Writing a travel memoir with Jessica Mudditt

Jessica Mudditt

Thu, Oct 12, 2023 4: 38PM • 38:03

Thu, Oct 12, 2023 4: SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Thu, Oct 12, 2023 4: book, write, myanmar, love, travel, year, life, memoir, story, wanted, memories, bangladesh, trip, place, business, writing, author, journalist, podcast, emma

00: 01

00: Do you want to live a life of freedom and adventure? Are you wanting more than the daily grind? Me too. Welcome to the Emma Lovell show, a place where we talk about living a life you love now, I'm your host, Emma Lovell, and my number one value is freedom. I've spent the last 14 years running your business and travelling the world. And now I take my husband and toddler along for the adventure to it's possible and I know you can create a life doing what you truly love as well. This podcast will inspire, motivate and encourage you to go after your dreams to create a life you love and to live it now not wait for retirement or someday in the future. I'll be sharing episodes weekly about how I harmonise business travel and self care. I'll also bring on incredible guests to share their journeys, the winds, the challenges, and how they're creating a life they love. Let's jump in and get dreaming. This is a space for you to manifest a life you love.

01: 06

01: I would like to acknowledge and recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this place now known as Australia. I'm grateful for the continuing care of the land, waterways and skies where I work live, listen, learn and play. From here on Eugen bear country and from wherever you are listening, I pay my respects to the elders past and present.

01: 29

01: Welcome to the podcast I'm delighted to introduce you to Jessica mudit. Author and founder of Hembree books. Jess has written an incredible book, which I have just finished and I'm totally in love with and I can't wait to share her story with you. Jessica Marie is an author, ghostwriter and book coach based in Sydney. During her 15 years as a journalist, she wrote over 100 articles for Forbes, along with bio lines in BBC, CNN and company director magazine. She's the author of two memoirs, our home in Myanmar and once around the sun. Fun fact, she was an extra in the hit Bollywood film, Tara Rum Pum. Just so many fun travel stories, and also such an amazing businesswoman. I can't wait to introduce you to Jessica.

02: 24

02: Welcome to the podcast, Jessica mudit. Hi, Emma, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to have you on I have had you in my ears for a few weeks. But I always love to start with who are you? Who are you in your words. I'm an author of two memoirs, which are also audio books, which is why I've been narrating my first one in your ear. That's called our home in Myanmar. And that's about the four years that I spent in Myanmar. The secret the prequel sorry, is coming out in March. And that's called once around the sun. And that's about a year long trip that I took. That was very formative for me. That was when I was 25. And I'm also the founder of Hembree books, which I have just launched after 15 years as a journalist. And Henry Box provides nonfiction authors with book coaching and ghost writing services. And I'm so excited because books have always been my first love. Articles are too short. And I get frustrated after talking to people and hearing all these fascinating things that you know, ends up on the cutting room floor. So this is a chance for me to pursue my love of books, but also to help people get their book into the world. That's so important to me, I struggled a lot to get my books out. And there was a point where I thought I would never become an author. So I'm passionate about helping other people get to hold the book in their hands. Well, I'm absolutely blown away because writing a book is definitely on my bucket list. And it's it's something that, you know, like you I had a big year of travel, I had a 13 month trip. I did the gap year after high school before University. And I thought that I was gonna come home and write a book at 19. And I've always felt like, I've been behind the eight ball. And it's this sort of it is a big thing. But then I think there's kind of this climate at the moment in the business world where it looks like everyone's writing and putting in air quotes for the listeners. Everyone's writing a book and so it can make you feel like, why haven't I just written a book? Tell us you know, yeah, like, was that your sort of journey as well? Yeah, I mean, it really is so similar. I well, I completed my university degree had no idea what I was going to do with my life. And then I set off to travel for exactly 365 days. It's called once around the Sun for that reason, but also because I tried to stay in summer temperatures the entire time, not with complete success.

05: 00

05: because, you know, you end up taking journeys you didn't anticipate to places like Mount Everest where it's really cold, cold.

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05: And I Yes, move to London wanted to get that book published did not could not focus really on becoming a journalist. And that was, you know, that was a struggle of itself. I had to move continents twice to do that.

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05: And so I mean, it's it's a very slow, long journey, which is just part of life like I've always loved my work. I've always loved journalism, I'm just at a point in time now, where I want to try this. And it's important to me to try and I self published. So had I not completely backed myself, the book would still my books would be unpublished. So that, for me was critical to decide that, thank goodness, we have the technology and the platforms that make it so easy and so cost effective. To get your work out into the world. Once you get the first one out. It's almost without question that there'll be a second one, if if it wasn't like pulling, yet something, you know, something happened to you, that was a one off event and you truly believe others would benefit from reading your story. So that might be one and done. But if you love writing, you'll fall in love with the process of having a book and you'll want to write more. But and it's a different thing, isn't it? Like? Because I guess a lot of people in my world are writing books for the business. So they're writing it as a marketing tool. Whereas a travel memoir, that's a hot project, isn't it? That's a that's a this story needs to be told. That's, I mean, obviously, as well, it's going to be in terms of your business. Now. It's a great marketing tool. I wrote a book, I can help you write a book. But predominantly, I know that, well, I'll speak for myself, the travel book is I don't give a damn if anybody else ever reads it. I want to I want I know that. I do actually want people to read it. But I know that I want to have that leader and have done that. So how do you feel about the travel memoir, as opposed to say, maybe a book about, you know how to do the thing? Well, I mean, it's funny, I was talking to a business author last week has written 11 books, she loves writing books. She's a productivity expert called Donna McGeorge, she's wonderful. And many business authors, they continue, because it's sitting on a book crystallises your thought in a way that nothing else can, I believe, and to have that depth of, of knowledge and but really, it's the process of setting it out and structuring it, I think that's really powerful. And then as you learn you realise that such an effective tool for learning and sharing of like a big idea not here's a blog post idea, but a big theme of like looking at the world differently. That's, that's addictive for for whether it's your point of view, the way that you saw the world for me, I wanted to share about Myanmar. So I was living in Myanmar at a critical time in its history where it was transitioning from dictatorship to democracy. The entire time I wrote it, I thought that I was just writing a lighthearted book about the beginning of Myanmar's democratic democratic era. But I felt driven to share that story with the rest of the world not so much about me just that I was the vessel as a journalist, I had a front row seat, and I wanted other people to actually travel to Myanmar. That was a huge motivator. It's such a beautiful country that people are so amazing. And I thought that that would help. But yes, also, I'm a creative person. And I didn't write a nonfiction academic book. There's already many, many great nonfiction academic books about Myanmar, I wrote about I wrote a memoir, because that's always been my favourite style. To my journalism. I've loved writing first person pieces like and I wrote, I, when I lived in Bangladesh, I got to write articles in the newspaper about that trip. I wrote them as columns. And so that was fantastic for me, and I just never thought that book. It was too hedonistic. It was too light, too fun to get to be a book. Then when the COVID 19 pandemic happened, I saw a picture at the front of a bookstore, it went viral, you probably saw it. And it said, we've moved our Travel section into fantasy. Oh, no, I didn't say that. But I'll close that and I thought I heard Yeah, it broke my heart and I thought hang on that year I had which young people may never get to experience again was absolute magic. And I'm gonna write about it. I'm gonna write it partly to get get me through lockdowns.

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09: Well, you know, I have this is a this is actually my third podcast and I started my podcasting journey because of COVID. We did a trip in November 2019. And on that trip, we would like getting through and I've just told Jeff about a trip that I'm about to do where I'm going to get through all these European countries, which again, we thought might not happen again. But I went through all countries in

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10: We are at five countries in two days, because he can Europe, we can do road trips. But on that trip, we were like listening to podcasts, we're like, we're funny, we're great. Me and my friend, we have a podcast. And six months later we did. And we have 87 episodes of a travel podcast, I wouldn't have got that podcast out there, if I hadn't have stopped and had the time to,

10: 24

10: to do it. And so it's actually a really lovely way to kind of get back into the travelling, people were so worried about you. But people were so worried about me during COVID, because they know I'm a traveller, I find, I enjoyed the time to do other things. And because I've done so much travel, we have all these beautiful memories to pull on. And I did write to you and ask you about that with the book, because obviously, it was 2012 whatnot. Obviously, your book kind of goes from like 2012 to 2016. And so how did you? How did you get so vivid, it's so beautifully written. And so like, you know, you really have a way of, you know, bringing the picture to life for us as a listener, and reader. And I was like, how did you have all that detail when it was potentially 10 years ago? Or when you read a book seven years ago? Yeah, it's, it's interesting, and that you can talk yourself out of writing a book because it didn't happen yesterday, you can say, I can't even remember the conversation I had yesterday, how could I possibly do this? What's surprising when you write a book is that you need less than you probably realise, so you can actually get bogged down, I'm gonna write a book about Bangladesh. And I kept diaries every day, which are 1000s, and 1000s, and 1000s of words. And that's going to take me so much longer, just because then you've got all the details to choose from the way memory works. And I've written, I've read books on memoir and memory, you remember the emotional content. So they're the memories you want to share? You're not sharing, I didn't share every trip I took or every person I interviewed. Why did I select the anecdotes I did because they had an emotional content. And they drove the overall story that the underlying reason, they revealed something about me and my that was poignant, or contradictory to show that it was really complex, or, you know, to cuz you're trying to make the reader feel a certain way. And you don't do that with facts, right. So you remember what was amazing to me was that there was one part where there was a storm and my fence fell down. And we went to our Burmese landlord, and she didn't want to fix it. And she sent out these two tiny little girls to pick up the bricks, and it was in the pouring rain, and it was terrible. And a conflict who's going to pay for this fence when there's no strata or tenancy boards to help you in Myanmar, language difficulties. And I knew that I had it on. So I wrote, I write the scene, I drafted the scene. And then I went back to Facebook, because I knew I had a photo. And it turned out I had a really, really long caption. And it was almost word for word. In fact, the way I phrased stuff was the same, because it's still how I feel it was true at the time and it's still true. So you forget the kinds of the colour shirt he was wearing.

13: 15

13: But what I would do is I would reconstruct it I had, I did have journals for Myanmar, not the daily sort of 1000 words a day type thing, but I had journals, articles, blog posts, photos, Facebook's Facebook posts and emails to mum and dad. And then also I'm a journalist so I'll go back and I'll research you know say if it's a public event like Obama I will go back and find out you It's amazing thing and thank you to the community of people out there who record the facts around something because then you can you can paint it you can paint it enough to create a scene a scene should only contain the information that's really really pertinent anyway. You can prove that you were there by you know, doing the the colour of the panel what my thing is, if I can't remember I can't make it up. And it probably wasn't significant. If you can't Yes, yes.

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14: You

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14: I'll go to the photo and like so something like there was the dog when I went to the Yangon animal shelter. I went back to my photos of because I remembered that she was kind of Goth looking, quirky looking, went back and saw her earrings and the photos so I can put them in the same.

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14: Hello, my name is Kay toon, and I'm the founder of stay tuned a collection of digital education companies. I've had the pleasure of working with Emma Lovell on a number of different occasions. Not only will she emcee at my in person book launch event, she also helped me out on the virtual launch too. I've enjoyed photoshoots with her and Jade and she's an excellent speaker and presenter. I chose Emma because she is just so full of beans. She brings life

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15: Energy and enjoyment to wherever and whatever she does. So she's highly recommended.

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15: Yes, those, some of those lovely details really do make. And sometimes it is that funny detail that was like why that story was so significant? Like, why are you telling me that you were there? And it's like, I have to give you the context as to why this thing was so random. Because if I don't tell you where I was, or what happened before it, then you don't understand why the thing was sunny, or why it then and then later on as well, some of the stories you told might seem, you know, because they said about the everyday thing. And then when you talk later on in the story you like, oh, you call back to that. And that's why you can see the difference. And I mean, look to me, I know, you talked about some pretty heavy things in and, you know, I knew the political situation. And it was very interesting actually reading it, and hearing you talk about Amazon Suchi. You know, because then later on what had happened, and I know, there were sort of reflections, and I'm not super into politics. So it was quite interesting for me to hear that. And you told it in a way that wasn't like too in depth that I, you know, I didn't switch off. But obviously, that's a huge part of the seminar. And the time you were there. But I must say it was it's very romantic for me. And I know that I know that journalism can be rough. And I know that travelling and living in another place can be rough, but it was still just like, oh, this is so cute, just spoke to my heart. And I was like, Oh, I know how challenging all the things you talked about can be but I'm like, I still want to do it.

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16: Well, it's the tough times the interesting, isn't it, when when life's a breeze, you haven't got much to write about.

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16: It's just a fact of life. I'm trying to recognise that in the moment. So saying to myself, you know, when I'm having a tough time, this is creatively, this is really good for you.

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16: And you can't do that. And you're just like, I just wish it was just a little less turbulent. Great. Just a little less. And then. I mean, yeah, I'm so glad to hear that you're going to write about Bangladesh, because you know, you talked about it throughout the bulk of it. And then I kind of was like, Oh, I would love to know, but that must have been a really, you do sort of like I was in London, and we went to Bangladesh. And then I met a man and we got married, and then I'm into Myanmar and like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But that's a story there. So I look forward to that. And then, you know, I kind of knew I kind of remembered but I got caught up in the story. And then the epilogue kind of was like, Oh, that was I mean, I'm not joking, we're going to spoiler alert, because it's kind of public, right? That, you know, we heard this whole journey of you and your husband, and then you know them together. I mean, how was that for you to then to ride around about this romantic time in your life? Well, one reason that's one reason why the Bangladesh book is parked in the fourth of four Memoirs of this 10 year period that I was away, I need the time and the space away from it to do it justice as well. I'd already begun the book about Myanmar. And then we began separating, so that had to be finished. And that was compartmentalising my life Life, which really is a survival skill. And it was it was cathartic to go back to a place in my mind, where everything was good and great. And and, you know, it's kind of a eulogy in a way and helps you process the different things to the extent that you know, you can really it was, you know, a 10 year relationship, Bangladesh is a really tough place to live. And if you found the themes heavy in Myanmar, this, this will be heavier.

18: 44

18: And during COVID, I didn't have the ability to write about something as challenging as Bangladesh, I wanted to go back and to, you know, live it because I do I live in my mind when I'm writing. And so to be really free in my mind and to be travelling again. And it was a time we look back now and say that was actually fantastic for prompting creative projects. But we didn't know if we were going to return to travel. And that's what we didn't know when that's what made it really sad and scary. Or if travel would look the same as what we knew it the true freedom. And for a while it was looking like India might be off the cards lately, and that really broke my heart as well. Because India has I'm very, very fond of India so that we share that person. I've been 12 times and about to take my retreat there and yeah, it's just and it's always so like ironic, like in 2019 starting 2019 I'm there with a group of women kind of mapping out what group tours would look like and taking women over because as you know, not everyone is like us and some people are very daunted by those places and they want to go but they don't want to go alone. And so I'm they're going and then I went to on a tiger Safari and again

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20: was taking on a full meal so that we could sell these trips. So we're getting already, we're sort of ramping this up, I'm earning commissions from, you know, planning people's trips, it's super fun. And then boom, and, you know, we're now yeah, we're now running a retreat, I'm running this retreat. And I've sold another one for March, a woman's running hers in March that I've helped to plan and that was a so a four years, you know, that's a four year break. And it's kind of like, it's really funny than reflecting now you're going, Oh, this was the plan. And this is what I wanted to do. And this is what I was meant to be doing. I'm just, in a way, it's good, because I've shifted the business and everything. And so it's, I'm doing it in a different way now, but you're like, Yeah, I think we lost that. I don't know that for you that anticipation. Because we had to, we had to kind of hold back of like, if you made a plan, you had it, you're pretty sure it was gonna be cancelled. So you could still make a plan. But you lost that anticipation of like, half the joy of a trip is

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21: and the anticipation and then what's going to happen and then the doing it is lovely and everything. And then you know, another part of the trip is, is the memory and it is having those memories and, and you do I guess gloss over sometimes some of the, the, you know, in that day was probably the cracking parts. But when you in your memory, or just you're gonna remember the good bit of it, yeah, or the truly the truly bad or the truly good. The

21: 28

21: bodily stuff, you don't really, you don't really remember and I also I have become comfortable with a memoir is my they, they're my memories. And I'm not going for, you know the rigour of accuracy to the degree that it could be a news article, I mean, often I've written memoirs around my news articles, but memory is really personal. And even if you and I did a trip together, we'd come home with different memories. So my memoir is my memories. And I do take responsibility for if it's factually inaccurate, because that that will be my mistake, but I'm comfortable to take the risk, I will do my absolute best because the power to me is in it being accurate. I am not a fiction writer, that's a completely different creative endeavour. For me, the point is that it's true. And so what I'm telling you is it's true, and therefore it's meaningful, and it reveals something about the culture. But it's more than my memories. This is personal. So what Sherpa will recollect if Sherpa had had written a book will be completely different, but I'm okay with that. So that's what I would say if you're planning a memoir, and you're tying yourself in knots about the accuracy. That's not the most important element. It has to be it has to be accurate to you and what's in your heart. But don't not write a memoir for fear of some fact checker coming out and saying it was raining on November 3. Yeah.

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22: Oh, I love that. That's so freeing. It's so freeing for me. But I'm sure it's great for the audience and such an interesting, I think the other challenge that I've found over the years was that, you know, and now I understand we recently were at a conference together this fabulous content by Summit, and Anna Featherston was there. And she said, on one of the panels, you got to write your first book to get to your third book. And, you know, understanding that it's not going to be that first book doesn't have to be the everything book. And so sometimes I was trying to get everything in my mind into one book. And I know that I have been actually on a writing retreat. And you know, she was, it was like, what's the style? What's the style? And it's like, well, it's, I like the memoirs style, but then it's like, I kind of was then doing like a how to as well. And so my problem was always the style. And it's like, you could write five books about about that. One year. One's a memoir, month, how to ones are these ones that like, I was like, Ah, okay, and autobiographical to travel them or what's what do you think's the difference there? Well, I mean, just in terms of the the number of books and getting books out, what I found so inspiring is the self publishing community. There are people making money you wouldn't believe and I see their KDP royalties because they share them at the end of the year. self published authors who write for a living, don't talk about books, they talk about series, and they will run 10 books a year. They are full time writers. This is Pulp Fiction, Pulp Fiction, but my gosh, these are multimillionaires. They they sit down and they write and they're super productive. And they're very good writers. And this is why they have millions of KTP page reads every year. So while I'm, they're freaking out about my first book, they're they're talking about the seven series that they've written, you know, and, and so and they just look at it, they look at it from a business perspective. They take the emotion out of it, and they they write to market which is another skill in itself, but they write what they love about and that's why they keep doing it every day because it is it is work.

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24: But I'm not saying

25: 00

25: II and something that I did that inspired me with I took his trip throughout and 65 days should be one book, right? Yep. It's not to let it in half, because they gave me the confidence to six months in it split. So I'm doing because it was getting too long, it was just too long, I had to break a convention that was either going to be giving readers 130,000 word book. But instead I decided, no, I'm going to split it. So when I get to Nepal, when I reach south or south Asia, after Southeast Asia and China, that's the third book, the fourth book will be Bangladesh. And I know it's unconventional, but I can do whatever I want. I don't have a publisher. For me. It's a geographic split, and it's okay.

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25: But that is that is an example of you saying, if there's a book that like planet out, it's not the vibe, but if you can write chapter summaries, you can write 15 of them mean minimum, you've got a book. And then if there's another angle that is sort of more of a business angle on the travel, and you've got 15 topics, good meaty topics that all linked together, that's a book. Yeah, I see that you're going to be brilliant at this new endeavour in your business. And I mean, I wish, gosh, I want to try and we try and keep these episodes short. This is you and I need a series waiting. That's what he wants.

26: 27

26: And I will have you back on these, I would love to hear more. Once the book, The next book is published about I'll read it and consume it. And I'm very, very happy to hear that the Bangladesh story is coming. And it has been so inspiring to me. And I did get teary a few times during your book. And I said to test like I said, We've only met a couple of times, and but I felt very proud of you. With the end of the book like it's

26: 54

26: Yeah, I think it's a, it's a huge thing to achieve. And then to have this capsule Time Capsule as well. I think that's such a beautiful thing for you and your family, at the very least, let alone the readers who are gonna go on and read it. And, you know, so I would just love to hear, I guess two things. So how do you feel about this change? So going from, you know, having this 15 year career to starting this new business? Like what's that sort of feeling like at the moment for you? You just said yesterday, like properly. So interesting. So my dad died in July, he died of dementia after a two year process of not losing him essentially, the day after I tried to keep working because I didn't know what else to do. That very next day, I just was at my desk and I had this sudden realisation I don't want to keep doing this anymore. I don't want to and I messaged my friend Adam Courtney, who is Bryce Courtney son, author of The Power of ERP, he'd ghost written a book, he's a good friend of mine, lovely person. And we spoke on the phone. And he said are you know, I don't know. Like they Yeah, sure. They approached me. And it was a great experience. He's done it before. He said, I don't know if you could make it as a business. But that was enough. I'd been talked out of it before when I'd put out feelers to other ghost riders saying money's not good. I only did it because I believed in the person, you know, who I wrote about.

28: 22

28: And I just decided I had to try. i This is my life. Dad's life has ended. And he would support me. I know he would support me trying just trying I don't have to succeed trying is enough. And I thought I have I have to find out if I can do this. I've always wanted to do it. Funnily enough, I went back to that email to the ghostwriter five years earlier. And it was basically the same contents as what I'd sent. Adam, I don't want to keep doing 800,000 word stories. It's too wham bam, thank you, Sam. Next person, let's do it. You know,

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28: it's it's journalism, it becomes Fish and Chip wrapping paper the day before, even with a digital copy books, you know, really, you do it, there's an emotional connection, you really get to tell someone's story, whether it's your own or someone else's go deep on an idea. It also is something that you have for the rest of your life. You do you have it for the rest of your life, it's something that you have done, like getting a degree, you know, becoming a doctor, that kind of thing. So okay, they're the good bits. And then the scary bits is waking up at three o'clock in the morning, thinking the phone is not gonna ring. Like I'm a single parent, this is the real deal. I do not have a second income. I've always been self employed, but it's it is terrifying. You know, I have I have bills to pay. And if I guess also, you know, if it doesn't work, then I failed publicly.

29: 50

29: Then I was driving class because then the start when you're moving from becoming a journalist to an entrepreneur with your own business, I was driving home the other day

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30: I went past a new business that's set up in a in a warehouse, which is wedding cars and like Lux cars, and they say, new business focus for your next event. And there's probably 15 limos in there. And I thought, Wow, that's a big front up investment, not me setting up a website, you know, so chill out, chill out, you haven't got creditors on your back. But I do have a big risk appetite. But it's just, you know, this is not a hobby. This is this has to work. So you know, at work, I'll make it work. I'm a hustler. I've always been a hustler. I tell myself if I could start my freelance business in Australia with zero contacts.

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30: I will throw myself at this at 90 miles an hour and see what happens. Yes, if you ran around Myanmar, Yangon with plastic bags full of piles of money, collecting money that you earn in 10 cents, a word is the word going around to three different locations and I was I was doing your son's for you, as you're just writing is like just paying for the car to get to that place she spent a whole day? Like, how much money did you actually make, if you've done that, they you this business is going to be fine, you are going to be more than fine. I have at least 10 clients in my mind for you. One of them is looking back at the screen. So Oh, you're gonna be fine. He's so nice.

31: 27

31: I'm super excited for you. And now tell me is the question we sort of asked here is, and I guess we've been leading there with it. But what does living a life you love look like?

31: 38

31: Ah, it is my children. My girls are three and four. And they are kind of the light of my life. And so it's doing things with them. And loving my work, which I think is also part of being a mum is showing them you can be a mum, and you can have a fantastic career. And you can have all these experiences together. So you don't have to choose. And so I want to be you know, as I approach school age, I want to be present enough to be able to come to assembly when you know they've done they're doing something cool. And but yeah, it's true. I just want to acquire experiences and professional experiences, and family experiences. Because again, with losing Dad, it's memories at the end of the day, with a bunch of memories, what assets we have is kind of immaterial, pardon the pun, but I am deeply driven on a professional level. That's part of my identity. And I want to be able to say that I helped people get the books out, I got my own books out and I helped other people because I know the pain the tears like I've cried with rejection letters, and I'm going to publish them soon on my blog. And

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32: it's it was it's heart ache equal to any relationship breakup, that pain of thinking, I'm not going to get to share my story with the world was has been it's crushed me in a different I've tried it different ways. And there's been a door, every door shut door every time. So this I think I'm going to find really fulfilling but I love I by no means have this worked out like I love what you're doing is that I mean, I haven't my kids don't have a passport, my passport expired in COVID. And I've not renewed it, I need to work out how to do this both financially. And from a timing point of view and that you know, thing of like disconnecting while you're away. So there's that I like the process of learning. I like not knowing what's ahead of me and knowing what I want, but how to work out how to get it. Yeah, yeah. And there's, there's a lot more skin in the game when little ones are along. But I also, I don't know, you also get lot more laser focused. And when we used to have hours and hours in the day to do our business and to do our writing. And, you know, I'll just get up at five or I'll just stay out till three and do think we don't have that time. And so you're like, I have to make this work. I have to earn a good income and have time for them. And I have this amount of time. So, you know, I actually I have found in the last I've been will be three in January. So I found that I just Yeah, I I've kind of I don't know, it's been better for me in a way and you know, don't know what's important and what's not. And we're clear on what you want and what you don't want and I loved the first time I met you was at a writers Christmas party and the two girls came along and they were fed. And so they are welcome anytime to editing I love teaching centre things too. And it's an I know it wasn't a choice. I know it was like if I'm going to come I'm bringing the kids yeah, that's okay. We were everyone was fine with that and I got to meet you and so I think this whole like we can combine the business and the life and you'll feel you and I have the travel and it can work it just probably a little bit. Yeah, it kind of like it's not easy when I'm having a bad couple of days. I just tell myself I'm on struggle street this week.

35: 00

35: Next week, I'll be I don't know what the name of the other nice places, but it's certainly challenging. It's an enormous challenge. But I like I like having a long road ahead, if that makes sense. I don't want to be at the destination I'm pointing to. So it's just about, I know what will make me happy. And it's and it's getting to do it, which has always been my goal, you know, just to become a journalist seemed out of reach. Having a career with writing involved seemed out of reach. I still don't take that for granted. I don't think I ever will. Because I thought I was just going to be a, I don't know what pen pusher, an Excel spreadsheet maker for the rest of my life. So, you know, I'm really happy to be on a podcast that still blows my mind. Wow, you

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35: know, you're, you're a must have, and you put yourself forward, which I always love. And please tell us so please tell us the book, how we can find the book and anything else you want to share with us? How can we connect with you? Well, Jessica moderate.com.au, I have a three day old website, which is so cute and beautiful. I'm so happy with it. So you can you know, find out all about my services, book appointments, book, a discovery call if you just want to have a chat. Like, if you've got a book idea in your mind that's been sitting in your mind for five years, I'd love to hear about it. So you can do everything at Jessica model.com.au and connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I love it. And we'll put all those links in, in the show notes. And just because book is available to buy as a physical book, but also as an audible, which is an audio book on Spotify, which was fantastic for me because I wanted to get to it ASAP. And so it helps me to consume it a lot quicker. I literally wanted to go for a walk or go for a drive. So I could listen to it. I am not blowing smoke up. Yeah, it was really so nice and amazing to hear. I get to go write a review online so everybody else gets to hear it too. So thank you so much for sharing. As I say it's been truly inspiring for me if this is a selfish episode, I just wanted to get all the things I will book a discovery call so we can focus on myself to

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37: Excellent, thank you. Thanks so much.

37: 20

37: Thank you for listening lovely one. I hope this has inspired you to dream big instant creating a life you love today. If you love what you're hearing, don't forget to follow and rate on Spotify and rate review and subscribe on iTunes. It helps other awesome people to find this podcast and get motivated and inspired as well. Want to stay connected. Come and join the live a life you love group on Facebook, or connect with me on Instagram. Emma lovell.au, the same as my website. But all the details are in the show notes. Lovely. I'll see you next episode for more inspiration, motivation and freedom seeking. Now go out there and live a life you love