I was at a dumpling making class a few weeks ago at a very cute spot in Boston.
It's called Maymay.
And as they taught us how to make a dumpling in the shape of an elephant, I thought to myself this is not a good place to meet someone.
I was there with someone, so I was not looking to meet someone in this dumpling class, but everyone else in the class was already paired or in groups.
That's when I thought of my friend Nicole, who was on the show some years ago telling us about the era of her life when she signed up for nine billion classes and clubs to try to meet a, And then I thought everybody might be interested to learn how.
So today we'll have Nicole's episode and then a fairly lengthy catch-up with a 2026, modern-day Nicole who's in a very different place, literally and figuratively.
She's still using the lessons she shared in her episode, just in new ways.
But I'll let her explain.
Also for those who are hearing this episode for the first time.
This was part of an entire season we did about how to meet people.
During that season, we followed a woman named Erin in real time as she dated.
So besides Nicole in this episode, you'll also hear a little bit about Erin, too.
Enjoy and stick around for a big catch up with Nicole.
I'm 71 with a boyfriend.
I'm more like a 39 year old when it comes to dating.
We met at a ballroom dance almost two years ago.
This is a voice memo we got from a reader of my column a few months ago.
Before that I did a ton of online dating.
I kept a diary and wrote notes in the toilet of the restaurant, and I'm not kidding about that.
So dating has always been scientific, sort of scientific researching for me.
We know it's like going on a trip to the dentist.
Necessary, but uncomfortable.
Okay, this was interesting.
From the Boston Globe and PRX, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
If you're dating, it's a thing you hear a lot.
A good way to meet someone is to take a class or join a social activity.
You know, like playing on a volleyball team or taking a sourdough bread-making class, signing up for pottery.
It would only be a matter of time before you're living out that sexy pottery wheel scene between Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost.
Today I'm going to look at this idea that classes, activities and clubs are a good way to find love.
In my column, I have often told people to sign up for things like this.
But I have to admit, sometimes that advice can feel a little empty.
Because I've definitely heard stories of people feeling compelled to go play softball or whatever, and then they don't meet anyone and they're stuck playing softball.
Then again, i do know people who have had success this way.
When we did a call out this season asking people to tell us how they met their partners, we did hear about relationships that grew out of activities and classes, like the woman we heard a few moments ago who met her boyfriend ballroom dancing.
So does this work?
Is it worth the time and the registration fees To dig deeper into these questions?
I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to.
My friend, Nicole.
Nicole and I used to work together.
She's now an editor who lives in New York.
Back when we were colleagues, she was very single and very interested in finding a boyfriend.
It seemed like Nicole was always on her way to some after-work activity with an eye toward meeting someone.
I remember thinking, how exhausting.
I imagined her suiting up for all of these missions, looking for love, but winding up stuck with a bunch of married people in like some floor hockey league.
And, if I'm being honest, I worried at the time that doing all of this just to meet a guy made her look, I don't know, like a little bit desperate.
That's not the word I want to use, but I remember thinking it at the time.
Here's how it all started.
When I met you, how old were you?
I had just graduated from college, so it was 2007.
So I was in my early 20s.
There was a work.
Eventually, Nicole sends this guy a candid note saying that she needs some time away from him to deal with her feelings.
To move on.
And it was that moment where I was like, okay, well, how am I going to meet people?
I can't keep pining over the guy at work.
I need to put myself out there and like have a real life.
I can't be like this sad Sally.
At this time, all my friends are getting married.
They're all marrying their college sweethearts.
And I was very much like the single person at the wedding.
And I went to all their weddings alone.
So at the same time, I'm like, I'm very aware of my singledom in the world.
What makes it harder is that Nicole's own parents seem to have this storybook relationship.
They'd met young and were enjoying a long marriage.
Nicole calls them soulmates.
Her love life doesn't feel anything close to that.
I feel like I did feel a desperation of I need to meet someone and get married, because what if all the great guys are gone?
And then is my option just to like wait until my 30s and maybe one of these other?
You know, marriages doesn't work out, and then I'm going to be in the divorcee pool.
Like, that's really where my head was at.
This all leads Nicole to a conclusion.
She needs to do something.
She can't passively wait for love.
She needs to go find it.
Go get it.
For lack of a better term, I became just like a capital J joiner.
I was just going to sign up for absolutely everything I could.
I remember once I saw an ad on the subway for a dragon boat racing team and I was like yes, that I'm going to go do that.
That sounds cool.
I was just trying to get out there.
I met people who weren't necessarily going to be partners, and that was fine.
It wasn't a disappointment if I met someone and it wasn't like a, there was like no one here for me.
Like I never dated anyone on that Dragon Boat team, but it was awesome.
This joiner mentality?
Well, Nicole gets serious about it.
I was actually doing a lot of running, a lot of running during this time, one of which was the Santa Speedo run, where you have to run down I believe it's Boylston Street right in your underwear.
And then I was running half marathons, which I was also training for.
I was on a softball league.
A friend of mine started a bowling league.
I did a competitive beanbag tossing through Social Boston Sports.
I joined a floor hockey league with people at work.
I signed up for a painting class, like a real one, not one of those paint nights.
I was a volunteer at the Boston Marathon Water Station, signed up to perform at Mortified, and then I set other various challenges for myself.
To just say yes every time people ask me to do things.
We started a book club.
And we started a book club.
Oh, yes, our book club.
Yeah, starting a young adult book club.
Like with immediate friends is maybe not the way to meet.
Do you know that I did make out with one of the only two guys in that club?
Shut up.
Who?
I think part of the reason why so much of it was athletic is I felt like it just felt like such a one to one connection of oh, I'm doing something.
I'm like actively doing something.
It could never feel passive to me if it was something that I was throwing my whole body into.
Did you see potential suitors at these events?
Yeah, of course.
I mean there were cute guys there and I certainly talked to people there, but it never got to like the next level of should we go on a date or would you want to go on a date?
Or even can I get your number?
That sort of thing.
When you go with single girlfriends.
I don't know if this is just me or if this is everybody, but I get this air of desperation and like The scanning the crowd and the like prairie dogs scanning the horizon of like where are the potential dates for me?
After a while it just started to make my skin crawl.
When you realize that everyone else is doing it.
Everyone is scanning the crowd, but no one is actually crossing the space to connect.
I need to say here that Nicole is generally a very positive person.
But this whole effort wears on her.
It was super exhausting.
It wasn't like every single day I was doing this.
I was taking breaks and eating a pint of ice cream in front of The Bachelor and not feeling great about myself.
That was the reality of the situation too.
Like it was both things at the same time.
Still, even though Nicole doesn't meet the love of her life, she finds something else.
She's more confident.
I felt like there was this interesting thing that happened in that yeah, I was putting myself out there and it'd be great if I met people.
But it kind of gave me this sense of self where, when I was out at a bar or where I was like I don't know, in the airport, for instance, that I could just randomly talk to someone.
I had enough to bring to that conversation in a pinch that.
I don't know.
It just made me feel like a little bit more self-assured to have all this stuff going on.
We'll be right back.
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A message about one of our sponsors, Cozy Earth.
A few weeks ago I sent Brett, my sister, a pair of pajamas from Cozy Earth as a gift.
It was a very beautiful set of pajamas.
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So Nicole develops this new mindset because of all of these things she's got going on.
And even though there's no partner yet, it feels like she's building towards something.
I just think doing those things made me like more marketable to the dating world.
I hate to say it like that, but it's true.
In a way, I felt like I was building up my dating resume so that when I got on the job interview, aka the first date, I was like see, here are all of my qualifications for being a cool partner.
One time, Nicole meets this guy in an airport, and she pursues him pretty hard.
We did wind up going out a couple times and I remember he called me once but I missed the call because I was out on the boat.
She was out, you know, on that dragon boat.
And I remember feeling so cool like here is this very good-looking guy and I am not available because I have something else to do that is more important than him.
2013 rolls around.
Nicole still doesn't have a boyfriend.
She makes a New Year's resolution.
She's going to go out and do something every day.
And if someone invites her somewhere, she'll say yes, no matter what.
So when her friend Patrick invites her skiing in New Hampshire one spring day because his wife can't make it, Nicole says yes.
The two of us go and the whole day he's sort of like picking out guys for me on the slopes.
He's like, what about that guy?
What about that guy?
He was like constantly trying to like help me find a mate.
I mean, I'm not a big skier and I used to ski a little bit, but like That'll have to see if people are wearing like goggles.
You're in goggles.
You do not meet people on the slopes.
We're not talking to strangers there.
I mean, the only time you're like congregating is when you're waiting in line for the lift, or like maybe at the end of the day if you're going to have a couple of beers at the bar.
It's pretty warm on the slopes that day.
In fact.
It's the day when the ski resort they're at, Bretton Woods, hosts its traditional pond skim.
The pond skim is like this big spring party.
Skiers and snowboarders are trying to glide over this small pond at the bottom of the slopes without falling in.
We were standing at the pond skim and we're watching all these people try and clear this pond.
And this one guy comes down and he's wearing a red onesie with the butt flap open.
And he gets across the pond just about until he totally eats it and falls into the water.
And I said to Patrick, no, that's the type of guy I should be dating.
He just looked like someone who was, like, living his life in this, like, happy, energetic way.
And, like, that was really attractive to me.
That is what I wanted for my own life, too.
So then Patrick goes to the bathroom, and I see this guy come back out.
He had, like, changed his clothes or whatever.
And I went over to him and I said hey, did you just do that?
You know that pond skim, which is like worst opening line ever.
But we started talking and it turned out we lived like a couple blocks from each other in Boston.
This conversation leads to beers back at the lodge.
And that leads to an exchanging of information, which leads to a text from this guy, as Nicole and Patrick are in the car on their way home.
Before long, Nicole and the guy in the butt flap onesie are going on a date.
And then some more dates.
Soon, they're legit dating.
I never had to guess if he was into me or not.
He just was acting like a guy who was interested.
He was setting up dates and we were going on those dates and it was just very quickly became obvious that we were headed toward the being in a relationship.
And I think it was maybe like a month or so later that he I think he sent me flowers to ask me if I would be his girlfriend, which is like really cute.
What's interesting is that Nicole says that had she come across this guy on a dating app, she might not have swiped on him.
Partly because he was three years younger.
I think I probably would have discounted someone younger than me on site alone.
And like, I'm so glad I didn't, obviously.
But it's just interesting, the things that we sort of write off when we make our mind up about somebody on a dating profile versus just like seeing him in person.
I was like, no, he seems like cool and interesting.
Nicole and her partner have now been together for six years.
Last fall, he proposed on a walk through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
They're getting married in November.
Did your half decade of joining and class taking and sports bra wearing like?
Is that what got you to the relationship you have now?
I think I was just like so used to introducing myself to people and talking to people and making small talk out of literally nothing.
So it was just like I wasn't going to not talk to this guy that I thought was cute, because I was worried I was going to be rejected by him.
If I get rejected by him, then I'm still at... where I'm at before.
But if it goes well, best case scenario, we get married.
I'm like, guess what?
We're getting married.
Nicole says sure she might have gone on that ski trip even without taking all of those classes and joining those activities.
But she doesn't think she would have approached her now fiance.
The biggest thing she learned in her joiner phase...
The importance of keeping the stakes low.
I think I started out, I want to get married.
I want to find a relationship.
I think I probably shot myself in the foot a little bit on some dates because I was like guns blazing.
That's what I wanted.
And it wasn't until like a few years in that I was like I honestly just want to find someone that I have something in common with and I have shared interests and that I want to spend time with.
It made me treat dates with less reverence, with a little bit more fun.
I was not going to let myself be beaten down by this thing that routinely was trying to beat me down.
Life is too short, I think.
If I had not met anyone and if I was single now, I'd probably still be doing the same things.
I think I'd still be just trying to be like the best version of me, building my cool stories, joining other things, finding other things to do.
Like I still do that.
I'm in a relationship now and we're like taking a bread making class. in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, we do stuff together, but I do stuff on my own too.
And so does he.
So I just think you have to figure out the thing for yourself that is going to get you out there, and then stick with that.
One of my big takeaways from Nicole's story is that being in classes, on sports teams and the rest turned her into a person who could approach strangers, who could feel confident on her own, who could walk up to some guy at a pond skim and say nice job.
Without dragon boats and painting, she might not have become that person.
She might have never met her fiancé.
Another lesson?
Nicole only joined activities she thought she might actually like.
They had to be things that I was interested in and that I was excited to do and I was like happy to be there, because if I had joined like a basketball league, that's like a nightmare for me.
But like, I'm sure there's a lot of guys there.
If the sole reason for me doing it was to meet people, but I hated the activity.
That was not a good experience.
Also, by pursuing this stuff, she found a like-minded partner who was open to new experiences.
Not everyone wants to ski or take a bread-making class, but there's a pretty good chance that a guy in a butt-flap onesie is open to new things.
If I've learned anything on this season, it's that more of us should be open and honest about what we do to meet someone.
Because love doesn't happen when you're not looking.
Just doesn't.
When it comes to classes and activities for singles, it can be tough to choose.
Nicole, the expert advises that it's better to join clubs and activities on your own instead of with a group of people you already know.
Running clubs are especially conducive, she says, to meeting people, as are things like softball leagues, because there's a lot of waiting around.
Who's up next?
When am I on deck?
You know, you have questions built into what you're doing that you can be asking.
That way you're not asking someone a personal question like, so where are you from?
Like, what do you do?
Are you married?
As a non-sports ball person who is not going to join any of these leagues, I can tell you that the book club I started with Nicole did seem like a good way to meet people, had we stuck it out long enough to get more members who were friends of friends, of friends.
Worth mentioning.
When Erin and I took that beer class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, our teacher Chris, told us that many singles come to the school specifically to meet others.
She does warn that in Cambridge at least, 80% of the class takers are women.
But you know, for some of you, that's good news.
Something good happened to Erin, and it had nothing to do with that beer class we took.
Remember that guy she had a good date with a few episodes ago?
Art's dad?
Well, they'd stayed in touch, and they made plans to go out again.
So I asked Erin to check in with me before and after the date went down.
Hey, Meredith, it's Erin.
Sorry, I sound so weird.
I've had a cold this week.
I just wanted to let you know I'm about to go on date number two with Art Dad.
I think it's been about a month since I last saw him when we went to the Harvard Art Museum.
He's been really busy with his work schedule and with his kids.
And I've also been busy changing jobs and sort of figuring out my next step in life.
So it's actually worked out okay.
Despite that cold, Erin sounded pretty excited.
We're going to Record Store Day in Somerville.
And then probably to have a drink or two and something to eat.
But I'll touch base when we get back and let you know how it went.
All right.
Bye.
Hey, Meredith, it's Erin.
It's Saturday night.
I just got home from my second date with Art Dad.
It was really fun, actually.
We enjoyed the really nice weather and being out.
We had a lot to talk about.
He invited me to go to his works gala, which is their big annual fundraiser, which I think is awesome.
So I'm going to hopefully go to that.
So we'll see what happens.
We had some drinks, had some dinner, had some ice cream and then I came home to try and get better from this cold.
But it was a successful second date.
So I'll keep you posted on what happens next.
Okay, bye.
I know, I know, I know.
It's early.
This all might amount to nothing.
I get that.
But hearing Aaron happy makes me really happy.
And it makes me think that, whatever happens with Art Dad, there are people out there that Erin can connect with.
That she can still have fun on dates after all she's been through.
And that's no small thing.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe and PRX.
The podcast is produced, edited and engineered by Amy Padula.
Audio mixing, sound design and mastering by Ned Porter.
Music by APM.
Our executive producers are Scott Hellman and Janice Page.
Special thanks to Linda Henry and Brian McGrory.
We want to hear your stories of dating and meeting people and not meeting people.
Email us at loveletters at boston.com or tweet at us using the hashtag loveletterspodcast.
Our next episode is our last official episode of this season.
I'll explore the stories of people who got together in dramatic fashion and how they sustained those relationships once the drama faded.
Be sure to subscribe to Love Letters on Apple Podcasts Spotify, Radio Public or wherever you listen.
And if you like the show, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or online at lovelettersshow.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
And in the immortal words of Chevy Chase and Caddyshack, be the ball.
Now for an update with Nicole.
So welcome back, Nicole.
Thank you for doing this again.
To start, for the people who just listened to your episode, why don't you update them on what's happening in your life?
They last left you living in New York, about to get married.
Where are you now?
Yeah, so since the episode, I have gotten married, moved to Maine.
I now have three children as well.
They are all five and under.
So it's been kind of a crazy busy, I guess, six years now since the episode aired.
Crazy.
This podcast still feels new to me, and yet you had time to have three kids.
Yeah, it's been a little bit of a whirlwind in my life.
Speaking of that, there are so many people who come on the podcast and one of their complaints about life, or issues with life, is that things are not happening.
Maybe they're experiencing dating fatigue or have the same friends they did forever, or haven't moved in the way they thought they would.
And I think when we recorded this episode, we were addressing this idea that there had been what felt like stagnancy for a long time in your 20s, or just a status quo, and then, all of a sudden, you get the things you wished for really quickly.
So I just wondered if you Have any thoughts about how quickly things can change, just when you think they're not going to change.
I literally think about that every day.
You know, now we have three kids.
It's like the thing I wished for, the thing I hoped for, that at one point I was like I don't know if this is ever going to happen, which I look back now.
I had those fears in my 20s and I had so much time.
And, you know, at the time, you don't realize how much time you have.
So it felt so urgent to me.
And now I'm like, oh, my gosh, all of all of my dreams came true.
I found this partner that I really adore and, you know, have these three beautiful children that I wished for for so long.
And life is really hard with three kids, too.
That's the other side of it.
It's not all like sunshine and rainbows all the time.
So, even though all of these things I hoped for came true, life is really different now, in good ways and in challenging ways.
I look back at that time. that status quo time, I'll call it.
And I'm not even sure that was true.
For all the talk we did about oh, you're not finding someone, you're not moving ahead in all of these different ways.
We did so much stuff.
You did so much stuff that perhaps it only felt like stagnancy because of what you were measuring.
I know, I think I was really hard on myself too, because in a lot of ways, like when you become a parent, a lot of those things that you used to, you kind of have to give up, at least for a little while.
You know like I'm not paddling a dragon boat anymore.
I'm not running road races.
My time has shifted into other things.
And there's a little bit of mourning.
That happens when you aren't able to do all those activities anymore.
We talked a lot about all the activities that I love to do.
Then my mission to meet people.
And it's funny now because the activities we're doing are more centered around the children, like taking my daughter to dance class or school drop off and things like that, and meeting people in those ways.
But yeah, I think I was pretty hard on myself, just so singularly focused on what was a pretty important goal to me.
I remember at the time talking and you saying, why is she so focused on this?
You know, it's going to be OK.
And I think now you know I'm in my 40s now and I think I now have the just the hindsight that maybe that you had at the time.
I've now caught up.
But it's bullshit also because the truth is it was important to you and you needed to do that work to find you what you were looking for.
Like yes, if you got in a time machine and told yourself, calm down, you've got all the time in the world, it might have been an entirely different path.
So even by the end of that episode, I was like, you know what?
It's okay if it feels urgent.
I just wanted you to give yourself credit for everything you were getting right and everything that was happening for you.
And it sounds like just being kinder to yourself, you see all of that now.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And I think I also feel like I was living a very full life too.
When I was single and living in Boston, I had stuff going on all the time.
And you know, I would never say to someone have hobbies because it makes you interesting to a partner.
That's not the goal.
Have hobbies because it's interesting to you and you know the right people are going to find you and things will fall into place.
But I will say my partner and I, we have a lot of shared interests.
And at the time we were like getting after it together, you know like going skiing a lot, or we joined a bocce league together.
So.
Having a lot going on and having that full life.
It just meant that then, when I met someone, it was additive.
I never feel like my partner completes me.
I feel like we complement each other and we're able to add something to each other's lives, rather than it being like oh my Prince Charming.
That's never been my outlook on life.
It's more like, oh, someone I can... be an equal to, equal with.
I want to ask about connection and making connections, because when we ran this episode, it was so focused on finding romantic love by taking a class or joining activities.
And since we were in this episode, so many more people have reached out saying, Mm-hmm.
I'm wondering how the skills you learned in those classes have helped you grow your community outside of your marriage, especially knowing that you moved to a new place.
We moved right before the pandemic.
So that first year of living here, we were pretty isolated.
I also found out I was pregnant with my daughter like a month or so before the pandemic hit.
So definitely went from being very social to all of a sudden I'm sort of marooned in our house, living in relative isolation with no friends nearby.
It was just my partner and I. And in that time, I started getting really into gardening.
I've always been into gardening.
I wound up kind of parlaying that love of gardening into a flower farm on our property and turning that into a small business, a side hustle, whatever you want to call it.
And so, as I started selling flowers within the community, posting about it on Instagram, I started meeting people through that.
And some people that I met on Instagram.
I wound up meeting in real life and have now become real friends just by having the shared interest of flowers and farming and gardening and that sort of thing.
But the other thing I would say is that I kind of have no shame when it comes to putting myself out there.
I'm not like a very adventurous person when it comes to adrenaline, but I would say like I'm emotionally adventurous.
I don't mind saying to someone, hey, do you want to get together?
Hey, you want to go for a walk?
I have no fear of rejection when it comes to that because I feel like what do I have to lose if they say no then then I'm just in the same place I was to start with but if they say yes and here's a new friend so I remember I took like a pregnancy class when I was pregnant with my oldest and There was another woman in that class where it just seemed like we had a lot in common and we were often piggybacking off of each other in the discussions.
And so I emailed her after the class was done and I was like, I feel like we have a lot in common.
Do you want to be my friend?
So I've said that now a couple of times to people where I just like come right out and say, do you want to be my friend?
And it always feels a little bit awkward, but I just like try and get over it.
And 100% of the time people are like, yes, let's get together.
Let's do something.
In the episode...
I laughed remembering how you talked about how it wasn't all classes.
It wasn't all clubs and floor hockey and all that stuff.
You also had nights where you ate a pint of ice cream and watched The Bachelor.
That's important to me because I think there's this feeling that you always have to be doing stuff.
And then I think in the last few years there's become a much better culture of self-care and feeling OK to say no.
But it's really hard to know when the no is healthy and when the no is inertia.
Mm hmm, for anybody to say wow, I could go out, I could engage with people, I could meet new people, versus I'm allowed to not do any of this.
And I don't have to feel unproductive by not connecting to community and not going to that class.
I thought sounded interesting.
So how do you make decisions when it comes to decompressing versus engaging.
And what advice would you give to other people who are sitting on the couch and thinking this would be amazing and just fine for a night?
But also, if I go out and do the thing, if I join the team, it makes me connected.
I mean, I think it comes down to like, where people find their joy.
If your joy comes from connecting with other people, then finding a way to prioritize that when you feel the energy to do it is a great goal to have.
But if you're someone who gets your energy or you re-energize, I should say, by having that couch rot time, There is no pressure to go out and meet people just because you think you should.
I mean, I got to a place where we'd lived here for a few years.
My husband and I realized that we can't rely on each other to be everything for each other.
Friendship is so important.
And I think when you have young kids and couple that with the pandemic, we started to be really on top of each other in a way that isn't super healthy.
We need an outlet that is other people.
And I just realized how much I need that female friendship in my life as well.
And so I did set like a little goal for myself where I was like okay, I'm going to invite some women over, women that I've like talked to in passing or, you know, maybe met through various school activities or whatever.
I'm just going to like put it out there and say do you want to come over to my house for a craft night?
So we ended up doing that and it was great.
We've done it now one time.
We haven't done it again because, you know, life takes over.
I mean, if there's anything that our conversation taught me before, it's that like you got to go easy on yourself and like not put so much pressure on yourself to change do what you think you're supposed to be doing versus why not just like follow your joy.
So I think, like finding connection for the sake of connection isn't what I'm going for.
I guess these days it's more like who are the people that I have in common with?
How can I build my own community around myself now in this new phase of life, in this new location?
But I do feel like there's something to be said about like staying friends with your partner and not just like collapsing on the couch every night and watching your show of choice, which we do.
And I love when we talk about our shows and you know, sometimes you need to just stare at a wall for a few hours.
But just like finding the balance, I guess, with all of those things is something that I want for myself and my life.
That's a good reminder.
What's funny?
So, like the wedding gift that you gave us, I still have it in my wallet because we haven't been able to use it because they shut down classes.
Oh, I got you classes!
Yeah, at Stonewall Kitchen.
And I think I just saw that they might be restarting the cooking classes again.
So I'm like, oh, Matt and I can now go have, like, a date night.
And...
This conversation is actually a really good reminder of not only the person I was five six years ago, but also the person my husband was five six years ago.
And it's just reminding me that when life gets a little crazy and starts to catch up to you a little bit, especially after having kids, and you turn kind of into roommates for a little while,
Yeah.
That he and I need to go do like a class or an activity together, because that was how we connected, you know, when we were dating.
And anytime we can like get out and do something together, even if it's like just going bowling or something silly like that.
It's a good reminder that we need to make more of an effort to do those things.
Yeah.
In listening to this episode again, I was reminded that you were not only taking classes and joining clubs and enriching your life through activities to meet someone.
In fact, the whole story starts with an unrequited crush.
And you're saying to yourself you know at a young age like I can't just be stuck on some guy because that could be, that could be the activity forever.
You know, you can sort of get addicted to saying, will he like me today?
What did that mean?
And I loved it, especially with all these years in between and knowing that it all worked out incredibly well.
I love this idea that classes are not just about meeting someone.
They're also about breaking a pattern and just literally looking at something new, whether it's a dragon boat or a book club or whatever.
It was like forcing yourself into new scenery.
You're very conscious of it in the episode.
But in retrospect, I'm like, oh, like.
I'm so often recommending, oh, do a thing, do an activity.
And it's often when people need to meet someone and also when they need to get over somebody.
Yeah honestly, it's like a good reminder for me as a person because not to keep bringing it back to motherhood, but I think I'm in a place now where you get a little bit lost in motherhood.
And It's such a good reminder that I need to try to get out there and do things for my own joy rather than like the joy of my children.
Just.
Being able to jumpstart yourself into something new, it does give you a new perspective.
It does energize you in a way.
At least that's how I felt.
I think I was in a place then where I was like I can't just sit around Totaling my thumbs waiting for something to happen to my life.
I felt like I needed to be active.
I needed to be like a verb and get out and be doing things, so that I felt like some sense of control over my own life.
Because I think that's probably more of what it was is so many of these things that I wanted felt like really out of my control.
That if I was making an effort to do something anything, by putting myself out into the world, then that was like a way of having a little bit of control over what my story was going to be.
However, that was going to shake out.
My last question is just about classes and now being in the position you're in with gardening and flowers.
Would you ever teach a class at which people might be able to connect?
Oh, I would love to.
That's such a good idea.
Yeah, 100%.
I want to teach a class about making flower crowns because I think they're so pretty.
That's definitely on my list of things to do as I'm growing the business.
Despite my allergies, I would do that with you.
My real last question is, when was the last time you had nine hours of sleep in a row?
Meredith, that's mean.
No, I promise you, you're going to get there.
No, it's been a while.
I just feel like they're under five.
I don't think I've had nine hours of sleep since, I don't know, 2020, maybe.
Okay.
You're going to get there and then we're going to take every class.
Thank you.
