Overcoming Challenges and Setting Visions for the Future
Michelle recovering after COVID and Kathy dealing with a dead fridge add some challenges, but we work through letting go and moving through those challenges, towards a vision of the future. What does the future look like for us? How will we continue to contribute to WordPress and the larger community as we get older? Kathy shares an inspirational story of a guy who was running marathons at age 88 (and winning because there was no competition), and Michelle wonders if she’s going to be starting the sciatica podcast. With technology and the tools at our finger tips, we’re sure to be doing something productive and fun, no matter our age. And we think you should, too.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Start your week smiling with your friends, Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. It’s time to get ready for some weekly motivation
Speaker 1 00:00:07 With
Speaker 2 00:00:08 WP Motivate Kathy Wednesday. Kathy,
Speaker 1 00:00:16 It’s Wednesday. It is the first day of summer. It
Speaker 2 00:00:20 Is, it’s, it’s somebody messaged me this morning and say, happy first day of Spring. And I was like, wait, what? And they’re like, wait a minute. I mean, summer. I’m like, oh yeah, that sounds better. . Although
Speaker 1 00:00:31 It not first day summer,
Speaker 2 00:00:33 It’s still, I had, I had my th my uh, furnace on last night still. So it is down into the forties here, still at night. And it got up to 77 today, during the day. So we’re finally getting some warmer temperatures during the day. But man, oh man. It’s stuck cold at night.
Speaker 1 00:00:51 Oh yeah. I don’t wanna hear about it. I do not wanna hear about it. Cuz we are under an excessive heat warning. Oh, sorry. So I have, my furnace is on, except it’s called outside .
Speaker 2 00:01:02 Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:01:03 . It’s bad. Yeah. And my fridge died on Monday. I woke up, of course, Sunday was the first time I had been to Costco in a year maybe. Oh
Speaker 2 00:01:12 No. Maybe longer.
Speaker 1 00:01:13 No. And so I loaded up the fridge that died. No. And, uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:01:19 Did you lose, did you lose things?
Speaker 1 00:01:22 Um, I think I’m in the process of losing, I’m still trying to hold onto to things , but I didn’t ha I don’t have a backup fridge or anything. Yeah. But I, now I do. My son, my son is, is here. So I sent him and his friend down to, uh, Lowe’s to get a backup fridge for the, for the garage. Okay. Which is of course 95 degrees in the garage. And so the fridge is working extra hard. It’s probably like freaking out that it’s here and it’s just like, why I don’t like my food in the garage.
Speaker 2 00:01:51 So wait, so, and it’s
Speaker 1 00:01:52 Gonna take a week to fix the, the big fridge. So,
Speaker 2 00:01:55 So the big fridge in the kitchen’s down and you don’t have the key to the wine fridge. This is not a good situation, .
Speaker 1 00:02:02 It’s not. And I recently started wearing like this fitness, health tracker. Yeah. Mostly because I wanna like, monitor my sleep and rest and recovery cuz I haven’t been sleeping real well. Yeah. And it, it yells at me if I’m under stress. It’s like, yeah. After a little more stress today. And I’m like, yeah, don’t say really, let’s talk about it. I’m under stress. So
Speaker 2 00:02:24 You wanna just yell that? No fooling .
Speaker 1 00:02:28 Yeah. So I’ve been, um, it’s interesting cuz the, the big fridge is like one of those built-ins and it’s one of those mm-hmm. , expensive fancy fridges. And of
Speaker 2 00:02:38 Course, of course those are the only ones that go. Yeah. Like the old, like, um, avocado and harvest gold from the seventies that are living in people’s garages. Those things are still going like gangbusters. But no, not the ones that we are, that we invest in. Those are always the ones that go first.
Speaker 1 00:02:55 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I, uh, I’ve been in the state of surrender, I guess is like, I can’t, this is all beyond my, my control. This is, I can’t fix the fridge. I don’t know what to do. Uh, the guy who’s searching high and low for parts all over, I don’t know, south America, I, it’s gonna take a while to get parts apparently. So I have to wait for that. Um, and then my food is all in the garage next to where like, I keep the garbage in the car and it’s just like, I don’t like when you’re hungry, you wanna go get something from, you know, it’s like it’s supposed to be this happy Yeah. One experience and now it’s like, and the hot garage with the garbage and I’m just like, .
Speaker 2 00:03:39 Cause
Speaker 1 00:03:40 Hot burger tonight, kids hot garbage
Speaker 2 00:03:42 Smells so good. .
Speaker 1 00:03:46 Well, I did move the garbage outside now
Speaker 2 00:03:48 Cuz it’s, that’s good. Like,
Speaker 1 00:03:50 But still it’s just, I, I’ve been under a little bit of stress, but it’s just,
Speaker 2 00:03:54 It’s sad.
Speaker 1 00:03:56 It’s one of those things that’s giving me the opportunity to let go .
Speaker 2 00:04:01 Oh, I hate those opportunities. Fuck those opportunities.
Speaker 1 00:04:04 Yes. . Literally, I’m a
Speaker 2 00:04:08 Of those, I’m not, I’m not gonna apologize for swearing on my own podcast. Dammit.
Speaker 1 00:04:13 Not at all.
Speaker 2 00:04:14 Oh, I had a wonderful, wonderful trip to Athens and yeah, on my last day there, I started feeling just really rundown. And that’s not unusual for me. You know, I’ve got fibromyalgia and arthritis, so, you know, eight, eight days of travel and conference and all of that is not unusual. However, ,
Speaker 2 00:04:31 Um, on the way to the airport, I started coughing and I’m like, oh, I probably caught a cold and like, I wore a mask, wore a mask on the plane. Mm-hmm. , I was not gonna like compromise anybody as much as I could, even if it was just a cold. But the next morning I got up and I felt like garbage, talking about garbage, I felt like hot garbage myself. Took that covid test and literally as soon as that fluid sucked up into that strip, it turned bright pink. And I was like, really? Oh, that’s not good . So like, oh, I, I texted my boss and I was like, I have covid and I feel like garbage. So I will not be, um, at work today, at all. And I work from home, you know, I mean like, but you, if you can’t sit up straight and focus, you can’t.
Speaker 2 00:05:13 And just, it was awful. So yeah. So I’m finally covid free. I took, I only had two tests, so I, I needed to wait as long as possible to take the second one to know that I, I’m clear to go to Word Camp my clear this weekend. But, um, I, I took the test this morning and it, it, the, the control strip showed up and no pink, no red, no nothing. So yes, covid free, which is good, which means I can travel and, um, but I’m shaky as hell. Like I literally, like, I went out today cuz I had to go to the bank. It was the first time I’ve been out of my house since I came home from the airport, um, over a week ago. Wow. That’s, that’s how sick I was over this past week. And literally just like, there were two spots in my house that were strewn with tissues and half drunk, uh, water, um, seltzers.
Speaker 2 00:06:02 Uh, and that was by my bed and by the couch. Like literally that’s where I’ve lived for the last week. So finally last night I was like, I want food, but I don’t have the strength or the energy to even microwave something. Right. So I downloaded DoorDash and I had never used DoorDash before and I went to, to create an account and it said I already had an account. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. So I went to try to log in and realized that I didn’t, it wasn’t my usual logins for things like that. You know, I have a formula that I use whatever for logins for things like DoorDash. Mm-hmm. So I went to my last pass and then I remembered that somebody was using my email address last year for all kinds of things. Wow. I was getting an email that, hey, your DoorDash food is on its way.
Speaker 2 00:06:46 And I like did a password reset on it and logged into it and canceled their order. Cuz I’m like, you’re not using my email for anything lady, whoever you are, different phone number. Then like Wayfair, I suddenly get notification that my, you know, there’s still like $4,000 worth of furniture sitting in my cart on Wayfair. Oh yeah. Let me change the password on that and cancel that order too. Lady like you, you’re gonna learn one way or the other. Cause you, she can’t pass, you know, she, I’m saying she whatever, cannot reset the password if it’s coming to my email. So Yeah. You know, just, I did all that. But anyway, so long story short, I had to create a new DoorDash account because when I tried to log in it wanted to authenticate through her phone number . So,
Speaker 1 00:07:30 Oh wow.
Speaker 2 00:07:31 I use a different email address, but I used DoorDash for the first time last night to get a burger and fries and it was like manna from heaven to have have like real food. It wasn’t just fruit or crackers or pretzels or whatever I had in my cupboard. Um, so it was, it was very good. It was very good. It was like the first person I’d seen in a week too. So I was like, wow, guy, guy who opens the door and I’m like, oh, thank you. And he’s looking at me like, Hey lady. Yeah, yeah. Just take your food and nobody will get hurt.
Speaker 1 00:07:59 Yeah. Yeah. . Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:08:03 So, but it was, it’s, everything’s good. I’m feeling much better now. And uh, yeah, I’m gonna, it was six hour, six and a half hour drive on Friday where I just get to sit in the car and head my way towards New Jersey and looking forward to seeing the folks at work camp, um, Montclair this weekend.
Speaker 1 00:08:20 So Yeah. Is that just a one day word camp?
Speaker 2 00:08:22 Yep, it is. So Friday night we have the speaker sponsored dinner. Saturday is the word camp itself where I’m talking about how to start a podcast cuz I have a little bit of experience in that and then the after party and then Sunday head home again and have, you know, be home by, you know, probably one or two in the afternoon, have the rest of the day to recover before work starts again on Monday morning. So
Speaker 1 00:08:46 Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Busy, busy.
Speaker 2 00:08:48 Always
Speaker 1 00:08:50 What you do. Like you are the queen of WordPress community, so
Speaker 2 00:08:55 Being busy, I’m the busy girl. I like it. I would much rather, yeah. It’s funny cuz you know, I talk about my age all the time. I don’t, it doesn’t bother me. I’m, I’m in my fifties and I was thinking about how much time do I really realistically have left in my WordPress career and if I stretch it, let’s say I really went into my seventies, I got like 20 years left. Right. Realistically, like time of influence, we’re probably talking like eight to 10 more years. So Yeah. Um, okay. I’m gonna, I’m gonna mute myself, let you talk so I can blow my nose .
Speaker 1 00:09:35 Yeah, no problem. Yeah, so about age, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately because my mom is, is older and has been having some issues and I’m watching all of this and I’m like, oh hell no, hell no. I am not going there. Which is part of the reason why I’ve got this, this tracker thing that yells at me to not be stressed out and I’m being like really conscious. Well, I mean, I’ve watched, you know, my husband’s health as well, so I’m like, okay. Yeah. I had a few wake up calls too where I’m just like, I’m, I’m gonna, I’m taking this, I am gonna go get some blood work done. I am very proactively going to start doing things and then I see I take this as a message from heaven. I see. I’m just scrolling and I see this one minute YouTube short, he says, guy, he is a hundred years old and he says that he was running marathons in his eighties and when he was 88 he won a marathon.
Speaker 1 00:10:30 He’s like, there’s nobody to beat me in my age group. And I’m like, this is the guy, this is who I wanna be in 30 years, 40 years, this is, I’m gonna be. So I started, not far, but I ran to my friend’s house, which is just like few houses down, but I ran to her house. Yeah. Which I, I haven’t run in like forever. And so like I’ve, I’m like starting to do stuff because I am gonna make the next 40 years of my life or thir 50, maybe 60, I don’t know how long I’m gonna live. But each one of those days and each one of those years and months and weeks I am going to, I’m gonna be that 88 year old guy. I’m gonna be like blowing people’s, like, look at her. Go. Yep. So that’s my little aspiration about my next few years I’m gonna grow.
Speaker 1 00:11:23 I’m gonna be, I dunno, when I, when I lived in Mount Shasta, there was a lady across the street who was 93 and she walked around the loop of our neighborhood, which is a mile and a half. She walked it twice a day with her dog, Andy. And she eventually passed, but as I was watching her and just like every morning she was out there and she had her like little sticks that the neighbors had given her so that she wouldn’t fall. Yeah. And she wa she was walking at least three miles a day. And I’m like, that’s the kind of old person I wanna be. Mm-hmm. . And it just kind of stuck with me that like, we have to decide cuz our, our choices that we make, like cumulatively now are the Yeah. Add up of like, what kind of old person are you gonna be? And I’m like, I wanna be a very active, vibrant and I wanna keep my sense of humor no matter what the fridge says.
Speaker 2 00:12:12 My great-grandmother and my great-great aunt, her sister lived well into their nineties and they lived independently up until they were like 91, 92 years old. And, and they lived on the second floor of this building with only steps. Right. So it was a building my grandfather had built when he started a business in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, um, near Danbury, Pennsylvania. Uh, and he had his business downstairs and the apartment upstairs was for the family. And so he, they eventually relocated the family to, um, Hammond, Indiana Munsters specifically. And, but my great grandmother and her sister lived upstairs. Her fa the sister never lived, never married. The, my great grandmother, I never knew her husband. He died, um, a long time ago. And so these two little old ladies, one of these really steep stairs like every single day and it just got to be a little too hard.
Speaker 2 00:13:11 And Aunt Ethel was still driving this 1960s, um, thing and she, she she ran over grandma’s foot one day. Like eventually my uncle said, we’ve just put in a a in-law’s apartment, y’all are moving down here to St. Louis and you know, you’re moving out of the apartment and everything. So, but even into like their last dying breath, they would spend every afternoon with their stories. Right. Their soap operas. Yeah. And the stories. And I used to run home, I don’t know about you, but like in the eighties I ran home from school and like Luke and Laura on General Hospital. Like, I, like I got home like 20 minutes into it, but I got 40 minutes of that soap opera opera every day. I love that soap opera. I watched it every day in the summer and I thought one of the, you know, I would be one of those ladies watching their stories like, and now I could care less about that kind of stuff. Yeah. But like, yeah. I dunno what kinda little old lady I’m gonna be. I’m definitely not running marathons, um, and that kinda thing, but who knows, maybe I’ll be like the oldest podcast, oldest living podcaster or something.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 . Yeah. Yeah. Talking
Speaker 2 00:14:10 About the Sciatica podcast.
Speaker 1 00:14:12 . Well how early,
Speaker 2 00:14:18 How early can you put your, how early can you start your ham on a Sunday?
Speaker 1 00:14:23 Yeah. . Exactly. Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. But yeah, I mean I, I don’t see any reason, and I think technology making things so much easier for us means that it doesn’t matter how old you are or how old you become or how young you are, even the techno, the tools that are there right now to empower you, to make your voice heard and to put your content out there and to share your contribution to the human story is, it’s all there and mm-hmm. , I, I think we have a greater responsibility ever, even more than ever right now because of, because of ai, because AI is, is built on the language we use between each other. The, it’s large language models, it’s how we mm-hmm communicate with each other. We’ve basically trained it to be something. So let’s train it to be all of us, right? Yeah, absolutely. Inclusive and every single voice and as positive and uplifting as possible. I think our responsibility to communication is even more so now. So I think we need everyone no matter, no matter how old they are or where they come from in the world, it’s time.
Speaker 2 00:15:33 I agree. I agree. And, and, and I think that there’s nothing wrong with 90 year old grannies podcasting if they want to or face. I, I love, like my mom is, my mom’s not that old. My mom’s a leaner seventies, but every FaceTime with my mother ends up me just looking at the top of her head cuz like, she just, like, the phone starts to fly. Like, I’m just looking at your hairline again, mom , you know, but she’s using technology and that’s what’s Yeah. You know, and we are tech people, so I imagine that our twilight years will be a lot more tech filled than, than not. Um, yes. Even though I’ve been corrected a few times with with my daughter in, in Athens by saying the wrong, the wrong thing. Like, um, I’m like, I don’t know what a Stan is, but like, I stand for like, you know, this, like this thing about being a fan of and standing for whatever, and I’m like, I’m a sent something stand. And she’s like, yeah, that’s not how you say it mom. I’m like, all right, I’m learning .
Speaker 1 00:16:30 Oh, just wait.
Speaker 2 00:16:31 Oh, you do the best you can.
Speaker 1 00:16:33 Even the the younger kids, it’s even worse where it’s just like, okay, I’m trying to keep up, just gonna try to keep up. And
Speaker 2 00:16:43 So one of the highlights, I have not put it out yet, you’re the first to know about it. One of the highlights of the trip as far as what I was able to capture with my phone camera is do you remember Vine that? Yes. Okay. And one of the most famous vines is this girl and there’s a field of ducks and she says, look at all those chickens. So I was somewhere and there were pigeons everywhere and I did the look at all those chickens. So I’ll be putting that out on Twitter and also probably on TikTok very soon. And if nobody else is amus, at least I’ve made myself laugh.
Speaker 1 00:17:19 That’s what it’s all about.
Speaker 2 00:17:21 Exactly. Finding joy in every day. Absolutely. Well, we will be back on a regular schedule now, I think. So we’ll be, I’m, I’m back from being sick and all my traveling and, um, and, and you are just a, a steady person for me to always know that you’re there for me. like, yeah, I’m, what are we gonna record? Let’s do it. You know, and getting each other’s schedule. So, uh, we never know what we’re gonna talk about one week to the next. We hope that we’ve inspired you or at least entertained you a little bit. we entertain each other. And if that’s all it’s worth, then that’s okay too. But, uh, we’ll see you all next week. Bye bye. This has been WP Motivate with Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. To learn more or to sponsor us, go to wp motivate.com.