Soul Gum

If your early twenties are for your Sylvia Plath fig tree allegory crisis, then your late twenties are for your Joan Didion Goodbye to All That crisis. In her famous 1967 essay, Didion writes, “That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.”

This episode explores a strain of existential dread that often shows up in your late twenties: the possibility crisis. Sometimes it hits you after capital-S Something happens. A bad break up, a wounding professional failure, or a friendship ending that felt like betrayal. Other times, there is no one defining moment or incident. You just realize one day that you are no longer as bright eyed, bushy tailed, or hopeful as you used to be, and can’t put your finger on why. 

Using Didion’s Goodbye to All That as our guide, we break down three key signs you might be experiencing a possibility crisis and what it might be trying to teach you.  Along the way, we talk about how to cope with the realization that certain doors really do close, what to do when new people stop feeling full of promise, and how to let go of the fantasy that someday you’ll magically know what you’re doing. Consider this episode a field guide on the strange grief of growing up. 

EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00 Intro 
04:23 What made Joan Didion great?
05:13 Signs of a Goodbye to All That crisis
05:46 1. You realize future you is just you
07:41 Weird girl money 
08:22 The 90s’ overly adult depiction of your 30s
10:41 2. You stop believing in new faces
11:32 Hope springs eternal on Love Island
12:09 Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first
12:58 POV you’re 28 & have met every person alive
13:55 3. Some doors are actually closing
14:52 The first time I felt a door close
16:14 When the doors start slamming left & right
17:03 It’s easy to see beginnings and harder to see ends
18:54 Perspective shifts that got me out of this crisis 
19:29 1. Idk what I’m doing but neither does anyone else
20:59 2. Trust means more when it’s a choice not an instinct
21:45 3. On “it’s never too late”
22:27 Possibility must be unactualized to exist
23:10 The U-shaped happiness curve
23:55 Has the internet made the possibility crisis start earlier? 
24:28 Socioemotional selectivity theory
25:25 The happy ending Joan Didion doesn’t tell you

EPISODE LINKS
⁠My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
⁠Follow Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠
Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok

Be honest: do you ever perform for no one? Do you spectate your own life instead of living it? Have you ever caught yourself changing pieces of you, from your clothes to your voice to your hobbies, in order to impress someone you don’t even like? 

This episode is for you if you’ve ever sucked in your stomach in a completely empty room. Or scrolled through your own social media posts, imagining someone else looking at them. It’s for you if you've ever looked at yourself through someone else's eyes for so long that you've forgotten what you look like through your own.

In it, we’ll unpack how we get trapped under the male gaze through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Sontag, Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, and more. Then, I'll walk you through 7 rituals that have actually helped me climb out from under it.

This is not an episode about giving up on love. It is a field guide on how to stop twisting yourself into inauthentic shapes to earn validation to fill the void of love. If you want to become the subject of your own life again, I think you'll like this one.

RITUALS FOR DE-INTERNALIZING THE MALE GAZE: EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro
07:28 1. The gaze audit (Sartre)
08:40 Subject self versus object self
10:01 Foucault’s panopticon & self-surveillence 
10:54 How to do a gaze audit 
14:11 2. Photo and mirror detox (Sontag)
15:42 3. Interrogate “I do it for myself” (de Beauvoir)
16:50 de Beauvoir v. Sartre: existence precedes essence?
17:21 Do we have to stop shaving to be good feminists?
18:14 How to trace the origins of your grooming habits
18:47 The marketing origins of shaving
20:02 5. Bechdel mode
21:35 The importance of non-man focused conversation
22:25 6. Pleasure inventory (Mary Oliver)
22:56 The antidote to self-surveillance according to psychology
23:45 How to take a pleasure inventory
24:49 7. Pre-situationship prep
26:44 Love poem with apologies for my appearance (Ada Limon
27:51 The surprising unobjectifying power of being really loved and really seen
28:48 Lightning round recap

EPISODE LINKS

My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now
Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) 
Follow me on Instagram and TikTok

In stories, the narrator tells you which ordinary things are portals to magic and adventure. In real life, you have to find them yourself.
This episode reveals 5 secret portals to the next version of yourself: seemingly ordinary choices, traits, and habits that are thresholds to the future version of you who lives with more courage, clarity, and freedom. It’s for you if an old version of you has died but the new one hasn’t been born yet. You might have recently experienced a big life change: a move, or a relationship ending, or a career change. Or maybe you know one is coming. It’s for you if you have an unshakeable feeling that there is a more alive version of you out there, if only you could figure out how to get to them. 
We’ll examine the work of philosophy’s greatest minds, like Nietzsche, Kant, Kafka, and the Ancient Greeks, to uncover the hidden thresholds between who you are and who you're becoming, and point out clues for how to spot them when they appear in your own life.

EPISODE OUTLINE 

00:00 Intro
04:54 I missed you
06:05 Help me keep Soul Gum ad-free
07:35 Talk to me!!! 
08:18 1. Intuition is a portal
08:49 Nietzsche’s beef with Socrates
10:44 The neuroscience of intuition (Gary Klein)  
12:31 I exist because of a woman’s intuition
13:03 The tension between ambition & intuition
14:13 Mary Oliver on reacquianting with your intuition
15:05 Small ways to reconnect with your intuition
15:42 2. Solitude is a portal (Pascal)
16:39 The fear of being alone with your thoughts
17:33 2014 study on the discomfort of being un-stimulated
18:05 Solitude as a tool in my creative process
18:58 Brain drain study: it is that d**n phone
19:30 Going phone n*k*d
20:12 3. Aligned friendship is a portal
21:36 Nietzsche: Friends should be your “best enemies”
23:06 Friendship as a mirror 
23:40 The research of social contagion 
24:18 Look for friends that show you what’s possible 
24:52 4. Nature is a portal
25:40 Our increasingly sanitized relationship with nature
26:15 Kant, the sublime, and the gorpcore of it all
28:41 The ego-interrupting power of awe
29:45 5. Action is a portal (Kafka’s Before the Law)
31:29 Mary Oliver on the most regretful people 
32:00 You deserve to know what’s on the other side of fear
32:33 Leap by Joy Sullivan
33:34 For the Ones Who Left by Me (Victoria Hutchins)
34:29 Lightning round recap
35:40 Subscribe, rate, share, talk to me!!! 

LINKS
My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now
Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) 
Follow me on Instagram and TikTok

See you soon - I'll miss you! Make sure you're subscribed so you know when Soul Gum is back.

WHERE TO FIND ME:
MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠⁠
Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
Join the waitlist for future retreats! ⁠
Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Everyone wants love, but no one can tell you exactly what love is. In this episode, we deep dive into seven philosophical perspectives on love, ranging from the Ancient Greeks to the existentialists. If you’re curious whether Plato thought soulmates were real or Kierkegaard would tell you to text your ex, this episode is for you. 

EPISODE OUTLINE 
00:00 Intro (the philosophy of love)
03:19 What even is love? (hypotheticals on love)
07:07 Ancient Greek philosophy on love 
07:35 Origins of the concept of soulmates (Plato’s The Symposium)
09:03 Socrates’ ladder of love 
13:03 Enlightenment thinkers on love 
13:15 Love as social performance (Rousseau)
13:58 Rousseau’s two types of self love 
15:22 How self love affects how you love others
17:31 The humanity formula (Kant)   
19:49 Practical vs. passionate love (Kant)
22:07 Love as a trick (Schopenhauer)
24:04 Why do opposites attract? (Schopenhauer)
24:28 Is love just biological encouragement to reproduce? (Schopenhauer)
26:06 Existentialists on love
26:14 The tension between love and freedom of choice (Sartre)
27:50 Love as an objectifying force (Sartre)
30:32 Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s non-monogamous love story 
31:40 The relationship between love and possession (de Beauvoir) 
33:06 How your fear of being seen impacts your ability to give and receive love (Sartre, Doestoevsky, de Beauvoir) 
36:54 Kierkegaard’s Works of Love 
37:22 Unreasonable standards in love (Kierkegaard)
42:24 Lightning round recap

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Plato, The Symposium (c. 385–370 BCE)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1818)
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit (1944)
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Gordon Marino, The Existentialist’s Survival Guide (2018)

MY LINKS
MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠⁠
Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
Join the waitlist for future retreats! ⁠
Practice yoga with me at Shanti Yoga Houston on the last Sunday of every month!⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠