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Transcript of Meta Connect 2022 Main Stage: Carmack Q&A: John Carmack answers the questions you want to ask

Original video

Hi, and welcome back to Meta Square.

All right, so hi everyone. John is joined by a group of developers or until my headset battery dies. So let's go join the conversation. Virtual Event Production Lead here at Meta.

[AJ] I think I was starting.

So I'll kick it off. My name's AJ. we're one of the launchpad participants.

[Guest] Thanks so much for joining us, John. I'm Nate Barsetti,

Okay. what is the thing or concept you see but also done as a co-op multiplayer. that is more work oriented, and what is something a developer at my scale as the most significant blocker to growth in VR in general, is kind of the intersection of a game like Skyrim I am at your disposal for as long as you have questions now,

So I really don't think there are any

Yeah, all right. acceptance where things like Beat Saber and Supernatural, Thank you for joining us for the Carmack Q&A. I think people trip themselves up when they go for much more sophisticated interaction dynamics, show stoppers for VR success at scale now. and like if you're doing an RPG game, and it pretty much works.

[Guest] Hello. I don't know how we're gonna go around here. really realized in VR, (people chuckling) Who's moderating or starting? And I think that's still what too many people in VR if you can add all sorts of layers of depth I'm happy to be here. in what you're doing and kind of gently from our launchpad, start and growth programs. I think we have enough examples and existence proofs I run ODEN Software, Current project that we're working on now with, you know, the Dungeons and Dragons mechanics

Yeah. would be a great game any other place, to VR controls could be a real stumbling block where you just drop those on somebody's head of things going out and getting really good mainstream So, my question for you is

So I'm Jim Theberge from Hidden Realms. that are important kind of miss,

[AJ] I can dig it.

So there is a pretty deep body of research to do locomotion or inventory control or whatever. So, there's so much that's not really VR specific as they're tracing a geometric trajectory across the air. every shotgun blast time perfectly, I mean, some people want the incredible grim experience for people adopting it. as many people that might have any conceivable interest to your game in the first 10 or 15 minutes. Now, that is some people's cup of tea. when you talk about something in the abstract, so you feel that enormous accomplishment. for extra sophistication, those are all still the most important things in VR. And those are just not going to be the things And the general advice is figuring out exactly how you map all of those things that I keep telling people that all the things but you have to hook them first. all the different things about their favorite ways What you've gotta do in VR is just can do to mitigate that? and all the different things that your users demand that you're getting to the end. that then gets extra depth and richness from VR, pull them into the game, there's lots of stuff when you get people to make a good or successful product in anything, It's basically a cross between the games Gauntlet and Gorn, that determine whether somebody likes or will come back And, well, we've already had some chat going on before. before really taking the hardcore VR mechanics.

[Jim] I've actually got a related question. the tactical game feel of things. You know, I was always about, And how to leverage player psychology in game design that are already hooked, but you don't want it to have especially in when you get into sort of where sometimes you're like, I mean, it's always nice to give you an extra cookie is that fact that you need to kind of gather up I'm basically an indie game studio building a loot and shoot dungeon crawler entitled Dungeon of Nekros for the Meta Quest 2. on kind of the psychological stuff and it's heavily influenced by work Because people that are VR enthusiasts will talk about shoot yourself in your own foot For example, what game design elements drive replayability? that you did in your earlier days at id Software,

Yeah, I think the journey itself, you know, is you get this awesome cool new item and you look at the world of gaming, That it's just so much fun to play So that's been my path. But there are clearly valuable things and Dooms and whatnots, the Call of Duty multiplayers, everything that you mentioned is definitely It was always about the game feel that you're not necessarily being led around on, you know, with item progressions where, you know, it can be the enjoy- And some people just do it for thousands of hours and then here's how the weapon matrix is out. the things that have been the most important types of things of the moment-to-moment side of things. getting through the game, Here's like every item or every weapon that I'm gonna have that I'm going to do for feedback You just do it because it's awesome. You can just dump too much of one thing in. in some cases. enjoy playing for the sake of playing. by some bait that you're working to try to achieve. And it's like a chef making something that a lot of these wind up being things that people just And that, I remember when I was doing this back with arc and progression and raising tension and kind of And some people go and make spreadsheets that other types of game designers do that, you know, of all of these things. of all the different elements that you're mixing in. directorial and storytelling things that happen across it. You know, the designers that are really picking it all out. for a programmatic thing, find as many places to use it as possible, But I do think that if you go out You need to make sure that you can hear the notes to have each thing in. but you can overdo it. Make sure that anything that you can think of doing here are all the different axes that I can give feedback on. I immediately do something to tell them all right, the user triggered this here. a dozen things that you do to give feedback for it. smoke comes off and you can literally write out in the Quake 3 Arena days when I just wrote out this list of here's all the different things You wanna look through every single frame and say, that I have acknowledged their behavior. record a high frame rate video capture of everything and you have seasonings and you have to go ahead where you have all of these seasons and figure out exactly the right amount and then it comes back on the sound rolls in, I start a sound effect. I play an animation, I have a muzzle flash, anytime you're doing a game, and don't just say, well, I tell people to look at frames, you know, And I'm really not deeply read that's almost nothing. like a gun firing in a game that's, you know, "ah, dammit, I'm just gonna gut my way through this But there are a ton of aspects to that where there are, that you do intrinsically fun where there are a lot of games was always just making the actions at the end of something, But I'm much more about like you wanna be that you don't even care that much of getting to the end like Ultima Underworld and Diablo. to drive players to return to a game over and over? about compulsion loops and so on. as well as what unexplored areas in game design rather than saying it's all about the VR aspect. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on those topics, You know, try to just do something that sliding through all this, just having a blast, such player sticky titles like Doom, What matters then is you break it all down to, And I was always much more about you know, whipping around, feeling every rewarding action, about the qualities of games that make them sticky. I've always been intensely curious the rail gun sniping somebody out I want the game to just be so much fun as you're doing it but that's never been my method. My contribution on the design side you feel may be opportunities to drive stickiness. not trip over your own feet or, you know, as well as games from my youth with some VR specific mechanic. the gambling oriented games where you get people So my question is, as a game developer, Just these intrinsically fulfilling things. Given your experience with building Thanks. on titles like Doom, because I wanna get to the end." to have been a struggle to get to it. that are pretty objectively pursuing some of those areas. in a lot of those areas where I know, And that works for some people, You know, you're giving them an attractive carrot. kind of coddling them through a lot of it

Yeah, and sometimes like you get that And I take the same approach in terms of just, you know, that I think gives the player a feed, you know, You know, it doesn't have to be the end goal that I, you know, the Fortnites and Minecrafts can be debate as well.

I like your analogy too of being a chef

Yeah. it's kind of like a choose your own adventure mindscape that you move through. So we're making an interactive experience, and I run a small game studio called Most Ancient. and how, you know, maybe it affected the NPCs Yeah. and how do I make it better and more, you know, because that's how I feel when I'm making things too. that is so much fun to use that you're just kind of, just fuller for the player, so. that were in the frame at the time. with some new toy. your reward is not a specific thing, your reward for getting here but it's your reward is getting to play more

Right. Yeah. Sorry, I'm a little under the weather, so bear with me. I have a question that's kind of on a different direction, I mean, we don't really know who the audience is gonna be

Well, I mean the nice thing That is a hard way to live though. where think about actual people like and there is no kind of royal road to success You have to kind of pick your battles well where can I go raise $10 million to build my VR game where for some non gaming things you'll find organizations don't think about abstract markets. And the hope is that you keep the lights on long enough, I wouldn't say there's great odds of success it really has to be finding a small market in the space between it. that they thought would be interesting in VR Who do you think is gonna be supporting So starting off from scratch to be making some kind of game, yeah, I don't, on a small enough scale that makes it valuable to them? on any platform is a very, very hard road that want to be involved in get some of the metaverse juice in some places, you know, Oculus or Meta You know, one of my advice that I'd give to everybody is it has to be done on a smaller scale. It's never easy to be a spinning up a small game studio you know, you don't need a publisher like in the old days at a traditional game development project and it's like, in some way. What is actually going to be the factor going through, adding in every element were small developers that were able to go do something these kind of projects as the platform sort of develop? that takes less and less total effort to be able to build. you work on your custom, you know, your passion project working on VR is where is the funding for these projects? that's not really around, you know, that they could sort of test the waters. 'cause they keep on wanting to expand it But one thing that I feel like as developers of small teams it's really hard to know if your investment of time I know there are a lot of small teams that do some work that that you can absolutely serve. a bit of feedback here and there about what they just did as support for some cases, but people that look You gotta think about really personal markets in something like that. There are places that there are grants to do development So most of the successful early VR titles for other organizations. to go ahead and get access to customers. is gonna pay back to you. So who's like publishing these things? And they've heard it's big, they want to get involved. about sort of direct user interaction platforms is that, but when you don't have a guaranteed audience, and get new people in, And then thinking about what's missing but, so my name's Veronica Graham

Yeah. it's gotta be simple and clear enough that they can pick up just looking around trying to do something, is really what you've gotta concentrate on. You know, if they've spent a minute with the people that are running these projects, that's, it's better to be very, very self-contained than to have some really rough mess You know, that ultimate distillation of everything down above that by having something that are funding the projects. And so if you can rise your scope's not going to be anything they are used to seeing an incredible slush pile you know, go to some of the people that's large scale and open. on it in seconds. of really, really mediocre stuff in a lot of ways. that would be my argument as to, you know, that do have some purse strings, That's a path that you can then start trying to leverage, because you don't have the resources or budget to do that. and concise and just have some little hint of magic in it, And if you want to impress people as they're enjoying themselves. And you know, You can see the smile under the headset to the experience and in a minute they're doing something, is really fun and like that sense of playing a feel that is really great that you've got a dozen people where if you've got something that you can onboard somebody they're like, hey, this is kind of cool. that think something is, you know, But if you've got something that has, that's gonna get through that. kind of keep the lights on by doing contract work who is going to be buying this game? And can you distill it down then into something And in a lot of cases,

So my name is Immersive Matthew, and I'm a, the story of the metaverse, about focusing on the emotional reaction, those emotions that you're just talking about how do you measure their emotional reaction? because I'm not a game developer. I see myself more than Imagineer than a developer you've probably already lost them. But yeah, it's still hard. But if there's a kernel of an idea, So my question is, I guess I'm an Imagineer as you were saying earlier. except for that dopamine part.

[Matthew] Can I have the following question to that? what you were trying to say there is focusing to get from the player, none of that is relevant to me So when you talk about game loops, but I imagine that as soon as eye tracking and I'm making a dark ride about the metaverse, that you're trying to-

Right now what developers have to do is So my question is, but they won't watch the people play it. And it's amazing how many people will spend a year building a game and they'll give it to people, where do you see the kind of data channel on what is the emotional status of our guests. so we can then craft those experiences to get, you know, becomes a feature, on that emotional reaction. which I understand, I understand that dopamine hit you need I guess is what you were trying to, And I find that really interesting what you're saying how we got to this point and where it's going. for developers like us or creators like us in the future, this hearing you talk is really resonating with me I guess the question I would have is the following one is

Now, in the future, If you never got a rise out of them, clicks the button does that and they, you know, that's going to like, take it to broad levels. If they're just playing your game They've got visions in their mind because they haven't watched other people interact with it. a grim smile of accomplishment there or just a smile of glee and they paper over everything, It's like, you know, that was kind of fun. we're gonna be able to get very clear data if you're rendering avatars and you've got that information, but watching people and like watching their faces, you know, Because for me right now, I don't get a lot of data, that you have to be able to get that. and put 2000 hours of development into something, seeing when somebody, you know you've got something this idea of using the eye and face tracking you have to literally watch people play your game. in the near future so we can get that kind of data then your game doesn't have the real magical spark And it's some of the saddest things for me to see people but they've built something that's just not good that have like poured their heart and soul into something

Yeah.

[Matthew] Yeah, okay, that's cool. than the moments of joy. that should be generally valuable of kind that would be a good idea for us to have. And catching those on your game may even be more important compared to Quest 2 in the mainstream, and disgusted with what's happening. that's going to be more effusive positive just do not pay enough attention of the second-tier and lower game developers to how people are really responding to their games. about like how much of the, you know, And we may be able to get something from that. that they just saw something amazing. on that is, but it sounds like something and it's also gonna be a different demographic where people are just pissed off probably a more reserved set of people than the, you know, We have a bunch of issues with privacy that would be quite valuable because I know large fractions you should be able to pull that out. you know, like on Quest Pro is going to be a niche product and afterwards they're like, Yeah, it was okay. I actually don't know where we are with that. So if you're running, But we've got the issue again where these, the tracking data is going to be available. they just get that smile whether it's, you know, Clearly we have to make that possible to skin an avatar I'm not aware of what the status of internal research But that seems like something to collect that kind of joy at scale, in a game when somebody, you know, which we totally should be able to do. from eye and Face Data, and they're not aware of it

Yeah, I can follow up on that too. where it's aimed at professionals and you're gonna get a thousand people played my game, So I'm probably gonna follow up with somebody internally only this many of them came back. So first of all, my name is Eric and I work for Squido. or negative about it. on an adventure game And yeah, you'll also get the negative ones But it's gonna be very hard to extrapolate from that the teenager that's got the Quest 2 about that because it seems like

On like what they're like a feedback form and getting their feedback. or this is not working. Or if they had a frustration, they were like, oh no, and they're still expressing something. it's still information I tell people you definitely want to pay attention and insensitive about something, what you need to know, but you should still listen but you have to filter it in a lot of ways so actually seeing the people play really helps with that. to everything that everybody says online. where they're probably not going to be telling you exactly because even if it's just, you know, somebody being outraged Now, you know, spinning off of that a little bit, You know, they're expressing something, can't really put their emotions on paper. But like, if they're having frustrations, You will be though as a developer they'll say like, oh, this was cool, they're not gonna be able to pinpoint it. feeling because oftentimes people is entirely different thing than just having and then just by looking at their reactions, we could see, we had a beta for a game that had like 200,000 downloads, that has a physics-based locomotion system And yeah, so just to follow up on that conversation this is not working, or I can't press these buttons, So actually like seeing people play VR okay, this is working. with just a very, very small pull of people but then recently we did a play test like for example, that you were having, I do agree because the, called No More Rainbows. or anger-inducing aspects of it. I don't know. We've made a world here in Horizons and we're also working we're in the Growth Track as well. of a happiness sentiment that we're extracting You know, it can go out and you can say, hey, to exactly what parts of it were the joy We're a development studio,

That's true

Yeah.

And they can't, this is my favorite part, this was like the worst part.

Yeah.

Yeah. (laughing) you know, it is,

Where mean internally, I mean like, I don't read the comments, that's not a great place to be. of some of our first party applications I've had that problem-

I wanted to follow up on the topic Not making version 2.0 that's completely different, replicate that and spread it out. And it's amazing how much benefit comes looking at an empty whiteboard all the things that are good, And people like to think that design is about this like leaning back, blue sky, it's like, ah, this is all terrible. If you've just landed at a random point in design space, and sometimes people will have conflicting desires, any of the positive stuff, that had some positive reaction, And if you're at a point where your product isn't getting you've probably made the wrong product. And I tell people to like follow the gradient of user value, But as soon as you find somebody And if you really rigorously follow that, and even joy from the positive things that are in there. there's a signal there and you can start kind of tacking you know, where you've got to find something. where don't get destroyed by the negatives, but take value and, you know, But if you set your expectations reasonably, and you can kind of take an anti-fragile approach there And, you know, you can't let yourself be crushed Just that's the reality of it. there's gonna be people that hate what you do. by a few negative things Or, you know, and the reviews, like, read through all of that, And if you get to the point where you're just like, oh,

Yeah, that's a good one. I built a world called Hanami

Hundred percent. but just fix everything that sucks and then find, you know, and then iteratively improving. and kind of gradient ascent towards success. why aren't we looking at the reviews which is a cherry blossom viewing world

That might be a little depressing sometimes to go, but that's what should be driving a lot of your decisions. you mentioned, conflicting designs. that are getting hammered for a lot of stuff My name's Chinami Michaels, and people are like, well-

There are, yeah. because people would try out new game modes, that the whole world is so crude, you know, which seems to indicate that it will raise the skill level of the video games that I was involved with, So how do you continue to support I've been wanting to ask about how, in first person shooters, of game modding because everything was crude. And there's also a dragon because it's VR they were basically professional development teams for them to do that and just jump into spatial 3D creation sorry I wrote down the question But then every generation after that, And so there was all this amazing creative stuff needed to be a creator It's sort of my love letter to that experience. and it got harder and harder for people to make game mods There's real issues there. for the experience. allowing 3D meshes to come in, where you can go cherry blossom viewing in Japan so I wouldn't get too long winded. anywhere at any time. the people that were still doing game modding And and also what people's expectations will be with really strong emotional stories that aren't games, Because they're coming in new users who come on and create some of the most interesting experiences I've had. the need to support new user, You know, you need to be able to have some kernel but it's so much more about like getting something out there your design over into that direction. but average it all together and sketching out a genius design, to kind of grow off of. from purely local changes. because there's no matter how good you are, I was in the Horizon Growth Track.

Yeah. without this pushing the limits on AAA quality. And the fact that these are it will look much better. But like I was saying earlier, what is this PS2 graphics stuff talking about how Horizon And you're right, that professional triangle modeling will, to have very, very large scale success such enormously successful title shows we have to make the graphics look better. after my talk, I had somebody going, you know, we are still fighting this issue where in my Twitter feed that it can still be possible next to the commercial offerings until in the later years, make crazy items and do things like that. nobody could do something ultra amazing. has some surprising benefits on the creative side of things. the graphics got more sophisticated, with also that kind of seemed relevant And like some of the things, You know, you had limits, one of the brilliant amazing thing about Minecraft is and Horizon Worlds makes it so accessible How Horizon Worlds will balance but they're strong narrative experiences that were still just operating in the amateur space the fact that having quality upper limits that the original Quake 1 was the golden age and seeing, especially Minecraft, but also now Roblox where a lot of people would look back and say it sets a maximum level. everything got better and more polished, And like, I saw this going through the whole history those new-

It's okay. = Because these are the real and pull things over here. they wanna be able to just say, views for everything. and they don't stay live in the main line. But I think that's the path. multiple seconds to decode and then, you know, it could like show these brand new full frame I, you know, and I had all these giant images that I could decode And it was amazing. There are literally millions of wonderful images. So, I'm sorry, a lot of these questions, Or if we get other things in WebXR experiences That we know we have all this data from things I had this huge view and I had a controller in 15 milliseconds a piece. And like we don't even have an app for viewing that anymore like all the feeds on all the social apps. Like I did a demo of using the video encoding technology because that's one of the things that should be like to load a 360 photo as an 8K by 4K jpeg image, all the latest frameworks and construction sets for things. So hopefully the experiences in VR can be like that. everything under the sun exists on the web by hand in Notepad. load your experience and actually try to experience it. And I think that we need some faster way to get through that So there's a lot more that I think we can do that you exist is step one. because we never got a lot of support on the 360 Photos app. to get to them, nobody finds them. or appreciation for something. And I was really disappointed that this happened because the process of getting into Horizon beautiful moments, but if it takes you multiple minutes But I do think I still hold out pretty good hope where you get a little bit of that poetic beauty that VR can have this, you know, and professionalism challenges on mobile than they do on PC. and this is objectively better. and things that we have to deal with here. where it might not have a lot in it, I can be like, okay, you do this with your Vertex, and there are some retro sites that are still done And then getting them to actually like, messy world of trying to build, And people talk about the funnel you know, is a challenge. that doesn't have the preconceived notions but they have a lot more serious kind of polish especially entertainment applications There's some things there, but I hope that it can be made so easy to get into And then there's things that are built in, you know, And then we need to make it just super easy because they're trying to be everything for everyone. and you could have a world that looks like that, to get into these as bite-sized experiences You're just talking to anybody that got a new VR headset that you don't talk to the Horizon community, of what's going to be in there. I don't know on all this dynamically for everything. In some ways you have to kind of pick a style. is a real issue. And so from creators, with what they're trying to do don't rush for the next revolution of all of these things. you'll always be able to create new things anywhere, I'm trying to tell people, it's like, but that problem of how will the community receive it but I like our current avatars. So I do keep saying of, I've had criticisms of a lot of aspects of Horizon, Take what we've got and just nail down the quality You want it to be a place for everyone, but not all design directions are reconcilable. the new Lord of the Rings environment I think that they have a huge challenge in a lot of ways So you have this strong tension, it's like, oh no, You can make like I'm not really on the Horizon team. And Horizon could just import that And I don't have an answer for this. and home looks amazing. which is a very different style than what we've got here. and the avatars look there.

Am I muted? or even worse a Horizon World because so much infrastructure I've got ideas and plans of attacks for how we could make it Oh you're mute. Yeah. 10 times faster, but they're not near term things. needs to be loaded in. But it's so much harder to do with a big WebXR experience work that people do as creators with those. we can be kind of close with the illustrations, but if we could get more of the experiences like that, And we can kind of do that with video, 360 Videos now. there's interesting stuff there and you wanna just be able to tap on it. But if you could get to the point I want Explore when you land in VR to be like a feed, where you see something interesting, It's about if things load a quarter second faster, you load that in, it just takes multiple seconds to load, where getting a user to even be aware to make this immediately gratifyingly responsive. that become easier for people to do. WebXR experiences or Horizon Worlds, you know, static models, and as fast as I could tap the buttons, But these are twitchy, low level, can cover all of that. I think that we could imagine apps, of different tastes and we have specific limitations But the design questions are hard because it's a whole world And there are paths around that. that gives you a little moment of peace You know, there is no web design guide that give you necessarily actionable stuff here. that everybody follows. let's grab the library that's used in the Facebook app And we never got that level of focus in VR Whether Horizon is a single application because there's a lot of stuff that could give these And I try to get things like that the behavior we'd like it to have is be like a website. There's everything in the world, get into the application, on the platform level so that, you know, a separate eye frame for every image whether it's things like static environments, into our mainstream applications. which would be probably the hardest of them to do that. technically optimized things where the teams, you know, where I did some demos of bringing technology into it. and finding something, that materially affects millions of users. what to do about that, the Horizon gaming community in some way. And my take was that it was on us to find some way this with your shaders and we just get it done compelling, amazing photos. the simple first time user just create something where if we're talking strictly technical stuff, sort of the easiest user-generated content. And there are a lot of really beautiful, but there's just something with the composition there I don't have like perfect answers instead of like encoding a video, I made a separate, I've done this with photos and videos even with 360 Photos, I need to get more buy in from developers. half second upload before you finally render something.

Yeah. some of those cool animations and there's some interesting I saw the mute go off and on there. Oh, I still can't hear you. It's only a few seconds to start a 360 video, Are you muted there?

Of a like processor development. we'll come back to it. Well go into somebody else here and if we hear you, Oh, okay. All right in the corner there. if you get your audio working,

Yeah.

An old timer welcome back. I talked to you briefly at Connect 6 in 2019

No, I actually think it literally will never hit the level do you think that the state of mobile processors will ever and asked you a bit about- I mean previous generation, high end GPU, CPU. of like your modern, even previous generation VR, approach what we see now in PC more powerful processors

Where we're doing a little bit of that on Quest Pro, seeing a GPU taking 700 watts now. And that was nine, We wind up being power and thermal limited and we're seeing we're pumping more power into it We didn't get really better silicon at that point. just by pushing more power into it, it had a two core processor at the time and, you know, where now they're getting a lot of the performance now we're running on an eight core processor In the next decade we might get another order of magnitude when you're four or five generations down the road. eight to nine years ago at this point. at a much higher frequency with, you know, And I think probably not. more performance than that. but it's still probably not a full order of magnitude when I first brought up Gear VR on mobile, of performance, but it's gonna be tailing off by then. You know, that winds up being real performance more stuff going on, So like the first, and we're gonna continue to get faster, it's like okay for 30% more each generation You know, we're gonna wind up getting, that compounds up a lot. I mean Apple especially has done some amazing work I was using a Samsung Galaxy S6, you know, but we're not gonna get 50 times faster. out of a relatively low amount of power. given that we're. But we know where we are with all the different nodes with getting a lot of performance I wanted to follow up now that it's 2022,

That's crazy. where the latest cutting edge nodes on GPUs that at the very highest end

Let me get one the person over here first, yeah. to floating point calculations sooner than they needed to. where that's possible in G and VR and all the things that you can do with that. But all of this really could be done back if they know what they were doing. There is some hope that dedicated custom hardware winds up. You get a factor of two by going to systolic arrays are actually going in that direction. So we could get more pixels per second out of a given watt with like 10 or 12 bit fixed precision. but I've got no signs that any of the major vendors but it's not gonna be magic. But you just slip your schedule a little bit, you're kind of saved by that (guests laughing) even in computer vision type things, and that's not really happening so much. you gotta care about performance now. But unless you start going to lower precisions on things like all the stuff that we're doing here, to be like, oh, this is not really fast enough. it's still lots of multiply ads and the GPUs are pretty good where so much of the work that we might want to do, There was a period kind of in the '90s, But it looks like we're slowly tailing down. at doing the multiply ads. You can still clearly, you're making game devs and you could make something get adopted really fast and, you know, the new processors come out, We're gonna get more, Every win is very hard fought. not your OS twice as fast as what it was. CPU faster, GPU faster, dedicated VR hardware, but it is probably never going to get to the point if something comes along and we just dramatically improve It's just mobile's, you know, the next XR2 G2 sort of in development, And that's why I keep telling people, all of our CPU stuff. I'd be the happiest person in the world So no, we're still writing a track of improvement, it's always possible we get some amazing breakthrough. where people are on the PC today. We can turn more power into heat without causing a problem to get more stuff out of it. with the headset. We just got a better cooling system on it.

And can I ask a question about the hardware? probably 16 bit floating point if they were, And so we actually do a lot of work in augmented reality It made it nice and easy to program things, but I, for things instead of things If anything, I kind of think graphics almost jumped

Hi John. I'm Ryan Canuel. if we wanted to, I run the company Petrichor in the Boston area. and so we're really excited a lot of performance was given up for that But it's gonna be trade offs, it's not going to be free. by specializing things very carefully, with Nvidia Register combiners in the late nineties everything here is rendered in shades with floating point,

Yeah, you get your 30% performance boost,

Oh man, I was counting on that. but it's not as easy as most people think

[Ryan] Sure, sure. That's why we decided to just avoid any of them And just seeing real life filtered comparable to Drop Simulator. That's a good point. But I'm a little skeptical of the value proposition It's still not on the horizon, as far as what you would do or office, augmenting the surfaces that way. the imaginary magical headset that you wear all the time out the sides or down below with that. and the rendering process, I'm not dogmatic about this, but I have yet to see the, Now there's gonna be some work environments where, to me, always a lot of the pitch was what it is myself. you know, the example of the application that's just like, You know, I do not rule it out but I don't know there are artifacts, that that's a pure good there. that you should be able to do it better. But I am totally prepared to be proven wrong. with the headset on your head moving around your house but is your real world better than the virtual world that you can put on the headset and be in a cooler place that we hope that we'll have tomorrow for people where a lot of the things are, it's like, hey, I think it is a great way to build today the apps You know, that's gonna be great. and what are some of the things that you really hope to see developers do with that? that just annotates your world around you. You know, internally at the company, you can still potentially get an order what's some of the things that you're most excited about and we could choose to call some of that back today of magnitude improvement that are sort of independently thread scheduled. I wanted to ask for that, you know, by removing some of the features that we love. about the full color pass through on the Quest Pro I, you know, see no programming through it.

Yeah. So everything is just around you and there's no need or fluid movement or what we've seen now mostly And usually they have whether teleport movement very early in the morning already. But every time we check out different games from app stores,

So I'm not aware of any robust hardware solution So if somebody says, I always want free navigation, There's the things that we know make people sick, and take the best one. which seem to help some people. just walking around a little bit with that. or software perspective that you can imagine Is there any solution for this from a hardware for the foreseeable future? which does point where Horizon should have something less to decide one of three different locomotion things. I mean we've got people that try the little vibrating things like smooth turning versus snap turning. that you do not have to move. I'm like, oh this doesn't feel good. and go to a more another approach that we wanted to make the locomotion issues on the headsets or the wrist bands, And what we think is that this is not a suitable solution with Oculus and now Meta and for all of our games through the limited quality of the cameras We were doing VR games since 2016 now working together experimenting and maybe somebody's gonna hit on something for an easy to use approach to for locomotion in our games. to like motion sickness there. is they have both and then they have different styles It's not nearly as clear as just kind of peeking down but even with the higher resolution cameras and the color, oh everybody's gonna wanna do this. we see that most of the games go different routes. it's not clear to me that that's, you know,

So I'm really not the MR booster. and you snake walk, that's a problem. like a five degree turn or something for that. that we should do globally where just any game that supports it, I had that turned on when I was doing my unscripted talk. So like Horizon has one vignette for moving I should at least have an option of doing different rates that they come in. for full color pass through and that technology than you are in real life, When I wanted that fine granularity, than the 15 degree turn. where I've got my notes going on and yeah, has its own mitigation with the vignettes,

Hi John, I'm Konrad from Fusion Play. So it's late in the evening. the user's actual head move. just go ahead and throw me into that mode. We are sitting in Leipzig, Germany. we had one big premise where you wanna do that, I think people that are excited about the future of AR rather than the present of ar of AR today that are excited the immersive virtual reality being the thing And I think that would be great but you have to submit something else to the compositor Or if you're turning your head while you're moving I really am about the, you know, many games offer both teleport and free navigation. but a strict linear move, there are things you have to deal with there. on magical AR headsets. that is the unique value for it, MR and AR, with rotation it's like everything moving around, happening on screen that doesn't correspond if it's at a constant velocity, it's only the moving around. as low or as simple as possible. towards the camera view while I'm aligned sort of objective solution for this

Yeah. and 20 different applications could then behave do some kind of vignette when you move right now. and then all games would automatically benefit from it and when you submit your buffers are submitting depth buffers right now. of different things about we could deep mine the data We could spend a lot of time on our psychological research in the exact same way. just set this extra flag when you resolve on resolve to make it really worthwhile. But I think that would be a genuine positive thing for the entire system experience to just say we handle it, So we would probably have to couple this but it would cost a good chunk of performance right now with some way of getting sub sample depth buffers to resolve the depth buffers. It really should be depth aware, not just, oh you're moving, We do have an interface for it, that huge surface right next to you it's in there in the OpenXR spec, let's fade something in from the side. But again, no applications So I would love to do that at a system level. And that entire thing should be vignetted out. there is no comfort issue doing very disturbing things. every little motion that's not head motion is going to have but as soon as you walk right up no matter how, you know, and you have a wall next to your head, if you're in an outdoor area and you've got a sky box And you would not want to have a vignette come in at all, And it could be better than anything anybody's doing now Because for instance, because it would be properly depth aware. you move around because there's no local thing moving. It's just a constant velocity. all over you and you're just looking around like that, at a system level where you would have you know, different things that you can do there, that's an objectively calculatable thing you don't really need a vignette where we could make that a sub sample depth buffer to my desk in real world But I do think that we should have some sense And, you know, And I do think there is actually a technical That would be a good thing. try out different styles that doesn't make you sick I'm gonna close my eyes when I'm doing large turns. And then I don't like how every application and you have a super large options menu where you first have 'Cause I wanted to make sure that I could be aligned of a global preference because like you say, to have just a global user preference at least. to your inertial sense. of vignettes you can activate and deactivate And our games are purely designed for VR around the way You know, if you do that, like I had that set up, set a threshold and then if any game, any experience, so it's not as big of a hit, and then just say we are going to let the user this is cool that I've got this now in my real world, you can look at anything in your view and go frame to frame, But this factor of things where there's a discrepancy if you're just moving in a linear line, where if you have a depth map, that's just freaking amazing. to submit a depth buffer, which is an extra cost. what actually makes you sick is the sense of something And I think that we should have the option of doing that between the inertial frame and your rendering frame, about this and then people just, you know, and then one vignette for smooth turning. you know, like how did this move and how did There's things that I'd like to do any motion, if it's submitting depth buffers, we do a uniform system level comfort mitigation there.

As compared to playing rather than just taking the sort of best practice of oh, as much motion sickness. and when play testing we found that users don't have where you move with your entire arms because our game uses special physics locomotion system

Yeah, that's true.

It clearly does help. do you think that moving more body parts has a positive effect on reducing motion sickness perhaps?

But when you've got a game that can cater to that, but like when I was playing Pop 1, You know, as they're moving around in their meeting. across an open field, People are really hustling around with their arms, And I remember people talking about, I mean, if we can find use for the locomotion, games with a joystick.

So I can like talk a little bit about that Gorilla Tag is one of the obvious things you can.

No, exactly. Do you think games that use more of the body,

Exactly, yeah. but when you've got some somebody motion tied to it, your brain gives you a lot more leeway. we would talk about how it's like you're walking or not only games, but maybe apps as well, you know, doing anything like that synchronized does work, gorilla walking around.

Hi, so my question will be pretty quick I'm the developer for Smash Runs on the Quest 2 and well, So it's not a sufficient solution, And that would also be a comfort mitigation of, But you can't imagine people in an office but it's probably not a universal solution you really just want to be pumping your arms to make you go faster. for a lot of people.

So I don't have them, I'm Julien, where you have artificial commission? And so Konrad asked the question then you're lucky, you've got a great situation. Are they- I suffer from severe motion sickness are affected, like severely affected as in the can't play, Do you ask these analytics? because Konrad mostly asks the same. about technical solution, et cetera. because there's, I mean there's certainly a lot for as long as I've known VR. Yeah. Another thing I was wondering is, most of the experiences

Yeah, because it's, I mean, it's a real thing. the most minutes that are in environments like that. the eye and face tracking in addition to sentiment, that I was carefully looking at the artifacts and it's kind of the perfect VR app you know, VRChat, Rec Room and Horizon where you kind of, those by far the most minutes are being spent in applications like that It's kind of moving to get to a place that you can learn. but the moving's not usually the thing. where people do move around a little bit, you have games with a little bit of locomotion like, It just plays to all the strengths and, you know, and that has the most users, There's something to be said there. The games that do have a lot of locomotion, it doesn't have kind of interaction playing to all the strengths and it winds up do you have some sort of analytics about how many people So Beat Saber is still the most successful app in VR

That would be good. after I played that for a little while because it doesn't have the motion sickness issues, this is the game that we want to play. comfort above all, that was in the early days of Oculus, they love what they've got. dialed in and that's the niche that you're aiming at And I mean it probably didn't help But that's another thing that we probably could use I mean, I played, I like to check out like how App Space that's just like gut it out, you've got to get your VR legs, start getting that sense of like, to get to your spot in the social things. But it is also a mistake to say, you know, oh, I'm not feeling good, and getting some real data about that. I wouldn't recommend catering to them as, you know, as you're target unless you know that you've got them if you move around to a position you get here, the hardcore run and gun people that are doing that in VR, moving back and forth with App Space Warp with physical objects issues.

What the company would do. to have a hard line there because there are, So it's a mistake to, you know, So it was like all the games have to be playable by the CEO and in many ways it limited what, you know. on no uncomfortable experiences. but yeah, I was feeling a little off It's a great product for them, but they aren't the majority. I mean all the millions of people that have Quest 2s, in the VR world like Beat Saber and teleport moving around But there's also just that hardcore crowd And that's including the social that winds up and that's still a problem for VR. But we have, so we have stuff that people can do I don't know exactly what data we've collected and that's a free navigation moving around thing. being the majority of everything. because they're not the majority, I played a little bit of Green Hell just a couple days ago being the most successful. and that is a big enough niche to support your product Warp was working on things. we were way over rotated on that, Yeah.

It makes sense.

[John] So what was the problem? (everyone cheering and laughing) of we're building this for fitness apps The fitness stuff really was a surprise five years ago. the space of interesting things to do there? Probably not. So if you've got a clever idea but there's a couple million people We didn't think that nobody really had that on their mind and the fitness applications sort of have that tapped out a lot of the navigation, but it's a question of like, will be able to play and enjoy, then yes, had severe motion sickness problems trying to do something that just doesn't involve by all means target them. are we, you know, have have things like Beat Saber But if you want to do something that the most people And if that addressable market is large enough, that will go do the more aggressive experiences. and he couldn't play any of those aggressive games.

Yes it is now. I don't let anybody go you into adding it successful applications that are going on.

[Julien] Thanks. and now at some of the more profitable, Yeah, you know, it's actually funny. What did you do?

Hey, just checking if my mic's working. and the possibilities there. And I don't know if that's, you know, and documentaries and life performance. that has elements of game but really wants to be that's inspired by a true story who like engaging narratives and stories but just to quickly introduce myself, and it doesn't need the motion, if it's not crucial to what you're doing. and especially with all the conversations around, So that was the solution that, you know. And so yes, cautionary tale that is always, You know, we're kind of asking this question of of a town on the Oregon coast that was washed away That's an eco fantasy time traveling adventure about where we can expand into multiplayer always seems to be relevant. especially at this point with VR where you have those people to have a version of the game play It affected my question. and figuring out how to create something creating a narrative VR experience called City of Sand. that will make sense in a moment, I think I'm gonna ask a different question And it was really because Brendan, the CEO of the company, I'm Jonathan David Martin. I'm a creative, director and producer in VR and AR

Yay. it might not be all of the people there,

You can hear me.

I switched headsets. weighing the pros that you get with WebXR into the ocean because they made And so, you know, in trying to kind of figure out

Just for everything there. that consistently holds 72 frames per second And I started doing some profiling on this to try to help them out with it. I mean, I know what you can do in WebXR. maybe on their mobile phones or other devices their own kind of best practices demo. But they've taken some real steps to engage what kind of platform we might want to consider, you know, that are really into it and trying to get other people in being comparable to a VR dedicated application. but then can also allow other people to be playing something that you can speak on a little bit, that just create an easier entry point for people, But where my team and I were talking a lot about that has a primary player in a headset, something that is broadly interesting to people is there something about WebXR the people that are mostly behind the WebXR work, that could be useful for us as we develop this further, you know, mixed reality and AR where I've yet to see a WebXR app But it's absolutely good enough to do great things. versus a dedicated app. as we're building out our world but then the trade offs with performance issues I know personally it can sometimes you know, timeframe about, you know, And my Oculus Launchpad team and I were some poor development choices. in terms of accessibility,

So I've yet to see like a WebXR app that I think does, And then it just runs terrible on mobile that they're just releasing as far as good baselines I was trying to actually get some profiles There's no reason why you can't ring all the performance that we're thinking about on a grand scale. and probably not right now, but in the two, three year, one of the developer breakout sessions to kind of get involved and check it out. for the metaverse to really.

And it seems really necessary, right, you know, a really first class job be a little bit challenging. But it's not impossible. that you could out of even a Unity, as good as a native app that's running on WebXR. And having that ability to just go to a URL, It doesn't hold frame rate everywhere. but then that's another one of the horrible things, But did you see today with the web developers, are on the PC side and they tend to just be able And the goal is to make something here that will be

Yeah. an entire web browser and all the WebXR stuff but, and that browser- instead of like having it work internally. It's not there yet, but it's not impossible. on the web messenger tab (everyone laughing) get patches taken back, you know, upstream. they've done a lot of work where they're releasing to your headset is ridiculous. I think that they've done an amazing job with, and doesn't drop a frame. it's a small team and they're like supporting It's just in general, People like the best practice (guests laughing) just a couple days ago and it's not perfect yet. and they have really been focused on user value. and the digital world, yeah. and what they're actually doing. in terms of caring about the users but that's like one of the kind of things let alone a native application. So clearly we need to get much better there, with the open source frameworks communities, to throw lots of resources at it.

Yes.

But I do always sing the praises of our browser team.

Have that permeability between the physical world, You know, they're after my own heart there

But I think somebody's to have it immediate and perhaps even more importantly you've had a very long day. when they have to actually click update for it. So there's some wins to be had there, all the subdivision services and everything there's a lot of power there. and get it. the instant updating when somebody runs a website Gorilla Tag could have been done that something that you wind up with doesn't have to be but still on a Quest 2 today you've got, And if that distribution of being able It's harder in VR because everything's harder in VR but it's not impossible. going to can make a breakout there versus any other content situation. It is like 35 million lines of code in Chrome anything that somebody could have done in JavaScript in a WebXR app realistically. you could totally do inside WebXR with the performance like a couple extra copies to get there. as a WebXR application perhaps kind of characteristics that we've got today. and directly accessible just a link away, You don't have as tight up control as you want, You know, it's just, there's so much stuff going on there. across all of this and the graphics have to go through So that's another one of these, even going through all of the web stack, as a great Oculus go game, part of me just recoils at the horror of the depth some neat stuff there. for doing all the basic stuff. avatar-rendering system that behaved basically in WebXR where I think if we had a high performance of the web stack. I think there's a real possibility for doing thing right in the middle of all of us, that we are here and then crazy WebXR But if you had this ability of just doing the basic stuff WebXR rendering thing in here that I don't wanna like pull all of Unity in. like this or like the way the avatars were in Home But eventually you want to be able to see like Meta Avatars and then you were just about let's do some crazy So I think that this, I keep an eye on this project the process for getting a URL is to like messenger yourself and log in

That's true.

Yeah. And even in App Lab or the store, And that ability to have things marketed Yeah. But you could do something that still does have and like every new user's getting it. and they're really paying attention to their users, most the same visual impact of this. So it hasn't had its breakout success yet, they can be making multiple changes a day That can be the superpower of a WebXR development absolutely state-of-the-art where you couldn't do rather than, it's like, oh we've gotta biweekly build that's going on in Horizon here efficiently where you get something like, you know,

Thanks.

Hi John. Thank you for staying on 'cause I know

So leaning on audio is a great direction Quest is as good as anything you can make anywhere. I was just shaking my head 'cause I agree. (laughing) if you're fighting that battle. So if you've got people that really understand music there's huge numbers of communities of people there. and sometimes it winds up looking kind of sad and pathetic you can probably find people that you can get to help There is this whole small game developer scene I mean I've seen some like VR shows it doesn't matter if it drops frames together to engage more audiences and uncover this magical tool and for people who feel like to lighting and there's lots of cool stuff But you do run into the graphics design. And while arguably you can do some better graphics than graphics production. they have skills and knowledge about the way people react with Unity projects. So something that really leans on the audio scape there is, as cool as real life is I think you're muted right now. that can apply really well. You don't need the same sophisticated sets of tools. You were trying to respond there. and like people that that run music shows, But the audio that you can play out of, you know, and high-end PC space and you just can't win And I've yet to see that done as well as I think it can be. So high-end audio production is also much cheaper tech forward founders who believe in the power of VR because we have graphics wise is that I'm not a tech person. their amazing ideas and lived experiences of Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain everybody compares against your latest next gen consoles My name is Yolanda Barton. And I am launching an immersive storytelling experience provided an amazing solution for a historic neighborhood and other amazing musicians from my neighborhood. And now I'm using immersive technology to tell the story that there's still so many opportunities to unlock a few other people here today too. that can help shape the future of VR? Like what are your thoughts about that and how can we work I recently finished Oculus Launchpad with quite it's still this build a whole new APK and upload it with your users and reacting multiple times a day People having to update to go through that. That I actually just found that immersive technology I think what makes my love and story in VR so unique that gets updated and kind of annoys the user in Seattle that I was born and raised in. I'm curious how you feel about us non-tech, could experience it. they don't have place because they're not in tech, most magical moments so that future generations focused on really recreating some of music history's but it hasn't happened yet. about really being super embedded

So in terms of graphics design though is hard. most people learn on a PC with, to do virtual reality game development, while we have the ability of doing things in unreal, the communities are a lot smaller, and have some basic sense of composition anything entertainment related is hard that is a superpower in terms of leverage that you can get and space and what you you want to do in there because if they're just using, in order of magnitude more power, and audio production for graphics development is there is, with some basic lights and things There are broad, the benefit of being Unity based that people can learn that are not game developers

Oh no, I'm not muted. versus the super high end professional developers. that should be amazingly better than real life. and is like, well this is nowhere near

In a related question, So even if you don't have deep skills on things, Just kind of pick the things and just getting them set up in the device this part's busted, this doesn't do the right thing. to make it right because that's the important thing. It's about like, this thing that I'm working on, I'm gonna do whatever ugly thing I need to do but that can turn into a whole another career You know, the most programmers, most great programmers, You know, you've gotta be able to find enough people But in the end, you can learn anything. and how they react and find out how to make it better. really, really watch your users watch what they're doing because they're trying to accomplish something. that people could spend their time in the entire world. if you really pay attention to your users, you know, that are going to be interested in this, grab them quickly, but I'm going to, you know, look at what you've got there. It's not about having the skills watch them, watch their facial expressions. There's a trillion dollars of content don't let them fall out, you know, out of the edge. finding a niche where it's worthwhile even if you don't have the skills, that is targeted for all sorts of other people. because you are competing against all of the other ways and all this other amazing free stuff in many cases, And so much of that does come from, for somebody to say, I choose not to spend my time It's back to that funnel in the fish hooks. but there are people out there, it's certainly better than it was a decade ago. or VR specialists that have knowledge It can be problematic for VR though, where people have the skills necessary to build things. and not everyone has the right skill sets But like I've said a couple times though,

So just staying in Unity is, you know, you know, it may be trying to just do some ugly awful hack The information's available, you can learn it, and writing a beautiful architecture. to go, you know, write an application. how to do modeling or audio production there's so many errors and I'm just wondering like,

Yeah. I mean, if you get anybody that tries through the whole process of like, oh my God, I just built this and I can walk around it, You have to kind of decide where you draw the line

Thank you.

Thank you. and set up a structure and fill in all the fields But for that first creation, there's probably some value there. It's slow going on this, but the browser works well. You know, this is cool. It just hasn't really surfaced yet. about, you know, as a programmer, more involved afterwards. I mean the, it's just, it's not good. you know, learn how to do something in Unity. This is amazing. and then call this and, you know, and learn how to use a modeling program, There are some development environments I mean, I talk internally just about our APIs into some of the development stuff, But, you know, like I was saying in my talk though, and then how do I import that into an application That's the type of thing where there should be better paths this is amazing. Because it's a hard road if you have to go which will, you know, somehow get into VR. that you could make this easy path to it I'm gonna model something in Blender (everyone laughing) what is the ideal Like what should that look like? because our development, it does suck. I mean, it really does make me sad every time I sit down I mean, in many ways for doing something, And then you're just like, oh, this is terrible. The form, the documentation, that kind of stuff. you know, joyful development environments. like to balance these new features, which is great, You know, then you can go ahead You know? that is a large chunk of the battle. for like export to WebXR or something all of these are just things to help you with a lot of new developers provide the user value. to build something native, it's so horrible. where you're just like, oh, it's so much fun to work on this if you're getting that huge reward reaction of like, so much effort has gone into making it easy for people to deploy the APKs is so challenging. I don't over index on like what you have or don't have. skills, technologies, tools, I teach VR at a university and so I'm working and they're using Unity and Oculus if you learn it in depth. But you should be about your user experience, probably starting in Horizons, it's all out there. to build sort of their first VR creation in Horizon. that's causing them a problem there.

it's not joyful. this function just did what I wanted, it made me happy. So, you know, with the Quest Pro announced today and there are like mitigations and paths And it's rare to see these joyful APIs or, It's not joyful. sometimes you have what I call a joyful API that's out of the frying pan into the fire.

All right. Maybe I wanna learn some skills to be able to do something Like there are paths for WebXR inside VR for their work or for meetings and whatnot. I need to provision a handle from here that people have around it. this idea of like, well, let's just throw it all away is sort of this gateway for so many people. probably working in Horizon is a good idea. (guests laughing) where you don't have they start off writing the most awful hacks It's like, Oh, I'm creating something. These are terrible things, the deployment process.

Yes, it is not, It's a problem. where you're just like, I love this function, You know, it's better on the PC it's to focus more people into, you know, where you've got some comparative advantage on all of it. Then you have to have people learn brand new things. You know, it's like that may be learning a new skill, to make some of these things better.

Okay. Yeah. If it turns out that you eventually have to learn And then every time there's an update, to just get rid of the warp So, I mean, I hope that it can get better. for being able to build something that makes users smile.

No problem. How far or how close maybe do you think we are, how do we create a good development support? and that's not mobile VR development. or whatever is your non-skill for your title, And if we can get some of that just works well I guess I can go with the question. spending more time in VR and doing what they need to do And then you have so many things, which is like, oh, I'm in a 3D world. I can duck down and I can look over it, And you can find out early on whether that and create something new, You know, just like Minecraft set a lambda up over here for this. but at least they're known terrible things

Yeah, I was just adjusting my headset are you okay, John? (laughing) or maybe how close do you think we are into like being able that I wound up accidentally clicking the power button.

That's actually getting pretty close How close or how far do you think we are? but I should be able to just bring up browser to like multitasking VR where I can hop into meeting, So yeah, so how far do you think, go do that. Okay.

That's true. if everybody's textures went down one level of detail I want it to be as fast as your phone. they've got the skill sets necessary awesome new technology to work there but I'm hoping that we can get that kind of cool, They may hate working inside the Android system, because yeah, that's what I want. while I had browser, And like I was saying, and I was here and I wanted to bring up browser, to do some of these things. But that requires really deep integration I hope that some of our refugee OS developers that are, But what we really need is a systems level resource support with the graphics driver and the, you know, But it's possible. I'm still saying we should make that an experimental option and it's gonna be a bad user experience. you can bring up browser, it should work. so that it would be fine if I was in a Quest 2 like, you know, if you're at Beat Saber, the OS and the GPU interrupt managements on things. without having to like, take off my headset for doing things like paging out GPU textures something's gonna get out of memory killed Now I want to bring that down to all of the headsets, well if you have Resident Evil up, but so many key people bring up the things like, it's using all of the memory of the Quest. and put it back on, go to my computer, go do this, so that people that are in lightweight apps, sort of the infrastructure necessary to let that happen. that we can have multiple apps resident. We've been for a couple years building up I'm not a hundred percent confident to work, general multitasking in my Quest Pro while I'm in Horizon here on a Quest Pro. where I am tempted to try it here, have my calendar pop up, or like just doing If you try to bring browser up, And we've got enough extra memory on the Quest Pro

And it was awesome. that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, where 30 second launches are not okay. at least inside any application, that would clear up enough memory for all of that to happen. It needs to be better than that. there was a point where that popped up I keep harping on this speed It was resident

Something up and you know, to just pop up and immediately be there. you click that it thinks about it. It's like hey Meta, bring up browser oh, this is just amazing. to pop up the Anytime UI, But that, you know, I remember thinking it's like, when you hit the Oculus button at the time I want this ability instantly pop it up. And that's what I want all of these multitasking applications to be. in like 15 milliseconds. It needs to be as quick and intuitive.

Or more yeah.

No, I don't think it's holding us back at all. Like the things that VR and AR in the future You want it to feel like you're in a movie. I don't have that enabled on on my system here, because he doesn't want to sit there making conversation twiddling his thumbs but that's what you want be able to do and you want it as fast as I can think it. have it super responsive or talking about using the voice over here I'm checking, it's like, okay, and all of that. controls or whatever. I want you to just be able to, you know, I click this button and it is there And now it takes like a half second or, you know,

I agree. I agree. you can't imagine Mark demoing this in a keynote

I mean, at the OS level, You want it to be a superpower. to get the resolutions of the depth.

Okay.

Yeah. everything renders to a surface. you know, all the fidelity of some of the things

All right well, Sounds like we're winding down here. I definitely want to thank the super passionate developers that joined us today, And that has nothing to do with Android and everything to do should be giving us. And I just think that means so much. That's actually a pretty good path for us in most cases. Or maybe a hindrance? and some Android apps take 20 seconds to start up. to be movie user interfaces and definitely a big thank you to John for taking time We have to hack around Android as a harness it's doing your thing.

As quickly as you want. While so many of our features would be, it's like, oh, It's really just that some Android apps could start up We project surfaces into VR. for joining us at Meta Connect 2022 Anybody want to get.

All right.

Right. All right, cool, thank you. I think we've come to the end of our Q&A today. but that's not any kind of a big factor for us.

[John] It was good talking with all of you. with how the developer made the application.

Appreciate it. So thank you to everyone Something else happens with a sharp snap of acceleration Do you think that maybe Android is in favor of that? in a half second Or do you think that Android.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks John.

Good job. where you're just like, it's there, and we look forward to seeing you next year. while this initializes you want everything Like we used to have this point where several versions ago, is right forward interface is over, to answer these questions.

Thank you John.

Reformatted Podcast Transcription

 

Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to season two of the popup pod, where my guests and I are exploring one big and juicy question, how much money is enough? I'm your host, Nicole Antoinette, self-employed partnered, but not married child free by choice. And I've had a somewhat rollercoaster history of experiencing up and down class changes throughout my entire life. My parents filed for bankruptcy when I was 14 years old, and I've been pretty much obsessed with personal finance ever since. And so the question we're exploring this season, how much money is enough? It's a question that I think about all the time and I can't wait to share today's episode with you. This intimate conversation is 100% listener funded paid for by my sliding scale Patreon community. That means that you won't hear any ads or sponsors on this show. It's just me backed by the support of 400 plus people who have come together to ensure that everyone involved in making this podcast gets paid. 

Speaker 1 00:00:59 That includes me as the host and creator my sound engineer and musician Adam Day, as well as every single one of our guests, our Patreon community also funds the creation of a full transcript for each episode, which you can find in the show notes to help make these conversations more accessible. Those are our production ethics here at the popup pod. And if that aligns with your own values, I would love to invite you to come check out our community@nicoleantoinette.com slash Patreon. That page of my website answers all the questions you might have about Patreon. You know what it is, how it works, what bonus content you get access to, why I've chosen this funding model. All of that is on that page. And our community is just fun and easy and welcoming space. And remember that it's run on a sliding scale so you can pay whatever amount makes most sense for you, either as a monthly payment or an annual payment, and you can move up or down the scale as needed over time. 

Speaker 1 00:01:55 You'll also get access to a ton of fun bonus content, live gatherings, the chance to help shape the topics and conversations of future seasons and more. So one more time. It's Nicole antoinette.com/patreon, and hopefully I'll see you there. In the meantime, I am excited to introduce you to today's guest today. You'll meet Buffy Jay Davis, whose pronouns are she her? Buffy's a writer, a web designer, a rug tougher and more. She's got a bunch of jobs which we talk about, especially because each job fulfills a different purpose for her, which I found really interesting. Buffy is a dear friend of mine. And I'm so grateful for the true transparency that she brought to this conversation, sharing the real numbers of her earnings, her debt, her savings, as well as stories about the fact that most people in her social circle grew up in a higher class bracket than her. And she talks about how that shows up in her day to day life. We talk about money, resentments, our completely illogical money behaviors, and so much more. My hope is that this conversation opens up some gentle and judgment free space for you to think about some of the questions that Matthew and I discuss for yourself. It absolutely did that for me. There's parts of this conversation that I'm still thinking about long after we are done recording. Okay. Friends, let's get into it. Here we go. 

Speaker 1 00:03:26 Okay. Here's where I would love to start as a way of you introducing yourself. Can you share where your money currently comes from? Like what you do for work, or if you're financially supported by someone else, or if you're living off savings or credit cards or some combination of those basically introduction by way of how you have access to the money that you need to survive. 

Speaker 2 00:03:48 <laugh> yes. Such a good question. I have a lot of jobs. I'll just start there. Um, I I'm self supported and have basically been financially independent since I was 16 ish, maybe 17. My jobs are this I'm a web designer. That's where the bulk of my money comes from. I'm a writer. I make some amount of money from my sub stack and book sales. And I am currently working on a manuscript that I hope to sell for, uh, a sizable advance. And by sizeable, I mean $50,000 or more, I make rugs. I'm a rug tester. I sell those and I do nutrition consulting for a company called black eye nutrition. <laugh> so those are my many varied revenue streams. And sometimes I'll pick up like a job where I'm like designing someone's newsletter template or, you know, like I am available for different things, but primarily those are my four revenue streams. 

Speaker 1 00:04:54 Yeah. I'm particularly interested in this because each of those on its own could be its own solo thing. Right. There are people who just do web design or who just do writing or who just do some kind of like hands on art practice or just do nutrition consulting. Right? Any of those things that you mentioned is it, and maybe it's a combination of both these things, but do you feel like your preference is to have a lot of different things going on or is this a, none of them make enough money? So I cobble all these things together. 

Speaker 2 00:05:22 Well, I'll start by saying that. I'm not sure there's an amount of money that I could have that would make me feel safe, which I'm sure will dive into deeply, but I don't have like a trust fund. I don't have parental support. Like if, if shit were to really hit the fan, I, there's not like I would have to basically ask my friends for money, which I do not feel comfortable doing. So I am often very fearful that I won't have enough, which prompts me to work more. And that is Laing with time, like as I make more money. And as I see, you know, I'm 38, so I've been self supporting for 22 years. <laugh> and I've really almost only one time did I run out of money? And it was brief. I like was outta money for like a week. And then I got paid, but you know, web design on its own makes enough money for me to live. 

Speaker 2 00:06:19 It's quite lucrative. I'm incredibly grateful to myself. <laugh> for teaching. I, I taught myself CSS and coding and being in the tech world has like really changed my life in a financial way. However, it is freelance. I don't work for a company. So at any moment I could not have a web client. And the nutrition consulting is consistent. The rug making is like an extreme joy of mine. That's very expensive. So it's helpful for me to at least make enough to offset the cost of doing it. Also like I have so many rugs in my house now I kind of have to, <laugh> get rid of some of them. And I have blessedly joyously learned and decided to not try to make my primary living off of writing. I think that writing is like my primary purpose on this earth. And when I'm trying to sell it too much, it becomes joyless and also less authentic. So, you know, every, every single job of mine serves that purpose, like a really specific purpose and all of them are functional for what I need them to be. 

Speaker 1 00:07:35 Okay. I'm, I'm obsessed with this answer. Like the thoughtfulness of each of the different like needs that all of the jobs meet for you. And I, I mean, I can relate to, especially what you said about writing so much. I feel like as far as creative outputs or practices go, like that's absolutely my main, I feel like that's my reason as well. That's the thing that I feel most aligned with and times where I try to go almost like too far in that direction and make that like the center of my job, it doesn't take the joy out of it, but it definitely cha it, it changes the experience of it. Like I like having it be one of the things in the bucket, but not the only thing in the bucket. 

Speaker 2 00:08:13 Yes. Yeah. And for me, right, writing is slow and to be creating enough writing to truly make a living off of it, I feel that I would have to be churning out short stuff all the time. And perhaps like writing articles about stuff that other people hire me for, that they want. That's not necessarily my first choice. And I just, I don't wanna write anything. I don't wanna write. It's not like I just love writing to write <laugh>. Um, oh, and then another thing I wanted to say just about the nutrition thing is, um, I <affirmative>, I love to help people like, make sure they have enough to meet their goals and stuff, but I, I get absolutely zero joy out of like helping people to diet or lose weight, which like, honestly, if someone's looking for a nutrition coach, like 98% of the time, that's what they want. So I really can't stay authentic to like who I am and what I wanna share and try to make the nutrition world, my primary thing either. It just can't 

Speaker 1 00:09:14 Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you're occupying any sort of like really, really niche thing that goes against what, like most of the people in the industry are doing, not to say that that couldn't be lucrative. Cause I'm sure there are plenty of people that are looking for maybe nutritional help. That's really like anti diet, but I get what you're saying. Yeah. That it would be a harder potentially like more uphill battle 

Speaker 2 00:09:35 Truly. Yeah. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 00:09:37 Um, I wanna go back to what you said before. Uh, and it was like kind of a throwaway con, like you said, it really quickly, but I think this might be like the underpinning of everything that we talk about when you said there's, you don't think that there's any amount of money that you could have that would make you feel safe. Say more about that, please. <laugh> 

Speaker 2 00:09:52 Yeah. Um, I'm just gonna talk like really transparently about my class background because it's a little bit weird and, and it's very interesting to me. Um, my dad is like, was poor my entire life. He was a mechanic and then he was like, basically just so addicted to drugs and alcohol that he was nonfunctional in a work way. And now he's passed away. My mom has been married a bunch of times, like five, five times and each time she marries, she kind of marries up in class, which is really it's compelling to watch like her class jump. My mom and I don't have a close relationship. I don't receive financial support from her. So it's kind of interesting because my mom actually has a ton of money as far as I can tell. I mean, like I said, we're not close and I don't, we don't talk a whole lot, but as far as I can tell, I do know where she's living. 

Speaker 2 00:10:53 I know what her house looks like. Um, I can see her assets and I think she is maybe really wealthy <laugh>. Um, but I don't, I wouldn't ask her for money and if I did, I don't think she would give it to me. So that's kind of interesting cuz most people, I feel like that are like more, uh, scarcity minded have consistently poor parents. And that's not the case for me at this time, but I just don't have access to that wealth. But growing up, I, you know, was more working class than everyone around me. I grew up in an extremely wealthy place. I was able to live there because my grandparents owned property. My parents lived there, everyone around me was rich legitimately and people were getting like BMWs for their 16th birthday and stuff. And I just like knew that I was different, but I didn't totally understand how, like I thought, you know, I was like punk and gay <laugh>, which is like, that's different. 

Speaker 2 00:11:52 But also like just in a different class bracket than everyone around me. When I was 12, I asked my mom for 75 cents to the bus. She called me a never ending money vacuum. As soon as I turned 13, I got a job. Um, I worked at the youth center in the town that I grew up in making fries. And after my sophomore year of high school, I dropped out and started working full-time and have basically worked full-time ever since. So there's just no safety net. Like I think the, the true feeling of like no one is there to help me with money is quite different than most people I know, but people don't necessarily talk about that. So for example, lots of people, I know own houses and for quite some time, I, I wondered like why don't Iona a house? Am I like a failure? And, and it's become very clear to me over time that most people, I know that own houses were given money by their parents, which actually I feel no animosity about that. I think that's rad. I want people to be taken care of. Um, but it's, I just wish people talked about it more so that I didn't have to feel bad about myself, you know? <laugh> 

Speaker 1 00:13:01 I mean, yes. So, so much I feel that way with like small business owners, people who are starting up creative projects, um, this idea that money has to come from somewhere. And I mean, even some of the sources that I named at the beginning, right. Like I, I think about when I first started my first podcast and that wasn't making money right away. And that was like a real slow growth process. And that was possible because I was in a two income marriage at the time with a relatively high earner. And like I thought a lot about how mu there's only so many places that money can come from. Like it comes from like essentially like trading hours for dollars, right? Like it comes from your job or it comes from money that makes money, like investments, it comes from savings. It comes from a credit card. 

Speaker 1 00:13:49 It comes from other people that's it like that. I like really can't think of that many other places that money comes from. And I agree with you. I think that we would, not that we necessarily owe each other complete transparency, but there is something about like, almost like pretending that you have gotten to a certain place or that you have a certain asset that you didn't get help for when you did get help. Like knowing how other people made something work is always such a relief for me, because I feel like it, like, it helps me understand more, which takes me out of the like brain weasel of there's something wrong with me that I can't do this. I don't know, like having full clarity on how someone else, like you said, like managed to buy a house. I feel like that's really generous to when people are honest about that kind of stuff. 

Speaker 2 00:14:31 Yeah. And to like go more on the avenue of your question right now, I probably make, mm, like, mm, maybe four to $6,000 a month, which is significantly more than I've ever made my life. And it feels like abundant and beautiful and wonderful. And also I have $230,000 of student loan debt like that. I will probably never pay off really. Um, I have income based repays, so I do pay toward it, but not much. I don't even touch the principal. I'm just paying the interest. I don't have retirement. I've been self-employed since 2013. So I've mostly worked for myself. You know, I'm like one major accident away from essentially being destitute. Even though I have saving, I have $30,000 saved for the first time in my life. I have like a nest egg that I've saved for myself. I make good money every single month, generally without fail, but that's still not really safety. Safety is like $300,000 in the bank, not 30, you know? And it's like, I mean, I'm speaking very generally, but I also am aware that capitalism makes you think that like you never quite have enough, so that's, we should interrogate that as well. 

Speaker 1 00:15:49 <laugh> well, no, but I mean, because I, I think one of the things that I'm so interested in, in this conversation, and one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you is there's a certain amount of vulnerability and disclosure that people are willing to do usually with their good friends. Right. But like the fact that we are actually friends, I feel like maybe we're gonna talk in more concrete numbers than someone that didn't know me very well would be comfortable talking in. And even just the way you said, you know, $300,000 would feel like safety. It's like, I it's like, I wanna agree with you. And then I think about, and I know this is like a us centric thing, but if you had any kind of, really, really serious health concern, right. You know, I, as a, as a also self-employed person kind of the health insurance that we have access to, like I think about if I had something that was like a real, like lifelong expensive medical thing, like $300,000 would be gone on a second. 

Speaker 1 00:16:37 Right. That's it's like, there's part of me that, and in wanting to explore this question of how much money is enough, it's a question that I'm asking myself all the time, almost because I feel like I'm doing the mental gymnastics of, I don't know that there is an amount of money without some degree of like social, like better social safety net that would ever feel like enough because enough is you can cover any possible emergency or any possible problem. So it's like, if I, if I feel like that's never gonna be possible for me, then I almost have to go the next tier down of like, okay, well I'll never have enough for something catastrophically going wrong, but let me pretend nothing's gonna catastrophically go wrong. And like, then how much is enough? It's almost like, does that make sense as like these different levels of trying to determine what enoughness is for myself? 

Speaker 2 00:17:23 Yeah. I mean, I can say for sure, I do not feel comfortable with the fact that I have no retirement. I don't care that I'm not gonna pay off my student loans. Like if I'm being really honest, it's so much money that it feels like monopoly money and I'm like, whatever, I'll do my little income based for payment for 25 years and then not even touch any of it. And then it'll go away. I think, I, I think I understand that, but the fact that like, I will get old, I will, at some point be unable to work and like, I don't have, you know, I don't have children, I don't have children that are gonna take care of me and I'm not going to, and I don't have parents that are gonna take care of me and I'm not going to. So like, that will need to change for me in the next five years. I would say like, I need, I wanna start thinking seriously about that because, you know, I wanna like be 60 and chilling. I don't wanna be 60 and panicked about like, not having any way to really care for myself because you know, like I'm in tech now. So skills become less relevant with time. And I don't know, I just don't wanna be like so panicked when I'm 60. 

Speaker 1 00:18:34 Yeah. I mean, I, I completely get that. I completely agree. I also, you know, don't have kids and I'm not planning to, and don't really see that kind of, I mean, not that having kids guarantees that they're gonna take care of you right. Or that you're gonna have, uh, cuz it doesn't sound like you would be taking care of your mom. Right? There's no, it's like, there's no guarantees of anything, but of course that is a relevant factor. So when you say that this is something that in the next, you know, couple of years you wanna prioritize more. Can you talk about what that actually looks like? Right. So right now you said you're earning like four to $6,000 a month. You have this $30,000 saved. Is that just like in a bank account? Is that invested? Like when you say that you wanna start making, you know, taking care of old muffin right. In the future of priority. Yeah. What does that actually look like? 

Speaker 2 00:19:16 Yeah. I'm not really interested in investments, which is somewhat unfortunate because I do think those things work to me, it seems like the most solid and smart investment is in home ownership. And I don't want to own a home <laugh>, you know, I feel really, I feel some kind of way about like being a white person and, and owning land. Like I, I'm not, I'm not criticizing anyone. I wanna make that really clear, but I just feel confused about that. Like it doesn't exactly feel an alignment. And also I don't want the responsibility of home ownership. I wanna be like deeply free. That's a huge priority in my life. So it's not gonna be investments. Unfortunately I think it's gonna be like budget and concerted effort to put money away. And also I'm gonna need to make more money. Like I think, I think to truly be able to put a sizeable chunk of money away, I would do an IRA, a Roth IRA or an IRA account, which I guess is an investment, but it's not the same as like the, in the stock market, 

Speaker 1 00:20:23 You know? I mean, but it is though. It is like, it it's it, I mean, this could be a separate conversation, but like it is, I was gonna actually let's pause there. What? So, because it sounds like you have either some judgements around investing or there's something about like, is it not values aligned for you? Will you talk about why that's not something that you want? 

Speaker 2 00:20:43 Um, to be super transparent? I just don't really get it. <laugh> okay. You know, I just it's like, I, um, like totally give myself accolades. I've done a great job of like learning how to be an adult without many adults teaching me, but that's like something I haven't gotten to yet. So I, I just feel like it seems really risky. I don't know. And maybe it's not, it's not a, it's not really about values. Although obviously I don't live capitalism. I'm living in it, you know, I, and I'm not afraid or ashamed to say like, I want to make hell of money. Like I wanna, I wanna feel so cared for by myself. Um, and I don't know people, I say that to people sometimes and they just look at me like they think that's a weird thing to say, but that's my like truth as a working class person. I want, I want to feel cared for and to feel cared for is to be able to afford the things you need. So mm-hmm <affirmative> yes. It's totally, it's not, it's not actually judgment. It's just like, I don't really get it. I don't know how to do it. I, it seems intimidating and risky and I'm, I'm scared to lose my money because I've never had it before. Mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 00:21:59 <affirmative> yeah. That's super real. I'll be, I'll be interested as your friend to hear your reaction to the other episodes of this season. Like, does it feel less scary like after like hearing other people talk about it or teach about it or, and maybe the answer is no. Yeah. The, the, the, the link between money and safety is, I mean, you mentioned that in a couple different ways, I feel like so important to underscore because what is gonna make each of us feel safe? Depends so much on how we grew up. 

Speaker 2 00:22:24 Yeah. And what we need and how many people were caring for. 

Speaker 1 00:22:28 Yeah. You mentioned before that if you were ever in a situation where you needed money, the only people that you would have to ask for money would be your friends and that you didn't wanna do that. Why wouldn't you wanna do that? 

Speaker 2 00:22:38 Let's see. Why wouldn't I wanna do that. I think I have some class shame for sure. Like, even though I know that people have all these like privileges and ancestral wealth and stuff, and that's often how they've been able to like buy houses and maintain wealth and blah, blah, blah. I still feel like a little embarrassed or, you know, this is totally theoretical, but I would feel, I think embarrassed about having to ask and just like, admit that I, I don't have it all under control even though like, of course, if I've, I mean, I've loaned friends money, it's fine. You know, <laugh>, as long as there's clarity around how it be will be repaid and what it means and blah, blah, blah, it's been totally fine. I feel no judgment if people ask me, but I don't know. It just feels scary. I mean, obviously I mentioned my mom calling me a never ending money vacuum when I was 12, has really stuck in the old brain. So <laugh> right. 

Speaker 1 00:23:38 That that's 75 cents. 

Speaker 2 00:23:40 Yeah, yeah. Right. Exactly. Wolf indeed. Um, 

Speaker 1 00:23:44 Yeah, Wolf indeed. 

Speaker 2 00:23:45 <laugh> yeah. 

Speaker 1 00:23:47 Uh, yeah. That's, it's interesting. What I'm taking from what you're describing is that it seems like you are in a social circle with people that grew up in higher class brackets than you does that feel accurate? It 

Speaker 2 00:23:58 Does. It, it very much does many, many, many of my friends are either, um, have more ancestral wealth or they've chosen more traditional career paths that are money making or they're, they've partnered and they have dual income. And I, I am partnered, but I've even been married before and I've never shared finances with a partner. And I don't really want to, my girlfriend is also a working class person. I feel like more inclined to date other working class people, which is interesting. But, um, generally my social circle, people have more money than I grew up with at least. 

Speaker 1 00:24:36 Yeah. How does that show up in the relationships if it does, 

Speaker 2 00:24:42 It does. It definitely does. Um, I see class issues constantly. Like, you know, my friends are incredible people and I love them so much. And sometimes they'll be like, everybody let's go on this trip. That's like really expensive without the awareness that like, some of us are just not gonna be able to go no matter what, you know, like we're not gonna be able to like finance such a thing, take time off, work cetera. Um, so that's one thing just like, which is like sweet that people are trying to be inclusive. It's not like out of malice at all, but I do notice like invites that don't necessarily, um, take into account the financial part. And it totally sucks to be like, I would really love to do that and I can't afford to, at this time 

Speaker 1 00:25:40 It is also interesting the culture around what we feel like we can and can't say yes to mm-hmm, <affirmative> like this, um, has come up for me in the past, particularly around weddings, like the amount of money that you're supposed to spend, or like be totally fine to spend in terms of travel or lodging and gifts and bachelorette parties and wedding showers and all of that kind of stuff. And it's not that you don't love the person and wanna celebrate them and want them to have the experience that they want. But I find that like, that has bumped for me in the past too, of like, this is not, I CA I can't spend the resources on this. And how do you communicate to someone, Hey, I love you. And like, this thing is, is out of my it's out of my reach. 

Speaker 2 00:26:20 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's humbling. And like, you know, I do feel like I've really worked on this over the years where I am, like, as I've said, and probably demonstrated in the few minutes we've been talking, I'm pretty transparent around money and my financial situation and how much I have, and you know, like what I don't have and blah, blah, blah. So I've gotten more adept at being clear about that. But sometimes in the past, I've just been like, oh, I can't make it. You know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> I also hear people judging, like, this is not necessarily my friends, but people in the world, like talking about certain kinds of food or like the quality of someone's house, like how nice it is or how not nice it is. And just like not take into consideration that, you know, money can buy you a cleaner house. <laugh> money can buy you a nicer house. Money can buy you nicer food. You know, if someone is trying to budget their food on food stamps, it's really difficult to keep it in that range. And I'm not doing that now, but I have done it many times in the past. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, 

Speaker 1 00:27:33 I'd like to pose for you a question that came from our Patreon community. Cause I think it's like quite related to what you just shared, this person asks, how do you make sense of being in class spaces that are outside of the class you grew up in, for example, being in a space where people are used to a certain lifestyle that you didn't previously have access to. And the context for this person's question is that they have experienced upward mobility that maybe like kind of family of origin or friends have not. 

Speaker 2 00:27:59 Yeah. Hmm. Let's see. I do try to name it if I feel it, because I think, you know, a lot of my life work has been undoing a lot of shame. And so to name what feels real to me is like a really active way to do that in a variety of ways. So sometimes I'll name it. Um, and, and other times I just quietly feel bad about it. You know? Like, like for example, if I see people that like, essentially don't seem like they're working very much and like seem to be totally financially fine. It's often like confusing for me. And then I realize like, oh, they have help. And then I'm like, not sad. They have help. I'm happy. They have help. And I want help too, you know, <laugh> um, so sometimes I manage it and sometimes I truly don't sometimes I'm just like, this is the reality of like a lot of my friends are middle class and have never been anything but middle class. And so don't have a real solid analysis of different class backgrounds. Mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 00:29:10 <affirmative> how often do you have these kinds of conversations about money with people that you're in intimate relationship with? Whether it's like romantic partnership or close friends or people you're living with, obviously it's clear, like you said that you are comfortable being open about this, but is that something that is part of your relationships? Like, are you talking about this kind of stuff? 

Speaker 2 00:29:29 I talk about it most with my working class friends, for sure. My girlfriend, and, um, one of my best friends, broski, the three of us are all like, grew up really working class and don't have a family to rely on for money and stuff. And, and I will tell you the three of us notice things often that I think other people don't necessarily, and we often talk about like some of my friends that are more working class wanna buy a house really bad. They really wanna buy a house and they feel so sad that they're unable to, and so much shame and blah, blah, blah. And I, we often have these conversations of like me being like, listen, you don't, you don't need to feel ashamed. You just don't have your parents giving you a hundred thousand dollars to put a down payment on house, you know? 

Speaker 2 00:30:14 Um, so I think it's a lot of like, um, soothing, you know, my more working class friends and I are like constantly talking about it because we're seeing the ways in which people can more easily move through the world and navigate the world because of the money and the privilege that they have, which is not to say don't have privilege. I do, but it is noticeable. And my working class friends and I are definitely talking about it. Sometimes I've had moments with friends where I'm like, Hey, this thing you said, rub me wrong because it feels kind of classist. And I have really good friends who are like down to hear it and down to get in the mock with me. So I feel good about that, but a lot of stuff I just notice and don't say much about mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 00:30:57 <affirmative> my experience has been at least with people that I'm in a relationship with the more money that people earn or have access to the less comfortable they are talking about money. 

Speaker 2 00:31:07 It's so true. The, the friends of mine that have the most ancestral wealth talk about money, the least to, and I'm like, what's up with that? Like, I'm feeling ashamed that I don't have money and you have to feel ashamed that you do have money <laugh> who gets to not feel ashamed. Oh 

Speaker 1 00:31:23 My God, that's so real. Oh my God. Right. Right. We're all stuck in this game. That's like inherently rigged and unequal and all feeling. Some kind of shame. 

Speaker 2 00:31:35 Yeah. Yeah. And, and I actually would like for none of us to feel shame, which is why I try, I do try to tell my friends with more money and more ancestral wealth. Like I don't feel judgment around it. I think it's good that you're taken care of. I want my people to be taken care of. I just wish we were all taken care of like every person on this planet. And that's like deeply untrue for most people. Mm-hmm, 

Speaker 1 00:31:56 <affirmative> I'm interested. Cause I know that it's, it has only been in the last like handful of years that you've moved into web design. Right. And you mentioned teaching yourself CSS, teaching yourself coding, and like in the inherent upward mobility of now having those skill sets that have allowed you to jump up in income or jump up in class or, you know, whatever the terminology is that you wanna use around it. Can you talk about how that has felt for you? 

Speaker 2 00:32:22 I will tell you, it feels incredible. <laugh> I have no qualms about it. I don't feel bad about it. I feel it's just like full of gratitude because I, if you would've asked me if I was gonna do coding, I would've like legitimately laughed in your face. I'm an artist, you know, like I'm an artist and a weirdo. <laugh> like, I'm not a tech guy, but I just fell into it because I was doing virtual assisting. And eventually one of my clients asked me to make him a website and how I have done my life, my entire life, every job I've ever had, anything I want to do. If I have an interview, if someone asks me, if I can do something, even if I have no idea how to do it, I'll just say, yeah, totally. And then I Google it. It's like my greatest skill is my like, can do attitude. 

Speaker 2 00:33:14 I really believe I can do whatever. And sometimes I get in over my head, but my client asked me to make him a website and I was like, sure. And then I was like, oh fuck. <laugh>. I dunno how to do that at all. Like at all. Um, and so I just Googled a bunch and you know, I was charging 20 to $40 an hour sliding scale when I started virtual assisting. And then when I made my first website and I really liked it, I was proud of the website I made. I thought it was cute and fun to make. Um, and 20 to $40 an hour to me at the time was like really good. So I was like, I'm just gonna see if I can roll with this. And now I know with web design, that rate is like, absolutely ridiculous. It's ridiculously cheap. 

Speaker 2 00:33:58 It is like actually a disservice to the industry to charge that little, but I was getting paid to learn. So I felt okay with that. I still do not charge market value for web design. And I hope too soon, but I guess I just see, like my girlfriend works at a grocery store. She works really fucking hard. Her job is harder than mine. And I make so much more to her than her that it feels like unacceptable and unfair, which is not to say, I feel guilty. It's just to say to, I make so much money now, in my opinion, and to charge more is like really quite something. And to get, just to give you numbers and context, I charge a hundred dollars an hour. Now standard rate is one 50 to 200 an hour. And I'm just like, why <laugh> mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 00:34:45 <affirmative> I mean, this could be its own whole conversation, right? The, like I was gonna say the ethics of pricing. I don't know if I mean ethics, but I think that that's somewhat part of it. This idea of are you charging what other people are charging because that's like the arbitrary nature of worth in the market or are you charging based on what's enough for you or, you know, it's like why I bump so much on any phrasing around charge, what you're worth as if what we're getting paid can in any way determine any aspect of our worth, right. Is the fact that you are being paid more money than your girlfriend. That doesn't mean that you are more inherently worthy at all. No. And so there's, but there's like some that like languaging, I feel like, especially in the like online marketing online business world is really prevalent of like charge what you're worth. 

Speaker 1 00:35:33 And I get what it, I get what it means. Like I get what it's trying to do, especially because it's usually advice that's given to people who are in at least one way or multiple ways, marginalized and are already earning less and charging less and all of that. And like, what does it take to have the confidence to raise your prices? But at what point is the raising of the prices not necessary? Like I'll share. I had, um, an experience earlier this year with, you know, someone whose work that I respect and follow online and they were doing a live event and the attendance for the event, like the ticket for the event was $10,000. And it was like a two day event, I think. And it didn't include lodging. Like it, wasn't an all inclusive thing. And I, as you know, I host your treats that are longer than that, that are all inclusive and are like a fraction of that cost. 

Speaker 1 00:36:19 Yeah. And it was such an interesting experience for me. Like, I cannot tell you how long I looked at this person's sales page, trying to make sense of my own feelings about it. Right. Of like what would have to be true in order for me to think, you know, what, I'm gonna pay $10,000 plus a plane ticket, plus lodging, all of that to go to, and I'm sure the event was fantastic. Right. And kind of what I came down to was like, I guess this event just isn't for me, because I can't wrap my head around that. And I can't wrap my head around any situation where I would charge that much. And then it's like, the questions of is that correct for me? Is that a limiting belief? Right? Like there's just like so much stuff around this 

Speaker 2 00:36:53 Totally value is like incredibly confusing to me, very confusing. I think my grocery store work and girlfriend should be a millionaire. That's a hard job. 

Speaker 1 00:37:06 <laugh> that? That's how I feel about Jen. Like the types of jobs that he does and stuff. And I'm like, how are you not making so much? Like he comes home physically just like wrecked at the end of the day, from how much is being put on his body at these jobs that he does. And I'm what like at my little computer, do you know what I mean? I'm doing this, you and I are talking, this is my job, you know? Yeah. And that's valuable too, but it's just such an, I don't know. It's okay. So, so my question for you, you said you're currently charging a hundred dollars an hour. Why, like how do you decide on your prices? 

Speaker 2 00:37:35 Well, I will tell you that my prices raise all the time. The better I get at CSS, the more confident I get in my skills, the more I'm like, why does a straight white man get to make 150 to $200 an hour to do the same job that I do? Like, and I'm charging $50 an hour. You know, I charge a hundred dollars an hour because it is closer to market rate. And I am looking to get to market rate because, um, just simply because I think there's no reason I shouldn't be like, why not? <laugh> um, it's, it's about the confidence. Yeah. For me, I charge a hundred dollars an hour because that's what I have the confidence to charge right now. Mm-hmm <affirmative> later. I do believe I will have the confidence to charge more. And that is, um, that theory is proven by the fact that I taught myself how to make websites in March, 2020, it's now June, 2022, I've gone from 20 to $4 an hour sliding scale, which I do not believe in sliding scales anymore. And we could talk about that to a hundred dollars an hour. And that's just simply about confidence building. 

Speaker 1 00:38:40 Mm. Yeah. I do wanna get to the sliding scale stuff, but first I feel like my, whenever anybody asks me about pricing or how I set my prices, because especially because I don't do something that operates on an hourly rate, I think it might be a little bit easier. Like my business coach Barry bear, who's also a guest this season, they have this awesome online course called freely. It's all about like an anti-capitalist guide to pricing your work. And it is more based on an hourly rate of like, okay, well this is how many hours I can work without overworking. Or this is what feels good to me. This is what my expenses are. Right? Like there is more of a formula. And sometimes for me, especially when I'm doing things that are like one to many or that don't necessarily have an hourly rate. 

Speaker 1 00:39:18 What I have come to this might sound so silly, but I set my prices for things other than retreats that have like a very tangible high overhead cost of things that I have to pay for. But I set my prices based on charging enough that I feel like it's pushing me to show up as my best self, but not so much that I have like too much imposter syndrome to do the job. It's like this, it's almost like this intuitive sweet spot of like, this is an amount of money that like really makes me wanna show up as my absolute best and hold the space and do the work and all of that. But it's not, so it's not $10,000 for a two day event where I'm like, I, I feel like I couldn't charge that. I would just like go hide in a hole. And you know what I mean? Like somewhere in that sweet spot and as your skills grow, whether it's as a facilitator, as a podcaster or a writer or a, you know, web designer, then that mark tends to move upward. 

Speaker 2 00:40:10 Yeah, exactly. For a hundred dollars an hour, you better believe I'm gonna show up for my clients. Like I want people to be happy. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and I am gonna do pretty much whatever you need within my capacity to make you happy. Um, and for $20 an hour, I simply wouldn't do that. <laugh> I'd be like, this is a $20 an hour website. You're gonna get what I give you. 

Speaker 1 00:40:34 <laugh> yeah, yeah, no it's so then am I correct in assuming that, you know, in the last couple years, as you've been doing websites that your income has increased noticeably? 

Speaker 2 00:40:44 Yes. Yeah. I would say here here's some context for that when, um, COVID hit and the like federal unemployment happened, I lost like most of my business when COVID hit, because everyone got scared and was like, I don't need a virtual assistant anymore. Um, because of the unemployment, I was making $2,400 a month and I was thrilled <laugh> that was probably the most money I've ever made on. And I on unemployment was the most money I'd ever made. And so for a long time, I was like, that rate felt good to me. I'm just gonna keep making aiming for that $2,400 a month. But as time went on, you know, I moved from Tucson where I lived in a trailer and my rent was $225 a month. Utilities included to Portland where now I live in my own house and I pay $1,200 a month. So $2,400 a month as an income, isn't gonna cut it at this point. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and yeah, now I, as I said, I make four to 6,000 a month, so it's at least double what I've ever made. Um, but 30% of that goes to taxes and yada yada you know, like, yeah. 

Speaker 2 00:41:55 Yeah. It's not actually 

Speaker 1 00:41:56 That, that your take home isn't four to $6,000 a month. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 00:42:00 No, but I'm ready for it to be 

Speaker 1 00:42:01 <laugh> no, hell yeah. I'm ready for that for you too. Can you share some specific things that either have, or have not changed in regard to your relationship with money as your income has increased? 

Speaker 2 00:42:11 Yes. I have a really great example that happened to me just this week, which is that I bought a new pack for backpacking. It was $300. I took it out on one trip and it became clear to me that the pack does not fit my body the way that I need it to, when I hike, I hike for like at least a month, the pack needs to be comfortable. So I was like, okay, I could use my old pack or I could just buy a different one and like try to sell this, this one that I just bought and hope it sells. And I just was like, you know what, I'm gonna spend another on top of the $300 I spent on this pack, I spent another $500 to get a pack that like really, I think is gonna work excellently for me and is a big investment. 

Speaker 2 00:42:55 And I just didn't think too much about it. I was like, I'm gonna do this at some point. My other pack will sell. It's fine. And like that to, to me, I, when I noticed that it felt meaningful because I haven't been able to do things like that in the past, I eat like whatever kind of food I want, weird $13 vegan cheeses. And <laugh>, you know, like raw pieces of cheesecake that are $8, you know, like I just I'm like, I, don't a big to me, a big lifestyle class indicator is whether or not you have to think hard about your groceries from a budget perspective. And I do not. And for that, I am very grateful and I just, I just see the ways it comes up. Like I have pretty good health insurance that I pay for out of pocket. I have personal therapy. 

Speaker 2 00:43:46 I do couples therapy. I do this like attachment style therapy. I like all the self work I need to do. I, I just do it. I pay for my dog has health insurance. If my dog has health problems, it doesn't feel like a huge issue to like, get them taken care of. And she, she does, she has se maybe has seizures. So like, I, you know, she's now gone from like a $200 dog that I got off Craigslist to a, an expensive dog on a monthly basis. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and it's just like, doesn't feel devastating to me. And just money can't buy happiness, but having enough money deeply relieves anxiety for me. 

Speaker 1 00:44:24 Oh yeah. I mean, also it can buy a lot of things that do make you happy like that. I, I feel like that idea that money doesn't buy you happiness. It's like, I almost wanna say, I don't think that's true or whatever the studies have shown. It's like true up until a certain point, right? Like it does until whatever it is, like $75,000 a year or whatever, that, that I don't have this, the like, study to site, but that there is like a drop off point at which more money does not increase your happiness. But below that it 100% does cuz like you said, it relieves anxiety. It's gonna give you access to more of the things that you want. Like I was just taking notes as you were talking that it's from what you just shared that your values in terms of how you spend money are healing like food and nourishment, your dog and hiking. 

Speaker 2 00:45:06 Yeah. Totally checks out 

Speaker 1 00:45:07 Like which checks out from what I know about you. Right. So you're definitely spending your money in alignment with the things that are important to you. It sounds like. 

Speaker 2 00:45:14 Yeah. And also like something that can happen now that was incredibly difficult before is if I just wanna, if I see something I wanna donate to, I just do, and I it's like $50 or a hundred dollars worth before. Whereas before I would see things that I wanted to donate to, I would feel this incredible mixture of like guilt and stress. And then I would like labor over if I was gonna donate $20 or $25. And like, I just, I'm so happy that I don't have to do that anymore. 

Speaker 1 00:45:44 Do you, are you someone who budgets? 

Speaker 2 00:45:46 I'm not <laugh> but I would like to be, I I, because I think, I don't know, I could be saving more. I, I definitely could be saving more, but I don't know. I'm just like, what is money? How am I supposed to know how much money I'm spending? <laugh> cuz I'm like, there is Venmo, there's PayPal. There's my credit card, you know? <laugh> yeah, I, I could, but I don't that's that's the short story. 

Speaker 1 00:46:10 Do you feel like you have enough money right now? 

Speaker 2 00:46:14 I feel like I absolutely have enough money for my life right now. I do not feel like I have enough money for my whole life. If that makes sense. 

Speaker 1 00:46:22 Um, say, say more. 

Speaker 2 00:46:24 If I'm looking at my day to day existence as like able bodied, relatively healthy, 38 year old, who lives in Portland, Oregon that like really, I don't have high class taste. I really don't buy clothes. I hardly have any clothes. My only solidly expensive things are therapy and food. I'm totally making enough. In fact, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled with my income for me right now. But as I said, I have like no retirement and I'm not, I have $30,000 in the bank, but I've also had $30,000 in the bank for about a year. So I'm, I've saved money, but I'm not saving more money. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, especially since I've moved into my own place. So I think if I budgeted, I could be saving more money and then I could be, you know, maybe happier. I, I could maybe feel more secure for future me. But as I said before, I'm one of my values is freedom and I wanna feel free to spend the money that I have and not like squirrel it all away. Like I'm still legitimately poor because I'm not. 

Speaker 1 00:47:27 Yeah. One of the things that I think about all the time and I'm not looking for you to have a good answer to this, cuz I certainly don't or like how the tensions show up between taking care of both like current you and future you 

Speaker 2 00:47:40 Mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 00:47:41 <affirmative> and what, like what does it, what does it look like to take really sweet tender care of current me while also keeping an eye on future me and like having no idea what her circumstances or needs are gonna be. How does that tension if it does show up for you? 

Speaker 2 00:47:59 Okay. This is really weird, but I'll just tell you, I have a strong, strong intuition that it's all gonna be just fine. <laugh> and that's how I cope day to day <laugh> because I, as I said started being self-employed 2013. I really wasn't sure what's gonna work out now. It's been almost a decade. I've only made more and more money essentially. Like there have been blips where I like, you know, it's like monopoly, like I'm going up and up and up and up. And then there have been times where I like had an idea that failed and then I'm like boo, back down to the poor category. But like generally speaking, if you look at the macro picture, I'm making more and more throughout my life. I'm now I have a lucrative career, um, with web design, which is totally incredible. And I am a hustler. Like I am so good at getting my needs met so I can only assume that will continue and get better with time. <laugh> 

Speaker 1 00:49:00 I love it. I love it. 

Speaker 2 00:49:02 I have no plan just to be clear, no plan, but I think it's gonna be 

Speaker 1 00:49:05 Okay. I think potentially I'm gonna listen to that last, like 90 seconds whenever I need a pep talk. So thank you very much for, um, your pep talk. I wanna dig into this idea of enoughness because it sounds from your answer that you, it was like a really quick, clear, like, yes, you have enough for current you and your lifestyle. Like you said, your abilities, your needs, all of that. How is it just intuitive for like, how do you define enough for yourself? Because it's interesting. Almost the juxtaposition of like how clearly you said yes, you have enough combined with what you said or like at the beginning of the conversation is that there's no amount that would ever make you feel safe. Like there seems to be like some kind of inherent, I don't know, like friction between those two. I don't even really know what my question is, but you say things now <laugh> 

Speaker 2 00:49:51 I think it so, okay. Well, you know how, when people go through a traumatic event and they like grit their teeth and disassociate, and then like after the event, they can feel all the panic around it. <laugh> that's how I feel about existence. <laugh> um, I think like in some ways when I'm like, yes, I have enough and it feels incredible. That's like part true, you know, that's a part. And then some days when I look at the bigger picture and my whole life and my deaths and yada yada I'm like, oh, like the reality is like much more traumatic than it feels on the daily. And part of that is that I've learned to like disassociate from the like, I mean, this is not just true for poor people. It is true for everyone. It is scary to be alive. What is happening right now? <laugh> like, I it's so hard to know how we're gonna survive various things, economy included. So I don't know. It's like a both and you know, like just holding multiple truths, seeing the gray area, knowing that like just for today, I am safe. I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, but I am certain that today I am. Okay. And I think like every day I can tap into that. 

Speaker 1 00:51:18 Yeah. So let's pretend that next week, your income doubles. So all of a sudden you're making eight to $12,000 a month. What would you do differently? 

Speaker 2 00:51:31 What I, what would I do differently? Let me think. I would be saving more for that. I can be certain the house that I'm living in. I do not own this house, but it is owned by a friend and it is likely that I will be here long term. So I would put some stuff, some money into the place that I'm living right now. Like for example, I don't have a fan in my bathroom and regularly I scrub mold off my ceiling, you know, I would love to just have a fan and I don't think it's that expensive, but I'm like, well, it's not my house. And it's not like I'm making so much money that I have like money to just toss so that doesn't get prioritized. But if I had more, it would, because that is too is directly related to my health. Um, I don't know. I wouldn't do that much different. It's kind of amazing. That's that's what I think helps me know that, like I am, I am safe. I am okay for today because there's, I, I buy what I want generally. Mmhmm <affirmative> so I think I would just save more mm-hmm <affirmative> maybe I would learn about it investing <laugh>. 

Speaker 1 00:52:36 Well, it's something that I think is interesting is when you were talking about your experience as a worker, right? You're in an interview, someone asks you, if you can do something, you have no idea how to do it. You say, yes, you figure it out. You like, it sounds like you inherently trust the sort of like scrappier hustler, part of your personality and the fact that you're smart and can figure things out. Why do you think that that maybe doesn't apply to how you feel about investing or cause that just earlier when you were like, eh, I just don't understand it. It feels too complicated, is it? Cuz there isn't. I mean there is money on the line, but not in the same way. 

Speaker 2 00:53:09 I think a lot of my confidence comes from evidence. Like I have a lot of evidence that I can do it, you know? Like I can figure it out on the fly. I can make it work. I can figure out like if someone was likem, you need to go make a hundred dollars. Right now I could do it. I feel confident that I would invent away and then I would have a hundred dollars, you know, but I have no evidence. So with investments, like I'm like, I don't know. I don't know that world. I don't know anyone that knows that world or I do. And they're not talking about it. Um, Nicole knows that world. <laugh> yeah. 

Speaker 1 00:53:43 It's like, um, this could be a separate phone call. I'm happy to talk to you about that. 

Speaker 2 00:53:46 Yeah. I mean, I mean I want money investments seem how to be, how people get money. I don't know. It just might just simply be an experience issue. Like I don't, I don't have any evidence that'll work. I hear things about like the stock market goes down and people panic and I'm just like, sounds scary. 

Speaker 1 00:54:10 <laugh> you mentioned before some of the ways that your life like day to day has changed since making more money. What are some of the things in terms of your relationship with money or your emotions around money that haven't changed that maybe you thought that earning more money was gonna change X, Y, or Z belief or habit or thing. And it hasn't changed. 

Speaker 2 00:54:32 I feel panicked about money intermittently. Like for example, I try to make two websites a month and work with people on two week cycles and like have a really stacked schedule. But if there's a gap in my schedule, I will instantly feel panic. Um, so that's one thing and there's no need, that's like just, uh, popularly traveled neural pathway for me is panic about money. Um, that's, that's pretty much, it is like the feeling of being poor lives inside of me. And it can come out at any time. 

Speaker 1 00:55:10 Yeah. Do you have any specific money related goals? 

Speaker 2 00:55:17 Yeah. I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a year soon, like in the next five years. Why? Um, because it just is such a nice number <laugh> you know, like it 

Speaker 1 00:55:28 Just, I mean, because you want to is a fair answer. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 00:55:31 It just feels like categorically enough. Like if, if I am making a hundred thousand dollars a year and feeling panic about money, I can no longer pretend that it's about money. <laugh>, you know? Um, I like around number. I think that to me, that is like a hundred thousand dollars is like symbolic of wealth, even though plenty of people make much more of than that. And plenty of people make much less than that, but like that I'm like, yeah, that's wealthy. So that's for sure don't care about the student loans. As I said, compare 'em or not, whatever is fine, but I would love to be putting money away in a retirement account. Like to even, just to be like, you know, I'm making a hundred thousand dollars a year. I have a hundred thousand dollars in savings. That's like pretty good. I think most people probably don't have that. I don't actually know. I'm just speculating here, but yeah, that's a goal, a hundred thousand dollars a year, a hundred thousand dollars in the bank. 

Speaker 1 00:56:38 Love it. I love it. 

Speaker 2 00:56:39 And I must take one month minimum off per year to hike. 

Speaker 1 00:56:45 Okay. Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about that. I mean, cuz obviously long distance hiking is a shared passion of ours, which of course requires taking big chunks of time off from work. And unless like something obviously the work that I do and the work that you do are diff is different. But something that it has in common is like, it requires both of us to be there, right? Like neither of us have chosen to build out the kind of business that can really operate in our absence. And I don't know that that's gonna change for me. Um, it's not necessarily something that I'm looking to build, but I'm very aware of the fact that like the making money 100% depends on me. Right. There's I don't have paid time off. I don't have sick days. Right. I don't have any of that. Obviously. I know you don't as well. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so thinking about long distance hiking, which requires taking big chunk of time off from work. And I, I feel like my question isn't really about hiking, but it's more about the larger implications of working enough to sustain your financial situation and save some, but also turning down additional work in the interest of both like avoiding overwork and burnout and also prioritizing this other non-work thing that brings you joy. 

Speaker 2 00:57:46 Yeah. Let's see. My mental health is really dependent on a variety of factors. So there's like a lot that goes into it. But some things that feel super direct and instrumental are fresh air in sunshine. I don't get a lot of sunshine here in Portland, Oregon, especially this year it's been truly terrible <laugh> um, but I do kind of need that, that kind of thing to, um, continue to function well in the rest of my life. So it's almost like it doesn't totally feel like a choice because if I am miserable and depressed, my productivity goes way down. Like I'm not, I am not joyfully greeting each day. I am watching the bachelorette in my bed <laugh> you know, so, so I do need that to like keep my spirit alive. I'm not able, that's what it is. There it is. I'm not able to show up in this world at all in any capacity. If my spirit feels dead, <laugh>, you know, like I need to, to have a strong sense of self in this world and for whatever reason, long distance hiking, having a lot of endorphins and exercise and fresh air and also alone time. Cause I'm mostly hike alone during the day. Really grounds me on myself. Mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 00:59:14 <affirmative> yeah. I feel the same way. I've been thinking a lot lately about, I mean, yes, obviously I want and need the resource of money, but what I most wanna feel wealthy in is time. 

Speaker 2 00:59:27 Yeah. 

Speaker 1 00:59:28 And I just value that so much. I know that I could be earning more. I know that I could be working more and an experiment that I've been making this year is having a four day work week. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, let's be very clear. I'm like, don't always stick to that. And I'm like sneaking onto my email when I shouldn't be sneaking onto my email. And like it's a, it's a whole process. Right? It's it's a growth process, but like the conscious decision to work less in exchange for more of a wealth of time when you're not financially independent. Right. Like that's been an interesting thing to be like, well, I could work this fifth day. Yeah. Or I could lay on my couch and read this book. Totally. I it's just like, it's just an interesting, like trying to decide almost like trying to decide what money is for or what I think having more money is gonna give me, especially when, and, and maybe this sounds cynical. 

Speaker 1 01:00:23 Like I don't believe that retirement will be possible for me in the classic sense of like you have enough money saved up in retirement's accounts, investments, you know, whatever your investment portfolio that you can live off the interest of it and like draw down the principle. So, you know, until you die, I, I don't believe that I'm ever gonna be able to save that much money. And I'm sure there are people that would say that's a limiting belief and let's talk about that. Right. And I it's great. Well, we can explore that in this podcast series for sure. But it's almost like taking that off the table has then made me, it's like freed me up from this like obsessive feeling of needing to work all the time. 

Speaker 2 01:00:55 Yeah. 

Speaker 1 01:00:56 I know. I'm like, well for what <laugh> like, I'm never gonna get to that benchmark anyway. So I might as well enjoy my life. I don't know. 

Speaker 2 01:01:04 Here's something I will say that I don't think I mentioned I do not work anywhere close to 40 hours a week. <laugh> and I, for people, I know a significant portion of people work 40 hours or more per week. And I just have like so much awe for that because I just can't <laugh> like, I don't, I ha sure. Yes, I do have ADHD, but I don't even know if that's why I just feel like I need to eat good meals, walk my dog exercise, do my therapy, blah, blah, blah. I have all these things I have to do just to stay like, well, so I don't have time to work 40 hours a week. So yeah, it's kind of similar. Like I could be working more. I could be working a lot more, but 20, 25 hours a week is good for me. 

Speaker 1 01:01:53 It's almost like I would have to change my earning model or potential in such a way that working more like, unless it was gonna 10 X, my income mm-hmm <affirmative>, there's like no point, right? Like, and it's, that's sort of how I feel about it. And this is where like the emotions come into play where I'm like, what's the difference of an extra a thousand dollars, which is how I know that I feel a lot more secure than I did when I was, you know, younger and in my early twenties and standing at the grocery store and like having to do the math before going up to the counter of like, do I have enough money to buy the food that I wanna buy? Right. And so for me to be able to say like, well, the difference of an extra thousand dollars, like would it actually ma I don't know. There's like, definitely something to that that I think is interesting. I wanna, I wanna go back to something that you said before about pricing. When you said that you no longer do sliding scales. Can you talk about that? 

Speaker 2 01:02:38 Yes. This is purely speaking from my experience and other people might have different experiences, so I'm not making any blanket statements, but my experience is that the people that don't have a ton of money that I've worked with, a lot of them literally save to pay me at the top of my scale. Whereas people that just categorically have always had and potentially will always have more money than me will pay me on the lower end. And I just feel like we're really taught to protect our wealth, having more money doesn't make you feel more abundant. And I just got sick of it because people in my community would hire me. And like, I would know for a fact that they like have a trust fund or like aren't working because whatever reason they're like supported by parents and they're like haggling me for a lower hourly rate. 

Speaker 2 01:03:49 And I just, I have that experience enough times that I was like, this isn't actually doing what it's supposed to, which is making the services more accessible. So even at like the bottom of my sliding scale, a website would be about 500 bucks and 500 bucks is actually not accessible to a legitimately poor person. So what I would rather do is just make sites for people for free. If I feel invested in the cause and everyone else can pay full price. And if like mm-hmm <affirmative>, if a person was like, listen, I really wanna work with you. I really value your time. I can't afford that. Like what can we do, I, if I really wanna do it, if I really feel like it's aligned, we'll find a way we'll do trade, you know, but generally speaking, why do I, as like a queer woman working class person need to be the like cheapest guy in town. Like <laugh>, you know, it just was like, it wasn't making sense to me when people, I know make more than me were paying me less than I was worth. Mm. And worth is like, okay, let's say less than the full value of my price, which is, I, I think many people don't totally realize this, but for me, a sliding scale, the full price is the top of scale. And anything less is a discount mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 01:05:13 <affirmative>. Yeah. I mean, so I've been using sliding scales for a couple of years, obviously, as you know, and this is something I love talking about and thinking about both from like the creator side and like the consumer or client side of it. And like, I think so much of it is how much, almost like financial education and handholding are you willing to do with the people in your community cuz you're right. Like, I certainly didn't grow up with any understanding of different like tiered pricing and it's very much like what you want as the consumer is to get the best thing for the least amount of money and what you want, what you should want, I guess, and what you should want as the creator is to, to get the most money for the least amount of work. Right. And that's so ingrained. And if you're gonna have any sort of pricing model that's outside of that, the cultivation of your community that you have to do to ha help people understand and like place them on a sliding scale. 

Speaker 1 01:06:08 Yeah. Which so far I will say has worked very well for me. I haven't had the experience that you have had with it. However, I have recently been thinking about how much of a sliding scale just gives a little bit more flexibility for people who are middle class in like one way or another, cuz to your point, like if the sliding scale doesn't go down to zero, it's not actually inclusive. And like it's not doing what it set out to do because someone who let's say the, like you have, if you have a three tiered sliding scale, like let's say the lowest tier is like a hundred dollars, right. It's like that's gonna be in like going down to $75, isn't necessarily gonna make that more accept. Like it needs to be zero. Right. And so something I'm interested in going forward is like, what does it look like to widen the sliding scale and like really leverage the people who do have access to those like resources, how to get them to like pay into it 

Speaker 2 01:07:00 A different way to look at it is like, I don't totally not believe in a sliding scale. I just don't believe in a sliding scale in every circumstance, a circumstance that I've done before that I really do believe in. And I think worked very well was, um, in early COVID I made this like workout program for people to do in their homes because allegedly no one was leaving their house. Um, and I was like, as five week program, you get an email once a week with linked videos and blah, blah, blah. And I charged zero to a hundred dollars sliding scale. And because it legitimately didn't matter if some, I was doing the same amount of work, no matter how many people, but I only have capacity for three websites max per month. So like, if someone is paying me a rate, that means that I'm gonna like really be stressed about paying my bills. It's just not that functional. Especially if they're making more than me. 

Speaker 1 01:07:55 <laugh> yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, you're speaking to the, it's almost like the time scarcity thing there of a lot of the things that I offer are one to many. So it's the same amount of work for me. If five people buy it or if 500 people buy it. And so I can have a little bit less, um, attachment to the way that the like sliding scale shakes out, you know? Um, yeah. It, this is so interesting. So this is kind of a left term, but something that I would love to talk about, I'm curious what you would say one or a couple of your like illogical money behaviors are, or like something that doesn't necessarily make sense. So I'll give you an example, something that I was thinking about the other day, I have a really hard time spending money on healthcare related costs for myself. 

Speaker 1 01:08:42 And I'm like lucky to be overall, relatively healthy. And I have this like new freckle mole thing, I don't know on my knee that has like popped up, but like, I should probably get this looked at, right. It's like new, it's like a dark color. It's whatever the resistance that I have to like, whatever this is maybe gonna cost or if this is what I've like, built it up in my head to be such a thing, which I think is somewhat related to the fact that I'm like bitter about our healthcare system in general, but sure, cool. I'm allowed to be bitter about it, but like nobody benefits from like me not being willing to go and spend whatever money is gonna take at the doctor. And you mentioned like buying the, the like nice new backpack. I recently invested $699 in a new backpacking tent. 

Speaker 1 01:09:23 I will tell you. And like I have saved up for it. It's so wild. I like didn't think that I was ever gonna like buy this particular tent anyway. But I did that like with relative ease, like that's, it's, that's too big of a purchase for it to be completely mindless to me the way that I would like buy a book right. Where I like don't really think about that, but I'm like, what is it what's happening within me that like illogical nature of I'm gonna spend $700 on a tent mm-hmm <affirmative> and I don't wanna get this Mo looked at I, so I'm like interested if anything comes up for you, that's like seemingly in a logical money behavior. 

Speaker 2 01:09:58 Well, I spend a massive amount of money on healthcare, like mental and physical healthcare. I do. I, I take like a lot of supplements. Well, blah, blah, 

Speaker 1 01:10:06 Blah. Great. Teach me how to do that. 

Speaker 2 01:10:08 I don't, I don't know. It's, it's hard to be like, I mean, yes, go get your bowl looked at, but like, I don't know. Do I really need to spend a hundred dollars a month on supplements? I I probably not. Um, but let's see. I think, I don't know if it's a logical, but something I tend to do is be like scarcity, scarcity, scarcity. Like I'm feeling stressed. I'm feeling stressed about money for no particular reason whatsoever. So I'm just not spending at all. And then I'll be like that hadn't spent like a thousand dollars <laugh> you know, like I, I do a kind of like, it's almost like a dieting mentality where like you're like being really restrictive and then suddenly you just like go for it and buy everything you need. Clothing is a big thing for me that I just don't spend money on. I have one pair of pants and a few shirts <laugh> and, and like I learned recently that sometimes people have like five pairs of pants, six pairs of pants. And I was like, what? <laugh>. Um, so that's kind of a logical and probably I could have a few more pairs of pants. 

Speaker 1 01:11:07 I also, I mean, I have some leggings, but I also have one pair of pants and I for years have been saying, I need to get some more clothes. And for whatever reason, that just feels like a leap that I don't take. 

Speaker 2 01:11:20 It's not very fun to shop for me personally. So I think that's part of it too. But yeah, I just have my categories that I will spend a lot of money on. Backpacking tends to be one of them, health tends to be other, and then other areas where I'm like, like, I, I'm not sober, but I like don't want to spend money on alcohol. <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, like, I'm just like, I could go have a drink at a bar with friends, but for some reason I'm like, oh, I can't really afford to do that. Which is bullshit. I just don't feel like spending my money on it. Whereas if you ask me to go out to eat, which is probably about the same price, I'm like when and where see you there, you know, <laugh> 

Speaker 1 01:11:56 Is that something you feel really comfortable doing? Like, let's say someone, you know, were to invite you out for drinks or whatever, like would, would you just say like I, no, I don't value spending money on that. Let's do something else instead. 

Speaker 2 01:12:06 I would probably go and drink a bubble water <laugh> you know, cuz like generally I feel like drinks or coffee or whatever is just a conduit for hanging out. So I don't know if it was something that like, like I couldn't go in the place unless I spent money like a V I P bar or something I would say no mm-hmm <affirmative> um, but 

Speaker 1 01:12:30 VIP bar, not your jam. 

Speaker 2 01:12:32 No <laugh> I dunno if you know that about me. It's 

Speaker 1 01:12:34 Not my, not yet. Not, not your vibe. Um, I saved so much money when I got sober mean I was just, I was just, uh, a nice side benefit of that. Uh, 

Speaker 2 01:12:43 Yeah. It's like a drink costs as much as a meal. I don't know. 

Speaker 1 01:12:48 Okay. Emotional related questions. Tell me about a time when you felt resentful about something money related. 

Speaker 2 01:12:55 Um, I'll tell you about a time that I'm feeling resentful about right now. Um, <laugh> 

Speaker 1 01:13:00 I feel like, let, let me list out my resentments for you in this moment. <laugh> 

Speaker 2 01:13:04 Well, I, and I feel a little like unclear about this, but I do have resentment in my heart, so I will tell you about it. Um, so in 2018 I got divorced in 2016, my ex and I bought a house together. Most of that house was purchased with money. He put in like $180,000. The house was about 200,000. He put in 180,000 from an inheritance he'd received. I put in 20,000 from money that I'd saved. And it was important to me to put in 10%, even though it was kind of arbitrary. If it's not clear, I like those kind of numbers, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> but when we got divorced, he instantly got a lawyer and I did not get a lawyer because my perception was that I couldn't afford one. Um, I did not fight for any equity in the house really. Um, I could have also, the part that I'm forgetting to mention is like, he didn't do any of the work. 

Speaker 2 01:14:08 Like I found the house, he was like, let me know when you find a house, you like, then I'll come look. But I like did all the work to find the house and like put so much like labor and time and energy into the house. And I also put a lot of labor and time and energy into my ex who like essentially didn't have to work because, or he worked very little because he had ancestral wealth and I'm like, you know, because of my scarcity mindset, I didn't get myself a lawyer. I didn't go after like anything essentially. I just was like tucked my tail in between my legs and was like, okay. And, and I was like, you know, he put in more like my attitude was just like, I wouldn't feel right, but I'm now I'm suddenly like, whoa, I protected his ancestral wealth and his investment. 

Speaker 2 01:14:51 That house is worth double probably now mmhmm <affirmative>. And I feel like just, I'm not resentful at him. What I'm resentful at is like kind of the, like the attitude that I've cultivated, which is that I don't have enough money to even try, um, to, to like get what, what I was owed for my investment actually. And I felt really resentful about that. I'm like, I just so wish that someone had told me like, babe, get a lawyer it's gonna pay for itself. Find someone who will do a payment plan, like put it on a credit card. <laugh> you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> um, so I'm bumped about that. Cuz I could be in a really pretty different financial position in terms of savings. If I had really like tried to get what is average for a divorce, 

Speaker 1 01:15:46 Do you think you would handle that differently if it were to happen now? Or I guess do you feel like whatever money block it was that had you not getting a lawyer or not fighting for the things that were yours, do you feel like that's something that you've overcome? 

Speaker 2 01:15:59 I do. <laugh> um, you know, time reveals a lot and I think as time has gone on, I'm really starting to like, think about, for example, my ex's financial position as opposed to mine and how cushy his life is really, um, in a lot of ways. And I just I'm like, why did I protect that for him? I, I, I value my contribution to that relationship and that, um, life that we live together much more now. And I know that it's not just about the $20,000 I put in it's about like, there's a bigger picture. 

Speaker 1 01:16:44 I mean, there always is right. Because I, I feel like there's very few money related things that aren't also emotional things that it's like, how do we feel differently if we are the one leaving the relationship and like is the fact that we feel guilt about leaving their relationship, make us less likely to like fight for the financial thing. Like there's, I, I feel like this is like a much more complex thing potentially, 

Speaker 2 01:17:03 Right? The reality is that he kind of probably sold the house and ended up with a full of his investment back <laugh> you know, but I didn't, I felt bad, you know, I like I did leave, I did end the marriage. He felt blindsided by it though. I felt that it should have been Nozari. I do believe that he was so I don't know, it's all very complex, but I do think that I could have and should have tried to get more out of that investment because that, um, because of my student loan debt, that is likely the only chance that I will have to have an investment like that mm-hmm, <affirmative> a like house property, investment. 

Speaker 1 01:17:46 So being divorced and like the specifics of the divorce that you went through, how does that impact, like, I don't wanna say the role of money, but like money in your, let's say current romantic partnership. 

Speaker 2 01:17:59 Mm. Well, we're not financially entangled really in any way. I also do partnership much differently than I did then. Like I am extremely, extremely unlikely to get married again and extremely, extremely unlikely to live with a partner again, like I just deeply love living alone and I, if I can't live alone, I also like to live with friends. I don't know. It would take a lot, it would take a long time of being together. Um, for me to feel like I want to do that. And I don't know that I ever will, because mostly what I want is to be free. So the nature of the relationship is just so different. Um, but yeah, we're not financially entangled in any way, if, if she needs money or I need money and the other one has it sure. We'll, we'll like do some lending, but generally speaking, we got our own thing going. 

Speaker 1 01:18:58 So then for things that are me, you don't live together. So you have fewer shared expenses. Um, but for things that are shared, is it just a 50 50 split or do you split according to the fact that you earn more than she does? 

Speaker 2 01:19:08 Well, she likes to feel it's, it's actually quite incredible. She like has not a huge amount of money, but she loves to make people feel cared for. So it's like feels important to her and the role she wants to play in our relationship to sometimes like, take me out or blah, blah, blah. So I let her, I'm like, I have no problem with that. I trust that she knows what's going on with her money and she can budget appropriately. We don't actually do that much. That costs money. I'm, I'm kind of realizing as we talk, like how we spend our time isn't necessarily expensively. I do feel that it's within my value system. If we were to live together and have more significant expenses together that, um, I would want to pay more. It seems like only right. But like for example, an expensive thing that we're doing coming up is she was like, I wanna take you to CIR du sole. 

Speaker 2 01:20:06 And we like looked at the tickets and I was like, I have a proposal for you. She was like, I wanna take you, I wanna pay. And I was like, I have a proposal for you. I propose that I buy your ticket and you buy my ticket and we get better seats, you know, like, let's get, let's get $200 seats instead of $100 and just pay for each other and like have a different kind of experience. And, and she's down for stuff like that. But if I had said like, I'm gonna pay 65% and you're gonna pay 35%. I don't know that she would want that. 

Speaker 1 01:20:37 Yeah. I mean, and that's so much of this stuff is about communication, right? Because what's gonna feel good for you might be different from what feels good for her, might be different for what feels good for me. Or it's like being able to talk about this kind of stuff is how we arrive at what feels good. Because sometimes it makes sense. And like, we both, like, sometimes it's not logical, like what it is that we want or what feels good or what makes us feel cared for. Yeah. So kind of flip side of their resentment question. Tell me about a time that you felt really joyful about something money related. 

Speaker 2 01:21:04 I love just buying the pack. I wanted to buy <laugh> every time I long distance hike, it's like, I'm the kind of hiker that like likes to take a lot of zero days. I always wanna get the motel. I always, you know, like I'm not, I'm not the, you know, people that are like, I'm gonna wash my clothes in this bucket and I'm gonna like sleep in a campground. I'm like, that's gonna be a no for me dog. I wanna luxuriate in a bed. I wanna eat like, you know, every trail town has like $12 plates of fries, like very expensive mediocre food. And I just want it all. I don't even care. And every time I can do that without too much repercussion, I like feel incredibly joyful. Um, my house is like, so absolutely incredible. I feel, you know, I've lived in trailers or like shared a room for like almost a decade. 

Speaker 2 01:21:58 And I've lived in this house by myself since last September. And since I've lived here, I've like started making rugs and I was able to get like, um, a really big frame. And like, when I make rugs, there's like yarn flying everywhere and it's dirty. And I just like do it in my living room. Cause I have all this space. I don't have to do it in my bedroom. I don't have to like, you know, and I even make enough that I've, I've had the thought, like if at some point I wanna get a studio, I could, I could probably swing that. So like that feels incredibly joyful being like, I want an artistic hobby. I'm interested in making rugs and just like going on YouTube, watching a couple videos and then buying all the infrastructure to do that. Like the tufting gun, the like nice yard and the frame, all this stuff was like, I don't know, $800. And I just, I didn't know anyone that had a tufting gun, so I just bought it and was like, hope I like it. You know, mm-hmm <affirmative> and I do very much. It's like incredible for me to have a visual creative art thing. That's not as like emotionally fraught as writing mm-hmm <affirmative> um, so, 

Speaker 1 01:23:03 And that's off a screen. I would imagine. 

Speaker 2 01:23:06 Hell yeah. Ugh. It's so good. I just love it. So anytime I can just like have a curiosity and follow it through because I have enough money to do so I just am like, wow, good job Buffy. Look at you. Go. 

Speaker 1 01:23:20 Yeah. That's I have, um, recently been getting back into baking, which has like always been a love and a hobby for me. And it's interesting, you know, I'm not spending like $800 on like flour and stuff or whatever at the grocery store, but there is a little like, well, I don't actually have to do this. Right. And this isn't like food that I need to survive necessarily. Like it's, it's an extra thing. And being able to be like, no, no, I'm allowed to have a hobby actually. Like that's fine. Um, that feels really joyful when I can lean into that kind of stuff. 

Speaker 2 01:23:55 Yes. There's so much of my like groundedness and sense of self that comes from just being able to be creative with no, um, I mean, I do sell my rugs, but like I said, it's basically just covering the cost of making them. So it's not like I'm not trying to make a living off of it. I just get to be free. It, it makes me feel like really attuned to my puffiness, you know? <laugh>, I don't know how to, you know, I dunno how to explain it. 

Speaker 1 01:24:21 Yeah. I mean, spending your resources, money, time, energy, all of that on the things that make you feel more like you 

Speaker 2 01:24:28 Mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 01:24:28 <affirmative> the dream, 

Speaker 2 01:24:30 The dream. It's very beautiful. 

Speaker 1 01:24:32 Is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanna dive into? 

Speaker 2 01:24:37 I don't think so. I, if people wanna reach out to me and talk more about any of this, I'm like very interested in the subject. And a lot of people I know are kind of resistant to talking about money. So just that I'm open to more conversations. I'd love to hear other people's opinions. And 

Speaker 1 01:24:53 What's something that you feel like you are curious to hear other people's honesty about when it comes to this topic. 

Speaker 2 01:25:00 I wanna, what I really wanna know is like, when I talk about my income, I sense a discomfort in the room <laugh> and I'm like, cuz I'm literally just like, holy shit. I made $6,000 this month. Hell yeah. And I wanna like run around the block, pumping my fist and I'll like tell people all excited and they're kind of like, that's great. And I'm like, oh, is it like, is the discomfort that it feels like bragging is the discomfort that like it reflects something on other people? Is it the discomfort? Like you make way more than that. And $6,000 doesn't seem that much. And I seem so excited that like, it feels awkward. Like I, I legitimately just don't know. So I would love to hear like why, when people talk transparently about money in dollar amounts, as it kind of feel like the air gets sucked out of the room <laugh> mm 

Speaker 1 01:25:50 That's such a good question. Yeah. I feel like at this point, this is more of a blanket. This is like more of a generalization, but I feel like at this point I can't have true intimacy with anyone that isn't interested in having these kinds of conversations. It's like, like talking about money is like such a fundamental, I don't even know value, but like it is, it is really important to me, for us to like have conversations like this and like be Frank and like be aware of what each other's like resources are and how we're doing financially and like how we're doing, like knowing how like a best friend is doing mental health wise and the impact that, that has on their ability to earn or not, or like all of these types of things. Like it's so important to me that I don't know that I could have a lot of intimacy with people that don't talk about this. Like I think about in particular, some of my like wealthiest friends 

Speaker 2 01:26:41 Mm-hmm 

Speaker 1 01:26:41 <affirmative> and I love them and we have fun together and we do not talk about money. Like they're very uncomfortable talking about this and I'm like, but I want, I wanna know, like what investments are they making? Like what, what are the conversations that like really rich people are only having with each other. Maybe I need to do that with this podcast cuz I'm like, what is that? Right? Like that's a whole world that like of information that like we don't even have access to really, or I don't know. I'm like curious about that kind of thing. But I, for me, I feel like it is a block in intimacy if I'm being totally honest, the fact that those aren't really things that we talk about and never would talk about. There's like something there for me. So I'm with you on that. 

Speaker 2 01:27:20 Yeah. What's happening there. Rich people. Can you tell me about your money? <laugh> right, right. And, and I think, I think part of it is people do feel judged and I, I can totally understand that probably some people are judging them, but also I don't think that I will. I just am really, really curious, like sincerely curious, like what's happening with your money? Like, what's it like to like, like for example, if you have ancestral wealth and you have a trust fund and your parents gave you money for a down payment on a house, do you still feel like you have like compelled to work and like you have to succeed in the same way that a person that we're like literally their finances depend on it. Like I just, I'm really curious about that. 

Speaker 1 01:28:02 I'm also curious about that. Hence why I'm doing an entire podcast about this. So I'll see what I can do to get some answers for you. Um, in the meantime, if you could leave people with one affirmation of sorts based on our conversation, what would it be like basically? Like what's your wish for everyone listening? 

Speaker 2 01:28:17 My wish for everyone listening, it's really complicated. So my first thought is I really want people to charge market rate for what they do. You know, it's also my wish for myself and like have your own sense of ethics around like what you give away. And you know, every, everyone will probably wanna make exceptions for certain things at certain times, but I don't necessarily think it serves people for like I'm specifically talking like women and queer people and POC. Like I don't think it serves this world for those to be the people that are charging the least. So, you know, I know it's complicated to charge what you you're worth thing. And I do agree with that, but I also am just like, don't be ashamed to wanna make money. Money is currency for survival. So yo go for it. Why not? 

Speaker 1 01:29:10 Yes, yes. Yes. What's the best place for people to find you. If they wanna say hi or check out any of your various many, many jobs 

Speaker 2 01:29:18 <laugh> um, I have a websitey J davis.com. I have a subs stack, which is my writing it's Moy, J davis.stack.com. And then my Instagram, perhaps unsurprisingly is Moy J Davis 

Speaker 1 01:29:34 <laugh> consistency. I love it. 

Speaker 2 01:29:36 Brand branding, consistency all around and do reach out. Also. You should hire me to make your website there, there. Yes. Listeners of Nicole, actually some of my very best clients have been listeners of your podcast 

Speaker 1 01:29:48 Really? Oh yeah. I mean, cause you, you were on the past podcast, so that's great. Yes. A plus recommend everything that Murphy does reach out. She will be charging market rate very soon <laugh> or, or by the time this, this airs. Right. I love it. I hope that for you. I, I hope that people reach out and they're like, this is more expensive than you said. That's my hope for you. Um, thank you for all of the honesty and vulnerability and sharing. I adore you and I'm so glad that you said yes to this. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 01:30:13 Thanks for having me. I loved it. 

Speaker 1 01:30:24 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the popup pod, there are a few awesome and super helpful ways that you can support our show. If you've got a few minutes to do that five star ratings on apple podcasts are so sincerely appreciated. It helps new listeners to see how much other people love the show. Writing a one to two sentence review to go along with your rating is even better. Uh, this is the kind of thing that I always tell myself that I'm gonna do for the podcasts that I love. And then inevitably, I forget. So I am trying to get in the habit of doing this for myself because even as a podcast host like knowing how grateful I am for every single review that this show gets, I still find myself forgetting or procrastinating on doing it for others. So perhaps we can do it together. 

Speaker 1 01:31:08 You will do it. I will do it. We will, we will just shower podcast reviews down on all the shows that we love. The third way to support the show. Let's talk money. It's very meta. I know with this, you know, theme of the season, but all of the intimate and honest conversations here on the popup pod are 100% listener funded. So that means that they're paid for by our sliding scale Patreon community. There's no ads, there's no sponsors. It's just a couple hundred people coming together to ensure that everyone involved in making this podcast gets paid. That's me as the host, my sound engineer and musician Adam Day, as well as every single one of our guests, our Patreon community also funds the creation of a full transcript for each episode. Those are our production ethics here at the popup pod. And if that aligns with your own values, I would love to invite you to come check out our community@nicoleantoinette.com slash Patreon. That's the page of my website that answers all of your questions. What the heck is Patreon? How does it work? Why do we use it? What bonus content do you get access to? What can you expect when you join all that good stuff? And remember it's run on a sliding scale so you can pay whatever amount makes most sense for you. 

Speaker 1 01:32:16 So one more time, it's simple internet.com/ patreon. You can come check us out for a month or two cancel whenever you want stay for years, you know, it's really flexible. Uh, it would really help support the show and you can see what we're all about and meet some of the people in our community. Okay. Friends until next time.