Taking the Pressure Off with Erica J. Schmidt
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It’s a miracle! I managed to launch my podcast. Welcome to This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life, a podcast where I talk to people who may—or may not—have had the chance to transformed their lives into a spectacular TED talk. In this debut solo episode, I introduce the show and do my best to interview myself. I revisit academic highlights from Mrs. Vanden Bosch’s grade one class circa 1991. Next, I unpack my very first morning routine, with accompanying thoughts on Gifted Child Syndrome. And I wrap up with a listener question from “Everyone Thought I’d Be Margaret Atwood by Now,” a tortured writer who fears she will never finish her novel. If you have a listener question, please get in touch with Erica via her contact page or Instagram.
“This is your strange and beautiful life. You can do all sorts of interesting shit. But you don’t have to. Your life does not have to be a spectacular TED talk.”
Inspiring books about creativity:
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
Splendid Books that Arose Following a Creative “Failure”
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Matthews
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
*Please support your indie bookstores
Loving shout-out to the song of Erica’s life, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
Erica’s letter to Mrs. Vanden Bosch was first performed at Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, crucial listening for anyone looking to heal their Gifted Child Syndrome. Check out episode 624 with six-year-old Erica kicking off the top of the show:
Mixing, Ukulele, and Cover Art by Erica J. Schmidt in Montréal, Quebec
Special thanks to Taes Leavitt (darling big sister, Big Heart Journey), Sherwin Tjia (technical and creative advisor, Sherwin’s Quirky Events), and my dearly departed Eileen Gun, whose generous gift helped to fund my new podcast equipment. Thank you so much for listening! Stay tuned for more episodes extra soon. Don't forget to follow This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life on your favourite podcast platform. And if you enjoyed the episode, I would be immensely grateful if you could share it with a friend and/or leave a kind and enthusiastic rating and review. (Here are those handy links again: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.)
This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life is brought to you by Lil and Bud dog cards, purchasable at ericajschmidt.com/merch. If you would like to sponsor the podcast, I would love to plug your product, service, or project as long as it doesn’t harm any people or their bodies. Please get in touch via my website or Instagram.
Website: ericajschmidt.com
Instagram: @erica.j.schmidt
