How to follow your passion...and keep your day job!
Do you have a dream for your life but have been too overwhelmed to start?
Do you make excuses about how you don’t have enough time, money, or support?
The time for you to start following your passion is now!
If you need a little help in getting started, or want to know how to move towards your dreams and keep you day job, look no further than this interview with Louise Miller.
Louise is a professional pastry chef and talented writer. Her books, The Late Bloomers’ Club and The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living have received rave reviews and are proof of the power of pursuing your dreams, no matter how busy your life is.
Listen in as Louise shares her practical advice for how you can create a life that is full of the things you love doing.
Be sure to visit Louise here, she’s got some great upcoming classes and lots of wit and wisdom for you: louisemiller.net
Top tips from Louise:
1. Start small and simple! Take a small action towards your dream; this creates momentum and is sustainable.
2. Start scheduling time for your passion. Your calendar reflects your dreams so make sure to schedule in time to make your dreams a reality.
3. Find people who support your dreams. Take a class, find a mentor, hire a life coach, or connect with a volunteer group. Having people in your corner will make all the difference to your success and ability to stick with it!
4. Share your dreams with your family and friends; let them in on your passion project and enjoy the support.
5. Be yourself! So many of our creative blocks occur when we waste time waiting for the perfect day, time, or lifestyle to magically create our lives…instead just focus on being yourself. Keep it simple and know that you are enough!
Full Transcript:
Gita: Hello my friends and welcome to the Gita Brown Show, bringing harmony into everyday life. I love being creative and I love wellness. And I've been teaching both for 30 years. To be creative it's helpful if you have a lifestyle that supports your wellness because that's where creativity starts. My philosophy is simple and based in yoga tradition, simple practices, done daily over a long period of time will naturally lead you to a life full of wellness. And from there your creativity can flow. And today we are talking with a very special guest, Louise Miller, about how to pursue your passion and keep your day job at the same time.
Gita: Louise is just an absolutely amazing, generous, creative person. She's the author of the City Baker's Guide to Country Living, which I have right here. Totally fan-girling here because I love this book so much. And she's also the author of The Late Bloomers Club, another fantastic book that I cannot recommend highly enough. I think I've given them out to gifts to almost every single female in my life. She is also, get this guy's, a professional pastry chef and is a self-described art school dropout and amateur flower gardener. I love this one, an old time banjo player and obsessive moviegoer and champion of old dogs. Yay. We love that. She writes and bakes in Boston, Massachusetts. And I'm just thrilled to have her here today because she's going to really help us understand and get some great life lessons on how to pursue your creative passion while maintaining a job. Besides that, so Louise, welcome and welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Louise: Thank you so much for inviting me.
Gita: Yahoo.
Louise: I love to be here.
Gita: I have to also, can I fan girl a little bit more? Because people, The Late Bloomers Club has praise from, let's see, it was a New England Society 2019 book award finalist, has praise from People Magazine, USA Today, Book Page, the Boston Globe, Library Journal, City Baker's Guide to Country Living was an Indie Next and Library Reads pick. Great reviews from the New York Times. Elle, Real Simple, and Bon Appetit. And guys, these books are not only creative and fun, one reviewer compare them to Gilmore Girls, but the descriptions of the food, Louise, that's where your pastry chef is shining. Not only are they warm and full of creativity and full of stories of people finding themselves, but they also have amazing descriptive imagery in them.
Gita: And I fell in love with Louise's books. I was happy to hear her speak at a writer's conference. You were actually talking about how to write a book proposal. And there was such a huge line for you. As soon as you finished your talk, I was like, "Oh, I will never get up to meet this woman. What am I going to do?" And so I'm thrilled to have you here today and to talk and to really share. So could you just talk a little bit about what is it like to be a professional pastry chef and a writer? Like how did you come to that and how do you balance both of those things?
Louise: Great questions. So I've been baking for, oh my gosh, it might be going on 30 years, if that's possible. I guess not quite. I was baking since I was 22 and I'm 48 now. So that's how long ago, and I definitely spent the first 10 years baking, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And I finally accepted that that's what I was doing. And so baking really came out of just that I had dropped out of art school and my father had died suddenly. And the only thing I knew was that I needed to do something where I wasn't dealing with the public directly.
Louise: Which sounds terrible, but I just was really grieving and just couldn't manage being just day-to-day in the public. And so that was how I got my first baking job. I figured I was doing this and it's hands on, and it will be a really different experience. And it's just been a funny, very, very durable career. And writing, I knew I wanted to be a writer the day I quit art school, which was back in like 91. And I didn't start writing. It was like 15 or 18 years later that I actually started.
Gita: Wow.
Louise: I'm really a late bloomer myself. And that's where the title for my second novel came from. But I'm a huge proponent for helping people not wait that long. So I love talking about the sort of things like why we don't do our creative work, and how we can start our creative work and trying to untangle all the things that get in our way. But yeah. So I finally started writing and the thing that really got me, it was funny, it's really weird. Everything I write ends up being in some ways about, I think about grieving. And the reason I started writing was I had this crazy crazy year. And I was the person where like I didn't write, I had a lot of excuses about not writing. I felt like I didn't have enough money to take classes. I felt like I didn't have any time. But I just had like a year that we've all had where I experienced tons of loss.
Louise: My brother got sick and he died. And my beloved beloved dog got sick and he died. And it was just this moment where I felt really like, "You need to either try your dream or let go of your dream." But it was... I just couldn't spend another year buying inspirational writer's guides and writing prompt books. And then letting them collect dust. So I promised myself when I was in the thick of all of that, that when things settled down. I would start, I would give it a try. And I took an adulthood class in Cambridge Mass, and that was where I wrote the first chapter of what ended up being City Baker's Guide.
Gita: Wow. I didn't know there was such a huge lag from that knowledge, that dream that you had inside yourself to when you actually started writing your first chapters.
Louise: Oh it was huge. And I really like-
Gita: And it's so common, right? That creative block. It's like, why do we do that? Why do we block ourselves so much?
Louise: I know. I think a lot about that. And for me it was like not knowing where to start. I had a really hard time like owning that I could be a writer. Like what did that look like? And the more I didn't do it the bigger it became.
Gita: Of course.
Louise: It became this monster in the room. Where I was just terrified to try. I don't know if I was terrified to fail or I was terrified to have people judge me or all of that I think. And I think a lot of people, it's like the identity piece, and it's a vulnerable thing I think to do our creative work. It's putting a part of yourself out into the world we don't always show. And I think that's can be a little scary too.
Gita: I absolutely agree. That's why I love what you said, the first thing that you did was you took a class because like that feeling vulnerable and also that owning the identity, I think that's when we need to reach out to people who are a little bit ahead on the path that we want to follow-
Louise: Definitely.
Gita: ... can be so helpful because they not only can reflect back to us, "Oh, Hey, I see that potential in you." Like, "Yes Louise, you have beautiful books in you keep writing. Just put one sentence in front of the other." But also it gives us sharing space with other people who are also feeling really vulnerable, especially when you're creating something from your own life experiences. You said you're writing from grief. So even though you're creating characters that are fiction and novel, it's still you and your life experience.
Louise: Absolutely.
Gita: So having that shared community sounds like it maybe it was a little bit of a turning point for you in actually getting the words out and down on the page.
Louise: Absolutely. Yeah. I think, support is so important, and it could be one person or it could be a class. I ebb and flow with... I have like different times during my writing process where I like feedback and times where I really don't like feedback.
Gita: Yes.
Louise: And just kind of getting to know what you need in the process.
Gita: I absolutely agree. There's sometimes when I'm writing, when I'm like, "Everyone just leave me alone."
Louise: Oh my God yeah.
Gita: Please don't look over my shoulder. I'm not sending this to anyone. You have to write sometimes like nobody is watching. No one's looking over your shoulder and then knowing when it's time to then get feedback. But I think particularly if you're brand new, finding that really great first reader who's going to tell you everything that they love so you can keep doing more of that because when you're so vulnerable, if someone rips it to shreds, I think that can stop and become a block for a lot of people.
Louise: Oh yeah, absolutely. I took a really damaging workshop when I was about a third of the way into the book and I didn't write for six months. Took a long time to claw out of that.
Gita: Oh, that breaks my heart.
Louise: So yeah, I really advise people all the time. It's a balance, right? But I really advise people to treat your work really respectfully. And so don't just hand it anyone, be very particular about who you share your stuff with. It's so important to get feedback, but I think there's this mythology, I think around all artwork but particularly about writing where you're supposed to have this really thick skin and people are just supposed to rip what you're doing to shreds. And I'm like, I don't know a single writer that has thick skin. I think the reason we're writers is we have really thin skin.
Gita: Yes, yes.
Louise: So that's really counterintuitive.
Gita: I absolutely 100% agree with that. And as a teaching artist, but in music it's the same thing. If a kid comes in and plays the clarinet for me, if I break them down, that's so damaging to their creative persona and who they are. And this is a great little place for me to mention to people that Louise is teaching. Don't you want this woman as your teacher? She's doing a series of writing workshops. You can find all of the information on her writing workshops at LouiseMiller.net, which we will link underneath this episode everywhere it gets posted. And especially over on my website. But I think you're exactly that kind of compassionate teacher who can balance the feedback with the care and the support, but also the rigor of craft, right? Because to really pursue the dream of being a writer at some point you have to be able to look at the work objectively.
Louise: Absolutely, absolutely.
Gita: So like you said, it's a balance. It's a balance.
Louise: It really is a balance.
Gita: How did you... sorry go ahead.
Louise: Oh, I was just going to say like I think part of the process of learning how you work is figuring out when it's just creative time for yourself and then when it is time to add that level of rigor to the craft.
Gita: Right.
Louise: And that can be a lot of trial and error. And I find it really changes from project to project, it's not written in stone.
Gita: Yes. And I love what you said too about owning it. For some reason for most of us when we are pursuing our creative passion, that sense of not owning it, writers do this, "Oh, I'm not really a writer." Even though they're writing and they've been published, they still don't call themselves a writer.
Louise: Isn't that crazy?
Gita: Or I teach adult musicians and they'll say, "Well, I'm not really a musician." I'm like, "What do you mean you played five concerts this year."
Louise: Right.
Gita: "You're a musician." But there's some sense that there's like some strata, like you only belong to that echelon once X, Y and Z happens. But actually-
Louise: Right. And and the goal post always moves. Like it's-
Gita: Yes. Oh true.
Louise: ... Everyone constantly redefining like when they'll feel really like they'll take themselves seriously.
Gita: Yeah. And wouldn't it be nice if you had taken yourself seriously maybe 10, 15 years before as a writer?
Louise: Yeah.
Gita: We might've had like five books on the pile here right now.
Louise: Yeah, absolutely.
Gita: It's some weird thing I've been talking to a lot of creatives lately about this. What is it, like what can we as middle aged ladies do for the millennials right now, so that they can maybe shorten that time span between when they have that dream and when they start implementing it? So they don't do what we did like in our twenties and thirties as waiting for later, not feeling worthy, feeling too vulnerable, not owning it.
Louise: Right.
Gita: I'm really interested in encouraging people like, "Man, you want that creative dream, like start taking small actions. It doesn't have to be that you write a novel right now." But you could certainly take a class with Louise Miller. You could read more. You can set small, actionable things so that that dream doesn't become this deferred thing, which for a lot of people then Louise, they'd never do it, right?
Louise: Right, right.
Gita: Like you said it becomes this big thing that you've never written the novel. And then it's insurmountable. And I think one of the biggest blocks that I really want to ask you about that I hear from people all the time, "I don't have enough time. Or my job is such like an energy suck that I have nothing left." So how in the world do you do all this amazing pastry chef stuff, and then you write novels, and you teach, like how do you do that?
Louise: I think the most important step for me at the beginning was really letting go of perfection at home. Because I had such hangups about, "Well, if I'm going to write, I need a three hour block of time. And no one can be home."
Gita: And it has to be totally quiet.
Louise: "It has to be dead quiet." Yeah. And then like all the laundry has to be done. And the house has to be clean. And it was like I never did anything, because that never happens.
Gita: Oh of course. And it's never going to happen. I have news for you.
Louise: It's never going to happen.
Gita: Never going to happen.
Louise: Yeah. So that was the first thing that I really let go of was this idea of perfect time. And I started like just really allowing myself, if I only had 15 minutes in a day to write, you can write a paragraph in 15 minutes.
Gita: Yes.
Louise: And if you're doing something even like a novel, they stack up. So I'm always trying to tell people like, "If you want to write"... I spent many years thinking about writing a novel, but if you write just a page a day, which is like 250 words, double spaced, at the end of the year you'll have a novel draft, like an average sized novel draft.
Gita: That is such a reality check.
Louise: Yeah. It's really doable. And I'm not someone that like, I don't believe that you have to write every day or I think the more rules we put on ourselves the harder there just becomes... I feel like rules become blocks basically.
Gita: Yes totally.
Louise: But what I do because not only do I have a very full time job, but my job schedule changes every week. Incredibly frustrating.
Gita: Wow.
Louise: So I can never say, "Oh, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday."
Gita: Right.
Louise: I'll go to the library because I could be working Wednesday and Friday night. So what I do is once I get my work schedule, I just sit down and I block out my week and I block out the times I'm going to go to the Y. And I block out the times I'm going to write and I just really honor those times. I think that that's really important. And really sometimes it could be just a half an hour, but I find the more, for me, like I try not to let too much time in between writing sessions because I feel like I have to crawl back a little-
Gita: Yes.
Louise: ... thing if it's not fresh. So I try to keep it really fresh. For me, this wouldn't work with all jobs. But for me, I feel like baking is a perfect job for a writer because in some ways it's the opposite. It's very physical and it's very, I get immediate feedback, I get immediate satisfaction of making something and then having people be happy about it. Whereas like novel is a year. And also just, I'm really lucky that I have a lot of time built into my job to think. So I actually end up doing most of my novel problem solving while I'm like peeling apples.
Gita: Oh I love that.
Louise: So I try to use that time really productively. So at the end of my writing session during the day, I'll make myself just a little quick notes about what I'm going to be writing next to try to... I'm not an out liner, but I like to know what the next scene is. And so I would just bring those notes with me in the morning and read them over and then let them go and focus on my job. But I find that the answers pop up. And so when I actually sit down at the computer, I'm not spending a lot of time spacing out trying to figure out what I'm doing.
Gita: Right.
Louise: Because I've done the thinking. And also baking, it was really great because I get feedback a lot. And baking really taught me how to receive feedback and how to work with it. And so it's been a great companion that way too. So yeah. Sometimes it's tricky, I do not write the month of December because I am chained to my baking station.
Gita: You are the pie queen, right? From Thanksgiving on? And cakes and cookies and-
Louise: Thanksgiving on.
Gita: ... Yeah. But you know that going in, right? So you maybe can let go of that self pressure of like, "Oh my God, I'm not writing."
Louise: Exactly.
Gita: And can let go of that punishment feeling and say, "This is what it is and I will come back to it."
Louise: Yeah. And I look forward to January.
Gita: Yes.
Louise: And try to do as much thinking as I can so I'm really ready to get back to the computer in January.
Gita: Yes. There's so much great stuff there that you said. I heard that you actually block time in your calendar because I think a lot of people when they're pursuing their creative passion, they actually don't schedule it. Especially if they're beginning out, like that's part of owning it, right? Is that they're not actually scheduling it and like we should be able to look at someone's calendar and say, "Oh, I see you want to be a sculptor because you've allotted time for that. I see that you want to be a writer because I see it every other day."
Louise: Exactly.
Gita: And what I also heard you saying Louise, is that you love that notion of like keeping traction. So it doesn't have to be that you're doing these big long blocks of writing or you're going off to live in a cabin and write your great novel. But that you're just doing small daily actions or whenever it works for your schedule, that daily sort of routine, or not even daily, but that routine of just touching the material, working with it, thinking about it keeps that traction going so that you never hit that like lull and creative drop that then you have to like pull yourself back into.
Louise: Right, right, yeah.
Gita: Yeah, it's so fantastic.
Louise: Yeah. I feel like that keeping the ball in the air is so important.
Gita: Yes, it's huge.
Louise: And also I think like really looking for those examples of people, like my friend Kate Racculia, her book just came out today called Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts and it's fantastic. But Kate worked very much full time when she wrote her first two novels and she just wrote on the weekend. And she didn't write during the week. And I think it's so freeing when you know, "Okay, Saturday, Sunday morning, that's what I'm going to do." But then you're not spending Monday through Friday feeling guilty.
Gita: Right.
Louise: You're allowed to have friends. You're allowed to have your family, you're allowed to get things done and go grocery shopping and not... I think we give ourselves so much pressure and so much guilt about not working. So I think that knowing when you're going to is so helpful. And then also like my favorite example of someone making time is the author Jeff Zentner. Because his first book, I'm going to forget, it was about snake handling like young kids. But he wrote his first novel on his iPhone on a city bus.
Gita: I love it.
Louise: On his commute every day, which is crazy when you think about it. But it's a brilliant book. So yeah, I love that example because it's such a great use of time.
Gita: I love it. And it's something you said too when you said you get clarity when you're peeling apples. It's so important when you have this creative passion to understand there's time when you're working on that creative passion, the butt is in the seat, you're writing, you're practicing your instrument, whatever it is, you're sculpting. But then that time away from it, when you're doing something physical with your body, that's when a lot of the cognition can occur and the connections can be made. So there's like even when you're working on it, you're working on it. But even when you're not working, you're kind of working on it too.
Louise: Absolutely.
Gita: And you need both. You actually need both and actually sometimes for a lot of us without that day job or regular structure, we might actually go a little cuckoo if all we did was sit at a desk and try and be creative and write because we need to bump up against life and have the satisfaction that I'm sure you have when you make a beautiful torte. Right? That then ah, there it is. I made the thing.
Louise: Exactly.
Gita: And I got to say, guys, you have to hop over to her Instagram feed if you want to drool at the beautiful luscious things that this woman creates. It's absolutely beautiful and inspiring. Which leads me to something else I just want to touch on with you is this whole notion of social media as artists. Because as I said, I heard you give that amazing talk at the Muse in the Marketplace Writing Conference in Boston. I think that was over a year and a half ago now. And as soon as it was over, like you were just flooded. I think there's like a line of like 75 people waiting to talk to you. And I had been sitting in the front but I had been so trying to take notes and take in all the information you gave that I didn't get in line fast enough.
Gita: I thought, well and what's that going to do? I'm going to say thank you for your lecture. I really enjoyed it. And then I'll never talk to her again. So I started stalking you on Twitter. And luckily we have a lot in common, we both love gardening and obviously we're both writers. And you said, "Hey follow me on Instagram. I do more photos there." And we just sort of started talking online really. And now here we are, you're on the podcast sharing this information with people. And to me that's an example of how as artists we can create community. To me it's not a waste of time to be on social media.
Louise: Oh no, yeah.
Gita: If you're actually looking to help connect with people who are like minded, connect them with other people and share more of the rigors of the daily process but also the joy of it. And I was just wondering like your take on like how do you handle social media in the midst of everything else you're doing? Do you have a strategy or what do you think about at all?
Louise: It's all pretty organic for me. But I love what you just said. It's like the perfect example of why I love social media. It's kind of like everything, you can find the really horrible sides of it or you can find the really great sides. And so usually my time with social media, is usually... I commute, I don't drive, I take a train. So that's my social time, like lunch break at work a little bit in the afternoon. So I try not to let it take up too much time. But I really, really enjoy it. My favorite is Instagram because I have a visual arts background. So I really, that's like the place I go just for pleasure. And I really love Twitter too. I love connecting with other artists. And I absolutely love getting to connect with readers.
Louise: So to me it's just this win win place where I can talk with people I really admire, and I can ask for advice. And then at the same time people can reach out to me and I find that so touching and I appreciate it so much. But yeah, I think, especially if you're just alone for hours, you don't have a lot of friends that are working in your medium or it can be really isolating just being alone in your head doing your work. I like standing out there, but I have boundaries with social media, and I have a few rules for myself. Really, I keep my social media very positive and not in a saccharin way. I really have a rule of like I want whatever I put out there to be genuine. And for me to feel like myself when I'm doing it.
Louise: And which means usually I can be a little bit of a goof ball. But I don't enjoy, I feel like life is stressful enough. And like I just don't enjoy rage Twitter, so that's just not my thing. So I avoid all of that and I avoid kind of making... I guess of like going down that road. But I'm very particular about how I use it. And then I very much, I make heavy use of the mute button and if I'm just finding like someone I love dearly is just ranting about something, writing or ranting about something in publishing and I'm finding it's just making me feel stressed, I will mute that person for a while. It doesn't mean I don't love them, but I try to really preserve my own sanity.
Gita: I love that.
Louise: And I take breaks because there are certain times of the year where I find as a writer in the public marketplace, like December is all the end of the... best books of the year, end of the year left, and then the most anticipated list of the year for the following year. And that can get really exhausting and hard. And yeah. So I let myself take breaks and just not feel like I have to be there.
Gita: I love that. You really, even though you said it at the top, you're like, "Oh, it's very organic." But actually it's not because you have a plan girl, you're like I keep it positive. I engage in things that are moving the needle forward in terms of joy, positivity. And to me all of your posts, at least on Instagram, it's like a little mini piece of art that you're kind of putting out there. And then on Twitter, I think especially for us writers it's super useful because you can literally throw up a flag and ask a question. And #amwriting, and like seven writers will like follow the hashtag and they will give you a concrete answers and help you right there.
Louise: Absolutely.
Gita: I've gotten some things published through like little connections on Twitter. So it's all in how you use it, right?
Louise: Exactly.
Gita: And setting up boundaries too. I'm the same way. There was some stuff I never... People wouldn't even know that I'm married if they followed my feed. They see a ring on my finger, but who is this strange person? Because there's boundaries there. But I think as artists, if you're really looking at cultivating your feed in the spirit of the art that you create, you can't go wrong because people need more of that in their lives I think.
Louise: Yeah absolutely. But I really feel like, I think there's a lot of myths around the feeling that like you have to be on it or to sell your books you need to be promoting like crazy. And I just don't really subscribe to that. I'll mention stuff when it's happening, but I don't aggressively try to get followers. And I just try to show up in a way that I enjoy and if I find I'm not enjoying it, I take a step back.
Gita: Well it works. It works Louise. Because you attract people to you like an open flower. The bees just fly to you. Because it comes through in the books, the way your books read, the way your social media feeds read. It's very much, it is positive, it's creative, it's thoughtful. And it's always about people evolving and being willing to evolve. And that comes through and I think that attracts quote unquote followers and that's what makes your readers feel like they can tweet to you and say, "Hey, I really loved your book." And again, I have to just give my plug here. I think I've given the City Baker's Guide to Country Living, I think to six people now. They might be like, "Okay."
Louise: That's so nice.
Gita: Really absolutely fantastic books.
Louise: Oh, thank you.
Gita: And I just can't thank you enough for coming on today. I think you've really been very clear and demystified how to pursue your creative passion and keep your day job, which is like to start, to start now, schedule it in, find people who can support you and to share your work as you go. And just to really be yourself is the overall message that I get from you.
Louise: Yeah. I think it's the most important thing, it really is. Because what's the point otherwise?
Gita: Yeah, exactly.
Louise: It really makes no sense to not be yourself.
Gita: Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on today, Louise.
Louise: Oh no, thank you for having me.
Gita: I just appreciate it so much. I've gone from a fan girl to now I got to interview you and shout about your books. And please people go check her out at LouiseMiller.net. And go off and like bake something now. Probably, right? Thank you, Louise.
Louise: Oh, thank you so much Gita.
Gita: All right.
Louise: I really appreciate it.
Gita: Take good care.
Louise: You too.
Gita: All right. Bye-bye.
Louise: Bye.
Gita: So there you go guys. Wasn't that an amazing talk from Louise Miller? Just what a fantastic novelist, fantastic human being and so so creative. So you guys have homework now because you cannot possibly listen to all that inspiration and wisdom from the fabulous author and not think, "Hmm, maybe I could take a little step towards my creative passion." So hop on over to GitaBrown.com below this episode, just drop a little comment. Tell me what that little creative passion you're wanting to do. And tell me one thing you're going to do this week to take an action.
Gita: It can be something small people. It doesn't have to be big. It can be calling a friend and talking about it. It could be just sitting down and journaling about your idea for a little while. Just something small. You heard what Louise said, just that small little daily investment of just looking at what you're doing over time adds up to books on the shelf and sharing your passion with the world. So drop on over to GitaBrown.com, leave me a comment, tell me what action you're taking today in pursuit of your dream. And if you're not doing it today, schedule it in and let me know when you schedule it so we can give you a little social support. I'm there for you. Remember you are the kind of person who can share your creative vision with the world.
Gita: Wellness and creativity is yours for the having. And we are here to support you. So I'm going to close with a little chant for peace. Pump you up with some peace and some good energy to go pursue that creative dream. This is a chant that was taught to me by my teachers in the integral yoga tradition. I'll do it in the original Sanskrit first and then in the English translation afterwards so you can get a nice little creative buzz. Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu. May the entire universe be filled with peace and joy, love and light. Now go get creating and let me know how it goes over at GitaBrown.com. I'll see you soon my friends. Om shanti, peace to you.