try something new, or to try something at all for the first time, or many times, but like exactly, get up to it.
• 47:05
  Polly Mertens: So I think our expression is here to bring other people into their expression, so I hope that, um you know, stories that we've told have helped people understand that a they're a creator they were, and the odds of them being created are One in 400 quadrillion.
• 47:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes yes, they are a creator.
• 47:30
  Polly Mertens: So give yourself permission back to be a creator in whatever spectrum of color expression that looks like.
• 47:38
  Polly Mertens: And I think sometimes we have to stop saying we're not Even not.
• 47:44
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like I'm not an artist, like I would tell you that if you had asked me 10 years ago I'm not an artist, I'm not an artist, but I was only, you know, anchoring myself into not being that and I allow now more.
• 47:54
  Polly Mertens: Maybe that garden is a little bit of art or maybe that you know right.
• 48:00
  Polly Mertens: So allowing ourself more and more of that and seeing yourself in this spectrum, this beautiful spectrum of art, and how you express and the impact that you're leaving on people and the message that you want.
• 48:09
  Polly Mertens: So exactly, so your mark.
• 48:12
  Polly Mertens: So what is our like?
• 48:13
  Polly Mertens: Closing one thing, as we always love to help people, you know, like if they only listen to one thing in this whole episode, what do we want them to remember?
• 48:21
  Polly Mertens: What do we want to ask them?
• 48:26
  Samantha Pruitt: episode.
• 48:27
  Samantha Pruitt: What do we want them to remember?
• 48:27
  Samantha Pruitt: What do we want to ask them?
• 48:29
  Samantha Pruitt: I really want people to close this episode with us knowing that they are a creator, they are a creative, they are we all are and they should go on about living life as art and leave their mark as art and leave their mark.
• 48:50
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, that is just.
• 48:51
  Samantha Pruitt: We're all here.
• 48:51
  Samantha Pruitt: It's so bizarre that we are here now, now that I've actually looked at all that closely.
• 48:53
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, obviously it took science classes, but like it just is beyond comprehension to me.
• 48:58
  Samantha Pruitt: And we're here for a reason.
• 49:00
  Samantha Pruitt: We're each here, such as snow, just, as such a unique grain of sand snowflake like just, and we're here to to leave a mark on the planet, on each other.
• 49:10
  Samantha Pruitt: It's a time stamp make it beautiful.
• 49:14
  Polly Mertens: make it beautiful and it can be very small or it can be great.
• 49:20
  Polly Mertens: Not everyone was born to be a Picasso or a you know Gandhi, or you know like become the next president.
• 49:28
  Polly Mertens: It's like, whatever your, we could use a few of those.
• 49:32
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, speaking of good candidates, love that, get up to good things and get out in the world, make an impact, right, yeah.
• 49:41
  Polly Mertens: And your mark can be your family.
• 49:44
  Polly Mertens: It can be your partner, your relationship, your business, your community, your state, your country.
• 49:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Any form of expression.
• 49:53
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, you want Look good after it, all right.
• 49:56
  Polly Mertens: Well, whatever that is, I hope you're left with something and you take away your creator and do something with it.
• 50:02
  Polly Mertens: Be intentional about it.
• 50:03
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, all right, my dear, take away your creator and do something with it.
• 50:07
  Polly Mertens: Be intentional about it.
• 50:07
  Polly Mertens: So, yeah, all right, my dear.
• 50:08
  Polly Mertens: What do we want to remind our beautiful humans of our closing thoughts for every episode?
• 50:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I want to add that you're a bloody miracle.
• 50:14
  Samantha Pruitt: You know that.
• 50:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So am I.
• 50:23
  Polly Mertens: And how your life feels is more important than how it looks, and every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.