you will be bad at your hobbies. And when you own that, I'm going to be bad at this. And it's

okay that I'm bad. Then the lightness can come in more easily.

Hi, this is Monica Packer and you're listening to About Progress, where we are about progress

made practical.

I have aired a bunch of vulnerable episodes over the last almost 10 years of podcasting,

but perhaps the rawst of all of them was this past fall. I had just returned from an amazing trip abroad to England, my Pride and Prejudice pilgrimage. So great. And then right after that, I had the more for mom's conference. And after that

ended, I just crashed. I crashed and burned into the biggest funks of all funks. I wasn't in the best

state, let's just say. And I was set to

record something and I just couldn't get my mind together. It just didn't feel relevant or something

like I could even speak to anymore, the plan topic I had. So instead of sitting down to record a

solo episode on something like today, I instead did an episode where I

shared in real time me coaching myself through my funk. And I had the biggest vulnerability

hangover sharing the episode because it just felt so navel-gazily. It also felt so, I guess,

removed from the real issues that people face and from the tumult of the world.

But I had so many people write me and say that that episode made them feel so seen

because they too have a good life and still are experiencing a hard period, a funk maybe.

There's one part of this episode in particular that created a waterfall

in a good way for me of ways I was going to work on this funk. And it came because I asked

myself a question, what do I want? And I think I'm going to start with one of two questions I typically ask.

I'm going to ask one of them and I'll probably ask myself the next one.

And the first I'm going to ask myself is, what do you want, Monica?

The first answer I came up with, like out of nowhere, is already making me laugh because it's, I want life to be easier.

...