In Episode 40 of the Creative Work Hour Podcast, the crew explores "Being Okay When Things Are Not Okay," sharing personal experiences and practical advice on resilience and finding joy amidst chaos. Tune in for insights on coping mechanisms and creative outlets.

Greg
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is episode 40 and it's February the 8th, 2025. In the room today, you have myself, Greg, we have Alessandra, Shadows Pub, Devon, Dr. Tamika, Andy, Gretchen, Dr. Melanie, Bobby B, and Ken. We were talking a little bit before the podcast started. You only have to turn on the news and there's bad things happening. You open your email. And we thought it would make a good topic for today's discussion. 

Being okay when things are not okay. Alessandra, how do you navigate that, being okay when things are not okay?

Alessandra
Well, I can tell you as founder of Creative Work Hour that this whole little experiment came about because I needed something that wasn't being provided in the places that I was looking. And some of those places were expensive places. I just couldn't find a place where it was okay if things were not okay. where it was okay if I wasn't okay. And that silence is there for a reason. One of the signature things about the creative work hour crew is that when shit hits the fan, we know how to take a beat. Something that I've learned from spending a lot of time in England is that there is something that is not a clinical fix, something that is not a therapeutic aid or modality, but it's simply called putting on the kettle.

Alessandra
And I like to think that in creative work hour, when we do our five minute check-in in the beginning of the hour and our five minute checkout at the end of the hour, that we always have that kindness, that ability to be patient and take a beat and put on the kettle for each other. And this has been one of those weeks. It's good to know that there's a place where we can come to do that. What are you thinking about, Greg, when we say being okay, when things are not okay?

Greg
Well, you took me off guard there. We didn't discuss who was coming to me next. Alessandra mentioned the cup of tea. And when you think about it, having a cup of tea in England or putting the kettle on, you're taking time out from life. You're stepping aside. It's calm, it's safe, conducive for conversation, no judgment. So putting the kettle on, that's kind of, so there's your trivia. But gosh, how do you handle that? Well, You know, if someone's not okay, first of all, it's okay to not be okay, and it should be okay to say so.

Greg
You know, and if someone comes to you and they're not okay, you don't have to have the answers. You don't have to solve the problem. It's okay to say, gosh, you know, I don't know what that feels like. I've not been in that situation, but I'm here for you. I'll sit with you. We know we'll have a cup of tea or whatever. Creative work hour is my safe space. It's a judgment free zone and it's OK to be honest. You know, we're very real here. We don't stand on ceremony and it's my family of choice.

Greg

So that's my thoughts on that. But shadows being OK when you're not OK. What are your thoughts on that? How do you navigate that?

Shadows Pub
Hmm. Depends on the mood I'm in. Most of the times I just tell the world to fuck off and disappear. Tameka.

Dr. Timeka
This is a good one, Greg and Alessandra. For me, Preparation is key here. So there are a lot of building blocks that I put in my way in case I'm not okay. One is a list of a thousand things that cost nothing that make me happy. And just having that list to refer back to. Also, one of my mentors once told me, you should always schedule fun times because upsets schedule themselves. And I've taken that and I've run with it. I mean, it has really been a game changer for me and a person that likes to spend a lot of time alone.

Dr. Timeka
I love myself and I love to be alone, but I also love to be apart. And I use the creative work hour and use it in a great way to make sure that I have people around me that have the same goal, but also the same mindset, but different views because you need that balance as well. But those are just some of the things that I do before time. So when time comes, I'm prepared and I can navigate safely and smoothly. How about you, Andy?

Andy
Well, you know, this week has been especially rough for me, you know, with what's happened. And it took a real toll on me. And I told the hearing creative ago what happened. We didn't know the extent at that point. But this by later when you more and more and my way of Taking care of that was, besides being in Creative World cover, also writing this piece, music, and somehow that releases a lot of good energy for me to compose when I'm in a stressed situation. But also having fika, you know, coffee with family and friends, going away and sitting and talking about other things.

Andy
It really helps. But I like what you said there, Tamika. Scheduling fun times. I will take care of that. Over to you, Bobby.

Bobby. B
Thank you, Andy. Yeah, in prior years, I would quickly spin a defensive cocoon to shield myself, bury myself somewhere to get away from the discomfort. But I gotta tell you, over the years, groups like this, have made significant change in that. Now I spin a silk cocoon because there is strength in recognizing discomfort. And sometimes you still need to be defensive, but there's that. But there's one other thing. A few years back, a dear friend gave me a picture frame And inside the picture frame are photographs of people that really matter, that you know have your back, that you could call any time, day or night.

Bobby. B
And the interesting thing about this frame is if you tap it, there's a sliver all the way around the periphery of the frame that lights up. And everyone in the picture picked a color. So if I tap my frame, It's gonna illuminate that color on mine, but it's going to illuminate it on everybody else's picture frame. And it's just letting people know that I'm thinking about them, not necessarily why, but just doing that reminds me of all those amazing people in my life, and that it's gonna be okay.

Greg
Bobby, thanks. That would be great. If you could give me more information on that, I'd like to add that to the show notes. That picture frame is amazing. Devon, being okay when things are not okay, how do you navigate that? What are your thoughts?

Devin
I had to think about this for a minute, but I realized I do three things. And the first is to try and not make whatever the thing is that's not okay mean more than it does. Because there is always something not okay in life. This constant striving for a place where everything is okay is just not attainable in my experience. So just getting some perspective on life and this things placed in it. And then the second thing I do is I get grateful. I start really doubling down on my gratitude list. I'm really focusing on the things that are okay.

Devin
And some things are always better than okay. And again, getting that balance of it's not all the one bad, not okay thing. And then the third thing that I do is seek humor. That is just my, you know, go-to comfort place is look for things that can make me laugh and change my state by bringing some funny images or jokes into my life, and that always helps. And then, of course, I got a creative work hour, and that takes care of everything.

Greg
Thank you, Devon. Okay. Gretchen, being okay when things are not okay.

Gretchen
Yeah, this one exactly Devon, it does take some took some thought on this one. I think what I'll tend to do is to try to try to send myself into some kind of creative mode, whether it's something I'm comfortable with doing, like my photography, or not so comfortable, like painting or drawing or journaling, that type of thing. If I can change my state in some way, that state, not only the state of mind, but my physical state. I may go someplace else. I may take a walk. Especially if I'm feeling really down, even if I just go out around the block for five minutes, it's amazing what that change of state can do when things are not okay.

Gretchen
And kind of take a look at the roadblocks I'm putting up to being, staying in the way of being not okay. How can I change that? Because you know, where I live, people will go, oh my gosh, it's raining. We can't go outside. I'm sorry, it rains eight months of the year here. So you just can't let that go. You can't let that be the thing that keeps you inside. You can't let, it being cold keep you the thing that keeps you inside. And, and I guess the other thing I do is I look, one of the things that I've done oftentimes is having been a former teacher is that the advice that you give little kids or the advice they give you and what makes them smile, what do things.

Gretchen
And as I tell my grandkids, when I'm with them and I'm sending them off to school or anything, I say, make two people smile today. And if I take that advice myself, and even if it's just to send a text because I'm not big on phone calls or to send a message or something like that, It's something to connect with somebody out there. And if I can do something, maybe reach outside of myself, that that changes my state. And that's what I do when I'm not OK, when things are not OK.

Greg
Fun scratching, yeah, doing something kind for someone else and yourself is a great way to all the science behind that. Dr. Melanie, being OK when when things are not OK. What are your thoughts on that?

Dr Melonie
Well, sort of everything everybody said. I've actually written prescriptions for people to have fun, because it can be really noticeable that people really don't have fun.

Alessandra
I want a prescription like that. 

Greg
OK. Hands up all who want a prescription. My gosh, the screen's gone crazy.

Dr Melonie
OK. Oh

Dr Melonie
And I don't have to use my bloody expensive electronic prescribing system for it because they don't list fun under stupid drugs. Anyway, that's one thing. The other thing is the whole idea of homeostasis kind of doesn't really exist. So trying to get back to the null point is what being alive is. You know, so that's the abstract thought. Some of this depends on whether something's just not okay in my little world versus in more people's worlds. And it has, over the last couple of years, been increasing, increasing, as my really woo-woo friends say, the amount of pain in the universe.

Dr Melonie
Like serious, I'm dying, I'm being blown up, I'm delivering a baby in the middle of rubble that's gonna fucking die in seven seconds. That kind of thing, I have on many occasions to spin a cocoon, but I also have to do something. And I was kind of raised to A, have fun and B, do something. That's what happens when you have an Australian lunatic mother. And so she knew how to take care of herself, sometimes at my expense. So I learned how to do some fun things for myself, but she, I had to learn how to just sit and have a cup of tea as opposed to trying to fix something.

Dr Melonie
But there's a good side to that, which is bloody well do something. You know, oh, you can't do that? All right, try this. Oh, you can't do that? Oh, try this. I drive everyone crazy at work with this. No, like why not? No. You know, fuck you, no, you know, let's try this. Let's, oh, it bends the rules a little. Gee, that's a bloody shame. Do we need to get this done? How, you know, could it make a big difference? Okay, cool. So those are the things I do, but I'm afraid it's going to get, you know, it's going to impinge on white middle-classhood more than it ever did.

Dr Melonie
And hopefully this means that some people learn, but it also means a lot of people die. in various ways. So then I cry. And then I get on creative work hour, so someone hears me and says, oh boy, you're right.

Alessandra
Yeah, we see you. I see Dr. Tamika, and it looks like she has got something to say.

Dr Melonie
You're on mute.

Dr. Timeka
No, you're on mute. I wanted to ask Dr. Melanie, and another thing that, you know, we really have to walk through those steps of grief because a lot of our contentment, discontentment comes from missteps in those steps of grief. And just addressing those, it just seems to help to alleviate a lot of things that we could have cut out if we had just merely walked through those steps. But I'll leave that to an MD.

Dr Melonie
I have no idea what the steps of grief are. I never went to a funeral until I was about 26. Nobody in my family lives in this country. So if they died, they died somewhere else, if I knew about it. So, and, you know, my mom was of the English persuasion that was like, you never wear black, you don't take kids to funerals, as opposed to some of the other more persuasions where you were going to a funeral when you were three. So I have no clue about what that means, if there are steps to grief.

Greg
I will put some information in the show notes.

Dr Melonie
Ah, okay. Dr. Tamiko will have to help me with that sometime. 

Greg
Yeah, we'll go over to Ken. Ken, how would it be okay when things are not okay? What are your thoughts?

Ken
One thing I like to do is to read a good book with a person or persons who have a problem that's somehow worse than mine. And so strangely, I'm reading a book right now called Zone One, which is about a guy who's living out the zombie apocalypse in Manhattan. And it's not a violent book. Strangely, it's more of a thinker book. And really, he's thinking about the world before. And he's going along. And there's strange scenes where, like, He's a sweeper. So there's like, anyway, he goes along dealing with zombies that really don't move much, but he has to clean them up.

Ken
And, but there'll be these observations. He'll go into an apartment, there'll be a coffee table a certain distance from a TV set. And then later he'll go into another apartment, the same coffee table, the same distance from the TV set. And then he just starts thinking about this whole world that used to exist with, you know, people buying their things and living their lives and doing whatever. And that's all gone now. You know, there's no more TV. Um, and so anyway, so it's, it's, it's, it's very much like you get into this guy's head in his thinking space and this world that's just worse than anything I could even imagine, even worse than the things going on now.

Ken
So that's one way I deal with things. And then the other way, which Alessandra knows about now, is this work I do through the Sacred Stream, this depth hypnosis work, which I would say is really about working to repair and heal and have a healthy energy system. That's the clearest way I could put it. So there's like processes for like intercoming to peace. Let's say you have some conflict going on within yourself. I want to do this thing and I'm kind of beating myself up about it. And then there's this part that's receiving the beating up.

Ken
So you can bring those two parts within yourself into a conversation. that can help you be more peaceful. You do something called a soul part exchange, which sounds kind of goofy and weird, at least it did to me when I heard of it, which is energies in your system. Anyway, so I like doing that. So that's one of the things. And I guess the final one, which Gretchen mentioned, is go out for a long walk in nature. And that's that. Yeah. So. There's a

Alessandra
long time that Ken was doing these walks, and he would send us photographs of things that he saw along the way, and he would post them in our Discord, as Devin Loveling refers to our daily chat for Creative Work Hour in Discord. He calls it GenPop, so I don't know if you've noticed this week, but now the daily chat has now been renamed GenPop. You're welcome, Devin. So we've seen, we've seen butterflies and cats and we've seen mushrooms and, and, you know, if you think of doing that again, Ken, that actually did us, that did us some good.

Alessandra
And thank you for doing that. An example that I wanted to give of collectively as, as creatives, we call ourselves the crew of Creative Work Hour is, with Andy's work this week in response, because he is a sweet Swede. And when the school shooting took place in Sweden this week, he was devastated as many were. And so he was kind of giving us the basic structure of what he knew at the time and what he was learning. And, you know, the stages of grief were pretty heavy. for him, but his creative work, taking in what Gretchen said of changing the state by being willing to enter into creative work, not by force, not by talking yourself into it, but by being okay if it were to happen.

Alessandra
Andy set and he composed this piece of classical, neoclassical music called In Memoriam. And we got to hear it today, was the world premiere. And there's things before they even get published or put on Spotify, he lets us have a little private window into the composer's corner. And we got to listen to that piece. And it was heart-wrenching and uplifting all at the same time. And I tell you, When I went into the pre-production hour for this podcast episode with Greg, it took a minute for me to be able to just to talk because I felt like that moment, many of us have seen that film called Schindler's List, and the music that is the soundtrack for that film will break your heart if you weren't already a mess in your seat from watching the film.

Alessandra
And listening to his music was like that. So I just wanted to thank Andy for showing up to do the work, to be the composer. And as we teased him earlier, that when he's not composing live with us in Creative Work Hour, we picture him wearing the 19th century poet's tunic in the dark with a candlestick and with the melted wax going down, and that he's just composing and he's doing the thing. And we're just, we're really, really proud of all of the, what do they say if one work is an opus?

Alessandra
Opera. More than one. So we're very excited about him and he's nearing 100 pieces of work that are available on Spotify. So you will get to hear one of those pieces. In fact, you already have. At the very beginning and the ending, the intro and the outro of Creative Work Hour Podcast is courtesy, the pen of Maestro Sporin. So I'm handing it back to you, Greg. Oh, I wanted to ask Dr. Tamika really quickly, because this is so quotable. You said, watch it, everybody, because sometimes I take a note and then I'm able to find it, but don't count on it.

Alessandra
You said, Dr. Tamika, schedule the fun times because the what times schedule themselves?

Dr. Timeka
Schedule fun times because upsets Meaning, upsets schedule themselves. Upsets schedule themselves.

Alessandra
That's so good. And we can do it on Dr. Melanie has a special magical prescription pad.

Dr Melonie
Oh, no, I write real prescriptions for this. I mean, I don't know where you go to fill them, but I write a real prescription, fun, three times a day.

Alessandra
Oh my God. If you haven't heard the Creative Work Hour podcast before, what we want you to know is that the way that we record it is we do it in person. on Zoom so that we can see each other's faces. And so we're making fun of each other as we, you never know that. We're making faces at each other. We're throwing hearts around. We're putting puppy dogs as screensavers. Dr. Melanie just showed us her prescription pad for prescribing fun three times a day.

Greg
Nobody knows what the topic is until, or the question until we actually ask it or say what it is. So it's all real time.

Alessandra
it's all real time so

Greg
this is normally where i would say well it's happened again you've wasted some perfectly good

Greg
i'm not going to say that this week what i am going to say is if you are struggling or if you're in crisis please tell someone who you can trust and if someone tells you that they're struggling please take the time to listen to them it means they've placed their trust in you If you're in the United States and you need help and end crisis, you can call 988, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you're not in the United States, there'll be a link in the show notes to a website where you can find help in over 132 different countries for free, 24 hours a day.

Greg
Please help someone if you're struggling, but please come back next week because we'll be here Send us a note and let us know what you do when things are not okay. Thanks for listening. Please be safe.