Finding Inspiration in the Compost
The WordPress community is not perfect. But even amongst the “compost” you can look for the good.
Transcript of Episode
Speaker 0 00:00:03 Hey Kathy.
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Michelle, how are you?
Speaker 0 00:00:07 I am so good. Like all afternoon. I had that butterfly feeling like the, the night before Christmas, that Christmas eve feeling that’s like I get to do something really fun this afternoon. And I’m like, Oh, I, It’s so funny cuz we work together but we don’t work together like we’re remote. Right. So it’s not like I get to be like, Hey you at the water cooler. We’ll catch up .
Speaker 1 00:00:24 Yeah, exactly. There’s no conversations in passing. It has to be very intentional. Like reaching out for some reason.
Speaker 0 00:00:31 Exactly. This is a really good reason. So that’s gonna be,
Speaker 1 00:00:34 This is a great reason. I think so. And you know what I um, so this is Friday afternoon, even though this will be released on Monday and I’m looking forward to the Monday that we will be releasing it on. But if the sun is shining, it’s beautiful weather. I took the day off of work today and I am like doing what things that I wanna do for a change instead of like things that need to be done. Mm-hmm. , I’m been bliss, so I’m just channel all my bliss here. .
Speaker 0 00:01:01 Well I’m in New York and the sun is shining here too, but today I woke up, it was 37 degrees outside .
Speaker 1 00:01:08 It’s too soon. Too soon for that. Ooh.
Speaker 0 00:01:12 How you am 60. And I’m like, oh man. It was like three weeks ago. I was like, man, open the windows, turn on the air conditioners like 90 degrees outside. So yeah. Life in New York is a c sometimes
Speaker 1 00:01:23 . It sure can be. Oh yeah. And you, you’re at Rochester. You guys get tons of like lake effect snow too there, don’t you?
Speaker 0 00:01:32 We sure do. I can go to bed with nothing on the ground and wake up with four feet of snow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:01:38 It’s crazy.
Speaker 0 00:01:40 It is. I don’t know why I live here. I don’t know. But it, it is, well I mean I have family here, that’s why I live here. But yeah, it’s like, you know, like why anybody just chooses Rochester. I mean it’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong. There’s, it’s really a beautiful area. You’ve seen the pictures I take, it’s Yes. A beautiful area, but winter is challenging and the older I get the more challenging it is. ,
Speaker 1 00:02:01 I hear you. I hear you. Winter, winter. Winter’s hard. Hot summers are hard. It’s like I’m looking for that, you know, perfect weather every day place. Yeah. I miss California honestly, but oh well. We do what we can do.
Speaker 0 00:02:15 Absolutely. Absolutely. So you have some awesome topics for today.
Speaker 1 00:02:21 I do. Well I’ve been kind of like watching just the conversa this hard couple of weeks. I think for people just in general, everybody that I’ve talked to has been, had some kind of challenge in their life over the last couple of weeks and there’s been a lot of, lot of stuff that has come up. A lot of people have gotten triggered by conversations and there’s a lot of, been a lot of really heavy conversations even in the word cross community. Mm-hmm. . But what I’ve noticed over the last couple of days, as we’ve gotten some distance from the initial triggering types of events, there’ve been a lot of really positive conversations that are moving people forward. And so I kind of had this feeling that, you know, we all go through the compost of life, so to speak. . Yes. There’s some difficulties. I mean, you and I have had some pretty significant challenges this year mm-hmm. . Um, but sometimes there’s some really beautiful flowers that can grow out of that compost. And I think that some of the conversations that people are ha having right now have been not only really eye opening for me, um, cuz I brought some of those conversations to my daughter who also shared her perspectives and Sure. Was very connecting. So I, I feel like even though we go through dark times, those dark times can often be the compost that we need to grow new things. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 0 00:03:41 . Now you and I have never discussed whether or not we use colorful language here because this is only podcast number two. But I’m gonna go ahead and interpret what you just said as sometimes shit makes the best fertilizer for the good stuff, .
Speaker 1 00:03:54 It does, it certainly does. I was trying to be like all , you know, I don’t know if we need to put apple, Apple gets weird with their podcast with the tags of like explicit language and things like that, but yes, I’ve, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard people say that gardening is the only hobby that can force people to carry around bags of shit .
Speaker 0 00:04:17 It’s so true. And then you get the best vegetables and you get the best fruits, you get the best flowers. Yeah. You know, and it’s, it’s, it harkens me back to like the idea of the, uh, like a gold forge or a silver forge, like to, if you find gold and silver natively in the ground kind of thing, it isn’t just like, Oh look, there’s a beautiful piece of silver. No, it’s, it’s got other stuff mixed into it. Right. Other os Yeah. And the the, um, the refinery, the refinery has to take that, literally melt it down, remove the SL until you have the beautiful, you know, 14 carrot or whatever. I don’t even know how they’re measured. I’m not a jeweler, but, um, you have that, that that metal, the pure metal that’s left over and so sometimes we have to go through the fire, Right.
Speaker 0 00:05:03 Like you had a tough year. I had a tough year. We’re still meeting on Friday laughing about the shit that we’ve gone through this week. Yeah. It’s, you know, sometimes it’s laugh for cry. Right. And I think we’ve both done both of those things, but getting to the tears and realizing that we’ve, that you can come through these horrible experiences whether, and they don’t even have to be horrible, but they can just be just nasty or whatever. And either, you know, you’ve gone through that refin, that refinery process where you’ve been the one who’s been tried and you’ve been the one who comes through and still shining or you just had to wade through some of the compost to get to the good stuff. Right. So regardless of, of how you look at those kinds of things, I think you’re right for sure.
Speaker 1 00:05:43 Yeah. And I think it’s really important because, you know, we’re going into another week here and who knows what could pop up, you know, what kind of challenges can happen and when you’re in the midst of it, when you’re soaking in the compost and that’s all it is, it’s really hard to see it for what it could be. You know, it’s like mm-hmm. , the emotions are getting triggered. The, I’m, you know, you just wanna just like, I’m done with this. I am done with the drama, I am done with you people. Goodbye. You know, the whole Carman thing of like, screw you guys, I’m going home. That whole feeling know
Speaker 0 00:06:17 She .
Speaker 1 00:06:19 Yeah. Yeah. It, you get to that point. But also like holding, being able to feel that, but also being able to hold in that feeling of what can I turn this into? How can I turn this on its head and turn this into some kind of fertilizer for a better tomorrow? And because there’s always gonna be a better tomorrow. The these emotions, if you look over the course of your life, they don’t last forever. They come in like peaks and waves and then better times happen. And somebody told me, the more crap you go through, the worse that it is, the better it’s gonna be on the other side. I’m like, I dunno if that’s true, but I
Speaker 0 00:07:08 Yeah, well I was a single mom, I raised my daughter from day one by myself and it was hard. It was that fi it was waiting through the compost while burning in the fire. Right. Like it was all of those things. And I look back now, I have a 30 year old daughter who is just delightful person. She’s an amazing human being with a good heart who does amazing things, who seeks to help other people who is a warrior for good. And I look back and I’m like, damn, it was worth it. And it, and look what happened as a result of all those years of difficulty. I went through that time I got my mba, well she was little, I worked a fulltime job I had, but I had my parents helping me out. And so, you know, the difficult times if you set your site on the possible outcome, like you don’t, I don’t never, I didn’t never knew what would the outcome would be like.
Speaker 0 00:07:59 You could only hope that you’re gonna raise a, a good human being right. That they’re not some horrible flag on humanity or whatever. But, um, thank God you was it, but , but you, you set your sights on that, you know, that that tunnel vision and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and hoping that when you get there the good things that you’ve like imagined will come and like you’re right. So for me it was like she is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened by life and I couldn’t have imagined it being as good as it actually turned out to be.
Speaker 1 00:08:32 That’s so beautiful. That’s so wonderful. Yeah. And I saw on LinkedIn you shared something that she had done and just yeah. How just so, so such a solid individual that’s that’s contributing to society being a better place and that was just so heartening to see. So all of that work so worth,
Speaker 0 00:08:51 It’s a part for you. And, and my two daughters, my, my daughter by birth and my daughter by WordPress , Lydia is my daughter by birth and Allie Dimon, who’s my daughter through WordPress, actually had lunch today together in Austin, Texas because Lydia, Lydia was there for work and when, when Allie was here earlier this year, they met and um, you know, got to his former friendship and so they went out to lunch together and they each texted me pictures of each other across the table and I was just like, my heart is smiling. It was such a good feeling that yes, the two good humans in my life are spending some time together. So
Speaker 1 00:09:26 That is so cool. How magical. Yeah. You kinda are like, you’re kind of the mom to a lot of people in WordPress. Like you watch out for a lot of people that’s Oh wow. That’s so, and that’s so sweet that your daughter and Ellie could connect that way. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:09:42 I’d be happy. It was a good way to end a week for sure.
Speaker 1 00:09:46 Excellent. That’s great.
Speaker 0 00:09:48 So what is your word to carry us through this week? If you had to pick a word to get through this next week? I know I put you on the spot, we hadn’t thought talked about this in advance.
Speaker 1 00:09:58 Yeah, no, I mean I guess it’s um, it’s perspective being able to, to ha hold that larger picture of a perspective and always, always keep hope. You know, always keep hope of what the positive outcome is. What, you know, a lot of times we get ourselves right wrapped up into the, our thoughts of what we think could happen. You know, we live in the future fear based of, you know, well this happened and that happened and now that means this could happen. And I, I think staying, you know, present with, um, a perspective of hope because mm-hmm , it’s never really as bad as our brains figure it out to be our egos who wanna protect us. Um, so perspective and hope I have to have two words.
Speaker 0 00:10:45 It’s okay. You told my second, the second your second word was my first word, so I think that’s because we’re, we have the mind meld, so I love it. My, my word for the week is also hope so. And I love that you added perspective to it, that um, definitely I have a huge hope for the future. Um, this last week showed us a lot of negativity and like you said, you know, it’s the compost of the week. I am hoping that this week brings with it hope for a brighter future and good connections and that people who have felt don trodden will start to feel like the flower rising up. So
Speaker 1 00:11:20 Ooh, that is beautiful. I love it. Love
Speaker 0 00:11:23 It too. That’s right. Well I’m glad we’re partnering up on this and we’re gonna kinda show this week cuz last week was a little long cuz we were introducing ourselves. But, um, I hope that everybody has a wonderful week and definitely we will see you next week. And Kathy, have a wonderful weekend.
Speaker 1 00:11:37 Thank you. Bye.
Speaker 0 00:11:39 Bye.