Suleika Jaouad

And I realized I did not want to sell my paintings because I didn't want to be painting through the lens of capitalism, of is this a sellable good?

Is this something that I can attach a price tag to?

And what should the price tag be?

I really wanted to preserve and reclaim that.

that part of my creative process as something I was just doing for myself without any sort of external or self-imposed expectation attached to it.

And I realized, you know, it's not always possible.

I love writing, of course, but it's also my job.

And so the lesson I took from that is that I want to be able to write things that are just

for me.

I want to allow myself the joy as I did as a teenager of filling up an entire notebook or a legal pad with a story without thinking to myself, is this something publishable?

Is this something I should post?

And when I think about the title of your podcast and

It's so in sync with, I think, the theme of what I'm exploring in my life right now, which is a reclamation of smallness.

Interesting.

Of prioritizing depth over reach, prioritizing smallness over skill, of...

of really allowing myself to think about the small joys, to think about ways that I want to narrow my attention to something

that may be small and may not go anywhere in terms of what other people see, but that feels deeply nourishing to me.

I mean—

American capitalism nudges us constantly towards velocity and volume.

And as someone who is