BTT EP 10
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Between the Tabs, the moodboard podcast where creativity, growth, and business meet the real life happening between it all. I'm your host, Kleidi Jeen, and we are going to talk about the stuff that lives between work and who you are, and we're gonna do it in four parts. So go ahead, grab your snack, grab your drink, get cozy, put on your little blanket, and let's hop into part one.
Let me take a big breath here because this is about to be wildly unpopular, but I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. It gets under my skin, oh my gosh, to see content like the Instagram content, the influencers showing all the hidden spots in Paris, and even more so when people talk about how cheap the grocery items are here, for example, or how really great the healthcare is here Oh, this annoys [00:01:00] me so much because, for example, for the hidden spots, the hidden spots are no longer hidden when, hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of viewers have seen those spots on Instagram.
And now guess what? They're all flooded. I remember when my firstborn was at daycare, there was a cute little hole-in-the-wall banh mi shop, so the Vietnamese sandwiches. So it was a cheap banh mi shop. You go there, get a sandwich.
It was so good. I think it was, like, two euros or something ridiculous like that, and it was so good. So I would drop him off and then go pick up a sandwich and have that for lunch and then go pick him up because he was doing half days. And apparently that shop got posted on Instagram.
This was about eight years, maybe seven or eight years ago, and I just remember the one day that I went to drop off my son and go get my sandwich, and the line was out of the door. The line was so long, so I didn't have time to get [00:02:00] the sandwich anymore, right? And then a couple of months later, ownership changed, and the sandwiches were so not good anymore.
They were so bad, so bad. So this is the kind of thing that happens, and that an extreme example. It's a real example, but an extreme one. Every place won't go that way, but honestly, that does happen quite a bit. Like, when an influencer makes a place well-known, especially if it's an eating spot, it gets really popular.
It gets really packed. It changes ownership, and then it goes down. That's an actual thing that happens. And also when it comes to the great and cheap healthcare, like, "Oh my God, I only paid 100 euros for blah, blah, blah." Like, you know, I'm paying for that. The people who live here, who are residents here and also who are citizens here subsidize the hell out of the healthcare.
Our contributions from-- Like, for example, for me as an auto-entrepreneur, my contributions or anybody who [00:03:00] works here, our contributions subsidize that healthcare that makes the prices that low So it really kind of stings to have another US citizen come over and have a healthcare experience and just blast out to everybody how cheap it is.
Like, "Come get some of this." But it's, it's not really cheap. I pay 30 to 40% of my income goes towards-- Of my profits goes towards that. It's not cheap. It's just how the whole system is set up. You pay for it at some point, it's just not at the point after you receive the services, if you see what I mean.
And also, people get wind of that. The people who are making policy decisions and making laws, they get wind of that and they say, "Oh, okay, this is cheap for everybody? Let's flip the script." For example, right now, what's being proposed, and I think it's being put in place, I'm not sure yet, I need to check on that is that healthcare costs are going up.
Pharmacy costs, the cost of drugs at pharmacies, [00:04:00] the cost of your regular visit, all of those prices, many of those prices are now going up because now the people, we're taking more of the brunt of the national debt and things like that here in France. Whereas billionaires are still paying next to nothing, if anything, here in France.
So it's becoming more and more of that capitalist US situation, and so it really gets under my skin. It really grinds my gears, as Peter says. It grinds my gears that people get on the internet and blast that, "Oh, it's so cheap. Like, go over there and take advantage of it." Because nothing, you know, nothing is free.
There's a cost somewhere that you might not be seeing, but it's there. I promise. So yep, that's my unpopular opinion. Yeah, prices are going up. The socialized s-services and provisions here in France are becoming more and more like a capitalist sort of thing. So it's, it's [00:05:00] getting harder.
It's getting harder. So maybe some of the influencers can cover that instead of getting on, God's internet over here and saying, "Oh, everything is so cheap. Oh, this place is so great," and, kind of ruining it in that way. Glad that you're excited, glad that you're ex- having great experiences, but, please, for the love of all that is holy, like, please stop ruining everything.
The feral Western travelers are just gonna consume everything to death, and It's not just here. Bali, you know, all these famous destinations for the nomads, the nomadic workers and the Western travelers. Like these posts are getting a lot of views and those views turn into visits, and those visits can sort of wreak havoc on, a system that isn't really to be flooded so quickly in that, in that way.
So I know I might be pretty extreme out here with this opinion, but you know what? There it is.
Let's [00:06:00] go on to part two, and this also might be unpopular, but maybe not. I think this is more, you know, if, if you think about this, this is something you might come to as well. And that is, you know, I-- here I go pondering, right?
Wondering. And I can't imagine somebody like Prince or Michael Jackson or David Bowie or someone like that stuck in a nine-to-five corporate job. Can you imagine that? Like, imagine Michael Jackson just kind of, I don't know, working in the mail room in the 1980s. We, we wouldn't have his music.
He influenced generations of music and we, we just wouldn't have that. And so I think of that and I think of other creatives working the nine-to-five, just working the gig economy, taking on jobs, whatever they need to make ends meet. All the while, their creativity, that thing that they wanna focus on, that thing they wanna build, that music [00:07:00] they wanna make, that thing they wanna draw, it gets ghosted.
It gets completely undeveloped, if not, you know, just underdeveloped. And that, that makes me sad. And it also makes me angry because not only are those individuals missing out on that feeling of fulfillment, of taking that journey to bring their creative visions to life, but the world is missing out on what they could have created to make the world a better place.
What, what beauty they could have brought to the world, what problems they could have solved for the world. All of that is missing and, you know, and we feel it. Our society is mirroring the fact that the creativity that is being shunned, that is being ignored, that is being suppressed, that is being ghosted, that is just trying to survive daily life, that creativity being missing, that being completely cut out of the picture of the world, we're seeing the effects of that.
And I don't know, I don't think I need to explain to you what we're [00:08:00] seeing. We're seeing, more wars. We're seeing all kinds of crazy things happening in the, the billionaire class of people with the types of things that they're doing. You know? We're missing out on that, that loving creativity where, you know, like, "Oh, I just wanna make this better.
Ooh, I just wanna bring this beautiful thing to life." That, that's... So much of that is missing. And imagine how the world could be if people who are really creative actually got to create, who were actually not trying to fight their ways out of a war zone or trying to fight their way out of famine or trying to fight their way out of climate change repercussions, you know?
And that's what my concept of living the dream is all about and I talk about this in depth over at Open House. I'll include the link in the show notes to Open House. It's my, five video series, that gives you like a deep background on what Soft Sundae is [00:09:00] all about and you can sign up to watch it for free so
i'll include the link. But that's what living the dream is all about. It's about how we can stay with our creative dreams without them tearing us apart, without the pursuing of those creative dreams making us abandon ourselves or treat ourselves like we don't matter.
Like, how do we stay with ourselves and also stay with our creative dreams? And that's what living the dream is about. And it's not about, something that only someone with privilege can imagine or can do. It's like how, what nuanced little things can we include or exclude in our daily lives to really allow us to be able to stay with it, to stay with our dreams without zapping ourselves so much that we end up with chronic stress symptoms and autoimmune diseases and things like that.
So , you can check out Open House with the link in the show notes, and that is gonna bring us to part three of this episode. I am getting all of the [00:10:00] behind-the-scenes stuff ready for launching my Thai Yoga Bodywork service, System Reboot.
So I am in the middle of warming up, creating everything, getting people's eyes on my Instagram, sending out little messages here and there by email, things like that, getting ready, getting ready to launch System Reboot. And if you haven't heard yet, if you haven't heard the word, this is something I've been slowly coming back to after a five-year hiatus during my postpartum with my youngest son, and now I'm ready to put it out there, ready to get it out into the world here in Paris.
I'm so excited about working IRL, in real life, with clients again. So I am launching System Reboot here in Paris to create my founding 20 client base, like 20 wonderful creative women, leaders in their own right, founders, women who are doing things in their own way. Like, let's work together, and you deserve [00:11:00] so much to feel good in your body and not take on the responsibility of everything all the time.
Let's give you 90 minutes to come home to your body right in your own home. So if you're in Paris, I come to your home, or if you're visiting Paris, I come to your temporary accommodations. So I wanna make sure, actually speaking of behind the scenes, that this comes across in the copy, that it's very clear that I am coming to you So I'm actually over here re-looking at the waitlist page that I created and re-looking at the emails and all of these things to make sure that that's clear.
Because I also, in addition to making sure that people understand that I'm coming to your home here in Paris or the surrounding area, I do have some clients who are just right outside of Paris, and it's easy to get to them. It's no problem on my end. But I wanna make sure to relay that you don't have to have this huge fancy apartment in order for me to come to you [00:12:00] to do this service. I have worked with, I have worked with clients in studio apartments, in really small one-bedroom apartments. And yeah, even like huge lofts or huge Haussmannian, like the traditional architectural style apartments here in Paris.
It runs the gamut. I bring everything to you. All I need is a little floor space to lay out the floor mat and enough space for you to lie down flat, with your arms out to the side.
That's it. So pretty much anybody can accommodate that. So I want to figure out how to make sure to say that in everything that I'm putting out there without being so wordy. So you see how many words it took for me to say that just now? Not my biggest forte, but here we are.
Anyway, that's what I'm working on over here lately, and I'm just really excited to stop pivoting over and over again from this offer to that offer and really just dig my heels in here with System Reboot [00:13:00] and do something I've been doing for a long time. I've been doing this since 2013. Imagine.
And so it just really feels, I don't know, it feels good to me. It feels so exciting to, to come back to this, to, to do something I know has made so many people happy and, you know, to get it going. So that's the behind-the-scenes stuff that's going on right now for Soft Sundae, uh, and it's all focused on System Reboot right now.
So now, you know, it's Wednesday. We are over here looking for dopamine hits between the tasks and the tabs. And you know what? There's one little thing I will suggest here to help us get through the rest of the week gracefully. And this is more if you are that creative dreamer and you are doing the work to put your creative dream out there, whether it's a business or a project, whatever it is Your eyes are probably bigger than your stomach.
[00:14:00] Your creative eyes are bigger than your creative stomach. And that, that passion project that you're working on, it might seem like it's never gonna get finished. Stay with it. Stay with it. That's something that's been feeling really right for me, again, with, with System Reboot, with my Thai yoga body work, staying with it and taking it one step at a time.
Just do one bit at a time. And sometimes you're gonna have a burst of energy, so hell, during those times, do a lot at a time if it feels right. If you need a break from building and creating, take a break, right? But come back to it. Keep building it. Stay with it. You know, people finished the pyramids.
They finished the Great Wall of China. Wait, is that finished? Was that finished? I think so. They finished Notre Dame in, like, in the 1200s, right? Rediscover patience. Keep going. Keep taking those steps. Stay with it. Dig your heels in. That's what [00:15:00] I'm doing. Let's do that together. All right. And so that brings us to the end of episode 10, and I will meet you the next time we're surfing for dopamine between the tabs, AKA next Wednesday.
Bye.
