Humility, care and connection | oncology nurse

Kartika Vasavada 0:00

Anytime anybody asks me what I do for a living, I say that I'm an oncology nurse. And immediately, usually, people are like, God, that's really heavy. That must be so hard. And it really isn't. I find so much joy in the work that I do. And like, sure, some days are hard and some days are emotional. But me and my coworkers, like, we have a lot of fun at work.

Dave Weich 0:37

Hi, I'm Dave Weich, and you're listening to Work Shaped Life.

Dave Weich 0:46

How many times have you heard someone say, I could never do that job? Probably you said it yourself about one profession or another. Some jobs simply require technical skills far beyond most people's abilities. Think of data scientists, aerospace engineers, or other jobs, such as professional athletes and dancers. Intense and ongoing physical conditioning is a non-negotiable crew equipment. Still other jobs demand the kind of courage that few people could reliably muster on a daily basis. Smoke jumpers, bush pilots, or maybe closer to home, but people you see cleaning skyscraper windows are no thinking. And then one of the occupations that demand the kind of compassion, resilience, and emotional intelligence that few people are able, or even if they're able, willing, to bring to their workplace day after day. Kartika Vasavada is an oncology nurse at Oregon Health and Science University, OHSU. I jumped at the chance to hear about her path to oncology and the way that patients, their families, and Kartika's colleagues shaped her life.

Dave Weich 2:03

So, Kartika, tell me about what you do.

Kartika Vasavada 2:06

So I feel like I have two jobs. I have been an oncology nurse for about eight and a half years at OHSU. I spent my first four years inpatient, and then I've spent the last four and a half years doing oncology infusion down at the waterfront of OHSU. And then the other thing that feels like a full-time job is I am a union leader at OHSU as part of the nurses union. And then I was recently elected and started my position on the Oregon Nurses Association Board of Directors in July.

Dave Weich 2:40

Wow. So you sound busy.

Kartika Vasavada 2:43

Yes. That feels like an understatement because also we are bargaining our successor contract at the hospital, and I'm on our bargaining team. So that doesn't leave a whole lot of free time, but I try.

Dave Weich 2:57

Yeah. Well, so first of all, just like in terms of how did you get into this line of work? I heard that you were in the food service industry beforehand?

Kartika Vasavada 3:06

I've done a lot, actually. I was a social worker straight out of college. So I just turned 40 this year. I grew up in Michigan and I went to Michigan State and Wayne State for my grad program and got a master's in social work and thought I would love it. And moved out here and worked for a nonprofit for a few years and then worked with teen boys, primarily sex offenders and trying to get them to be able to like get back into society. But it didn't quite feel like the right fit. And so I knew that I wanted to go back to school, and so figuring that out was a challenge. So I had started working in food service when I was 14, and so I knew it was something I could fall back on. And so I worked at a bunch of places in town while I started actually volunteering at OHSU, and that's when I realized I wanted to be a nurse. I volunteered on their pediatric oncology unit and met some of the nurses there, and they were just incredible.

Dave Weich 4:10

You started volunteering immediately in pediatric oncology. How did that happen? Was that your choice, or was that just the volunteer opportunity that arose?

Kartika Vasavada 4:19

That was just where I was placed. I had kind of gone in with an open mind. I would be willing to volunteer kind of wherever, and I just needed something to fill my time and to kind of figure out what I wanted to do next. I started in the outpatient clinics, pediatric outpatient clinics, and then they had an opening and they just placed me on pediatric oncology. So I was there for I think three years.

Dave Weich 4:53

What was your initial reaction to that? What did that feel like to suddenly be in that environment?

Kartika Vasavada 5:01

Heavy. It is some of the hardest moments in people's lives, but it was also like my primary objective as a volunteer was to just see if any of the patients needed anything. And they also had like a playroom there, because it's a pediatric floor. So it was to set up the playroom and like engage with the kids if they were in there. And so even though some of these kids would have to be there for like days, weeks, months on end, I would go in weekly and we would just like hang out. If they were having a good day, we would just like be in the playroom and we they had like a a rice table, kind of like a sandbox, but with rice. And they had video games and board games and books and music, and it was fun.

Dave Weich 5:56

And now, what does a typical day at work look like for you?

Kartika Vasavada 6:01

A little less fun. I work with adults and I have my entire career, and so there's less games involved usually. Give a lot of chemotherapy, immunotherapy. I spend most of my days, most of my shifts, just like with anywhere from five to seven patients throughout the course of the day doing their treatment. So, like some of them can be as short as like 30 minutes to an hour, some of them are full-length, like full day-long treatments that they'll be there for hours. Some people want to engage a little bit more, and I do my best to like have some sort of relationship. These are often people who are coming in every week, every other week. So we see them pretty frequently.

Dave Weich 6:48

You say that you started in social work. So you have had a vision for most of your adult life of helping people who need help, who might not be in a particularly confident, strong, certainly joyous place. I mean, it's interesting that you went from one field where that is to some extent the context to another, completely different context. You know, heavy is a word you used.

Kartika Vasavada 7:16

This is something I, for as long as I can remember, it's what I wanted to do. Kids always have those dreams of like being a firefighter or being an astronaut or a ballet dancer or whatever. And I one of the first things that I remember is I wanted to be a pediatrician. And I wanted to, for a long time, I thought I wanted to work with kids and I wanted to help people who needed it and wanted it.

Kartika Vasavada 7:44

I think there was definitely some aspects, especially going into the social work part of it, where there was a lot that I didn't have growing up, there was a lot of support, there was a lot of things that I felt like that I learned as I got older that I didn't have that should have been or could have been inherent in childhood and in growing up. And my biggest goal is I wanted to be that for someone else.

Kartika Vasavada 8:12

And so working in social work and working in nursing, it's really not that different. I just get to use a little more science in and like this other half of my brain that I feel like works better in nursing than I did in social work. And it's kind of amazing because like with what I do now, my the thing that brings me the most joy is like like I mentioned, this is the some of the worst times in people's lives. Like getting a cancer diagnosis, no one is ever thrilled about it. But being a part of that journey, whatever it looks like, whether it's good or whether it's bad, is it feels nice to make that connection. It's like a sense of humanity, like these people want to do well, they want to make it through treatment, they have this goal and they have this drive. And being a part of that and being able to like help them through it is just it's a good feeling, and I don't know. I couldn't imagine doing anything else now. Once I became an oncology nurse, I was like, this is it in some capacity, this is just what I'm gonna do.

Dave Weich 9:24

Was there ever a moment that stands out to you as emblematic of that, where you felt some sort of real fit?

Kartika Vasavada 9:34

I don't know that there's any one moment that sticks out. I think anytime you're working with people, like it's always hard. You're not gonna vibe with everybody, especially in these situations. Some people just don't want to talk to you. And I think it was also the compassion from my coworkers, like we're all in this like really sometimes awful field that is unfortunately never going away. And they are also some of the greatest people that I know. Yeah, it's just what this entire section of healthcare brings is feels different than other healthcare. It feels more human.

Dave Weich 10:22

It seems like your job is really almost like bifurcated into these two pieces where one is extremely technical and you are administering treatments that are exacting, I would imagine. This needs to be done properly for the patient. But at least an equal part of your job is human, is interpersonal. And it seems like social work would probably be an excellent training for that.

Kartika Vasavada 10:52

Oh, absolutely. I think there are definitely a lot of nurses, and there are some that I know and highly respect, that try as little as possible to make like personal connections with our patients. To them, it's just like too challenging, so they really focus on the treatment and getting patients just through the day in a very like linear sort of way. And so it was a lot of from what I learned from social work of like how to not only just like be around people and deal deal with people, but like dealing with the emotional aspects of people going through this. Like, people are gonna, they're stressed, they're anxious, they're gonna cry, they're gonna lash out. And how do you handle that? Working inpatient was really challenging because it was like a lot of folks coming out of surgery and dealing with post-surgical recovery, and people aren't always their happiest when they can't eat and they can't move, and they don't have their same normal level of autonomy that they used to have. And so I feel like again, it's that like compassion piece of like, yeah, it must be really hard to lose that sense of self and lose that independence, and now you have to have this person who is younger than you, especially, having to like walk you to the bathroom or like give you your meds every day, or whatever that looks like.

Dave Weich 12:24

And how do you carry that around when you leave work? How many hours are you in a typical shift doing that?

Kartika Vasavada 12:31

I work 12-hour shifts and usually two to three a week.

Dave Weich 12:35

So you've just spent 12 hours in that environment, and then you move to whatever the rest of your life is. What does the transition look like? Do you have a routine or something to get you into a different mindset? Does it happen naturally?

Kartika Vasavada 12:53

My routine now is a lot different than it used to be. Working inpatient, working outpatient are vastly different. There was a lot more chaos and there was just like a lot more stress involved in inpatient. And so it felt like it was a lot harder to just like walk away from, especially since like if I was working two or three shifts in a row, it was likely that I would see those same patients like two or three shifts in a row. And so it was different because people would be there for an extended amount of time, but then you wouldn't necessarily know what happened happened to them after. Kind of one of the hardest things was doing that through COVID. People couldn't be with their families, and coping just in general was hard. Like people were already like uncomfortable with healthcare workers, like being out in the community, and then it's just like I work with cancer patients, so I felt like I had to be like even more careful that I didn't bring that into work with me. So it felt a lot more isolating. So, like usually when I worked inpatient, it was a lot of like come home and immediately like take a shower, and that was my opportunity to decompress. And then it would like I would eat and then I would try and watch something that would like bring me joy. And it was also just a time that I read a lot and I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, so it was like really easy to distract and find other worlds to kind of go into. And I mean, for a little portion of that time, I mean, I've it's something I've grown out of. Like I had poor coping mechanisms where I used to like come home and I would need to like I felt like I needed to have a drink or two to like forget just how hard the day was, or forget just the amount of things that I had to do in that day and what would be waiting for me the next day. Now, working an outpatient, it's still hard, it's still emotional, and it's still stressful, and we still deal with like really sick patients, but I get to see the trajectory of their care and I get to kind of like be more involved, and like if I come back tomorrow, I'm not gonna have those same patients, so I can kind of like it's a little easier to let go of whatever happened today and be able to show up again tomorrow. And we see so many patients that like I won't even like be guaranteed to see them the next time they come in. So like now I feel like I have more of a bandwidth to more engage in my life. Like I can spend time with friends after work if I want to. I can like watch TV, have dinner, like do whatever, but it's not as like I don't feel that need that I have to like decompress and that I have to have space away from everyone and everything to kind of let go. It's definitely easier. I still read a lot and I still watch the same things on repeat sometimes to make me feel better, but there's less of the weight involved, if that makes sense.

Dave Weich 16:02

Totally. Is your social circle outside of work comprised of people who are not related to work at all? And if so, yeah, outside of work, do you socialize mostly with people who do completely different things?

Kartika Vasavada 16:16

I try my very best. I love my coworkers, and there's a couple that I'm really close with and I hang out with outside of work, but the majority of my social circle and my partner are not healthcare. They don't work in healthcare or anything healthcare adjacent, really, and it's really nice when I hang out with coworkers or when I do something with them or with even multiples of them. It feels like we always end up talking about work in some capacity, and you really just want to get away from it, but it just like always brings you back. And so it's nice to be around folks that I don't have to, don't need to do that with. They're always there if I need to like talk to them about something in particular or like vent about something, but like it doesn't take the entirety of our time spending time together. And it's also really fascinating to hear what my other friends do. Like, I have a few friends in IT, but like everyone is so spread out. I have a couple tattoo artists and a therapist and business side of Verizon and like all of these things. And so I feel like it makes my outside of work life so much more special and bigger, and I don't feel as like isolated in this like world of cancer.

Dave Weich 17:42

Was the fact of a shorter work week in the sense of less days, not necessarily less hours, and certainly not less baggage? Was that part of the attraction? Did it matter to you at all? How do you feel about it now?

Kartika Vasavada 17:54

It definitely mattered. That was one of the biggest goals from switching from social work to nursing, is I wanted financial stability and more of a work-life balance. When I was working as a social worker, and also when I like ended up transitioning into the service industry again, my whole life was work. Like that's all I did. And when I was a social worker, that was less stuff that I could leave there because there was no one else to come in to do my job for me. It was just me. And I was working so much and making so little that like I worked a second job at a restaurant and I just like never had the time to decompress. So like when I made the intentional switch to like find a new career, that was the goal, is that I needed more balance to be able to like live a life and pay off my student loans and like be able to do other things that I'd want to do. And so working the two or three days a week, like I don't know that I could ever go back to working four or five days a week. It would be such a hard transition.

Dave Weich 19:01

Yeah. And yet, in the middle of this, you took on the union work. I imagine that the nature of that work is very, very different than the work you're doing the other days, and that's probably part of the reason why you manage it, because it's not as if you're taking double shifts, you're doing something different that's related. But why did you start doing that? And what made you think, yes, I want to give this much more of my flexible time to a work-related effort?

Kartika Vasavada 19:36

I think at the end of the day, it was that it hopefully improves the working life and conditions of me and my coworkers. It really started as like I joined a committee for two hours a month, and it kind of grew to where I've been the secretary of a union of 4,000 nurses for the last three years, and I'm on the bargaining team. And it's definitely increased in the time commitment, but like seeing the problems and being able to hopefully do something to advocate for my nurses, advocate for myself, and hopefully build better working conditions felt like something that was worth the extra time. Sometimes it feels overwhelming and like I don't have any more to give, but I work with some really great people in that realm too, where we all share that workload and that burden.

Dave Weich 20:43

I don't know what your parents do or did for a living, but how how were you drawn to a path of what feels like purpose? That's a great thing. Obviously, not political, but like it's also a lot to take on, and not everyone is driven that way. How do you think you became a person who's like, this is what I'm going to do things that help people and help systems?

Kartika Vasavada 21:09

God, like, I don't know that there's any like specific point where I was like, this is something I have to do, or this is what I want to do. So I grew up in Michigan, just south of Detroit, kind of a lower middle class community, and my mom's a real estate agent, and she still does that. And my dad was a chemical engineer, and he retired from that pretty early. And my parents have been divorced since I was five, and there was just a lot of things that like didn't feel great. Like both my parents had gotten remarried when I was 10. My dad moved out of state. Living with a single parent for a long time, like and working in real estate, like she had to be gone a lot. She had to like show houses and my brother and I would go with her sometimes when we were younger, or my grandfather lived with us for a while, but it just felt like it was constantly like this having to work so hard to just like make end ends meet or to like get through. And don't get me wrong, like my mom worked hard, and like at no point ever did I not have the things that I needed. And for the most part, I had the things that I wanted and I started working pretty young. I was a babysitter at 12. And just seeing the things that were that felt like it was missing. Like I was very grateful. I had a teacher who wasn't even one of my teachers. I think he was a special education teacher at my high school who would just let me hang out in his room. And it was like just a way to kind of escape from things. I was also like one of three non-white kids in my school. And so it was just like it felt like there wasn't a whole lot of resources. It felt like there wasn't a whole lot of people to stick up for each other. I mean, I was in high school during 9-11, and as a brown person, it was pretty terrible. I'm sorry, I might cry. I guess it kind of stemmed around then just not wanting people to have to be alone during that.

Dave Weich 23:33

Yeah. Again, I don't know. I'm not gonna pretend to have walked that path. Well, different people would have different reactions to it, but it's not hard to imagine how it would kind of toughen you up and give you a little bit more of a sense of purpose. But that also requires, just to be kind of real here, a certain amount of strength on your part. Like, because the opposite reaction is to withdraw.

Kartika Vasavada 23:59

Yeah.

Dave Weich 24:00

Is to be angry or whatever your reaction is, it is not to say, I am a strong person and I am going to make my way my way.

Kartika Vasavada 24:11

And I did have that. Like I did have the anger, and it just like came out in different ways. It never came out in like my work life, it was more the social life. I like, like I had mentioned, I used to drink a lot, and I used to go out and party a lot, and like that was the way I would cope or deal with my own self, deal with my own feelings of like feeling abandoned or feeling alone. But I didn't need to do that in my professional life, and it was really hard. I also moved to the other side of the country from all of that, and it was necessary. Like, I remember my first couple years here, I've lived here 18 years now. I thought I was gonna move back. I didn't think that making the move to Portland, Oregon alone as a 22-year-old was a good idea. I was like, I don't really have a support system. I was working in a job that I wasn't making any money, and I didn't know what I was gonna do. But there was something about that work and just like the Pacific Northwest and just not wanting to go back that I needed to be here and I needed to continue what I needed to find something that was gonna work for me and that I wanted to do, and there was something that was just like that is not in the Midwest, that is not in Michigan, and you will find it here, and I don't know, it's feels kind of crazy to say because like people were always people will ask, like, what's your plan B? If your job were to end tomorrow, like you always need a plan B. And I was like, I don't know. I love my job, and like there was a period where I was losing faith in oncology and the work I was doing, and so I moved to outpatient, and it's incredible, and I couldn't imagine what else I would do. And social work was great, but like it didn't feel right, and this does.

Dave Weich 26:21

What combination was trusting your gut versus did you get good advice? Did you have models or sort of people you looked up to or saw? How did did you just kind of was a persistence? How how did you get from point A to point B?

Kartika Vasavada 26:36

Persistence is a nicer nicer word than stubbornness. God, it sounds terrible. I didn't really have a ton of great role models growing up or in my adult life necessarily. And a lot of it was like finding my way on my own, but it was also this stubbornness of like I wanted to do it on my own. I didn't want to be influenced by anybody else or anybody's advice or decision making. And I honestly sometimes I think back, and that's like what landed me at in social work the first time and in the first place is when I was a kid I wanted to be a pediatrician, and then I realized that's too much schooling, and I didn't want to do that. I grew up lower middle class and I didn't want to have to deal with all of that debt, and I was offered an opportunity for someone to like pay for me to go to school with the intent of going to medical school, and I was vehemently against it because I didn't want to be indebted to someone else, or like have someone else's motivation drive what I did. So even when I went to nursing school, I wanted to do it on my own terms and like applying to places and like even just like what I did in nursing school or how I got there, it was a lot of my own stubbornness and like I needed to do it on my own and make sure that it was what I wanted to do, and I wasn't just doing it because it was what someone else wanted me to do. Yeah.

Dave Weich 28:21

What is most interesting to you about your job? Like if you were to think of a specific experience where you just felt like that was a really good day at work, or that was a day where I really, really contributed, where you know, not that no one else could have done it, but that but that you were there and you did. What what is that to you in your work?

Kartika Vasavada 28:44

95% of the time it's connecting with my patients. It is just being able to like be in a room and have a conversation about whatever they want. In the last four years, I have gotten really close with a lot of my patients for that reason. And like I see them intentionally every couple weeks when they come into the infusion clinic. That is the most favorite part of my job. And I would say that other 5% is like catching something because I made that connection, or catching something because I was intentional about my interactions with them, or just intentional about the work I do or being there. It's still a nice part of my job, but I'm definitely not the smartest person in the room where I work. I work with some really incredible and knowledgeable like oncology nurses. So it's nice to be a part of that.

Dave Weich 29:44

What do you think is maybe something that's interesting about the work that from the outside you would never see or expect?

Kartika Vasavada 29:53

Anytime anybody asks me what I do for a living, I say that I'm an oncology nurse. And immediately, usually, people are like, God, that's really heavy. That must be so hard. And it really isn't. Is like I find so much joy in the work that I do. And like, sure, some days are hard and some days are emotional. But like me and my coworkers, like, we have a lot of fun at work, like we have a good time and we can joke with one another and talk about our own lives while also like engaging with our patients and like doing this really important and very meticulous stuff. But yeah, it's not just like a sad space, like we see 200 patients in a day and it's a good time. Which is so weird.

Dave Weich 30:57

It is, and I'm sure hearing that, some people will be just like, what? But but I mean to flip that on its head, particularly now that you're an outpatient, like you are, I would imagine, a reasonably high percentage of the time, if not curing forever people, you you are helping them return to the life that they recognize. I mean, that's an immense amount of good in the course of a workday. Most people don't get that.

Kartika Vasavada 31:29

Yeah. And that was definitely the other, like another drive for moving from inpatient to outpatient. Inpatient, and again, especially during the pandemic, was incredibly sad. And we lost a lot of patients, and like I said, I lost a lot of faith in oncology and the work I was doing. And so, like, now I get to see this like broader spectrum of it. And yeah, bad things still happen, but also really great things happen. And we have a bell that people can ring on their last chemo treatment, and we also have patients who have metastatic cancer, and they're like, I'm never gonna be cured of this. However, it's been 15 years and I was supposed to die 10 years ago, and they want to ring it, and it's so cool, and it gives me so much more faith in this work and why I do it and why I show up, even though it makes me crazy sometimes.

Dave Weich 32:32

Yeah. The repercussions of your daily work are right in front of you. Oftentimes those outcomes are hidden by time or corporate structures or whatever it may be. And I gotta imagine that part of it isn't gratifying to see that the work you're doing is that meaningful.

Kartika Vasavada 32:56

Yeah, I think that's why I keep doing it.

Dave Weich 32:59

Yeah.

Kartika Vasavada 33:00

And it's interesting, there are a couple things that like especially that I especially carry with me in the work that I've done is I have at the very least two patients that I had taken care of when I worked inpatient and partially when I worked outpatient that have since passed away. But their family members have still, like, one was husband of the patient, and one actually both of them are husbands of the patient, that I've come to intentionally say how much they appreciate or care about the work and the time I had spent with their with their family and how I engaged with them and like how I made them feel while they were there, and through some of the hardest parts. And that is something I will always carry. Like I had a patient son gift me a book of Ishmael, and I never read it, and he just like had a little Post-it note in there that said, Thanks for taking care of my mom, and I'll never get rid of it. I read it, it was a great book. But just like that Post-it, and it just means a lot.

Dave Weich 34:06

Yeah. If you were to tell a story about something that happened to you at work, what would that story be?

Kartika Vasavada 34:13

There's a lot.

Dave Weich 34:15

Let's pretend it's a reasonably joyous occasion.

Kartika Vasavada 34:20

Oh, God. A reasonably joyous occasion.

Kartika Vasavada 34:25

Like I said, I work with cancer patients. Some of them are like solid tumors, so we're talking like pancreatic, stomach, lung, whatever. But then we also have our blood cancer patients, so leukemia, lymphoma. Especially for leukemia and lymphoma folks, their blood counts get so low while we're giving them treatment that they don't have like an immune system and they don't have platelets to help them, their blood clot, and things like that. So sometimes we have to give sex advice to our patients. And it is one of those things that like I don't think about. I don't think about that being part of my day, or sometimes we're just like, oh, that's not happening. They're having cancer treatment. There's no possible way that this is something they'd want.

Kartika Vasavada 35:10

And there was a day , it wasn't even my patient. I was just like coming up to help. And she goes, Can I ask you a question? And I was like, Yeah. She's like, Can I have sex with my partner? And I was like, I'm so sorry, but no. And she was like, What can I do? And so we went over like things that are possible, and I was like, Unfortunately, like there isn't a lot. You don't have an immune system. And it just like was this great, it was a great conversation. We're all adults, nothing she's doing is inappropriate. It is harmful for her in that situation. But it I walked away feeling like I'm glad I had that conversation, but I was not expecting it. And it was just it was very funny, and I was like, I love that you and your husband still want to do this. Like, I think that's also just like part of life and like part of a marriage, but it was also just like very unexpected, right?

Dave Weich 36:12

But it's so indicative, I think. How would you ever know that unless you had a very close friend who had gone through something similar?

Kartika Vasavada 36:21

Yeah.

Dave Weich 36:21

Yeah, I guess you could read or look it up on the internet or something, but if you would ask your nurse.

Kartika Vasavada 36:27

Yeah, and it's like people will have kind of conversations with their doctor, or their doctor will just explicitly say, you can't do these things. But I mean, I've just found that patients are sometimes more likely. I mean, I spend more time with them, so they're more likely to open up to the nurses and ask more questions and I don't know, be more curious.

Dave Weich 36:49

In advance of this conversation, when you thought about what we're doing, did something come to mind for you about like, oh, I'm probably gonna have to talk about that, or I should talk, like what even just the subject more broadly, what did it bring to mind for you?

Kartika Vasavada 37:05

I would say the last few months, like work has felt really hard. And it has, I don't know, I went through phases of like, is this what I want to do, or like just being really upset with work. And so this kind of helped me, like, when I was like, oh, I have to think about what I like about my job, or like what I what I do in general. And I guess like taking that step back and realizing that like the things that I get frustrated with or that I'm upset about at work are temporary. Yeah, it just like it made me have to like think about the work that I actually do and the part of it that matters and the reasons why I actually do it to begin with. Which was great.

Dave Weich 37:54

I'm glad. Thank you very much for taking the time.

Bailey Cain 37:59

On the next episode of Work-Shaped Life.

Michael Bolognino 38:02

The thing that unites my client base is not their profession. It's that there's something that they know they want to be different, they want to figure it out, and they want to go make it real. And our job is to answer four questions. The questions are: where am I? Where do I think I want to go? Where do I actually want to go? And how do I get there?

Bailey Cain 38:24

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to hear the episode when it drops. In the meantime, check out the Workshaped Life Substack, where I recently shared some thoughts about falling in love with the artistic process. Workshaped Life is produced by Sheepscot Creative. It's hosted by Dave Weich, edited by Michael Lipper and me, Bailey Kane, with production support from Benna Gottfried, Rosie Struve, Amelia Lucas, and Kate Sokolov. We'll be back in two weeks with Michael Bolanino. Thanks for listening.