Episode Notes
Paulette Perhach (@pauletteperhach) is an freelance writer, journalist and writing coach, who shares her knowledge and expertise with those pursuing writing, both as a career or for personal creative goals.
In this lively podcast interview, Paulette speaks to host Anne Muhlethaler about her early beginnings with writing, how one of her stories, ‘The Fuck-off Fund’, went viral, and how this didn’t just propel her to the top of literature mountain but zip-lined her (in her own words) to finance media mountain. Since then, Paulette has published her first book, Welcome to the Writer’s World, and tells Anne all about the writing and editing process, as well as the courses and services she’s currently developing.
Paulette, along with the novelist April Davila, also co-created a virtual space for writers during the pandemic, called A Very Important Meeting, offering participants mindfulness meditation and a 45 min focused writing session, with the option to get support on their writing projects from the hosts, who are all accomplished writers themselves.
Paulette talks with a lot of humour about her personal challenges with finances, writing, day-jobs, anxiety and how mindfulness and meditation have supported her in finding more balance when managing her anxious mind.
A very spirited and inspiring conversation.
Selected inks from episode
You can find Paulette at http://www.pauletteperhach.com/
or follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/pauletteperhach
on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/paulettejperhach/
or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulette-perhach-23b12832/
Paulette’s viral story, the Fuck Off Fund https://www.thebillfold.com/2016/01/a-story-of-a-fuck-off-fund/#.hz4t8emwj
A Very Important Meeting – writing coaches bios and details – https://www.averyimportantmeeting.com/instructors
Michael Moss books on the food industry – https://www.mossbooks.us/
Writer Chuck Klosterman – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Klosterman
Paulette’s dream obituary is available to read here: http://www.pauletteperhach.com/about
Hugo House – a house for writers, in Seattle – https://hugohouse.org/
McSweeney’s – https://www.mcsweeneys.net/
Granta – https://granta.com/
Welcome to the Writer’s Life – Paulette’s blog – https://welcometothewriterslife.com/
And Welcome to the Writer’s Life – the book – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39711925-welcome-to-the-writer-s-life
Penland School of Crafts – https://penland.org/
Bernadette Jiwa – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6556886.Bernadette_Jiwa
Tara Brach – the sacred pause, guided meditation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-yF9EMkE88
Kerfuffle – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kerfuffle
Holocene, a song by Bon Iver – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE
On Bullshit , a book by American philosopher Harry J Frankfurt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
Matrix, a book by Lauren Groff – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57185348-matrix
The Body, a guide for occupants, by Bill Bryson – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43582376-the-body
George Saunders – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Saunders
Full Episode Transcript
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour, and namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, and I’m your host, Anne Muhlethaler. Today, I am delighted to be joined by Paulette Perhach. Paulette is an author, a journalist, and a writing coach who loves to share her knowledge and her expertise with those who are pursuing writing, both as a career or for personal creative goals. Paulette, along with the novelist, April Davila, who was also a guest on the podcast earlier this year, co-created a virtual space for writers during the pandemic called A Very Important Meeting, which is where I met her.
Anne Muhlethaler:
In this wonderful virtual writing space, they offer the participants a mindfulness meditation and a 45 minutes focused writing session, with the wonderful option to get support for their writing projects from the hosts who are all accomplished writers themselves. In this interview, Paulette shares her own journey with writing, how one of her stories went viral, what it’s like you juggle creative pursuits and a day job, and plenty more, which makes for a very joyful, honest, and exciting interview. So I am really delighted to share my conversation with Paulette Perhach. Happy listening. Paulette, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to Out of the Clouds.
Paulette Perhach:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited. You have the best podcasting voice in the world, so you make-
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you.
Paulette Perhach:
… me want to work on mine. Mine’s a little shrill.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, you do know I used to be a singer, so I have explored the microphone before the podcasting.
Paulette Perhach:
I’m currently a kitchen and shower and car singer. I love singing. It is not for consumption of other people.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yet. So, I wanted to start, as I do with most interviews, with you to tell me your story, and pick up wherever you want.
Paulette Perhach:
I am a creative writer who is doing all the things, trying to make it all work, probably doing too much, and nearing 40, and really thinking about honing in and creating the life that I really, really want based on this foundation of what I’ve been doing, and recognizing how far I’ve come, and really aligning what I originally envisioned for my life, which was, I want to be a magazine writer who’s getting sent all over the world to do incredible stories. And then in my lifetime, everything has changed so much about magazines, about newspapers, about the world.
Paulette Perhach:
The internet was not a thing when I was born in 1982, back in the late last century. My creative outlets are really writing and entrepreneurship, and I love that entrepreneurship can be a creative outlet, and I’ve really, really enjoyed it, as well as other things, like photography and design and cooking. So just trying to live in the space of my favorite roomy quote, which is made the beauty we love be what we do.
Paulette Perhach:
The beauty I love is not scrolling on Twitter, although that is what I do often, but trying to have as much time in that space of belting as loud as I can while chopping up some beautiful peppers and waiting for a friend to knock on my door, and yeah, finding as much time in that space as possible, and feeling the way I felt when I read Lauren Groff’s Matrix last weekend, just like, oh, just re-falling in love with how good writing can be.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, thanks. I really hear you. Sometimes I think that when I was a kid and I fell in love with reading, one of the things that I realized, probably more as a teenager than as a child, was how beautiful words can be. When that hits you, you know how you need to say it out the out loud, even if you’re on your own, you need to read them aloud?
Paulette Perhach:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s that’s a pleasure I like to reconnect with regularly.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. You’re like, what is that? [inaudible 00:04:52] or something. What’s the mysterious magic behind this? Why does that sound so good? And then, of course, with writers, how do I make my writing sound that good? And how do I wield this magic?
Anne Muhlethaler:
So tell me, how old were you when you chose writing as a career? Oh, did writing choose you?
Paulette Perhach:
I was 10 years old, at the bus stop with my two best friends who are still my two best friends, and I said, “I want to be a writer when I grow up.” And my one best friend said, “Do you have any idea how hard that is?” And she was so right. So yeah. So I started out literally like middle school yearbook.
Anne Muhlethaler:
How did that go?
Paulette Perhach:
There’s so much about dividing the line… Part of my life challenge is doing things to be special and to get attention, and doing things because they’re of service to people. A video exists of my whole family, cousins and everything, tons of kids on the floor, Christmas morning, opening presents. It’s crazy loud in there. And then there’s me, and I get a candy cane on one of my presents, and I just whip around, looking for someone to tell, and just my shrill, little voice over the den goes, “I got a candy cane in my present.” And it’s like, who cares, kids?
Paulette Perhach:
So when you’re like a middle school yearbook, you’re like, “I want my name on the page, I want to be special, I want to be the writer.” Whenever I feel like I’m just doing something for attention, or to be special, I call it candy caning, and I’m like, “Okay, you’re candy-caning.” Let’s bring it back to like, how can you serve the reader and honor yourself and love yourself, but not be like, I need to be special to be okay as a person, which has been a long time struggle.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think it’s something that most of us can and recognize or acknowledge exists in our lives, as well, for sure.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. I’m the youngest, and I was a total daddy’s girl who was not spoiled too much financially, but definitely spoiled with love, deservedly. So I came out of the world, and I’m like, “I’m cute. Everything’s going to be great. I’m the protagonist.” And then the earth is like, no, please shut up.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Depends on how you tell the story. Yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. When I did Peace Corps, that was very good for me. That was a very… needed ass whooping by the world, and that really was my… a big part of my origin story, how I came out into the world.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Tell me about that. So how did you come to get into the Peace Corps? And can you explain it for people who are not from your neck of the world?
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. So when you say Peace Corps in the United States, people envision you living in a hut, and you’re like this… traditionally coming under more scrutiny, you are this very good person. Actually, there’s a movie where this… the character can only see someone’s insides, and their insides look like their outsides, and all the Peace Corps volunteers are beautiful people inside, which is, yeah, not necessarily true. And so I had always wanted to travel, and never had money in college. A big part of my story is the financial chaos of my family. My family went bankrupt when I was eight. And then when we were finally starting to get our footing, when I was 17, my dad was killed in an accident at work. So that was just a total chaos disaster.
Paulette Perhach:
So I was 25, and I was doing newspapers, but I was like… I was a small town reporter, and I was like, something is not quite right about this. The recession was coming on, things were getting bad, and things were getting bad in newspapers, and I was like, “This is a good time for me to try to do Peace Corps.” I also had a lot of problems with anxiety. Not so much depression, but… Anxiety just sucks, so is that depression, or is it just anxiety sucking? I was also undiagnosed ADHD.
Paulette Perhach:
So I was like… I just wanted to kick myself out of my life. I’m like, let me go do something big, be of service to people. For example, when I got my country where you go and you volunteer for two years, your salary is about $2,000. So I got Paraguay… I knew I was going to go to south America, and I got Paraguay, and I was like, “I wanted mountains, I wanted beaches.” And I was like… You can request a country change, and I almost wanted to, because I’m like, “This is not a very…” There wasn’t Instagram at the time, but the mood was like, well, this is not a very Instagramable country.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay.
Paulette Perhach:
And then I was like, “No.” I was like, “You are going to serve others, and you’re going where you needed, so you’re going to Paraguay.” And I went, and just adored the time I had there. I always joke that it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And the big thing… I didn’t know Spanish when I went down there, and they have one of the highest levels of bilingualism in the world, so they speak Spanish and they speak Guarani, which is the indigenous language, which is like very different from a Latin language.
Paulette Perhach:
So you just go, you’re like the village idiot for like two years. You’re treated like a toddler. I went from being… I was the features editor at a small newspaper, but I was a competent person, and I could communicate so well. That was my thing, words are my thing. And then all my words were taken. Yeah, I would say that para is probably like the global middle class. For example, there was the big earthquake in Haiti while it was there, and they were gathering up funds to donate to Haiti.
Paulette Perhach:
So not the poorest of the poor, just like… But you do see a lot more suffering, and you see people working a lot harder for a lot less payoff. And so most of that like, I deserve, or this should have worked out in this way, or like, poor me, my dad died, so now I get this great career, that was drained from me, mostly. Of course, it’s been like more than 10 years now, so it’s worn off a little bit, and I’m like, too much Instagram, not enough traveling in the real world. I’m like, where is my infinity pool?
Paulette Perhach:
But I think the most important thing, too, was the relationships. To me, Peace Corps is the relationships that I formed while I was there. I literally just randomly called my host mom, because I thought of a funny story. I call her, and we start laughing within 10 seconds. It’s not fair to her for me to say like, being a freelancer writer is hard. So to me, that was the big thing about like, the world doesn’t owe you anything, and if your choice is to try to work in this thing that you love very much, and a lot of people love and want to work in, you better get out there, and you better work as hard as you possibly can and honor the opportunity you’ve been given to chase it. Because in a lot of places in the world, I wouldn’t be able to.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That sounds like a really incredible, incredible two years. Have you gone back to Paraguay?
Paulette Perhach:
Yes. In 2017, I did three months, backpacking in South America, from Columbia down to Paraguay, and I didn’t tell anyone, except my host brother that I was coming. I just rolled up seven years later and surprised my host mom, and that was, literally, one of the best things I’ve ever gotten to do. It was so fun, it was so fun.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, that sounds amazing. I’ve never done Latin America. I’m really looking forward to that one day.
Paulette Perhach:
Let’s go, anytime you want. I need to do the more Southern countries, is a dream of mine.
Anne Muhlethaler:
The only place I’ve been is Mexico, which, as a European, we think is Latin America. So, tell me about what it’s been like for you when you came back after the Peace Corps, reentering the workforce and pursuing your dream as a writer in the US.
Paulette Perhach:
So I started from the bottom. It’s a long story, but basically, I financially screwed myself after Peace Corps. Literally two days after coming back, which is a traumatizing time. It’s just a really hard time for everyone, coming back. A lot of people say it’s harder to come back than to go. I was in a cubicle as wide as a bathroom stall, doing data entry as a temp, because I needed to get a job immediately, and just crying all day long, and crying and typing out numbers. That was a time I really learned this kind of energy that I call not staying here energy.
Paulette Perhach:
So one of the things that I did was I said, okay, what can I use this time for? Literally, wearing my mom’s shoes, driving her car to a job, crying all the way there, listening to Florence + the Machine, getting there, being too treated like… As a temp, you just get treated like dirt, literally getting yelled at. And I was like, “Wasn’t I just on my horse in the fields in Paraguay, speaking Guarani, this like… My social capital had plummeted, as well as my real capital.
Paulette Perhach:
So I said, “I’m going to learn this. I’m going to learn 10-Key during this time, that little… the numbers pad.” I’m like, “I’m going to learn how to do that.” So every day, I just studied that for like five minutes, did a little game online, and then I practiced 10-Key. And I was like, this is my little like… I’m moving forward, even though I’m on the… I am like feeling like I’m crawling through mud, I’m going to be right. So eventually, I decided to move to Seattle, after living with my mom for about eight months, and moved to Seattle, super broke, still, just really trying to have that not staying here energy.
Paulette Perhach:
It was the whole year, it was really, really hard. And then from reading all these books on finding a job, really just coming into educating myself and taking responsibility for my own self-improvement and self-development, read all these books, got an interview at a tech company. Because I’d been reading all these books, I knew that they expected me to negotiate. My friend at the time, who worked in healthcare, so never had to negotiate, just said like, “I don’t think you should negotiate. You really need this job.” And I was like, “No, I’m going to do it, even though I am desperate. I would take half of the salary, probably.” So I asked for 5,000 more, and I said, “Well, what about commission?” Because I was writing proposals. So they gave me 1% commission, and that was a hundred thousand dollar difference over the next three years.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Paulette Perhach:
So, I knew that I wanted to be a writer, so I used that to… I paid off my student loans, and I put as much as I could into my retirement, because I’m like, all right, I know it’s going to be a little harder to save for a retirement once I’m a writer. And then I left that job in 2015, and was working part-time, doing a 20-hour a week job, and doing some freelance work in 2016, when a story of mine went viral. That was really where things started to take off for me. I call it setting the table, getting ready for your success, and trusting that it was going to come. So I had my Twitter set up, I had my Facebook as a writer, and my story went all around the world, I just got a Google alert with my name. Here we are, five years later, and it was translated into Indonesian.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Paulette Perhach:
It’s been so cool to see it go all around the world. That was a really fun ride that will probably never happen again, but it was cool. And that was kind of the… what started getting my name out there, which is how I’ve come to write quite a bit about personal finance and emotions, because the story was about women and money. And so from there, just really… I want to write a novel, I want to still be traveling the world and writing incredible travel stories, I want to make enough money. I design courses for writers, and I’m trying to do all the things to make sure that I make it out leaning too hard into plan B, while keeping plan A front and center, but not requiring that my novel make money for me, so I don’t strangle the creativity around it or rush it. So-
Anne Muhlethaler:
Am I correct in saying that you’ve been… You’ve writing over the last few years for a number of really well known publications. Tell me about what it was like when you saw your name on the New York Times, for example. Which one was your favorite?
Paulette Perhach:
What’s so funny is that I’ve never felt as thrilled or excited as when I first saw my name in publication in college. This was the first time that it wasn’t a yearbook.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay.
Paulette Perhach:
It was for the material science and engineering newsletter of my university.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Amazing.
Paulette Perhach:
So funny. I happened to be one talking by one of my journalism professors, and I was like, “Look,” and they were just like, “Uh-huh,” like, could not have been less impressed. It’s so fun, it’s exciting. The thing was, though, actually, the very first time I was in the New York Times, I happened to be having an anxious day, and it didn’t make me feel better. And I was like, that was really such a good lesson in mental health, and how the external cannot always penetrate the way that you feel in your mind.
Paulette Perhach:
I was doing therapy at that time for my anxiety, but that was before I had started medication, which so immediately helped. Just two weeks later, I was like, “Oh, this is what it’s like to not wake up with dread. Interesting. That’s nice.” So that was really one of the things that helped me decide like, okay, I had been resisting medication for so long, and I was like, “I don’t want to be a slave to some pill.” And then I’m like, “Actually, this is not a big deal. I don’t want to be a slave to my anxiety all day long.”
Paulette Perhach:
That was such an important lesson with the first time of seeing it. I think a lot of times, those bylines can be anti-climactic in a good way. It’s like when my book was published, it was anti-climactic in a good way, because it reminds you that the joy is really in creating the thing. I love, love, love interviewing experts. I just got my 10th piece in the New York Times, and got to interview these genius architects who are designing houses on cliffs, and it’s just so cool. I love learning, and you get to learn so much when you do a piece. What’s published is probably 5% of what you yourself get to learn about that topic. But it is very exciting, and it’s exciting to share, and it’s exciting when it happens over and over. You’re like, “Oh, this isn’t a fluke, I really am a writer. Cool.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s amazing. So tell me, the story that went viral, is that the one called the Fuck off Fund?
Paulette Perhach:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Ah. So I saw that you were a nominated an award, the piece is also anthologized in… I don’t know if it’s a book called The Future is Feminist-
Paulette Perhach:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… alongside works from lots of women that I admire a lot, as well, [inaudible 00:20:23]-
Paulette Perhach:
That was crazy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… Mindy Kaling, Caitlin Moran, I love her.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. I love her, too. Oh my God.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, I’d love for you to tell us a bit about that story, and why do you think it went viral, and how did it come to exist?
Paulette Perhach:
So, I love the story of how this piece came to exist, because it came out of a really dark time with my writing, and shows the importance of something I call fake-outs, which are fake stakes around your writing, or anything you want to be doing that’s not screaming at you to do. So, end of 2015, I was having a rough time with my writing, so I said to my friend, like, “Will you do an accountability measure with me?” And so to me, fake-outs are anything like hiring a coach, taking a class, signing up for open mic nights. It’s an answer to the question, what would happen if I didn’t write today?
Paulette Perhach:
Once a month we had a piece. We were like joking when we set up the accountability measure. We were like, am I even a writer anymore? So the calendar invite said, in all caps, are you even a writer? And that was the day we had to send each other an essay. And so this essay came out of that, and it started as a list of, yeah, these are the kinds of funds you should have. You should have like a great opportunity fund when you get an opportunity to go on a trip, and you don’t get any notice, so you need the money, blah, blah, blah.
Paulette Perhach:
One fund I wanted was called the fuck off fund, which is the amount of money you need to tell someone to fuck off, if they deserve one. So this is your boss, your landlord, your parent. It’s really about having autonomy over your life, and not giving anyone else control over you because they control some aspect of your finances. So, started off as just an explanatory essay, and then through craft and through revision, I came to write it as it would happen if you didn’t save a fuck off fund, and then got sexually harassed at work, and or your boyfriend becomes abusive, but you live with him, and you can’t afford to get your own place, and the things you start to find yourself excusing because it’s easier to excuse than to figure out how you’re going to get out of the situation.
Paulette Perhach:
And then I rewrote the story of what would happen if you did have a fuck off fund. And so it’s this like sliding door scenario. And yeah, it was like… The day that it was published, I was at my job, in my cubicle. And then around 10:30 in the morning, Jezebel posted a story about my story, and I just like wheeled my chair into my friend’s cubicle, and I was like, “Something is happening.” L Magazine called it super viral. It was crazy. It was-
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Paulette Perhach:
Someone mentioned it in an interview with… Oh my gosh, I’m blanking on her name. Elizabeth Warren. The craziest thing that happened was that at the Cannes Film Festival, Conde Nast had all these billboards that said like, in the future, this, in the future, that, and one said, in the future, every woman will have a fuck off fund.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You’re kidding me.
Paulette Perhach:
I am not.
Anne Muhlethaler:
No way. Oh my God, that’s amazing.
Paulette Perhach:
The worst thing was that my idea was living this wild life. I was like, the amount… This is what’s crazy about being a writer, is my social capital just skyrocketed. But again, my real capital… When that Conde Nast billboard came out, I was at the place where I did my MFA residencies, which were 10-day residencies, I wasn’t attending… A long story, I was just there, and I literally brought groceries to feed myself, because I couldn’t afford to go out to eat. I saw that thing, and I was just like… I was just exhausted, and I was like, I would like some compensation for this idea. I would like to receive the amount of like… I would like to be support for all the value that I’ve apparently brought to the world.
Paulette Perhach:
Probably, between the actual piece… I got paid $40 for the original essay, and then maybe like for reprints, like a thousand, overall, total, and I feel very confident saying a million people have read that story. On the original website, 750,000, and then it’s been reprinted in The Observer, Times of India, all around the world, and I was freaking so broke, and I was so frustrated. That was really, I think, such a lesson in like, you have to create your own structures for monetizing your work.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I work with a couple of writers based between the UK and the US, and it’s true that… Actually, they’re all women. We’ve talked about a few months ago how, even when you are within the magazine structure, you’re already tweet it as someone that is expandable, there are thousands others who want your job, so-
Paulette Perhach:
Oh, totally.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… you’re already badly paid when you’re in. And then when you’re external, it’s even worse. It’s even worse.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And that sense of, what are we worth, what is our time worth, what is voice worth, that’s something that’s deeply difficult to look at and important to discuss.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. I just had a piece in Vox about all the reasons people under charge. But something great that came out of the Fuck of Fund is that… I always joked, like, I was at the base of the literature mountain, trying to climb up literature mountain, and it just ziplined me to the top of personal finance media mountain, where I got to meet a lot of people who are at the forefront of entrepreneurship and personal finance media. It was so funny. Literally, I was about to go sit down to brunch with like the Susie Ormans of our time, and I went to the ATM, and I had negative $200 in my bank account, and I was like dying.
Paulette Perhach:
I’m like, “I’m about to go sit next to Erin Lowry, who does like the Broke Millennial brand and is very well known. Maybe she’ll invite me on her yacht one day.” And I’m like, “And I literally have negative $200 my bank account.” But they have taught me so much, so now I’m so all about reporting back to the writers’ world about, here’s what they’re talking about over… The people who know about money, here’s what they’re saying, dudes. You guys would not believe it. The cool thing is that the way that I now make my money…
Paulette Perhach:
I think that supporting yourself is a creative act, like, how can I bring value to people? It’s not like, how can I scrounge money, or what’s my scam? It’s like, how can I pair the value that I bring, with the needs that other people have? And when that comes together, and people are super happy that you’re there, offering what you have to offer, and you love giving it, it feels as good as getting published in the New York Times.
Paulette Perhach:
I was just looking through my list of all my coaching clients, and just feeling so much love for each person, because I work with each person for three months, and really come to know their story and their work. I’ve just been so surprised at the quality of work, and how they’ve blown me away and seeing them improve. For example, I was talking to one coaching client, and she was doing this dream sequence. And I was like, I just read something that was an amazing dream sequence, and I wanted to show it to her as an example. And it was something one of my other coaching students had written. It wasn’t a published piece.
Paulette Perhach:
I was just like, “What did I just read? That was an incredible example.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s amazing.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. And just being able to… We, in art, tend to feel like business is antithetical to art, and it’s really not. Both of them are finding a new way to create something that other people appreciate. I always say like, when I support myself, I support the arts, and I wish, especially in the US, that I lived in a place that was a little bit more supportive of the arts, but I don’t. I hear France is great for that, but I live in the US.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Yeah. Part of me thinks it’s not just the arts, and I’ll tell you why. I’m coming to the end of my coaching course. My mates who are becoming coaches, I think that a lot of us, actually, have really great difficulty, not even valuing our time, but even putting the offer out there, even putting pen to paper, putting a dollar amount to our time. I think it’s got a lot to do with the way that we’re brought up, I think it has to do with our sex. It seems that females, at least in and around me, struggle with this a lot, and we definitely need to read more about what you’re telling us about in terms of personal finance, and value, and how not to underprice ourselves, because it’s definitely a struggle. I’ve seen so many people go through the same thing.
Paulette Perhach:
I really love offering… I had one friend who was like, “Well, if I charge a lot, what about people who can’t afford it?” And I was like, “You have tiers of offerings.” That’s why when we have the meditation and writing sessions for A Very Important Meeting, it’s payment-optional. That is the thing that I provide to people who literally have no money, because so many things have been given to me. I’ve gotten loans, I’ve gotten scholarships. So I think we can also have the big ticket items, but also consider part of our mission, helping people who don’t have the means for those big ticket items.
Paulette Perhach:
Anyone can come into A Very Important Meeting and have the attention of April Davila, who’s an incredible novelist, Faith Adiele, or myself, or Matthew Perez, and say like, if you have any questions about writing, we’re here. And so that’s an incredible value that I’m so committed to having be payment-optional, and we love the community that supports us when they can, and then people who need to in with the scholarship. That’s so great. And then other people who can’t afford to really go and get the one-on-one, and the people who want that, I need to be willing to accept that, and to let people support me if I really feel like I am doing all the work to be the kind of artist that can bring value to others.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm. Yeah, that’s beautifully said. Would you like to explain to those who don’t know it, what A Very Important Meeting is, and how did it… Actually, tell me, how did it come about? How did you meet April?
Paulette Perhach:
So April, Davila, and I met at a writer’s conference called AWP, literally the week before everything shut down. If it had been held a week later, it would’ve been canceled, for sure. She came by my booth, and we hung out for a second. And then through chatting, later, we both realized that we had an interest in meditation and writing. For the first few months of the pandemic, I was in a really, really tough spot. I was having a really hard life situation already, and then the pandemic happened, and I was like in rose, chocolate, pity party mode for a while.
Paulette Perhach:
And then I took an online dance class from Sia’s choreographer. I was like, “All right, let me try to do something.” So it was the first time that I felt human during the pandemic, and it brought so much value to me. And I said like, “What might writers need?” And to me, it was, we need to regain our focus to not be doom-scrolling, to be able to see and talk to each other, to not feel so isolated, and to actually have a time to get our writing done. Because right now, it feels like sirens are going off nonstop,” which in a lot of places, literally, they were.
Paulette Perhach:
And so April and I started this group, and what we do is we come in, and then the meeting leader leads a 10-minute mindfulness meditation to help people gather their focus. I end my meditation with a poem, or a quote, which I absolutely love. And then we go straight into 45 minutes of focused writing, which when you actually have your focus going, is a long time and really helps… I don’t know, it’s a good chunk. And then afterward, we just go around to see how everyone’s work went that day, and talk about writing for about 15 minutes. It’s just my daily, making sure I get my writing done thing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So you are doing this for yourself, and you’re doing it for others, and it totally works.
Paulette Perhach:
Oh, yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
How did you connect meditation with writing?
Paulette Perhach:
I think they both are around focus, and a thing that you want to make sure that you get done in a day, but also, it’s really hard to skip, and feel like something else is more important, which is why we named it A Very Important Meeting. When we agreed on that name, I was like, “Oh, April’s going to be an amazing partner.” And she totally is. Oh, we have so the same vibe. So it says right on your calendar, A Very Important Meeting. I want to talk about what you said about, it’s for me and it’s for other people.
Paulette Perhach:
So I think when I was in Peace Corps, people are just like, “You’re a Saint, and you’re just giving to other people,” where… People who really were like that were pretty disappointed, because sometimes people are just like, “No, thanks. You talk funny and you look weird, and we don’t trust you, and we don’t want your help.” And then when I was in business, people assume like, you’re always trying to eat the other person’s lunch, and blah, blah, blah, it’s all for you, all for you.
Paulette Perhach:
I have found, really, that the best place is in that middle place, apart from the 10% that I feel that I should be donating. I’m not at 10% yet, but I do… that’s my goal, to get to 10% donations of time and money. I find that apart from that, half for me, half for you feels like this kind of cosmic balance of your effort. Not like a tit for tat, but it’s like, we both get something out of this, and it’s almost like two sides of a lean two that lean on each other, and it’s equal.
Paulette Perhach:
There’s a beauty in that, where, yes, I come and I get my little $20 an hour, and I get my writing done, and I get this incredible community, and other people get this incredible community, and they get their writing done. We’ve just created something beautiful. I mean, so many people… I just got done reading two Michael Moss books about the industrialized food industry, and just realizing the level to which most business doesn’t care about the people that they serve. It’s really nice to create business and a profession for yourself that is that kind of like, half for me, half for you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm. The middle way.
Paulette Perhach:
The Middle way.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm.
Paulette Perhach:
Yes. And not being a martyr, but also not taking advantage of people.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. So skipping to something else, I was reading through several of your articles and [inaudible 00:36:10] and Medium. So you had me laugh out loud a bunch of times, so thanks. It was great doing research. I appreciate. I would love to know, how did you develop your writing voice?
Paulette Perhach:
You develop your writing voice when you realize how many other people you’re trying to sound like and stop it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay. Who did you want to sound like?
Paulette Perhach:
Oh gosh. Serious personal essayist person, literature needed a British accent. One of the things that freed me from that was Chuck Klosterman in one of his books. I was reading it, and in the next, he goes on some tangent, and then the next paragraph, he writes, in all caps, anyway. And I was like, “Wait a minute.” I’m like, “You’re allowed to write in all caps and say anyway and make a joke?” I’m like, “This is how I write to my friends in emails.” So I knew I was finding my voice when my friends would say things like, “Oh my God, I could totally hear you saying that.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh.
Paulette Perhach:
When you’re making yourself laugh, and you’re like, “This pleases me,” and… I sometimes just make myself just cackle in my office, and I love it, because you never know if anything is ever going to come of this writing. So you might as well entertain yourself. When you feel that your own gaze is most important, then I think you start to find your voice. But it takes a really long time, like years and years, and you’re digging for it and just saying like, what is more me? What is more real?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Now, I’d like to know, when did you write your biography, the one that’s currently on your website?
Paulette Perhach:
People love that, and I love it. I love being the writer that is totally just like, “Hey, here’s what it’s really like.” Because it’s such a disservice that we do to writers. So basically, if people don’t know, I have my writer’s bio, like, Paulette Perhach is a writer, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then I have a section called rejections, humiliations, and failures. And then it’s written in the style of an author’s bio, but it’s just describing all of my failures, and rejections-
Anne Muhlethaler:
It is hilarious.
Paulette Perhach:
Because I think a lot of my style about how I help other writers comes from the fact that I moved to Seattle and I happened to move six box more writing center called Hugo House, which, just luck of the draw, is one of the best writing centers in the country, and I got to hang out there and take classes and meet writers. And then you see nobody is as hot as they look in their author’s photo, or composed, or happy. Everyone’s freaking out and anxious and scared and feels like an idiot. The author’s bio is this absolutely like the Instagram of text describing your life, with a complete filter of success on top of everything else.
Paulette Perhach:
So I think the service that I provide to new writers is just being very honest about all the rejection that I’ve been through. And so I post all my rejections on Instagram, and I just posted a correction I had to have done on Instagram, which gutted me, so that they don’t say like, “Wow, I’m not a genius,” or, “I’m not a prodigy.” That the failures are as much a part of the successes, so get used to it, because it just keeps happening.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Now, the last part, the dream obit. How’d you say that? Or, obituary.
Paulette Perhach:
Obit. Yes, my dream obit.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Uh-huh (affirmative). How did that come about?
Paulette Perhach:
That’s the newest part, and I actually need to work more on that, I think. I mean-
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think it’s pretty funny-
Paulette Perhach:
… that sounds funny.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… and I’m even good going to ask you if you could read it to our listeners, because I feel like it’s so entertaining, that why not? I think it’s really great to have something to look forward to that’s different, and I don’t think my voice is the right voice. I think it should be your voice.
Paulette Perhach:
So I think I actually posted this when my friend, Stephanie O’Connell, wrote on Twitter that like, ambition is vulnerable. And so to really say like, no, this is what I really want… Although part of this is just, obviously, joking, which is fairly obvious, which hurts, but it’s like, no, I really want to be in the best… I want to be an incredible writer. Like, I want to be doing work that is in the best publications in the world. Like, what? Who do you think you are? It’s like, I don’t know. Okay.
Paulette Perhach:
So here’s my dream obit. Paulette Perhach, age 100, spontaneously combusted while on horse safari and Zimbabwe. No horses were injured. Known as the Beyonce of the riding world, Perhach was the author of at least two New York Times bestselling novels, which it would be so cool if Tin House had published. She also wrote three books on writing, covering the life, the business, and the spiritual path of writers. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Granta, and all the other cool places, and the best American writing about feelings.
Paulette Perhach:
She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for outstanding achievement in the listicle. Perhach co-founded Art Church, a weekly spiritual gathering for artists. She hosted an annual writers’ retreat that move locations each year, bringing writers to Brazil, Patagonia, Banff, and Colombia. The pieces of her body will be battered and deep fried, and fed to see creatures off the coast of Florida. She is survived by her many nieces and nephews of siblings and friends, as well as her best friend, hourglass.
Anne Muhlethaler:
There’s so many things I loved about that, especially the last few words. So you will be best friends then, that’s wonderful.
Paulette Perhach:
Yes, we will. I had mentioned in the rejections how I didn’t get this American life internship, but I did pay to meet hourglass like a creep.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm. That’s pretty fun.
Paulette Perhach:
It’s the only meet and greet I’ve ever paid for. I was like, “I don’t care. Yes, I don’t care. That’s an option, yeah, let’s do it.” And I called my friend and I was like, “Do you want to do this?” She was like, “Yes. Great.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s amazing. So, I’d love for you to tell us the story about how you decided to write a book, and how this particular book came along for you.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. So I have been doing courses for writers. Let’s say I didn’t have any credentials to really rest upon. Just the fact that I was in it. I was trying to be a writer, I had been published in Salon at that point, and I was really in it. And I was like, “Okay, here’s how you start, here’s how you really make the shift and start to take it seriously.” After Fuck of Fund came out, a local publisher called Sasquatch contacted me and said, “Hey, do you have any ideas for books?” So I gave them my course that I’d written, and they really liked it, and they wanted me to add on top of it a memoir about being a writer.
Paulette Perhach:
So it’s about 50,000 words of instruction, with 20,000 words of memoir about being a writer. Oh man, I worked on that during 2018, and that was… I have never worked so hard for so little payoff in my life. I lived in 150-square-foot apartment in Seattle, and worked from 8:00 AM till 8:00 PM. I remember when my book launch was coming out, someone wanted to go on a date with me, and I was just like, “Well, I have to go scope out my book launch venue, and there’s a bar there. So if you want to do that, you can tag along on an errand if you wanted to see me.
So, yeah, it was super tough. It was really cool. I finished one of the drafts on my trip in 2017 in Columbia. I just stayed in one place in Columbia, and I had to rewrite three sections a day. I was copying from the old draft to the new draft by hand. I didn’t just edit it, I was like, “I’m going to make myself copy it over.” Because if there is something that makes you not want to copy over a sentence, it’s the fact that you have to type out 70,000 words. So you’re like, “That’s not cutting it, that’s not cutting it, skip, skip.” So, yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
And then we had the book launch in Seattle, and was fabulous. It was like my artistic wedding, I felt like. It’s been a really wonderful ride, and it got selected as one of poets’ and writers’ best books for writers, and that was the day that I was like, “Okay, I did enough. I’m not a hack.” I describe it as freshman orientation for new writers. It’s called Welcome to the Writer’s Life, and it is like the welcome mat, like, here’s where we do this, here’s this. You’re going to want to know about this, and this person, and this publication, and onward you go, and you got to worry about making money, and you got to worry about getting all your writing done, and here’s what you have to read and how you have to read, and here are the things writers like to argue about.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Ooh.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. MFA versus no MFA. It’s been received really well. I’ve been really happy with the Amazon reviews, got four stars, more than four stars with more than a hundred reviews. So, feel great about that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yay.
Paulette Perhach:
And I still keep my blog at welcometothewriterslife.com, which is kind of continuing the conversation.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. So, I wanted to ask you about the rest of the courses that you are now offering, because you have a panel of things. There was one with a really intense and interesting name, which had the word deluxe in it. Do you want to tell me about, what are the different resources that you currently have for people out there who actually-
Paulette Perhach:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… need your help?
Paulette Perhach:
Yes. So I have a self-run course called Going Pro for people who want to become freelance writers, I have a coaching group and one-on-one option called Powerhouse Writers, which is really for people who are like, I want to be my own badass, and I want to really make this life work, and what are the things that are going to power my work and really get me the life that I truly want? And then the Writers’ Machine Control Center Deluxe is a piece of software that I’m designing for writers right now. It is a Google add-on that runs a Google sheet that helps people track everything about their writing lives, so they can stay organized and get to the fun part. That’s been really fun. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s So cool. Is that live already?
Paulette Perhach:
It’s live now, and it’s… So it’s just… I have such big dreams for it, and I have a fantastic developer, and really love… It’s just a fun creative project to be like, “Okay, how can we handle this, and how can we…” Just, how can you manage all your contacts? When I make a mistake or something feels disorganized to me, I can be like, “Okay, how can I fix this in the writers’ mission control center?” It’s really exciting, and I think it’s going to help a lot of people to have more organized and profitable freelance writing lives.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay. I’m looking forward to testing it out.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. So I’m teaching a class called You’ve Got to Get Your Writing Life Organized. It’s just a two-hour class where you get the sheet free with the class, and we talk about all the different aspects of organization. So yeah, so those are all my live events and everything. But yeah, it’s a lot, right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
It Sounds like a lot, but it also sounds wonderful, because it feels like it’s segmented at different levels for people who have different objectives. So-
Paulette Perhach:
Totally.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… I will make sure to have every single one of them in the show notes, as well.
Paulette Perhach:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What advice do you have for aspiring writers out there, whatever their age?
Paulette Perhach:
Run. No, I’m just kidding. So, I think that the biggest thing is that you get better at the thing by doing the thing, and that’s true for anything. And so be careful what you’re good at. Sometimes I realize that I am really good at watching TV. I got the remote down, I got my… I’m pressing those buttons like someone live streaming there Grand Theft Auto game. And I’m like, “Wow, I’m really good at watching TV. Let me rethink my life. I’m really good at Twitter, I’m really good at other things.” And so just being careful about that, and knowing that the number one thing that writing requires is your time, and so you have to get very intentional about your time.
Paulette Perhach:
A worried parent might say you’ll never any money. What I would say is you have to become very intentional about how you make the most per hour, so that you can buy other hours for your creative writing. There’s a lot of opportunity out there to be really creative about how you make money. I think, especially in the tech world, it’s like, do we really need 23-year-olds making $125,000 a year, or do we need more 20-hour a week jobs, where 23-year-olds can make $50,000 a year, and also be jazz musicians, and travelers, and poets?
Paulette Perhach:
I think we’re all questioning and reexamining our lives and saying, who decided we work 40 hours a week? When did that happen? Or, wait, am I made of trillions of atoms, and in a universe that I can’t even comprehend, and circling the sun, and my job is to pay bills until I’m 65, and then sit around and watch TV? Like, Hmm. Doesn’t really make sense to me. So, just becoming very intentional about how you live your life. One of my main phrases to myself is, there’s no time for bullshit. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have any in my life. I wish I had less bullshit. But you just have to get super intentional, and you don’t have to take the life that is just handed to you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s interesting to hear you speak about this possibility, this different kind of life where you work less, but you get to pursue passion, you get to do something creative, you get to enrich your life and other people’s lives. I’m interested in hearing from you, how are you supported as you were growing up with your dream of being a writer?
Paulette Perhach:
I think that is where I won the parent lottery. My book is dedicated to my mom, who always said, just follow your heart, and she really… That is where she gets the number one A plus of momhood. She really just always said like, follow your heart, honey. So that was great, and that’s… Not everyone gets that, for sure. So some people have to find that. It’s great to find that kind of support and community online, and to join writers’ groups. I’ve seen posts where people say, my parents say X, Y, Z, and it’s got to be really hard to go against what your parents think. Actually, one time, I went to this… What do they call it? A craft school for two weeks, called Penland. While I was there, I was there making glass beads. While I was there, I met someone who quit medical school to major in clay.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome.
Paulette Perhach:
And I was like, “Wow, that’s a conversation.” The great thing about being a writer is that you… When you’re in clay, you can’t really do corporate clay. I imagine you can in some ways. But like with writing… I’m writing a website for a very huge scientific project that’s extremely boring, and getting $100 an hour to do that, and that buys me my two hours in the morning to open up my novel and Scrivener and stare at it and say, “Huh, okay. What’s going on here? Let me try to, hopefully, make this into something at some point.” So we can do the corporate writing.
Paulette Perhach:
But, if you’re like me, and you have no… you like feel claustrophobic in a day job, and you want to make your own way by creating value for people who have money and can afford to pay you, you just have to consider yourself a business person, and learn everything that a small business owner would be learning; Bookkeeping, accounting. I now am able to outsource a lot of that, which is fantastic. But you have to be marketing, you have to be networking. Networking’s huge. So, just be ready to own it, to be like, “I want to be a writer, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen, including QuickBooks.” Let’s be thankful for all the tools we have now, my God. It’s a lot easier than it used to be. You can Google anything.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I appreciate that. So, what’s next for this writer’s life?
Paulette Perhach:
This writer’s life, I am going to really start to scale my courses and fulfill the promise to myself that they’re going to be the thing that buys me more time, and my coaching. I have been working with a fantastic assistant now for a year, and I’m really handing more off to her, and I’m going to be doubling down on writing the kind of writing I really want to be writing. I feel a little bit like my essay side of my life hasn’t been getting as much love. I keep being like, “Oh yeah, there was this essay I wanted to write. There was this essay I wanted to write.” And I’m looking at my 40th birthday next year, and so really getting just more intentional and being like, “Okay, halftime. Halftime break, halftime pep talk.”
Paulette Perhach:
Instead of being like, “Wow, I haven’t become the writer I wanted to become,” one side, which is tempting to look at, it’s wow, let’s look at the foundation I’ve built, and really kick it into high gear, and how can I build on what I have so far? I think I have such an incredible foundation to really move into the kind of writing I want to be doing. I think it’s great to be doing that at 40. Thank God I wasn’t in a very successful essayist when I was in my 20s. Are you kidding me? What did I have to say? Nothing. So I think now, I have a little bit more of something to say, and, hopefully, the ability to bring value to people who read it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm. Yeah, you’re right in terms of the age. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of Bernadette Jiwa.
Paulette Perhach:
Mm-mm (negative).
Anne Muhlethaler:
She has written a bunch of books. She runs, also, a course with Seth Godin and Akimbo called the Story Skills Workshop, and she only started writing in her early 40s, or at 40.
Paulette Perhach:
I love that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m not sure.
Paulette Perhach:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And-
Paulette Perhach:
[crosstalk 00:55:32] all these stories.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Her are wonderful and so useful. I actually just bought, I think, six or seven copies to gift at Christmas, so…
Paulette Perhach:
Wow.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m getting this in early. Is there anything else that you’d like to share that we haven’t covered, before I move to my quick fire round questions?
Paulette Perhach:
I think the importance and the joy of the social aspect of being a writer… I just had one of the hardest weeks of the year. If I hadn’t had an extremely terrible week about four months ago, it would’ve been the hardest week of the year. The way that my community just swooped in around me and supported me was incredible. The joy that I get from the writing community, which you can get online now, it’s just so fun, and I really… I’ve always struggled with being such a social person, but also being a writer. When I was little with those two best friends, I invited them over to climb trees and read, because that’s what I did, and I wanted to do that just together. So that’s my entire personality, is I to be really social, but I also like to read and write.
Paulette Perhach:
I was like, “I should just be an cabin in the woods,” blah, blah, blah. But I think really digging into to making friendships in this world. It’s not like networking with… Not to pick on accountants or anything, but I don’t know if I’d want to be at a party with a bunch of accountants. We get to hang out with writers. I have never met a boring writer. All right, like one boring writer. But mostly, writers are super fun and funny and interesting, and I love the whole world of it. And then the more people you know, the more they will help spread the word. We all just support each other.
Paulette Perhach:
I think the community around me and the people I know has been as much of a joy as creating my work and working with clients. And then clients become friends, and now I just hired… Someone who just hired me to do their coaching, I just hired her to do my branding. And it’s like this… We don’t have coworkers, we have colleagues who are doing this work with us. And so I think really being intentional about that has brought me so much joy and so much work, as well. So really not shying away from that, and considering socializing with other writers part of your work.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm. That’s a beautiful, beautiful idea. Yeah, absolutely. Embrace the industry that you’re in.
Paulette Perhach:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Anne Muhlethaler:
So I’d love to ask you about meditation. So Out of the Clouds is a podcast, which, like, me sits at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. So how did you get into meditation?
Paulette Perhach:
Anxiety.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm.
Paulette Perhach:
I think just trying to say like, what can I do to help with this brain that is all over the place? I feel like meditation is this wave that helps me observe it without tumbling into it. Not always, but sometimes. There’s just so many benefits to meditation, in business and in writing. When I had that really bad week, last week, I was able to be like… Sometimes I feel like I’m not always able to choose my attitude. I’ll walk past someone who has a shirt on that says, like, choose happiness, and I was like, “I’m trying.” It’s not always easy, it’s not always possible. But I find more and more that… I say, I can choose my attitude about my attitude, where I say, “Well, I have a really crappy attitude today,” or, “Oh my gosh, I feel super defeated today, and I’m going to let that sit. Wow, I’m really having a hard time choosing happiness today. If I could choose happiness, I would. Today, we’re going to go with acceptance. I accept that this is hard, I accept that I feel down.”
Paulette Perhach:
And so there’s just a layer of space between myself and my reaction to the world, in which I can serve what I actually need more than just reacting. If I feel defeated, I can do something like, I’m going to let myself go out to lunch with a friend today, instead of just sitting around in the story to be like, what do I need right now? What do I need to get back in that space? And just really strengthening the other side of the equation of the person inside this mind experiencing it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. What I’m hearing you say, as well, is being able to get distance with whatever you’re feeling, because you’re observing, rather than identifying. So you recognize the existence of the state. You may feel it, but you can get a little bit of breather from it.
Paulette Perhach:
I think that I’m especially watching Succession, which like… So the characters are about the opposite of a monk. It helps me, as well, as a leader having a team to deal… I would feel the same way, maybe, if it were like a mom dealing with her children, where it’s like, my immediate reaction is anger with… Let’s say there’s a mistake or something… I did have one meeting that was like the most enraging meeting, and I stayed calm, and my assistant was like, “I can’t believe you just stayed calm through that whole thing. That was like the craziest thing ever.” And I was like, “Meditation, meditation.” Actually, I wanted to make a mug that says, you’re lucky I meditate, because that’s-
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s a great idea. Add that on Your website.
Paulette Perhach:
I know. We want to make A Very Important Meeting swag, so I got to get it on that. So yeah, just the beat of, a feeling arises, and you can pause, which Tara Brock talks about, the like… I think she calls it the sacred pause, and decide how you’re going to react, rather than just reacting and then regretting. Right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm. Yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
It’s that little space in which you feel the agency to decide how to react to anger, to disappointment. Life has been really, really hard for about the last two years, and it’s… I’ve had ups and downs within this pandemic, but trying to stay on a level plane, I think it tapers out. The lows aren’t quite as low, that’s what I found.
Anne Muhlethaler:
In the course that I did with April called MMTCP, it’s a mouthful, one of the things that I found out about, which was a bit of a shocker, is that we have… we’re built in with a negativity bias, human beings. We are.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And so anything that we do towards like meditation, whether it’s mindfulness or other kinds, or love and kindness, really helps us actually, he become more even, so we don’t just see things negatively. Anyways, that’s a bit of a shocker. Thanks so much for sharing that. So I would love to hear of an act of kindness that has touched your life.
Paulette Perhach:
Oh, this is one of my favorite stories from Paraguay. I was being sexually harassed and robbed at the same time. I was sitting at a park bench, waiting for the bus, and this guy was talking to me and asking for my phone number, and his son was standing behind me. He was young, 10 years old. They gave each other… or, he gave him like of a knowing glance. I was wearing my big backpack, and I was like, is this kid riffling through my backpack right now? The bus came, and I got on the bus, and all the outside zippers on my backpack were open.
Paulette Perhach:
I was savvy enough, at that time, to not have anything in the outside pockets, but I was so down. I was going to a certain place, and my Spanish was not very good, and so riding the bus was really scary to me. Was I going to fall asleep? Was I going to get lost? I have a terrible sense of direction. So I told the bus driver where I needed to go, and didn’t really understand his response. And then I went and I sat all the way in the back of the bus. I was sitting there, down, just feeling alone and vulnerable. And then I think I fell asleep, and I woke up, and I kept hearing rubia, rubia, which means blonde, which was basically my name in Paraguay. I look, and literally like every single person in the bus is turned around, pointing, like, “This is your stop, this is your stop.” Everyone in that bus was making sure I was going to off at the right spot.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Aww.
Paulette Perhach:
And they were all taking care of me, and it was just so cute. I arrived where I was going in this really great mood and really touched by that. It was just adorable. That was the majority of my experience in Paraguay. Any place where you don’t really speak the language, which I didn’t initially, and how many people made sure that I was okay, that saw that vulnerability and made sure that I was okay.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s lovely. Now, possibly a hard question for you, what is your favorite word?
Paulette Perhach:
Ah, I just need to add, for context, that you would tattoo on yourself.
Anne Muhlethaler:
[crosstalk 01:05:06].
Paulette Perhach:
That I would tattoo on myself? Oh my gosh.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. That you would like carry on your skin for a While.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. Actually, in the writers’ mission control center, I have a place to put your favorite words, and I think let’s is one of my favorite words. Like, let’s, that spirit of just an idea of something we should do, let’s do this. It has a level of excitement. I feel like there’s kind of some play on that with my name ‘Pau-let’s’. Yeah. I, just yesterday, had like an hour with someone, and there’s this beautiful garden that I haven’t gone to enough that is just four minutes from my house, like four-minute drive. We only had an hour, and I’m like, let’s go to the garden. And we were like, “Do we have time?” I’m like, “Yeah. Okay. Make a coffee, let’s take a coffee to go.” We went and walked around and had a beautiful time, and I was like, “Wow, the difference between an hour, walking around in a garden, and an hour watching mindless TV, the depth of that is so different.” So let’s do those things that feel like life.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm. I love the energy that is contained within it.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. That or kerfuffle.
Anne Muhlethaler:
For non-fluent English speakers, can you please explain what kerfuffle is?
Paulette Perhach:
Kerfuffle, which I am Googling here, is a commotion or fuss, especially one caused by conflicting views. Well, that’s not a very good definition. I just like the way kerfuffle sounds.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I agree, it sounds funny.
Paulette Perhach:
Sounds like a kind of waffle. Like, can I have the kerfuffle?
Anne Muhlethaler:
You’re right, it would be a much better dish than it is a commotion.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. Yes, kerfuffle. But I find myself more and more being like… stopping with words and being like, “Ooh, that’s a good word.” I feel that makes me feel like a poet. That’s developed maybe after reading Mary Oliver’s book on poetry and realizing how important the sounds of words is.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Now, what song best represents you?
Paulette Perhach:
That’s a really hard one. The first thing that comes to mind is Holocene by Bon Iver, which is just the most beautiful song, and it makes me want to write something that beautiful. I feel like that… it feels like the thing I’m seeking. Or, yeah, the ultimate state of like, this is the kind of life I want to have, or maybe it’s the opposite of me, because it’s very calm and soothing, and so that’s why I love it so much. But I just love it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What would you say to your younger self, if you could send yourself a message?
Paulette Perhach:
I love you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s wonderful. What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Paulette Perhach:
Someone who said to me, when I had a really hard time breaking off a situation. She said, “It just sounds like you don’t want to.” And paying attention to all the reasons that we keep doing things, even when we just really don’t want to, all the excuses we give ourselves, and just… yeah. She was probably the oldest person I just consider just my good friend. She’s in her 60s, and so has this great ability to just be like, “Here’s what the reality of that situation is.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
I was wondering whether you would choose the one that’s behind your head, that I can see on our Zoom screen. I really-
Paulette Perhach:
Well behaved-
Anne Muhlethaler:
… like that.
Paulette Perhach:
Well behaved women rarely make history.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
I love the quote, too, like, go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you imagined. That’s just a classic.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s beautiful. Now, what books are next to your bed, or on your desk?
Paulette Perhach:
I’m trying to only keep three books on my nightstand and be like, these are the three books I’m reading, because I have… With my ADHD brain, I will start a million books and not finish them. So the ones that I have now are coming soon here, because I took a picture of them so I could get them right. One is a small little book called On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hmm.
Paulette Perhach:
Another is The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson. And then I had Matrix by Lauren Groff, which I finished, but is still there, and it’s just like… it made me feel like we need to protect Lauren Groff at all costs. She’s a national treasure.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, I’m not familiar with her. So-
Paulette Perhach:
Oh yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… I will definitely go check her out.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Who is one person you think we should all know about? So it could be a politician, a writer, a musician, an artist, anyone.
Paulette Perhach:
George Saunders. Probably a lot of people know about him, but he’s just the best.
Anne Muhlethaler:
For those who don’t know about him, would you tell them a little bit about who he is and what he does?
Paulette Perhach:
He is this writer… Well, his book came out on January 6th, I think one year and the New York Times said George Saunders wrote the best book you’ll read all year, and I was like, “Damn, that’s goals I didn’t even know I could aspire to.” The New York Times like called it for his book, what? His writing is just so joyful and funny, but serious. He has this spirit of really connecting with humanity. He also has a great writing book, and it’s called A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, I believe.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay. Yeah. I’ve heard about that.
Paulette Perhach:
But just the way he talks is so without artifice, it’s just… it feels very natural, and he’s like your kind neighbor. It was so funny, I had written in my book a little bit of a guide to meeting famous writers, if you ever get to meet famous writers, and having a plan. And I was like, don’t just run up to someone and be like, I love you. When has a stranger running up and yelling, I love you ever turned out well? And then I saw George Saunders on a plane, and what do I do? I love you. I was like, damn it. He was very kind about it, did not call security. And then I actually… I had quoted something that he said in my book, but I wasn’t able to find the recording. And so then after we got off the plane, while his wife was in the bathroom, I was able to corner him and confirm this quote for my book. And then he was on my flight, coming back, a week later, which was so funny. Felt like a nod from the universe.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Definitely. That sounds like a good sign.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. But he’s a very sweet person.
Anne Muhlethaler:
The last question that I like to ask all of my guests is, what brings you happiness?
Paulette Perhach:
Singing as loud as I can, beautiful music, cooking, seeing new things, lava, crocheting, and making things, making jewelry, my friend’s children, and just those moments that feel like you don’t want to be anywhere else. Like, this is what life is actually about, which I am looking forward to getting more of as, hopefully, the pandemic wanes. And beautiful, beautiful writing, and feeling like some writing that came out of me was beautiful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much.
Paulette Perhach:
You’re so welcome.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Paulette, it was such a pleasure. I really appreciate you making the time and dodging me in all my questions. Could you kindly tell people where they can find you and maybe contact you if they’re interested in pursuing any of your courses or asking for advice, possibly?
Paulette Perhach:
Sure. So, you can follow me on Twitter at Paulette Perhach, Instagram as Paulette J. Perhach. I blog at Welcome to the Writer’s Life, and you can contact me at pauletteperhach.com.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome. I will also put the details for A Very Important Meeting, so-
Paulette Perhach:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… people are able to pop in and come meditate and write, if they so desire.
Paulette Perhach:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks, again, for your time. I am really looking forward to seeing you soon at one of the meetings-
Paulette Perhach:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… and I wish you wonderful, wonderful week. Thanks again to Paulette for joining me on the show today. So you can find her online first at pauletteperhach.com, but she’s also on Twitter at Paulette Perhach, and on Instagram at Paulette J. Perhach. Details for LinkedIn and her blog, Welcome to the Writer’s Life, are also all linked in the show notes. So, friends and listeners, thank you again and for joining me today, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed our conversation. If you’d like to hear more, you can go to your favorite podcast app and hit the subscribe button. You can also leave a review, it’s always lovely to hear from you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
If you’d like to connect, you can get in touch with me at Annvi on Twitter, or on LinkedIn, Anne Muhlethaler, or on Instagram at _OutoftheClouds, where I also share some guided meditations and daily musings about mindfulness. The website is finally live, you can find me at annevmuhlethaler.com. If you don’t know how to spell it, you can either find that in the show notes, or go to outoftheclouds.com. That’ll get you there, too, and you can sign up for email updates, whether you are interested in more podcasts writing or other things mindfulness. So that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds. I hope that you will join me again next time. Until then, be well, be safe, and take care.