Long-term listeners of this podcast know that I've spent the last five years talking about the dark.

Now I've built a flashlight, and it's called Moods.

It's an instrument for serious, private inner work designed to dismantle your excuses and never

inflate your ego or assume the role of a sycophantic companion.

And the wait list is finally live.

Access is granted in the exact order you sign up.

Lock in your spot now at moods.world.

Welcome to the new era of inner work.

You're listening to the consciousnessciousness Stream, my Patreon exclusive podcast within a podcast, where I share unfiltered thoughts, deep dives, and intuitive explorations.

What you're about to hear is a preview of a full episode available for my premium members.

I'd like to start this episode with a little bit of a visualization.

So call to your mind an image of a photograph.

I picture that it's a group of women lined up shoulder to shoulder with their faces tilted toward the camera, and everyone is smiling, except one.

In the far corner, there's a woman whose lips are unmoved.

She isn't frowning, per se, but she also isn't really performing that reflexive grin or duckface the way that the others are.

Her eyes drift away from the lens, almost like she's looking at

something just beyond the frame. Her expression is unreadable. In the sea of bright Instagram

influencer smiles, her stillness is kind of uncanny and jarring. In this image, this one unsmiling woman in a crowd of

grinning faces is really the seed of this episode that you're going to be listening to today. She is the spirit

of this conversation. For as long as anyone can remember, this woman, the unhappy woman,

has been treated as a problem. We have so many names for her.

Hysterical, melancholic, bitter, or my favorite, difficult. In movies and fairy tales,

...