Podcast appearances and mentions of cindy guentert baldo

In this episode, Katelyn and Emm talk about shifting planner lineups and goal planning. If you're interested in hearing a more in depth explanation of what's going on with the merger of Cultivate What Matters with Daily Grace Co., Cindy Guentert-Baldo from Llama Letters has a really good video here. SOCIALS: Katelyn: @katelynplans on IG, YT, TikTok, & Etsy Emm: @planwithemm on IG and YT, emmusedesigns on Etsy. SMALL BIZ SHOUTOUT: PlanDreamLive -- Find Joana on Instagram here and on Etsy here Do you own a small business or just want to promote one of your faves? Let us know and we'll spotlight them on the show! Any burning questions? Email us at professionallyplanned@gmail.com. Your question could be featured on the air!

SHOWNOTES I know a bunch of you are readers - today I'm giving you a bunch of books that I'm either reading or want to read!     • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.     • NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d     • Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints       • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com     • STUFF I MENTIONED (these are affiliate links - I receive compensation if you purchase through them) The Exorcist - https://amzn.to/3hem73D The Leftovers - https://amzn.to/3JQleeb Courtesan - https://amzn.to/33KquR8 Catherine The Great - https://amzn.to/3Hfo4Ye Peter The Great - https://amzn.to/3JM2goV Burnout - https://amzn.to/3s9SBlW The Fifth Season - https://amzn.to/3vbd1NC We Are Not Like Them - https://amzn.to/3h9IY0h Hello Habits - https://amzn.to/3v8qohn       Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION We're talking books today, my friends we're talking books, I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about life on and off of the internet. And today my husband is walking around upstairs too. You might be picking up a bunch of that noise and there's nothing I can do about it, but we're going to drown it out with talk of books.   One of my favorite things to talk about, I might do this more often if you guys like it, but I'm going to give you three books in three different categories. Those categories are. Three books. I read recently that I enjoyed and want to tell you about three books. I'm in the middle of that. I am enjoying and am hoping that I will continue to enjoy, but books I'm starting and then three books that I want to read that on my TBR list and I'm going to be attacking next.   So hopefully somewhere in these nine books, you'll find something that's interesting to you. So let's start first at the books that I've already read recently. They're all fiction. One of them is historical fiction. Uh, these were all first time reads. I believe I may have read one of them years and years ago, but I don't remember.   So those three books we'll start with the one. I think I may have read a long time ago, but I don't think I have. And that is the Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. You I'm sure you've heard of the movie. Uh, the book was written before the. The book is excellent. The movie is an excellent adaptation of the book.   If you enjoyed enjoy, it might not be the right word. If you, if the movie was something you were into, you may be into the book. The movie is a very straightforward adaptation of the book. I would suggest that there's like a little bit more color or flavor to the book than there is in the movie, as there is with any book adaptation.   But if you're not. If you weren't into the movie or whatever, or if the movie was too much for you while the book is not super graphic, it is intense. So there is that, but I enjoyed it. I actually have the SQL Legion, which I know he wrote after the movie came out. And is what the third movie was based on what that one scary fucking scene that's like fucking terrifying if you know, you know, I haven't read that one yet though, but I have it.   I'm pretty sure I've read that one before though. I think I remember getting it from a garage sale years and years when I was a kid, but I don't remember it very well. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. So yes, the first book is the Exorcist. The second book on my list that I read recently and really enjoyed was the leftovers by Tom Parata.   This is the book that the TV show was based on. I have not seen the show. I've only watched the pilot episode, but have not really made time to sit and watch through the show. But I had heard the show was interesting and I had heard that the book was good. I am a fan of dystopian fiction. I am. Of end times fiction, uh, all those sorts of things.   I thought it could be really interesting. And it was, it was a very interesting book, kind of a quiet book, kind of, uh, um, contemplate of almost, but a good book, not high adventure at all. If you're looking for like an adventurous dystopian style book, this is not the book for you, but if you're, if you enjoyed what was one that I recommended in my newsletter recently, uh, never let me go the book about the donor.   If you enjoyed that book, you may really love the leftovers. It has that same kind of mundane in a world, surrounded by what the fuck kind of situation. Really liked it. And then the third book I read recently is another one I've talked about on live streams and that is court isn't by Diane Hagar. It's a historical fiction book that is about Deanna , who was the main mistress of Henri.   The second, I believe it was on rave. Second of France. He was married to Catherine and they had a whole bunch of kids, but the end of TA was his teres on teacher. On teacher. I believe that's how you, I don't speak French, like the main, the official mistress. Right. And she was his alleged true love and was like one of the main political power movers in the kingdom where I see his wife was kind of pushed to the side, Catherine Domenici, wands Ryan's up taking a lot more power into her own when her husband dies in her kids become a king.   That's not what the book is about. The book is mainly about, uh, the relationship between DeAnn, Henri and Catherine. And it was a very, very fun read. I would suggest that if you like reading historical fiction, especially historical fiction, along the lines of say Philip Gregory, where there is some liberties taken with the history, there's recognizable history, but there's also plenty of liberties, especially when it comes to adding in sexy times, you will probably enjoy this.   So those are the three that I have read recently that I enjoyed the three books. I am either reading or just cracking into, I have not gotten very far in any of these yet, but I am starting them. So I just thought I would let you know, two of them are books that apparently are the first two in a series of four about the Romanoffs.   So, uh, Hear me out here. So I started watching, I watched the great, right. I watched both seasons of it, which I am fully aware that it is historical fiction in the sense that it has, like, it's a little Iqua of historical fiction, right? Like if fruit sneezes in the general direction of a fruit flavored sparkling water, then the great history sneezed in the general direction of the show.   And they even, they mention it like in the title of the show, it's like an occasionally true story or whatever. But like most historical fiction, at least for me, what winds up happening is I, I see enjoyable historical fiction. And when I'm done with it, I immediately want to find out what really happened.   So when I was done watching the great, I decided to look up some biographies to find one on Catherine. The great, and I discovered that this, uh, reporter named Robert J uh, Robert K. Massey had written a book about Catherine, the great, and he had written a book about Peter, the great who shows up sort of in.   In the gray. And I was like, Ooh. So I got both of them. And I started reading them. The reason I went with his books is because I had already read two of his books, which were both about the Romanoffs. They were about Nicholas and Alexander. One's called Nicholas and Alexandra. And the other one is called the Romanovs the final chapter or something like that.   It's about like the last year of their lives. And I had read both of those and I had enjoyed them both as books, but also his writing style. It's very important to me. If I'm going to read a biography that I enjoy the writers, the authors writing style. Otherwise, I can't get through it. I need biographies to read at least somewhat like a novel.   They could be very much full of facts, but they need the writing style needs to be an enjoyable one for me to read. And I liked his books. And so I was fine picking up those two, but then I realized when I pick them up that they're technically those two books and the two I've already read are a series of four book series about the most famous Romanov.   So Catherine, the great Peter, the great and Nicholas and Alexandra and their kids. So I was like, oh cool. I'm just reading it backwards order. Anyway. So both of these books, one of them is called Catherine, the great portrait of a woman and the other is called Peter the great his life and the world. Um, and I will mention these are all linked.   All the books I'm talking about are linked in the show notes, other Amazon affiliate links. So using those links will support this podcast. I appreciate that, but if you don't want to, uh, if you don't want to use those links, you can just Google the books and find them. Anyway, just started both of them.   I'm barely into them, but I did really like the other books. If you're into biographies and you're into historical biographies, these may be books for you to give you some context as to other biographies that I've read and really enjoyed the writing style. In case you have read biographies and like to know kind of where I gravitate.   I really like Antonia Frazier's writing her book on Marie Antoinette is probably one of my favorite biography books of all time. And then, uh, Jeff Gwynne has written some fantastic biographies. The ones I've read of his are, um, his book on Charles Manson, his book on Bonnie and Clyde, which is just fucking outstanding.   And his book on Jones. Uh, great, you know, super cheerful reading materials, Cindy. Anyway, that just gives you an idea of some of the biography sort of writing styles that I tend to gravitate towards. So those are books I'm working on. I will report back on how good they are, but in general, They are something that I'm excited about.   The final book I'm working on was actually sent to me by the authors, but it was already on my radar. It was going to be a book club book last year before I had to basically shut the book club down until I could figure out what I wanted to do with it, especially with the move. And that is called burnout.   The secret to unlocking the stress cycle by Amelia and Emily. Nagorski their sisters. Uh, they S Emilia center. And I am just about to get into it, but one of the reasons I've been looking forward to reading it is because I have been burned out so badly and I'm, I'm sitting on the edge of burnout right now.   And what I would like to do is get to a point where I can recognize the signs earlier so that I can avoid it a lot more efficient. Not just for the sake of being productive, but for the sake of my own mental health. So I'm starting that book. I have heard wonderful things about it. It has been recommended to me so many times by so many people who I think see the signs of burnout in me.   I actually have it. They sent it to me and I'd actually bought it last year too. I found it on my Kindle. So I've got two versions of it and I'm going to be digging into it. It might be the book I take on the airplane with me to go wild. Um, you guys are. Few weeks later, but I'm recording early. So there is that, but I had, I have just cracked into it.   And again, there's there all three books or books I just started, but I am very excited to dig into all of them. And I think what's going to happen is the burnout book will be a travel book. And the two books about the greats will be my bedside books to read before bed. Anyway, moving forward from those three books that are on my TBR list, I actually own two of them and need to buy the other.   But I will be starting those ones right away. Two of them are fiction. One of them is non-fiction and the August we'll start with a nonfiction book, which is one that caught my eye while I was at of all fucking places, an Amazon store. I was there at the mall there for something else, and I saw it and I got sucked into it and I bought it.   And that is called hello habits, a minimalist guide to a better life by . Now I have no interest in being a minimalist. I love my stuff. I love my stuff and I'm happy with my stuff, but I am interested in habits and how we build them. And I have read atomic habits. It's a great book. But I'm curious to read other books on building habits.   And this one seems like an interesting one and I'll be the real, the cover just was fancy looking. And I was like, okay. So I have that sitting on my kitchen counter. That's the non-fiction book that I am excited to start reading, but I have a lot of other nonfiction books I bought because I was excited to start reading them.   And then I didn't. So we'll see how that goes. So I'll check back in with you. The two books that are fiction are both books. I am very excited about. The first one is the one I do not own yet. And that is the fifth season by NK. Jemisin many of you in my audience, my patrons, whoever who are fed to see readers have recommended NK Jemisin to me, like hardcore recommended her to me.   She's a woman of color. She's black, I believe. And she has written. Uh, apparently some outstanding fantasy. I love fantasy. One of my bucket list items this year is to read a new fantasy series new to me because I'm a reader. And so often I will gravitate towards rereading something like the wheel of time that I have already read a million times before, but I wanted to start with her.   It was either her brand in Sanderson. And I wanted to start with her mainly because Brandon Sanderson much like Robert Jordan is, is a girthy writer. He was. Like doorstop books. And I would like something a little less, uh, massive to start with. And her, her BR I think it's the broken earth trilogy, which is what the fifth season is the first book.   It's a trilogy, it's three books. So it's an easily digestible series for someone like me who tends to blow through books. I have high hopes for. Um, I don't have a lot of information about it yet, but I'm excited I'm gonna order it. And I will probably start that one as soon. Maybe that will be my reward to myself for when I finished one of the biographies of the great one of the greats, or I might just pick it up because currently those three books that I've got on deck, none of them are fiction.   So I might just pick that one up the other, or I might start with the other fiction book on my list, which is we are not like them by Christine pride and Jo Piazza. Now I found out about this book, which is a story about. A white woman and a black woman who are friends and then there's like a police shooting and how they grapple with it.   It's supposed to be a really good fiction standalone book. I heard about it because Jo Piazza, the white co-author, the other author, Katherine Christine pride is black. Uh, Joe Piazza is the host of the under the influence podcast, which I've talked about on the show before. Um, and so I had heard about it that way.   So. It just sounds like a good book. And I might start with that one because since it's not a series, it's a one-off. I can usually blow through one of those very quickly, either way. All three of those books are books I'm super interested in and what I might wind up doing. Well may wind up happening is I may take like the Catherine the great book and work on that.   Set the Peter the great book aside and grab a fiction book and stick it in there. Because what I find is if I overdo it on biographies and nonfiction, my joy of reading plummets, it's like a fucking erection that just like go sad. When you think about, you know, something heinous. Taxes or something. I don't know.   My penis goes pew. When I read too much nonfiction and, and biographies now non-fiction tends to be the, the most, not the biographies aren't non-fiction but I like self-help versus biography basically is what I'm talking about here. And even that I was going to spend some time with this podcast talking about genres and trying to avoid, and self-help was going to be like the number one.   But then I realized I bought that habits book and that self-help. So maybe I didn't actually think about that too clearly, but what I have found is for me, if all I try to do is read books that I'm reading for like a quote productive reason, or a learning reason, my joy of reading disappears. I do like reading books like that, but they need to be.   Balanced with fiction books that I'm just reading because I love reading. There has to be some level of that when it comes to reading. And so that's, that's maybe the lesson I'm leaving you with today's to recognize what kind of a reader you are. Are you somebody who can read more than one book at once?   I tend to be somebody who gets made fun of by my family because I leave books open on the couch to the page I'm on. And they'll be like four different books that I'm going with at any given time, because that's just the way that I read. But it's very important to me that I read books that are. There's a mixture of them.   Now, if I go all fiction, like I did in January reading those books, we already talked about that's different. I'm fine reading all fiction all the time. But I do like to bring in nonfiction books and biographies and other books like that because I do enjoy reading those, but they are not the books I gravitate towards when I'm really just reading for pleasure and reading for relaxation.   My first. Instinct is to go to fiction. And while I can relax reading these other things, I do like to, to spread it out. I will also add I'm not somebody who takes notes in the books that I read. I do, if they're non-fiction and I feel like I need to, but a lot of the times I just read it. That's just my style.   That's just the way I tend to do things. I have wanted to be like a book journaler. I have that I'm always fully booked planner. I looked at recently where I'm like, yeah, fuck. Yeah, I'm going to fill this out. Probably not though. So I just wanted to bring that up though. Give you an idea of what I've been reading, what I'm planning to read and how I'm sort of approaching my reading right now.   I'm not trying to like schedule time to read. That's never worked for me. I just need to have my book. Available by Kindle needs to be charged. My books need to be out where I can find them so I can pick them up when I feel the moment, especially if I'm trying to aim towards grabbing my phone and opening up candy crush.   Instead, again, listen to the boredom podcast. If you'd like to, or the one other one that came out recently about hobbies, talking a lot about that shit lately. And it's true. Like if I have the books available, I will write. So that's what I'm going to work on. I'd love to hear from you anything you've enjoyed reading recently, something that you have on your TBR list.   Let me know, tag me in your stories on Instagram at @llamaletters so that I can see what you're reading. I'm curious. Maybe I'll add some books to my list. I love books. If you love books, let me know. This is not a book podcast, but there will be books talked about here, just like. In the meantime, don't forget to thank my patrons.   They sponsored these episodes. They're awesome. www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo. And you will find out more. And until next time, my friends, I hope you find a good book to read. I hope you enjoy it and I'll see you next time. Peace out.

What animal am I? Not whether I have hooves or a tail, but what is my Chronotype? I continue my series on personality tests this week to figure out when it's best for me to do... stuff.     • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.     • NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d     • Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints       • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com     • STUFF I MENTIONED Psychology Today Article - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sleep-newzzz/202104/the-four-chronotypes-which-one-are-you Quiz - https://thepowerofwhenquiz.com/ Daily Schedules - https://brightside.me/inspiration-psychology/heres-the-perfect-daily-schedule-that-corresponds-to-your-chronotype-506010/     Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION So I, I took a look at my goals for the year and how I'm doing on them and so far. And one thing that is standing out to me is that I have been struggling to make time for the hobbies that I would like to pursue. And I want to talk about that. Hi everybody. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo welcome back to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about life, both on and off of the internet.   And today, whew. I'm feeling, I'm feeling a little personally called out. I called myself out here in that I am, I want to reconnect with hobbies, but I am not making time for it. When I said about life, both on and off of the internet, part of what I wanted to do was reconnect with hobbies that I didn't feel the need to share with on the internet.   And I just can't seem to break that habit. So why is that? Why am I having trouble making time for hobbies? Why, why do I want them in the first place? Why are hobbies important? Let's let's start there. Let's start there. And I would also add that if you haven't listened to episode 1 52, which came out two weeks ago on boredom to listen to that one as well, because I feel like these two are intrinsically connected to each other.   I want to be bored. I want more time for hobbies. I feel like these things, if I can solve one, I might be able to solve the. Anyway, the biggest reasons hobbies are important. We know a lot of these things, right? We know that they can help us decompress and help us with our anxiety. They can stimulate creativity.   They can make time, help you make time for yourself and spend more time with others. Meet new people. Non pandemic wise when you're going like to groups of like knitting circles or whatnot. Anyway, I mean, I've been a lot of friends through my plan or hobby that's that's one way to meet new people. So there's an article I read on peace, innovation.com written by, uh, Deondra garner called working to live the importance of hobbies.   And I'm going to read from that article because I think it really nails. Quote, hobbies are a great way to decompress after a long day at work or on your day off. When life becomes too overwhelming, your hobbies can help you relax. Doing something you enjoy outside of work can be beneficial for your mental health.   Having hobbies can lower anxiety, lower your stress level and help cope with depression. Hobbies help you form a life outside of work. You are just relaxing and doing something you enjoy without any of the pressures of. Side world. You don't have to do something as structured as you would at work or school.   You don't have the added stress of attending on time to participate or working with a group or completing a task by a specific time. These aspects are what make hobbies such have such a positive outcome. When you're stressed, you can go paint, exercise, read, or do a plethora of other activities to lessen the amount of stress you have.   Hobbies can also increase your interaction with people and the value you can bring to each other. Participating in hobbies with others can sometimes make the hobby more enjoyable because you're doing something you enjoy with people who have the same love and passion for the activity that you have.   They get also impact your interaction with your family. When you find a new hobby, you can share it with your family. This gives you more time spent with your family and you're doing something you all enjoy. Another reason you should get a hobby is to gain knowledge. Hobbies, often teach you things that can have a positive impact on your life.   The knowledge you could gain from a hobby will stay with you for life. Meaning you could use this knowledge when you're 35 or when you're 85. After you figure out if you want to get a hobby, the next step is finding the right hobby for you. And quote. So the funny thing was, as I was starting to like, look into articles and shit on this.   And I was reading that and thinking about the hobby, the right hobbies for me, and then an, an video popped up in my feed from the frugal crafter, which I'll link below. And it was called, do you even like your hobby anymore? And the whole point of the video was like, you know, you might be doing something because you've always done it, but.   Is it actually bringing you joy anymore? Do you even like it anymore? D are you buying shit for the sake of buying shit rather than because it's bringing you joy. And that was something that actually caused me to think. Because lately, like I said, I've had some aspirations to reconnect with certain hobbies.   One of the things the frugal crafter brought up was saying that sometimes we want to return to a hobby because it's something we used to do, but. We may not be in a stage in our life that we like it anymore. Part of me wonders if this is sort of how I'm feeling about acrylic painting, because I've been trying to work on these paintings for my living room and I just keep putting it off now.   I don't know if that's because it's not, I'm not into it anymore. I was never super into it in the first place. Cause I never really took the time. One of the reasons I like watercoloring is I can just spritz the pallet and get going. But with acrylics it takes a lot more cleanup and I fucking hate cleanup.   So maybe that. I dunno, I'm not ready to drop it yet, but at the same time it gave me some food for thought. Another thing that I was thinking about was the hobbies. I know I enjoy. But sometimes I'm just not in the mood for them. Examples would be baking. I have not baked for the most part since I moved to Denver.   And I know for a fact that part of the reason I haven't been doing that is because I am scared as fuck about adjusting recipes for the altitude. And then there is. Reading, which is something I don't seem to have time for during the day. And then in the evening, when I normally would read, I have been so brain dead from the day that I just don't feel like reading more and I would just rather get on my phone and play candy crush.   And that's, we're going to, we're going to head into candy crush land for a second because currently candy crush is my hobby and it's not like I. It's not like I love it. It just, it gives me that short-term little dopamine kit. I can recognize that. I recognize that it's just something to do when I'm starting to feel bored back to the episode about wanting to feel more bored and bringing the candy crush out.   And then if there's no lives left, I get frustrated because I'm like, but I want to play it right. I'm thinking I might need to just delete the apps off my phone and I might, I may wind up just doing that, but it seems to be the go-to for me right now when I am bored and needing something to do. And instead of going and finding my book or doing something else, I just grabbed my phone.   Scroll, Instagram, play candy crush. It's not a great cycle for me. I'm not like if that was, if you love candy crush or some other game on your phone and that's the hobby you enjoy. Like enjoy partaking in then fucking more power to you. But I can tell when I'm doing it, that this is not something that is great for me either mentally or in any other way.   This is just, it's not my, my ideal thing, but it's the easy thing. And that's the thing that I'm just diving into right now, because I'm just so tired all the time from feeling so crappy because that's a big part of it is the exhaustion and the crappiness of how I'm feeling like I'm so tired and I'm dealing with.   Pain and misery in my body from being in kidney failure, that the thought of expending more energy on hobbies, is it just, it feels overwhelming and frankly, a little like annoying, like why would I fucking. But I recognize why I need to do that. It it's, there's so much there that would help me. My word of the year is replenish and it will help replenish my thought process.   I actually got through both January and February is one little word projects recently because I was waiting for all the shit to come in. It was shipping delays and I can't start something unless I have the right things. Cause that's just how neurotic I am. Did it was so proud of myself and so excited.   I shared it with my Patriots and then I shared it with my kids and I was like, look at this thing, blah, blah, blah, did not post it on the internet except to my patrons. So there's that, but it brought me, it brought me so much joy and it wasn't a big. A big deal. It didn't take a lot of time for me to work on it.   I worked on it and I put the time into it that I felt like putting into it and I enjoyed it and I was proud of it and it made me happy. And I realized, this is the thing these hobbies can do for me, if I can manage to make the time for them. So. I think maybe one step to making time might be the whole boredom thing, trying to make boredom a habit to then have room for hobbies, and then maybe deleting some of the things off my phone that are distracting me from it.   But the other hobby I'd kind of like to pick up, which is not in my goals, but I kind of want to go back to animal crossing. It's been over a year since I played animal crossing. And I'm worried that if I get back into. Suck my life away, the way that it did when I, when I was playing it, when the pandemic started, but to be fair, I'm in kidney failure and I was having a really hard time.   And so it made sense. I don't know if it makes sense anymore, but cat's gotten back into it and I've been watching what they're doing and I'm like, oh fuck. I kind of want to do that too. I don't know. I think I need to, re-examine the hobbies I'm trying to pick up. And decide if maybe it's enjoyment that I don't, I'm not anticipating getting, or maybe it's too hard and uncomfortable to get into.   Am I expecting too much? Am I expecting to get too much, get too much pleasure out of my hobbies right up front. Do I need to put the little work in the houseplant thing is going okay. I'm not as on top of it as I should be, but I am working on it.   I'd love to hear from you, how you make time for your hobbies. This kind of is not a very long episode, but honestly I just sort of needed to get off my chest that I am. I am. I have all the intentions in the world of making time for hobbies for my own. But I'm not following through on it. I would love your tips.   I would love your help and your experiences. Let me know, tag me at @llamaletters on Instagram and your stories. And let me know. I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, I'm going to keep working on it. I'm going to try and schedule time to be bored. I'm a delete some shit off my phone. And my next episode is going to be about some books that I've read in books.   I want to read because reading is one of the hobbies I've had throughout my life. And it's one that I have still continued to do, even if I haven't always been great at making time for, and so I want to make sure to keep it first and foremost in my mind. So let me know on Instagram, don't forget to check out my Patreon www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo.   They are the sponsors of my podcasts and they're fucking awesome until next time, make some time for yourself and your hobbies. This. And I'll talk to you later. Peace out.

It's time for another personality test podcast. And this one is fun because it also is going to tell me what time I should be doing things. Hi everybody. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about life, both on and off the internet. And this is an episode in an ongoing series. I'm doing that. Really titled anything but loosely known to me, at least as personality tests, test for a cynic when it comes to personality tests. And this week I am talking about the chronotype test. Now there's apparently a chronotype test that has been used for years. Uh, called the morning eveningness questionnaire, but it has been expanded by a doctor named Michael J. Bruce, who has expanded it into four. Chronotypes used to be three, but he expanded into four. Now this has to do with like your sleep and wake preferences. And when the best times are for you to do certain things, when your energy is highest and lowest and blah, blah, blah, he's written a book called the power of when I have it. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, I don't know yet, but the book is all about discovering what your chronotype is and then making sure that you do your best to work along the lines of your internal clock. Now, I recognize that something like this in and of itself is inherently privileged because not everybody. Choose to work at jobs or in careers that respect your internal clock. You know, I don't know what my internal clock is yet. I haven't taken the quiz yet, but I used to have to work at 4:00 AM. When I worked at a grocery store, when I was in the bakery, I'd have to go in at 3:00 AM and that was not necessarily something I use, but it got to pay the bills. I get that. I just wanted to preface it with that mainly because when I talk about being able to. Alter how I do my work or when I could do my best work, I work for myself. And so that is both a blessing and a curse, but the blessing of it is that I'll be able to adapt based on whatever information I get from this shit. Should I choose to? But the curse is that because I can adapt. It means I also sometimes adapt my way into doing nothing for a while and then I don't get paid. I just, I wanted to add the context there. Anyway, let's get. This Dr. Bruce Bruce Wayne situation here. So the tagline, one of the taglines for the novels is, or the book is to learn the best time to do everything from drinking your coffee to have sex or go for a run, according to your body's chronotype. Okay. Well, one out of three ain't bad, right? Anyway. So I'm going to read to you about the chronotypes that he talked about in an article for psychology today, uh, so that we can understand which one is which, and then I will take the test and then we will come back and talk about it. He based the types on mammals, I guess, birds, I think I could be wrong about this, but I think the idea of like, um, an evening, a night owl or a morning Lark or whatever those ideas are from the original Kronos. Framework. He has framed them around mammals because as humans we are. We got the boobies. Anyway, the first one is lions. Lions are morning hunters and people who are the lion chronotype are the early risers of the world. Lions are optimistic, naturally disciplined, including about their sleep routines, practical and goal oriented. They're generally good sleepers with a medium sleep drive. It's rare to find a lion who struggles to stick to a regular early bedtime. Lions have a natural tendency for routine and moderation in their daily habits. And this shows in their overall health picture studies show that morning types of early bedtimes have a lower risk for cardiovascular disease, less obesity, and may have lower risks for mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and others lions leap into their days full of energy the morning and early afternoon, or when lions are at their most productive. Aside from that. I, I don't, I don't anticipate that I'm Elian. He also adds that about 15 to 20% of the general adult population are lions. The second chronotype is bears. Bears are all day hunters and bear chronotypes are go with the flow types with middle of the road, sleep wake preferences of the four chronotypes bears adhere most closely to a solar schedule. Bears are most alert and productive during the middle of the day. From late morning through early afternoon, bears are easygoing and social fun-loving team players. They have a high sleep drive and tend to sleep deeply, but many bears carry a sleep debt. They don't get enough sleep to meet their needs. Bears are prone to inconsistency in their sleep routines. They often under sleep during the workweek and sleep extra on the weekend to make up for their insufficient rest inconsistent sleep habits can put the bare circadian Nicholas. Chronically out of sync, social jet lag has been linked to higher BMI and greater risk for obesity exists. Weight is a common challenge among bears who tend to carry weight, particularly around their midsection. Their vulnerability to social jet lag is one highly likely factor bears are the most common chronotype. About 50% of the adult population are bears because it is the most common chronotype bear time has. Influence over our social time. Six o'clock is the standard dinner hour because that's when bears are ready for their evening meal. Remember settling in to watch your favorite TV show at 10:00 PM. That's when bears are ready to lay low, but aren't quite prepared to fall asleep. And the majority of bear chronotypes modern society as long adopted bear time is the norm in large part. All the other chronotypes live on bear time. When it comes to daily social schedules for schoolwork and social. I will say just from all of that, I think I'm a bear. I'm just going to say right now, bear is the front runner. Uh, the third one is wolves. Wolves are nighttime hunters and the Wolf chronotype has a strong preference for evenings wolves are the people who drag themselves out of bed before 9:00 AM. And don't start really feeling tired until midnight or so. Wolves are creative, impulsive, and emotionally intense. They love to seek out new experiences and are natural brisk takers wolves have a medium sleep drive with peaks of productivity in the late morning. And again, Evening, because if their strong preference for evening hours, wolves often struggle with living. According to the schedule society demands of them. Things like work in school, get going too early and social fund ends too soon. What was, they're highly vulnerable to chronic social jet lag and insufficient sleep. And that can have consequences for their mental and physical help. Health research shows. Evening credit types are at greater risk for. Diseases wolves typically perform at their best with a run seven hours of sleep. Getting that much sleep can be tough for wolves because their biological rhythm is so at odds with society's timetable for daily life, about 20 to 15 to 20% of the population are wolves. Yeah. It's not me. And then dolphins. Dolphins of the mammalian world, our uni hem, what the fuck dude, can I even read this uni hemispheric sleepers? That means they sleep with one half of their brain at a time with the other half awake and active. That is a pitch perfect analogy. The fourth chronotype of restless light sleepers, as I've said, dolphins are wired and tired types. Chronically tired during the day. And wired with restless nervous energy at night, dolphins are light and restless sleepers with a low sleep drive who tend to wake frequently during the night, their minds are active in the evening with often racing thoughts and they feel physically keyed up. There are biological reasons for dolphins, nighttime, restlessness, and agitation. It turns out that dolphins have a circadian biology that's turned upside down. In contrast to other chronotypes dolphins, brain activity increases at night in areas of the brain that promote alertness and unlike other chronotypes dolphins, blood pressure and cortisol levels rise in the evening, which leaves them in a state of physiological arousal at bedtime. Come morning when the other chronotypes are experiencing elevations to blood pressure and cortisol that are fueling their morning, alertness, dolphin levels are playing. Personality wise, they're highly intelligent, cautious detail oriented. Perfectionism is a common dolphin trait and often anxious, as I've said, about 10% of the population are dolphins. I don't think I'm a dolphin, but I do resonate with some of that. I tend to not be able to turn my mind off at night and that will lead me to not being able to fall asleep for hours. If I can turn my mind off, I can fall asleep. But if I can't, if I get going on anything, that's the cause of a lot of my like, slow to sleep until. Anyway, I'm super interested in this now. So I'm going to take the quiz. It is@thepowerofwhenquiz.com. Everything will be linked in the show notes, and if it costs anything to get your big info at the end, I'll be sure to let you know, I'm going to take a pause here and I will be back in just a second with my results. Okay, so I'm done. And like I thought I am indeed a bear. I was actually talking to Jesse about it when he popped in here to ask me if I wanted lunch. And I was like, what do you think you are? He thinks he might be a dolphin, which actually would track with a lot of things, but moving forward. So when I, the, the quiz itself, uh, was just a series of questions. It's just, you drop your it's multiple choice type questions, and then you give them your email and they send you your results. Allegedly, I haven't actually gotten my results. There it is. They just showed up. This has been like 15 minutes since, um, since that's the case, now it does say he's going to be sending me a series of emails to tell me all about being a bear. So I'm unsubscribing because I don't want all of those emails and a. But it's just some interesting information about being a bear. I guess I'm kind of interested in reading the book. I'll be real with you. That's not always the case with these personality tests, but I am curious, but I was like, okay, wait, this is not giving me what I want. Like he's giving me all this info allegedly about being a bear. But what I really want is to know, well, if I'm a bear, what am I supposed to drink coffee and have sex and run. So I. Bear chronotype. And I came to an article on the website, bright side.me that has hell ads on it before warned, but it also has the perfect daily schedule that corresponds to your chronotypes. So we're gonna go to the bear. And it says here on there, little infographic that bears are 50 to 55% of all people. They sleep a lot, but don't get enough sleep, lack of energy after lunch and on weekends, they try to recoup the sleep that that's basically me. I will be real. That is basically me. So here we go. They, uh, Ooh, the main rule bears shouldn't sleep more than eight hours. Even during the weekends. I wonder if being chronically ill with kidney disease is changes that because I swear sometimes my body just needs sleep. It feels like regardless. Let's look at the daily schedule for bears morning from 7:00 AM to 11. Wake up and exercise from eight for eight to 10 minutes, eat a hearty breakfast and drink coffee. It'll help to not overeat in the evening. And the excess calories will give you the necessary energy for the whole day plan your day. Maximum productivity from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Do things that demand a lot of energy and concentration. First you'll complete them faster. You'll get tired as lunchtime approaches. That's why it's better to go out for a walk, bright colors, and the sun will wake your organism up and will help fight drowsiness have lunch at 12. It'll give you energy for the rest of the day. By two, you may start feeling tired again. So arrange meetings and coffee breaks to help you get through the afternoon. After work from six to 10 is the best time for a workout. It's hard to start, but only at the beginning have a light dinner after exercising, more protein, fewer carbs. And the end of the day from 10 to 11 bears can stay up late, but they always feel tired in the morning. You better turn off your gadgets at 10 and go to bed. The funny thing is looking at this schedule. A lot of that's already what I'm doing, kind of, I usually try to wake up around six 30 because I get my kids if it's seven for school and it gives me time to take a shower before they get up, or at the very least have coffee before they get up. I don't usually eat breakfast because my stomach is really upset in the mornings, but I've been thinking that it might make me feel better if I eat something once my stomach has mellowed out. The daytime schedule is very similar to what I liked in an ideal day is what I would do. Eat lunch at noon. Take a walk to like wake myself up, schedule things in the later half of the day. Like that's what I try to do anyway, but it's something to keep in mind. I actually have found myself when I do ride the Peloton. It tends to happen more frequently in the evenings, usually after dinner around eight o'clock. That's just what it seems to work the best for me the end of the day is just shoot. Right anyway. So the idea here is, is this schedule actually feels very. Reasonable to me, I should look at a different one and see if they feel a little bit less reasonable, but this bear schedule, I'm looking at it and thinking Yeah. So we'll look at the lions. The morning, people waking up at five 30 drinking coffee around 10 end of the day. Go to bed at 10. And then for the wolves, wake up, set two alarms, 20 minutes apart, postpone all your main test to one PMC that would never work for me because I feel like a lot of my creative work gets done between like 10 and 12 and then dolphins, very neurotic, restless sleep loved to spend time on the internet till late at night. Oh my God. I need to send this to Jesse. I'm pretty sure it's him. Cause it says it's better to start your day with a morning and running some exercise. I've been telling him he needs to do this for years now. Holy shit. Anyway, I think this out of all of the personality tests that I've taken has been the one that I'm most amused by partly because I have been so stressed out about sleep anyway, because you know, being a kidney failure exhausted. These schedules are actually like, kind of give, throwing me for a loop. I may just read this book. I don't know. So I would love to hear from you in the comments or in the comments. This is not a YouTube video, but on the podcast we go to the Instagram and the stories and you tag me at @llamaletters and you tell me what you think I'd love to know what your chronotype is. And do you actually like subscribe to any of this? Does it work for you? Thank you so much for listening. Thank my patrons. They're the ones who, uh, subs who sponsored these episodes. You can find out more at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo. And until next time I hope you get some sleep. I hope you take care of yourself and peace out.

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but holy crap, I would love to be BORED.     • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.     • NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d     • Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints       • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com     • STUFF I MENTIONED Benefits of Boredom - psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/202004/5-benefits-boredom How To Be Bored - https://zapier.com/blog/benefits-of-boredom/ Under the Influence Podcast -     Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hello, my name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo, and I need to be. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast, or we talk about life both on and off of the internet. If this is your first time here, I am so excited that you're here. And if this is not your first time here, thanks for coming back today. We are talking about boredom and why I need to be bored and why I somehow cannot manage to be okay with being bored.   It's a thing that I am coming to terms with. I just got off of a three-day weekend and I had some moments where I got bored and immediately turned to candy crush. I'm actually going to be talking a little, you'll be hearing a lot about candy crush over the next few episodes, but like, it was like, I couldn't just sit and be bored.   And I realized that this like constant busy-ness in my mind. Is one of the things that is contributing to my massive sense of overwhelm. It occurred to me that maybe I need to embrace boredom just a little bit. So let's talk about being bored. Why is being bored? A good thing, because it sounds like a bad thing, right?   Like when you're a kid being bored is like the worst possible thing ever, you know, like, oh my God, mom, I remember my kids being like, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And I'm like, you can fuck off. I didn't say that, but I wanted to.   One of the reasons I think being bored really can frustrate a lot of us is because when you're bored, it's like time moves slower because you're not constantly busy, constantly. Everything else shit starts to drag. And then as soon as you get wrapped up in something and suddenly it's flying by. But I realized with as quickly as like February has flown by for me, uh, maybe being bored and having that time going slow could be a good thing.   There's an article. I have a link and the articles I talk about in the show notes, this one is from psychology today. It's by a Dr. . He wrote an article called the benefit five benefits of boredom. And so I'm just going to read through them really quick. The first benefit of boredom is that boredom can improve our mental health.   So according to the article, It says that in this age of information, our brains are overloaded with information and distractions. The wealth of information means a scarcity of attention. Attention uses one's limited cognitive resources for productive activities. So taking a break can be a valuable opportunity to help our overloaded brains relax and alleviate stress.   It is beneficial to step away from social media and other stressors long enough to feel bored and quote. So right here is something that I think is a distinction between. What I'm doing and what I might maybe should be doing. I'm okay. With stepping away from social media and from other things, I can do that for a few minutes.   I don't think I do it long enough to get bored, because I think the moment I'm starting to even brush against the idea of boredom I'm right back on my phone or I'm right back in my book or I'm right back, whatever. So there's a podcast. I'm sure you've heard of it. If you haven't. It's awesome. It's called under the influence.   One of the things they're talking about in the newest season is in the fall having a day where women exit social media for a day to show the power that women hold over social media, it doesn't really talk about non-binary or other people, which is something that I've actually been curious about. And I want to message them, but the idea here is to step off for an entire day.   And I was listening to her talking about, and I'm like, that's a great idea. And then I was like, do I think it's a great idea because I want to show the power that women have over the internet and like the internet economy, or is it that the idea of just not being on social media is. Refreshing. I don't know, but this idea of stepping away from it long enough to be bored.   So not just stepping away from it, but step away to actually our board. It's not something I'm including in my March goals, but it might be something I start to think about. Come. The second benefit to being bored. According to the article, boredom can increase creativity and can provide an opportunity to turn inward and use the time for thought and reflection.   Boredom can enable creativity and problem-solving by allowing the mind to wander and daydream. People were in one study, people were made to do boring tasks like reading reports or attending tedious meetings, the boring tasks encourage their minds to wander, which led to creative ways of thinking. The study showed that with mundane activities, we discover useful ideas in the app.   External stimulation. We use our imagination and think in different ways and quote, this was kind of where the boredom came from. For me, the idea this, this particular benefit was the one that was at top of my mind when I was thinking about wanting to be board, was that one of the things I want to do this year is more hobbies and really stimulate my creativity outside of work so that it can like benefit my whole life.   And I'm just not bored enough. I don't think to really let some of those newer ideas start from. One thought process I had when looking at this article was like thinking about being in high school and being in a class that, or a college middle school, whatever, being in a class that I really wasn't into.   And I was a nerd. I was into most of my classes, but there were classes I wasn't into. And so I would start doodling and I'm a child of the nineties. So often those doodles were like the Stussi S that special S or drawing Tweety bird, or Marvin, the Martian. If you are a child with it, like if you were a teenager in the nineties, you know exactly what I'm talking about, the cover of my trapper keeper and so on and so forth.   But I was, I would do some of my most fun doodles when I was that bored. So this makes a lot of sense. The third benefit to boredom, uh, from the article, boredom motivates a search for novelty without boredom. Humans would not have the taste for adventure and novelty seeking that makes us who we are intelligent, curious, and constantly seeking out.   The next thing, novelty seeking implies dissatisfaction with the status quo and a willingness to challenge established ideas and practices. Great achievements are facilitated with dissatisfaction with the status quo. And I'll tell you right now, this is when I read this benefit. I was like, oh fuck. Yeah, because I am both an very intense creature of habit.   Like I get stressed out if my routines and my habits are funny. But I also do get frustrated when I'm doing the same old, same old for too long, in certain aspects of my life, especially creative aspects of my life. I've always been somebody who kind of bounces like a hummingbird from hobby to hobby. And I think that this idea of novelty and seeking out new and interesting experiences is something that I am really trying to lean into this year.   But it's kind of fighting against my nature. I want these things, but my nature is to stick, be a homebody stick to the things I know through teens. I know the status quo is comfortable for me. And so stepping outside of that is difficult. And I'm thinking if I can get bored enough, that might motivate me to do it in a way that just saying, I want these things.   Does that make sense? I wonder if it does, it's making sense to me, at least from the article, the fourth benefit of boredom is that boredom motivates the pursuit of new goals. Boredom is an emotional signal that we are not doing what we want to be doing. Being bored means we are currently engaged, not only.   Uninteresting or challenging situation, but also in a situation that fails to meet our expectations and desires, boredom encourages us to shift to goals and projects that are more fulfilling than the ones we're currently pursuing. And here I think is maybe the crux of why it's so hard for me to be.   Generally speaking, I am not in an uninteresting or unchallenging situation with my life. We moved to Denver that in and of itself is challenging. Right. But I, my family has some challenging health problems right now, but I'm relatively happy with the state of my life, with the things I'm doing with whatever.   I don't feel very. Dissatisfied with my life. What does she say in the breakfast club? My home life is unsatisfying or my home life is satisfying. And I recognize what a privilege that is, but maybe that's part of why I don't tend to gravitate towards boredom aside from the fact that I've always been someone who just can't manage to not be busy.   I also am someone who is relatively content with the state of my life. And so maybe that is one of the reasons why I don't have that, like, kind of wanderlusty achy feeling. And the fifth benefit of boredom, according to the article is boredom and self-control skills boredom affects the ability to focus and pay attention because the interest is lost among students boredom results in disengagement, from class and poor performance, they can feel bored when they lack the cognitive resources to focus.   The ability to focus and self-regulate is correlated with the ability to handle boredom, learning, to endure boredom at a young age. Great preparation for developing self-control skills, like regulating one's thoughts, emotions and actions. Yeah, man, like that makes sense. I have always been someone who feels like their brain is moving at a million miles per hour, often faster than I probably want it to.   And boredom has always been really stressful for me. And so trying that maybe that's why meditating has never really worked for me. Cause I get fucking bored and I'm like, no, I don't want to do this. I want to do something else. And so I'm thinking by facilitating some boredom in my life, maybe that will help me a little bit when it comes to focus issues I have in other areas, maybe I don't know.   Anyway, so I. I was doing some more research into the idea of boredom, right? Like, cause I was like, I know I want to be bored. I know that being bored is something that's almost like aspirational to me. I've joked a lot about when Jesse and I finally go on our honeymoon, even though we've been married for fucking what, like eight years now, I don't even know.   He, he knows I'm not good at remembering these things, uh, by seven had a honeymoon yet. But my goal honeymoon is to go somewhere, maybe tropical, where I can like lay by. Like in a pool, be in a pool where the water is filtered, but be in sight of the beach where there's no wifi, so I can be bored, but that's my dream honeymoon.   And. I wonder sometimes if I might hate it when I actually do it, because I'd be like, fuck, I'm so bored, you know? But this idea of being bored to me just feels right. It feels like if I can just manage to get to a point where I'm like, fuck dude, I am so bored that it might help me kind of rocket ship off into more interesting or new to me, experiences and things.   So I was like, okay, well, if I really want to be bored, and if being bored is something that I've actively pushed against my whole life, then how do I get there? You know, that's, that's easier said than done, but one of the things I came across was another article that was on Zapier, which I think is an app that lets you like connect things to get out of whatever the article is, what I'm here for by Emily Esposito.   And it's about the art of being bored, how to be more productive by doing nothing. And the specific thing I zeroed in on where the types of boredom, because if I can identify with the type of boredom I want, maybe that will help me get there. So the five types of boredom that she talks about were developed by a team of German.   Researchers led by Thomas guts. They wanted to dive deeper into the types of boredom. And so they did a bunch of research. They studied high school students and college students asked them to answer questions over the course of a couple of weeks. And. They identified five different types with unique characteristics.   These types are in, I'm going to read from the article number one in different perhaps than most neutral of the five people with indifferent boredom are calm and withdrawn from the world. They use the words, relaxation and cheerful fatigue to describe. Number two is calibrating boredom, which refers to wandering thoughts and not knowing what to do.   You want to change your environment or behavior, but aren't actively finding alternatives. This type of boredom is common when. Performing repetitive tasks. Number three is searching boredom, which is defined by a sense of unpleasant restlessness and an active search for ways to minimize that boredom using two, usually turning to activities and thoughts about hobbies, leisure interests in school.   Number four is reactant boredom, which is characterized by feelings of aggression, reacted, boredom, motivates people to leave the boring situation and avoid those responsible for it. People experiencing this type of boredom have persistent thoughts about specific, more, highly valued alternative situations.   And finally, there's apathetic. This type of boredom operates at a different level than the previous four. It's a deeper, more negative state of mind that can be linked to feelings of helplessness and depression as well as destructive behaviors. So when I'm looking at these five, I would say that when I am bored, I tend to be in the world of.   Calibrating boredom where the wandering thoughts and not knowing what to do and apathetic boredom, which is where I go when I'm in a really not great place. And that is, um, that tends to trigger some of my anxiety and depression. So I think what I want is to bring into my world more of the calibrating board.   Which is the board and the happens with repetitive tasks and the indifferent boredom where I'm bored, but I'm okay with it. Like I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm relaxed and I can just be bored and be okay with it. So that's what I think I want to really search for. They offer in this article, a couple of ideas of how to do it.   And the first one is about choosing activities, right? So there's a bunch of mundane tasks we have to do on a daily basis, whether they're work-related or house related or whatever the case may be. And the point that the article makes. And I super agree with this is that there are some tasks that. Feel mundane and repetitive, but you still have to focus.   The example they bring up in the article is building a pivot table and analyzing data. It's boring and it's tedious, but you have to focus on it. You can't like. You can't let your mind wander right now for me, a task like that would be, uh, prepping vegetables. Now I find chopping vegetables to be kind of relaxing.   However, I could also get easily bored by it if I'm just not in the right spot, but I have to pay attention to what I'm doing. I can't let my mind wander or I'll chop my finger off. You see what I'm saying? The other thing the article brings up is that there are tasks that. Are relaxing. That can be confused with boredom.   I brought up earlier that meditation makes me bored, but they say that meditation is actually meant to promote tranquility. The idea is to remove the distractions and rid your mind of stimulation. Whereas boredom is when you're trying to find the stimulation and you can't find it. I don't know. I'm still pretty bored by meditation, but the point is, is that might not be the way to find it a.   A task that they bring up. That would be a really great example of a way to bring up that like boredom of doing what is the calibrating boredom of doing repetitive tasks is like stuffing envelopes for something like, if you're doing wedding invitations or we were doing life campaign with their, my church to send out things for donations or whatever, stuffing envelopes, definitely a boredom inducing situations.   So coming up with ideas, like for that, for me coming up with like a boredom list, I'm going to maybe put that in my bullet journal in March makeup of board and list. I'm gonna write that down. I'm gonna write down a boredom list of activities that I can do that will kind of take the stimulation out to.   But give me something to keep me occupied so that my hands are working, but my brain can wander. The second thing they suggest is to banish distractions, which is the one we were already talking about with removing your smartphones. One of the people referenced in the article is Sandy Mann, who is a psychology lecturer at the university of central Lancashire.   And she said, That we're trying to swipe and scroll the boredom away. But in doing that, we're actually making ourselves more prone to boredom because every time we get our phone out, we're not allowing our mind to wander and to solve our own boredom problems. So the suggestion is, is to take your, don't take your phone out when you're standing, waiting for something like I do this all the time.   I was standing, waiting around. I bust out my phone and I play a little candy crush. The idea here is to. To not to start getting the habit, whether you have to put an app on your phone or something else of not whipping your phone out in those little Mormon moments where you could be bored. So that's something to work on.   I might turn that into a habit for April as well. I don't know. And then the other situation, the other idea they bring up, and this is one that I need to take to heart, and that is to stop overbooking yourself. You know, don't accept. Meeting. Don't always be going out strategically block off boredom time in your calendar.   You know, some people would say leave white space in your calendar, but this idea of like making sure various time for you to get bored. It says here in this article, uh, for some, uh, minutiae Zomorodi in a GQ article said that being bored is like the stuff that feels super uncomfortable. If you're not used to it, like going to the gym, it really hurts at first.   But then you start going maybe three or four times a week and it gets a little easier and maybe you get a little hot, a little exercise high in the sweat starts to feel good and it suddenly becomes part of your life. So the idea is to. Treat boredom like a muscle and train it so you don't lose it. And then you can go find your boredom, find your time, spend that time being bored and make it a habit.   Making boredom a habit. That's also a good idea. I should write that down. I'm going to make myself a little list. I'm going to make myself a little list. I want to make a boredom list and I want to do boredom habit. I better write those down. Those will not be in my March video. Cause I already filmed it.   You probably already seen it at this point. However, I will be talking about that more come April. I think, I think that is going to be a focus because like I said, in the title of this, I want to be bored. Now what about you? Do you want to be bored? Are you going to try some of these things? Are you going to seek out the boredom in your life?   I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Go to instant. Tag me at @llamaletters in your story. And tell me your ideas, the things that help stimulate your boredom. Are you trying to be bored? Do you think I am losing my shit for wanting to be bored? Let me know. I'd love to hear about it. This episode was brought to you by my patrons.   They're fucking amazing. If you want to know about Patreon, go to www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more. And in the meantime, my friends, I hope you find some time this week to get a little bored. I'm hoping I can too. I, I don't know if I'm going to be able to or not, because this week is, you know, a busy week for me, but we shall see wish me luck.   I'm wishing you. Well, And until next time, peace out.

If you have an invisible illness, chances are at some point you've been accused of "faking it." What most people who don't have these types illnesses don't know is... we do fake it. We fake being WELL.     • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.     • NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d     • Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints       • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com     • STUFF I MENTIONED https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/chronically-me/201910/feeling-sick-faking-well https://www.ravishly.com/chronic-illness-fake-being-healthy https://themighty.com/2020/12/chronic-illness-fake-being-well/   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION So the other day on Instagram, I was talking about, uh, the. The guilt that I feel when I'm having a not so great day and just want to take a personal day. But I feel like I can't because I have to take so many days when it comes to having a really bad chronic illness day. And one of you, Wendy messaged me on Instagram and asked me if I would do a podcast on fake.   Well, chronic illness. People think you might be faking sick, but we're actually faking well. And she, I was like, oh fuck. Yeah, I hell I want to talk about that. So thank you, Wendy, for bringing that up to me because that's what we're gonna talk about today. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo on this podcast.   We talk about the way we live our lives, both in person and on the internet. And this is a major piece of it. If you are chronically ill. In one form or another, this could actually have to do with mental illness. This could have to do with physical illness or all sorts of different. For a little bit of context.   I am in kidney failure. I have polycystic kidney disease. And so I have a lot of the problems that come with kidney failure, the nausea, the, um, the brain fog, the exhaustion, all of that, but also have massive football sized kidneys, and those add their own level of pain to my day, with the size of them pushing on my ribs, pushing them, my organs, I can't bend over.   I can't tie my shoes, blah, blah, blah. I am in pain. Or uncomfortable or both every minute of the day. So very much I am, um, chronically ill, however, um, aside from some yellowness in my skin and my large kidney belly, which a lot of people just assume I'm pregnant. You can't see my illness on the surface.   I'm not wearing it on my sleeve. The same goes for people with so many different invisible illnesses, whether it's fibromyalgia, whether it's Ehlers Danlos syndrome. And those just both come to mind because my kid is potentially diagnosed with one of those. We're still working on that, but there's all sorts of invisible physical illnesses that can cause pain.   And that can make you feel like shit every day. The same goes for a lot of mental. Illnesses things that you're dealing with, like depression or chronic anxiety or all sorts of different things like that. There are so many things that afflict us and impact how we're doing on any given day that people on the outside, people who are not, uh, us basically, they can't see.   It becomes a real feeling of stress, especially when people question you, if you're having a bad day, this happens. This happened a lot for me when I was working for, I worked for myself now, but when I was working for somebody else with coworkers, when I would need to take like a moment and people would question because they couldn't tell, it's not like I have a broken arm hanging from my side or something.   So they would question me about whether or not it was faking, feeling shitty. I've seen this with my kid. They have run into problems with other people in their life who have questioned them on how they're feeling. Are they really feeling, is it really that bad? I know a lot of people in the chronic illness and chronic pain communities feel this way.   I know, especially it can feel this way when you go to the doctor and you are asking for help or relief with your pain or looking for answers. And there are some amazing, amazing medical professionals out there, but there are also some who maybe did not pay. Empathy on their trip through medical school, especially if you're a woman, especially.   And I've heard, like if you're a woman, if you're fat, if you are a person of color, your, your, like your concerns are not always taken as seriously at the doctor. If you have the nerve to go to a doctor about it at all. For me, one of my biggest issues is that I am in pain all of the time, and I very rarely have anything to help me with relief from the pain.   Because of the stigma around pain management, pain management medication, and with the whole like opioid epidemic, I have an entire rant on how the opioid epidemic and all the situations with that. Some of the people impacted the most by it who don't get talked about the most are the chronic pain patients who.   They have to spend their lives in misery because, um, of the way that like people are not being treated like criminals, if they need to, if they need pain management. So there is that all of this to say that it is very easy. If you are somebody who suffers with an invisible illness of any sort to be.   Accused of either directly or indirectly a faking it, of faking your illness of exaggerating your illness of, of over-blowing your illness and what Wendy said to me. And what I really started to articulate to myself is that, yeah, I do fake it. I fake it a lot, but I don't fake being sick. I fake being well, here's the thing.   When you are somebody who is dealing with chronic pain, chronic illness, you don't need to fake feeling like shit because you already do, but you may decide either purposefully or just subconsciously that it would serve you better to just put on the wellness facade. It's easier that. So I'm going to link several articles that I looked at in the show notes, because there's, there's other people.   Who've also said this very succinctly, but I'm gonna just talk about some of the reasons I can think of about why and how I've faked being well, one of the biggest reasons. I'm fucking sick of talking about it. I'm sick of people asking me how I'm doing. I'm sick of having to explain. I'm sick of having to talk about it.   I just want to be left to be miserable and peace. And if I present as miserable, people are going to ask me, they're going to be concerned. Maybe I just don't want to talk about it. That. So I fake it. The funny thing is my family's onto me. I can't fake it as well around them anymore. They know me well enough where they can see the changes in my body language.   They can see the changes in my face. They can see it. Eyes. They could see it in how I carry myself. They can see it in the way that I move around them and the way that I just move in general, the way I walk, maybe even the clothes I decide to wear. They're very astute at picking up on the signs. Even if I'm trying to present like quote, everything's fine.   They can tell. That I'm lying, especially Jessie, my husband. Oh my God. He can pick it out, like out of a fucking lineup, but generally speaking in other relationships. Yeah. I'll just, I'll fucking fake it because I don't want to deal with it anyway. I don't want to talk about it that day. It gets old, man. It gets old and it especially gets old.   When you start to feel like that becomes your entire identity, like, look at me, I'm the sick person. And that may not be your entire identity to other people, but it can start to feel that way to yourself. So faking well to, just, to just not deal with it is most definitely something that I, I do like on a regular basis.   Another way that I fake well is because I, I don't, there's this dichotomy that comes when you're sick. Right. You see this a lot, especially in like the cancer community, right. There's like the cancer warriors, the people who are like bravely facing on their cancer. And then there's. Like the super miserable sick people you hear about like when somebody is reaching the end of their life and they're just, they're miserable.   So they're miserable to everybody else around them. So there's, there's these two kind of archetypes of a sick person. And in my experience, especially being chronically ill. Neither of those really sum up my experience on a day-to-day basis. I'm not a warrior, I'm not battling my illness. I'm, I'm just, I'm doing my best every single day.   I don't want to be seen as the hero of my story because it's not that simple. I don't want to be put on a pedestal for it, but at the same time, I also don't want to be seen as like the miserable sick person and. It's hard to push back against those narratives. It's really difficult to push back. It's like pushing back against stereotypes.   It can be really difficult. And when you're already exhausted and already in so much pain, it's easier to just sidestep the whole thing altogether. Like people, if I'm not having a bad day, Sickly wise, or if I'm putting on that, I'm not having a bad day sickly wise and it won't come up, then I don't have to deal with it.   But as soon as it comes up, it becomes something I might have to deal with. And I just don't want to, most of the time, I don't have the fucking energy for that. Another reason one might fake being well is so that you can kind of.   If people start feeling sorry for you because you're sick or they start questioning whether you're faking, being sick. It's a very short leap from that to questioning whether or not you're capable, whether or not you're competent, whether or not you are, you are capable of being like a fully formed adult.   It's very easy to infant analyze somebody who's chronically ill. It's very easy to dismiss somebody. Who's chronically ill. It's very easy to other somebody who is chronically ill. And so by faking well, you're blending it. You're blending in with the well people you're blending in with the crowd, and you're not calling attention to any of these things.   People don't make assumptions about your state of mind. If they don't know that you are in a haze of pain every day, people don't make assumptions about your state of mind. If they don't know that you have to take Trevor. Every day, people don't make assumptions about your state of mind. If they don't know that you are only putting half of your thought process forward, because the other half of it is dealing with not throwing up.   Now, it's not a fair comparison to make because. Even when I was not in pain all the time, there were plenty of days where my thought process was divided and some of it was focused on the task at hand. And some of it was focused on my grocery list or some of it was focused on the drama going on at work, or some of it was focused on reliving last night's episode of flavor of love.   Like it's not like chronic illness. People are the only ones who are distracted, but it can be very easy to question somebody's mental competence. If they have another situation going on, because if you are not, it, it, it fits you into this category of sick person rather than person. And, and it just, sometimes you just don't want to fucking deal with it.   There's other. Times where one might fake. Well, because you're trying to go down like the fake it till you make it kind of kind of road. Like, well maybe if I fake feeling, well, maybe I've eventually will, you know, maybe if I ignore it long enough, I push it to the side long enough. Maybe I'll actually forget about it for a little while that never happens, but it can help with cheering yourself up.   It can help with, with distracting yourself. There are ways we're putting on that kind of cloak of wellness. It can add at least like a superficial level of, I don't know, like peace and that sometimes I'll take it right. Sometimes I will take it a big piece of faking. Well, though, and probably for me at least is one of the biggest pieces is because.   I don't want to be seen as the complaining sick person to my family, to my people around me, my friends, everyone else. I don't want to be seen as like the bummer. Right. I don't want people to distance themselves from me because they don't know what to say. I don't want people to distance themselves from me because they're tired of hearing about it.   Like, I don't want like being sick, having this shitty genetic disease. Already sucks. I don't want it to be indirectly sucky by alienating people in my life now, whether or not that would actually happen. I don't know. But there is a lot of messaging out there that can at least make you feel that way. It can make you feel that if you are too vocal about your, your chronic illness, if you are, you are.   Turning your frown super down on all the time that, that people are going to eventually distance themselves from you. There is messaging out there and it can be easy to internalize that a lot of people don't like being reminded, right? That, that humans, like if you're feeling healthy and everything else, and there's somebody, who's your age, who is struggling really hard with chronic pain or with illness, it can be a reminder of your own mortality and.   And so that can cause people to even like, not consciously, but subconsciously distance themselves from you when you're sick. And so by pretending to feel better, you hope to insulate yourself from some of that. And one of the articles I read in the psychology today, article she talks about, um, The idea of the heroic sick person.   So like if your illness, this goes back also to like the warrior thing, right. It goes back to the person they use, as the example is Beth from little women, right. She's dying. She meets it with acceptance. She meets it with bravery. She meets it with, with like being. Just accepting and okay with it. It's not icky.   It's not stressful. There's no bed sores. Like you don't hear about any of that. You just hear about her bravely heading towards the valley of the shadow or whatever it is for that book a bunch. So that makes that make sense. But that's not usually what chronic illness really is like. And that's usually not what somebody who finally is at a point where they're going to be hospitalized.   It's not what it's usually like, but this idea of like the, the idealized sick person, Barbara Hershey in beaches, dying of her woman's disease or whatever, right. When you see people in these movies dying of something, You know, getting cancer, getting whatever, and then they, they face it and they might have some problems facing it, but then they, they go through it like even a movie like step-mom with, um, with Susan Surandon it's a great example of somebody faking well, right.   The movie step-mom was Susan Surandon and Julia Roberts is about a divorced couple at Harris is the husband and SU Susan saran. The mom and the dad had Harrison, Susan Sarandon and Susan surrounding gets diagnosed with cancer. And at Harris has a new girlfriend. Um, Nate who's Julia Roberts. And. Susan Sarandon's character.   It kind of, it shows kind of two things. It shows the, the, the dynamics of a family dealing with a new step parent and the biological parent, having trouble relinquishing any sort of control to a step parent, blah, blah, blah, which I found fascinating as somebody who was in Susan Sarandon's place with my kids gain a stepmom, but then also.   She's hiding her diagnosis from them. Cause she doesn't know how her family is going to handle it. She doesn't want people to see her as a sick person. She hides it for a good from her family for a good chunk of the movie to a point where they think that she's maybe moving to another state or she's having an affair or something like there's a lot happening there where she's faking being well.   But then once people know about her being sick, there are some times where she's really snarky and not like accepting it. But for a lot of it, she's like the saintly dying mom. Right. And she's putting on this. This idea of being the, the heroic dying person for her kids, but it also shows through in the.   There. There's not a lot of movies made about people who are absolutely like you also. Okay. Let me, let me just continue on this rambling note to mention that like the polar opposite of all of this is the memories that the character Rachel has in Salem's lot. Salem's lot, uh, pet. The character, Rachel and pet cemetery, the memories of her sister Zelda, dying of meningitis, and like the, the scary to a kid sister who is bedridden and on a bunch of drugs.   And, and, you know, her room smells like urine because of the bed pan and everything else. I would argue that some of the depictions, not all of the patients have Zelda by far, not all of the fictions of depictions of Zelda, but I would suggest that there is a level of truth there because from everything I understand and from everything I have witnessed from people in my own life, There is a level at the end of a long drawn out illness, where somebody is dying from it, where it's not beautiful, like the movies it's, it's hard and it's stressful for everybody.   There's a reason that long-term caregivers suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts and survivor's guilt and all of that. They feel guilty because they feel relieved. All of that, to say that when you hear about these things, when you see the dichotomy of like the heroic, saintly dying people in the movies, and then you hear about the reality of it and the things that caregivers have to go through when you yourself are chronically ill.   You don't want to be seen as the saintly dying person, because it's not you, but you don't want to be a burden to the people that you love. And so one of the only ways you can kind of circumvent some of that is to just pretend to not feel so shitty. And so that's at least that's my perspective on it. So I guess what are the takeaway I want you to take from this podcast is if you are somebody who is chronically ill in whatever form it might be, and you fake being.   For your own sake, just know that I understand because I do it too. You're not alone. And if you are somebody who is not chronically ill and you have someone in your life who is, first of all, take any assumptions you have, that somebody might be quote faking it when it comes to their pain and put it out the window because chances are, if you know somebody who is chronically ill, And you can see that they're in pain that day.   Chances are they've been in pain every day and that day it's just excrutiatingly bad. I know that. That's what my husband actually has said as much to me that he knows that when I actually talk about how bad I'm feeling, it's like way worse, because I wasn't talking about how bad I was feeling before it got bad enough for me to talk about it.   So just, just keep that in mind. What you see with the chronically ill person is often what's gotten bad enough for them to allow to the surface or where they can't hide it anymore. This is not the same for everybody. I'm not talking. This is not, you know, everybody's experiences are different, but I think that there can be between, I think the real stigma for chronically ill people is both the long time.   Not listening to so many people when they talk about like the things that are wrong with them, as well as, uh, and I'm going just go back to it, but like the, with the opioid epidemic and the problems that it has had with things like pain management, it has become stigmatized to talk about being in chronic pain all the time, because people think you're just talking about it to get.   And I just, I wanted to talk about this because I think that there are some of you in my audience who will resonate with this, and I want you to know you're not. I love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Let me know on Instagram at @llamaletters, or you can message me, uh, using my email. I check all the links out in the description or the show notes below.   I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope that if you are somebody who is chronically ill in some form or another, that you have as good of a day as is possible for you. And I hope if you are not chronically ill, that I hope you have a great day as well. Make sure to thank my patrons. If you see any of them out on these streets, they make all these episodes possible.   And if you are curious about being a patron yourself, you can go to www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more. I really hope you all have a great week and until next time, my friends peace out.

It's been a long time since I lost my parents - 20 years for my dad, 15 years for my mom, and still grief is a constant companion of mine. In today's episode I am reflecting on my own grieving process and what it looks like, so many years later.     • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.     • NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d     • Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints       • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com     • STUFF I MENTIONED Prolonged Grief Article - https://hms.harvard.edu/magazine/aging/profound-sadness-prolonged-grief     Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION I'm going to open this episode up with a quick trigger warning. Um, I'm going to be talking about loss in this episode, loss of parents specifically, um, and. So, if that is something that you are not in a place to think about right now, then I will not have any hard feelings. If you choose to just move onto something else.   May I suggest a previous episode I had recently where I talked about my self-care stuff, because that could be a good thing to reflect on instead. Let's jump into it. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about how we live our lives, both on the internet and off of the internet.   And one thing that I think hasn't changed in the age of the internet is great. I don't think it has fully changed. At least I'm sure it has evolved in some sense, but we as humans grieving as a part of life, because loss is a part of life. It, we are we're social animals, right? We don't, um, we're not meant to be in a complete silo on our own for our entire lives.   There are going to be people who come into our lives and go out of our lives. And when they go out of our lives, whether it is via. Just moving on, whether it is via breakup, whether it is via drifting apart or whether it. Death. When people go out of our lives, there is usually at least some amount of grief.   There's also grief that we have for ourselves. When like something changes. We evolve, we change jobs, we move there's a change in our lives. And there is often a level of grief that comes with thinking about. Your previous life, even if you're happy with your new life, there is sometimes a level of grief that comes with that new part of you today, specifically, though, I am going to be reflecting on grief and loss.   When it comes to losing somebody very important to you. For me, it was my parents and what it feels like so many years later, because. When it's immediate, it's not always easy to think into the future, how you might be feeling. And I want to speak to the perspective of that, especially for people who might be grieving right now, so that you can kind of hear about it from somebody who is farther down that path.   So to give you some context, um, my dad died 20 years. I was 21. He was 40. It happened right after September 11th happened. He died of a stroke. He had a brainstem aneurysm brought on by PK D, which is the kidney disease that I also have. And he, he had a brainstem aneurysm. He went brain dead and we had to take him off of life support.   Five years later. So 15 years ago almost to the day this podcast is going live, like it's right in this week, my mom died. My mom died suddenly in her sleep. We never found out what the cause was. The autopsy didn't show anything. She just died when they each time. When my dad died, I was 21 in a new relationship with my soon to be husband.   And then ex-husband when my mom died. Um, I was the parent of both of my kids at that point. My oldest was three and my youngest was just about to turn one. My baby sister was pregnant with her oldest. Right around that same time, we actually wound up having to move Becca's baby shower because my mom's funeral wound up being on the day of Becca's baby shower.   I didn't deal with my grief very well when both parents. Either of them. I am the oldest of three sisters and I very much went into mama bear mode. My mom, when my dad died, fell apart, she, he was her high school sweetheart. They'd been together for 21 years at that point. I mean, they've been married for 21 years at that point and she was not expecting to lose her husband when she was 40.   And then when my mom died, It was like, fuck, really? Like, we just, just did this, you know, so both times I kind of pushed my grief off to take care of others and then it came back and it hit me like a freight train later, especially when I had cat, uh, after my dad died, I had cat a couple of years later and, um, the postpartum depression hit me really hard with a bunch of unresolved grief.   It took me a good amount of time to really not be in like full blown meltdown, every few minutes mode. But as the years have gone on. It's evolved. Now, when I was doing some research for this podcast, before I started recording it, I actually learned about something called prolonged grief, which is not what I have.   I'm not going to suggest that I have that, but it is interesting. And if you are somebody who is, who is more than a year out from a big loss and it still feels real, like it just happened every single day. You may have prolonged grief, prolonged grief is an actual thing. So I'm going to read, I'm going to read kind of a description of it.   Prolonged grief generally presents as an inability to adapt the loss. You wake up and feel like it's brand new over and over again. Uh, it was added to the, um, diagnostic manual of mental disorders saying that it is grief that persists for one year or more. And according to the article I found, uh, prolonged grief.   One of the hallmarks of it is that usually. Usually the treatments that are used for like people with like severe depression, don't work on people with prolonged grief. It's, it's different than that. And it can actually bring increased health risks, but they are starting to work on it and work on specific treatments for prolonged grief.   Are more effective. So if you are somebody where the grief feels raw and fresh every minute of every day, even more than a year out, definitely seek help for prolonged grief because that's generally speaking when you lose someone, grief is not the same for everybody, but it does start to evolve. As time goes on and we adapt to it.   And that's what I want to talk about because that is where I'm at and where I've been for several years. So the best way I can describe being 20 years out from suddenly losing one of my parents and then 15 years from the other parent is that it's become my. It's become one of the many companions that kind of ride alongside me every day.   They don't, they're not very talkative. That particular, that grief companion is not talkative, does not stick, like is not constantly whispering in the back of my mind. Like some of my other companions are, you know, But, but it's there. One of the things I have learned in these past years is how to recognize the things, the triggers that will bring that little grief companion to the forefront.   Because what I have learned is that I have learned to live with it. It has not become over time. It is no longer the first thing I think about it is no longer at the forefront of my mind. But it's there. And when it does get brought to the surface, it hurts and it hurts in so many ways that are similar to the way it hurt.   When I lost my parents, even that pain has been blunted just a little bit. But rather than a constant low grade feeling of grief, it's more like, kind of quiet. And then every once in a while something will happen and it'll bring it to the surface and I'll have a good cry. And one of the things I've learned over the years is to keep an eye out for the things that tend to trigger it now, to be fair, there are often things that trigger it that I'm not expecting.   And then I get hit with an unexpected wave of it. But generally speaking, I can tell there are certain kind of specific things. One is certain Elton John songs. I've made no secret of the fact that I love Elton John and B. There are certain Elton John songs. I can't listen to without crying like a baby. I have I can't picture things in my mind.   I can't picture my parents' faces. My dad loved Elton John and he loved to play piano and sing Elton John songs. And when I hear goodbye, yellow brick road and Daniel, which are the two hardest ones for me, goodbye, yellow brick road and Daniel. There's a few others as well, but those two are like the top.   When I hear them, it's like, I can smell my dad again. I can, I can smell him. And it's visceral and it just sends me, I don't actually have something like that for my mom. I don't have something that just full blown Rex me the way, the way that that does. Well, that's not true. I have a recording of my mom singing Patsy.   Cline's. If I listened to that, that wrecks me. But I wonder if the reason that I am so, like my it's memories of my dad that really sent me because you know, my mom and I want up having a really closer, close relationship as adults as I started having kids, even though she moved away, I there's two reasons.   I think my, my grief from my mom is not quite as visceral as my grief from my. A I lost my dad when I, he was my first major loss. I had lost like great-grandparents and shit. And like a friend in high school, my aunt had had cancer, but survived it. But like, my dad was my first real loss and I was 21. And then I got diagnosed with PKD right afterwards.   So it threw me for a loop. So there's that, but also, and I think this one might be a bigger piece of it. I never got closure with my mom, my dad, we saw him in the hospital. He, we all got a chance. My, my mom, my sisters, I was living an hour and a half away. They came and got me. We went to the hospital, we all got to see him.   My dad's siblings got to see him before he died is still living ones. My grandparents were there. Like everybody got to say goodbye to him before we pulled the plug. My mom died in her sleep in Bakersfield, down in Southern California. We never even saw her body. We saw her after she was cremated. So there's a level of like unreality, I think.   Whereas with my dad, it was much more like in your face. And so I think that might be part of it, but I'm not sure. I guess that big, the reflection that comes out of this though, is I find it extremely important to recognize the things that, um, can trigger a wave of grief. Although I will also say that when I do cry, like there have been times I've purposefully put on Elton John songs to have a good cry because it's cathartic, you know, it doesn't send me into a deep depression the way you used.   So if you're a deep in grief right now, that might be something for you to hang on to, to know that grief might be horrifying to you right now and, and unwelcome. But that the way I see it now, when I grieve either of my parents or both of my parents, whether it's a super hard cry or whether it's just like a wistful thought.   It's a reminder of how much I loved them and having that strong feeling still bubble up even 20 years later. It's it's, it's a reminder to me that I. I loved them and that they were a major part of my life. You know, part of the thing I'm really reflecting on today when I'm recording, this is that I'm 42.   I was 21. When my dad died, I have officially reached a point where I, uh, have lived longer on this earth.   Well, I've lived as long, probably not longer yet because it hasn't hit his anniversary yet. But I'm at a point now where I've lived as many years on this earth without my dad, as I did with him. And it hasn't changed the things he taught me or the memories I have or the way I still think about him. I don't grieve my parents every day, but I think about them every day throughout the course of my day in natural way.   And that's also comforting to me   when I cry, when I smell. Cause like I said, the Elton John songs, another big trigger for me of grief with my dad is the certain scent. It's a mixture of like, like motor oil and pot, which my dad smell cigarettes too. Sometimes, especially when I'm doing, like getting my car worked on, I catch a whiff of that smell and it throws me.   But again, It's just a reminder. There were a lot of times with my parents where things were hard. We grew up in poverty, like lots of hard times, but the love I had for my parents and the love and the memories, all the hard things, they're still there. And I remember them and I think about them when I need to, but like, I'm able to reclaim a little bit of the joy.   And I think that was one of the hardest things when I was deep in the initial stages of. Was, it was very hard for me to really find joy in memories because all I could think about with my memories was how much I missed the people I lost. And now that that grief has evolved into being something I can predict a little bit more.   I'm able to really embrace all of the memories and even embrace the grief. You know, when I started to think about doing this podcast episode, I was thinking I could reflect on, okay, 20 years later, this is kind of where it's at. And I think as I've been sort of talking through this with you all, I think the thing I'm really reflecting on the most is that the best way I can describe losing someone close to you.   Suddenly, I don't, I don't know about with a long illness. The people I've lost in my life with long illness have not been as close to me as my parents, but I lost both my parents suddenly. So I don't know for sure about the feelings that come with like caregiving and survivor's guilt, but what I will say,   the reflection, I think that my biggest takeaway from this. Is that I welcome my little grief buddy. We've learned to live with each other. We've reached, we've reached a, a mutually beneficial relationship. We have figured out a way to co-exist and find some amount of benefit.   I welcome. The memories of my parents now I welcome the times I cry and I welcome the times when it's hard. And I remember them because again, it just reminds me of how much I loved them. Now I recognize. That grief does not always take that form for people that your grief might be complicated because he might've had a complicated relationship with someone.   And I recognize how lucky I was that the issues that we had growing up were not something that traumatized me to a point where, like, I couldn't wholeheartedly love my parents. I had phenomenal parents. They weren't responsible. They weren't great with. But they loved the shit out of us and taught us to be healthy and how we love people.   So I recognize that everybody's grief is different and that sometimes it can be more complicated than that, but I can't speak to that experience because it isn't the experience I've had, but I can speak to the experience of being 20 years out from a major loss and having it still cut down. But that those cuts remind me.   They bring me back to a time when I had someone I loved so deeply in my life and that I can be 21 years out from it. And still to this day. Remember how powerful that love was in my life. And that is the lesson I take from my grief. And that is the reason I'm fine with metal grief, buddy, hanging out in the car, even if they're quiet most of the time.   And I hope that if you're grieving someone right now that one day you'll be able to come to peace with your little grief buddy, too, but just know it's a process and that there's nothing wrong with. For being where you are. And then if you are struggling with acute grief, more than a year after the fact, talk to your doctor about potentially having prolonged grief, you don't have to suffer.   You can work. There are things you can do anyway, with all that being said, I'd love to hear from you about your experiences with grief. Let me know, and thank you to my patrons for sponsoring this episode as usual www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more take care of yourselves. I love you.   Big hugs. I might go listen to goodbye yellow brick road now and give myself a good cry, but I'll be welcoming that good cry until next time, my friends peace out.

SHOWNOTES Today, in honor of Valentine's Day, we are continuing the personality test experiment with The Five Love Languages!     • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.     • NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d     • Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints       • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com     • STUFF I MENTIONED Quiz - https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/love-language     Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION What is love, baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. If you want to watch A Night at the Roxbury now you're welcome. Welcome to view and curated life podcast. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo, and today we are continuing my experiment of trying out various personality tests, uh, from the perspective of somebody like me, who's fairly.   When it comes to personality tests, and today by request, I am doing the five love languages because it's Valentine's day when this podcast goes live, it just seemed appropriate. My original plan was to do this with my husband, Jesse. Difficult sometimes to nail down times, or we can both sit down and do this.   So today's just going to be me. But if you are interested in me having him on the podcast to talk about his love language and maybe see what we can figure out between the two of us, uh, tag me at @llamaletters in your Instagram stories and. Anyway, let's just get right into it. And if you're interested in the other personality tests, they are in previous episodes, I've probably done five or six at this point.   So yeah, it's an ongoing series again, tag me at @llamaletters. If you have any suggestions for other personalities, You would like me to take, so let's get right into it. The five love languages. I probably don't have to explain this to most of you. Most of you probably already know all about this because it is extremely popular.   But if you don't know the love languages are a personality test about how you express and receive love. It's meant to. People, uh, effectively communicate their feelings in a relationship. It was originally a book by Dr. Gary Chapman, who is a licensed marriage counselor. He's also an evangelical Christian.   And if you're anything like me, then that sounds alarm bells in terms of taking some sort of a personality test from the quote Christian perspective. If you're not Christian, While his books, there's a series of these love language, books, or languages about different ways to be communicate. Uh, there, from that perspective, from everything I understand, I haven't read them, but they do have that perspective.   But according to my basic internet search, anyone can benefit from his material. I don't feel like reading the books. So I went to the Google and I came across like the official website of the love languages. And so let's talk about what they are and there's five, which I've said already a bunch of times, uh, first is acts of service, which are for people who actions speak louder than words for them.   Right. Somebody doing something for them is their form of love. Next is receiving gifts. Uh, receiving a heartfelt gift is what makes them feel most loved quality time is the next one. And that is forgiving. The other person, undivided attention. Uh, words of affirmation is the love language, where words are the thing that gives you, the people giving you good, like compliments affirming words is the way you receive love best.   And then we do this is that. No physical touch. I knew I missed one left for that person. Nothing speaks more deeply than appropriate physical touch. Now I pulled all of these from the website directly in their little blurbs, but they've got videos and all sorts of other stuff where you can dig deeper into it.   Again, I don't really want to, I just want to take the test and figure out which one I am. So I'm going to the quizzes page on the website and there's several quizzes. They've got the love language quiz, but then he's also got the apology language quiz, the anger assessment quiz, the appreciation language.   A quiz. And again, if you're interested in me doing any of these, either by myself or maybe with my husband, let me know on Instagram about what I'm going to be doing is the love language quiz, which says what's your love language, trademark for couples singles, teens, and children. Take this quiz to discover your primary love language, what it means and how you can use it to better connect with your loved one.   It says here, you need to save your results because they won't save them. There is, as of right now, no cost. So I will let you know, after I take it, if there is a price to pay for like the more detailed analysis, which is what I've been paying for a lot of these, for the sake of science in this podcast.   But, uh, I don't necessarily think you need to do that. If you're trying to save your money here or whatever, like I'm doing it for science, man. Anyway, I'm going to pause this and take the quiz and we will talk about it in a couple of weeks. That didn't take very long at all. Probably about five minutes.   It was a group of probably 20 or 30 paired statements, which is it's more meaningful, more meaningful for me when, and then two different things. So things like my partner says, I appreciate you. Or my partner does something. That's been stressing me out, whatever the case may be. And so I scored fairly highly on two of, well, no one of them, I scored the highest two of them, my score kind of close to each other.   And then two were kind of down in the bottom. I'm not surprised by this breakup at all. Uh, acts of service is my, my primary love language because I just, I love when. Jesse does ship for me. I'll be real. Um, I don't think that that was my love language for the longest time. I think the second one on my list, which is if acts of service came in at 23, at 37% words of affirmation and physical touch both came in close to each other at 23 and 20%.   If you would asked me what my love language was. Six or seven years ago before my kidneys really started to fail. Or if you had asked me what, I might've thought myself, just in general, what it would have been words of affirmation would have been the, uh, the one that I expected to be the top, because I know that I tend to really shine when I am complimented.   When people tell me that they appreciate me, like I am a pleaser. And so. I also can fight back against pleasing. It's very uncomfortable place to be. But the point being is that when somebody lets me know that they're proud of me or whatever, that always really lights me up inside. However, um, as my kidneys have started to fail and I've gotten more and more exhausted.   I have found that people doing things for me, because they were thinking of me because they recognize I was tired or stressed out or that I just have a lot on my plate. And then just stepping into do something without me having to ask has very, definitely become like the top of my list. I, I didn't read the books.   I don't know if this is more like, what was the other one was the Enneagram. Now, one of the ones that I did recently said that this is kind of how you are from the day you're born. It was the one that has you thinking about what you were like as a kid, uh, I, I, I would imagine that your love language might change depending on your circumstances.   If you're a, for example, in chronic pain, a lot of the time, perhaps words of affirmation goes out of the way when it comes to acts of service. It doesn't surprise me. That receiving gifts is on the very bottom. Yeah. Honestly, I've always been very, um, I've always been very touched and excited when somebody has given me something and thoughtful, but generally speaking, um, gifts are just not something that like lights me on fire.   I, it's just not my thing. It's not that I don't like getting gifts. I just, I'm kind of ambivalent about it. I don't think about it a lot of the time, which is probably why I'm so shitty at giving gifts as well. Um, Quality time has been lower on my list lately. And it's not that I don't love spending quality time.   It's just since the pandemic, we spent so much time together that quality time, sometimes I just want quality time with myself. Do you know what. And physical touch was the one right in the middle at 20%. Very close to words of affirmation. Again, this is one that I think has changed as I have gone deeper into my kidney problems.   Uh, Um, somebody who loves hugging, loves touching, holding hands, all of those things. However, the intimacy side now just be totally real with you. The intimacy side of relationships for me has gotten really. Tamped down. And I think it's a combination of the antidepressants I'm on, but also the fact that I am in large amounts of pain all of the time, my kidneys are massive.   And so the thought of anything invading my body, any even pleasurable invading force. Sound like the business right now. So I would imagine that that might have pushed physical touchdown, where it might have ranked higher. I would probably have suggested that maybe six or seven years ago the order might've gotten words of affirmation, physical touch, then acts of service.   But currently right now, this, this, this tracks with everything I know. And it's actually very interesting to me to think about the differences between what it is now and what it might have been before. My kidneys had progressed as badly as they have. Anyway, interesting conversation. I really do want to do this with Jesse, so I may have a SQL to this coming up soon, but in the meantime, I would love for you to let me know on Instagram at @llamaletters, both what you would like to see from personality tests.   And what's your love language? What is it that lights you on fire? I'd love to hear about it. Thanks as always to my patrons for sponsoring this video. With this video, this podcast sponsoring my foggy kidney brain. As much as they do, if you're interested in finding out more, go to www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo. Once again. Thank you. Have a wonderful rest of your day. If you celebrate Valentine's day, I hope it is lovely. If Valentine's day is at bummer and a half for you, I hope that you find something to do today that makes you happy, regardless of whatever the hallmark card and candy companies want us to sell it.   I have a good one, stay safe and I will talk to you next week. Bye friends, peace out.

Today is my 42nd birthday and while most of the time I have NO idea what I'm doing, today I'm sharing 42 things I've learned in 42 years! DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hello, everybody. If you know me at all, then you know that I live for my birthday purely because of getting to sing the it smell birthday song from Thor, Ragnarok, which I will leave linked down below if you have not heard it. But yes, today is my birthday. I'm actually recording this a little ahead of time.   So it's not my birthday yet, but when you hear this, it will be my 42nd birthday. And so today, My myself, Cindy Guentert-Baldo. I'm going to be leaving you with 42 pieces of wisdom things I've learned in the past 42 years that I thought would be interesting to pass on. Some may be fun. Some may be deep, some may be obvious, but yes, 42 things I have learned in 42 years starting right about me.   Number one wear sunscreen. Even if you don't plan on going outside, make sure it goes on the back of your ears. Make sure it goes down your neck. Make sure it goes behind your ears. If you wear your hair up in a ponytail, make sure it goes on the back of your neck. Don't neglect your hands. Sunscreen. My dudes so important.   Number two stretchy jeans can save you from an accident. If you have mom, bladder, kidney disease, and a sudden urge to go to the bathroom. I swear if I don't have to pee. And then I'm within like sneezing distance of a bathroom, suddenly my bladder goes into overdrive. And sometimes unbuttoning your flight takes too long.   So there is magic in stretchy jeans when you are basically running to the bathroom to try and not pee your pants. And I know you're like, but Cindy, what about using like the ask asked it gasket the toilet cover no dudes there isn't time for that. If I'm trying not to pee, I will just have to live with like squirrely fucking.   Stuff on my butt cheeks, because it's better that than the PB in my pants. Number three, plastic glasses, frames, beat metal glasses frames any day of the week and twice on Sunday, especially if you're allergic to nickel, both because I've known. At least in my experience with metal glasses frames that they snap in the middle way more often, my dad used to solder my fucking glasses together in high school.   The other thing is that if you're allergic to nickel and you have metal frames, like the bows of your glasses are metal. If they rub on your face, you will get the worst fucking rash that then develops into like an open situation. It's awful. And the way we dealt with that was paint my glasses. Clear nail Polish, except that also wears off.   And then the situation happens again. I used to think plastic glasses were heinous because the first pair I ever had made me look like Sally, Jesse Raphael when I was a fucking fourth grader. And now I'm like plastic glasses all the way there. They're the best of right. Nothing's going to ever give me a goddamn nickel allergy reaction on the side of my face when I have to wear them to see, I sound like I'm ranting.   I'm not ranting. And these are just things I've learned. I swear. If you're going to be prone to impulse shopping, if impulse shopping is something that you, you, you tend to do on a regular basis, steer clear of trader Joe's during the holiday season. I'm not even going to talk about how I got suckered in this year.   And I used to work there and I know better number five. And this is one that I learned after being kind of a douche and unknowing douche, but a douche nonetheless, don't wear perfume to acquire. Or to anywhere where you're, I mean, I know this is pandemic time. We're not really standing in like close quarters with anyone right now, but you never know who you're going to trigger with like a heavy scent and inquire, especially when you're breathing in like large gulps of breath while you're singing.   The worst thing is to trigger an asthma situation or something with somebody. So just skip the perfume on choir rehearsal days. Number six. Some sushi restaurants are more heavy on the wasabi when they make their new Geary. So then the Gary is like the piece of rice at the chunk of little, little, little rice situational.   Bundle. And then there's a piece of fish on top. Right. And what they do is they use a little bit of a Sabi to kind of like glue the fish to the rice, but it also adds flavor. Well, the place we used to go to didn't use very much wasabi. So I didn't even know there was wasabi there. Good with spicy things.   We went to a different restaurant where they used a lot more with Sabi, and I thought somehow my rice had been dipped in chemicals and I was freaking out only to find out no, there was just more wasabi. So just know that someplace, if you think your, your new Geary's tasting a little off and you're not used to the wasabi, that's probably it.   Of course it also might be the fish being gross. So keep an eye out for that. Number seven, getting into arguments while driving makes that argument way more intense than it needs to. I don't think I have to say any more for that. I think that is self-explanatory number eight. The most important part of a relationship is communication.   Not sexual energy, not things you have in common, not. Any of that shit it's communication because there are days when there isn't going to be any sexual energy. And there are days when you're not going to be feeling very into anything. But if you are able to communicate how you're feeling with the person or people that you're in a relationship with, whether it's romantic or it's platonic communication is the thing that keeps relationships going.   Communication can help you with apologizing. It can help you with explaining yourself all sorts of things. So if you're going to work on developing anything in a relationship that you really want to solidify, the communication is a big piece of that. And that's something that I have learned in recent years, and I am so grateful to have learned it and to be with somebody who not only is good at communicating themselves, but as good at helping me communicate when I'm not in a good communicating space, which is pretty much anytime I'm upset.   Number nine when somebody tells you who they are, believe them. Now, this applies not only to assholes is assholey around the internet, but this also applies to people who are telling you their pronouns or their gender identity or their sexuality fucking believe them. Don't tell them it's a phase. Don't think it's a phase.   Just believe them until they tell you otherwise. And they may never tell you otherwise because they may, this is my, this is who they are. And as a side note to that, This shit is fluid people evolve. They change, they come to greater understandings of who they are, and if somebody tells you their pronouns or something one day, and then later on, they adapt or.   They grow, they change. Those are none of those are really great words for this, but they like, they come to fuller understanding of who they are and their pronouns might change. That doesn't mean it was a phase. It means they came to a fuller understanding and you should celebrate that. I have no patience for people who take issue with people's that gender identity or pronouns number 10, any cuss word can be better by adding on E R Y fuckery.   Bullshittery all sorts of shit. Like. Yeah, yeah. Country. Oh yeah. That's good too. Yeah. Dickery wankery. Yeah, just keep trying at T just do it. My husband thinks I am whack as fuck, but I tell him that some Whakarae to accuse me of that. Number 11, finding a physical activity that doesn't hurt and is at least somewhat fun.   Can like exercise a little less annoying. I am not saying you might enjoy it. I don't fully enjoy exercising, but when I find things that I actually. Like find a little fun and they don't make me feel like, I mean, they might make me feel in pain in the sense that I worked out, but not like causing me joint pain or like problems with my kidneys or whatever, finding something that does it suck ass for me.   And doesn't like actively make me hurt. It does have. Now, I'm not going to say that exercise is never going to be a, not annoying for me. Right? Like I'm not somebody who probably will ever love exercise, but I have found exercise that I can do on a somewhat regular basis because it met those qualifications number 12.   And I'm saying this with my own personal experience on both ends of the spectrum, ex smokers are probably the most judgy people at current smokers. It's, I don't understand it. If your next smoker, you know how hard it was to quit, like give him a fucking break. Jesus. And I used to be that judgy. I'm not that judge yet.   Number 14 toddler feet look like little pork chops with toes. If you know a toddler or like a nine month old baby in your life, look at their feet. Pork chops with toes. Swear to God. It's, you know, they're getting older when the pork chop with till phenomenon goes away. Yeah. That's, that's a sad moment.   Number 15 speaking of babies, don't spend hella money on cute baby clothes. Whether you are somebody who is pregnant, somebody who is adopting somebody, who's going to become a parent for the first time of a baby shaped child, somebody who is giving gifts to somebody else who is going to become a parent.   Don't spend hella money on cute baby clothes. They're going to grow out of them before they ever come close to being worn out or even worn at all. They're going to puke all over them. Who explosions at the back of their diaper, just spend money on bulk  bulk little sleepers, things that they can wear that are inexpensive, and that you can just throw a bunch of them in the washer because these babies go through way more clothes in terms of growing fast.   And in terms of grossing them out, like babies can be changed multiple times a day when they're little purely because of how nasty they are. If you spend hella money on cute baby clothes, you're doing it for the fucking gram. Even if you don't know that you're doing it for the. There's other things to spend money on for babies like diapers seriously.   And I guess to complete this little trifecta of baby related things, although to be fair, I can't remember. I might have more pop up later, regardless. Number 16, never for the love of all that's holy assume someone is pregnant and say something about it ever. I don't care if the baby is coming out of.   Don't fucking say anything until they say something first, because it fucking sucks to be asked when you're do, when you've just given birth three days ago, and you still look six months pregnant because that's the thing nobody warns you about. Or when you have polycystic kidney disease and you look fucking pregnant, but what you're pregnant with is diseased ass fucking kidneys, or maybe somebody who just happens to have a belly and isn't trying to get pregnant or somebody who happens to have a.   Is trying to get pregnant and having trouble with it. Just don't do it. Don't do it. I don't understand why people think that's a good idea. And as a bonus for this one also don't touch people's pregnant bellies without permission. And I'm hoping that this has died off because of COVID. But if it hasn't, oh my God fucking don't touch someone unless they let you touch them.   They give you permission. Oh my God. Sorry. Number 17. If your vacuum is not sucking well, but heal and you live with any sort of long-haired people or pets, check the brush to see how much of a furball has grown there. I swear, I am logging. Everyone in our house is lawn care. The only people that aren't long haired are the pets.   They're not people, you know what I mean? And Lucy's getting super plush because of the winter. And yet I still get like question mark Pekichu face when I try to vacuum. And the vacuum is not sucking as much as it should. And then Jesse will flip it over and get his razor blade out and cut the giant furball off of it just as.   That's probably the first thing you should check. There may be problems with the vacuum, but there's always a chance that a giant fucking Tribble has grown inside of your vacuum cleaner. It needs to be removed, and I'm not going to do the removing because it grosses me out to touch it. But Jesse does.   Thankfully communication is the key to any successful relationship. Number 18 salt, your pasta water. One pinch is not enough salt. You want to add quite a bit of salt to really add the flavor to the pasta. I'm going to caveat this with, I'm supposed to start reducing the amount of salt I'm cooking with.   So this pains me to say, but it actually is true. Like salting your pasta water really does help number 19, and this may be a personal opinion, but I don't think I've met anybody in recent years who disagrees with me? Red apples, red delicious apples are the worst apples. I don't understand the point of red delicious apples besides being nasty.   And on that note, number 20. Swiss cheese is the red apple of cheese. Fight me on that. Number 21. Earplugs can be a godsend. If you sleep with somebody who snores, just get this mushy ones. If you have the harder ones, they're uncomfortable. I swear your ears will not envelop this mushy ones. This mushy ones can be comfortable and they also can just save your sanity.   If you were having trouble sleep. Also, if you're happy, if you sleep with somebody who snores have no problems, shaking them and waking them up to get them to change their position often that'll help too. But earplugs man, they help. Number 22, grease two is the superior grease. End of story. I can go on an entire podcast about this, but I'm not going to right now.   Number 23, the sniff method of checking on. Yeah, it can be necessary. Right. But it is always risky. Know what risks you're taking when you do the sniff test of laundry, especially, especially if it is not your laundry. And it is the laundry of your 15 year old son, number 24. If you have gas, I'm not taking my car gas and talking about, you know, the gas that makes you go fart in your stomach area, in your abdomen.   And it's not moving. Get on your hands and knees and stick your butt up in the air. You may look ridiculous. And if you do this in front of teenagers, they will laugh at you, but it will help the farts move. I promise you. It also helps us sciatica 25 and I have not tested this. So this is allegedly, but the internet did tell me that if you have the hiccups, you can stop them by sticking a finger up your ass.   I have not tested this to be clear, I have done the eat a spoonful of sugar, and that is sometimes helped, but apparently sticking your finger up your ass can help with the hiccups. If this has ever worked for you. Let me know. I promise to keep you anonymous. This number 26. When someone asks you, if you want to see something.   Think long and hard about your answer before you open your mouth, don't do what I've done and say. Sure. And then regret it instantly. Number 27. If you are a person who menstruates always, always carry something with you, because even if you don't need it, someone else might, and you could totally do them a solid.   Number 28. If you have a headache, drink some water, it might help the headache. You might be dehydrated. And if not getting more hydrated is always a good thing, but drink some water. Number 29 when it comes to kiddies, the belly is always a trap, unless it isn't. But I would suggest to err, on the side of the belly being a trap, number 30 ask before hugging someone.   Don't just hug them. But number 31, if they do say you can hug them, make sure to hug them. Like you mean it don't give them any like namby, pamby hugs, give them like a good solid hug. It, you could make their day. Number 32. You will never change someone to be what you want them to be. And you should never change who you are to be someone that someone else wants you to be.   It's. So don't try embrace people for who they are or move on. Number 33, no one likes being evangelized at regardless of what the subject is. I I'm aware that this might feel like an evangelizing podcast for things that I've learned in 42 years, but let's be realistic. Nobody wants to be evangelized to nobody.   It fucking sucks, dude. Don't do that. Number 34 online fandom online fan communities can be both amazing. Awful. That can be both. They can be both sides of the coin and sometimes they can change from one to the other, in the blink of an eye. I've seen that recently. And it's just something to be aware of.   You might have a community that is beloved to you, an online fan community. And one thing, one piece of media, one comment, one, something can fuck the whole thing up and it's sad and it sucks. But unfortunately that seems to be the life cycle of online. Number 35. And this is something that has become much more present in my life since moving to Denver, but nothing beats a good non-greasy hella hardcore hand cream, number 36, let people like what they like, unless of course what they like is actively harmful.   But generally speaking, just let people like things. Don't tell them why, what they like sucks. Number 36. White Zinfandel over ice during the summer is classy as fuck. And I will not hear otherwise. Number 38, if you're going to take a nap don't nap for too long, because it usually doesn't end out well, like usually feel like crap afterwards.   Number 39. Reading for pleasure is just that don't judge people's non-harmful reading choices. Let them take pleasure in what works for them. They don't have to read a certain kind of literature, a certain kind of book, a certain kind of non non-fiction book. I've seen people say that reading fiction. For losers.   I've seen people say that reading, why is for losers? No, just let people read what they like. If they're reading for pleasure and good for them. If they'll listen to audio books, because that's what they prefer, then good for them. And if they actually don't like to read and they prefer to consume their storytelling or their information in a different way than good for them to my God, I guess this goes back to let people like what they like number 40 Play-Doh does not taste as good as it smells.   Number 41, Bri tastes way better than it smells. Uh, number 42, the last one on this list. And in my mind, probably the most important one. Tell the people that you love, that you love them often. You never know when you might not get that chance. Again, I'm going to repeat that one. Tell the people that you love, that you love them as often as you can, because you do not know when you won't be able to anymore.   That's actually something I learned 20 some odd years ago, but it continually replays out in my life. So I had to add that one and make you all sad. But I'd love to know from you in the comments, any of these surprise you did any of the do disagree with any of these. Let me know. You can tag me at Lama letters on Instagram stories and let me know.   I'd love to find out in the meantime though, a thank you for being here on my birthday. It's my birthday. B, thanks to my patrons for sponsoring this episode and everything else I do. You can check them out at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more. And finally you rock. Thanks for being here with me.   And I look forward to having some more turns around the sun with you. Peace out friends.

I'm continuing my personality test journey (with a healthy amount of skepticism) with the Color Code Personality Test! DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED Color Code Test - https://www.colorcode.com/ Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hello everybody. It is the uncurated life podcast. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. And today we are continuing my series on personality tests, especially from my point of view, as somebody who's kind of cynical and skeptical about personality tests. Although the last one, which was the Myers-Briggs test, kind of shocked me a little bit.   But we're moving on to a fun one today. One that's been requested. It's the colors, personality test. Now I find a few different versions of this online, but decided to go with the one that looked the quote most accurate, which is the color code test, which whew are you personality test. So allegedly it identifies both what you do and why.   And it separates you into four colors and this is pulled directly from the website. Reds need to look good, technically be right, and be respected. They are strong leaders and love challenges. Blues need to have integrity and be appreciated. They are focused on quality and creating strong relationships.   Whites need to be accepted and treated with kindness. They are logical objective and tolerant of others. Yellows need to be noticed and have fun. They love life, social connection and being positive and spontaneous. So that's basically the information here. Um, I don't have a lot of background information.   Like I said, it's sort of all over the place, but it is something like much like a lot of the other personality tests. They have stuff on the website saying, well, you could use this to build a better business or to build a better team or whatever, but I basically just want to take it and find out what they have to say.   So I'm at the website, www.colorcode.com. And I'm heading right over to the tab that says personality test. So when you get there, you have two options. There's the basic analysis, which is a quick and free way to sample the color code personality or. You can do the full analysis, which is a completely customized result, which is designed to fully analyze your personality.   Now I'm going to pay for it because I, uh, science, I guess I've been paying for the more advanced versions of all of these. And I don't know if I'm wasting money or not, but I'm going to write it off on my taxes. So there you go. This should give me a good report as well as a lot of personnel development shit, which I've gotten from the other ones too.   I'm not really worried about that. So I'm going to start taking my test and I will report back as soon as I'm done. All right. I'm done with the test. It's actually a very quick test and the questions are all, there's a series of like, you pick a word and then you, there's some statements you pick and it's all having to do with how you were as a child.   So I think that in and of itself, that to me makes me wonder how accurate this can be, because it's based on your own memory of being a kid. And I'm almost 42. So that was a while ago. Right. But let's, let's go and let's look at my results and it's. Fucking in depth personality test report on me. So let's go first and foremost to my main color.   Cause it gives you a main color in this report and a secondary color. And my main color, which is overall it's 64% is red. And then my secondary color is blue at 24%. And then the other two white and yellow are eight and 3%. So very much a red with a secondary blue. So let's go and read what it says about me as a red.   It says, congratulations, Cindy, your core color of red means you have the driving core motive of power.   This, this is a red, you need to look good technically to those whose opinions matter, your intellectual prowess is often admired and emulated. You're a born leader. You seek act action and are highly productive. You can be highly critical of those who, uh, dissatisfy your expectations. I agree with a lot of that.   You need to be right. Yes. And this, I think goes back to when I was a kid, I would say one of my main characteristics and my sisters will agree with this. I was, I was pretty bossy, bossy and impatient. And I know that there is some level of like patriarchy when it comes to telling little girls that they're bossy, but like, I was bossy.   Like I, I still kind of am actually. Anyway, it says that reds need approval in a way that is different from the other colors, yellows want approval from everyone around them, but it only matters to reds when it comes from people who are important to you, people who you respect. So I don't necessarily need approval from people.   I don't give a shit about. Tracks with me, it also says is a red that I can lack or have struggles with intimacy, like building intimate relationships, which is entirely true for me. So who knows, maybe I am a red let's look at my secondary color. So it says here that I have a blue, secondary color. There are advantages and disadvantages to that.   The major advantage is that people with a strong secondary color can naturally work to develop the positive traits of that color. In your case, Cindy, you should pursue the development of the strengths of the blue secondary color as they will make you even more effective as a person. The disadvantage of possessing a blue secondary color is that it challenges the aspects of your red core.   You may send mixed signals, which also tracks. One moment you'll act red. The other you'll act blue. This behavior can confuse people and make it difficult for them to know how you will react to any given situation. In other words, you may appear to be more inconsistent than would appear as somebody without a strong secondary color.   As a core red with secondary blue, there will never be a dull moment in your life. You possess one of the most complex personalities of all the color combinations. You face an intense internal struggle and often give mixed messages to those. With whom you interact, you can. Someone for making a mistake one minute, then feel guilty and offered to treat him or her to lunch.   The next you move forcefully through life, creating action and impacting others as you go. But when you feel those impacts might've been negative, your secondary blue personality leaves, you feeling very deep, remorse and guilt. Oh my God. Okay. That makes me feel called out. There was a day, the other day where cat really wanted to make whipped cream with the heavy whipping cream that we had in the fridge, like in the.   And I was like, no, I'm gonna use this for dinner and Catholic, but mom, we can always get more. You're not making it tonight. And I'm like, yeah, I want it now. Don't and I got super mad and then realized how ridiculous I was being and apologized and let Kat make the whipped cream. But like everybody in the house was looking at me like Cindy, you're fucking like all over the place.   And apparently this agrees with that. Now there's another section here in the paid for version where it gives you red needs, red wants than blue needs and blue wants. And what it suggests is that I circle the top two or three that are the most critical to. So let's take a look for red needs to be right, to be respected, to hide insecurities tightly, and to look good intellectually.   I would say that if I'm being real honest with myself, the most important ones to me are to be right. The most on that list to be right. And maybe till it good intellectually, if I'm being real honest, uh, for red wants reds, want to receive selective approval to please yourself, to lead others and to experience challenging adventure.   I would say from that list, if I was going to pick two, I would say to receive selective approval and to lead others now for the blue needs, they are to be good, morally, to be appreciated, to be understood and to receive acceptance. And I would say easily looking at that list that my top two needs there would be to be good morally, and to be appreciated.   And then for blue wants to reveal insecurities to enjoy security, to be autonomous and to please others. And from that list, I can again, easily pick two, and that would be to enjoy security and to be autonomous, no, here is a. Situation that, um, where it's based on some of the stuff you picked off of the test.   And so it tells you your strengths and limitations. So my red strengths are I'm motivated, pragmatic, productive, proactive, decisive, assertive action oriented, determined a leader and focused. My blue strengths are that I'm quality oriented and deliberate. My white strengths are that I'm self-regulated and inventive.   And my yellow strength is that I'm a creative thinker. My red limitations are that I'm selfish tactless, always right. Bossy and demanding. My sisters would be like, yup. And my blue limitations or that I can be judgmental. Self-righteous a perfectionist worry prone, overly sensitive, low self-esteem and unrealistic expectations.   My white limitations can be that I'm can be an indirect communicator. And my yellow limitations are that I can be naive and obnoxious again, all of this fields, but these were all things I picked. So it's not like they wouldn't feel right to me. Now there's one little section here that I want to touch on before.   I end this and that is there's a section towards the end that tells you about development tasks to consider as. And then they've got them for work personal and love. And I'm going to look in on the personal, because that's kind of my focus for this next year is to help bring my personal life back into like focus in my entire life as a whole.   So I'm going to look at these ones and I'm going to see what I can take away from them. It says here, I need to start enjoying living in the most. Yes. Being more introspective in how you impact friends and family. That's something I've been working on for a long time. I'll be real with you. Inviting people who live life differently into your life.   That would be kind of hard for me, but yeah. Um, I need to stop making all the decisions about how your friends should live your bare life. That one I actually don't think I do, but it's mostly because I've been really kind of persona. Non existence in my friends lives in recent years, but I have done that before.   Uh, stop being so rigid about completing tasks on your days off Jesus. Yes. And stop getting mad at your family when they disrupt your focus. Aha. Yes. My kids will be like cheering in the background, um, and then continue juggling a variety of interests in your life, which you do so well. I appreciate you think that personality test, but I'm not really feeling that way right now.   Sharing your gifts of vision with the community and challenging the status quo. So, yeah, I'm down for that. I'm down to do some of those things. So what do I think about this test? Well, like I think that it's, I think that it's been fairly accurate, but I also don't know exactly how. How much insight it can give when there really was only probably about 50 questions total, and they all had to do with how you felt you were as a kid, which again, the further you are away from being a kid, it feels like the, the less you remember, but it was an interesting little thing.   And I guess it'll be really interesting when I get to the end of this series and I start comparing all of these results against each other. Well, anyway, it was a fun test take. I can imagine you want to get all this information, but it could be real interesting to look at by just doing the free version.   So I'll leave it linked in the show notes in case you want to take it and share your results with me over on Instagram, tag me at Lama letters and your stories. I'd also love any suggestions on personalities to take in the future personality tests. I've got a few of them on my list currently that I haven't done yet.   Um, Clifton strengths actually is the only one I have. At the moment. So I would love some more suggestions for personality type tests. They don't have to be scientific. They can be fucking bunk as shit. Maybe even a Buzzfeed test. I don't know. Let me know in the comments around the comments, this is a fucking podcast.   Let me know, uh, over on Instagram at Lama letters, or you can let me know, um, from my emails, whatever you want to do anyway, in the meantime, Thank my patrons. They make this episode possible. They make all my episodes possible and you can talk to them over at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo. In the meantime, my friends, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week, and I cannot wait to talk to you next time.   Thanks and peace out.  

It's January, the biggest month of the year for diets… or is it “wellness” now? DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED Good Housekeeping Article - https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a35036808/what-is-diet-culture/ Maintenance Phase - http://maintenancephase.com/ Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast. Before I even get into this episode, I wanted to give you a bit of a trigger warning for anybody who struggles with, talk about weight. Talk about dieting, talk about exercise, talk about disordered eating and all of that. I will be talking about my thoughts on how wellness and dieting seem to be.   Kind of interchanged with each other right now, is this all my own thoughts and my own experiences, but I know that for some people, this can be a conversation that can be really hard for them. So I'm just letting you know, upfront that if you need to skip this episode, no hard feelings. Totally understand.   But I wanted to say that upfront because I love you. Let's get going. Not that this is your first time here. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo this is kind of a heavy one to get started on, but it also kind of gives you an idea of sort of the, the different ways that this podcast kind of takes shape. I love to talk about how we live our lives on the internet.   And for me, that can show up in some sassy molassey and that can also show up in some kind of heavier conversations. And today's definitely going to be on the heavier side, but it is something that has been weighing on me quite a bit. Recently, no pun intended. And that is, is wellness. The new diet.   Imagine. Wellness and diet, both being in quotes. Now I had already had this thought and I will kind of talk about that a little bit in a hot minute here, but if you don't already listen to it, maintenance phase is a fantastic podcast where they dissect a lot of things around diet, culture and wellness culture, and it's fascinating.   And it has helped me really unpack some of the stuff that I have had ingrained in me for a long ass time. And. I think that if you haven't listened to it, I'll make sure to link it in the show notes. There talk about wellness and diet has been really instrumental for me in solidifying some of the thoughts I was already having.   Although I will also say that I don't have very solid thoughts on this. This is more of a stream of consciousness conversation that brings in my experiences and my thoughts on the subject. And this will be an ongoing conversation, I think, cause it's fascinating to me lately, especially as it pertains to myself, my body image.   And how some of those things can impact my kids. So I guess a good place to start is my history with dieting. I'm 42 years old. Well, I'm almost 42. I keep saying I'm 42, but I haven't quite turned 42 yet, but I'm getting there. I grew up in the eighties in the nineties. Dieting was everywhere, but it wasn't really something that was impressed upon me, partly because I grew.   In a fairly poor household. And there wasn't really any conversation about dieting because the conversation was often about. W what kind of food we were going to have for dinner? Like where are we going to have to go get the free government food? Or where are we going to have to get something on clearance at the grocery store that my mom was going to have to make stretch?   It, it wasn't like a, it wasn't a real conversation in our house. If my mom was into diet culture. Honestly, I don't remember it now. My sisters could totally contradict me on this. I also was a very self-absorbed teenager, especially, but I don't remember my mom being super into, into diet culture for one.   My mom, as a profession was a cook. She did was a kitchen manager at a restaurant at the cafeteria. She worked in various kitchens throughout her life and loved to cook. Unfortunately, when it came to our meals, she was burned out on cooking for the most part, and also trying to stretch a very, very meager budget when it came to our food.   But she wasn't afraid of. On top of that, my mom was a bigger lady. She was not skinny by any stretch of the means. She was a much a bigger person, but she seemed to have quite a bit, at least again, from my memory of a fairly good body image of herself, partly because my dad thought that she was just absolutely gorgeous and.   They may have fought like cats and dogs, but they also were high school sweethearts and super into each other. And so, again, from my perspective, I'm not speaking for my mom and my mom has passed away. So she can't really speak for herself anymore. But from what I remember observing. I didn't get a lot of my issues with food from my mom's specifically when I was in high school, I did have body image issues, but most of my body image issues were surrounded by the fact that I was six, two.   I grew a foot and a half in a year. And when you AE are super tall female and be. It's like the mid nineties and they haven't really started selling like long sizes and a lot of the super discount stores, which is all we could afford to shop at. I wound up having to do things like wear men's jeans because they were the only ones that weren't high waters on me.   So most of my body image issues that I remember were surrounded by, um, how tall I was not my weight. I honestly don't really remember being super. Annoyed by my weight in high school, what I will say. And again, this can go back to my self absorbed. Anise is that both of my sisters tended towards my mom's body shapes.   They were both are both larger than me. And maybe part of me was like, oh, well, I don't have to worry about that. Cause I'm skinnier than them, which is a shitty thing to say, but. I can totally see myself sort of internalizing that. I just don't remember any real issues that I had with body image that wasn't around, both my height and the fact that I have never been able to give my hair.   Like I didn't even know. Straight irons were like flat irons were a thing. I just thought people had naturally smooth hair and my shitty hair and my shitty teeth were just because I was poor. I found out later. Yeah, that is part of it because I couldn't afford the things to make them fancy, but it wasn't that fancy people, rich people just happen to be more fancy know they can afford the ways to be more fancy suffice it to say, I didn't start struggling with weight until I got.   It really started when I was in my first marriage. And some of it came from comments that my ex-husband made, that had to do with his standards for beauty. And they weren't about me being. Overweight. They were about me having smaller boobs basically. And I internalized a lot of that. I don't think he really knew when he told me those things, that that was going to impact me for years to come.   I think for him, he was just making an offhanded comment, but. For me, they did impact me for a long time. And the, and again, this goes back to a lot of what I've been thinking about lately, which is it's very easy for us to make offhanded comments. About ourselves, about other people that we don't think are a big deal, but there may be people overhearing what we're saying or that we're saying them to, whether it's our kids, whether it's other people in our lives, whatever the case may be.   And so what to us, does it seem a big deal because we've already internalized it or it just doesn't seem like a big deal to us. It could be really awful for somebody else. And that's just been something that I've been grappling with lately. Again, that particular comment did not make me really worry about my weight.   The worrying about my weight began when I was pregnant and it wasn't even when I was pregnant, my first pregnancy with cat, I went 41 weeks. I gained 70 pounds and when I had cat, cat was a little under 10 pounds. I was having a lot of trouble dropping the weight at first. And I wanted to, I wanted to just get back to my normal and believe me, my normal has Al was always at the time, like 180 pounds.   Again, I'm six, two. I wasn't ever expecting to be super, super skinny or anything. I just didn't want to be where I was at the time. So I went on weight Watchers for the first time. And this first round of WeightWatchers that I was on was successful for me. I wound up losing the majority of that weight and feeling really good about it.   I wasn't exercising all that much cause exercise and I have never been good friends with each other, but I was like just really counting calories and restricting the food I was eating and it worked. And then I got pregnant again. And this time with RJ. Because of various circumstances, which I can totally go into in another video.   A lot of it was my fault. Uh, we wound up, I wasn't working and we wound up having a lot of trouble, like with money in general, in the early days of my pregnancy with RJ, I wound up going without food for a week because I was so worried that we wouldn't have enough money for food and for gas to get me to the job I was going to.   And I ended up blacking out at my training. So. Suffice it to say that even when I started working again, I did not have either the time because I had a toddler or the disposable income to indulge all of my cravings. When I was pregnant with cat dude, I was all about the Wienerschnitzel, corn dogs and shit, or chili dogs, and shit like that.   But with RJ, I only gained 20 pounds. And then on top of that, he was almost 11 pounds when he was born. So that to me felt like, like triumphant, but I did again, try to go on weight Watchers to lose the weight a second time. And this time I struggled with it. However, I discovered that there was another way that one could lose weight.   Enter the time in my life. When I was below my goal weight, I was the skinniest I had ever been in my life. Not only that people were telling me how good I looked, I was also the most miserable I had ever been in my life. It was when things were really bad between my ex-husband and I, and I was a manager at trader Joe's and I was working 50 plus hours a week on a schedule where I barely saw my.   It was chain smoking. I was only eating basically goldfish, crackers and drinking. Coca-Cola. That was it. That was basically my life now. No, at this point, I didn't know I had polycystic kidney disease, but my blood pressure, it was only just then starting to skyrocket. Amazing. I can't imagine why. Right. But like, you could see my hips and I felt really, really like, like, like Zoolander would say really, really good looking, but I was utterly miserable.   This is a very self-destructive period of my life. I was drinking too much. All sorts of shit happened again. I might go into this more and more detail one day, but that's not the subject of this podcast.   The best weight I'd ever been in my life was the most unhealthy I'd ever been in my life. And yet I was still proud of myself for being that weight. And for a long time afterwards, once I had gotten out of that marriage, once Jesse and I had started dating and then living together and I put on like the happy, the happy weight, the weight that comes when one stops, one, quit smoking for one and is not like completely and utterly lost.   Depressed and just fucked up for that whole time. Yeah, I put on the weight, but I would keep idealizing this ideal of myself when I was a super skinny, but also really unhealthy. This was the first time it began to occur to me, but not in the front of my mind, in the back of my mind that it's not about how much you weigh when it comes to how healthy you are.   That doesn't mean that there can't be health problems that come with being. In the upper limits of weight and there's things that come with being in the lower ends of the weight spectrum or whatever. I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is that how much someone weighs is not necessarily an indicator of their health.   There are other indicators that are much more obvious making assumptions about someone's health based on their weight is foolish because that doesn't tell you anything. But at the time, I didn't quite think about that.   Now I was never a diet cycler, but in the years after I got together with Jess, I put back on weight because I had quit smoking cold Turkey right before we moved in together. And then. Generally speaking, I was much happier. So I was not like subsiding on crackers and soda anymore. There were times when I would return to my old favorite, the weight Watchers that I did, the whole 30, my kids will make jokes about that to this day, because they were like, mom, are you fucking kidding me?   I flirted with plenty of diets, but I didn't. Um, really go down the super high protein end of things. Mostly because again, knowing that I had kidney disease, that just seemed like a bad idea at the time. However, in the time of this timeframe, I began to notice certain wording around dieting coming from my diet fat free, you know, zero points kind of WeightWatchers lifestyle.   I began to notice with some of my friends. Th their wording was different, but it felt the same very specifically. It was around things like eating, clean, eating, lean, feeling, lean, feeling light, you know? Yeah, cleansing toxins. My first real exposure to this shit started happening. It was happening to me and a group of my friends and I immediately was like, what the fuck does that even mean?   It just sounds like diet talked. Clothed differently. And I had evidence of that fairly soon. I had a friend who blacked out from not eating enough in there eating lean phase or whatever. And so I was like, okay, this, this is kind of concerning me. But again, it didn't cause me to take a look at what I was trying to do.   Like, okay, this person is saying they want to eat clean and feel light. And I'm like, I'm kind of worried about you, man. But then I turn around and I'm like, how many? Zero point snacks can I get in today? Right.   So that all leads me to the most recent years where I've really, I've really kind of changed my thought process on all of it. One of the things that changed that thought process is having polycystic kidney disease. Literally because my kidneys are massive. They make me look pregnant and has taken me a long time.   I'm talking up until recent days where I can look at myself in the mirror and not completely hate the way I look. I recognize why I look the way I look and. I am trying real hard to love my body, but I think I've at least gotten to a point where I liked my body. I don't love the way it feels a lot at the time, but I also am at a point now there's nothing like fucking chronic kidney disease to let you know that when you eat something that your body doesn't like, your body lets you know, real quickly and that's where I'm at right now.   So it's a balance of how nauseated I am. Most of the time. And how certain things that I tend to go towards when I'm nauseated might make me feel like shit. Maybe because of my medications, maybe because of my kidney function, it depends on the thing, but it's, it's helped me work my way through it. I don't recommend this.   I don't recommend chronic genetic illness as a way to help you figure out your. Your issues with diet culture, plot twist, though, as I was starting to come to terms with my body, both how it felt and how it looked. I started to also notice at the same time that all of those things that were beginning to irk me years ago with my friends about eating clean and all of that, we're starting to take over the fucking world of dieting and so on and so forth.   Thanks to things like goop and all sorts of other shit. This idea of eating clean wellness, flushing your toxins, and. People talking about flushing, their toxins is one of the things that annoys the everliving shit out of me. If you have working kidneys, that's their job and your liver's job as somebody who does not have very well working kidneys when I need, when there comes a day, when I need to flush my toxins, that's done with dialysis.   So miss me with your fucking talks and flushing. Thank you very much. Moving forward. So noticing that, that eating clean the way that instead of talking about going on a diet, now, people were talking about improving their wellness and an eating clean and restricting carbs and whatever the case may be, it's they wouldn't say restricting, they would say I'm avoiding carbs or whatever.   The language softened, it felt a lot more like Gwenyth Paltrow, the way that you would talk about things. And then. I began to notice how I was talking about food around my kids.   When I talked about being bad, when it came to eating something, when I talked about. Having a cheat day or whatever. I didn't ever notice those things. But remember what I said before about comments that you think are not innocuous impacting people harder when one of your teenagers struggles with disordered eating, especially around avoiding and restricting foods.   You begin to recognize whenever that stuff starts to come out of your mouth and that began to happen for me. And so, even though I felt like I was coming to better terms with how I saw my body, I realized that I had a lot of the training retraining to do and how I talked about shit in general, because some of those things that to me were kind of throwaway comments.   We're impacting my kid in a way that was forming their opinions of themselves so that as they went into their life, they might change how they feel about certain things. Now that's kind of where I'm at now. So that gives you sort of the beginning to the, the current state of how I am feeling like I'm more at peace with my body.   Not at peace of the fact that my body is shutting down, but at peace with what I need to do in order to feel less shit. And not worry about the rest of it. That's where I'm at right now. Like currently I need to start reducing my salt according to my nephrologist. So that's something to think about, but not because I'm worried about being fat beat because I need to reduce salt for my blood pressure sake because I have kidney disease.   So I'm comfortable with where I'm at with my body. I mean, I'd be comfortable in my body, but that is reasons beyond my control. But what I am comfortable with is how I feel about my body. And I have hard days. But they're fewer than they used to be. But right now, currently, what I am worried about is my kids, not just the one, discover this, dealing with disordered eating, but both of them and the images they're taking into the world, as well as really thinking about like the things that are so deep inside of me, that I don't even notice them.   I want to remove as many landmines as possible, both for my kids and for myself. Anyway, now that we've talked about that, I want to talk about a few things that, that, um, are kind of at the forefront of my brain when it comes to this whole idea of wellness versus diet and how they're both just basically insidious.   One thing for me is the obsession with food. And this is something that my kid is working on, right. This obsession with eating the right foods. Which is now it's like, let's eat the clean foods. Let's eat the non, the non-toxic foods, whatever used to be let's eat the fat free foods or the no points foods or the no carbs foods or the low carbs foods or whatever the language has changed.   It used to be like, they would say like fat free or low fat or whatever, but now it's about eating clean. I keep coming back to that, but that's like eating clean and wellness are like fucking two sides of the same goddamn. I'm not saying eating less processed foods is terrible. It's a, it's fine. It's a good thing.   But when you start assigning morality to your food, that's when we start heading into trouble territory. Assigning some foods as good. And some foods is bad. Some foods as naughty in some foods is nice. Some foods is clean and some foods is dirty. That's assigning moral judgements to food that doesn't fucking exist.   It's just food. And believe me, when I say it is just a first world problem too, because if you think about it, If you really wanted to improve, people's eating. If you really wanted to improve public health, if you really wanted to improve all of these things, if it wasn't about beauty standards, if it was about real overall health that we would be working on things like bringing accessible food to food deserts.   Stopping equating obesity with health problems because really the health problems need to be addressed. The obesity is not the health problem. You can address it. If there's an issue that's causing like joint pain or whatever, but if you have health problems, doctors need to look at that first. And having access to things like open space, places for people to walk easily accessible things for people to do where they can move their body and making it so that moving your butt, like getting people, the clue that you just want to find a way to move your body, that you like, you don't have to punish yourself.   Exercise. Shouldn't be punishment. I'm getting on a tangent tangent here, tirade. I'm very sorry about that. I'm actually not very sorry about that, hashtag, sorry, not sorry. I will say that aside from my own management of changing my language around food and exercise and trying to remove the morality from food, the other things that really, really piss me off are a, the way that people make assumptions about.   Based on body size and that's gonna be an entirely different podcast. I can tell you from my own experience and from experience of my family members, the differences in ways one might get treated at the doctor's office based on how big you are, right? The way that you can't necessarily be diagnosed with an eating disorder.   If you aren't at a certain BMI, which excludes everybody, who's not at a super low BMI who also has disordered eating. And then of course, there's my anger at companies selling us. Now it's wellness culture used to be diet culture. Now it's wellness culture companies sell it to us because the way you sell something to someone, as you identify the problem, and then you sell them a way to fix it.   And so for company and wellness, dieting, all, that's a huge Indian. And so companies can make more money if they're selling a solutions to why we're fat solutions, to why we're unhealthy solutions, to help us with our wellness, as opposed to actually addressing the systemic things, donating money, or doing all the things advocating for government help for the.   Actually will cause society as a better as a whole to be more well, we're selling us this thing that makes us feel like, well, if we do this and we eat clean and we remove all of our toxins and blah-blah-blah, then, then we might get closer to Gwyneth Paltrow. You know, I don't know. This is a big rant. You guys, I don't even think this is as organized as I wanted it to be, but we go back to my central thesis.   Right? Is wellness the new diet? Yes. Yes, it is. I think that it feels like, and I got this from wellness, from wellness, from maintenance phase, they said something like, sometimes it feels like you just take a bunch of papers about, or like advertisements about diet and control F and replace all of the diet with wellness.   And there you go. It's the same fucking shit. And I'm not saying taking care of yourself, self care, that sort of thing is not important. But what I am saying is that companies. And gurus and people trying to make money off of us capitalism if they take diet, which is an extremely, extremely lucrative industry.   But it's starting to get a bad rap because dieting does not sound like the business in 2022. If they repackage it as wellness, suddenly people are willing to buy it again. I'm trying to be more discerning about that. And my hope is that if you struggle with this, that this might help you get a little bit of clarity towards being more discerning about it.   And I know this was ramble-y, this was all over the place, but I needed to get some of this off my chest. I will be re-exploring this topic more in upcoming days or upcoming months, whatever. But in the meantime, what I would love to know if you understood or agreed with any of this, let me know in Instagram stories, tag me at @llamaletters so I can see it share this podcast.   If that's interesting to you, I just I'd really like to know your thoughts anyway. Thanks to my patrons for sponsoring this episode. That's what they always do and the rad, and you can check it out at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more. Thank you so much for listening until next time, my friends peace out.

It's been another long, tiring year for me with lots of changes and challenges. In order to really pump myself up, I decided to take some time to really think about what I'm looking forward to in the next year. DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED Previous Episode - https://uncuratedlife.libsyn.com/131-shit-im-excited-about-fall-21 Vlogmas Giveaway Schedule - https://cindyguentertbaldo.com/?p=7177 Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Well, hello friends, welcome back to the uncurated life podcast. I thought that as we are cruising into December of 2022, that it would be a good time to really think about some things I'm looking forward to in the new year. I already did an episode like this a few months ago, and there may be some repeat things, partly because some of them haven't happened yet.   Well, mostly because some of them haven't happened yet, but I will link it in the comments. If you haven't heard. Yet. So this is going to be fairly lighthearted, but I do want to just kind of think about some of the things I'm looking forward to in the next year. Some where I have some high expectations and somewhere I have some low expectations, mostly because I think that it helps keep me feeling.   At least somewhat hopeful, even when I am in the middle of some pretty intense stuff, family and personal wise right now. So it's, this is an exercise for me to kind of keep my head, right. I'm not into the whole manifesting shit. I'm not into all of that. But what I do really like to think about is. Just reminding myself that there is stuff that I can be hopeful about, even when a lot of other shit in my life feels pretty rough at the moment.   Before I jump into these things, though, my name is Cindy Guentert Baldo. If this is your first time here, I'm glad you're here. And if this is not your first time here, thanks for coming back. And I did. To remind you that if you are not following me on Instagram at Lama letters or over on my YouTube channel and all these things are linked below, I have started my Vlogmas giveaways, where I am trying to get a shit ton of planners.   I've been reviewing out of my house and I will be rotating between Instagram and the YouTube community tab, running these on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays for a 24 hours. Each it's open internationally. All of those good things. The schedule will also be linked. So if that's something that you're into, if you want a free planner go and check them out, let's get into the things that I am looking forward to in 2022.   And first of all, because this is me, we're talking about, we have to talk about media and I guess one of the things I want to say before I jumped into it, cause I'm pretty sure I've mentioned at least one of these things in the previous episode, but one of the things, or two of the things I think. Maybe three of the things I mentioned in the last things I'm looking forward to, I have seen already, and I was extremely happy with all of them.   If you're interested in like actual reviews of things, let me know, tell me on Instagram, tag me in your stories, because I don't know if that's something you want from me, but at the very least I'll give you a high level. Look at those three. And that was Halloween kills, which I know some people. Like it was polarizing.   I enjoyed it. I felt like it was a solid entry. I I'm a big fan of the Halloween series. I enjoyed the Easter eggs and I enjoyed the brutality of it because apparently that's what I like in horror movies. I liked it. I can see the complaints people have with. Dune was outstanding. And I am so glad that they were able to Greenlight the second one, because that would have sucked so many balls socks, if they did not Greenlight that.   And currently we are in the middle of the wheel of time series. And again, for some book fans, it's a little polarizing because they've had to make changes, but I am of the opinion that it's an adaptation. They have to change things to make it translate for the show. And every episode for me is consecutively getting better and better.   And the casting is outstanding and the show is beautiful and I am loving it and I am just excited to keep watching it. And the thing I love the most is that my kids are super into it with me. It's something I have loved since I was their age. And so being able to watch it with them is amazing. And even Jesse is on board for it.   Good times, but those were the things that I was looking forward to media wise, the things I am looking forward to next year. And I think I've said, I've already mentioned some of them TV shows, uh, discovery of witches, which is coming out in January. It's the final season. They've done three seasons to adapt the three books.   And I have really enjoyed it. Several of you were the ones who got me into the books this last year to begin with. And then I went and I bought the shows on Amazon because I don't have the cable where I could stream it. I'm ready to watch the new season. I'm still here for it. You guys, so here for it, Matthew Good is a hot hot man.   And I just really enjoy the way they've been adapting it. And I'm excited to see how they bring it to a close. The other thing I'm looking forward to is how some of the dragon. Now I know some people are like you, but the last season of game of Thrones, well, Aside from the fact that, um, unlike game of Thrones, how so the dragon story is done, you can pick it up yourself.   It's the first volume of fire and blood. And I honestly would rather he finish the second volume of fire and blood that finished the series at this point, if he was only going to finish one thing, cause I loved it as somebody who likes reading history, like I'm nerd like that house of the dragon, which is basically a history book of the reign of the target.   Good times. And I am looking forward to the show. I think the casting so far has been outstanding. They're going to be having like 17 different dragons in the show. They all have different personalities. I'm looking forward to it and I've heard rumor, nothing confirmed that it will probably come out sometime in like April to June of 2022.   And I'm here for it. Not going to lie. Movie wise, uh, some of these, it should be no surprise to you. For example, Halloween ends the final of this trilogy that they're doing with Jamie Lee, Curtis and Daniel Gordon green, and all them looking forward to that, uh, screamed five is supposed to be coming out in January.   Okay. I remember hearing that like the original three from the first group of movies, you know, Courtney Cox and, uh, David Arquette and nev Campbell, weren't going to come back because west Craven has gone without there being a really good reason. And apparently the people who are making it are like huge fans of the original movies.   They really want to honor west Craven by making it there's a great cast, including what's his face from the boys. Uh, the one who plays huge. He's supposed to be in it. There's it just, I have enjoyed all of the screen movies to varying degrees. I was again, 16 when the first one came out. So it's very much in my wheelhouse of like self reverence, referential, horror film.   So I'm down to see it in the theater. Probably not, not with the new variant, but I will stream it wherever streaming is available. Assuming I have it. Uh, then there is on the horror movie list also. Which is Jordan peals. New movie has Daniel Kalua in it. And Steven Yuen from the walking dead. And, oh, I don't remember who else, but it has a great cast already.   There isn't a lot out there about it yet, but I thought that both us and, um, get out were outstanding, outstanding horror films. And I am I'm, I'm perfectly willing and ready and able, and my body is ready to watch any horror movie. Jordan Peele decides to be. And then on a non horror note, the SQL to enchanted is supposed to be coming out this next year disenchanted and it has the cast back and I loved and chanted.   It was the first movie cat saw in the theater. And I, I loved that. They were able to send up the princess movie tropes. While still being a good PR like, like scream, scream was excellent at both lampooning horror films while also being a really good horror film in chanted did a great job at lampooning Disney princess movies will also be in a really good Disney princess movie.   So. I would love to see that. And then, uh, the new Batman movie with team Edward, Robert Pattinson in it, I am very interested in it. I love Batman movies. I really enjoy them on all sorts of levels. Even George Clooney, nipple suit, even Ben Affleck actually thought Ben Affleck was not terrible. I thought he was very good, like older dark Knight returns, kind of comic book.   If you've read the dark Knight returns comic series. Frank Miller. I think he embodied that older world, weary Batman, and I'm excited to see Robert Pattinson's Batman, which is supposed to be sort of in between the origins of Batman, like Batman begins. And then the later Batman of like the dark Knight rises, it's supposed to be like Batman in his first year of Batman and where he still hasn't quite figured it out yet.   I think it's interesting. I would love to see it and yeah. Um, I'm team Edward for Batman. That's all I'm going to say about that. And I'm not actually a big fan of the Twilight series. I just like saying that I probably shouldn't have even had to tell you that anyway, now that we've talked sort of about some of the media, I'm looking forward to.   I said in my last thing, I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward for snow. I'm still looking forward to it. It hasn't really snowed here yet. It's actually 70 degrees today. It did have the, we did have a couple of flurries right around Thanksgiving at night, and that was exciting, but not enough to stick.   So I am still really looking forward to snowy season. I know you all are going to be saying like, yeah, you won't look forward to when you have to drive. Uh, it hasn't happened yet. So give me my illusions, delusions, whatever you want to call it for at least a little while longer. Another thing I'm looking forward to in 2022 is exploring more of the Denver slash Colorado area.   We haven't really had the opportunity to do much of that in large part, because since we've gotten here both Jesse and I have been really swamped with work. And then on top of that, there have been health issues for various members of our family, including myself that have needed to be addressed. So the most exploring I've done is shopping and.   Doctor's offices. So being able to explore more of it, we really want to go to red rocks amphitheater, whether it's, I don't know if we want to go see music yet, because again, the variants that are coming out, that that's not, it's not something I want to bring into my life, but I've heard the sunrise.   There is gorgeous. There's a lot of things we'd like to do. We just haven't had the chance yet. And I would really like to prioritize that in the next year, which will be something that will likely happen when I start setting goals for the new. On top of that, I would really like to see how Lucy and Layla's relationship is developing.   I've mentioned it, I think a couple of times in the podcast, but maybe I have, maybe I have it. I don't remember. We adopted a puppy, Layla. She is a black lab mix. We think she's mixed with a little bit of pit bull. We got her from the Colorado retriever rescue. So she's a rescue puppy and we have let her and our cat Lucy really.   Take their time getting to know each other with an emphasis on Lucy, driving how much they are actually experiencing each other, because Layla is totally good with cats because the foster home, she was in. Had a ton of dogs and one cat and the cat was the alpha. And she quickly learned that the cat is the boss.   She really wants to be Lucy's friend when he's not in the mood to play with her, she will whine, but she won't bother him. And just last night, I got to watch them playing with each. They were chasing each other up and down the stairs. It was really cute. So I'm excited to see how their relationship develops both because it, it it's good for both of them.   I think Lou has been a little lonely since Loki died, so it's, it's just something I'm excited to watch because it's been really cute so far. Another thing I'm looking forward to art-wise is trying larger scale art projects. This is actually something that has been on my mind for a while. And I am now at the point where I would really like to start exploring that that may be something that I hope to either get some for some Christmas money or I don't know what, but maybe an easel, maybe try doing some acrylics.   I don't know if I want to watercolor on a larger scale, but I'm really interested in doing a quick acrylics on a larger scale. That's just something I'm super interested in and it's not something I would necessarily be doing for like my art prints or anything like that. At the moment, it would be for me in my own enrichment and, and practicing of new skills, which is very important.   If you are any sort of creative, it is always important to be forever learning because there is always something more to learn and you, that anything you learn in different arenas can often be applied to different areas of your creative practice. It's important to me to try some new things. The idea now that especially that I have room where I could leave an easel set up on the regular, I really would like to get started on trying some larger format pieces of art.   That's that's high on my list. Now I will say that while this is not meant to be like what I'm looking forward to work-wise for the next year. I, there is at least a little bit of work coming into this and that. Trying out different things, lines of products. So for my product based side of my business of my work, like I do all sorts of different work.   I make content, I freelance, I have a community on Patrion and I also have an Etsy shop that I sell. Prince of my original artwork. And one thing I did this holiday season was introduced some new products. I sold some vinyl sticker decals. I sold some bookmarks and I sold some calendars and that was really fun.   And so not only am I interested in experimenting with different kinds of art for my own enrichment, I'm also interested in releasing just some different things, whether it is a full. Well fuller, I don't know how you would say it, but like a line of bookmarks with more of my fuckery flowers on them, as I've gotten requests that people can collect them to maybe putting some of my pattern work and other things that I've been doing as well, kind of to, again, continue to hone my skills maybe on fabric or a wallpaper, or on like going through like a print on demand site, like Spoonflower or.   Society six or whatever to sell, like mugs or pillows or whatever. I don't know. I'm just, I'm curious about like testing things because it's, it's fun to see my stuff. And I've always had a lot of fun when Kristin has sent me from Christiana designs, like a mug or whatever, like things outside of stickers that she's put my art on.   The art I do for her is one style of art and the art I'm working on for my. Different. And so it just, it's something that I'm interested in maybe experimenting with. I think I've come to the conclusion. I won't release new fuckery flowers except for the holidays. So like once a year, because they do take quite a bit of time to actually paint.   It's a series of 12 and each painting is hours of work, but I don't know. It's just something I'm looking forward to next year is maybe trying some experimentation with that. That's on my list. Again, of things I'm looking for. Now house wise, a lot of, you know, we moved to Denver this past year and I actually will be doing a podcast kind of thinking about the last year and everything else, as well as the videos that'll be coming out on my YouTube channel.   Rob, talk a little bit more about the move and everything else, but one of the things I'm looking forward to this next year is really settling. Like we already have settled in. And one of the things our family commented on when they were here this last month was how it already feels lived in here. But there's a lot of things below the surface that really could use some love.   Like I thought I would get more organizing done in the closets and I just have not had the time and I have so many. That just, I could do an entire YouTube series just on organizing all of the closets in this house and have a good amount of content. I would like to really get shit organized in the closets.   I would really like to get some art on the walls, which is something I'm already working on right now for the main level of the house. But like, Getting some of the smaller details taken care of in this next year, while we're both exploring and really trying to live into this house because we love this house.   That's something that I really am looking forward to. It's like a nesting kind of instinct that I am feeling pretty hard right now. Hard. Also speaking of the house, taking on some home projects. Now I am not talking about large home projects. One of the things I did appreciate when we bought this house is that it's not a project house.   The previous owners put a lot of work into it, which we really appreciate. And one of my requirements, when it came to buying the new house here was. Not getting a project house because our house in Napa was a project house. It was a hoarder house. We had to put a new kitchen into it, new bathroom into it.   And we did most of that work ourselves. It was a lot of work and a pain in the ass, but there are little things that have been on my list since we bought the place. And there are things I'd like to like put some time into, especially as another big focus for me this next year is going to be setting boundaries around my work and personal time so that I have space and time to do some of these personal projects instead of always.   Into work. One that comes to mind specifically is the cabinets in my laundry room. They are still the original cabinets from the house and the cabinets are in great shape, but the doors I would like to update them either put new doors or maybe paint them. I'm not sure, but I would like to update the laundry room cabinets and there's several of them.   And I know that would be probably a project in and of itself. That's something I'm actually looking forward to doing. Cause I think I could, it's a small enough scale where I don't need to get like a contractor to do it and I could probably figure most of it out on my own, but it's large enough where the impact for me, especially since I spent so much time in there, it would, it would be.   Another thing I'm really looking forward to is, um, like I said, the closet organization, uh, RJ really would like his room painted. And while we might do that professionally, I like to get that done for him. Cat has actually discovered they love the murals in their rooms, so they're going to stick with those.   But RJ would like to have his room painted and I am, I want to get that done for him. And on that same note, another thing I'm looking forward to is discovering and rediscovering hobbies. This again, goes back to really making sure I have time for myself, but there are things I'd really like to do for one, I have really started enjoying the small plants that I've been taking care of and for the most part I've kept them alive.   So I would kind of like to try some larger ones in the next year. I'd also like to do some gardening. I don't know how much gardening, because bending over is really hard for me. But gardening is one of those things that I've always wanted to do. I've aspired to be a gardener and I have never, ever put the time into it.   So who knows, but that is something I'd like to maybe try. Something that I have already been doing. And I'm looking forward to doing a lot more of is a stir frying and using a walk for cooking. I have actually made some new recipes that my family adores and we tested them on our various family members when they were here over the last month.   And they loved them. So getting better with walk cooking is a hobby. Like I love to cook cooking in general as a hobby for me, getting back into baking would be great, especially with the altitude change, but walk, cooking specifically, like. Be real honest. The thing I would love to figure out is that thing where you take, you can't see what I'm doing, but like, imagine I'm like doing like a winking off kind of hand gesture, but like where you shake the walk and like flip the stuff in the walk, I've always been too scared to try that with eggs or with pancakes or at the walk.   That's something that maybe by the end of 20, 22, I will have tried and been successful. That's a hope, but hobbies, hobbies in general, this also can go back to the larger scale art painting as well. You can tell a lot of these things are really they're, they're mixed in with each other, and you're probably going to hear a lot more of these when I actually set my goals for next year, because I think a lot of them are going to sort of surface there.   I would really like to. Rediscover a church community. So that was something that I had on my list for this year and with COVID and everything else that really was not feasible. I miss my Napa people a lot and I would love to reconnect with a new church community. They have started doing hybrid in person and at home services.   And I'd like to go in and just meet some people and introduce myself. The biggest thing that's kind of keeping me back is the, uh, the new variants. It's just it's stressful, but that is something that hopefully depending on how the world looks in the next year is something I would like to do in the next year.   And if all goes well by the fall, I would love to be at a point with a new church community where I am considering rejoining a choir with the church. The one that we are looking at has a lot of a very robust music program. Hi on my list and singing in choir at my church was one of my favorite things to do singing in my quartet.   My quintet, one of my favorite things to do the choir signups happened a few weeks ago and I very much considered doing it. Cause that's how I got into my previous church was by joining the choir very early on. I just don't have the time at the moment. I, my time is very splintered and I have not gotten to a place where I feel confident that I can make that time for myself.   So I don't want it to be something that feels like a burden to me, but it is high on my list of things to prioritize in the next year. Assuming I'm able to start meeting people at the church and assuming that's the church we want to stick with and that joining the choir is something that I still want to do once those sign-ups start.   So I talked about a bunch of things I really am looking forward to in this next year and at the heart of all of them and probably at the heart of my goal setting for this next year, which I haven't done yet, but I've been thinking a lot about it is really developing a good mix of work and personal life setting boundaries.   Trying to find some sort of harmony, all of those things. It's, it's high on my list. You're going to hear this over and over again from me, both in podcasts and on my YouTube videos and probably on my Instagram, because it is something that I am struggling so much with right now. And I really want to get some of my personal life back.   When your life is work and I love my work, please don't mistake me. I do. I'm doing stuff I love, but it's still work. Which means that a, there are times I don't love it. And B sometimes the things that used to bring me relaxation are not part of my work. So by their nature, they don't relax me anymore. On top of that, I also am so like, feeling so awful by being in kidney failure.   And having kids who are dealing with health problems themselves, that my life feels like just an endless hamster wheel of work and feeling like shit. And I want to find some room in my life for things that make me happy that fulfill me, that relax me, or just keep me in touch with the rest of my life outside of those aspects.   Even if it's not relaxing to redo cabinets or even if grocery shopping or whatever doesn't necessarily relax me. I'm starting to feel out of touch with parts of my life. And so one thing I am looking forward to in this next year is re redistributing the way my life looks reconnecting with parts of it and making sure that other parts that are getting that are kind of commanding more of my attention are, are given a much more reasonable level of attention.   So that I can take some of that and read distributed elsewhere. If that makes any sense, that's more than anything. What I'm looking forward to in this next year is making that a priority and seeing the ripple effects that it has and the other aspects of my life. And now that I've said all that, I really want to pick up my goal planner for next year and start setting my goals.   But I haven't decided which planner that is yet. So anyway, I'd love to find out from you something you are looking forward to. In the next year. So if you are on Instagram post, like a picture of this, whatever in your stories mentioned something you're looking forward to next year and tag me so I can see it.   It would make me really happy. Share this if you want to. I don't know. Just, I love talking to you. I don't care if this podcast gets big, I'm just happy to make it. That's all the only goal I really have for it is, is connecting. So let's connect as always. This podcast is sponsored by my patrons. They make everything I do possible, and I appreciate the ever-loving shit out of them.   If you are curious to know what it is like to be a patron, check out my Patrion at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week and until next time my dudes peace out.  

Have you heard of the Bad Art Friend story? I have so many thoughts, but today unsurprisingly I'm zeroing in on the part that touches me personally… the kidney donation part. DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED Original Bad Art Friend Article - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html Plan With Me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewZzIORQKYw Insider Article - https://www.insider.com/bad-art-friend-kidney-donation-nyt-dawn-dorland-sonya-larson-2021-10 Savy's stream (starts when the BAF talk begins) - https://youtu.be/sOsWU7Ampuc?t=8738 Slate - https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/bad-art-friend-kidney-crisis-donation-altruism.html Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Well, hello friends, welcome back to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about all the things having to do with our lives and how we live them on the internet. And today's story today's episode. I talked a little bit about it in a recent plan with me, but I'm going to talk more about it today. I just, you guys like.   This is one of those situations where so many different things cross, and I could spend hours talking about it, but I'm not, I'm going to zero in on probably the most obvious point for me to zero in on. But yet at the same time has been one of the lesser talked about aspects of this entire story. And the story I'm referring to is the bad art friend story.   So if you do not know what it's about, I'm going to give you a very brief overview. I gave a bigger overview in, I plan with me and I will link the original story, which I recommend you read from the New York times, because it's a fascinatingly written story that kind of. Presents things in a way where it sort of serves like a Rorschach test for you based on who you side with.   And of course there's a lot of other articles dissecting it online, but I'm going to give you enough context so that you understand my grievances or my things I want to talk about. But before I get into. What I'm talking about today, I would like to make sure that you are signed up for my newsletter, which I send out on the first Monday of every month.   And then I might send out an alert if something like opens up when the calendars went on sale this week or this last week. But. This month's freebie is a coloring sheet of my fuckery rose, which I think is really adorable. And if you sign up during this month, you'll get it automatically. Everybody who's on the newsletter.   Got it already, but you'll get it this month. But if you're not on the newsletter before the end of November, you're not going to get this. It's only people who are either on it or sign up for it in November. And. I really think it's fucking cute, especially since I'm releasing the new series this month as well.   Anyway, newsletter link, as well as all of the articles that I'll be referencing are all in the show notes. So be sure to check them out. All right. So here is. Here is a bit of the story. And it will say upfront that this story touches on so many different nerves, right? It touches on racism and classism, how we perceive friendship versus the reality of a friendship, plagiarism, writing, etiquette, social hierarchies, the privacy of DMS and text messages.   The story basically. Has all of these elements in it, which makes it so fascinating. And on top of that, it's about writers. And while I have written books, I don't consider myself like a writer writer because my books are not that sort of writing, but from what my writer, friends have said to me, It's not surprising at all that a story like this came out of the writing community, because it is a very insular and kind of gossipy commute can be gossipy.   Not that every writer has gossip and not that all communities are gossipy, but like this particular group of writers and this area of writers in Boston is. Has at least somewhat of a reputation from what I have heard. Anyway, like I said, read the story. It's a fascinating read, but I'm going to go to an insider article that actually has a pretty good recap of it.   Because if I try to go through the actual article, I'm going to like get lost in it. And so here are the basics. It's a feud between two different writers, Dawn Dorland and Sonia Larson. Don darlin altruistically donated a kidney. Now, when you altruistically donate a kidney, it means it's a non-directed donation.   You don't know how it's going to. These are the most rare of donations, and I'm going to go into this a bit later, but suffice to say she donated a kidney to a string. As a living donor and then create a Facebook group to share news and information about her donation. She saw Sonya Larson who she, I guess, interacted at a place called grub street in Boston.   It's like a writers like where you can get educated and shit like that. I'm not entirely certain what the, I couldn't discern what grub street actually was. But Don went to like writing workshops and was familiar and have been to a lot of writing things, but wasn't, hadn't really like published anything yet.   Sonya Larson has published things and his friends, like in a group of friends from this grub street with these other authors and they call themselves the chunky monkeys, which okay. But the, this, this comes to pear to bear. Right. So. Don post. This group invites people to, it tells them this is not made clear in the article, but tells them that they do not have to join or hang out in the group if they don't want to.   She just wants to make sure people who are interested can get information about this and so new joins, but doesn't ever say anything and dog. In one of the first like cringy things in this story messages, Sonia is like, did you know, I donated a kidney because she hadn't responded to any of her messages and they had a bit of an exchange.   And so Don knew now that Sonia was aware of it. Time passes and Dawn finds out that Sonia has written a short story that is getting some attention about a Asian woman who gets a kidney donation from a white woman who is narcissistic and needs attention. And it's very much about a white savior trope.   Is this stuff that with the whole story is about, but that's the character who in previous additions of the story was named Dawn. And the letter that this white woman wrote to the Asian woman was copied from the letter that Don wrote to the final recipient in her kidney chain. Now, when Don found out about this, she sits something to Sonia.   So when you changed some of the wording in the letter, but swore up and down, she wasn't trying, she was just inspired, blah, blah, blah. And it wasn't about Dawn, even though the characters name was Dawn originally. This all turns into a bunch of lawsuits, Sonia files for defamation, Don files back there's like stories get pulled from a big competition and so on and so forth.   And the biggest kind of thing that gets thrown into this is that when Don is in the discovery phase for one of her lawsuits, her lawyers subpoena the DMS and emails of Sonya, and it comes out that there's this group, text of these chunky monkeys, making fun of Dawn for her. Kidney donation and calling her like needy and, and that she's cringy and that they're not friends with her, even though Don assumed she was friends with them.   And there's a lot of like stuff in these DMS to show that indeed Sonya did write the story in part two to rip on Dawn. That, that was part of it. So, and this is ongoing. There is not a resolution for this, but as you can see, there were lots of tweets, examining performative, altruism, bullying, copyright privilege.   People were very divided Celeste, Inc. The author of little fires everywhere. Who's one of the chunky monkeys and was in these group, texts comes on and like goes hard on Twitter to defend Sonya, which sounds freaky. Uh, it just, I don't even know, man, but there's like a lot of people talking about like mean girls and that like, so when you was a mean girl who plagiarized and Dawn was a needy cringy person who doesn't understand social cues.   And I will say that the conversations around this. I have been very much rooted in talking about the donation, the rate, the way that Sonia put racism into the story, the mean girls, the bullying, all of those things. One thing that wasn't really talked about was, um, class Dawn comes from, uh, poverty and Sonja comes from like an upper middle class upbringing.   And. Savvy from savvy writes books who I really enjoy channel. I've talked about her before she had a live stream where she talked about class cues and how, you know, when you don't like some of the things that are considered to be like go shh, or, um, or I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for here?   Like, like that's not how we do things. We don't talk about money this way. We need to humblebrag, not just brag about certain things. That the way that Don was just being earnest about talking about her kidney. Is not classy compared to people who have been from a upper, like an upper class upbringing, which is an actual thing.   I grew up in poverty. I understood exactly what savvy was talking about, even though I'm having trouble articulating it. So go check that out if you're interested in that conversation, because I found it fascinating and I have it linked in the description at the timestamp, because it's quite a bit into the big live stream that she did anyway.   With all of that being said. And like I said, I'm going to keep telling you, like, pause this podcast, go read the article, get a bit of context around it before you come back as a bunch linked in the show notes. But what I wanted to talk about. Was, and this is no surprise to any of you who have been around and know that I have genetic kidney disease and I'm currently cruising into kidney failure and I'm on the transplant list and need a kidney donation.   Right? So you can imagine that. And my sister and I talked about this, she has a transplant from a living donor. And one of the things that really concerned me about the discourse online around this, as well as some of the things that the chunky monkey said, Sonia specifically in the DMS that were published upon the internet, that it really concerned me that it seems like kidney donation became kind of a joke question, mark.   Like, not entirely, but like, like what does she expect us to do? Donate a kidney. I don't know. Maybe you fucking should someone to give you now that I've, contexted the shit out of you with this story. I'm going to, I'm going to give you a more, you know, moment and give you some information about kidney donation.   Not for my own personal sake, but because I want to. Like, whether you think Dawn is cringey, whether you think that she was needy for attention, whatever the case may be. I want you to really understand what she did and the significance of it. So you can maybe give her a little bit more space when it comes to being cringy.   Cause sure. I thought she was cringy too when I read it, but who fucking cares because cringiness is way outweighed by what she did. So here's a little context about kidney donation, the wait list for kidney. For people who need a kidney is usually a brown, a hundred thousand people long at any given time in the United States.   Every day, people die waiting for a transplant and that's from the people who are on the transplant list. This doesn't count people who are on dialysis, who are in kidney failure, who don't qualify for kidney transplant, because maybe they're too sick. Like my great aunt, Ella, who also has PKD and actually got called for a transplant only for them to see at that point, she was just too sick to get the transplant.   And so they took her off the list and she just won't be able to get. She's just too fragile. Right. And then of course, there's that person that like went around the news relatively recently through the university of Colorado, which is where I'm getting on the new transplant list. After moving to Denver who was denied transplant because she refused to get the COVID vaccine and people are like, oh my God, her rights.   It's like, you know, the death camps or whatever. No motherfucker. No, no. If you know anything about transplant, then you know that a, there is a shortage of organs and B it is a very intensive, like surgery requires a lot of manpower. It requires a lot of people and it requires you to be compliant, not just ahead of time before you get the transplant, but for the rest of your life, the life of that organ, you have to be compliant.   If you miss your meds, even once it could go into rejection. And so transplant centers and transplant. Doctors, the teams that manage transplants are extremely cautious about who they put onto a transplant list, because they need to make sure that the organ donation has the highest chance of success.   Because there are so many people in need and there are so many people who will die before they get one because of the shortage of organs. So crony had goddamn river for the woman who didn't get the COVID vaccine and is pissed about knocking her transplant. You have to get every vaccine before you get your transplant because they immunosuppress you.   Like that's part of the fucking. Anybody who was shocked by seeing that story doesn't know enough about transplants, to know that there is nothing out of the ordinary about it. Sorry. That was a rant. Anyway, like I said, there's a shit ton of people who need kidneys. And every day there's more people who need kidneys.   And everyday there are people who die before they get them. There are three types of kidney donation and I'm simplifying this, but there are basically three ways that one might get a kidney in their body. The first and the most common is by, um, a cadaver transplant. So somebody who died. And they're an organ donor and their organs were fit for transplant.   They go to the list and they see the first person on the list who matches the organ. And then they transplant. Now the cadaver organs are the least likely like you, the outcomes are better if you can get a living donor transplant because living donor transplants. I have not had that timeframe in between when somebody dies and when the transplant goes into the body.   So the organ itself has a longer lifespan. Generally speaking, um, like my sister Amy was told with her living donor transplant from her husband that it could last 30 years, at least with my grandma. She got her cadaver transplant when I got pregnant with cat. So 18 years now, and that is considered to be outstanding for a cadaver transplant, like way longer than they potentially thought it would last.   So on top of that with the cadaver transplant, somebody had to die, which it sucks. Right. But like be an organ, even if you're not willing to be a living donor, be an organ donor. If you're able to, because like I said, so many people are writing and this is just kidneys. This doesn't count. At least kidneys, king, kidneys and livers can get living donors, but not everybody can.   So not every kind of like a heart transplant. You can't give someone a heart as a living donor. Right. Anyway, so then there's living donors, people who donate a kidney, cause you can live perfectly fine with one kidney. So you donate your kit, one of your kidneys to your. To usually someone, you know, whether it's a friend, whether it's a family member, whether it's a person, you know, from the internet named Cindy Guentert Baldo, that's joking.   I swear. Maybe not maybe a little bit, not joking, but like there's a saying we have in the kidney transplant in the kidney community of like share your spare. Right. And those that's the majority of living donations or somebody giving a kidney to someone that they know. The smallest amount of donors are the living donors who donate altruistically.   This is also referred to as non directed donation where you are going to donate one of your kidneys, but you don't know who it's going to. You're just donating because you want to donate an organ. That's what Don darlin did. She donated a kidney, which set off a chain of donations where one person got her kidney, that person had a donor who did not match them.   And then that donor chose to donate their kidney to someone else who also had a donor who then did not match them and see what I'm saying. And from what I understand, the letter that Dorland wrote to. The recipient was not actually to the person who got her kidney, but to the person at the end of the chain who got a kidney.   So it's not necessarily like a totally relevant point, but I just thought I would bring that up. So one of the things that massively enraged me about this story, where, where the joke. About how cringey she was. Well, we should just like, should we donate a kidney? And people like giving her shit for talking about it.   Now I would imagine that if you had not heard about this story ahead of time, there was probably a chance you didn't know, you could altruistically donate a kidney because there is, there's so many things surrounding. Kidney donation and living donor donation. Like if you have somebody in your life who is in kidney failure, then you will start to hear about those things.   But it's not something that really crosses the minds of people who aren't impacted by it. And so, yeah, maybe she was cringy. Maybe she was seeking validation for it, but I'll have to say that that is so fucking. This is a quote from a slate article that I will also link in the show notes because it really, I think clarifies how petty and just like fricking awful.   The jokes that these chunky monkeys were making at Dawn's expense really are to me like how much it, it just enrages me that they turned her into a joke. Just listen to this, this quote, what makes the kidney shortage uniquely tragic is that there is technically no shortage of actual kidneys. Most people have two kidneys, but can be perfectly healthy and live a long life with only one.   There are literally millions of spare kidneys in the United States. Given 35 thousand people are added to the waitlist every year, only 0.1, 4% of our country's adult population or one in about every 7,000 people would have to donate a kidney each year to meet the demand. In this light, there is actually a massive kidney surplus and.   So you may ask yourself, okay, well, if there's so many kidneys, like why don't they get more incentives to people to donate blah, blah, blah. Right. There's a lot of complications that come from that. A, there are health implications. It is a surgery. It's a pretty major surgery as a matter of fact. And. While the outcomes are generally really fine.   Like really good. Like my brother-in-law, brother-in-law's doing great with his one kidney. You know, he had to recover from a major surgery, but th his he's doing fine with his one kidney and my sister is doing great with his other kidney. Right. However, he did have to recover from pretty major surgery and go through the pain and the complications of surgery and the potential.   Shittiness that can come with surgery and everything else. On top of that, there's potential financial implications for somebody who is a living donor. Generally speaking, living donors, medical expenses are covered by the recipient. Like if I get somebody to donate to me, their medical expenses will be covered by my insurance.   On top of that, there are. Um, there are organizations that help pay for things like missing work or travel expenses incurred as well as if the donor, if the recipient is able to help cover that with Jesse. And I hope to help cover that for somebody, if they donate for us. However, there is a, there's a very like shaky line.   That is also involved here because where does helping cover costs turn into compensation? And that begins to like dive into like the ethical and moral dilemma surrounding. Adding incentives to people to be living donors, right? Like there have been suggestions. Like if you donate a kidney to somebody, then you should be, you should get like access to Medicare for the rest of your life for free.   Right. If you donate a kidney to somebody and you ever need a kidney, well, and this is true. If you donate a kidney to somebody and you ever need a kidney yourself, you go right to the top of the wait list. But like, they've talked about offering. Incentives to people through the government, but they usually don't go anywhere because there is a.   This ethical dilemma around offering payment for organs, because you can see where that would open a really, really, really dark slippery slope where like people in poverty selling their organs from, have you ever seen repo the genetic opera like that? Right? There is a big, big. Like waiting pool of shittiness that they don't want to go into, which is why you have to both go through psychological testing as a donor to make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons.   And B there cannot be like any compensation going back and forth between donor and recipient because they, it violates ethics on top of that. We can't like force people to give up their organs cause bodily autonomy, my dudes. Right. So. Any program that there might be to encourage living donation is extremely open to exploitation.   And that's really why there isn't anything like that yet. So the biggest way to encourage living donation, the biggest way to both, but people know it's even possibility that altruistic donation as a possibility is to. Talk about it is for living donors. They encourage living donors to talk about it.   They encourage living donors to tell people about it. They encourage living donors to advocate for it, to go in parades, which is something Don did and got made fun of by the chunky monkeys. Like all of these things, these things that are considered cringe or whatever, like no you to humbly brag about it.   No, no, you really don't know. You should tell everybody about it. Don was doing. What living donors are encouraged to do, which is talk about it to hopefully encourage other donors, whether whether altruistic or directed or whatever, like that's the only real way besides kidney patients. Putting their phone numbers on their cars with their blood types is starting Facebook groups to find donors like kidney patients themselves are already looking for kidneys.   Having donors talk about it is the other way to get people interested and potentially considering it. And that's what she did. And they fucking made fun of her for it. So fuck them. That's basically, if you want to know who the bad art friend is, I don't give a shit who the bad art friend is. What I know is that one person.   Donated a kidney and the other one plagiarized her, at least in my read of the situation. And so honestly, all of the rest of the shit doesn't really matter to me. If they had not made jokes about her donating a kidney and how they thought it was, she did it to be needy and blah, blah, blah. They haven't donated a kidney.   Now. I'm not saying you have to, to be a good person. You really don't, it's your body. And it, like I said, it's not an easy or a non-consequential consequential decision to make, but don't fucking make fun of somebody else for that. Think about the person who got that kidney, who could have been one of the people dying on the waiting list.   Like, fuck that shit. Anyway, that's really what I wanted to say. This, all of this talking 20 minutes of talking, just to say, fuck them. I feel gross that I read little fires everywhere. Now, knowing that the author there is fine dragging somebody through the mud, because she has a friend who made fun of somebody who donated a kidney.   Like it bothers me, you guys. And I know I'm feeling a little petty about that, but you can imagine in my position and in the position of anybody. Who is also waiting for a fucking kidney to see an altruistic donor get made fun of, because she's cringy, like, fuck you. Anyway. Now that I've said all of that, do you still want to subscribe to my newsletter?   Because if you do, you'll get the fuckery coloring. At least in the month of November also, you should check out my Patrion because they're the sponsors of this episode. They get to hear these episodes a couple days early, which I don't know, that might matter to you. Maybe that won't matter to you along with other things, they're actually getting a second fuckery flower coloring sheet as a bonus download in November.   Isn't that rad? Anyway, they're my sponsors for this episode. They're amazing. Check about, oh my God. I almost burped. And I'm gonna keep that in on the podcast because why the fuck not I've already. General people I've been the old kidney patients shaking my fist at the clouds kind of a situation today, but yeah, check them all out.   All the links are in the show notes. And until next time my friends be a good art friend and don't make fun of someone for donating a kidney. And until next time, peace out.  

Sometimes I feel like Oscar the Grouch, and today is no different. Today I'm going on a (lighthearted) rant about some shit that's annoying me. Lighthearted is the emphasis here my dudes. DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED Work Planner Setup - https://youtu.be/4dM7YsxI2jo Maintenance Phase Celery Juice - https://maintenancephase.wixsite.com/home/episodes/episode/4cfde6d6/celery-juice Livestream (puke story) - https://youtu.be/mdCd5fS3iZU Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hello friends. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast today. I'm glad you're here because I need someone to listen to some shit. That's annoying me. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo welcome. If this is your first time here. And do you like what you hear then? I hope you subscribe. We've got new episodes every Monday.   And if this is not your first time here, I hope that you like what you hear and you stick around because that makes me happy quick. And before I get into the episode, I do want to let you know, in case you didn't know already that this week on the 11th, November 11th, 2021 in my Etsy shop, I will be offering a limited run of 2022 calendars, their wall calendars.   They have a mixture of. My fuckery flowers from both series, then old series series one in the new series series two. These will be limited because I can only get so many of them before I lose it. So make sure you head on over there to pick up a calendar or three, they make excellent gifts, blah, blah, blah.   But anyway, I want to make sure to remind you of that because the there'll be dropping on the. If you are on my newsletter, you will get the heads up when they go live. And if you are a patron, your access comes tomorrow, November 10th. So just make sure that if there's something that you're interested in, I don't know how quickly they're going to sell out.   I've never done this before. So you may want to keep your eye on. Anyway, let's get into this because marketing also annoys me. So I've just got a handful of things that annoy me. I told you when I did my like I'm back episode, that I wanted to both handle some spicy topics and some light-hearted topics and talk about things I love and blah, blah, blah.   Well, a combination of lighthearted and spicy is some shit that's annoying me. And I've got a whole list of things that run the. And I just thought I would let you know to see if a they annoy you and B if they don't, you can always yell at me on Instagram at llamaletters, let me know in the stories. So let's just get into it because I love talking about shit that annoys me, apparently that I wonder if there's a personality test that tells you that I don't know.   First of all, is celery juice. I am so tired of seeing on Instagram. I am tired of seeing influencers talk about it. I am tired of seeing it in YouTube videos. I'm tired of it. If you want to have a deep dive on how bunk the whole celery juice thing is now that it's bad for you. It's not, but it's not like it's magical either.   Then listen to the maintenance phase episode on celery juice. They do a great job. I'll leave at link in, the show notes. If you haven't listened to that podcast, a 10 out of 10 recommend. However, my big hatred of celery juice comes from two sort of areas. The first one being like, what the fuck is wrong with just eating celery?   Like I don't even like celery all that much. I like it in soup. I don't really like it on its own. It's too stringy for me, but. There's like a segment of people who think that you have to juice it for it to be good for you, but doesn't that just remove all the fiber? I don't get it. Secondly, a lot of the celery juice, like the people who are enchanted with it kind of use the same language around wellness culture that I find to be really toxic.   And that's going to show up later on this list, but also in some later podcasts, but a lot of it has to do with like the idea of like, Hearing your chronic illnesses and detoxifying yourself. And I'm just going to say that whenever anybody suggests some new trendy thing to cure chronic illness, especially genetic chronic illness, which is what I have, it feels remarkably abelist and it feels really like, uh, I was going to say naive, but I don't think that's the right word.   Just sorta sort of. I don't know, bogus, like fucking no, dude, I have genetic kidney disease, celery juice won't help me. And secondly, anytime somebody tells me they're doing a cleanse or drinking the juice to flux out, flush out the toxins as somebody with failing kidneys. I want to slap them because you know what flushes your toxins, your liver and your kidneys.   So if they're functioning, they're doing it for. You don't need magic juice to do that. And if you're like me and have failing kidneys, Magic juice is not going to flush my toxins. You know what? Well, dialysis, sorry. I did say this was shit that annoys me. So sorry. Celery juice, but I am, I am moving on from you.   Number two, raisins in cookies. Now I know there are some of you who love a good fucking oatmeal raisin cookie, but for me, raisins and cookies are. The most disappointing thing that can ever happen. And the reason that this is like on my mind right now is recently I got surprised the other day thinking I was going to have a delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.   And it was an oatmeal raisin cookie. And I'm sorry, that is not the business. I like raisins. I have nothing against raisins, but not in cookies and raisin bran. Fuck. Yeah, leave my cookies alone. Hashtag. Number three. And this one is actually very, very much relevant to me right now, because I have had to make so many doctor's appointments for both myself and my kid because of my chronic illnesses that have already talked about.   And because my kid has some health problems, we're trying to nail down, hold music. Now I would be fine if a company had like a serious XM station or something, or some kind of. Radio station. I don't know something where the music rotates, but when it's the same song over and over and over and over and over and over again.   And you're on hold for like eleventy million years. It's it makes my brains leak out my ears, like an ice pick to my temple and it's awful. And like, I understand that that's probably less expensive for a company than doing like a radio station, but dear God, dear. Oh. Oh, my God, I just can't. I can't it's it's grading.   Thankfully, at least one of the people that I had to call had the option for you to save your place in line and hang up and they'd call you back. And as much as I hate my phone and ignore it, I tried that and it actually worked. Most of the time I haven't trusted it, but I did try it and it worked. So I may go with that because that might save me from turning into Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's the shining and having all work and no play makes Cindy adult boy, number four, I wrote this out and then the day I wrote this out, it was wrong.   So I'm still gonna tell you it, but. I was kind of shown up by it. And that is that they made the strawberry SAE refreshers at Starbucks seasonal. I have fallen for that with extra water and extra ice because it's too sweet for me. And then they disappeared because it was seasonal, but I don't think it's seasonal now.   I think it might just have been because of supply shortages because they came back. So I don't know. So that may not be accurate. So right now I'm annoyed by the fact that I was wrong.   Next is my seasonal allergies. I thought they would disappear when I removed, when I moved to Denver, because I never had them until I moved to Napa. And Napa is a micro climate and it is known among locals that when you move to Napa, you tend to get allergies, even if you never had them before. And like, everybody I know in Napa would have like the most miserable seasonal allergy situations.   I thought I would be rid of them when I moved, but apparently Napa just like imprinted them on me because I got to Denver and I still have them and it fucking sucks. And I just, I, it annoys me and this is a, should I annoys me? That annoys me podcast. I'm just saying. The fact that my Claritin only takes the edge off.   And the fact that anytime you sneeze or have a runny nose right now in the age of COVID, that everybody looks at you, like you're carrying the plague. And it's like, dude, I have fucking allergies. Like it just it's, it's one of those little things that like, I hated I've always hated, but with COVID it has just gotten more annoying and sure.   It's not as annoying as having COVID, but like, this is annoying shit. This is not catastrophic shit. Right. Speaking of COVID. The next thing that's annoying me is that I bought one of those home COVID tests because one of my kids had some symptoms after somebody at school had gotten exposed and I gave them the test and the test was negative and I was supposed to give them another test in 36 hours.   And I couldn't find it. This annoys me. I still can't find half of the shit in my house because we just moved and I put some stuff away. And now I don't know where anything is. And I know that that will be solved when I start organizing. And now that we live in a bigger house, there's just so many more places for shit to be.   I spent way longer than I needed to looking for the broom the other day, because we have too many closets and I know it's a first world problem, but like it's fucking annoying and referencing that I also can't find my AirPods and I really want them and could use them. I've been doing a lot of things recently where it would have been helpful to have my.   And I don't want to replace them because they're expensive. And on top of that, like I know that the moment I replaced them, they're going to come out with new ones. It's just, I have them there. They work perfectly fine and I just cannot figure out where the fuck they are. And I'm really annoyed by that on a completely unrelated note.   I am very annoyed by my new potassium. So as people who. I have chronic illness or people who take a lot of medications can probably understand. One of the things that can get really annoying is when you've been taking a medication for a long time, and then you change pharmacies or you change healthcare systems, or you change something and the brand manufacturer of your medication.   Especially if you're on generics and so like a different generic company, because there's all sorts of companies that make some of these medications, especially the ones that have lots of generics. I'm not talking about insulin because insulin doesn't have generics. And that's an entire thing that goes beyond annoyance into white, hot rage as this wife of a type one diabetic says, but for me, my potassium.   Has changed. I just, when I made, made the move, we swapped from the Kaiser system to a different healthcare system. And now I'm getting my prescriptions filled at Walgreens and the brand or the generic brand that is making my potassium is different. And for some reason, this new potassium, my gigantic fucking potassium pills that have take three times a day melt in my mouth.   Not in my hand, they start to dissolve the moment they hit my mouth. They kind of crumble when I dropped them into my pill minder, so that there's already little bits of potassium to dissolve into my mouth. And it is bitter and terrible. And I have chronically low potassium, which is really strange for someone in kidney failure.   Like I am, but because of that, I have to take, I have to eat Tassie and rich foods and take hella potassium. And the real thing that makes me sad is that the options that I have. To swap to, instead of this melt in your mouth, not in your hands, potassium are like infusions, which according to my sister, feel like molten lava in your veins or the liquid, which is even gnarlier.   So I'm stuck with it. And it's really goddamn annoying, especially since those pills are so big. I gag on them every time I swallow them and I have to do it three times a day. I am lucky that I haven't barfed on myself. Well, because of that, I have barfed on myself recently. That's an entirely different story.   Number nine is something that has been annoying me for a long time. And I am sort of subjecting myself to it and it still annoys me, but it's my fault because I'm subjecting myself to it. And that is discs for planners. It's helpful to have the disks for my work planner. I can take pages out and write on them.   It's cuter than. Using, um, a three ring binder and I wanted letter sized paper and having like a Filofax type situation for that size. It's harder to find. I love the cover. I love everything about my work planner, but the discs are really pissing me off because even though they're helpful for removing things and whatnot, random shit keeps popping off.   And every time it happens, I curse myself for putting myself in this situation because this is why I don't like this. But I'm gonna keep using them. And so I probably should shut up about it, but this is my podcast. I'm going to do what I want. Right. Number 10, back to the barfing. Nausea is getting worse and worse for me.   It happens when you get further into kidney disease. My sister warned me to keep a extra trashcan with a roll of bags in it, near the toilet for all of those times when it takes you over. And I wish I had known that. After I puked all over myself, I'll make sure to link the plan with me where I tell that story.   If you're really interested in it in the show notes, however, my nausea is getting worse and worse and the Zofran has stopped completely helping and instead just taking the edge off. And I know it's just going to get worse until I get a transplant. I hate being nauseous. You guys, I hate it so much.   Number 11 trader Joe's is discontinuing their curtains from what I was told when I was there the other day. And I just decided I liked them. So I'm bummed. I know this is like the most white girl thing to say about my trader Joe's product. That was discontinued. Trust me. I worked there for 12 years. I had to hear it all, but dammit, this crew Johns are good.   And then finally, the thing that's annoying me the most in the preview. If it's something you're interested in, please let me know in the stories at Lama letters. If you want to make episodes on it, because I'm really thinking about doing it. And that is talking about toxic wellness culture and deprogramming myself from some diet culture.   I have a kid who is dealing with some disordered eating right now, and it is really causing me to take a look at some of the things that I do. And it's annoying the shit out of me. And more than annoying me that I haven't set a better example. But on top of that, I've had some comments over the years, but recently I've had a few more of people being very well intentioned, but completely dismissing my experience as somebody with chronic illness.   And it's just making me more and more annoyed to the point of rage about toxic wellness culture. So if you are interested in hearing a podcast about that, please. Anyway, those are some things that I, that annoy me. I know this is not the most positive episode, but fucks shut. Sometimes shit annoys you. And sometimes you want to get off your chest and sometimes you get surprised by raisins and cookies, and sometimes you puke on yourself and we got to talk about those things.   If you want to share with me something just random, that's been annoying you lately. Let me know in the Instagram stories, just post at llamaletters and tell me about it because I'm curious to see, but the random shit that's annoying. You. Because it's fun for me. Don't forget to check out the Etsy shop on the 11th.   If you're interested in calendars and don't forget to thank my patrons. If you ever see one bop and about because they make these episodes possible. So thank you, patrons, www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo. If you would like to find out more, you know, who doesn't annoy me, you all, and I'm glad that you're here.   So thanks for hanging out next week. I won't be quite as annoyed potential. But until next time, until that next annoying or not annoying time, stay safe because it'll annoy me. If you're not safe and peace out.

It's new planner launch season and I thought it would be helpful to issue a PSA - Planner (come to your) Senses Announcement. DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.   NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED My Consumerism YouTube Playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmus5Pc0SfZvLQtie_9bc1RGdUAQV8kKj Planner Peace Skillshare Class - https://skl.sh/2MKRtC3 Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast. It is chilly. I'm drinking a cup of tea, which means it's probably new planner season. And so I thought it would be a good time to, uh, do a P S A. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Thanks for being here. This is your first episode and you like what you hear?   I hope you will subscribe. I put out new episodes every Monday. And if this is not your first time here, welcome back. My dude. I'm glad to see you. You know, in the internet way, planner season tends to come twice a year, new planner season. Now there are some companies that shall remain. But nameless that release planners every five minutes, but in general, for most planner companies, new planners come about twice a year.   Once it's in the may, June, July kind of area with new planners that are academic based, whether they're for students or they're just for people who like to keep an academic year calendar. That was me for a long time. The calendar year, like year planner coincides with the. Right then the other new planner season is in the fall for the new year.   All of the new, this will be the 2022 planters that run from January through December. And we're in that. Now we're in deep in that now, and this may actually becoming a little late for some of you, but as new planners season generally stretches for a handful of months. I figured that it was about time for a quick chat from your internet.   Or big sister, friend, whatever you want to call me, your internet, voice of reason that you can listen to. I want you be able to listen to this whenever you feel like you're getting swept up in new planner season, whether it's right now or next year, the next time the, uh, the jovial planner company releases 85,000 products.   Like if you need it, if you need to hear this, I want you to be able to listen to it. I'm calling this a planner PSA. It could be a like, you know, planner, season advisory kind of situation. I don't know. However we want to call it, whatever, whatever we want to call it, maybe a planner come to your senses and it.   Whatever the case may be. I want this to be something you can listen to when you're feeling the pull of a whole bunch of things and your brain and your mind and your heart and your wallet are all screaming at you, bruh. And you need a little bit of extra encouragement. That's what this is. So let's get started.   Shall we? First of all, this might be the most dangerous time of year for a planet. When it comes to overspending, when it comes to buying shit, you don't need, like, I'm sure there's other dangerous times of year, but as a planner person who purchases planners this time launch time is like the hardest to resist the most fraught time of year when it comes to how you spend your money and what purchases you make.   And often emotions, emotions get pulled into it as well after. You're probably in need of a new planner for next year. If you're an academic person, this applies during the academic launch season, but like in general, right? Like most people right now are trying to figure out what planner or planners they're going to use next year.   And right when they're having this like crisis, this wondering this like vulnerable time when we're like. We're fragile because we're trying to figure our shit out. And then all of the companies come out with all their new shiny things and all of their marketing and all of the influencers and all of the everything.   And it's just bombarding us. You know, that when you're on social media, you start keying all those targeted ads for the new planner. You even potentially thought you might want. And unlike other times, when you might find yourself buying shit, you don't need for no apparent reason other than marketing at this time of year.   The thing that makes us extra vulnerable, extra fragile is that re feel kind of justified, right? Like I know I need a new planner. I know I'm going to need one. So of course I'm going to have to buy one. So I'm justified in buying shit, but eleventy million planners really, really. Are you actually going to use those really?   So like my first thought and my first kind of thought for you is to think about the method of only buying shit on launch day launch day, whenever a new planner launches or a new version or a new edition launches only buy shit on launch day. If, you know, you're gonna to use it, you've already decided, for example, the power sheets launch for affiliates was a few weeks ago and I'm recording this and I bought shit that day.   I don't know if I'm using power sheets next year. I'm in a current planner crisis when it comes to that, but I knew I was going to review them. So I knew I had a purpose for them. Now, at the point, you're going to hear this power sheets launches are already passed, but. Found yourself buying, you know, $60 planner on the off chance you might use it.   That's the kind of buying decision that I want you to try and back away from. If you know, you're going to use them something and then launched it up by the ship, by what you're going to buy. But if you aren't sure don't get swept up in the hype because that's what it is. It's hype. And in 99% of cases, The shit you want is still going to be there in a couple of weeks after you've considered it.   Now that isn't to say that there aren't certain designs or whatever of something that might sell out, but if you don't know you're going to use it, that doesn't matter how pretty the design is. Keep an eye on things in case they're coming close to selling out and really ask yourself if you're going to use it, but don't buy it on launch day.   If you're only curious, because you'll probably spend more money on shit you don't need just from the excitement that is marketing. It's all it is is marketing. In the same vein when shit does launch and you're buying something, let's say we'll use the power sheets example again, let's just say, you know, you're going to use them.   You've used them before. You're going to use them again, buying them as a no-brainer, but then all the accessories are out. Again. Just be very careful there. Don't let the excitement of all the new things cause you to buy shit. You're not going to use. Okay. Um, the reason I keep emphasizing this is because sometimes you have the stuff in your cart and all you need is for somebody to remind you to double-check and think, am I actually going to use this?   Do I actually need this? And that's enough for you to like back out. I just, I hate when people spend money on things and regret it because. We're in a capitalist society and money is a resource that is necessary to exist in this society. And it sucks when you spend it on something and then have regrets, but also there's the, the situation of more shit than you need, which will become more waste or more whatever.   Like it's just, it's perpetuating this like over consumption lifestyle that we're all sort of being exposed to by the media, by social media, by everything. And. You know, little changes. It's not that we're going to change the world by making little changes, but at the very least you might make your life a little less unsettled or uncomfortable or overwhelmed.   My next tip. And this is an important one, especially when you're thinking about launch time and buying your next planner. If you are in a place where you don't really know what you're going to do yet is to do the work ahead of time, start thinking about what it is you think you'll need, not which brand you think you'll need, but what system you'll need.   Do you need a weekly, do you need a daily? Do you do most of your planning and Google calendar and just need something that you want to be able to do? Art or memory keeping or lettering practice or whatever. Don't let brand marketing tell you what you think you need and want actually assess what you've been using.   What has been working, what hasn't been working, so that you have a better idea of what you might be looking for. And then you can narrow things down. For example. Generally speaking daily planning is not for me. I tend to prefer a bullet journal for like rapid logging my tasks for the day and a weekly planner to visualize my week a daily printed planner has never really worked for me, but if the marketing for a new daily planner, like the new Moxy life daily planner really starts to creep into my mind.   I might decide, oh, Hey, maybe I should. That except I know I'm not going to use it because it doesn't work for me. If you struggle to discern what kinds of planners or what systems you might be wanting? I have a Skillshare course called finding planner peace that may help you with that. And I will leave a link to it down below.   It's a Skillshare premium class. If you're not a member and you've never used it before, my link will get you, I think, a free month, right? But like, I just I'm an affiliate, but I specifically designed that class over around how to help you figure out what planner you might be best suited for. And it's not necessarily brand specific, but it will give you some kind of ideas of which way to, uh, which way to turn, check the link in the show notes.   Another tip is to set a budget and stick to it. Like if you say this is how much I can afford to spend on planners and new planner accessories for the next year, stick to it, that will help you a not buy more shit than you're comfortable buying. And B it will make you. Thoughtful in terms of what you actually purchase, because if you're only allowed to spend X amount of money, you're not going to be blowing it Willy nilly on 15 different planter companies coming out with their cool shit, because you might buy something and then regret it.   And the thing you really wanted comes out later. So just set a budget, stick to it, and really like, be considering of how you're going to allocate each of those dollars or whatever. When it comes to influencers and influencer types, if you want to support them. Like me, when you do purchase, look and see if they have an affiliate link, it doesn't cost you anything.   And it helps them, uh, like make a little tiniest that much, but a tiny bit of money on the side, especially if they have helped you figure out what it is you like, like that's one of the things I do appreciate is when. Other people review planners ahead of time. So I can get an idea of what it is that I would like to buy.   And if my whole reason for doing planner reviews is so I spend the money so that you don't have to like, hopefully by me spending the money, you get to look at what it is and make the decision to not get it. And then you're not going to waste your money on it because you are. But if you decide to use an affiliate link, if you want to, if you don't then fucking don't like this, do what you're going to do.   And I'm totally cool with it either way. But on the flip side of that, if the same influencers or influencers in general planner, creators, whatever the case may be, if they make you want to spend all the money without thinking about it, maybe you should mute them during launch season. I've given this advice before and I mean it for me, Unfollow unsubscribe.   The mute is one of my favorite buttons in Facebook and Instagram, because you can shut somebody up for a while and they don't even know you're not going to offend anybody by and following them. They don't know you can't see their shit. And if you want to see it, you can still go see it, but it stays out of your feed.   And I promise you, there are people that I mute during launch season because I am just, I can't handle it anymore. Totally. Okay. And a fantastic tool. If you are a. Avid user of social media, like I am, and you need to get a break from it so that you can make your decisions about things with a little bit more thought.   And finally, I'm going to say this, and for some of you, you may be like, duh, and for some of you, you're going to be like, thank you. But it's an important thing to remember. You do not need all of the things. Most of these planner things are. And you can redate shit. You can go through the effort to re date shit and re and use it and make sure it doesn't go to waste.   But like that sucks, dude. That's a lot of effort. So before you make any planner purchase, ask yourself, will I use this during its intended timeframe? And if the answer is no, are you going to be willing to alter it in order to actually make it work and use it and not waste it? And you need to be honest with yourself when you ask yourself that, because if the answer to that is no.   And I know for me, it is, I can promise you right now that while I will slap date covers down on a planner, I will never read date a planner. And when it comes to undated planners, the jury's out. I generally speaking, I'm not a fan of undated planners, but because I'm lazy. But like, if that's your thing, then that's your thing.   But the question here is if you can take a hard look at this potential, this potential purchase, and be honest about whether the likelihood of you actually using it. That might help you from buying it because you don't need a wall of planners. Yeah. There are people on the internet with a fucking wall of planners.   I have a wall of stuff. I do planner reviews, but like, there are people who are part of affiliate programs are part of like squads or whatever who gets sent all this shit. They didn't have to pay for it. And if they did have to pay for it, there's like a certain level of elite ism that comes with having a wall of fucking planners.   You don't need that. You do not need. My hope for you. This planner season is that you are able to be thoughtful about the decisions that you make to not regret the money that you spend. And you make sure that everything that you bring into your house is coming into your house because it has a purpose.   You got this, I believe it. I think you're going to have a great time this planner launch season. And if you need any extra encouragement, find me on Instagram at Lama letters. I'll fucking encourage you. You got this, make sure that you check out that Skillshare class, if you need some extra help and don't forget to jump onto my monthly newsletter, I'm going to keep reminding you guys about this because I, I am.   That's what I'm doing, right. All of this stuff is in the show notes. Thanks to my patrons for sponsoring this episode. They love it when I do anti-consumer content I'm generalizing, but I think they do. You can check out my Patreon at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more, make sure you listen to this.   If you need an extra kick in your pants, this planner launch season stay safe. And until next time friends peace out.

People have been asking me (for years) about my personality type. What enneagram am I? What other random test situation? I have actually never really paid attention to all that, so now I'm starting a series where I take a personality test and discuss it! Today it is the DISC test, an OLD one from the 1920s mainly used in business. DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop is open! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED DISC Test - https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/ Info on the test - https://www.ionos.com/startupguide/productivity/disc-assessment/ Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast. Today is the first of what I think is going to be several personality test episodes. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. And if this is your first time here, welcome, I would love it. If you subscribed and hung out. Hopefully after you're appearing all of this today, you'll be fine with that.   And if this is not your first time, welcome back. If you want to take this test and you haven't before it'll be linked in the show notes, let's get right into it. As a preface. I have had so many people since I've started doing YouTube and everything else. This whole online creator situation, I have had so many people ask me what type of personality I am, what Enneagram I am, what fucking I N G P w.   Five that I am. I don't know. I don't actually do a lot of personality tests because I don't usually have the patience to sit down and do that. I have taken some of, there was one quiz I took a long time ago that maybe I'll try and find again where you're supposed to answer a bunch of questions about your values.   And then they take every all like a hundred and something religions, and then they decide which ones you're the closest to. And I remember doing that in my top three. We're secular Quaker, Unitarian Universalist, which is what I became and secular humanist, which is also what I said that there's that maybe I'll do that one again.   See if it's. Maybe add that in the political test, whatever, but personality test wise, the one or two that I've taken was like decades ago. And so I thought that this would be a fun little segment to have on the podcast every once in a while, because personality tests are in my mind, both garbage and interesting.   So I'm fine with both of those things, right. You should have heard last week's episode. When I talked about the Lula rich documentary. Which is garbage and interesting. Right? Anyway, so I am going to take the test today and then I will report back afterwards. So I'm not going to fill my, I'm not gonna record myself actually taking the test because that could take a long time and it might skew the results.   But I'll talk about the test. I will pause the recording, take the test, and then immediately afterwards report back on what I found and what I think about. Okay. I think that's going to be interesting if you think this is a cool format or a good idea, please let me know at Lama letters on Instagram, let me know in the stories.   If you take the test as well, let me know what you get. I'm so curious. And if you know of personality tests, you'd like me to try. I would love it. If you let me know in the DMS on. Also, just as reminder, if you haven't signed up for my newsletter, it is where I am giving you guys monthly peaks into everything you can reply to it.   And I can take your in your info interest. Can I talk now on which personality test to try or what podcast episodes you would like the info for that is in the show notes and October's freebie is currently available unless it's not October anymore than it might be a different freebie. You'll find out anyway.   Let's move forward. Today's test is an old one and it is the D I S C test. I pick this one because it's a shorter test. It's just, so it's an easy one to start with. Right? The D I S C stands for dominance influence, steadiness and compliance. The test is linked in the show notes. I'm sure there's different versions.   The one that I will be taking is linked. It's like 1, 2, 3 test.com or something it's linked. If you want to take it with me. One of the things I found when I Googled this is some criticism of the test specifically in like corporate work situations. A lot of these personality tests are utilized by companies to, I don't know, psychoanalyze their fucking employees instead of just giving them like better wages.   I don't know. That's not good into like an anti-capitalist rant right now, but I wanted to read you some of this because I think it's kind of enlightening on the test. I got this from a website called  dot com. It's like some. Fucking shit that has a bunch of corporate-y bullshit, but whatever, I thought that the criticism was interesting.   Right? So this is a quote from the website. The DIC assessment is among the most widely used personality tests in the corporate world, but it has been under scrutiny. Critics say that the assessment tool is outdated scientific findings in personality, psychology post 1920. So that's when the test, the test.   Early 20th century, post 1920 are not considered an empirical science-based foundation does not exist. Quality criteria such as validity are values that should be measured, actually being measured and reliability. Our results. The same every time are not fulfilled. The fact that D I S C personality tests seem to make applicable statements can be traced back to the Barnum effect.   According to this, we like to ascribe to desirable widespread or vague statements, although they're applicable to many different. In the last few decades, new assessments and personality psychology have been designed that speak of five key personality types, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.   Four personality types alone are no longer regarded as true to our time and quote. That was a lot of jargon. But what I gleaned from that was that a, this test is outdated based on what we know about psychology and. Aside from the fact that like the personalities it's testing for are outdated, the way the test is kind of built is kind of vague.   So it's entirely possible to take it more than once and get different answers. I'm going to take this test now and I will report back on both my personality types that it gives me what I think of the test. And do I agree with this criticism based on my extremely unscientific mind. So let's do quick pause and we'll be right back.   All right. I am done taking the test and I decided to pay for the extended report. For the sake of science. I imagine I'll be doing a lot of that during these episodes, but that's okay because my podcasts are sponsored by my patrons and you should check out www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more anyway, before I let you know my thoughts on the test in both digging into the test a little bit more and realized that I didn't give you a good kind of explanation of what these things are.   Um, and I have little bit more information cause I have this, uh, bigger report that gives you some more info on what the test actually is. I thought it would fill you in on that and then let you know my thoughts on the test and how I scored. So we talked about the four types, right? Dominant, influence, steadiness and compliance.   Well, they have definitions for those dominance describes the way you deal with problems, assert yourself and control situations. Influence describes the way you deal with people, the way you communicate and relate to others. Steadiness describes your temperament, patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness, and compliance describes how you approach and organize your activity, procedures, and responsibilities.   The D I'm going to read from the report. The DIC theory is often visualized as a quadrant where the top bottom and left right sides represent specific behavioral tendencies. People who score high on dominance and compliance tend to be more task oriented, where people who score higher on influence and steadiness are more people oriented.   Those scoring high on dominance and influence are generally more assertive and active. And higher scores on compliance and steadiness give rise to calm and more cautious, cautious behavioral styles. So what they also say is that the dimensions of the DIC are not dependent on each other. So you could score in one of the areas and it doesn't determine your score.   Like if you score high in one area, it doesn't necessarily negate your score in another area. One of the things that they do. And part of the reason I paid for the results is that your test results. And I saw my results. Give you. Like which one you're the highest in, and it shows how you breathe. They all break the four breakdown, but there are 15 profiles that have been identified as a good coverage of the possible outcomes based on your score overall on each of the things and those 15 outcomes in alphabetical order are the achiever, the coach, the counselor, the creator, the enthusiast, the evaluator, the individualist, the inspiration.   The investigator, the objective thinker, the perfectionist, the persuader, the practitioner, the results oriented and the specialist. Um, I don't know which one I am yet because I haven't scrolled down that far before I do. I'm going to give you my thoughts on the actual test that I took on this website. I found it to be.   Really general. I felt like, and I think this is the same in a lot of personality tests, there were the same questions being, or the same prompts being given. Phrased slightly differently. So the way this test ran was that they gave you a series of, I think 28 different little blocks of prompts, and each one has four prompts and you were supposed to pick the one that was the most like you and the one that was the least like you, and they weren't necessarily related to each other.   They were just four things. And you pick the one that was most like you and the one that was least like you. And there were 28 sections of that. The problem I was running in. Was that there were some where I could hardly choose which one was the most like me. And there were some where I didn't feel like any of them were like me.   And so those were the hardest ones for me to answer. Matter of fact, I didn't answer one. I just put the one that was least like me kept going and it wouldn't let me finish the test. The other real issue I ran into with the test. And again, I'm not a psychologist. I don't know any of that shit, but I'm like, The other thing that kind of irked me was that when you finish the test, it takes you to a page to get some more information on you, to help figure it out.   And the first thing it asks your gender and only offers the binary choices of male and female, which as we all know, gender is a spectrum, not binary, but moving forward. So my DIC score I'm scrolling down. So   in order. I scored the highest on dominance and then the next highest on influence the next highest on steadiness and the lowest on compliance. It doesn't surprise me. Now, when I saw the original results before I bought the report, it actually showed it on a pie chart. And the way the pie chart looked was that a little over half of my answers indicated dominance.   And then of the other half that was left, it was like a sliver of compliance and then pretty much equally distributed between influencing steadiness with a little bit more of influence over steadiness. So the next section on the report says your responses indicate that you want to assert yourself and like to take control, enjoy competition and challenge are self-sufficient and individualistic and all go.   Our goal orient. I tend to be direct and positive with people like to sweep people along with your forcefulness are persuasive, especially when seeking help or commitment, get restless and bored when involved in routine and repetitive work and activities need change and variety in your work. And non-work life may be impatient with people who are less dynamic than.   And that I'm independent and uninhibited feel restrained by rules and restrictions prefer to be measured by short-term rather than long-term results and are willing to take an unconventional approach. I tend to agree with probably about three quarters of that. The things I think, where I feel like this is not at least in my understanding of myself.   The biggest things are that I get restless and bored in routine and repetitive work and activities. That is so not true. I am a creature of habit and when my routines and repetitive things are disturbed, I get really, really grouchy. That was the one I think I, uh, I disagreed with the most on this list. I also, I agree with the direction.   And like sweeping people along, but I don't know how persuasive I am. So that one is a question mark for me, but a lot of this is very much me, so I agree with that. So my profile from that list of what was it, 12 mine is the results oriented. And I'm going to read this to you. You are individualistic, demanding and persistent.   You seek out challenging situations and are responsive to competition. You should be able to handle the daily stresses and pressures of work in life. However, when really pushed, you may become rather irritable and fault-finding people see you as a take charge sort of person who is self-confident and strives for results.   I mean, the part that's cracking me up here is the one really pushed. You may become irritable and fault-finding. Yeah. Yeah, that's accurate. Here are some key words that people often use to describe the results oriented profile, demanding direct egocentric self-assured change oriented, frustrated by lack of progress, persistent, determined, stubborn, independent, and quote own person.   Now I kind of take a little umbrage at egocentric, but at the same time, Isn't that something an egocentric person would say, I don't know. Oh, my prime value for an organization, because this is through a corporate website. Is your driving forcefulness and determination to achieve goals? Uh, tactic and strategy for increased effectiveness says, you appreciate need to.   I need to appreciate that some people may not be as dynamic and forceful as you avoid confrontation by developing your empathy and increasing your tolerance. Impose a little extra self-discipline when faced with details and routine work. And see here is again the point where I feel. This isn't exactly me is that, um, I already do avoid confrontation for the most part, because I really dislike it.   I consider myself to be fairly empathetic and, um, like I said, I really like details and routine work, but now this is interesting most, unlike your profile. The perfectionist, the profile most opposite to your profile is the perfectionist. You will most likely not recognize yourself in these descriptions of the perfectionist conservative, very modest, logical, always systematic, factual, non demonstrative, deliberate, careful, precise.   Accurate predictable and controlled. They're not wrong. I pretty much see myself in zero of those.   Whew, non demonstrative, logical conservative. No. Now here's the interesting part. So I'm looking at the appendix here, which gives you a little bit of a description of all of the different ones. And the one that I'm looking at that I feel like might be a little bit more accurate for me, but again, who fucking knows, right.   Is the persuader, which has some. Some overlap. Right. But the persuader is optimistic, enthusiastic, self-confident persuasive, sociable, change, oriented, independent, persistent, decisive, direct, and demanding. I feel like that is a little bit more, a little bit more, uh, accurate to me. I just took the test and that's, that's what it told me.   So do I, do I think that this test is completely on the nose? No, it's a personality test. Like it's full, it's totally like impacted by my decisions. And there may be a point where maybe I'll come back to this in a year and take it again and see if the same thing happens. But overall, I would suggest that it's not completely off the mark.   I feel like there are a few spots where it feels wildly inaccurate for me, but overall it does feel at least somewhat. Reasonable. I don't know. So I would love to hear from you. About not only what your personality not being pleased, do not pay, do not pay for the 1499 additional PDF. Maybe what you can do is if you really want to just take your score and then give yourself a little.   And the grid would need to be divided into four equal parts D and I on the two top left and right. And then see an S on the bottom left and right. And then kind of just fill in sort of which section has as much as it does. Like whichever one is the most, give it like the biggest and you can kind of see how it fits and maybe just Google it.   I just don't. I spent the money cause I can write it off, but don't spend the money. That's ridiculous. Unless you really want to then spend the money. But I'd love to hear if you take this. Tag me in Instagram stories at @llamaletters. And let me know what you got and tell me that you did it. And if you have any specific personality tests, you'd like me to take in the future.   Let me know in the DMS, this was very odd, but whatever, at least it was a short one. I know that there are some longer ones, I guess. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, don't forget to sign up for the newsletter and check out the Etsy shop, check out the Patreon, do all the things, man, do all the things. But at the very least, if you don't want to do all the things, tag me on Instagram stories that you're listening to this because I'm glad to be back.   And the only real way people know about the podcast is through word of mouth. And that is AOK by me. Thank you so much for watching. I promise to knock it to confrontation and until next time friends, peace out.

If you've been around the planner world (or shit, the online world) you probably know about LuLaRoe. Amazon Prime released a documentary called LuLaRich chronicling the rise and fall of the MLM - I've got so many thoughts! DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. NEWSLETTER https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61525a85337f1c2aacf52f6d Etsy Shop Reopens 10/21/21 https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo YouTube - https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com STUFF I MENTIONED LuLaRich - https://amzn.to/3EWgMbT TFD Video - https://youtu.be/HHK5FuOCGyU The Dream Podcast - https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-dream Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com   TRANSCRIPTION Hey everybody. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo. If this is your first time here. Welcome if this is not your first time here. Hell yeah. I'm glad that you're back. Blah-blah-blah let's get into today's episode really quick, but before I do, I want to give you a quick announcement.   How many times can I say quick? And this episode who knows, right? The announcement is that this coming up Thursday, October 21st, 2021, my Etsy shop will be reopening. I will have all of the series, one fuckery flowers, my art prints of realistic flowers with naughty words, hidden in them. All of the series one, the flowers that were in the shop before we'll be back with all prints and postcards available as well as a couple of small, new, like stocking stuffer type items, a few bookmarks and vinyl sticker packs.   You can find the link to it in the show notes. And soon in the next few weeks, I will be updating it with limited edition calendars with series two and series one fuckery flowers on them. And then in later November, there will be the launch of series two, which is. Set up 12 new fuckery flowers with prints and postcards, as well as some bundles of things that will include both series.   So if that is something you have been waiting for, or you haven't checked it out yet, my Etsy shop will be linked in the show notes and you can go ahead and favorite it, do all the things and look for it on October 21st. Now let's get into the episode. We're going to talk about Lula rich today. Why is this relevant to the planner world?   Yes, it's fucking relevant to the planner world. If you don't know why it's relevant to the planner world trust, I will tell you about that. So what is Lula rich? Let's start right. Lulu rich is a documentary on Amazon prime. It just came out well, it came out in September and I binge watched all four episodes of it.   It's about the rise and fall of the multi-level marketing company. They interview current and ex. Retailers or consultants. They're the people that are actually part of the multi-level marketing company. They interview former employees of the home office, the corporate side of it, and most interesting.   They interview mark and DeAnn Stedham who are the founders of the company, as well as some of their family members who were put into high level positions within the company. One of the things that I thought was interesting is that the documentary was made by the same people who made the documentary about the fire festival.   So they have had some experience making documentaries about dumpster fires. So what is LuLaRoe in case you don't know? And if you don't know, I. Remarkably jealous of you. LuLaRoe's a multi-level marketing company. If you don't know what multi-level marketing is, and I'm really jealous of you, it is direct sales is another name for it.   Some people call them pyramid schemes. Although in the U S in the laws, there are very specific rules that govern pyramid scheme. Versus multi-level marketing companies, pyramid schemes are illegal. Multi-level marketing companies are not honestly, I don't really see that much of a difference between the two.   And if you really want an interesting, entire deep dive on multi-level marketing companies, I will recommend the first season of the dream, a podcast. They did a limited series on multi-level marketing. That's outstanding. But in general, multi-level marketing is a business model where there is a company that produces something, whether it's it's essential oils like young living or what's the other one.   I don't remember. There's some other fun. Essential oils. I don't give a fuck or like makeup. Some of the most famous makeup ones are like Mary Kay and Avon. Then there's Amway, which is one of the most famous Tupperwares, also multi-level marketing company, but there's all sorts of them. And during the age of social media, they've exploded because of how social media works.   And Lula Roe really leaned into that. We'll talk about that in a second, but in the idea of a multi-level marketing, is that. There's a company that makes some sort of a product rather than sell that product to stores or sell it themselves like wholesale it, they sell it to consultants, quote, independent consultants who are not employed by the company.   They send a contract with the company, but they're not employed by the company. The consultants buy the products at wholesale and then sell them to customers at re. No in and of itself, that doesn't sound like such a problem, right? Except that a lot, or the majority of multi-level marketing companies, the money is not made in the sales of the product.   The money is made in recruiting more consultants underneath you to then by-product from the company and sell to customers. The problem here is a, if the real money is made through recruiting, rather than selling the product. Then the people at the top make the most money and then, but they have to depend on more and more levels of people beneath them.   Hence the term pyramid scheme. The other problem that you run into is that while they say there's like so many people that you can recruit and blah, blah, blah, if you're recruiting your customer base sooner or later, you don't have anybody to sell to now social media, once again has blown this all up because you can reach out to more than just your, your sphere of influence in like your community or whatever.   But like it, it can, a company can really hit like a level of saturation and that's when shit can start to go a little wonky. Now, if you really want to really delve into like the side of people who have been burned by this, besides watching Lula rich, Google, anti MLM, trust me, you'll find all sorts of.   But we're talking about LuLaRoe. So LuLaRoe is a MLM that sells clothing. It started with maxi skirts expanded in to quote, buttery, soft leggings, and then a whole bunch of other things. The. Clothing was mainly geared towards women. And one of the things, one of the like selling points of it was that they had all of these like wild prints for the fabrics that these clothes were made out of.   And that any given print was only going to be. Into like 3000 pieces and then it would be gone. And so retailers will be getting in there. The consultants will get in their orders of prints. And if you got one of the prints that was like a very popular one, then people would want to shop with you. It also supposedly was going to encourage collaboration with other retailers because people would be looking for certain things.   And if you didn't have it, but you had other friends who were consultants, they might have it. So you could serve your customers that way, which is an interesting way to go about it. Okay. Now, one of the things that was, is pretty painful about Lula Rowe is that retailers, which is what they call their consultants.   Um, don't get to choose the prints. They can pick the styles and they can pick the sizes, the prints, however, we're not their choice. They would not know what they were getting until they open their box, which could be very cool except, and Lula rich really. Demonstrates, this really shows a lot of the evidence of this.   Not all of these prints are nice. I've heard people refer to some of them as Doritos leggings. There is a lot of them where the way the leggings were made, it would look super like a badge or a penis because of just the unfortunate way the pieces were stick together. And as time went on, the prince got more and more janky and more and more not desirable.   And so these consultants would wind up with a lot of inventory that they couldn't sell because it was ugly. And then on top of that, the only way to get better inventory would be to order more and more and more. And you can see where this could become a problem. Now there's two things that really are important to understand about LuLaRoe's specifically one because it's clothing and because it's like meant to be an inventory, heavy business, the initial package.   Is like at least $5,000, you have to spend a huge chunk of money upfront and then continually order more and more you with some multilevel marketing companies, you could get a catalog and sell from the catalog and then order as the money comes in, that would be the least risky way to go about things.   But in LuLaRoe, because you don't know what you're getting until you get it, you literally have to buy a bunch of shit in order to sell a bunch of shit. So there's that the second thing to know about LuLaRoe is that it, it really started in the mid 2010s, I believe, right? As Facebook lives and Periscope and things like that were becoming really big.   So. A lot of consultants started to do Facebook lives. They get their box of stuff. They go live on Facebook in their group or on their page where they had a bunch of potential customers. And then they would just show items and people would comment sold and that's how they would sell them. And this just really blew up and a bunch of other multi-level marketing companies hell or use social media now, too.   But it got very big on Facebook very quickly. And this is where the connection to the planter community begins. So. Around 2016 and I could be wrong. It could have been 2015, but I, my best memory is around like late 2015, early 2016, Lula Rowe sorta started to take over the planter community. It started with a few retailers in the planner world, and then they began to recruit from the planner community.   Now I understand why this is. I'm going to generalize a little bit here, but a lot of people in the planter, community or women, especially back then, a lot of people in the planner community are introverted. I'm generalizing. And there's a lot of them that are moms. A lot of them that they, I w I would, I would say that in, especially in like the circles of planner committee that I've run in, like the PGW kind of area.   There were a lot of people that were kind of ripe for the picking when it came to Louisville road, because one of the things that they did well at the beginning was sell clothing that was comfortable and Dorito his side was not like entirely unflattering. But it was comfortable. I got some, I got the maxi skirts because they were the longest maxi skirts with a nice wide band around the belly.   I'm six foot two. It's hard to find maxi skirts that are actually maxi on me, but the Lula ones I got were, they also had a. Irma. That was like a tunic length top that was long enough to cover my plumber's butt crack, which again is very difficult for me to find because of how tall I am. It's just, it's hard for me to find.   And so there were certain items from LuLaRoe that were just there. We're well-suited for me and I was comfortable in them and I appreciated that. And I wasn't the only one now I also had to get into a little bit of that hunting kind of mindset, because I didn't want any wacky prints. I wanted solids.   And so solids were like a big unicorn, especially black leggings. Oh my God. So hard to find. But so the people who came, who were planned or people who got into Lula Rowe had a really great audience for them kind of already there. So those people, they sold their products to planner. People, built groups from planner people and built their teams from planner.   People. The teams are pretty big and there was a lot of them. And LuLaRoe was everywhere. There were all sorts of people like asking about different groups and blah, blah, blah, but it came kind of to a really frothy head at go wild 2017. And now. So the go wild team, the people that put the, the org, the welfare planners, people that put on the actual conference decided that year, that for the plan Gemma party, they were going to rent the little bar, like, like corridor that's at the, uh, the Gaylord hotel in Nashville that the conference was being held at.   There were these three bars, there was a karaoke bar. There was a kind of a club style bar. And then there was a smaller situation. And what they decided to do was rent all three of those out and like close it off to just the people that were coming to play in JAMA. So Erin Condron sponsored the clubs, style bar, Krissyanne designs sponsored the karaoke bar, but that was the third bar.   And remember, this was the second year of go wild and it was only 700 people coming. So the number of like companies that had. Been willing to put large amounts of money into the conference. We're still very, it was a, still a very short list because it was so new. And so they decided to allow a Lula Roe pop-up to sponsor the third.   Now, um, a lot of this is anecdotal evidence. I don't know all of the details behind any of this. This is just like I said, from my observations, from being in the community and being at the event. But. Uh, one of the groups of consultants in the planner community decided that they would as a team. So they were all on a team together.   They were all in one downline. They decided to pool together and sponsor the bar so that they could bring their shit and put all their clothes out and let consultants shop. And it seemed like, you know, a smart financial move for them because so many people in the planner community were buying shit anyway.   So they were going to have them kind of as a, as a captive audience. Right. There were two controversies that came from this one was that at this point, and even to this day go wild does not have a shopping component to it. Every once in a while, there will be like a place you can buy things or like one.   Opportunity to buy things. But one of the reasons they don't have like a vendor hall or haven't had a vendor hall in the past is because they wanted the shop owners who are part of the community to actually get to come and meet their customers and enjoy the conference, not spend their whole time vending.   I think that's a great idea personally, although I do know some people who get sad that there's not a lot of shit to buy, but personally you get so much shit from the conference. So much swag anyway. That's like, where would I put it? Like I barely have enough room anymore. Regardless. So there was that there was a lot of sore feelings that these people were going to be allowed to sell when selling was not allowed.   Otherwise, the other source of hard feelings was that there were other Lula consultants who wanted to bring their sh who were not in that team who wanted to bring their shit and sell it like out of their hotel rooms. But there was like a band put on that because this team. Had sponsored the bar, they got to, um, have like exclusive rights, again, make sense because they're putting the money into the sponsorship so they can demand that, that happens a lot with sponsorships, you can, and other kinds of contracts, like I've had contracts with people before where I have signed exclusivity with them for a certain thing as part of the contract.   Like it makes sense. But one of the things I saw people bitching about. And it's understandable was that there wasn't an opportunity for them to step up. It was suggested, and then it just happened and other people felt left out of it. I get that when I say bitchy and I don't mean that in a negative way, I actually mean that in a, like it's like they were, they were upset about it.   And I get that. I do understand that I could see both sides of this particular situation. Looking back on it. I'm like kind of grossed out by the whole thing, Maine. Mainly because of my feelings about MLMs. And I have a lot of feelings about MLMs and I'll expand on that in a bit, but like, I think that.   Part of the reason I wasn't. So skeeved out by Emma, the Lula Roe specific MLM at the time was because I had found a couple of items of clothing that worked for me, but I was already getting really kind of grossed out about how it felt like the planner world was becoming like fertile recruiting territory because at the heart of it, multilevel marketing is predatory and that's something that Lulu right shows.   Anyway. So that was the. The situation, I will update you on some of those planner connections as I finished talking about the documentary, but I wanted to give a bunch of context, 17 minutes of context, of both what LuLaRoe is and how it connects to the planter world. So now let's talk about the documentary.   I'm not going to spoil it. You should watch it. I promise you. If you have Amazon prime, you should watch it. It's four hour for, I don't think it's four hours. I don't think they're all an hour long, but it's four parts. Give yourself the time to watch them all in a row, because you may not want to step away from it.   The first takeaway I have what a fucking hot mess, and I'm not even talking about. There's there's two kinds of big, hot messes. There's the hot mess of the clothing. One of the reasons that Lulu burrow began to sink as a, as a company was that the clothing went downhill. The patterns you learn in the documentary, that the people who had to design the pattern.   Unhealthy as somebody who does graphic design and can make repeating patterns like very unhealthy unreasonable quotas, like impossible quotas to make. So that's where like a bunch of plagiarizing came in and a bunch of other garbage and Dorito prints, right. There was also stuff being kept outside. So it was moldy and like wet.   And so consultants were getting nasty shit and the company wasn't helping them with it. So there's that the quality was going down. But then on top of that, and maybe kind of in tandem with that. The way the company was run was a hot fucking mess up Mickey mouse horseshit, right. They hired their chip mark.   And Dan had between them like, hell fucking children, like 14 children or something. There, there, there are latter day saints or Mormons. They between them and a whole bunch of children, including a pair of children who are married to each other fucking glossed right over that. But like, They put their children into like all of the executive offices, despite none of them having any experience at that.   So it doesn't surprise me that a company that grew that quickly, like they show how fast the revenue and the consultants grew. It's like ridiculously fast growth with incompetent people running the company. It was bound to explode at some point, and it just happened to explode. And she sent out shrapnel of stinky leggings and penis crunch.   So there's that right? The second big takeaway was how they portrayed mark and Deanne Stidham, which I actually thought was very. Very clever of them. They interviewed the two of them, the founders of the company in their fancy office. She's wearing like designer heels, looking all like made up and very Tammy Faye Bakker.   And they're sitting there and they're like swab and like answering their questions, all calm and cool and collected. And then they juxtapose the filmmakers juxtapose. With segments from their deposition, from one of the multitude of lawsuits that are against them, which I'll get into in a minute and how the answers they give the interviewers and the answers in the depositions.   Don't always track with each other. It's very, very telling it very much, kind of informs your opinion of them as you're watching the show. The other thing that I found was really, really just both gross and also amusing was them fronting like they're feminists talking about how they're trying to like empower women.   This is a women empowerment company to run your own business and blah, blah, blah. Except it comes out during the documentary that they want to hammer home like traditional gender roles. Like once you get going, you need to make sure your husband is respected. Bring him into the business. Cool with your business, you should find a new husband, but like he still needs to call the shots.   And then they started to talk about like how they wanted it, like have feminine a feminist company, female empowering company. And before DeAnn could answer her husband talked right over her. Like it was a beautiful, I think it's in the trailer. It's a beautiful example of how ridiculous this shit is. Now I felt really like another thing that I took away from the whole documentary was how conflicted I felt about all of the ex consultants that they interviewed, especially the ones who built massive teams.   They had some coaches, which is like the second highest level on the pyramid. And, um, at least two mentors. So that's the highest level that you could reach. And they were talking about their regrets and the way they felt about certain things. And I felt very sympathetic towards them, especially as somebody who like filed for bankruptcy because of an MLM, like I felt sympathetic to them.   But at the same time, I really felt also that except for one there's one exception to it. And you'll know when you watch the documentary, who the exception is based on. The way that she talks about things, but none of them seem to really, they felt awful about their situation, but none of them really seemed to cope or like talk about the fact that they were predators.   Like, if this is what happened to you, what happened to all of the people below you? All of the people, like one of them had thousands of people on her team. Is there remorse. Do you feel bad about it? If you really want a nuanced take like a really good take about this? I would suggest you watch the video on the financial diet channel, where she talks about that.   A link in the show notes. She also has a. Good. She's great conversation about how the only way to change the culture in which multilevel marketing continues to proliferate is that we can't just get mad at the people who run the companies. We also need to get mad at the people who use the companies to make money, like the people who recruit a whole bunch of people.   And where's the line drawn. Like if you recruit one, I think I recruited three people over the course of my time at a multi-level marketing. And does that make me predatory? Compared to somebody who, who recruited like 2,500 people. I don't know. You know, I have no idea. So, so there's that right? Check that video out.   And there was one particular couple who I was really grossed out by, and that was the, I think they're called the . They weren't, they never quit. They were fired from Lula Rowe and they didn't seem to show any. Like I don't, I think they'd still be in it today if they hadn't been fired. And they were like there for sympathy and it's like, I don't feel sympathy for you.   It's hard to feel sympathy for you got fired from something that really sucked. And now you're speaking out against it, but you would still be like playing into the suckiness if you hadn't been fired question mark. I don't know why just look and say, you got to watch the documentary. I'm curious to know.   And then there was an entirely other situation that really is not a multilevel marketing thing, but just a toxic fucking wellness. Diet, I'm really into the podcast maintenance phase. If you haven't listened to that 10 out of 10 recommend. And like, I have been working really hard to try and like deprogram myself from diet culture.   And I'll talk a lot more about that in some upcoming episodes. But the thing that like kind of came out of the blue and I sorta knew about it from other anti MLM stuff I saw, but like the way it was described just really, really got me was the weight loss surgery. Shit.   If you haven't seen it yet, I'm not going to spoil you too much, except to let you know if the talk of like weight loss surgery, and having to maintain a certain physique to be accepted is triggering to you. That is something to watch out for when you're watching this documentary, because it absolutely comes up.   Let's just say that the owners, the owners of LuLaRoe had a fucking life. Group chat to get people to go to Tijuana and get weight loss surgery, and you were pressured to do it so that you can look a certain way, reinforcing certain roles about how somebody should look. It's fucking gnarly dudes, and I'm not going to go too deep into it right now just to say, Hey, watch out for that.   If it's in, it's hard for you and be damn right. But I will say that one of the biggest aha moments that came to me at the end of the documentary. And this brings it back to the planner world. The biggest aha moment to me came at the end from Robert Fitzpatrick. He is an expert on MLMs and he is somebody that they interviewed for the documentary.   And he he's the one who shows up throughout it to explain things about how MLMs in general work. He's actually does a very good job about that as well. So that'll help you if you're still confused when you watch the documentary. I'm also going to read his book soon, and I will be sure to discuss that here.   He said that once an MLM gets big enough, it's damn near impossible to make money when you get recruited into it, because you need to get in early enough. To be one of the people that are higher up in the pyramid, the later you get into it, the more likely it is that you're going to have a hard time finding other people who haven't either heard of it and been burned by it or heard of it and been recruited themselves.   So when an MLM starts to struggle or loses popularity or start sending their consultants, slimy leggings, the people who are higher up in the pyramid, the ones who already have big teams, big. We'll bounce and go to a newer, more up and coming MLM to start the cycle all over again, to get it on the ground floor so that they can build their team from people that they brought with them.   And then shoot up to the top of the pyramid. Now, when he said that my jaw was on the floor, not because this was new knowledge to me, this is not something that I didn't already like, no, but it was the first time that I had really. Wrapped my mind around the fact that a lot of the people who recruited heavily from the planner community when Lula rose started to cruise down hill bounced to another MLM.   And now a lot of them are higher up on the pyramid. There it's a nail Polish company by the way, but I'm not going to, and like I'm not condemning every single person who's in an MLS. I could, but I'm not going to mainly because a blanket condemnation is something that I struggle with, especially with my, like, you, you values that I so have trouble living up to sometimes, but I will say that, like that particular comment it's like you held a mirror up to the planner community and it was an, you could see that exact story play.   And it's still playing out today. It just makes you go. Hmm. Now there's a bunch of other things that this documentary gets into gets into race and how MLMs, especially ones like Lula Roe are. Really geared towards a certain demographic of white women. Who's a good target. Like who's easily recruitable, who are the people that are easily preyed on.   There's a reason that there are a lot of military spouses that get recruited into MLMs because they are looking for like community and you can find one in an MLM until. I don't want to do it anymore, then that community has gone and I can do more, but I'm not an anti MLM podcast, but I could totally do some more episodes on them in general.   And my experience is on them. But I will tell you generally speaking, I have not talked a lot about them in my, on my YouTube channel or here on the podcast, because. I had a, I had a shitty experience that really messed my family up really fucked my life up. And I take responsibility for the choices I made.   I'm the one who decided to do it. I'm the one who spent the money. I'm the one who caused my family to file for bankruptcy because of it. I'm the one who recruited a handful, a couple of people into it. I did those things and the consequences for those things were brought because of my actions. As I look back on it, I was a perfect person to be preyed on.   I was a brand new mom. I was out on disability because of tendonitis. My everything was really hard. We were like scraping by. I was a perfect candidate for it and I can see how I was pulled into it, but I don't like to talk too much about my really strong feelings about MLMs. Because I know from personal experience how touchy and like fraught that conversation is, especially for people who are still in.   And it just makes me extremely uncomfortable to talk about it. It's one of those, like it's like throwing them all to top cocktail and I just, there's all sorts of times, I'm fine to throw the cocktail. And this is one in particular that just is very difficult for me. So I haven't decided exactly how deep I want to get into anti-Muslim.   And it would mainly be on this podcast now on the YouTube channel, just because it's not really related, but like, it may be changing soon. I may be willing to do more depending on how this comes out, but this, this documentary kind of like was a reminder to me of a lot of my feelings and it brought up a lot of other feelings as well.   So I wanted to mention that because it can be a really difficult thing for me to even wrap my mind. Yeah. But, like I said, the documentary brings up all sorts of things about race, about. Income inequality about the role of religion, especially Mormonism in the forming of a lot of MLMs. There's a reason a lot of them have come out of Utah.   Like there's a reason for it. The toxic positivity that like infused. MLM culture, the toxic wellness culture, which is going to be definitely something that's coming up on this podcast in the next couple of months, because it's high on my list of things to talk about. Like there's a lot of things that this documentary touches on, but doesn't really dive deep.   It could have been a lot longer. I would love to see a documentary of this quality made about the MLM industry as a whole. But the problem you run into with that is that the MLM industry has the government in its pocket. There's a reason that it hasn't been regulated and it's not a Democrat thing, and it's not a Republican thing.   It's a government thing. And they're like, you should go listen to the dream for a lot more information about that. But yeah, I just wanted to give you some of my thoughts on it and provide some context because I have seen a lot of people in the planter community talking about wanting to watch this. And a lot of people who were around for that who were like, hell yeah, planner, community LuLaRoe, blah, blah, blah.   And a lot of people wondering what the fuck? Why, why is the planner community? Why are so many people in the planner community? So excited to watch this documentary? I wanted to provide some of that context because I think it really does inform how MLMs can be very, they can be very predatory on groups of people, especially with.   And how the planner community was impacted by that. Anyway, now that I talked all about that, if you have watched it, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can let me know, tag me at Lama letters on Instagram, in your stories. I'd love to find out your thoughts. And, uh, also keep an eye out for my Etsy shop reopening this Thursday, the 21st, which is not a multi-level marketing company.   I make these prints and then I sell them to you. And I will not recruit you to sell them to someone else because they're fuckery flowers, not fuckery business practices. Also, if you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet the October freebie has started to go out. I'm so sorry if you were not able to get it earlier, but you should get it by now.   If you start to sign up for it, there will be a new one in November. All of this stuff is linked in the show notes as always. This is sponsored by my patrons. They are fucking rad. They. Support me in everything I do. And hopefully I have not pissed too many of them off with any of my recent episodes. I guess we'll find out won't we on the Patrion page, you can check it out at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more as always take care of yourselves.   I'll see you next Monday. And until next time, my friends peace out.  

This week Megan and Myra sit down and chat with Cindy Guentert-Baldo of @llamaletters to discuss the latest in the planner community, remaining true to yourself and so much more! We wrap up the show discussing the future Archer and Olive x Cookie Sticker Co collab, giving credit to Black creatives, HP response, and listeners feedback. Keep up with Cindy @llamaletters "Be inclusive and chill" pins are live on our website! Shop them at https://www.plannersandwinepod.com/pins ! Thank you for your support! Purchase your Go Wild 2022 tickets now at https://www.wildforplanners.com/go-wild-planners-conference-socal-2022 Check out The Honey B Shop IG: @thehoneybshop Website: https;//www.thehoneybshop.com Babebox: https://www.thbsbabebox.com/ Be sure when you share the show on social media to use the hashtag #plannersandwine. Thanks so much for your support! Check out our website Plannersandwinepod.com for episode info, links to our Merch, Patreon and so much more! Follow us on IG: @plannersandwine Megan's IG: @megsgotaplan Myra's IG: @myraplansit Thank you to the sponsors of this episode Wild for Planners, The Honey B Shop, and Anchor. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/planners-and-wine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/planners-and-wine/support

Leanne and Caitlin chat with Cindy Guentert-Baldo of @Llamaletters.

Today's episode is a recording of a recent YouTube video, talking about how jarring it can be when your feelings about the holidays are not happy, yet the media portrays them as a magical time. PREORDER MY NEW BOOK! https://amzn.to/2HJ9Tld (affiliate link) PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get 14 days of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 WHAT I TALKED ABOUT Original Video - https://youtu.be/DNueTgBXj9o FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Discord - https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Let's talk about living kidney donors and not funny jokes on 90s reboots. PREORDER MY NEW BOOK! https://amzn.to/2HJ9Tld (affiliate link) PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get 14 days of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 WHAT I TALKED ABOUT Marie Claire Article - https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a34845471/selena-gomez-saved-by-the-bell-kidney-transplant/ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I am fascinated by the reaction of people to The Crown's season 4, especially in how people are treating Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.  PREORDER MY NEW BOOK! https://amzn.to/2HJ9Tld (affiliate link) PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get 14 days of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7   FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I got some sad news about one of my Patrons today. It is causing me to reflect on the power of the internet. PREORDER MY NEW BOOK! https://amzn.to/2HJ9Tld (affiliate link) PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7   FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

This one is for all of you - a bit of mellowness in a week full of potential upheaval.   PREORDER MY NEW BOOK! https://amzn.to/2HJ9Tld (affiliate link) PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 WHAT I TALKED ABOUT Poem - https://www.uua.org/worship/words/poetry/let-artists-win Hadestown - https://www.hadestown.com/ My Video - https://youtu.be/8blR0Z6L9F0 FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I've been on an instagram break for quite some time, but I'm starting to figure out how I'll come back to it (this time with appropriate boundaries in place). Today I'm talking about the beginning stages of my plan to return.   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ WHAT I TALKED ABOUT Leaving Instagram Video - https://youtu.be/Dsf6huqtGYs   FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Dude, I am having so many thoughts and can't figure out how to express them. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

It's okay to step away from things that are causing you mental distress. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Have you ever sat and let your mind wander to whatever deep thoughts come out of your brain? Have you ever written them down? That's what I did this week, and today I'm talking about them! PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬   FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

The global pandemic has triggered a wave of toxic positivity, and I want to talk about it. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ WHAT I TALKED ABOUT WaPo Article - https://wapo.st/31Hjxw8 HealthLine Article - https://bit.ly/34SHAKD FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Today is a quick little bit for you inspired by my friend Ann-Marie Harik (Rose Paper Party).   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

This week we chat with Lydia from @clevergirlcraftings to discuss her thoughts on American Craft mishap and correction plus her feature in The New York Times. We also discuss the latest Erin Condren x Hello Kitty release, Cindy Guentert-Baldo's leaving instagram video, and of course your five star reviews ! Be sure to follow Lydia on IG @clevergirlcraftings and check out The New York Times article she was featured in: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/style/scrapbooking-blm-black-lives-matter.html Instagramers Lydia mentioned in this episode: @readlikearockstar, @craftsofadifferentshade Cindy Guentert-Baldo's YT video discussed in this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsf6huqtGYs REGISTER TO VOTE! https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote Don't forget to leave us a 5 star rating and review on iTunes for a shoutout on the next episode! Would you like to advertise on Planners and Wine? Send us an inquiry from the link in our IG bio. We are so grateful to you guys for tuning in every week and that's honestly payment enough. BUT if you would like to financially contribute to our podcast and its production, our cash app is $plannersandwine and our Paypal is paypal.me/plannersandwine. Be sure to send us a message letting us know you contributed so we can thank you personally! Meg is about to start her first year of teaching! If you would like to contribute to her classroom, click the link in our IG bio! Follow us on IG: @plannersandwine Megan's IG and Youtube channel: @Megsgotaplan Myra's IG and Youtube channel: @myraplansit --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/planners-and-wine/support

The title says it all man. Back to school is sending me down a stress spiral this year and I need to get it off of my chest. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Thanks to a question from Monica in the LLL Facebook group today I'll be discussing my thoughts on how COVID-19 is (and will be) impacting the planner community. I'll be looking both at the hobby of planning and the economy that has sprung up as a result. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I expected a lot of things going into this shelter in place pandemic situation, but there has been a LOT I WASN'T expecting... PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Is your first instinct to apologize, regardless of the situation?   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Am I back? I hope so!   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com THINGS I TALKED ABOUT Meal Planning Sucks - https://youtu.be/jOLktdBM4no HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

A quick update during social isolation...   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Today, Holly talks to illustrator and online content creator, Cindy Guentert-Baldo about her amusing floral illustrations, being approached by a publisher to produce a hand lettering book, and how to still get stuff done even when you're a chronic procrastinator. We have a few colourful words in this episode. Get all the links on our website at www.unstoppableauthors.com

In today's quick hot take (actually recorded last week, but I brain farted) I talk about something I heard at the Chicago Planner Conference. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com   HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

After spending some time at the Chicago Planner Conference recently, I thought I'd take some time to give my best tips for surviving a larger planner conference or event, especially from the perspective of someone with chronic pain or illness.   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 ORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com   HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Today I'm pondering the small things in life that make my day a little brighter, even when the rest of it feels like a dumpster fire.   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com THINGS I TALKED ABOUT March BuJo Setup - https://youtu.be/Ew6X2KJ5g-0 HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Why is it so hard to be satisfied with what we have?    PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com   HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Today I'm talking about my recent root canal and how it touched every aspect of my dental shame. For some background, check out episode #99! PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com   HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Believe them.   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com   HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I'm admitting defeat this week. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Oh man, I have some feelings.   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com   HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

In honor of both episode 100 (!!) and my 40th birthday, today's (tongue in cheek, meant to be kinda silly) episode is allll about things I don't have time for.   PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com THINGS I TALKED ABOUT Meal Planning Sucks - https://youtu.be/jOLktdBM4no HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

It's my birthday and I want to talk about… my teeth. PROJECT PLANNING FOR PROCRASTINATORS -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium for free with this link (affiliate link) - https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 PREORDER MY BOOK! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) CHECK OUT MY ART PRINTS! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I'm turning 40 this week and BOY do I have thoughts about that. SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Are you letting the people around you determine who you are? What you do? SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ THINGS I TALKED ABOUT Creative Pep Talk (book) - https://amzn.to/2RFWEDb Creative Pep Talk (podcast) - http://www.creativepeptalk.com/ Carolyn Sewell - https://www.carolynsewell.com/   FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

What do you do when you get derailed? How do you react when you seem to lose momentum, especially if it is something completely out of your control? Today I'm talking about my recent experience being diagnosed with gout just as I was ramping up into the New Year. SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Maybe it's the prednisone, but I've been really annoyed this week and have wanted to ask the same question all over the damn planner internet.   SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I got sidelined by a new diagnosis this week and I want to talk through my feelings about it. SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

In today's still as yet unnamed Friday series of quick little bits in your ear, I'm baffled by some observations about myself and my latest gym experiences.   SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

One of my goals in the first quarter of 2020 is to figure out where my time is going so I can use it more efficiently and set better boundaries. But before I start time tracking (down to the minute - I'll explain in a later episode) I wanted to take a second and make some assumptions... where do I *think* my time is going? The difference between what I'm actually doing and what I think I'm doing is an important one, I think, and I invite you to reflect on the same thing!   SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

This is the first in what I hope will be a weekly Friday segment, 3 minutes or so in length, where I spit some hot truths at you based on whatever is on my mind this week. Today? I'm speaking out for the people who need to track mundane ass shit in their planners because they're building habits or need accountability (or any other reason). SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Today I'm chatting about three things I've learned about setting goals and actually achieving them, as opposed to my usual MO of forgetting what they are by February 1st. SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Today's episode is the third in a series of how I feel around the holidays, and in this conversation I lay out not only the reasons *I* feel like a grinch most years, but many reasons OTHER people might feel depressed, ambivalent or unhappy during this time of year… and some things that MAY help. SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I've been sharing custody for about 10 years now, and the holidays add their own special layers of stress and compromise. SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR BOOK CLUB! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Book Club: Good Morning Good Life (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/2LDZyWW Book Club: Good Morning Good Life Planner (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/36xWKm9   MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ LINKS DISCUSSED New York Times Article Gretchen Rubin4 Tendencies Article 4 Tendencies Quiz Greatist Article Harvard Business Article FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

The title says it all... I suck at saying no, and during the holidays it can get SO MUCH worse. Let's talk about it. SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR SHOP UPDATES! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ LINKS DISCUSSED New York Times Article Gretchen Rubin4 Tendencies Article 4 Tendencies Quiz Greatist Article Harvard Business Article FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Some food for thought this Monday morning about hating something for the sake of hating it.  SOME STUFF FOR YOU CHECK OUT MY SHOP! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CGBPrints EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR SHOP UPDATES! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

In the spirit of American Thanksgiving this week, I'm musing about how Instagram style gratitude/thankfulness trackers really don't do shit for me, and why I think that might be. SOME STUFF FOR YOU EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR SHOP UPDATES! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

How do you deal with feeling guilty when you can't get everything done due to sickness or some other issue? This was one of your questions - I'll answer it as best as I can today, although I struggle with it ALL THE TIME. SOME STUFF FOR YOU EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR SHOP UPDATES! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND PLANNER GIRL CHATTER ON ALL THE THINGS Podcast - https://plannergirlchatter.com/ Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/plannergirlchatter/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/plannergirlchatter/ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

This week's episode is a fun one - I got to record a joint podcast with Planner Girl Chatter at the West Coast Planners event in Portland in October, and we played a game of Never Have I Ever! Be sure to go check them out as well! SOME STUFF FOR YOU EMAIL NEWSLETTER FOR SHOP UPDATES! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) West Coast Planners - https://www.facebook.com/groups/WestCoastPlanners/ MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ FIND PLANNER GIRL CHATTER ON ALL THE THINGS Podcast - https://plannergirlchatter.com/ Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/plannergirlchatter/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/plannergirlchatter/ FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Have you ever played Never Have I Ever? Well we did LIVE at The Candy Shop with Cindy Guentert-Baldo with The Uncurated Life Podcast. Enjoy this fun after dark episode!  Thanks Colleen & Katie for a fun weekend at your latest West Coast Planners event!

Today is part 1 of at least 2 parts (maybe more) of a call in show, talking about YOUR pet peeves as a subscriber/watcher of YouTube. I decided to make this a multipart episode as you have a lot of opinions! MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less -  Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Cigna Article on Chronic Loneliness - https://www.cigna.com/individuals-families/health-wellness/chronic-loneliness   FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

My friend and Patron Pamela asked me to talk about loneliness - she wanted to know if she was the only one who felt lonely all the time. Well, my friend, you're not, and today we are chatting about being lonely, the difference between being lonely and being alone, and how chronic loneliness is actually a thing. MY SECOND SKILLSHARE CLASS! Creativity For All - Simple Artistic Exercises In 10 Minutes Or Less - https://skl.sh/2NhroIq Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) Cigna Article on Chronic Loneliness - https://www.cigna.com/individuals-families/health-wellness/chronic-loneliness   FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

When you have a chronic illness or other condition, there are often days that get derailed. It's easy to feel demoralized, easy to feel GUILTY that you're not getting anything done… and the happy quotes on Instagram and Pinterest don't help much. How do I deal? Today's question comes from Lacey at @andromeda_rising - it's kind of a side conversation to the whole toxic positivity series which will be continuing.  MY FIRST SKILLSHARE CLASS! Finding Planner Peace - https://skl.sh/2MKRtC3 Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558

Today's episode is a quick ramble on one of my favorite subjects - cussing, and how I feel about it both for myself and as a parent. MY FIRST SKILLSHARE CLASS! Finding Planner Peace - https://skl.sh/2MKRtC3 Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I'm back from my break with a Hot Gossip episode, this one talking about some of the stuff I've seen online about planner events recently! From influencers being assholes to why certain sponsors seem to be all over an event, here is the $0.02 no one asked for! MY FIRST SKILLSHARE CLASS! Finding Planner Peace - https://skl.sh/2MKRtC3 Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

I'm continuing the series on Toxic Positivity with a comment from one of you who asked a really good question - if a speaker or person with a huge following in the community has a message that has a lot of toxic positivity, how do you have discussions about it if you don't have a following yourself? MY FIRST SKILLSHARE CLASS! Finding Planner Peace - https://skl.sh/2MKRtC3 Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Where will I be in 5 years? Where will this online community be in 5 years? How do I continue to be unapologetically myself without succumbing to what other people want from me? These are the questions I tackle, thanks to my friend Miche Navarro's submission to my form, in today's episode. MY FIRST SKILLSHARE CLASS! Finding Planner Peace - https://skl.sh/2MKRtC3 Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Today is my first call-in show; suggested by my Patron Jaime, I'm answering three voicemails left by you! I talk about looking for rejection, how I deal with stress, and more! MY FIRST SKILLSHARE CLASS! Finding Planner Peace - https://skl.sh/2MKRtC3 Get two months of Skillshare Premium free! https://www.skillshare.com/r/profile/Cindy-Guentert-Baldo/3618925 This episode is sponsored by my Patrons. Learn more by checking out my Patron Page!   PODCAST INPUT HERE Form For Suggestions - https://forms.gle/WSDPo2rYyEER9nMW7 Voicemail Box for Call In Show - (707) 492-5946‬ SOME STUFF FOR YOU Get my newsletter! https://mailchi.mp/cindyguentertbaldo/podcast Preorder my book! https://amzn.to/2XIuqgg (affiliate link) FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com HAPPY MAIL Cindy Guentert-Baldo 4225 Solano Ave. #601 Napa, CA 94558   Inquiries - cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

This week Lisa and Izzy are visited by Cindy Guentert-Baldo, more widely known as Llama Letters all over the internet. They talk about taxes, being self employed, slime, and horror movies. Looking for Cindy? @llamaletters everywhere Patron Youtube The Uncurated Life on Apple Podcasts As always, make sure you rate, comment, and subscribe. Any questions, suggestions, or concerns? Email us at WashiWineRepeat@gmail.com Instagram @washiwinerepeat Lisa's Twitter @PolishedWriter

Cindy is well-known as the mastermind behind the Llama Letters empire. Her talented handwriting skills and stunning doodles have captivated us from the start. Dig a little deeper into Cindy's story on today's episode. You may think you know her, but do you know why she keeps all her receipts? Do you know what level she's on in World of Warcraft? or What she thinks it takes to be creative? I'll be on her podcast Monday, March 18th 2019 so make sure to swing over to The Uncurated Life Podcast to here more of our conversation! YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/cindyguentertbaldo Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/llamaslovelettering/ Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/ Website - www.cindyguentertbaldo.com The Uncurated Life Podcast (iTunes) - https://apple.co/2qT9q4G The Uncurated Life Podcast (Google Play) - https://bit.ly/2r0t9Qb Bio - Cindy Guentert-Baldo is a YouTuber, podcaster and freelance artist who is committed to showing the reality of her life on the internet. She has spoken on stages all over the United States about hand lettering and embracing your mistakes. She is known not only for her planner and lettering content, but also her trademark potty mouth and irreverent sense of humor. She currently lives in Napa, CA with her husband, two teenage children and a cat who is just as loud mouthed as she is. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/planner-lifestyle-podcast/message

If you haven’t had the opportunity to hear Mari Mundo yet, get ready for some time saving encouragement from a popular bullet journaler in our community. Her no nonsense efficiency and productivity tips are totally necessary if you are using this type of planner. Also we chat about trying to use what we have, while being totally weak sauce at enforcing it. Want more Mari here's where she hangs out! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mariplansalist/ Inspired Notebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/theinspirednotebook/ Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/mariplansalist Show Highlights Where Mari started Inspired Notebook Community Work Planning vs Home Planning Mari’s “day job” Tracking Tasks brings value Cost of your time Current notebook lineup Stephane Reveals her spare planner Nurturing friendship New York Planner Meetups The groups Mari admins What everyone should be reading Mari’s bullet journal philosophy Daily check ins and efficiency Things she’s tracking right now What she’s buying right now Using stickers instead of buying more Storing all the things Planning out planner purchases Budgeting the planner spending Contributing to businesses we love Colleen pushes Cocoa Daisy Where you can get more access to Mari What she’d love to see at events Jamie is awkward at the EC opening Mari preps for an incoming store. Stephanie commits to a bujo for 1 week. Mentions Day Designer - https://www.instagram.com/thedaydesigner/ Curvy Girl Guide - https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheCurvyGirlGuide/ Leuchtturm - https://www.leuchtturm1917.us/notebooks/ Lemome - https://www.amazon.com/Bullet-Journal-Notebook-Pen-Loop/dp/B077P4GLMH/ref=lp_15840849011_1_1?srs=15840849011&ie=UTF8&qid=1520184804&sr=8-1 Jackie Kate Devries - https://www.instagram.com/jackie_kate4/ Cindy Guentert-Baldo - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Kristen Damian - https://www.instagram.com/krissyannedesigns/ New York Planner Addicts - https://www.instagram.com/nyc_planner_addicts/ Llama Library - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thellamalibrary/ Furiously Happy - http://thebloggess.com/ Inspired Notebook Community - https://www.facebook.com/groups/theinspirednotebook/ Planner Chic@s - https://www.facebook.com/pg/plannerchicas/ From Lucov with Love - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37683751-from-lukov-with-love Rock Chicks - http://www.kristenashley.net/titles/rock-chicks/ Cricket Paper Co - https://www.instagram.com/cricketpaperco/ Paper Pandah - https://www.instagram.com/paperpanduh/ Coffee Monsters Co - https://www.instagram.com/thecoffeemonsterzco/ Design Pandemonium - https://www.instagram.com/designpandemonium/ Simon Says Stamp - https://www.instagram.com/simonsaysstamp/ Cocoa Daisy - https://www.instagram.com/cocoadaisykits/ Go Wild - https://www.instagram.com/wildforplanners/ West Coast Planners - https://www.instagram.com/thewestcoastplanners/ Erin Condren - https://www.instagram.com/erincondren/

Part two of our interview with Cindy Guentert-Baldo. The continuation of our conversation Cindy shares some lettering tips, do’s and dont's of getting started lettering, and what 2018 holds for her. Also, if you are new to all things Llama Loves Lettering we finally ask (at the end) for her to share how she got started. Show Highlights Connecting with Cindy’s world Who influences her content Don’t be a dick Sharing how you feel with out ruining the day Why the language? https://youtu.be/MkDFoa_zLtY Choosing to be uncensored Curated content vs real world Plan as you go - Month! Things to avoid when starting lettering Size to start practicing lettering Tip for better penmanship Alphabet worksheets When to practice lettering Cindy’s origin story 2018 Plans The irony of being planner famous Cindy’s sponsorship considerations Why we share, and what we hope for. Mentions Cindy’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo Micron Pens - https://www.pigmamicron.com/

Our very first two part episode features Cindy Guentert-Baldo a lettering artist and fellow planner enthusiast. Part 1 is not for the faint of heart. Warning: This conversation has nothing to do with lettering. We chat about her planners, internet people, the planner community, and murder… see this one’s all over the place. Part 2 has the on topic advice and detail on Cindy and her lettering journey. We left all this goodness in because it was too good to leave out. Show Highlights A moist welcome to the new year. Cindy’s current planner lineup Don’t trust Arizona people. Jamie’s lettering recommendation from her SIL A few parenting moments Meeting people of the internet What we see happens at events and meetups Banana’s and Kadadict Murder in Northern California Cindy’s Special Cocktail Mentions Llama Lettering - https://youtu.be/Dxo5NHn1vdk Plancation
 - https://arizonaplannergirls.com/plancation-2017/ Scribbles That Matter - https://www.amazon.com/Scribbles-That-Matter-version-Notebook/dp/B01N63VX52 Day Designer - https://daydesigner.com/ Erin Condren - https://www.erincondren.com/

Your 3 hosts headed to Seattle for S’Mores Memories put on by the West Coast Planners. In this recap episode you’ll hear about the adventure the ladies had in Seattle, and the Planner event held there. Show Highlights Navigating Seattle The First Starbucks Stephanie’s 3rd PSL Market Creeper The Pig Our Visit to the Gum Wall Stephanies’s Truffle The Hike To “The Rostary” Seattle Convention Center Bathrooms Jamie’s Coffee Princess Moment The Best Table To Sit At Our Night Time Communicating Favorite Moments Boundaries & Lines Final Day In Seattle Mentions West Coast Planners - https://www.instagram.com/thewestcoastplanners/ Emily Ley - https://www.emilyley.com/ Mari Mundo - https://www.instagram.com/mariplansalist/ Florence Antoinette - https://www.instagram.com/livelifeandcreate Cindy Guentert-Baldo - https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/ Sparkle Smith - https://www.instagram.com/sparkle__creations/ Frank Hearts You - https://www.instagram.com/frankheartsyoutoo/ Will Walo Co - https://www.instagram.com/wilawalo_co/ Scriver Creek - https://www.instagram.com/scrivercreek/ Kit Life - https://www.instagram.com/kitlifeplanners/ Krissie Anne Designs - https://www.instagram.com/krissyannedesigns/