Episode 12: Talking About Community with Janet Kitto

Hello, friends.!I’m your host,  Crys Cain, and this is Episode 12. I am recording this intro September 30th, 2020.

It’s really hard to believe we’re three quarters done with the year. Even more so than other years with how much the pandemic has changed  our lives, and yet also put them on pause. It’s one of those times it seemed to last forever and disappear in a blink at the same time.

My personal update for the last two weeks: I’ve definitely committed to writing the solo romance series. Two things are really helping me focus and feel joyful in the process.

The first is my goal to buy a car that I mentioned in the last episode. So this is my “car series” and every word I write, I envision as a Lego piece of my car. That I’m building it with my words.

The second thing that is helping me is focusing on my enjoyment and writing neurodivergent and differently abled characters. One of my main characters in this first book has a sister who has cerebral palsy. I introduce her in the second chapter of the book ,and I just found myself grinning as I wrote it. I’ve really missed that feeling, that joy. It’s wonderful to find it again.

I’m also working on another co-writing project, the third in a series that my co-writer and I have been putting off for nearly two years. Readers have been consistently asking for it, or we probably never would have come back to it because writing the first two books was an example of a co-writing horror story.

There were three of us co writing those first two books, and we had major conflicts with the third person. I was having panic attacks, working on those two books with that person. That’s how bad it was. And I don’t recommend the experience. I like to think that I’ve clear enough boundaries now, that I’d walk away from a project like that in the future. But I’m not certain, because there’s always those feelings of expectation responsibility. But hopefully, hopefully I’ve learned my lesson.

We bought out that third writer, so we own all the rights to this series, and now two years later, we finally have enough space to approach the project with emotional neutrality that is growing into excitement.

Onto the episode! My friend Janet Kitto and I have been talking a lot about communities and our place in them lately.

Honestly, this conversation may not be that interesting to people who find relationship building extremely natural, but for those who often feel like they’re on the outside, who feel like it’s hard to belong to a group. I hope that this conversation is both informative and helpful.

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Crys:  Janet and I met in a mastermind run by J Thorn, called The Author Success Mastermind, and we were talking about community today. This is a conversation Janet and I have been having, I dunno for months now, And I thought it was a really good one to share because a lot of people are aware for their yearning for community, but may not have the word for it,  may think they don’t actually need it. And we’re just going to talk about communities and why they’re useful for us, what we look for, how we work in them. And so Janet, would you describe real quick what The Author Success Mastermind what was, or is, still going on?

Janet:  What it is? It’s a unique community because somehow we all know about J Thorn, whether we’ve listened to him on a podcast or you’ve read his book or, we’ve heard about him in some way. And so what it is, is people coming from different levels of experience. They’re coming from different lifestyles and we all meet together and we learn how to write scenes and, and it can be intimidating.

It can be way out of your comfort zone. That’s what I think about it as The Author Success Mastermind. it’s a place where we all have, at some point, have to be vulnerable  and look at how other people are doing their writing.

Crys: Is that the first writing or creativity community you’ve been a part of?

Janet: No, and it’s interesting because I’d been in a couple of others. It was someone that I knew from one of those other groups that said, “You know, I know how you feel about the work J Thorn is doing, and he’s starting up this mastermind and you should look into that.” And it was a really nice way for the two of us, because our relationship, we had sort of gone the course and we went in different directions, and it was really a lovely way of her recognizing what I needed.

Crys: That’s really cool. We enter and leave communities a lot. That’s just the way of life, and whether it was you both left the community that you two were in together because that community no longer fit you. And then you entered in The Author Success Mastermind community for awhile, then left it because this is a paid community, The Author Success Mastermind,  and it has to fit financially as well as time wise.  A lot of people come for a session or two and then leave, which is exactly as it should be.

So the community you are in no longer fit you ,and your friend recognize that and you entered it in a new community. What was the difference? What did you need from each community? And then why did you no longer need that particular answer?

Janet: T he group I was with before we were, we were all Canadians, but we were at one end on one coast and the other coast, and so it was hard for all of us to meet in person. Also, we were just really heading in different directions, not even location wise, the writing that we were doing, we were heading in a much different direction. When I joined a J Thorn{s group, there was an invite where we actually all met in person.

This was during the second session that I did with The Author Success Mastermind. I got to go to Cleveland–and the exciting part of that was that was the first official trip I took identifying as an author. I had to fill out  the little form when I went through customs: and why are you taking this trip? It’s a business trip.

That was  a huge thing for me.  Not only what was I going to be meeting in person and hanging out and having all kinds of conversations face to face with other authors, it was  the first time that I had told myself, “You can do this. You are doing this.”

I think another difference, too, was that I was being held accountable with other members when I had been in groups.  It’s very easy to say, “This is what I want to do, this is what I’m going to do, or this is what I’ve done.” And there was a whole different approach whe, I entered into a paid mastermind.

There was not only homework that we’re doing, we were put on the hot seat and asking questions and getting answers from the other members. I think it’s, it’s really easy not to do that. You can put together a group and everyone wants to just show up, but I don’t know that you’re going to be put in the same hot seat. I think that I was pushed so much farther because there were more of us, we were all in different places. And for me, that’s really important that I be able to see different perspectives.  I don’t want to be with someone who is doing the same thing as me.

Crys:  That makes a lot of sense.  Right now, what communities are you a part of that are supporting your creative journey? Because we all have communities that we’re a part of, just in life, which is where we live. If you go to church, any kind of organizations, you’re usually involved in family, whether you like them or not–you’ll have these communities. But what communities are you in that are specifically supporting your creative journey right now?

Janet:  I think that’s an important distinction, because you can be part of a group and you can be part of a community.  It is about who is supporting you, who has the mutual concern for you and you have for the others.  I’ve sort of gone out of my way this year with any opportunity that came my way, by being in a writing room and inviting other authors to come and join me.

So, doing sprints together. I’m a Patreon supporter of Mark McGuinness for his 21st Century Creative podcast. And within that group, there’s a number of us who are showing up and being accountable for goals. I’m a member of  Brian Clark and Jared Morris’s  Unemployable Initiative- -that is a network where I’ve been able to, it’s on the Mighty Network, and within that we’ve been able to create our own little network of novelists.

So again, I show up by posting. Every week, we have a topic that we follow for the month,  it’s really important that we get to know each other and for me, I’ve put myself in that community because it’s so easy  to join these groups and be like–either you’re doing like a, a broadcasting where you’re just talking about yourself or you’re just listening.

 I’ve been trying to put myself in all of these communities where I’m responsible for something. And even with the membership site for J Thorn,  I’m making sure that I’m participating at the broad level . There’s a group of us that meet on Saturdays and we give ourselves homework and we talk about story.  To me, it’s any of those communities where I can be an author. That’s where I’ve tried to push myself in the last couple of months.

Crys: I have never thought about the difference between group and communities in the way that you just expressed. But I love that. Because I think that a lot of times when we go to a group, we are thinking that we will find or join a readymade community and that is not the case. You can absolutely build a community out of the members of a group, but it doesn’t just appear before the people are there, if that makes sense.

Janet: Yeah. If you don’t invest yourself emotionally,  if you don’t show up, if you’re not afraid  to show what you know and what you don’t know, that’s not a community.

Crys:  I think that’s what so much of us experience  when we find a writer’s group. We’d go and watch because we’re scared , and that’s fine for a time or two as you get to know what the flow of the group is, what the energy is–whether they’re negative, critical, or supportive and insightful,- -but it doesn’t turn into a community until, as you said, you show up. You’re vulnerable to risk.

Janet:  I guess the one thing we haven’t talked about is, a community has to have a leader. A leader has to be invested in the same level that everyone else’s. Again, because then it’s just more like a broadcast. To me, a leader is someone who  is on the same path. You’re both going in the same direction.

Crys: That’s interesting. Because our communities in real life don’t always have –I’m thinking about  where you live, your family–they don’t always have a leader. Is it something that is more necessary for online communities than in person communities? I’m just really curious. I haven’t thought about the necessity of leaders in the community before.

Janet: I wonder if we have to look at the meaning. Everyone has to look at what a leader means to them, because in a community, are we not there so that we can be who we really want to be? And is that the role of the leader? Because the leader recognizes that. You’re there for a purpose.

Crys: So this leadership isn’t necessarily a triangle leadership style of structure that you’re thinking–it’s not how you see it –where there’s a boss at the top of the company kind of leader?

Janet:  If I think about who I would want as a leader, I’m thinking about someone who is just as curious as I am. Someone who wants to see things unfold in the same way as I do. We’ve had this conversation just recently where we were talking about whether we should jump in and give advice, or at what point we should.  Should we be asking more questions? 

I guess that’s what I’m thinking of when I say I want someone who is as curious as I am. If that person has a chance to share some of their experience with me… you know , I’m really struggling with this one.

Crys: No, this is great. I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, what you seem to be describing as a leader is not necessarily a leader of the group. Not someone who is taking organizational charge of a group. What you are talking about is more like a trailblazer, someone who is willing to take risks and teach and lead people through the wilderness, but not boss them kind of thing.

Janet: Yeah, I agree with that.  I’m very much about the space being there for whoever comes into the community. That space has to be there so that that person can do the work that they need to do. And if we don’t give them that space, this isn’t the kind of leader that I want to have at the forefront. If there’s not space for me, if there’s not space for everyone else , even that leader, if there’s not space for them to go that route that they’re going to go…

That’s another thing that happens with communities. They shift, they change. We go from place to place. But the ones that stay with us, the ones that we want to stay apart of, I think that happens when we feel like we are in a relationship and we don’t just feel like we’re watching.

 I think a lot about relationships because my expectations of relationships that I had earlier in my life have changed how I think about relationships that I want to have now in my life. I always thought of family as being someone that you are related to by blood, and the more I’ve become invested in the author community, the more I’ve seen that that’s a whole other level of family.

Those are the people that have helped me become the person that I was always going to be. We all come to the page in the same way and creative goals are going to vary from person to person and what they have the space for in their life.

It’s interesting, once you start pushing past the barriers that you had up for yourself, when you get to that place where you do find a community that allows you to grow…  I didn’t realize how much of myself I had put away. Once I let go of a lot of  the things that they had just kept around me, it was comfortable once I let go of those things. I started experiencing a larger creative life. That’s where it was very clear to me how important it was to be in an author community, to be in the right author community.

Crys: Can you describe one of those things that you’ve had to let go of?

Janet:  What I had to let go of, what I had to unpack, was that I wasn’t this person that I thought I was. That I had kept quiet because I had to. How could I find a voice if I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say? What I had to let go of was that I had to just let go and think what I have to say, it doesn’t matter too who I was. That I could let go of being this person that was trying to protect everyone else. I was really only trying to protect myself.

It’s a very safe place to think that you’re small. That’s another thing I had to let go of. I still do it to this day, that I don’t think that I’m belong where I am and yet, I know what I get up and I do each day. I know that I’m doing the work. It’s been the biggest thing to let go of and it helps being in the community of authors every day. It just gets easier and easier. 

Crys: In the Unemployable Initiative with the novelist group, I know that you have been very conscientious in your approach, and that’s about how to create the possibility for a community to develop. That’s been one of the central applications and things you’ve been talking about. Now, you and another author started this group, right?

Janet: That’s correct.

Crys: What have been your goals and thoughts on how to create the kind of community you’re looking for? What did you want to get out of breeding this group?

Janet: It was an interesting thing deciding to become a novelist cohost. I just wanted to be part of a private accountability group, and then I found out, no, that’s not what it was going to be. Okay, this is my big fear. I’m facing it. I went with it. Within the larger community, a lot of us wanted to get into smaller groups. I had to say, yes, I’m willing to help you out with this, the other cohost. I’m willing to throw ideas out there. And it’s really interesting when you do that kind of collaboration. Cause it was so new, both of us we’re in one way, wanting to run in different directions and in another way, wanting to just leave it and let other people  have the conversations.

So it’s, it has been every week it’s been having to remind our, both of, you know, I had to remind myself she had to remind herself. This is a strange year. There’s a lot of people that just aren’t doing a lot of talking. So it’s not us. If you’re going to be in that position in a community, you can never take it personally. If people aren’t talking, then  you ask a question. You think about it as just a, we’re not having a conversation, the eight hundred people that are listening, we’re having a conversation, just you and me. And that’s been really helpful for me. I’ve met a lot of people by just forgetting about who else is in the room.

Crys: I want to take that thought and connect it with your comments about relationships. The difference between a community and new group, is in the group, you are building up relationships one-on-one with other people and that coalesces into a community through some kind of alchemy, that–and the reason we’re talking about this–these things are not necessarily natural to either of us.

We’re not outgoing, relationship-building racers, like some people I know who just, they breathe relationships. They look at someone and they make a relationship. It’s not how I work at all. And I don’t think that’s how you work, because we’re looking and we see the threads of where relationships could be.  We see the threads of where relationships are. Just like we do in our writing. And we think clearly, how do I build these threads stronger?

I do like the idea of a community being like a web, because it’s all these individual points connecting to other individual points.

 There are people, bless them, I’m so glad they are in our lives, who just live on in those connections. They don’t have to think about it.  Their thinking on relationships happen so fast that they don’t even realize they’ve had thoughts. And that is just not where I am with the relationship building it all.

I like having this kind of conversation, because this is such a learning process.  I like knowing, how do we build our individual connections stronger? How do we build our community connections stronger? Because it doesn’t happen naturally for me. I have to consciously put this effort in and know where it’s going.

 And the better sense I have of what a community is, the more tools that I can consciously employ in being a good community member, enriching my communities, accepting from my community. It’s actually the hardest part for me. I can give, give, give,  and get to know people. But accepting help,  accepting offers of, I dunno, gifts, anything, whether it’s just a kind word– that can be incredibly difficult for me. But those are necessary parts of the community building web. You have to be able to accept as a well as give.

Janet: That’s so true. I think  what I’ve learned over the past couple of months, my expectation was that I had to know so much  to be a cohost or to be a member of a community. And  that’s the wrong place to enter into this kind of relationship. It’s knowing that everyone supports you for where you’re standing.

And as long as you’re just having the conversation… I’m thinking about my role as a cohost for the novelist, and I realized,  so appeals to me, I can just ask questions. I don’t have to have the answers. It doesn’t have to be a new question every week. It’s continual, you know. We’re taking layer by layer. I want to get to know you. I’m going to ask this question. Then next week, we’re going to talk about something else and we’re going to go a couple of weeks and then I’m going to come back and I’m going to ask you a question cause I want to get to know you.

It’s a wonderful circle. How things go around and different people are then jumping into the conversation. It’s so easy. Like when, whenever you think that it’s going to be hard, that’s where you’re gonna have a struggle with community because that’s, we should be able to just sit around and, Charles Bogle talks about campfire events, you know, just sitting around–

Crys: Before you said that, that’s the exact image I had in my head. Like during summer, when you have a campfire every day of the week. The topics you talk about aren’t necessarily going to change every day. It’s not like you’re going to talk about opera one day and no, no gardening the next, though you might, and chances are, you’re going to mash those conversations together and you’re going to build on them.

Janet:  Any time in my mind that I can bring it down to that level of, there’s just a few of us here and we’re going to talk, there’s just so much more that comes out of that conversation. I’ve been witness to that. That’s been the greatest gift I’ve received this year.

There’s so many places where we as authors can have conversations. It can be about craft. It can be about mindset. It can be about just the times that we are living through.  It’s very interesting how as authors, a lot of things during self isolation hasn’t changed for us. But it’s those relationships that are outside of being an author with our family and friends, how that has had some kind of impact on how we’re creative.

 That’s kind of a nice thing to be able to have a community where you just come in and it’s okay if you talk about those outside things, but for the main part, you’re just going to talk about, how do you make sure that your theme is present in every scene? How do you get up in the morning and have something to do when you sit at the desk?

Crys: For people who are new to writing and wants to find new unity, what would you tell them? What advice would you give them?

Janet: I think you have to stay away from social media because I don’t know that you’re going to find authentic relationships that way as an author.

Crys:  Why is that?

Janet: Well, it’s definitely an entry point, but, it’s very easy for people to ask for things and not even understand what they need. And so that’s why I think social media is it’s too broad. It’s too muddy.

Crys: It sounds impossible to start finding community there, but it’s harder to get possibly group aspect into the community aspect.

Janet: Yeah. I’m just wondering if that’s how I feel or if I’ve just heard other authors say that so much, that’s my canned answer. The thing about online relationships for authors, it’s much easier for us as introverts to just try and find something online. Do I want to go down to my library and ask at the front desk, is there any writing groups that meet? No. No, because for one thing, and this may be because I live in a small town,  I’m going to meet a lot of people who are hobbyists. Am I going to find the relationships that I need to find?

Crys: I will say that the percentage of crazies goes up significantly with in real life groups, or at least it did for Nashville. I do have a hesitancy of sourcing groups in real life. Then that’s that whole introvert thing. That’s me personally. I love meeting my groups in real life, but after I’ve vetted them on

Janet: very true, very true.

Crys:  When you have sought new communities, how have they come to you? Has someone introduced you, have you gone and found them?

Janet: All the ones that have took me anywhere– it’s this is an interesting question because when I started out writing, I wasn’t ready to invest in myself. And the only way I made progress was when I invested in myself, when I invested in a course, when I paid for a mastermind  it was through the people that were also in those courses and in those groups, that’s where I made.

That’s where that’s how I got to where I am today.  It’s really interesting when you ask that question because I could have got stuck for a long time thinking, well, I’m not making any money writing, so I can’t invest anything in myself. I can’t invest in my writing. So I’ll try and meet someone online through social media.

I’ll try and meet with local groups and do write-ins and I never did.

Crys: It sounds like you not only invested  money, on of courses and in paid mastermind, but, when you finally made the choice to invest your time, not only in being in those groups, but,  invest the time in finding the other groups as well.

So what I think I hear you saying is you sacrifice to the gods of writing. You did make a sacrifice and then you wanted to make the sacrifice worse then. There was something hate, whether that’s money or something else, there was something paid that gave you an external reason to show up and make it worth it.

How does someone go about finding a community that supports them?

Janet: Well, they have to first make sure that they’re going to come into the community and have something to share. I think that’s really important.

Crys: You know, brand new beginners who are thinking , I don’t have anything to share. I don’t know anything. How do they get to the point where they do have something to share or recognize what they already have that they can share?

Janet: It’s a combination of education and connection and you have to come into it knowing you don’t have to know what you’re capable of. You have to be there for those people. It’s also about what they’re there for and how are you going to know that when you’re going in?

Crys: I want to come back to that idea of groups versus communities. I think you can enter a group at any point, unless they have strict stipulations of accolades or education that you need. But that’s not the kind of group that we’re generally talking about here. There are plenty of author groups on Facebook and they’re super easy to enter. That will get you a lot of knowledge, by joining those groups and listening, but you’re not going to become a part of the community or make a community until you start giving back.  And that is often a smaller subset of groups.

I’m thinking mostly of the 20BooksTo50k group. I can’t think of any author Facebook group that rivals or even hopes to rival its size. I know there’s at least over 20,000 members.

But a community cannot be, in the way that we are talking about it, can not be that large, because you can not individually connect with them. But you might find a community of people within that group who all match the same way.

And oftentimes when that happens, that community steps outside the bigger group for a smaller, more intimate experience. Not that they leave the group necessarily, but that they add that little community to their community bubble. They’re like bubbles. 

Maybe step one is to just look for groups that are about whatever you’re wishing to connect with, that seem to have the same kind of ideals as you do, and that are pretty active, where there is giving you teaching already going on in the group. And then educate yourself as much as you can from the information you’re getting there, and start giving in return to the group.

 It can be as simple as–one of the things that they do in the 20BooksTo50k group–is posting whenever you finish a book so that people can celebrate review. That is sharing something. Another of theirs is income markers. When they’ve hit a new milestone.

And those are all giving something to the community. They’re giving the story that this is possible. They’re giving the story that if you keep working hard and you will keep moving forward. Even the failures are, “Here are the lessons I’ve learned.”

You have to have something to give. We don’t mean you have to be the best at anything. We don’t mean that you have to have a giant pot of knowledge that you can sprinkle down on the peons who know nothing. That’s not it at all. There are so many ways that you can share and contribute to a community,  without spending any money–

Janet: Without being faced by those limitations, because a lot of times people will think, well, you write in a different genre. So that’s a limitation. You’ve been writing longer than me. You write full time and I don’t. All those limitations.  That’s not the kind of barrier you want to have if you want to be part of a community.

We were talking about these larger groups. It’s okay to experience them to learn something from them, but  when it gets to a point where, okay, it’s just all noise… I don’t think you should just step back and not try and look for something else. Just recognize that that’s a point where you’ve now discovered the things that are important to you, and you’re just trying to find someone from that larger community who you can step away with. Or even if you can have a good friend that says, you know, there’s this group of people over here. They could be your community.  Maybe that’s another thing to recognize too, is for some of us, it’s going to be a group, and for some of us is going to be a community.

Crys:  I think that any time that you are building up one on one relationships, you are building the potential for community. I had, an acquaintance, another author and teacher who I’ve been following for a while. And we’ve only recently started chatting, on Instagram.

A couple of weeks ago, she’s like, I never do this, but  I think you’ll get along really well. She put us in a little Instagram group chat and yeah. We’ve had this slow conversation going on ever since.  She was very insightful. We do all have some really good connections, even though we’re not all writing the same thing. Not even publishing the same way. None of us live anywhere close to each other in three different countries. and yet we have that seed of a community in that we are all in the same realm, wanting similar goals.

Janet: That’s a great way to sum it up.

Crys: I’ve seen this happen a few times. What happens when a community falls apart? whether it’s from drama or if it was just a time based community, like with The Author Success Mastermind. That’s not a falling part, but what happens when the community dissolves? How do you handle really dissolving whether it is drama and you’re just like, nope, this has changed from what it is. I’m gone. I’m out of this or. It’s “Hey, like this was the time we had together.” And, you know, I still have all these individual relationships, but they’re not nearly as strong when we don’t have the framework of the community that we had joined, because that has ended.

How do you handle the dissolution of one of your communities?

Janet: Yeah, not well. Because it’s very easy to feel like an island unto yourself. If you’re not ready to move forward on your own, but something has ended, what do you do? And then there’s the relief of all that’s ended. Now I can stop and I don’t have to stand as tall.

 I say it never ends well for me because The constant void that I’m trying to fill is,  I need this to keep going. And as you say, there’s a natural end to all groups and communities.

Because if I have to answer that for myself, I know that it means there’s another investment I have to make.  I don’t think it means you have to go searching for something new. I think it just means that you have to figure out how you fit into the next opportunity. 

Crys: Another thing to think of is that most of us are in multiple communities simultaneously. And so sometimes we shift our energy. So when community ends, for whatever reason, good or bad, that does indicate a shift in our energy. We do shift our energy from one community to the other, whether it is because the other one is serving us more or we can serve it more. I don’t think you have to do both equally all the time.. Sometimes you’re going to be in seasons of helping and sometimes you’re going to be in seasons of receiving. Lesson I’m learning all my life.

 The ending of a community. What came to mind after I asked that question was that lost feeling that I, and I think a lot of people have, when you leave university. Because you’ve been in this very intensely driven community for at least four years, for most people, I don’t know, Britain might be three. Anyways, a bunch of years.

 Then you all go off to do completely different things. And some of those people will stay in your community for a long time or, well, forever and most of them will go away. And that is one of the, the clearest points of switching communities that I think most of us go through.

Janet: Maybe it’s how you use the freedom. Like once a community comes to it’s natural end, do you fly with that freedom that you now have? Or is that freedom so scary that you try and find another fit, because you still have some growth to do ? Yeah. Within author community, just because you’ve learned your craft and now it’s time to write, does that mean you’re really comfortable with all that freedom? No.

Crys: That’s a lesson I have been learning on many levels, and it’s really interesting to see it applied to the community. Though when you think about it, your relationship with the community entity is another relationship. It isn’t just all these individual relationships. The same lessons we have learned about interacting with your former partner or your sister or your current partner or your best friend, a lot of those lessons can also be applied to how you relate to community.

Well, this has been wonderful. Normally we have these kinds of conversations over a period of days and link the WhatsApp voice messages.

Janet: This has really hurt my brain to do it in an hour.

Crys: Yeah. Cause normally we have, what? A half hour to ten hours to think about our response. For those of you who are CliftonStrengths, people, that is Intellection at its most intense. But it’s a good exercise for us.

Janet: Yeah. Yeah, we will both walk away and wonder what the heck we said, but we probably said something of value at some point.

Crys: There have been times where I’ve been, you know, having deep talks with friends and wishing I just had a recorder on us because I said something that I felt like was just groundbreaking, and next day, I can’t remember it at all. So clearly it wasn’t that important, but it sure felt like it at the time. And I would love to rewind and know what I said.

Janet: It’s more… it’s probably how you emotionally connected to the thought, because it’s more disappointing when you do write it down and you look at the next day and you go, “Oh, that’s nothing brilliant at all.”

Crys: I feel like wine made that one seem more brilliant.

Well, thank you, Janet, for braving, the recording process and having this conversation with me.

Janet: Thank you for, yeah, having this space for me to just talk and explore all of this. Thank you.