Find the power, purpose, and fulfillment to shape your life and those around you that matter most.

If you're still clinging to the idea that you are not creative, here's another fantastic interview to help you change the way you see yourself, and the reasons why that might be so important for you. Within your creative ability (it's in there, promise!) is the power, purpose, and fulfillment to shape your life and the lives of those around you that matter most. Writer Meg Conley shares her story and inspires you to reclaim your agency and create a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Meg tackles gender roles, home culture, and how to take creative action in this episode. She shares a few steps that she personally takes to begin creative endeavors, and it includes a lot of blank notebooks. You don't have to overhaul your whole world, you don't have to identify as traditionally creative, you just have to want more for yourself and take the first step forward in harnessing your creative power.

About a few other things...

Reclaim your creative power and rediscover who you actually are! If you’re ready to come back home to yourself, to be able to say that you know who you are and what matters to you, take my foundation course, “Finding Me.” It’s OK that you’ve lost parts of yourself along the way; but as you learn to anchor back into who you are and align your life to what matters to you, you’ll find that you have more strength, more fulfilment, and more creativity to bring to your important roles and responsibilities.

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TRANSCRIPT

Monica: [00:00:00] Welcome to About Progress, Meg I'm so happy to have you. 

Meg: [00:00:04] Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. 

Monica: [00:00:06] You have really shaped an amazing community online of women who are working on healing themselves and undoing false narratives. The big part of what I see in you is how you tap into your own creativity in ways that I think can be very powerful, but also something that we can all do. Every single one of us. 

So let's start with just first having a quick conversation about creativity in general and how we can discount ourselves from saying we are creative or that we can tap into our creative power, because we think  it only fits this mold. What are your thoughts on creativity and how we relate to it?

Meg: [00:00:45] Yeah. So I've kind of gone on a journey when it comes to creativity.  I'm 36. Women my age, slightly older, slightly younger that I've learned to define creativity kind of through this filtered social media, Instagram lens, you know, like we call 'em.

When I first started going to blogger conferences and stuff, you know, a women who had a beautiful Instagram feeds that were, you know, like they're artists, right? Like it's gorgeous. They can arrange a room beautifully or like a cupboard, their children beautifully.

They would introduce themselves. They'd say I'm a creative. And I thought that that was. Really neat and  praise worthy, but it also felt a little  exclusive to me. And I kind of bought into that  paradigm for awhile that there were some people who were creatives, they could call themselves creative, and then there were other people who could not, and  Especially because my particular skillset  especially in the early days of social media  was not  you know what I do, isn't captured in photos, I'm a writer.

 I didn't feel particularly creative and I didn't feel like the type of creativity I did have  could be recognized by other people.  So that was difficult because it felt it was kind of a disempowering place to be, if that makes sense. And then, you know, paradigm shifts are great. And  I think a lot of us are very lucky to experience several of them.

Like around 30 veteran work. That's like a very shifting time. And  I realized that those women who are arranging their cupboards beautifully in those rooms beautifully  And their children beautifully were creative.  They, they could call themselves a creative, that's a great designation, but it wasn't  it didn't exclusively belong to them.

And not only are there all kinds of creativity,  creativity is not limited to what can be presented.  I think that I thought creativity meant a project that you were capable of starting and finishing projects that could be presented. Like that was what a creative person did. I think great people do that, but obviously creativity is not limited to that.  I think creation  does not have much of a beginning and it certainly does not have an end. And if you're living, if you are alive and breathing and listening to this right now, you are creating . You have thoughts in your head, but no one else has  I mean, even the CO2 you're emitting is never been emitted by anyone or anything else.

I think  so I want to be clear that none of this is denigrating. The people should do create and present projects. But I think in ways that like  are beneficial to me because I'm not capable of that. So I need someone else to be capable of it. And  and show me the way. But  I think that as soon as we realize that life is an act of creation and that  it's an ongoing   diagram of projects that we're all involved in.

 It's very empowering, but it also  allows us the freedom then to begin experimenting and expressing ourselves in ways that maybe we hadn't before. I mean, as soon as I woke up and, and it's not like I can think this every day because I'm a human and  I am wildly optimistic, but not all the time, but the days when I can wake up and wonder what I'm going to create that day and the question isn't am I going to write an essay?

 Because that's how, that's one of the ways I create the question is more like, what kind of life am I going to create that day?  Those days are maybe my most productive, although I think productivity is overrated, but there's certainly my most  fulfilling. And  I think, I think if more of us saw ourselves as creative forces  we would be braver and bolder, but I also think that we would be more fulfilled, which I'm much more interested in than boldness.

Monica: [00:05:27] Yeah. I really think there is that direct correlation between fulfillment and empowerment. And I've experienced that in my own life. When I feel like I am not living my life, that is my own, it's directly tied to how fulfilled I am. Yeah. And when we are fulfilled, we are powerful. And that, like you said, we are all creative forces.

So if we are living a fulfilling life, we are living a powerful life. And I think if we were to do that, shell of just, what we've been discussing is creativity is power; it's power, and it's your individual power. It's the way that you live and design your life and, and live that out. 

Meg: [00:06:09] Yes. And I think it's your right.  I think that we're  at this point right now where we  there's a lot in the world that is not as it should be. And  I know it sounds so cliche, but the first thing that we need to do before building a new world is imagining it. And  that's something that we're each capable of doing every day. And I mean, I have like a lot of imaginings about what I hope the world will look like someday.

And I do try and find ways to  take some of those creative hopes I have and turn them into impactful action. And I think that that's when creativity really, really manifests as power  is when we begin creating a home, creating a world, creating a life within those two things  that fulfills us, but also centers  the freedom and fulfillment of others.

Our creative force is going to create a world for others.  Creative actionable impact that  empowers others in centers, others in their own lives, maybe not in our lives is  It's a really good creative work that I think I'm seeing more and more women find a way to engage him  which is, which is exciting.

Monica: [00:07:26] It is exciting and we only need more of it. And I'm glad that you spoke to this because I think a lot of how we discount ourselves in ways that we already discussed, like just from the label alone, but we also discount ourselves from the action of leading a life, like creating a life, a meaningful life for ourselves, a fulfilling life, because we think that's selfish.

And know what you just described as there is a chain reaction here, right? Our fulfillment will not only empower us, but it will empower others. Any other benefits that you can speak to of harnessing this creative power? This force we have inside of ourselves?

Meg: [00:08:04] I think, I think for me  I'm really obsessed right now with the home, you know, that's what I write about and. And so I write a lot about home culture and I think if I'm interrogating, as I've been interrogating  American home culture, especially  the American home culture, I know which is  you know, I'm half Irish, half German, which means I'm very white.

I think, I think something that I've seen is the people I can find in my heritage have  centered their creative forces within their four walls  whether it's  creating an advocating for themselves or for their kids  or for loved ones. And they've been less interested in  figuring out creatively how to connect one home to another, how to connect one community to another. And I think what I'm very interested in right now is understanding  what creative solutions and what creative  impactful actions we can figure out as women to  link our homes together again, or really for the first time, honestly, in America.  And. And figure out creative solutions for  advocating for one another  proceeding, social justice and racial justice.

 I think sometimes we don't give  creativity enough.  I don't think we send her creativity enough in seeking solutions for some of the things we need solutions for right now.  And I think if we opened. If we opened up a little bit, if we had that paradigm shift where we understood that our own creativity can help  can help drive  some of those impactful actions.

I don't know that that's an empowering thing to think about at your breakfast table. Right?  Like I, I can think about that while I eat my bacon and eggs in the morning and  And figure out a way to have creative action that day. 

Monica: [00:10:07] Hmm. Oh my goodness. There are just so many phrases here that you're saying that I have to keep writing down.

Creative action is, is I think the essence of, of what we can do, it's just the, the, it goes down to the small ways that we are living it out. Like you said, within the walls of our. Of our own home, but especially how that can connect to other people's homes in ways that we can all be lifted up.  I just want to kind of zoom out a little bit on your own life.

 You know, Stay at Home Meg you do a lot, like everybody needs to sign up for your newsletter, so we'll make sure we put that on there and following Instagram that way. I love your investment in the home. Yes. But as a woman who is a writer and who has this inner power, did it feel like you were captive to the home in some ways? And how did you, 

Meg: [00:10:55] Yes. Yes. 

Monica: [00:10:57] So how did you make that shift? How did you make that shift and empowering yourself and still it's not like a lot.

Okay. The connection here before we dive into how you made that shift is. I think a lot of women are afraid of changing because they think their whole lives need to change drastically around them., That if they were to change, if they were to harness their own personal power and create a life of meaning and extend that to others, that means that they would have to disregard the responsibilities that they would have to cut off a family that they might have.

Or a job they might have. That doesn't always have to be that way. So let's talk about how we can mold this from the inside, out in ways that do change the way we are experiencing our world, but maybe not mean we have to totally overhaul our entire world. And this is totally not on our list of questions. Let's go there. 

Meg: [00:11:50] Okay.  I think we should start with, I'm going to talk just briefly about my own journey. So  I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  And I still attend, I'm still a member  for your listeners that like aren't aware what that means to be raised a women in that church.

Fairly traditional with a lot of emphasis on a woman being in the home, like you're supposed to grow up and get married and the woman is supposed to be the homemaker.  And the man is supposed to be the breadwinner. And, and it's a man and a woman mean in this case, right? Like it's, it's very heteronormative.

And  and then the woman has the babies, so she makes the babies in the home and the husband  provides the babies and the women, and then also works. So  my husband and I have known each other since we were 12 and we were best friends.  We didn't date until our twenties. And then, and then when we did, we got married very quickly and he'd been raised in the same tradition.

And so we, we tried that for the first couple years of our marriage. We were very traditional  and. It didn't work. And so when we discovered it didn't work  I think both of us had a bit of a crisis because  what does that mean? And I think  my crisis lasted longer because I really pushed against the home.

At that point. I was angry that I hadn't graduated college because I thought I didn't mean to, cause I was going to have these babies and make casseroles and I did have the babies, but like I forking hate making casseroles.

Monica: [00:13:34] Love that good place reference by the way.

Meg: [00:13:38] I'm not a typical homemaker. So  I emerged from that period, understanding, I believe correctly that   home doesn't need to be centered around a woman and a woman doesn't need to be centered in the home.  But I also left that time period.  It's so odd as soon as I abandoned  the idea that I belonged in the home, I became obsessed with home; because  home does matter.

 But it needs, but it matters  across gender boundaries and  across  whether you're married or not like whatever your home is and whatever your home unit is,  home matters.  And so that. So to answer your question, that was scary in some ways, because I had shifted and my husband had shifted and frankly  our lives had to change.

I would love to tell your listeners that like, when you realize something big and new, that your life doesn't have to fall apart because of that.  But  It's creative destruction and it's okay. And I think that we need to be better about embracing it.  So the way that my life changed and the way that Riley's life changed  (Riley is) my husband is we, we completely took apart the way that our house ran and  centered the family instead of me in the middle of it.

 Yeah. Riley does more around the house at this point in our lives than I do.  There were some big changes.  We moved to a new state so that we could afford childcare so that I could work.  And I, I write  about 30 hours a week now.  And so all those were big changes and there was some loss.  I moved my kids to a new state so that I could work more.

They left friends behind.  Riley's career is on a different trajectory now as he supports what I do. So I think, I think I just want to be really honest and say that  when we realize something, especially as women  Because so many of us are  in boxes that men don't always find themselves in.

 Often there is going to be some creative destruction to facilitate new creative action and new creative building. And that's okay. I think that if you are clear with yourself and you are in generous with yourself and you were clear in generous  with the people in your life, whether it's a partner or a boss or children, or all three  then it's, it's okay if  You push things over and let them fall apart so that  something new can  take its place, 

Monica: [00:16:47] Something new and better. It doesn't mean that the process isn't difficult, that there doesn't need to be changes that are uncomfortable, that make other people have to stretch. We've talked about this a few times with some people.

And what comes to mind right now is Dr. Julie Hanks. We talked about how, you know, women don't need to be the sacrificial lambs of their families. And like when we're put in that position, when I taught, when, when you were talking about you know, feeling like the home had to be centered around you to meet the more that dichotomy of like women having to be the sacrificial lamb.

And so when you're shifting out of that perspective and to a new way of both perceiving and valuing and even you know, living out your role and how you want to live.  There's going to be some shifts, but that stretching will help other people harness their own creativeness, their own ability to choose and to, to adapt and to grow in ways that they need to, like, it will make us stronger families.

It will make stronger children. It will make us stronger home when there's real people living there. Right. 

Meg: [00:17:52] You know, you want, and you know, the. Again, in my case, because I'm focusing so much on the home, in my work.  The thing that I realized was like, the thing that needed to be centered was the home, not me within it. And once you're centering the home  first of all, it's everybody's job. Everybody's four walls. It's not just you, it's not just the woman.  But centering the home also means centering the community, right? Like the home is part of this like broader web. And  I think that as women understand their own creativity  however they're expressing that creative power as they figure out how to center the thing that compels them  even instead of themselves within that thing,  they'll see where it connects to a larger story.  One that needs them one that needs their work and   one  and that's going to teach them a whole heck of a lot. I mean, there's a lot of humility in real creativity.

 I've spent a lot of time learning from women.  In spaces where I've  been uncomfortable because I haven't known enough  because I thought I knew things that I didn't know. I think that  as we center our creativity, instead of ourselves as creative people, it opens us up to the lessons we need to learn as well as the actions we need to follow   through on if that 

makes sense.

Monica: [00:19:25] Well, it's interesting. You brought up action because one of the things I I've been kind of queuing into with this conversation is one of the biggest forces of our creativity is our ability to choose. Yeah, it's really harnessing. Yeah. It's harnessing our own agency, our ability to choose for ourselves what matters to us and how we're going to live that out.

So for women who are listening to this, and this is a whole new paradigm for them, and it is terrifying to hear, and it might shatter some, some, you know, ways that they viewed themselves and their role, and that's uncomfortable and scary. I just want to bring it back to this. Like, don't be afraid because you get to choose.

Yes. You get to choose. 

Meg: [00:20:08] I think, yes, I think in your choice, listen, you know  I was a kid in the nineties and I still remember like, You know, you're watching like design, designing women reruns on a cable and like, there's this message over and over again that like women get to have it all.

And like, I understand now that was a myth of the eighties and nineties because I hit high school in the two thousands, and even as a high schooler, I was like, oh, I don't think that women get to have it all. And. That's true, right? Like we have to make nobody does and we live in a society that forces sometimes some pretty brutal trade-offs, but you do get to choose what you have.

And so  and those choices just have to be ones that  are ethical and that you feel fulfilled by and  protect you and protect  the vulnerable in your community. I mean, I do sometimes worry when we talk about women centering themselves, we forget that sometimes, sometimes the way we center ourselves can harm  vulnerable populations.

But  I think that you can make choices.  You can have it all if it comes to  Fulfilling yourself being honest about what you want and how you want to create, and  using that creative power to lift the people around you.  And the, and those things don't have to be scary. 

Monica: [00:21:35] Yeah. I like that. This is bringing it back, I'm sorry. I'm bringing up other past episodes, but Dr. Jennifer  Finlayson-Fife, we talked about how to choose happiness. And she talked about how we don't often we can't choose our choices very often. Sometimes we can't. We only have two bad choices to choose between, but we can choose like what you just said, how we're going to harness our own creative ability to choose for ourselves how we want to be, what matters to us and how we're going to live that out in a way that has an alignment, even within these hard choices that we have to face. 

Meg: [00:22:08] Well, you know, as you're saying that I'm thinking sometimes what you can choose is to speak out about  your own discomfort or the  lack of choices that you have. Right. I mean, you know, there are women listening right now who  Need to work 50 hours a week and cannot afford childcare.

Well, there's not much choice there. Right? But they can use their creative power to speak out about that and to join with other women, other organizations who are speaking out about that too, to seek, to create choice. And I think seeking to create choice is  sometimes that's the only, that's the only choice women have, but  it's an honorable good path making one and it's exhausting. And if that's you I'll send you some cookies. 

Monica: [00:23:03] Yeah. You don't have to be both. That was awesome. All right. Thank you, mate, for letting me kind of go off on a few other wandering paths, but this, this has been the conversation. But I have been needing to have with you. So thank you for indulging me as well as the listeners.  So let's, let's take it back to them. The women who are listening now and who are like, okay, I'm ready to kind of step off this cliff of where I am right now into the unknown. I want to harness my own creative power. Where do I start? And how do I do that?

Meg: [00:23:37] Yes.  I think the first thing you have to do okay. If you have to be honest with yourself about what you want, not what you wish you wanted, not what you  years ago, what you're supposed to want.  You have to be honest with yourself and then you have to be honest with whoever is sharing your life with you.

Yeah. So  If that's a partner, you need to be honest with your partner. If that's in the home or in business.  If this is a box, you need to be honest with your boss.  I find it very helpful when I'm about to have  a conversation where I want to Lay out my, not my desires, but like what I am going to do, which is a little bit different.

Right. I wish I was going to.´  I write it down like a letter to myself so that I can articulate  exactly what I want and so that when I'm ready to have the conversation  I am prepared and I've also put myself in the space of  Listening to myself. And so I am at that point ready to be listened to if that makes sense.

 And I want to just quickly put in a plug here that for some women, especially  in marriages where  there are a lot of old patterns and maybe partners that are not as willing to  engage in creative destruction with them.  I'm just a really big fan of couples therapy. And I think it's great to have a safe space where you can have these conversations and  and.

I, I just want to, I just want to put that out there because I think it's great to have a mediator.  And sometimes a couple couples therapists can help with that. So the first thing is to be clear with yourself and with the others that are going to  be influenced or  help you engage with this.

 The second thing I like to do is buy a blank notebook. I do all the time. I've got so many blank notebooks and  I write out my list of intentions along with dates on when I want to have them accomplished.  So for example, I decided I wanted to start this newsletter and I kind of decided it quickly, you know, it was like, you know, the first week of August and I thought.

Oh, I've heard of this thing called sub stack. I want to start a newsletter. And then by the second week of August, I was like, what could it be on? I read a lot about the home. Maybe it would be on the home. And so  during that week, I wrote down what I wanted. The newsletters will look like in five years and I charted out like the growth points I wanted to hit.

Each year during those five years now, am I going to ever look at that again? Not me because that's not how I like. I honestly, where is that blank notebook along with all my other blank notebooks, but it helped me the  creative project real to me. And  It gave me permission to get started. And I, and you know, after I had written that down, I was able to start it the next week.

And so whatever your process is for starting engage in that  and don't think about end dates or necessarily  I don't know that you need to have like a final idea, just whatever gets you started. I mean, a friend of mine, she goes on before she starts any big project with a client that requires a lot of her creativity.

She does a weekend long hike by herself.  And so for me, it's writing it down for other people it's disappearing into the mountains.  But I think create space. Right. And so  that would be however you create space. And then  I think it's really important to have.

A group of women, a community  that you can turn to with this creativity is exhausting. There's a lot of failures.

Yeah. If you're doing something, if your creativity is taking you into public spaces, whether it's your career or if you're a writer or a creative, making beautiful things on Instagram, there's, there's going to be a lot of criticism.  You're going to feel mortified a lot of the time, like creativity  Creating is a mortifying project. I mean, that's why life is mortifying. There's so much creative failure 

Monica: [00:28:29] And even  just creating your own, like creating your life. 

Meg: [00:28:35] There's so much failure and there's a lot of disillusionment.  Yeah. And it's important to have a group to share that with, because they're going through the same thing.

And so  And so I think, however, you build a community. For some women, that's going to be online. I mean, especially a lot of stay-at-home moms.  When I had young kids and Riley was working 80 hours a week in Oakland, California, where we could not afford childcare.  I was completely isolated and creativity in isolation.

 Trying to write a book or just trying to live your life is exhausting and hard. And women finding women online. That was the only way I connected much of the time. And so I think your community can be online.  I think it can be listening to great podcasts like this.  And I think, and obviously it can be in person but  I think without a community creativity,  creative action, creative destruction is  is empty of the  breath it needs. And so  if you leave any, you know, with anything from here, I hope it's that  to find a community, you can be honest  honest with, but you can fail with, and that you can  Triumph alongside. It's.

 I think, I think that that's the saving, the saving bit of advice that I have. 

Monica: [00:30:02] You know, I'm really glad that you are very honest about what it looks like to live a fulfilling life, a creative, fulfilling life, where you're owning your power. You're seeking fulfillment. You are leaning into your agency.

It doesn't mean life is perfect. It doesn't mean life is easy. You know, this kind of the cycle to this creative action and creative destruction, right? Like you said, the very beginning of our conversation make it's ongoing. Yeah. And separate ends. It never ends.

Meg: [00:30:34] I mean, it's all right. And, and you're going to, you're not just creating your life.

Like you're creating yourself and you are a new version of yourself. I mean, your cells literally turn over and you become an actual new version of yourself, however many times during your lifetime. Aside from that biological process, you become a new, spiritual, mental version of yourself. So many times during your lifetime, and you are constantly creatively deconstructing yourself and recreating yourself.

 I am not who I was  in almost. There is not a layer of me left from when I was 20. I'm a completely different person. And that required a lot of destruction and it required a lot of  creativity to  recreate myself. And, you know, I'm 36 now. And  in a year when I'm 37, I will have gone through several creative destructions of myself and it's painful.

And, and again, there's a lot of loss, but you're not being  You're not being inauthentic or a failure. You're just like living your wild, wonderful life. And  it's really beautiful and it's okay. That it's  Hard too, but  I think too often as women, we think that we needed to figure out who we were at 25 and then you have to dig to that.

 But if I'm the same person, I was five minutes ago, I'm failing. Like, that's the failure I'm afraid of. Right? Like, that's that stagnation. 

Monica: [00:32:11] Well, and I think a lot of where we feel a void as women as when we have either neglected the cycle of creative action and creative destruction that goes back and forth, back and forth over and over, we're neglecting it out of fear or we're neglecting it out of feeling forced into staying the same. 

Meg: [00:32:36] Yes. Well, and you know, why we feel a bit forced to stay the same is because instead of being told, I was Meg, I was told I was a woman who was going to be a mom, right? Like we're told we're going to be our roles instead of who we are as people. And yes, the minute that as women, we are able to  stop defining ourselves by our roles.

And we can just  Define ourselves by our, every changing personhood, we will feel less trapped. I like the roles I fulfill. I love being a mom. I love being a wife. I love being all types. I have lots of roles.  But none of them are me. And so  but that is  Especially, depending on the tradition you were raised in, that's a really difficult place to get. And I have a lot of empathy for the women that are in that  in between spot where they feel uncomfortable in that void you're talking about, and I'm 

Monica: [00:33:34] feeling stuck, 

Meg: [00:33:35] feeling stuck in that role. Right. And then in the visit and they kind of, haven't quite gotten to the point where they can    separate their complete personhood from it yet.

I mean, I was there. I was there too, and it's incredibly painful spot to be. 

Monica: [00:33:52] Meet me too. And yeah, I mean, let's give them a glimpse of what's on the other side of this though. I mean, yes, it's painful. Yes. It's ongoing. Yes. It can be destructive. But what you create from that rebel, like you said, is not just a wife, but it's yourself, right?

You have a fulfilled and strong and powerful creative center inside you. You're able to bring that full self to whatever roles you are facing. 

Meg: [00:34:22] Right. Well, and then the role stop defining your worth. Also, 

Monica: [00:34:26] We talked a lot about this a few months ago and then on the podcast. Yeah. 

Meg: [00:34:31] Yeah. Cause then, cause then you realize, you know, like your elemental at that point, nothing    there's no alloy, right?

You are pure self. And once you understand that you are your pure self  first of all, it's okay that you have a lot more to learn. It's okay when you're humbled.  It's okay. That you're still on a journey  because that also doesn't mean that you're worth less. It just means that you are human. And it also means that when your roles shift or, or maybe you don't,  You don't step into the role you always were told you had to step into  it doesn't, it doesn't impact who you are as a person.

 And I, I it's freeing and liberating to understand that. 

Monica: [00:35:19] Yeah. Usually we're trying to look for the roles to, to show who we are when really the reverse needs to happen. Right. We needed to bring who we are to what we do and right. And then that there will not only be more fulfillment and joy, but more power so that we can do more good right. Within the walls of our home. And as we are linking them to the broader community and those around us and whatever way that plays out. 

Meg, I have sat here a few times in this conversation. I don't know if I've ever been so hands, like I'm just moving my hands everywhere because this conversation has taken me to so many depths of, of both why I'm here and what this community is for and just how connected we are within our communities online too.

 This has been really an honor for me. 

Meg: [00:36:07] You're so nice. I know that I kind of go on tangents. CO2 and trees or whatever. So, sorry.

Monica: [00:36:13] You are in the right place for tangents. That is what this community is used to with me too. So.

 I always end the podcast by asking this question because we're a personal development show. So we have to ask this before we sign off. What is something you are working on right now with your own personal development, your own growth, your own fulfillment? 

Meg: [00:36:34] Oh yes.  Actually this is big.

So I  I I'm writing. I'm always writing, which is great.  But I recently found out that I have ADHD, which  explains a lot of my own creative failure over the past 36 years. And  I got to meet with this treatment team and  they started me on this, like, you know, medicated regimen  and.

One of the things that I'm able to do now, which is new for me is I'm able to kind of conceive of like long form projects.  Generally for your listeners who haven't read me, I'm an essayist.  And I'm good at writing essays. I'm okay with that. Like, we're allowed to say what we're good at. Right.  But I felt for a long time and I've had people  In the publishing industry even asked me to write a book.

Like I felt like there is a book, but  I haven't been able to conceive of like long projects like that, which  I found out was part of it this condition that I have, like this diagnosis. And anyways, I've been on this medication for about three weeks, and it's really interesting how with the right help, the right tools, suddenly you're able  to begin to conceive of possibilities you couldn't before. And so I am  I'm working on a book and so  we'll see  it's going to hit. 

Monica: [00:38:05] Yeah, you're on the podcast again. 

Meg: [00:38:07] I hope so. It's really, I would love that. It's really interesting. Yeah.  Hmm. On a long project with  neuro-diversity has kept you to short projects and  so yeah, that's kind of my, my big  challenge right now, but I think I'm in a space  with professional help. That's gonna  At least I'm going to at least be able to attempt it, which was not a capacity I had before. And so, so anyways, go get help if you need it.

Monica: [00:38:40] I think, yes. So many, one connected to that story, 

Meg: [00:38:44] I think it would be my, my suggestion there. It's not magic, but  it, it does feel like a possibility.

Monica: [00:38:52] That's amazing. And where should people go if they're interested in being part of your community? 

Meg: [00:38:58] Ooh, that's so kind.  So I am a contributor to medium. I write for their publication gen and for the publication human parts. And  so you can find my profile on medium and then I have a newsletter   stack dot meg conley.com.

My newsletter is stay at home Meg and I don't know the URL for it, obviously. And then, and then there's really a thriving community of women, mostly women on Instagram that I'm continually, continually blessed by. And the women within that community really bless each other. And  I'm, I'm just lucky to be a part of it.

And, and so I I'd love to see you there. There's always lots of interesting conversations 

Monica: [00:39:45] happening and that's that make Conley? Is there a underscore. 

Meg: [00:39:49] Yeah. At underscore Meg Conley. Okay. Yeah. I thought I knew what 

Monica: [00:39:53] there was one 

Meg: [00:39:54] in there. Yeah, you got it. 

Monica: [00:39:56] Well, this is this. I mean, like I said, this truly has been an honor in a way that almost makes me feel emotional. I wish that during our time together in the Bay Area, we had been closer and known each other. Yeah, 

It's funny how those worlds can drift apart and collide again in many ways. And I feel so blessed by what you do. I'm so grateful that you would be on the show to help my community rise up. And  I'm just, again, thank you very much for being here. 

Meg: [00:40:28] Thank you so much for having me. It's truly an honor. I've been so excited.