First Date Podcast Update, Grat Lists, My Guru’s a Drunk, Plus Let It Go on the Solstice With Erica J. Schmidt
Welcome to our final episode of 2023! Today’s guest is me, Erica J. Schmidt. I have a special update about my first date podcast project. I’m going to talk a little bit about gratitude lists. And our listener question comes from “My Guru’s a Drunk” who’s concerned about her motivational speaker mentor’s drinking problem. With the Winter Solstice on the horizon, our half-bad ukulele segment is Let It Go from Frozen. For maximum auspiciousness, be sure to sing along.
And that’s a wrap for This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life, 2023, Season 1. Thank you so much to all my incredible guests, listeners, and everyone who helped this long-time podcast dream to come true. I can’t wait to bring you more interviews and episodes in the New Year. Until then, I’m wishing you a joyful, restorative, and low-pressure transition into 2024. May peace prevail in your heart and across the world.
With a heart full of love,
Erica
Mixing, Ukulele, and Cover Art by Erica J. Schmidt in Montréal, Quebec.
For more on Erica, you can read her generously personal essays at ericajschmidt.com/blog.
If you haven’t already, make sure you listen to Episode 12: First Date With Amir.
And if you loved this solo episode, you will also love Episode 1: Taking the Pressure Off With Erica J. Schmidt.
Follow Erica on Facebook or Instagram or check out her website at ericajschmidt.com. You can also make her day by sending her a listener question to any of these places.
And a loving shout-out to Erica’s favourite YouTube ukulele teachers: John at The Ukulele Teacher, Cynthia Lin, Katie at One Music School, Lisa at The Ukulele Fool, Vasko at Ukulele Cheats, and Bernadette at Bernadette Teaches Music. I didn’t get a chance to cite all of your on the pod, but thank you, infinitely for your generous content and enthusiasm for spreading the joys of the ukulele all over the world. Your work is right at the top of my grad list!
Listener Question From “My Guru’s a Drunk”
Dear Erica,
I’m worried my mentor has a drinking problem. I work in self-help and motivational speaking. With my mentor’s support, I’ve climbed to the top of my field—close to where she is. As my career has grown, my mentor has invited me to bigger events in the industry, and we’ve started to hang out more as friends and colleagues than as mentor/mentee. This is when I started to notice that she drinks way more than I realized. She’s always first at the bar and makes jokes about needing a drink on her way. I noticed that at the end of several events, she’s slurry and sloppy which I find surprising because she is known for her work in optimizing habits and self-empowerment.
A couple of weekends ago, I’m quite sure she had at least 6 drinks at a function. Then she came over to my house, drank an entire bottle of wine, and when I said I was out of white, she was like, oh that’s okay, I’ll switch to red, and drank three more glasses. She basically passed out on my couch and I had to accompany her home in an Uber to make sure she got home okay. I checked in with her the next day and it was like nothing happened. We are all free to make our own choices but this and recent experiences have really changed how I see my mentor, both as a role model, and as a person I want to spend my time with. That said, I know this is just one element of her life. Maybe she is going through a hard time and it is a cry for help. But she goes around preaching about how she’s cracked existence with her winning routines and systems. The dissonance feels real and I don’t know what to make of it. Should I confront her? Express my concern? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Love, My Guru’s a Drunk
Thank you to Taes Leavitt (darling big sister, Big Heart Journey, Episode 9 of This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life), Sherwin Tjia (technical and creative advisor, Sherwin’s Quirky Events), and my dearly departed aunt 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.
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.
