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Know this about people pleasing, olive pressing and apocalypse skills
883 Plays11 days ago
It's the RESKILLIENCE ROADTRIP where I'm intercepting all sorts of good sorts along Australia's east coast!
First up is Ceilidh Meo who teaches no less than 80 apocalypse skills (!!!) while also growing olives, shoring up the food system and being casually shamanic.
This is a ROMP of a convo that is INSPIRING ME TO USE CAPS. Such fun. Such depth.
I also share about the caravan park we've just checked into.
🔥 WITHIN
GEEK OUT ON MICRO NICHE OLIVE PRESSING
An antidote to the olive oil crisis
Cooperation is not the same as collaboration!
POMMUS
The gross truth about imported olive oil
THE FIVE C FRAMEWORK
When knowledge ain't power
Systems design thinking for avoiding monumental fuck ups
WHY 40s ARE THE BEST DECADE
Yay for confirmation bias!
Loyal soliders of the psyche
Birth story REWRITE
Learning types
Manifestation vs. MAGIC
Where does the need to know everything come from?
Do more of what you’re already good at, or challenge your comfort zone?
Not here to consume, but to create!
🧙♀️ LINKY POOS
Connect with Ceilidh ~ CIVILITAS
Ceilidh's olive oil ~ Apulia Grove
Art exhibition + workshops ~ Ancient Roots in the New World
Mel Robbins ~ The Let Them Theory
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Reskilliance Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
race scallia Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned in to Riskiliants, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome
Recording from New South Wales and Documentary Tour
00:00:18
Speaker
to a brand new season of the podcast coming to you from the back of a van by the sand on the south coast of New South Wales. Jord is literally sitting two metres away from me as I record this, so I'm trying not to sound ultra self-conscious.
00:00:32
Speaker
As you might know, jod is touring Happen Films' new doco called The New Peasants for the next couple of months, and I'm tagging along, interviewing radical humans along the way not-so-secretly stack functions and make it a reskillience road trip too.
Interviews and Audience Engagement
00:00:46
Speaker
Just some of the folks I'll be intercepting include John Seed, Joe Nemeth, and Morag Gamble, so it's going to be quite the buffet of brains. Another thing that has been absolutely unreal is meeting some of you at screenings.
00:01:00
Speaker
And I have to say, whatever weird filter I've created with these long-winded intros and wending conversations is working. Thank you to everyone who's introduced themselves in person.
00:01:11
Speaker
As this episode goes to air, which is Monday, August 18, there are still a few tickets left for the Canberra and Sydney screenings later this week. Then we'll be in Narara Ecovillage, Dungog, Belagin, blah, blah, blah.
00:01:23
Speaker
I've chucked the link in the show notes. Every screening so far has sold out, so don't rest on your rutabagas. Grab a ticket if you want to see George's new film about artists as family.
Eco-friendly Campsites and Podcast Connection
00:01:33
Speaker
So I've got to tell you about this caravan park that we just checked into.
00:01:36
Speaker
It wasn't a particularly conscious booking, we just needed somewhere to stay for the night and it was in the right location. But when we arrived, I knew something was fishy. Rather than the usual blue and yellow signage bright enough to give you a migraine,
00:01:50
Speaker
We were met with muted greens and browns, lovely healthy gardens, and low, natural-looking cabins backing onto the bush. Inside reception, everything was woody and welcoming, including the humans behind the front desk, who gave us a map of the campground showing our sight, then proceeded to say things like, "'And here's where to spot the bandicoots after dark, if you're really quiet!' And there's where you can see sugar gliders at the crack of dusk.
00:02:18
Speaker
And our resident lybirds have just hatched chicks. Freaking yes. I asked if there was a place we could contribute our pent-up road trip compost. And they said sure.
00:02:28
Speaker
There's a hungry bin in our kitchen garden. oh and while you're there, help yourself to fresh herbs and fossick for eggs from our chooks. The icing on the cake was when they told me they'd just had bathtubs put in. So go ahead and have a soak, which is totally unheard of on a filthy road trip.
00:02:45
Speaker
And also they were selling local halloumi cheese in their fridge. Seriously, they just got me. It was like finding values-aligned oasis in a vast sea of very average travel options.
Guest Kayleigh Mio and Her Diverse Skills
00:02:57
Speaker
And that's kind of how I want this podcast to feel. Like a homecoming, like an affirmation, like a haven for kindred oddballs and bandicoot fanciers. Incidentally, that's how this conversation you're about to hear with Kaylee Mio felt too.
00:03:13
Speaker
Kayleigh is a ripper of a human being who invited me to come and hang out in her straw bale olive processing shed on Tonga Rung country near Heathcote and talk about apocalypse skills. She has so many feathers in her cap she can probably fly, including farmer, facilitator, cooperative conceiver, permaculturalist and keeper of no less than 80 life skills that she readily teaches.
00:03:36
Speaker
from wielding a chainsaw to hosting women's circles and everything in between. You'll particularly love this episode if you're interested in the nuances of our food system and psyche.
00:03:47
Speaker
Before we jump in, can I just say a massive thank you to everyone on Patreon who is now contributing significantly to my weekly income. It's wild that you're helping fund this podcast as a community, even though you can just have the content for free.
00:04:02
Speaker
Thank you so much for your generosity, And a shout out to new patrons Claire, Hayley, Camilla, Sarah, Belinda, Katie, Beck and Renee. Women supporting women in a cost of living crisis.
00:04:15
Speaker
So good. Thanks everyone. Here's Kayleigh Mio for a massive dose of apocalypse solidarity.
Kayleigh's Farming Journey and Challenges
00:04:21
Speaker
Enjoy. So Kayleigh, we are sitting in a cozy room and I would love to hand it over to you to give a bit of a sense of the country we're on and our surrounds.
00:04:34
Speaker
And I will just say that I'm very excited to be doing the first in-person interview of the tour that Jord and I are on. Well, Jord's on a tour and I am the groupie in his wake but I'm taking the opportunity to intercept amazing humans on the way so this is the first of hopefully quite a few awesome conversations on the road and you've invited us here for a couple of hours this morning to hang out and hear from you so yeah just um I'd love you to paint us a bit of a picture of where we are both in this room and and the broader landscape Sure. And thank you very much for having me on the podcast for a start. it's Such a pleasure. It was a very random reach out. go Hey, I think our interests and skills and areas of expertise are ah kind of aligned in that space. So um we're here on Tongorong Country, which is...
00:05:21
Speaker
right at the edge of the connection with Dja Dja Wurrung country. So this particular farm is very much edge land. So we're on the edge of the shires, we're on the edge of the water management catchment, we're on the edge of the indigenous owners.
00:05:37
Speaker
So it's kind of that... I think it suits me very well. I'm an aging kind of peasant, yeah. Our farm is called Apulia Grove and um we've been here since 2007. And it's kind of a funny story actually how we ended up here. So I'd had 10 years in the city, ah you know, doing uni and met my husband and whatever and that was fine.
00:05:56
Speaker
And I'd kind of had enough of Melbourne at that stage. And so I said, you know, let's buy farm. Why not? Because he had also, he'd been at college, at Queen's College when he was studying at Melbourne Uni. So he knew a lot of country kids and he would go and visit their farms and you know he had an experience when he was in his teens where was sitting on somebody's back porch drinking a cup of tea with wrigglers in it because you know nobody filtered their rainwater back then yeah so he he was like yeah this is the life I want to do it so when I said let's buy a farm he was like that's a great idea I was thinking sheep because that's what I knew and you know wanted to have my own little flock so i could shear them and do all the handcraft stuff but his dad actually came out from Italy in 1956 so when I said let's buy a farm he said let's grow olives and I was like
00:06:37
Speaker
Sure, I can't see a problem with that. And we were still living full-time in Melbourne at the time, during the weekend planning to do the weekend farmer thing. And so that made a lot more sense because trees don't wander off, you don't have to worry about your fences, you know you don't have to water them every day, that kind of thing, which is really important if you do actually have stock in place.
00:06:52
Speaker
So we had two criteria when we were looking for the farm. The first was the trees already had to be planted and it had to have, quote-unquote, a little bit of geography. So we found this place on the internet and we came and had a look.
00:07:05
Speaker
And... decided that we loved it and we bought it and then because we didn't know anything about olives at that time um so it was a very steep learning curve the real estate agent said to us you know you've bought this place you're gonna have to harvest these trees in about two weeks time we're like oh okay good um what we did find out was that the varieties that are planted here so we have a traditional tuscan blend of frantoia and curagiola in the main with lachino as a third sort of pollinator variety and then a few table olives thrown in as well
00:07:36
Speaker
And Latino actually the variety that grows at Leche, which is Tali's dad's hometown. ah So he has this family connection to this particular grove through the varieties.
00:07:48
Speaker
And my mum's really big in family history. And so she's been exploring her side of the family and everything. And it turns out that my four times great grandfather, William Tanyan, is buried at Heathcote, which is 20 minutes down the road, because he was a miner in the district. So we both have this family connection to this bit of land that we instantly fell in love with when we saw it How beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. What a meaningful story. And to find out after the fact.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Like we had no clue. we're just like, this is it. This is the place. You know, it feels really homely. The first couple of years we picked the olives and we would take them to somebody else for processing. And most of the processes in the industry at that stage needed at least 500 kilos to talk to you. And to pick 500 kilos between two people in a weekend is really hard work.
00:08:31
Speaker
um So we looked around and we thought, well, we'll buy our own processing machine. And then we needed to build somewhere to put it, which is how we ended up with this particular cozy little room that we're in at the moment, um which is the storage room in the processing shed. And then we worked out that, you know, there must be other farmers in this situation who couldn't pick 500 kilos in 48 hours, because that's what's recommended between picking and processing for olive oil.
00:08:54
Speaker
um to get that extra virgin quality. And yeah, so we um opened up the processing to other people. And yeah, so we've been doing that since we bought the first press in 2009.
00:09:06
Speaker
We opened it up to other people in 2012. And we kind of had an idea of what we're doing. And we've been contract processing for small growers
Local Food Production and Olive Farming
00:09:15
Speaker
since. So yeah, 50 to 200 kilos, which in terms of the olive industry amazing.
00:09:19
Speaker
Absolutely micro niche. But we work with a lot of people in Melbourne who've got like one or two trees in their backyard. And I suppose people are thinking about olive oil in a way they might not have before, given the soaring prices and the shortages based on various global factors and local factors.
00:09:35
Speaker
So how is what you're doing building resilience in that system? It feels like a bit of an obvious question, but I'd love for you to just wax poetic about, you said micro niche, boutique olive pressing and olive groves. Sure, yeah.
00:09:51
Speaker
So obviously the more food we can produce locally, close to home, in your backyard, on your balcony, whatever it might be, you know the the better it's going to be for you in terms of knowing what's in it and how it's been grown, but also in reduction of you know carbon footprint and and all those sorts of things that...
00:10:06
Speaker
we talk about and hear about quite a lot. Most people don't have access to, you know, all of processing equipment and to be fair, you know, even a small machine like ours is very expensive in terms of capital investment.
00:10:19
Speaker
So we were in a position where we were able to do that and and that's been great, but obviously not everybody is. Programs like Ceres and that's the thing where can get those, um collaboration and cooperation effects in place mean that there's not many people in fact I think we're pretty much the only um small scale processing facility that does you know the size of batch that we do and even we have a minimum batch size of 50 kilos because what we've found is if you try and press less than that it just gets stuck in the pipework of the machine and you just have to clean the machine and you don't actually get any oil and people get a little bit
00:10:52
Speaker
annoyed at having to pay for our time and labor when they don't get anything back. So we've we've set that minimum for a reason. But, you know, most people, you know, if you've only got a little olive tree or, you know, it's an off year because they tend to have a good year and then a bad year, um you might only get 10 kilos and That's still a lot to pickle and eat in a 12 month period, um particularly if you get it wrong and it goes bad or whatever.
00:11:14
Speaker
So being able to combine those sorts of groups and and yields to make something that that people will use, because a lot more people use olive oil than they eat table olives.
00:11:26
Speaker
Which is sad, but I understand it when you look at the difference between naturally fermented table olives versus commercially produced. um Because in the commercial production, they use caustic soda delicious to debitter them. Yeah.
00:11:39
Speaker
And ah like I never liked olives until I tried naturally fermented ones. I realized that I could actually taste that caustic soda and it's not pleasant. um It's got a very astringent feel in the mouth.
00:11:49
Speaker
Having access to those small food production kind of, you know, it's like the the niche dairies. It's like the niche abattoirs. There's a massive challenge at the moment for people who want to produce their own meat and sell it legally to the public.
00:12:03
Speaker
They can't access the abattoirs because agriculture has this very agribusiness focused, get big or get out kind of attitude. And yes, it's a lot of work to deal with lots of individual small batches, but the people we meet in the process, farming can be really isolating.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so having that connection across multiple years and even just, you know, sometimes on a one-off and just getting to know people and go, hey, you know, we're doing the same thing. We've got the same interests. You know, let's talk about that.
00:12:32
Speaker
It's actually a real game changer in that perspective. Yeah, there's a lot of street trees in Brunswick and, you know, those traditionally sort of Greek-Italian areas of Melbourne. And... ah Most of the time they are table fruit varieties because people didn't have access to those small processing units to make the oil.
00:12:48
Speaker
From our perspective, they can be a little bit more challenging to process. They don't yield as well as the oil varieties. um There's usually about a 10% difference in yield between table So you press them? yeah we still press them you will still get oil it still tastes great it's amazing it's extra virgin you just don't get as much so for table varieties it's usually an average somewhere between eight and twelve percent yield by volume so if you bring us 100 kilos you get somewhere between eight and twelve liters of oil back um but for oil varieties you would see that increase by to sort of 18 to 22 there's a big difference in how much oil is actually in the fruit and counter-intuitively
00:13:23
Speaker
the smaller fruit has more oil in it. So there you Little fatty globules. Exactly. And so what happens to all of the gooey goodness that's left over? Because I know you've got some cool ideas about waste streams because there's also the prunings, the foliage, all of that jazz. So yeah can you talk to us about those innovations maybe that you're you're heading up? Yeah. So at the moment, um we just compost the waste and put it back on the grove.
00:13:47
Speaker
Because it's got everything that the trees need to make more olives in terms of micronutrients and that sort of thing. That's the thing, isn't it? Like the fruits of a tree also hold a lot of the minerals and yeah they're kind of feeding themselves. Yeah. So like if you're growing hay to sell, you're actually exporting your farm's fertility. Because a lot of the the micronutrients and even some of the macronutrients that go into creating that plant stalk, if you ship them off farm, then you've actually you've got to keep reapplying those those minerals back in each year. Should we be eating our own hair?
00:14:17
Speaker
I wouldn't go that far. um Toenail clippings. Hey, look, there's plenty of people out there that chew their fingernails. Oh, yeah, a lot of keratin. Exactly, yeah exactly. And it's all just protein. um But it is not necessarily an easily digestible form of protein because you see all those weird medical shows where people are chewing on their hair and they end up with these hairballs that have to have surgically removed. So i wouldn't recommend that. I don't watch those shows. Okay, yeah, no. I just see them flush past on, you know, love whatever services. Especially the ones where they're Lansing boils.
00:14:45
Speaker
Oh. um like dr Dr. Pimple? Yes. Yes. Okay, so this is my gift to pleasure too. Link those in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Pimple Popper. Pimple Popper. Can recommend just if you're not squeamish. um So you're composting their, what's it called? The map? So technical the technical term is pomace. Pomace? Yes.
00:15:02
Speaker
What an amazing word. So olive pomace is the... You can't make pomace? Look, you could. You could. And this is one of these. All right. I'll just, I'll let you fly with this. But yeah, so most of the commercial processes have what's called a three phase processing machine. So you'll, it's basically nothing to do with the electricity that the machine requires. They're all three phase electrical.
00:15:22
Speaker
But what it means is that they have three outlets. So one releases the oil One releases the black water and one releases the pomace and it's a much drier process. And that's the one that they use to, you know, push ah press into briquettes or feed to cattle or, yeah you know, like there's a few things that they do with it at the moment.
00:15:40
Speaker
Some people get really enthusiastic and separate the pits from the dried flesh and pulp um because they're a really good heat source for biomass generation or, you know, wheat heaters or, you know, some of those alternative heating systems. Commercial producers do this?
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, that's so they do divert those things into useful... Yeah, because on to them, again, it's like, how can we make money from waste? yeah it's It's that capitalist mindset to some extent.
00:16:09
Speaker
And they want to be able to make as much money from from the processing as possible because you're still paying people to oversee the making oil and stuff. But so many industries don't do that. There's so much waste that's just wasted. yeah.
00:16:21
Speaker
yeah And to be fair, the olive industry in Australia is actually pretty forward thinking. You know, we we were one of the ones that started looking at the quality of extra virgin oil from a scientific chemistry perspective, as opposed to just the taste tests.
00:16:35
Speaker
And our requirements for extravert extra virginity in olive oil in Australia are actually slightly more stringent than the International Olive Council. Wow. because ah look I don't want badmouth anybody, but a lot of the product of Italy, product of Spain, product of Greece, olive oil that you see in the supermarket.
00:16:56
Speaker
Because of the way our labelling laws are in Australia, most of that oil... ah Sorry, most of that fruit is grown in Northern Africa and shipped across the Mediterranean to be processed in those Mediterranean countries so that they can label it product of... Now, if everything that was actually labelled product of Italy, Greece and Spain in terms of olive oil came from Italy, Greece and Spain, every person in their population would have to have about 20 olive trees.
00:17:25
Speaker
And I can guarantee that's not true because they also have an urban population where, you know, people live in high rises and that sort thing. So what I was saying before about you've got to process it ideally within that 48 hour window. By the time you've picked the fruit, packed it into shipping containers, had it sit on the dock waiting to be loaded into a ship, then shipped across the sea,
00:17:44
Speaker
takes a couple of weeks, unloaded at the other end, sat around waiting to be picked up and get to the processor, it's totally mouldy. and So the the fruit is rank before it even gets processed. So what they do is they turn it into oil and then they deodorise it and they chemically strip it out.
00:17:59
Speaker
So it's basically a liquid fat and it has no flavour, it has no character and that's what's called refined olive oil. And then they might mix it back with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil for flavour for colour.
00:18:11
Speaker
Sometimes they put food dye in it to make it look that beautiful green colour that we all associate with extra virgin olive oil, which, by the way, colour has nothing to do with the quality of the oil. It has to do with the ripeness of the fruit when it was picked and processed.
00:18:24
Speaker
So they tweak all these things and then they keep the good stuff for themselves because they know olive oil. As you would. Yeah, and they export all of the refined oil. Send that to those heathens down under. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly, because we don't know any better. We haven't got an educated palate, the majority of the population, in the same way that people who have that tradition from several thousands of years ago have in terms of their food culture. Well, we don't eat it on its own as well to savour those complex flavours. Absolutely. Like my Spanish friends dip their finger in oil, any oil I've been cooking with them before, they'll dip it in and say, oh, that's a good batch. Yeah. Or they'll be tasting it before we apply it. And obviously when it's mixed in with whatever you're cooking, you lose...
00:19:05
Speaker
you lose all of that beautiful complexity. Not necessarily lose it, but a lot of people don't realise that everything you can do with wine in terms of the grape variety, when it was harvested, where it was grown, how it's blended, um you know, all those things you can do with olive oil and the different varieties of oil fruit as well. the same like terroir? Yeah, you absolutely. So my Frantoio grown here compared with a guy we process for who's also got Frantoio over to Voka, completely different flavour profile. Yeah. But people don't understand because they don't do those tasting sort of things. So it's not about overriding the complexities with what you're cooking. It's about finding the one that matches what you're trying to make or or noticing how the different oil you use affects the flavour of the overall dish. yeah
00:19:50
Speaker
And that that is part of the beautiful creative process that cooking brings up for me. and you know I think we'll probably end up having hubs of equipment around because, again, that's that's something that we're looking at is that you know to buy ah an electric rake to harvest your olives, which will basically quadruple your productivity, um you know can be anything from $5,000 up.
00:20:10
Speaker
um And so a lot of people don't necessarily have that capital. But as a cooperative, again, we can have a few of those. You can hire it for a day or a week or whatever. um at a reasonable rate and get your harvest in and you don't have to invest in the equipment necessarily because and then store it or worry about that side of things too. so And for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of harvesting olives before, it's basically like you're tickling a tree.
00:20:34
Speaker
with ah If you don't have the mechanised olive tickler, um you're doing it with like a little kid's play pit rake and and raking them off the tree. It's really quite satisfying, but it definitely...
00:20:47
Speaker
what is a workout, especially when you're reaching and doing that repetitive motion. So I can see how that would be and a massive boon to anyone harvesting olives. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, when you're individually plucking olives, you get whatever your work rate is, how many and kilos per hour, raking them will double that and using the mechanical rakes
Cooperative Farming and Collaboration
00:21:06
Speaker
quadruples it. So it's actually very effective in terms of the labour.
00:21:09
Speaker
use But again, it's about that capital investment, which is something that that everybody tries to do individually. And actually, you get much more leverage by bringing, pooling those resources in a way that it brings everybody together.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah, I want to ask about the challenges because i yeah, I do see the reasons why we do individual individualistic atomized things because it's just fucking hard to share with people, especially when everyone has a different level of conscientiousness about people.
00:21:42
Speaker
equipment care and things like that. So Kayleigh, if you could talk about how you can kind of reorient yourself to these challenges and and really see the opportunity when involved in something like a cooperative, because I'm immediately thinking of even deciding on the the brand and like the the persona of the cooperative that you're nested within and people's vastly different tastes and associations and creative instincts and And then things like equipment and just working with folks who may have fundamentally diametrically opposite personality types to you.
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, and it it is a question that comes up a lot. um Some people have had cooperative experience before and it hasn't gone particularly well. And that's the case in the central Victoria area too. There used to be a co-op in central Victoria for olive growers, which is why so many of the groves are that sort of 300 to 1,000 trees.
00:22:34
Speaker
um And purely coincidentally, had nothing to do with us. It folded about the time we bought our farm. Just making room for the next division. I know, right? And that was like nearly 20 years ago now. So we feel like there's enough shift in the broader environment to make giving it a go, again, a possibility. And in fact, the gentleman who had all the company experience in the steering committee was a member of that previous co-op. So kudos to him for giving it a go a second time around.
00:23:02
Speaker
um And he was very enthusiastic about that. So... But, yeah, it can be a real challenge. And one of the things that I like to keep in mind is there's an African proverb that says, if you want to go fast, go alone.
00:23:15
Speaker
and if you want to go far, go together. And I think we have this, oh, my God, I'm 25 and I haven't done anything with my life. and And, look, you know, 20 years ago that was me. I'm not, like, it's not new, but it's a thing that people go through. We're like, oh, you know, and the more we see on social media all these things successful people in their you know early ages and child prodigies and and we we forget that that skews the vision so much that these people are not I'm not gonna say normal but they're not the norm um you know they might have had all kinds of motivating quote-unquote factors that may have been good may have been bad to get them to that point um and you know workaholism is
00:23:59
Speaker
equally as dangerous and defective as being too lazy whatever. But just the whole way we see people and and and what we see as successful, we have this idea that I've got to do it fast. I've got to do it now. i've nobody can Nobody else can do it.
00:24:17
Speaker
And I also suffer from this. So, you know, I'm by no means immune. It's still a work in progress for me too. But I remember distinctly the first art exhibition that I did because I do a bit of textile art as well.
00:24:30
Speaker
The first art exhibition I did back in 2019, I'd invited a couple of artist friends from Bendigo to to come and collaborate with me. So I had this vision, this idea for the thing and how I wanted it to look.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I said, do you want to be involved and, and you know, put your art in and we'll we'll work on it together. And it was probably the best thing that I ever did because one of the women who is an Indigenous artist, an amazing artist, she had a lot more experience with exhibitions and and stuff. So one of the reasons that I invited her was i I knew I didn't know what I was doing and I wanted somebody who had done it before. And then the other lady asked was also a textile artist because I knew I wanted a lot of textile stuff in this particular exhibition.
00:25:10
Speaker
And I distinctly remember sitting in one of our fortnightly meetings about, you know, just a check in. How are you going? What are you working on? You know, where's, you know, where are the project, the pieces at? One of the women put up an idea and my immediate reaction was, no, no, no, no. Like I didn't say it, but my my mental reaction was, no no no, no, no, That's not how I saw this going.
00:25:29
Speaker
And I was like, whoa, like I literally had this moment to step outside myself and go, whoa. Wow, look at your ego here. And okay, it's not where you thought this was going to but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And think how amazing it could be.
00:25:48
Speaker
You know, so just having that opportunity to actually reframe that. moment and as I said for me it's been a massive learning curve ah learning experience because now I remember that experience whenever my instant reaction is no that's not how I saw this going I'm like but it could be way better than what you can come up with by yourself And so being able to notice that and and remember that has been really important in how I work with the collaborative side of things because somebody's got to have the vision.
00:26:18
Speaker
But you can't hold so tightly to that vision that nobody else has space to contribute to it because that's not cooperation. That's not collaboration. And you mentioned before we started recording about the distinction between collaboration and cooperation. And I wonder if you can unpack that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Cooperation and collaboration, they're two words because they actually have different meanings.
00:26:43
Speaker
So this is really, really well articulated for me in a framework that was produced that I learned about just recently at the Drought Resilience Conference in Geelong, actually only a couple of weeks ago, by an academic, Niall,
00:26:58
Speaker
O'Connell O'Connelly from Western Australia and he basically put it into a framework of the five C's as humans we start in the competition phase like you've got stuff I've got stuff if I share my stuff with you I have less stuff and therefore I'm not going to share right so we're we're being competitive it comes from that survival mode and you know plays into Maslow's hierarchy of needs in that if we don't have our ph physicalsic physiological needs met in terms of food, shelter, all that sort of thing. How can we possibly work together for the benefit of the broader community? Now, i does sometimes it extends to family, sometimes it's not. You know, we tend to be more protective of those we love and and know intimately and we'll be more willing to share with them than somebody random. But yeah, so we all start a competition because if I don't have enough stuff, I'm not going to survive. And therefore, whatever it is that I'm trying to create is never going to happen.
00:27:49
Speaker
And so we move on from that to cooperation, which is where I have enough stuff. I know that there's an olive grove over there and it's got way too much fruit for me to pick and pickle. And, you know, I've got my year supply of olives.
00:28:04
Speaker
So I'm going to tell you about it because then you can make use of that as well. Or, you know, that's an on-topic example. But, you know, any of those sorts of of things. we We start to cooperate where it's not going to be detrimental to ourselves. It's surplus.
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah. You know, we we take what we need first and then we share it with other people or it might be a resource that we found useful in terms of it's it's not going to affect me if you have that information is cooperation.
00:28:32
Speaker
Collaboration is much more challenging because it actually requires that individual with the vision. And so it's about finding that vision that's best for the community and being able to communicate that to the broader community to say, hey, we could do it this way.
00:28:53
Speaker
you know, what do you think? And getting that feedback as well. But also, You know, here's where I'm thinking, here's the ideas that I'm playing with. You know, I'd really love your input and being willing to listen to that, but in a way that, as I said, has that leadership role.
00:29:12
Speaker
position i I don't necessarily want to say leadership, but but having somebody who's actually tasked with facilitating those
Living Intentionally and Personal Development
00:29:20
Speaker
interactions. because so So competition is very individual.
00:29:25
Speaker
Cooperation is usually a one-on-one kind of situation. And then collaboration is where you start to build that bigger team. And that's where a lot of the challenges come in. So you need to have ah facilitator who understands how to communicate, understands a little bit about, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and things so that they can see, okay, this person's coming from, you know, this place of not having these particular needs met. A fantastic framework that is really helpful this situation is nonviolent communication by...
00:29:56
Speaker
ah Marshall Rosenberg and yeah just helping people frame their needs in a way that is less confrontational so that they can potentially be met by the group or understanding that actually they're being that way because they have this need that hasn't been met so yeah so so collaboration requires that sort of guiding hand in a way I always forget what number four is but you move you move from collaboration in that smaller group space never hurts. Yeah, that's for sure.
00:30:26
Speaker
um I do actually have, i baked yesterday specifically because I knew you and George were coming and I have this recipe that I wanted to try and we think it's amazing, but I would love your feedback. because we made Now I'm salivating. We made olive newtons as opposed to fig newtons. Oh, I see what you did there. Oh, God.
00:30:43
Speaker
Like, it it sounds really weird, but you'll you'll be surprised. Anyway. Yeah, so cake is not the fourth one, but I can't remember what it is off the top of my head. But then you move into cohesion, which is basically where you get these other groups of collaborators who come together and basically change society, is the idea.
00:31:00
Speaker
The end. The end, yeah. cause like And, yes, I realise it's a bit facetious and a bit, like, way out there, crazy, mad, staring eyes kind of um theme. But... The thing to remember is that society is just a set of agreements that we've made as people and we can change it. You know, capitalism is a system designed by humans.
00:31:21
Speaker
You can change the system. And then we just have to agree on it and then, you know, good things happen. Do you think that though, given the state, the very, very increasingly categorically precarious state that we are in, do you do you think that we, maybe not even so much as have the capacity because of course we have the capacity to to do this if we had the will, do you think we literally will change things or there's that are inevitable change disintegration and potential re-emergence of something or just a cataclysmic collapse like these pockets of amazing wholesome stuff i see and i'm really heartened by but generally i see a lot of decay and and and terrifying habits and degeneration of human potential yeah i agree i am
00:32:17
Speaker
A glass half full kind of person, in case you hadn't noticed. So I don't know that I can realistically um predict anything. But also, you know, look, I live in hope. And I think, you know, part of what you're doing with Reeskillians and, you know, some of the amazing resources and things that are out there is really beneficial.
00:32:39
Speaker
But, you know, they say knowledge is power. It's not. Applied knowledge is power. So if you're listening to this podcast and you go, hey these are great ideas. it Doesn't matter whether it's this episode or any other episode, because there are some fabulous episodes out there.
00:32:55
Speaker
If you just consume that information and you don't do anything with it, you haven't changed anything. Except maybe the way you think. And look, there's there's a timeline here, right? So you've got to change the way you think to change the way you live. The paddock between your ears, as Charles Massey says. Absolutely, yes. And it is it is kind of the last frontier in a way. And it is the vastest frontier in a way. Because, yeah, it's like, you know, six, eight inches between your ears, whatever.
00:33:24
Speaker
But the... actual potential for that space and and the way we think and and as I said applying what we ah't understand and know because we can only do what we can do with the information we have at the time we have right but if you have that information and you don't do anything with it you're not just shortchanging yourself you're shortchanging the future for your kids you're shortchanging the future for the planet so Living intentionally is exhausting.
00:33:52
Speaker
Don't get me wrong. But it's something that we all have to do more of. What are your checks on your quality checks along the way to make sure you're not intervening under um misguided notion of what the right thing to do is in a situation?
00:34:09
Speaker
How do you test those ideas and and understand what your impact positively or negatively might be? I try and apply systems design thinking as much as possible.
00:34:21
Speaker
And that may or may not be a concept that your listeners are familiar with, but it's basically, you it is permaculture. um It's, my husband works in IT and we have this saying in our house that there's a lot of things that have been created by adult ah engineers without adult supervision.
00:34:37
Speaker
right And that includes things like electric cars because, you know, the battery life of the original electric cars was not very long and we have no way of recycling those batteries. Engineers without adult supervision is a lack of that designed system system design thinking in terms of how is this going to be played out? What are we going at end of life or whatever?
00:34:59
Speaker
Having said that, there is also this thing called overthinking. And if you spiral into overthinking, you never take action because, oh, what if I do this and it causes this and it does this?
00:35:10
Speaker
And, you know, you sometimes you just have to... take that small step, get a bit of a momentum and then adjust your course as you go. a good rule of thumb to my mind is only taking a step that doesn't leave you unbalanced and reaching and striving too far out of some space where you can safely kind of come back and recalibrate and reassess if you need to.
00:35:39
Speaker
It's not making something so big that then the risk is so great. know, that just, that seems really logical to me, but maybe, I mean, we've got a scale obsessed society.
00:35:51
Speaker
Absolutely. You know, bigger is always better. Just ask any bloke ever. Scale of things is determined by the individual's risk appetite too. Yes. So if you're risk averse, you're going to find it very hard to take action because you're going to be potentially catastrophizing all the possible outcomes. Me and my amygdala all the time. but Before you've done anything. It's so beefy.
00:36:12
Speaker
And I used to be like this too. Like, don't get me wrong. Um, One of the things... I turned 42 this year and I absolutely fucking love being 42. I cannot tell you how much of this risk aversion, overthinking comes from...
00:36:30
Speaker
just where you are in life, not you specifically, but people in general. um And the older you get, the less fucks you give. And I have very much reached that point. And partially it's about confirmation bias.
00:36:43
Speaker
You know, the more you do things and the more feedback you get that what you're doing is a good thing or people are inspired by it or they're enjoying it or the more you want to do it, right?
00:36:54
Speaker
So, and the less that makes you question what you're doing. Am I... making sense here Katie absolutely making sense I'm thinking oh i I challenge that when it comes up in my mind because I have such a big inner critic that doesn't even want to believe the evidence that is mounting in front of me but please continue yeah so so a lot of people are in that situation so You have to let yourself believe. You have to let go of that that inner critic. Like for me, it's, the you know, I have one too.
00:37:24
Speaker
But the only, absolute only thing that you can control in life is your thoughts and your actions. So, you know, if you really want to feel in control, start meditating.
00:37:39
Speaker
Start letting go of that stuff or going, it's and it's not about fighting the negative thoughts. It's about going, oh, there they are. ah does that really still apply?
00:37:51
Speaker
like his you know and And just questioning them, getting curious about those negative thoughts. Because if you just try shut them down, it's the same as like not experiencing your emotions. They will continuously pop up and they will come back and go, hi.
00:38:04
Speaker
um And if you talk in archetypes and that sort of thing, it's the loyal soldier. We talk about the loyal soldier. This is the person who, or the persona, the part of you that kept you safe at whatever age and stage you needed to be kept safe.
Creative Process and Personal Growth
00:38:19
Speaker
by saying, you know, don't do it that way, do it this way or whatever it might be. And now, so so it's kind of like having a conversation with that person going, i see you, thank you, I appreciate that you're here for me to to look out for me in this space, but actually not needed right now.
00:38:37
Speaker
And if you can start doing some of those things in a conscious, as I said, living intentionally is fucking exhausting. But if you can start to notice when those things come up and you can start to apply some of those things, then you will make your life so much easier.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you for offering such rich answers, complete with so many awesome references that I know people can follow to their heart's content. it's not It's not necessarily all mine. A few years ago, I did the Four Seasons Journey through the School of Shamanic Womancraft. Oh, amazing. Yeah.
00:39:11
Speaker
um And then last year I apprenticed to it as well. And so when I did it, it was through COVID and it was very disjointed. And so for those who don't know, the School Schamanic Womancraft is a women's mystery school, for want of a better expression, um that was founded by Jane Hardwick Collins, who was a home birth midwife for many years and also a hospital midwife before that. And it basically takes women through the rites of passage.
00:39:36
Speaker
So it's usually six gatherings over 12 months and And they're in person and they're camping and they're amazing and they involve ceremony and ritual and you get to do all kinds of interesting things like make a drum and, um you know, all these kind of awesome stuff. But basically, yeah, they look at your different rites of passage. So the story around your birth, how it's been told to you, how you replay it and how you can reframe that.
00:40:00
Speaker
um And for me, that's a particularly relevant one, actually, which is um so when my mum was pregnant with me at about 38 weeks, she went and had her obstetrician appointment and he did a sneaky, he was doing a vaginal exam and he did a sneaky stretch and sweep, which is basically where they tweak the cervix to see how.
00:40:17
Speaker
ready it is for labor. Now, my mother did not consent to that process. She didn't even know it was happening at the time. He didn't tell her that he was doing it. You know, we're talking back in the early 80s. But she feels that that brought on an early labor. So she always said that when I was born, I looked about two weeks prem and I had joined us. So, you know, i was yellow scun rabbit.
00:40:38
Speaker
And she talks about using dad's hankies as nappies for me because I was that small. I'm like, that sounds a lot more than two weeks premature. But anyway, you know, I survived. I was fine. It's awkward. She didn't have, I wasn't in NICU or anything like that. But for me, the way that story plays out now is in my creative process because birth is a creative process. It doesn't matter whether you're birthing a human baby, a podcast, a piece of art, a co-op, a business, whatever it might be, a new product for your business, like whatever. It's a birthing process, right?
00:41:08
Speaker
So the way that plays out for me is I get 90% of the way through whatever the creative process is. And then I'm like, No, somebody else can do it now. And I see it time and time and time and time again. yeah Fascinating. I've got a book that I've written. It's not published yet because I just want somebody to, like, I've done my creative bit. I've i've written it.
00:41:25
Speaker
ah just want somebody to take it off my hands. I haven't put it out there, but if you're a publisher, feel free to get in touch. Yeah, so i see this play out in my life all the time. And how do you work with that then? well do you just Again, you observe observe and in interact. you know we go back to permaculture principles. We go back to um all those kind of things. But I don't know if you're familiar with Mel Robbins' new book, Let Them.
00:41:45
Speaker
Oh, I've been meaning to read that. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, it's about that control thing. So you just, yeah, you let them. so It's let them think what they will kind of thing, right? When you're crippled by people-pleasing syndrome. and Absolutely. Or you're offended by somebody's reaction to something or, you know, just let them. You know, they're coming from their place.
00:42:04
Speaker
And I can be the bigger person here. I literally need to eat this milk so that it is in every cell of my body. So part of that, the reason I mentioned that is because when you're in that space of, you know, oh, it's my birth process playing out again or whatever.
Diverse Skills and Continuous Learning
00:42:21
Speaker
If you can see that and be with it, it'll pass a hell of a lot more quickly. It's like emotional processing.
00:42:27
Speaker
If you let it happen, so it's it's not let them, it's let me. You can apply it to yourself as well. I forget that sometimes nothing needs doing. It's actually just an engagement with a part of ourselves and a curiosity, as you say, changing changing the, why are you doing that voice into the, huh, that's interesting mode.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah. So fascinating. It's really getting juicy now. You sent me this list of 80, because I counted them, 80 skills that you can teach And the bottom note was, if Kayleigh doesn't know how to do it, she knows someone who can help you do it.
00:43:06
Speaker
So many of them I see as inaccessible to me as... As a female, he wasn't ever really enticed into that world as a young person and therefore has a completely arm's length relationship, outsourcing the chainsaw to the the dude kind of relationship with those skills.
00:43:20
Speaker
But also simply the the confidence involved and the self-belief involved in cultivating a list of 80 different things that you can turn your hand to. So wonder, Kayleigh, if you can... Just help us understand who you are on the inside that allows you to express this gamut of amazing apocalypse skills externally.
00:43:40
Speaker
i don't know how to answer that except with a story. When we bought the farm and started making our own olive oil and to me, like i was mid-20s, having been...
00:43:57
Speaker
a people pleaser, not knowing that I was on that neuro-spicycle spectrum at the time. And I had a very good childhood in terms of, you know, protection and and provision and whatever. But i didn't feel safe in that environment for a variety of reasons. so And so, yeah knowing knowing how much of that can come from a traumatic background, not which is, you know, again, not a competition, and I'm not saying that it was particularly traumatic by some standards, but for me it was an unsafe environment.
00:44:29
Speaker
And telling people that I made olive oil was really confronting as a mid-20s something, because how many people do you know that make food Me personally? Yeah.
00:44:42
Speaker
A fuck ton. Yeah, okay. So but bad example. It's probably abnormal. I suspect your sample size might be slightly skewed in that biased direction. But like, you know, um I'm talking about I'm living in Melbourne.
00:44:54
Speaker
I work in administration at a university. Everything around me is corporate. All of all of my family and friends are employees. They're not doing their own thing. And all of a sudden, here was I doing this little side thing that,
00:45:08
Speaker
you know, I thought it was really cool, but I didn't really know it about yet because I was still learning about how to make olive oil and all the different things and whatever. So I didn't have that confidence in my own abilities. And then to tell people like, who are you to have the audacity to tell somebody that you make olive oil? And it's, you know, it's amazing. but But again, that confirmation bias, the more I told people, the more they're like, that's really cool. Like, how does that work? You know, who, what, tell me more, you know, and just getting that feedback of interest and excitement from people allowed me to build my confidence and go, you know what, this is actually pretty fucking cool.
00:45:40
Speaker
I didn't know many people my age who knew how to spin yarn from fleece. I didn't know many people my age who knitted. I didn't know many people my age who, you know, preserved food or whatever because of the environment that I was in. And it was kind of like, yeah, I did feel out of place. and But in the end, I'm like, I don't know anybody who knows these skills, but I have these skills. And i in the conversations I have with people, they're like, I'd love to learn to do that. I'm like...
00:46:07
Speaker
like I can teach her. And as a kinesthetic learner, the more I teach, the more I learn. So it's really funny that you mentioned that I am an accredited chainsaw operator. I do have my ticket. I do also have a Cert IV training and assessment just because I wanted to understand the process of putting together a workshop and the the way it flows and if you want to do assessments and and that sort of thing. So understanding the learning process more ah from that perspective. So i don't, you know, I'm not in the TAFE system. Would you recommend that?
00:46:37
Speaker
If you like systems and tick in the box, sure. It did help in terms of being able to structure the way that information is presented in a workshop in a way that makes sense to people and helps it to flow because I can be a little bit all over the place. I find that really tricky too. Yeah, which one of the things I love about this podcast. There's boundaries. Yeah.
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah, from ah from a teaching perspective, if you want the outcome to be you've started without this skill and you want to gain this skill, you need to have that framework that people can fit the pieces together.
00:47:14
Speaker
So from that perspective, yes, I do recommend it. um But it was never my intention to go and teach accredited yeah through TAFE or whatever. Yeah, it's it's funny you mention that because um I did actually chainsaw my finger year.
00:47:25
Speaker
10 days ago. They weren't even going to see that. I know, but no, no, this is, it's important because I am a kinesthetic visual learner. So I have to learn through doing. So the fact that I have now chainsawed my finger, and I always make jokes in my chainsaw workshops. I'm the only person who's ever had to use the first aid kit. And it's usually when I'm checking the tension after sharpening the chain.
00:47:43
Speaker
But now that I have actually chainsawed my finger and it was very minor, I haven't lost any digits. It's literally only a flesh wound. I know exactly how it happened. I know exactly why it happened and I never have to do it again.
00:47:54
Speaker
So there are downsides to being a kinesthetic learner sometimes. And, you know, one of my favorite quotes comes from Eleanor Roosevelt about, um you know, learn from other people's mistakes because life is too short to make them all yourself. So, yeah, don't ever operate your chainsaw above your head is basically what it comes down to on too little sleep.
00:48:13
Speaker
um Yeah. do you ever feel overwhelmed or... So just to give people a sense of, but backing up for a second, some of the skills that you sent me as examples of things you can help help folks with. There's things like planning and planting a food forest, composting, pruning, seed saving, all of that kind of land-based homesteading-esque stuff. And then there's soap making, killing and dressing small livestock, and pickling beef and pork. Like my...
00:48:40
Speaker
Definitely had a little flag go up that I wanted to ask you about that one. Things about olive oil, household budgeting, and then you even have like metalworking, woodworking, women's circles, weaving, building community, and tapping into creativity.
00:48:55
Speaker
Like this is such a broad suite of offerings. My questions are around how you prioritize. Like I have all of the questions in the world that I just want to kind of hand over to you right now to to help me solve life.
00:49:09
Speaker
But I'll stick to how have you prioritized? How do you approach learning these skills? Like, do you do one thing at a time? How do you carve out time to do these amazing, grounded, life-sustaining things that so many of us see as indulgences?
00:49:23
Speaker
Please explain. So one of the things you probably need to understand about me, Katie, is I haven't had a real job since I was in my mid-20s. And part of that is because my husband works in IT and IT t pays like a demon. And I recognize, I absolutely 100% recognize my privilege. Skill, partner selection.
00:49:42
Speaker
No, no, privilege. But I mean, like, he's a great guy too. But... but So, you know, meet your partner online. This 20 years. We've actually been together 20 years this year. And that was like before dating apps. This was like an actual website, folks. And...
00:49:58
Speaker
and Yeah, ah like we spoke online for about three months before we met in person. And again, it's one of those crazy stories. So I grew up in Hamilton. I had family that lived in Fairfield in inner Melbourne and then they moved to Heidelberg and now they live in Greensboro. So I've always traveled on that Hurstbridge line train.
00:50:16
Speaker
And at Dennis Station, there was this old milk bar that was covered in graffiti murals and it was beautiful and I loved it. And I thought one day I'm going to live there since I was 14. Fast forward years.
00:50:28
Speaker
And I meet this guy on the internet and we talk online for about three months. He didn't have a profile picture. didn't really care. was brain and chemistry. And anyway, we we swapped some photos and it was really funny because i I was thinking, you know, from what he was saying that he didn't really sound like a white walls kind of guy, but I knew he owned his house.
00:50:44
Speaker
And he sent me these photos of the inside of his house. It was all like reds and blues and greens and yellows and crazy, amazing, energetic colors. Yeah, just the like the living area, the living space, this house was just so full of vibrant energy from the colours.
00:50:59
Speaker
And he didn't send me a photo of the outside. But we decided, you know, as I said, we spoke online for about three months. We decided ah just been down to the Port Ferry Folk Festival with another mate of mine and camped down there for the weekend and had this, seen this amazing band called Those Bloody McKennas. And I don't think they're around anymore, but they were from Queensland. Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
And they were having a residency at the East Brunswick Hotel in Melbourne for the month after the festival every weekend. And anyway, so I said to bunch of my mates, like, like I'm going, you want to come?
00:51:29
Speaker
And said to Tali, do you want to come as well? And he's like, well, why don't we get dinner first? And my immediate thought, you know, this this negative bias, survival mode, what if he's an ex-murderer? Anyway, so we met and we had dinner know and the conversation just like flowed. It was like we had all these, it was just like talking online. We had all these pop culture references in common because even though he's considerably older than I am, he is not a grown up in any way, so shape or form, unless he has to be.
00:51:55
Speaker
It was like we'd known each other for years and years't years and years. Anyway, the night went well. We we enjoyed the bed so much so that, you know, he sent me an email and was like, let's let's have another date. When I eventually went back to his house.
00:52:05
Speaker
Well, we met. We met. We talked online for about three months. Then we met in person. And about six weeks after we met in person, I actually moved in to that house that I admired for 10 years. And it was just so so.
00:52:19
Speaker
You know, do be careful what you wish for. I'm not i'm not into manifesting and and that sort of thing. But I was looking at Mel Robbins' clip this morning actually about the thing where when you emotionally connect to something, your brain registers that moment and remembers that moment and...
00:52:38
Speaker
then puts your subconscious to work to find ways to make that happen. Now, I'm not saying that had I never, you know, like the chance of meeting the guy who owned that house on that website is like infinitesimally small.
00:52:51
Speaker
But the fact that I was on a website, a dating website, you know, increases your potential exponentially. um So it's about, yeah, it's about the subconscious then going to work to find those things to make them happen for you.
00:53:05
Speaker
And it's the same, like, you know, I've always talked about buying a farm and I just happened to meet the guy who wanted to buy a farm. But for me, it comes back to that, Again, living intentionally.
00:53:16
Speaker
um So you talk about, you know, you ask about finding time and space to do these things. A lot of the time it'll be dictated by people coming to me and saying, I want to learn this thing. Well, cool, let's do it. Because now those skills are just part of who I am.
00:53:33
Speaker
they They're just integrated into my life um and they're part of the experimentation side of things. So, for example, yesterday i was experimenting with, so we're doing an art exhibition as part of the co-op fundraising, which is happening in September um from the 18th to the 29th of September at Dudley House.
00:53:53
Speaker
in Bendigo and one of and in conjunction with that exhibition we're running a bunch of workshops alongside so if you want to learn how to do soap making you want to learn you know come and play with clay or whatever and you know a bunch of different stuff because the art exhibition is Ancient Roots in the New World and it's about the the beauty, the mythology and the symbolism of olive trees and also olive trees as food for body and soul.
00:54:18
Speaker
So So Athena is the god Greek great goddess of the olive. And so she was also the patron goddess of arts and crafts and, you know, pottery and brewing and all those fun things in ancient Greece.
00:54:33
Speaker
So one of the workshops we're doing is we're going to make the like small clay lamps. And so I was thinking about fuel for those. So, you know, combining olive oil and bees. So yesterday made mini candles out of cotton buds, olive oil and beeswax. So it's it's about playfulness.
00:54:49
Speaker
It's about, experimenting it's about yeah just like learning stuff and then integrating it into I can't explain it any more than that except that I realize that if you're stuck in a nine-to-five job it's always going to be much more challenging to do those things because you have to apply your creativity in a different way usually in the service of somebody else that's why one of the things that I teach is some of those business skills about you know how to how to do that to get yourself out of the nine to five so that you can actually live with chasing down whatever it is you want to chase down.
Balancing Passion with Strategic Planning
00:55:25
Speaker
so
00:55:25
Speaker
I often think about the fact that it's one thing to feel really alive to your passion and purpose, but quite another to strategize your way there, especially when so many of us start or so many of us are shackled by very real obligation to debt early on.
00:55:43
Speaker
um So I think that strategy piece Again, i can fall into a bit of despair around, I'm just not strategic enough to figure this shit out, but I know there are ways. And also what I heard you talk about was tuning into the emotions that you want to feel, not as a form of magical manifestation that does seem predicated on a certain level of privilege, but as my friend always talks about, not everyone can manifest, but we can all call in a bit of magic.
00:56:09
Speaker
And I think magic has a very different quality and I like your... your story sharing, teaching story around what it means to harbour a little flame that might be kindled in the future and how that can play into... That's a type of strategy in itself. It doesn't have to be a very left-brained, calculated assault.
00:56:31
Speaker
That's probably more of a comment than a question, but... a question look my bum's going numb but i have so much to ask you so i'm just going to try and like really get to the heart of things because i just think you're so fantastic and this is like everything that i care about in life hard and soft skills my question is around how cool is it to challenge ourselves to lean into things that we may find difficult or a bit confounding like my partner talks about when he was a kid pulling engines apart with his dad and putting them back together and he has this incredible sense of
00:57:03
Speaker
How does something work? And he'll develop a skill to the point where he just knows how to problem solve something because he pulled it apart and put it back together. Whereas I was drawing pictures in a corner, learning about equine anatomy.
00:57:14
Speaker
For me, soft skills are where I feel really comfortable and like human relationship focused stuff. Should i push myself to learn about machines or tools or building or should i lean more into the things that i'm naturally inclined towards what do you reckon
00:57:36
Speaker
Well, it depends on the individual. So what do what do you want to chase down? There is a part of me that obviously, like, I keep thinking about this this idea of resilience and what it means to claim something for yourself to a degree where you can um understand it without needing those industrial supports or to call in the cavalry and I keep thinking about that and shooting myself around you should understand how things work a little bit more and that's more of a mechanical kind of mindset so that's there it's probably there for a reason but if I just let myself flow in the river of my own desire it would just be creative fun things
00:58:22
Speaker
So there's benefit in getting outside your comfort zone. Absolutely. Because you don't know what you don't know and you don't know what you're capable of until you challenge yourself. And the question that I would ask you to ask yourself is where does that need to know everything come from?
00:58:42
Speaker
Because again, this is something I've learned through the Four Seasons journey. is that we all have this sacred wounding around. So they talk a lot about astrology and, you know, it's again, it sounds very woo, but if you think of astrology as a framework through which people have understood human nature for over 2000 years,
00:59:04
Speaker
Then it becomes helpful, right? It's not saying every Aquarian is like this or like me because there's more to it than that. So in most astrology that you read in the newspaper or whatever, they just talk about your sun sign.
00:59:16
Speaker
And that is only one element of the birth chart. So the birth chart is where the what the heaven ah heavenly alignment was at the moment you were born. in the place you were born because that also affects it.
00:59:29
Speaker
And it's so what you can see in the sky as opposed to what's below the horizon and where all the constellations and things fit. So I have an Aquarian sun sign, but my rising is Capricorn.
00:59:42
Speaker
And that is a very same strategic business, systems thinking, we're going to do shit differently to everybody else. yeah The goat. The goat. The sea goat. No. More importantly, the sea goat. So even the mythology around that, this this is an animal that walks in two worlds.
01:00:00
Speaker
It's not a goat. It's a sea goat, very specifically. And so it comes back to being that edge dweller that we talked about at the beginning. It's like you you you have this capacity to move through the world in in
Astrology and Personal Insights
01:00:12
Speaker
ways.
01:00:12
Speaker
um You know, my moon is in cancer, so I can be extremely empathetic and emotive. and not always to my benefit or to the benefit of the people around me.
01:00:23
Speaker
But, you know, it's so it's it's one lens through which we can look at life and look at how we interact with the world. But from that, the point I was trying to make from that Four Seasons journey is one of the things that we look at is that sacred wound, is where Chiron, the meteor, was at the house it was in and all that sort of thing at the time of your birth and how that plays out as...
01:00:43
Speaker
your, i don't want to use the word trauma because, you know, people have different understandings of how that works, but basically everything that happens to you has some level of traumatic impact.
01:00:53
Speaker
Um, and you know, like if you get a splinter, but you hate needles, that's going to be more traumatic for you than somebody who is okay with needles, for example. So, you know, it's a continuum.
01:01:06
Speaker
Sorry, microphone. So the way we perceive things will impact that level of trauma in and of ourselves. And particularly between the ages of like one and seven, when you're really starting to work out the ways of the world and um how everything fits together and and who's safe and who's not and, you know, environments and all that sort of thing if you have a big impactful event then it's going to stay with you more than later on. So a lot sometimes that can play into the sacred point. But basically like in In the journey that I was on, my sacred wound was around, as I said, not being safe in that environment.
01:01:43
Speaker
And whenever i asked for help, it was shut down. So on one of four siblings. My mum was a stay-at-home parent. My dad had his own business, worked very long hours. So when I asked for help, it wasn't there because mum was dealing with...
01:01:56
Speaker
know, three siblings. She had four kids under eight. So yeah, pretty close succession. So a lot going on and I'm a middle child. I'm a classic middle child, but I'm also the firstborn daughter. So, you know, all these other societal roles and gender roles come into it as well.
01:02:12
Speaker
Basically what that means is whenever I asked for help, I didn't get it. So I had to learn to do things for myself. And so knowing these skills is part of that coping mechanism. But sharing them with other people is about working with them to find what they want to know and learn. and And so that's why I say the question I'm asking you to ask yourself is why do you need to know these skills? Yeah.
01:02:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's fascinating because I think my it would be almost inverse for me where everything, every need was met to the point of not allowing my own experience of challenge and suffering and and internal resourcing.
01:02:50
Speaker
So things being done for me is the habit and the expectation that then the mental, it creates this very big mountain in my mind when it comes to doing something that doesn't feel easeful.
01:03:04
Speaker
Like you just said, radically reframing those coping mechanisms as something very positive when shared in a certain way or when know brought awareness to... Is it that or is it kind of doing the opposite of our conditioning?
01:03:19
Speaker
And I think deep down, and I've spoken about this on the podcast a couple of times before, I know that that that wound, that that experience in early childhood, is so generative when I allow it to be, it's just maybe not the person that i idealize or want to be. And i I think I absolutely hero worship people who I see as different to me in this way, such as yourself. Like, holy shit, look how many skills you have. Whereas maybe what I really need to do is kind of so lovingly embrace this, the questioning that arises for me because of my curiosity, because it seems so incredible to me that people have these skills.
01:03:56
Speaker
you know what i mean? Like this is the fuel for the podcast. Sure. But I can probably welcome some of those things in too. And again, my question for you is, have you ever actually sat down and written your own list of skills?
01:04:09
Speaker
That I have not. Because I think you might be surprised by how many would be on there. Comparison is the thief of joy. Like comparing yourself to anybody Nobody gets out of life alive.
01:04:21
Speaker
We're all here doing the best we can. and yeah, the more you can get curious, the more you can get playful, the more you can have that... you know what what a lot of the ancients say is is that human experience you know we're not here to consume we're here to create and you know that's one of the things i love about your podcast is that you know you're creating something and people are getting value from that and yeah so it's it's a big part of that is don't compare yourself just and it's easy to say as i said i've i've reached a point where you know
01:04:57
Speaker
I have no more fucks to give in terms of what people think of me. I'm just whatever. And, you know, if if I can help in any way, add value in any way, that's that's what I'm here
Community Importance and Future Preparedness
01:05:09
Speaker
to do. You know, so, yeah. Well, I'm very pleased you're out there doing that in the world. I look forward to my 40s.
01:05:14
Speaker
And my final question for you is, what would you like us to know? And that can definitely encompass what you're up to what you want to what you want to share and point people's attention to, or something kind of philosophical and profound.
01:05:26
Speaker
You'll never learn it all, but if you follow your own breadcrumbs of interest and... But also don't dismiss things because they come from a perspective you don't share.
01:05:40
Speaker
Because if you can understand somebody else's perspective, you will have a much better chance of connecting with them. And that's...
01:05:52
Speaker
I think that was the fourth C. heart Connection? Yeah. So competition, ah cooperation, connection, collaboration, and cohesion. Nice. Pretty sure that's it. Yeah.
01:06:04
Speaker
There you go. We've come a full circle. It does feel full circle. And I'm going to link some tasty treats in the show notes, things that you've got on the hob and how people can interact with you. Is there a particular thing that you're most excited about?
01:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, I'm rebranding the whole Zap Studio thing. um So Zap Studio came about from zombie apocalypse preparedness. It was all those crazy skills.
01:06:29
Speaker
I'm rebranding to civilitas, which is a Latin word that means citizenship because it's not about surviving the apocalypse. It's about building community. And, again, this is a shift from twenty s to 40s. Yeah, softening perhaps.
01:06:44
Speaker
Yeah. softening perhaps Yeah, maybe. I was pretty dogmatic in my youth. Mind you, I'm still pretty, you know, Matt staring the the fanatic. but And can that be expected soon-ish? know these things take a long time. Well, it's already online.
01:06:57
Speaker
Oh, is it? Yep. So you can link a ah website there. Brilliant. yes And can people reach out to you if they want to learn cool shit? They certainly can. Oh, my God. And there will be some workshops and things listed and it needs updating because I've been co-op focused, but I'll get onto that and organise some dates and things.
01:07:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And just one final kind of sub, but quite a large question. um Apocalypse predictions? Well, I think it was Isaac Asimov who said that World War, or it might have been Kurt Vonnegut, anyway, ah World War III will be fought with nuclear weapons and World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
01:07:32
Speaker
So the more we can get back to understanding the principles of how to use sticks and stones, the more we can avoid World War III, I think. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
01:07:42
Speaker
So I look, I think humanity will survive. It will be very uncomfortable and disruptive, but technology is not the savior that we think it is. And hands-on skills are definitely the way to go.
01:07:55
Speaker
Isn't a bicycle the peak of technology in many people's eyes? There are so many things you can do with a bicycle. Yeah. You can you can run a washing machine with a bicycle. You can run a blender with a bicycle. Yeah, you can make a green smoothie. Yeah, you can you can go places on a bicycle. You can actually you can sharpen knives using bicycle technology.
01:08:12
Speaker
Because it's really hard to make broad sweeping statements about technology. There are appropriate technologies and there are just... deadbeat, dead-end technologies. so do we say it's the bicycle or do we take it backwards and say it's the wheel in general? ah Could be.
01:08:29
Speaker
Well, this has been so good. I'm so grateful for your time this morning and thanks for coming by reaching out to me. I think that's just, it feels a little bit more like the dots joining without me having to even, you know, chase them anymore. And I'm, yeah, I just absolutely love what you're up to.
01:08:50
Speaker
Well, the feeling is extremely mutual, Katie, so good luck editing because we went many rabbit holes. Oh my goodness. I know, I just looked at the time, was like, oh, that was long, yeah.
01:09:00
Speaker
Have fun. That was the delightful Kaylee Mio. You'll find a whole bunch of excellent links in the show notes if you want to fossick further. And I will catch you in another fortnight with another interview and Caravan Park Review.