Gwen Duda is a visual artist located out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada where she paints abstract expressionistic acrylic, oil, and mixed media works while employing eco-friendly studio practices with what spoons she has in a day.
Gwen has been dealing with chronic health issues on and off throughout her life. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and S.E.I.Ds – Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease in her mid-thirties and last summer was hit by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The act of painting itself has been healing and being back in the art business and studio aids in her continued recovery from PTSD.
Here’s what we discussed in today’s episode:
- Managing your energy
- Finding inspiration from other Spooniepreneurs
- Healing through art
- Finding your passion
Connect with Gwen
Website: http://www.gwenduda.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/gwendudartstudios
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GwenDudaStudios/
Connect with Nicole
Website: http://www.theresilientva.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/theresilientva
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/spooniepreneurcommunity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wnicoleneer/
Nicole (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Spooniepreneur podcast. I’m Nicole Neer, an online business manager living with fibromyalgia and bipolar disorder. On this podcast, I’m going behind the scenes in my business and talking to other Spooniepreneurs to get real about what it looks like to be an entrepreneur and living with chronic illness, to inspire you to start the business of your dreams no matter what life throws your way.
Nicole (00:28):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of this Spooniepreneur podcast. Today’s interview is so powerful, I cannot wait to dive in. And what we’re really going deep into today is what it looks like to be happy and redefining happiness as not what you accomplish in a day, but how you approach your day, right? And it’s such a subtle shift, but when you’re living with chronic illness, it can mean a world of change, right? And so today I am talking with Gwen Duda, who is a visual artist located out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where she paints abstract expressionistic acrylic oil and mixed media works while employing eco-friendly studio practices with what spoons she has in a day. It’s a tall order, right? Gwen has been dealing with chronic health issues on and off throughout her life. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and systemic exertion, intolerance disease in her mid-thirties and last summer she was hit by posttraumatic stress disorder. The act of painting itself has been healing and being back in the art business and studio aides, Gwen and her continued recovery from PTSD. It’s powerful, right? And she is an amazing woman. I cannot wait for you to hear what she has to say. So let’s just dive right in. All right, so I have Gwen with me today. How are you today, Gwen?
Gwen:
I’m doing pretty well. Thank you, Nicole.
Nicole:
And I love to start with learning a little bit more about your health journey.
Gwen (02:19):
Sure. Ask me anything specifically. I kind of see health correlated to it. You know, since we’re whole, we’re dynamic beings. We have all these different aspects to our lives, right? We’re children or we’re adults or we’re brothers or fathers or you know, brothers, sisters, employee, employer. We have all these different social and cultural aspects of ourselves and health is connected to that. And health is connected to, you know, our own, what we want to accomplish in life, our own sense of self and so forth. Right. Cause it can start to dictate, determine who we are to ourselves. So my health journey is really interconnected with, even though I hate using that word journey, right? Cause it’s like, you know, corny. But you know my experience so far, right. I mean it’s a journey. It’s fine if you use that term. I don’t mind. I would say that it’s interlinked with all those aspects. So you can start me anywhere in that.
Nicole (03:32):
So I hesitate to use diagnosis because it’s really just a word and like you said, it’s a journey, but tell us a little bit about the symptoms you’re experiencing or what’s going on right now with your health that you feel like might impact our conversation.
Gwen (03:48):
I’m all right. I might lose track of things from time to time, but you can just guide me back. I’d like to sort of focus on, I was given a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome when I was around 35. I had had symptoms of that for quite a while beforehand. And the symptoms really I started having problems in actually when I was even a kid, I had problems with allergies, but back then they didn’t really understand what was going on. So they always thought I had slight pneumonia and I’d be put in the hospital and they would tilt you down and whack you on the back to get whatever’s in your lungs out. And I had nothing. So I thought that was interesting.
Gwen (04:41):
I felt like a little drum. And so that was for a few falls like that I was hospitalized. And that’s one aspect of the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. But I’m trying to remember now the medical authority. I think it’s in the States have come up with a new term for that rather than fibromyalgia. They are calling it six systemic exertion intolerance disease. And that seems to be a more accurate description of what happens because when I over exert myself, that’s when symptoms will kick up. And it’s things like anything from dizziness to vertigo to, and dizziness is different than vertigo. One evening I had a seven and a half hour vertigo episode and I thought, Oh God, please, I don’t want to go to emerge. I just feel so awful. I’d rather die and don’t want to be seeing it emerge for eight hours with vertigo.
Gwen (05:40):
And then dissipated. And then I was left for about a year and a half with just dizziness that slowly, slowly, slowly went away. So it’s like I would get these really weird, you know, the consistent fatigue. I had really wicked insomnia and it just goes on and on all the different aspects of the illness. So now where I’m at, last year I developed complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That is like comparing a firecracker to a tsunami. Yes. The PTSD just completely just did me in. That was about last year, this time. And there’s no way I would be having this conversation with you if it was at that time.
Gwen (06:49):
But what it did do the, the PTSD, I’ll just call it PTSD. It gave me the gift of clearing everything from the ground up and I had to, I mean, I took my self-care seriously before, but now it’s like, alright, there’s certain things that I need to do. My health care is number one right now and it actually needs to be for the rest of my life. And so in preparing for speaking with you today, I’ve got up this morning, I did what I needed to do. There were things that needed to be done in the home and then also for business. And then I was like, okay, I’m starting to get sort of tired. I know this specific type of tired that I get, this drop, the bottom of my energy just drops completely out part of the PTSD.
Gwen (07:35):
So I’m like, okay, you’re going for your 30-minute lie down now. And sometimes I have to have those periods in a day. And that’s what I do. I’ve learned that I need to have boundaries not just around other people and things, but also boundaries with myself because my background is a type A person, type A personality and I just give her nails, right? Now it’s like, no, it has to be in balance and the health comes first because of the health isn’t looked after. If I don’t look after myself and give myself those in, stick to those boundaries. Right. It’s like, it’s like re-parenting myself. If I don’t have my health, nothing happens. Long answer to the short question you gave me what was it, an hour ago, few minutes.
Nicole (08:23):
It’s so interesting to me. I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and so many of us are type A personalities and it’s so interesting to me that so many of us also struggle with chronic illness. And so I’m really interested, were you an entrepreneur before you got sick or did that come after?
Gwen: I think it would before because my father had his own business and my mom, she was outside of the home as well as working in the home and she would go and she basically freelanced herself before that was a thing. I come from a small community in Manitoba, Canada, right. My parents are children of pioneers. So they just worked right. And wherever they could, you know they did everything themselves. Me and my dad built our house with my uncle.
Gwen (09:24):
I mean, they laid the foundation, they built the house, they put in the electrical, they did everything. And so, and my mom of course, you know, and it was very much domestic divide. The man did this and the woman did that and, and my mom did everything in the house. Like she repainted re wallpapered I mean we even like re painted the house. I think we worked on the tiles too on the, on the roof. I remember I was on the roof one year as a kid thinking, should I really be doing this? But you know, you just did what needed to be done and you didn’t hire out. You did it yourself. Right? So I came from a very, very strong work ethic. And so now I’m just thinking for me that was demonstrated to me.
Gwen (10:06):
So I was looking at ways to make money, you know, getting odd jobs when I was a little kid yet. And I think nine years old, I started to work. I think in me I can follow as a team member quite well, but I’m a leader, right? I like to take control of this situation or this is the type A personality as well. I don’t know, but I always see the way it could be done better. Right? Or I’d have an idea and that the frustration for me, I think how I ended up becoming more entrepreneurial was actually I was always that way. But because of the illness, it really allowed that aspect of myself to shine because I wasn’t able to keep up anymore with the demands that a regular job would entail.
Gwen (10:58):
Oh, you have to be there at eight o’clock in the morning and you know, you have to work till this time. I did manage to find a few jobs where they’re like, okay, this is the work that needs to be done and these are the hours that you have to do it in. And so I had some flexibility in that. I could come in a little later as long as the work was done and if there were any meetings I had to attend those. Like, if there’s a meeting at nine, well, I had to be there. So I did have some flexibility with some employers, but I can only work part-time at that time and so I was also freelancing events. I think I was always inclined to be an entrepreneur, but having the illness that started taking away my productive hours and started sidelining me, I had to become more creative in how I was going to create income.
Nicole (11:54):
Yeah, totally. And I was really interested when you were talking about your health journey before, you know, you mentioned the difference between having physical health issues and having mental health issues. And it’s something that I’ve definitely experienced. I was starting having fatigue and pain and all of that. And then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and that knocked me down in a way that my physical health issues never did. And it was a real driver in how I set up my business to create a life that really worked for me. So I could incorporate that self-care. Right. So I’m really interested, seeing that we have similar journeys, how do you tailor your business to work around that aspect of your life? Like what does that look like on a really practical level?
Gwen (12:47):
Again, I would bring that back to self-care. So it’s determining what you need in order to have a feeling of contentment, stability, and self-assuredness. So for me, I mean it’s gotten really stringent in that. I recognize for example, if I want to relax like I do take like there are some days and there’s not very many actually. We’re all work all day and not take some sort of holiday from existence as it is. Like I’ll watch something on YouTube or Netflix or Prime or whatever, right? But absolutely no violence. I watched nothing violent, no dramas actually. Cause right now my system is still hyper-vigilant. There’s still too much cortisol being pumped through, right? So I need to bring my body back into homeostasis. So I need to do whatever engages the parasympathetic system, which is the calming, when your system gets calm, like at night when you get that lovely serotonin going and you feel nice that I need to get the relaxation mode engaged as often as possible. So I watch really carefully what I watch for entertainment, only things that are positive, calm, whatever. I do meditation and that’s actually I’m going to give a recommendation, I think it’s called insight timer.
Nicole (14:24):
I love that app.
Gwen (14:26):
Yeah. Because what’s great about that is it’s free and we get so much for free. So if a person’s on a tight budget, which when you have a chronic gallons, did you know when you have a chronic illness that your costs, just your basic, because of your medical costs and what’s all incurred on that is, you spend 30% more than the average person
Nicole: at least.
Gwen: Yeah. At least. At least. I’m sure that maybe even has gone up. I was actually going to university to become a social worker and that was a stat through a class I was taking, which was a disability. I can’t remember the exact title, but it was about disability and I found that very interesting. I’m very careful as to what I watch.
Gwen (15:10):
I’m very careful about what I take in through my ears. Even when I go outside, a large loud truck was by I block my ears because anything that stresses the body, it’s whether it’d be sounds, sight, relationships. Anything like being too tired and not getting enough sleep, not getting proper nutrition, whatever stresses the body will exacerbate the negative aspects of whatever you’re dealing with. So yeah, I’m quite vigilant with that and I’m very careful with whom I spend time with and I used to be a fixer. I would really want to help people all the time. And I realized I had to put in a boundary for myself that was like, you’re not helping people anymore. You have to help yourself. Yes. Right. Then I’m working on right now and I’m reeling myself in and realizing I feel that part of what I did was I kind of gave myself away, I’m giving my energies away and for no income, right.
Gwen (16:18)
You know, like whether it’s volunteering or helping someone with my professional skillset, but not getting any money for it. You know, it’s, this is a little aside, but I started to realize more and more, no, no, you need to charge. If people want to learn some, whatever I have to offer, then no, you have to make it valuable. And if you don’t value it, no one else will. And usually people only value something if it’s got a price tag attached to it. So, uh, there’s a woman, long story short, she wanted me to basically mentor her daughter who was coming out of university for art. To have her shadow me for a day or whatever. And uh, I was like, ah, yeah, well I charge 35 bucks an hour, which is nothing.
Gwen (17:05):
I lived in Toronto. That’s like a cup of coffee and a bagel. And like, this is crazy out here. Ad she got really insulted and I thought, fine, then I don’t have to deal with you anymore because obviously you don’t realize that what you just asked for is quite, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not parasitic, but I mean, it’s taking advantage of me. It’s not a reciprocal relationship. And that’s another thing that I determined. I need to have relationships, especially energy-wise that are reciprocal. Yes. And, and work and work. You enter a job or whatever and it’s whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a job that has a product that’s, produced or a service that’s done, you establish a monetary value on that. They pay you and you give them that service or product that is reciprocal.
Gwen (17:59):
That’s a positive reciprocal relationship. If you’re in a friendship relationship or family relationship, whatever, and you put in time and you listen to them and you care and you go over your way, maybe do an errand for them or whatever, and then they don’t return your phone call one day for a week and Oh, I’m sorry, I just got up now. You know, I forgot. And I’m like, Hmm. That is not a reciprocal relationship. So then that person gets kicked out to the very periphery of my circle. When you have someone that like you’re in the middle of the circle and then your closest relationship is that your husband, wife, whatever you know, is in that circle with you. And then there are close friends and then friends, acquaintances and so forth. I’ve learned that in some situations that value I had on that friendship, I was able to see, Oh, they don’t value me the same way. Oh, that hurts. But that’s okay. Then I can reestablish where they should go in that circle and then I’m more realistic. And then I find that it’s really important to do self-evaluation of every aspect of your life and find out where your energy leaks are and then plug those.
Nicole (19:10):
Yes. And I know that I really, I mean, I started out in social work, that’s my background and I learned as I got sick that it just wasn’t worth the energy and you really have to hone in on what’s worth it. But then as I started building a business, I realized that that was the best training I could ever have for freelancing because you really learn upfront, I am going to value this time because this is so precious. This energy is so precious to me. So you don’t take that for granted and you charge what it’s worth. Do you have that same experience?
Gwen (19:52):
Yeah, I would say yes to that. And also because I’m in my fifties now, right? So time is limited. There’s an expiration date that’s I’m staring up at and there’s a lot that I want to do. I was, even though with the PTSD, it did sideline me for about six months. I that was it. I was completely kicked out of the life game. There was nothing happening in the student and nothing. I had to find the professionals that would help me and do the work in order to get better. And because of that, those two aspects, I am here today talking with you coherently and not feeling like running out of my room here screaming into traffic. You talked about anxiety. I think bipolar and I don’t have bipolar and I’ve read some on it, but it’s the highs from what I understand, it’s like where you feel like I’m invincible and I’ve got great ideas and you have so much energy and you know, you just want to do it and you’re just super confident and then you hit the lows or you’re just like, I’m trapped.
Gwen (20:55):
Life, you know, is awful when you’re down. It’s interesting to note. I was watching a video and it was on composers and they, Oh, I can’t remember which composer is Shuma and I can’t remember, but how their most productive periods and they were bipolar, so they wrote all this amazing music when they’re at their heights and then for like a year or two and sometimes even three nothing. And so that you yourself, you, you learn how to manage that. And with me it’s like learning how to manage the anxiety that comes with PTSD and the depression. And the anxiety is just cause you’re a hypothalamus, they’re in there, they’re just like signals. Like the alarms are going like Ryan, Ryan, danger, danger. You have to teach your brain like, no, everything’s fine.
Gwen (21:48):
So your brain over and over, everything’s fine. So one of the things, and this is a little aside, cause this goes with the type a personality working with personality is that actually I really enjoyed work and I enjoyed it because it was kind of a high, right? Because you go from one thing to another thing and be like, it would be exciting to have your to-do list and then be crossing it all off, right? And you just go, go, go and you slam back a cappuccino or whatever and keep it rolling and then you just sort of like collapse at the end of the day. And then for me, I would stuff my face with chocolate macaroons, right? That was my reward. But that wasn’t sustainable, right? The body can’t take that. The body needs what it needs and I’ve learned that it needs what it needs.
Gwen (22:39):
For my diet, for sleep, for the environment, it needs a safe, quiet environment. And sure. And then when you’re well balanced in your homeostasis, you can do things like go rock climbing, then all of a sudden pump old cortisone into your system and you feel excited and so alive. Right. And that’s a great feeling to have, but it’s something that needs to be for, I’m gonna speak for myself, but, I don’t get the luxury of just going out there and not thinking about how is this going to impact me? You know, how is this going to impact me next day or for the next week or two weeks? So I have to say, okay, get your rest, because we still want to be spontaneous, right? We still want to do things. Someone said, well, do you want to come down to the Lake tomorrow and be like, Oh yeah, I’d love to. But I always have to stop myself and go, okay, if you do that, then it has to work into the plan. It’s like, do I have to give something up? Do I need to rest more today? So on and so forth. Now bring me back to your original question because have I answered that properly?
Nicole (23:51):
You have, and what I’m wondering now is just hearing about your journey, you are an artist and so you’re creating art about the experiences you’re having, but then that’s also your business. So tell me how that works.
Gwen (24:05):
Well, I would say like before then, I’m a visual artist, I’m a painter. My background is in advertising art. So I worked in print television. I worked in an in-house agency that is similar to Loblaw’s, but it’s federated co-ops. So you don’t have co-ops here in Ontario and I don’t think Quebec, but you have it on the East coast. So they’re like the base sort of, except they have farm machinery on top of all that and that kinda stuff. So I have that background and I worked in television for a couple of years as art directors. I have that background, but I always wanted to do fine art and, or continue to do it because I used to freelance. Specifically, I like doing realism in portraiture, so I would freelance doing that.
Gwen (24:55):
Then when I started having health problems, I tried to freelance full time, but that didn’t work either because as you well know, when you have a business, not only are you working on the jobs you’re working on, but you’re also hustling for new work. You’re following up with old work and then you have marketing and now we have social media, which I didn’t have back then and that’s a whole job on and so on and so on and so on. let me just think now. See I can sometimes I’ll lose my track of thought. So you were asking me
Nicole (25:31):
art and business and what that looks like with your health.
Gwen (25:35):
Thank you. Thank you. What ended up happening because I ended up crashing again as I was trying to do my own business, like with portraiture and realism and stuff. And what followed was a few years of just not being able to work at all. And I lost everything. I lost my home, I lost my marriage, which is okay because it wasn’t worth saving. When you become very ill and ill for a long period of time, you really find out about the close people in your life and what’s going on there. And so I had to re-imagine my life and what kind of work could I do cause I couldn’t do time, really time-sensitive work anymore, which was working in television and working in print, really tight timelines. So I thought, well I’m going to go to university and social work.
Gwen (26:26):
Like you. Because I thought I could do that part-time and still make enough money to pay my bills. Right. So I ended up at university. I stopped doing art for anyone else. I did a few pieces for myself, but then as I was going to university, my mum got ill so I ended up leaving university and going to take care of my mom so I didn’t finish my social work degree. And then I ended up here in Toronto because that’s where my partner ended up doing his master’s and now doctorate. So here I decided rather than going back to social work and accruing yet more of a Canada student loan, that I would go into art, fine art. And so I ended up going from realism into abstract expressionism.
Gwen (27:16):
And so that’s the type of work I was doing. And then when I got hit with PTSD last summer, I couldn’t do anything for about six months. And then I slowly started coming cause I was too terrified to go into my studio, believe it or not. And I slowly started, I forced myself to go back in there and I just put like a scribble on a piece of paper and then leave the room. And then the next day I would go in and do a little bit more and then so on and so forth until I was painting again. So the work, I was going to do a project that shows both the digital progress of PTSD from inception to a year later or two years later. So I thought my work could be a part of that. So I actually, I’ve only done a few pieces that are specifically dealing with PTSD.
Gwen (28:11):
Like I just finished a piece a few weeks ago and it’s up on my website if anyone wants to see it. Gwenduda.com. It’s sort of like an angelic being, but it’s not like, and I have all these words written in sort of around her, but it’s specifically to things like life is an illusion because I was thinking everything that I knew before PTSD was like sort of blown away by it. And I felt that my brain had so betrayed me. That life is not what you perceive. We perceive so much through our brain and our brain tells us how to feel. I’ve learned a lot about the brain through this whole process. So the brain can be deceptive to us, right?
Gwen (29:03):
And we can be taking in visual information and auditory information, but our brain will say, Oh, that’s dangerous. Like for example, if you were beaten as a little kid by a guy that had a red shirt and a beard, right? Maybe dark-haired guy that had a beard and red shirt, every time you see a guy with a beard and a red shirt, you get triggered, right? You’re like, you would get like a very reflexive sorta like, Oh, danger, danger. Your brain would say, right. And you’d feel it. You’d feel that anxiety. And then, you know, one day, say you’re a woman and you’re married to a man and he decides to do the fashion beard, right? The guys had been sporting and then decides, Red’s his favorite color. Well, you’ve got a bit of a problem.
Gwen (29:43):
You have to convince the brain that no one’s okay. So I am doing some works that are specific to my progress with PTSD, but also I actually just love to do the work. And what I mean by that is I’ll just sit in front of a blank page of paper or canvas and I just let it flow through me. And so whatever comes out is sort of what’s meant to come out at that time and period. And it will be whatever it is. So if it’s more personal as to what’s going with my psyche and such, it will come out right. If it’s more transcendent say had gone out for a walk and I’m seeing the most beautiful sunset or sunrise sometimes that will come out in my work. The work is very nature-inspired. It’s very, very much the natural world is what inspires me and keeps me going. And I think one of your questions is what motivates me when I’m not feeling well, nature.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely.
Gwen (30:46):
So does that answer your question as well?
Nicole: It does. Okay. So what advice would you give to somebody with a chronic illness who is looking to become an entrepreneur?
Gwen:
I would say just get your eyeballs on anything that you can read or watch or people that inspire you. People that have overcome illnesses or roadblocks or what have you to get where they are now. I can’t recount all of them, but there are stories that I’ve come across where I thought, well, you know, that that person has done well in life. And then I read there a little bit about their autobiography and I was like, Oh my God, I didn’t know they had to overcome this or they had a chronic illness and they still managed to find a way to make it work for them.
Gwen (31:39):
So those stories, adversity stories, I’ll read them or watch them. It’s really interesting. I came across a YouTube interview with Dolly Parton, and this was a few years ago and I was just amazed by her. She was a singer and she was famous when I was growing up. Right? So I know of her work and then she’s kind of fallen out of fashion as the new generation has come up. But I think she’s a thing again. But she’s an amazing businesswoman. I’m sure she had things to overcome in her life, so that’s what I look at it. And I look at the attitudes of the people that have this. And even for myself, I recognize for example, if you’re dealing with like mental illness it is an illness, right?
Gwen (32:29):
And it’s not just split off. Your brain isn’t just split off from the rest of your body. It’s a whole. So even, for example, they’re coming up with new discoveries, for example, what type of bacteria is in our intestinal system can actually determine our mood. Yes. So that’s why it’s so important. I had a ton of antibiotics when I was a kid. It was antibiotics for everything. Right? And of course that kills all your good flora and the bad flora, but the good flora too. So I wonder about that for myself as well. I’m not trying to overcome that as well. So, I look to nature for inspiration and motivation. I would say if you are wanting to become an entrepreneur, it’s funny I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur.
Gwen (33:18):
I just thought of like, what do I want to do? What do I want to do that will make me want to get up in the morning? Because that can be a heck of a battle. Some days it’s like, no, you’ve got this to look forward to do and you’re going to do that. So it’s a perpetual also curiosity, if you’ve got curiosity, cause you’ll take that and you’ll, you’ll work that into, or that’ll be what drives you to do your, the job that you want to do. And then research and reading about people that do what you want to do. I read about artists a lot. Artists lives what they’ve done, how they got to where they are. I mean for the visual arts, you know, getting to the point where you’re in your works being sold and some of the biggies and so forth.
Gwen (34:02):
I mean, that’s kinda the rock star status of artists. If that happens, you’re in. Great. But I’m just an artist so I need to hear stories about other artists and what motivates them and how did they deal with life setbacks? The ones that are still here, the ones that manage to stay above the grass, cause sometimes artist stories can be quite tragic. And what made them happy? I was reading about Agnes Martin who, I came across her story by Hank Green. He has a couple of YouTube channels. He’s a writer, he’s quite famous. And so he was doing a series on, or he was doing a talk on this woman, Agnes Martin.
Gwen (34:55):
And that’s how I found out about her. Again, there’s that perpetual curiosity. I guess I’m a nerd and I’m just curious about all things, like nature or you know, butterflies, or how do they put that top coat on? Like how do roofs work? You know, how did they make it waterproof? So I always had this curiosity. I heard about Agnes Martin and she was dealing with schizophrenia and there was a saying, and I, I won’t say it because I don’t want to, if any of the people that are listening to this want to check it out it’s such a great little talk and her story is so interesting and inspiring. And I took her saying and I printed it out and I have it up on my studio wall and so it’s one of my commandments for happiness, if you will, or I’m developing a code of happiness for myself.
Gwen (35:50):
I’ve got about to 19 points, then I’m almost done and I’m going to refine them and I’m going to put them up on my studio wall. And those are just basic. It’s a basic life code. Put energy into what you want to do, not what not what you don’t want to do. Just hanging out with people that really like you, that are considerate and kind. Part of, I think what I grew up with is like I want it to please people, right? I think my parents, I wanted to please them and they were pretty hardcore and you know, we didn’t talk very much as a family cause we were always working. So I realize a lot of these things was more from childhood. So it’s like, no, quit looking for other people’s approval and just give it to yourself.
Gwen (36:36):
It’s like, Oh, you want to do that? Do that. Okay. How do you feel about that project now that you’re done? Oh, I feel pretty good. Okay. Move on. You’re not looking to anyone else to tell you, you did a good job on that project. So I used to waste time trying to, in the art world, right. We’re trying to get, and mind you, I haven’t actually gotten a gallery per se because I didn’t have the energy to be able to, tell them or to, what’s the word I’m looking forward to commit to a whole show? Like I just didn’t know what my energy would be like. So I just do one piece at a time. Now things for me are getting better.
Gwen (37:15):
I could actually do this so that galleries or something I’m looking at now. I never want to overextend myself. It’s, I don’t know about you, Nicole, but from reading your Instagram posts and such, I can see that you’re pretty pragmatic about what you can do and what you can’t do. And I don’t want to promise something that I can’t deliver. It makes life very hard, you say, not that it takes the magic out of it, but there, there are guidelines that we need to follow in order to be the best for our clients and to be the best for ourselves.
Nicole (37:54):
And I think that there’s a fine line that I’ve found because I’m really pragmatic about what I can accomplish and what I can’t, but sometimes that holds me back. Because I’m stuck in that, Well, I know this will work and instead of pushing myself a little bit in taking a little bit of the risk, I stay where it’s safe. Is that something that you, you’ve experienced?
Gwen:Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Gwen (38:22):
There’s this aspect of my personality that when I have an idea, I just want to fly with it. I want to see how far it can go and how high. And, especially in doing a painting, it’s like when you have a certain feeling that comes through you in a certain energy. I would work sometimes for like hours and hours and hours straight just to capture that, right? But then I pushed myself too far. Right. And I would do that day after day because that energy changes and then when the energy changes, the image changes, right? So you want to keep that image in the same energy field that you had when you create it or else it’s not the same image. But now it’s like, Oh, okay, can’t throw myself into the wall anymore because I’m tired of scraping myself off of it. Um, so what do I do? So
Gwen (39:22):
it’s a matter of, okay, I work smaller, but if I do a larger piece, it’s like, okay. It’s like remembering that energy. I can actually write like a poem or something down that will capture it and then I will reread it and then just set myself in that. So you know what, it’s a matter of discipline. Yes. It’s a matter of discipline. We are, this was so funny. We had friends over the other night cause we finally all got together for a game day and it’s hard to get all our schedules together, but we did it because you need to do it. It’s great for your mental health, great for your physical health. Right? And you need to laugh and be with people. Your brain needs to see smiling, happy faces around you. And one individual, he just started this new job and, and I’m working there for a few months and they put them in charge of hiring.
Gwen (40:09):
And they had a person that came in for the job and basically said, cause it’s a job at a library. So what’s a library used for? It’s used for learning. And especially if you’re in a university and as a student, whether you’re a graduate or undergrad, you’re always learning. I shouldn’t say graduate. I mean like in a master’s program or a doctoral program. And so he had this one person that came in and basically the person said they were an engineer. They were at the top of their game and they didn’t need to learn anything anymore. They could very easily tell other people what they needed to know. And, you know, that raises some eyebrows. And the other thing was that he wasn’t interested.
Gwen (41:05):
When my friend told me about that, I thought, Oh, you know, it was around people skills. That’s what it was around, was wrong. People skills. And I said, it’s interesting because they ended up hiring somebody that didn’t have all the skills they wanted but had the personality that they wanted. And I found for me it’s way better is way easier to have that aspect in another person, so that’s sort of the most important thing I find about this. Sorry, this just makes me think about, I’m looking to hire an art assistant. And I realized in writing up that description that it didn’t matter if they knew how to work Excel perfectly or anything like that. I would rather have somebody that I can work with. So now bring me back to the original question.
Gwen (41:55):
See, I do this, I go on this sort of long thing and then sometimes I lose my way. So bring me back.
Nicole:
You totally answered that. What would you want to know when you were becoming an entrepreneur and you totally nailed it.
Gwen: Oh, all right.
Nicole:
So is there anything that I should of asked but I didn’t?
Gwen: So this is pertaining to health, dealing with chronic health. And having your own business, right? Yes. I think we’ve probably covered everything, but if I was to make it succinct, I would say first thing that you need to do if you don’t already know-how, is to learn how to take really good care of yourself. Learn what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are because everybody has them. I would say my weaknesses were, um, I love the underdog.
Gwen (42:55):
which could be admirable, but the problem is, that was an energy leak and it was a blind spot and that explains my first marriage and which actually, I ended up losing a lot because of that first marriage I got really ill during that first marriage. It was a,I would say the person had a personality disorder, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I would say really know yourself, do a self-inventory do a self-analysis and say, okay, you know, what do I want? Some people say, you know, we’re on a path to discover who we are, is like to uncover things. And then I heard a quote by Dylan that said, we’re actually creating ourselves all the time.
Nicole:
Love that.
Gwen:
Right? So I thought, okay, I’m this entity that’s on this planet that’s whirling through what could be quite a hostile universe, but wonderful.
Gwen (44:00):
None the same. You know, who the heck am I? So you get these big questions, right? And then it’s like, okay, but I have to pay bills and I have to get food and this kind of stuff while I’m here. So how am I going to do that and how am I going to do that in a life that I will feel really good about getting up in the morning to meet every day? What kind of life do I want to create for myself? What do I want to do? Where do I want to be? And then answer those and then say, okay, what’s the vehicle that I’m going to use to attain that? And that’s your income stream or streams and there’s a whole bunch of books out there to help you with that.
Gwen (44:45):
One of the greatest books is what color is your parachute. I love that one. Yeah, Richard N Bolles. That was probably the most important book I’ve ever read in regards to that. And so maybe you have to work a job that’s just a chip of the diamond. Again, maybe you don’t really like it but it’s given you some skills that you can then transfer into your own your own business that you’ll need to know in your own business as you start building that business. But to be realistic to get the people that are your friends, keep them close. It’s a real balancing act when you have chronic illness cause you can not do everything. Something’s going to slide in. My case lately is housework lately cause I like to have an orderly home and a clean home cause it makes me feel good.
Gwen (45:36):
I’m getting together a sale, a huge sale of older work. And I have over a hundred right now. Pieces I think have like 300 if not somewhere in there. Two to three hundred. And it’s very tedious cause I have to photograph things in photo edits and I’m uploading everything to square and then I have to connect that to my website. And you know, and that’s another thing. In your own business, you’re going to have so many roadblocks. It’s not going to go as fast as you want it to. I thought, Oh yeah, I’ll pop it on square and dah, dah, dah and I’ll be done in a few days. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And uh, so I’m behind on my own. We have timelines,
Gwen (46:21):
So I’m behind on my own timeline, but I thought, maybe this is meant to happen later. Cause I wanted it to happen before I moved because I didn’t want to move. It was just nice to have a lot of little less to move right from my studio. But I think at a certain point you kind of have to, cause I think this goes with being a type A personality. We’ve got a schedule, we’ve got a plan, you know, you got to meet that timeline. Right? Cause it makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we’re in control and on top of things. But maybe it’s not meant to be and not meant to go exactly that way. And here’s a little story.
Gwen (46:59):
So I told you about my first marriage that ended. And actually when I look back on that first marriage, it’s a good thing that I did get ill because it showed all the cracks in that relationship. And if I would’ve continued, they would’ve continued. If my health was fine, if I was still in the same job I had been in and he had the same exact unreasonable expectations and I kept meeting them, I would’ve stayed in that relationship. And to be honest, that relationship was so right. But because of my illness and because I’ve got blown out of the water and all the things that happened, I ended up meeting the person I’m with now who I’ve been with for 17 years. Right. And he is the love of my life.
Gwen (47:45):
So, you know, is it better? Is it good? There are stories I think in almost every culture. When you look back with hindsight, you can say, Oh, something you really, really, really wanted. Now that you look back, you’d go, it’s a good thing I didn’t get it. So I kind of look at my illness and there’s different ways to look at it. Like some days I’m so angry, I’m so angry and it’s like, I was sick for like two decades and just to think of all the time I lost my youth, I lost, cause now I’m going to fifties.
Gwen (48:27):
It hit me in my late twenties, early thirties. And the thought that I could’ve been a lawyer, I could because I was going to go into law, that’s another story. And then I sit back and I go, yeah, but that’s all that’s all conjecture. You don’t know. Right. So with PTSD you can feel really scary, angry and irritable. You can feel like you’re on a fun roller coaster with this one. You can probably relate to with what you’re dealing with. And then I, then I get to that point of acceptance again. It is as it is now, the only thing you have control of quotation works for.
Gwen (49:17):
How would you say a chance to do is the present in the future? What are you going to do? How are you going to make this the best years of your life? And I kind of akin what I’ve been through, like someone that’s been falsely accused and put in jail and then when they come out, if you’ve been in jail for 20 years for something you didn’t do and you’ve lost all your productivity and education and you come up from school. I kind of feel that way with fibromyalgia cause I lost a lot of friends. I lost a lot of connections. I felt very isolated. And as I’m coming through the PTSD and I’m starting to get energy back and things and I’m really focusing on building out, as in a business that talks about firstly secure your local business, right?
Gwen (50:09):
Grow out from there. I really have to engage in my community. Because as you engage in the community, then you get notoriety through that. People begin to know you and people want to do business with you if they feel a sense of that, they know you. I’ve read an awful lot of books, I’ve listened to an awful lot of people in business and also in healing like a chronic illness and health and all that. And I put them together. So that’s what I would say is don’t lose hope. If you’re having a rough day, bad day or you know, bad year, just be like, okay, just do the best you can and keep the dream alive. Like, do things look into like, let your curiosity lead you to what you love.
Gwen (50:59):
And when you connect with that, that will give you the energy that will help heal your body and your mind and your spirit. And so build on that. Keep doing what you love, keep seeking what you love, spend time with people that make you feel better. If someone you’re with, instantly your energy starts to drop? So it’s learning. So it’s about immense self-care in all respects, healthy boundaries with yourself and with others. I have let quite a few people go in my life and guess what? My life got better. Yes. So that’s your personal is connected to your profit margin if you will. Your personal is connected to your business. Those are one and the same. So take care of yourself and you’re taking care of business your business. How’s that?
Nicole (51:55):
That is the perfect place to end this interview. I love that. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us, Gwen.
Gwen:
Well, thank you Nicole. I appreciate you listening and I would like to hear more from you. I mean I follow you on Instagram and you keep sharing what you’re doing and maybe one day we’ll work together and that would be fantastic.
Nicole:Yes.
Gwen: I’m not sure if I’m ever going to have a show. I mean, we’ll see what happens, but I mean, it’s for educational purposes, I just want people to know. Mental health is health. It’s not like mental health. And then, you know, the rest of our health is like, it’s health. The mind is the body, the bodies affects the mind. And so art actually can be a really wonderful way to help heal the body and heal the mind. So I just want to encourage people, whether that’s writing, poetry, writing, playing music, listening to music appreciation, painting, drawing, any of the arts, dance movement that will actually help heal your brain and heal your body. So please take time for yourself to enjoy and love anything in the arts.
Nicole (53:10):
Yes, yes. Thank you so much for listening to The Spooniepreneur Podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe, recommend rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to find show notes and to get connected to our community of Spooniepreneurs go to http://www.theresilientva.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.