On Episode 534: Trying Something New: It’s Supposed to Be Hard, we come to the conclusion that the difficulty is the point.
How often have we been seduced into thinking that something we’ve never tried must be easy, simply because experts make it look that way?
On this episode, we talk about the new things we’ve recently tried, and how often we underestimated how difficult they would be.
As Katy dips her toes into the art of pottery, she learns that failing is a crucial part of the learning process.
Find Part 2 of this episode, Trying Something New: How to Keep Trying.
The stationery company Tiffany mentions in this episode is Paper and Cities.
You can listen to the episode right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 536: Trying Something New: How to Keep Trying
Episode 517: Could You Miss Discovering Your Passion?
Episode 97: Finding Inspiration on Your Doorstep
Episode 494: Your Brain and its Perceptions (with Erik Vance)
Episode 454: Trying New Things, Opera Edition
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- Katy recently started taking pottery classes, expecting it to be relaxing but finding it much more physically demanding and challenging than anticipated.
- The hosts discuss how certain skills or art forms can appear easy when done by experts, but are actually very difficult for beginners to master.
- They emphasize the importance of trying new things and challenging yourself, even if it’s uncomfortable, as a way to potentially discover new passions.
- Tiffany shares her struggles with drawing and illustration, despite finding them appealing, highlighting how different skills come more naturally to different people.
- The hosts discuss an upcoming trip they’re planning to Rome in October 2025, where they’ll explore lesser-known sites and share the city’s hidden gems with a small group of travelers.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Hello, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall. This show is mainly listener funded. This isn’t a place where you’re going to hear blaring ads like you would on TV or on terrestrial radio. My voice right now is not going to be suddenly interrupted by some guy talking to you about auto insurance or how to mail order clothes. Tiffany and I have been pitched by companies who want to litter the Bittersweet Life with that kind of advertising so many times and we have always said no, the money they’re offering isn’t worth the annoyance to us and even more importantly to you. We really believe that. But we do hope that you enjoy this oasis from the loud, over amped tone of commercial marketing. Enough to throw a dollar into this hat, this imaginary hat that I’ve just laid out for you. We need funding to keep this show going and we’d like to have enough to hire a little help. For example, I would love to hire a skilled audio editor to give me a hand sometimes, but we just don’t have the funding for it. For the last 10 years, some of you have been listening since the very beginning. I have spent hours and hours every single week getting this show ready, and often that means working very late into the night. I could really use a break sometimes. And that is just the start of a long list of things. We wish we could afford to get this beloved little show on a more healthy footing. And we have a goal. We would like to consistently have $1,000 a month or more coming in over on the Patreon. Right now we’re almost $800 a month. So what do you think? Do you think you can help us get there? For $5 a month or more, you’ll get bonus episodes and live meetups. You can even send us a text. And for higher donors, Tiffany will even help you plan your next trip to Rome. There’s lots of other things on offer, so go check it out. Visit patreon.com/thebittersweetlifepodcast. There is a link in the notes of this very episode. And back to that idea of no loud blasting ads cutting into the program. I want to read you a note that a listener and new Patreon donor sent recently. Charlotte writes, I became a member on Patreon today. I love your podcast and a top reason I listened to your show over the years is the lack of ads. I don’t listen to other podcasts as often or as readily due to the annoying number of loud and unpleasant ad interruptions. You spoil us with the near zero ads on your show. Thank you. And keep it up. Do you feel the same as Charlotte? If you do, Visit us on patreon.com/thebittersweetlifepodcast. And I want to thank Jess and Melissa and Charlotte and Steve and Miranda for hearing my plea and jumping on board. And all of you who I just named, watch your mailboxes. And I’m talking about your actual, real life mailboxes because I’ve sent you a little something with my thanks. And now onto the show. Welcome to Rome. This is the Bittersweet life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks. Hello. This is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Tiffany over in Rome. Katy in Seattle. And today we are going to talk about trying new things, but not just trying new things. Trying things that are totally a totally different experience once you do them than what you were expecting that experience to be like. We are talking about this in part because I have just started taking pottery class. You know pottery Tiffany, You’ve probably seen it done in movies, if not in person, where people are sitting at a wheel and forming beautiful objects with their hands out of.
Tiffany
I definitely seen ghost. So if you’ve seen ghost, you’ve seen a pottery wheel.
Katy
Yeah. A romantic, relaxing experience. I don’t know about Rome, but over here in Seattle, it is becoming more and more common to encounter a pottery studio where it’s not just people who make pottery for a living, but it’s people making pottery for a living while also training people like me to make pottery for fun as a relaxing spot. These kind of places are popping up in different neighborhoods all over the city of Seattle right now. So I don’t know if I’m just starting to notice or if pottery is having a moment, but I saw it several times. And you know me, I like to challenge myself. I like to occasionally make myself try something that’s outside of my comfort zone. And kind of last year, I inched into that by taking a drawing class, thinking that, like, at least I know how to sort of draw, and maybe this will be harder. But I also picked an instructor who had a kind of more cartoonish style, which is also the style I know how to draw in. So it was definitely me being challenging myself but keeping myself somewhat comfortable. So when I kept encountering all of these pottery places, I kept thinking, well, maybe that’s it. Maybe I should try making pottery. Maybe that would be something different, something challenging, but also relaxing, meditative. I could come back with a whole new bowl and plate. Set anyway. So, long story short, it is not like that at all. I had. There is. At least I haven’t gotten to the point where it’s relaxing. Granted, I’m only two classes in, but the very first class, I don’t think I’ve been in a classroom setting where I felt more self doubt in such a long period of time. You know how when you try something new that you really have no intellectual acumen for and you, you. It almost was like, I mean, to put it frankly, the thing that I was the best at was like kneading the dough into a circle or like into a ball shape. You know, like the thing that you would have mastered as a kindergartner. That was what I was the most proficient at. And I had no idea how physically demanding shaping something on a wheel can be. I mean, I’m not going to go into how it’s all done because to be frank, I don’t quite understand it just yet. But to get something centered on the wheel, I could do that for 25 minutes just trying to get the clay centered properly on the wheel. But then to like start to change it into a different shape and keep it centered on the wheel, you have to like physically shove the clay with two different hands in two different directions while the wheel is spinning really hard. You have to be like basically right on top of it with your whole body force pushing behind it. Otherwise things will get off kilter. And that’s when you see like a bull all of a sudden, like lose a side or. I can’t even tell you how many times my clay just flew off the wheel. You know, it was just, I don’t know, describing it can’t do it justice, but it was far more physical than I ever expected when you look at those relaxing scenes in the movies. And it was also, I guess the way you have to move is also so touchy. Like if you have the clay, let’s say, and you finally have it in a shape that resembles a shape that you want, if you release your hands from it too fast, that can throw it off center and ruin it. So you have to like take your hands very slowly away. And even that is just, you know, it is just so hard, it sounds impossible.
Tiffany
And I gotta say, Katy, despite the fact that I grew up watching Ghost, I have never perceived pottery as something relaxing. I don’t have any experience with it. I’ve never tried it. It doesn’t seem relaxing to me. So what you’re telling me, while it’s definitely maybe a little bit More physical than I might have guessed. It’s not that surprising to me to find out that it’s really hard. To me, it looks hard.
Katy
Yeah. And it is hard. Very hard. I mean, I should have known. I mean, it’s not that I definitely thought it was relaxing. Like, I knew it would be something that would be like people practice for years to get good at. Right. Of course. So I. I expected it to be hard, but I also thought it would be sort of enjoyable, I guess.
Tiffany
I’m sure it does get enjoyable.
Katy
I’m sure it does, too. And I forced myself to go to class yesterday because I was definitely like, do I want to keep doing this? But of course I’m going to do the whole thing. But I will say I should have known that I was in for something more challenging than I was expecting. When they went around the room on the first day, and they basically were like, introduce yourself and tell us what experience you have with doing something like this. You know, And a vast majority of the people there were like, I’ve never done this before. But there was a group of people who had done it before. And not only that, they had taken the beginner course, which is what I’m in last quarter, they were repeating the course. And that. That alone on that first moment should have told me, like, oh, this is going to be hard. Like, this is going to be really, really hard. But I did go for day number two, and we learned how to trim the thing that we’d thrown the week before, which, you know, I saved some things that I threw. Whether they were worth saving. I don’t know.
Tiffany
When you say that I threw.
Katy
Threw it. I get. I don’t even know if that’s the right terminology, but where, you know, where you form it into something you. I don’t know.
Tiffany
Okay, you form.
Katy
I formed it into a thing that represents. Represents. It does just represent. Resembles a mug.
Tiffany
I think. Represent, maybe is.
Katy
It represents the idea of a mug. Yeah. Anyway, and I set it aside, and it kind of dried out ever so slightly day by day in the week between the two classes. But then yesterday, we learned how to trim it. So you trim off all the clay that you don’t actually want to be there and try to actually help its form a little bit more. And that was a lot more fun. I like trimming more than I like making the thing because it’s like big spools of clay, like flinging off to the side on purpose rather than unintentionally. Did you get really dirty the first week? I Did. Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t know if that was just me. I felt like I was just covered in clay. Everybody around me looks so beautiful and delicate, and I’m, like, covered in wet clay. But, yeah. So I don’t know. I’m glad I went. And I think these things are important to do.
Tiffany
Yeah. I think it’s so good to challenge yourself and try something totally new because it will force your brain to be like, ah, I have no idea what I’m doing. And come up with ways to figure it out, which is. It’s just a good exercise for your brain, especially when you’re, you know, when you’re not a young chicken anymore and your brain needs to, like, be woken up from time to time because we get into our patterns.
Katy
Well, you know how I don’t think of myself as a perfectionist. In fact, I know I’m not in so many ways in my life, but, man, like, the. The general insecurity I felt that first day feeling like I absolutely. Not only do I not understand this. Like, he just gave me instruction, and I’m sitting there going, I cannot remember what he told me to just do with my hands. That kind of insecurity I feel like I haven’t really completely felt since I lived in Rome, I suppose. And, like, some guys like, yelling at me, asking me a question I don’t understand. I feel like it was very equivalent to that feeling of just being like, I’m completely out of my depth. How many questions can I ask this teacher before I become that student? You know, the one that’s constantly like, I’m sorry, can I ask you another thing? You wanted me to form the bowl How.
Tiffany
Does not sound easy.
Katy
Do you have anything like that where you tried something, thinking it would be one way and discovered that it was something else?
Tiffany
Kind of. Not exactly the same, but I definitely. I’ve never been good at drawing. I know this about myself. I’m not even good at, like, putting on nail polish. Okay. I don’t have a lot of control over my hands, apparently. I don’t know.
Katy
Boy, you’d be terrible at pottery then.
Tiffany
I know. Like, I can’t put on. On, Like, I can’t wear eyeliner. Like, I literally can’t wear it because it’ll never be the same on one eye as it is on the other eye. And it’ll look really wonky. Like, one eye will be thicker than the other, or one eye will be. It’ll be too low. So I just don’t wear eyeliner because I know I can’t do it. And I don’t paint my nails because I know I’ll just make a big mess. I’ll paint my toenails because, you know, toenails, they’re further away. Like, when you’re walking around, you know, you can’t see it quite as well. Like, if you get on the cuticle, like, nobody notices. But, you know, if you. Your nails badly, it looks bad. So I just don’t paint my nails and I don’t wear eyeliner and I can’t. Like, I can’t even draw a straight line. I do have nice handwriting, I gotta say.
Katy
Yeah, you do.
Tiffany
So. So I must have some control.
Katy
But can I say something before you go on? When it comes to, like, why you don’t paint your nails, I also don’t paint my nails, but let me tell you, I could paint them right now and I would have them messed up in, like.
Tiffany
In, like, less than My second reason.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
This is my second reason. I cannot sit still long enough for them to dry.
Katy
The last time I got my nails done by anybody was on my wedding day. And I did not even make it to the car before I had ruined them enough to have to walk back in and have her redo it. Is that terrible?
Tiffany
I’m the same. I’m exactly the same. That’s why. That’s the second reason I stopped doing them. So I know this about myself. I know I’m not good at drawing. However, certain artists, and I don’t mean, like fine artists, I mean, like, more illustrative artists, they make it look so easy. What especially gets me are those illustrations of, like, cities. Do you know what I’m talking about? There’s a company, I think it’s called the Paper Cities. I’m not sure if that’s the exact name. It’s an artist and a stationary company. They make the most beautiful, like, calendars and stationary and beautiful things. And they’re almost always like a city. But it’s definitely illustrated. Right. It’s not realistic. And it just looks so easy. And I just feel like, you know, sometimes on Instagram as well, like on social media, they have like a. Like a fast. What do you call that, Katy?
Katy
Time lapse. Like a super.
Tiffany
A time lapse. A time lapse. Super fast. And it’s like, oh, my gosh, this looks so easy. Like, I know I could do this. You think you get, like, seduced into this idea that this art form, which is clearly someone’s life’s work.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
Is going to be easy and for me, I think it’s mostly crafty stuff and illustrations that I feel like that has got to be doable. Like, I should be able to do that. And then you sit down with whatever it is, whether it’s embroidery or illustration. Those are two things that I feel like I would love to be able to do or draw something beautifully, even just like the bullet journal. I don’t know if you’re familiar with what the bullet journal is, but you’ve probably seen it. And, like, you don’t have to be an artist to have a pretty bullet journal, but you have to need. You have to be able to draw a leaf, you know, like a respectable leaf.
Speaker C
Like, you have to be able to.
Tiffany
Draw some kind of, like a pumpkin, you know?
Katy
Okay.
Tiffany
And I. I used to try to keep a bullet journal, and I used to try, okay, it’s October. Let me draw a little pumpkin in the corner. And it’s like, tiffany, don’t do it.
Katy
Because it’s just going to.
Tiffany
It’s going to ruin it. It’s going to look so bad that when you see. See it, you are gonna hate. You’re gonna hate yourself. Like, it’s just gonna be so horrible.
Katy
This makes me want to, like, challenge you to. When we post this episode, when this episode goes up on Monday and everyone’s listening to it, that on Instagram, you post in our stories a picture of a pumpkin that you drew. Oh, God, I’m dying to see it. Will you do it? Will you draw a pumpkin?
Tiffany
I can try to draw a pumpkin. Or I can pull out one of my old bullet journals and just, like, show you, like, my old attempt that I actually put in ink that. Erasable.
Katy
Yeah, okay, do that. That’s very funny. That’s very funny. It reminds me of when I have a very fine artist friend who does amazing paintings. And, you know, occasionally people will ask her, how long did that painting take you to do? And she’ll be like, well, I mean, the painting itself probably took about five hours, but also an entire fine arts education and about 20 years of practice. It took me my whole lifetime to be able to do that in five hours.
Tiffany
Of course, yes, for sure. For sure. And then. Then that. That brings me actually to my other thought when you were talking, which is that when you hear someone playing a musical instrument, now, I don’t think it sounds easy when it’s a musical instrument. I don’t get the same sense of like, oh, I should be able to dash off a perfectly scaled drawing of Amsterdam. Or I should be able to you know, create a little bowl. Like, how hard can it be? You know, I don’t get that sense. But you do get the sense that it must be so much fun to do that. I don’t get the relaxing sense from the pottery wheel, but I get the sense of, like, playing the violin, like, just picking up a violin. It feels like when you’re doing it at that level, it should be effortless.
Katy
You’re not concentrating on, like, what am I doing? You’re interacting with, say, the other musicians on the stage, watching the crowd and singing or something, while you’re playing something else. You know, it’s just that kind of ease.
Tiffany
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think. I mean, obviously, I think that. I don’t know. I’d have to talk with a classical instrumentalist. I know as a singer, it was never easy for me. I never felt that it was easy. Especially, like, in a performance, there was always nerves and all of that. But I don’t. I think that it’s like, kind of a myth. Like, I think that, you know, we look at these people, the fact that they’re artists or experts, the fact that they’re able to make it look easy is what shows their mastery. And that could be said for dancers, too. Like, have you ever watched a ballerina on stage? And it’s just like. It looks like she was born doing that. It looks like that is her natural way of moving. And the truth is, it takes a ton of energy. Not just a lifetime of practice and study, but even that moment, it’s got. You know, it’s not easy, what they’re doing.
Katy
No, I don’t think ballet looks easy. I have that. The opposite feeling, I feel, just by this. When I was a little kid, I had a friend who was in ballet, and one day I asked her if I could try on her pointe shoes. And I tried them on, and I was, like, wandering around on my tiptoes, and I was like, this hurts so much that I have ever since then, not thought it was easy. I mean, you had talked about playing the piano, I think, during our maybe New Year’s resolution episode or, I don’t know, sometime recently. I mean.
Tiffany
No, it was the episode we did on discovering your passions. Can you miss discovering your passion?
Katy
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. Is that something you still haven’t done yet? I assume I still haven’t done it.
Tiffany
You still haven’t done it. And every time. I really. I was really, really good at practicing the first quarter of the year, and even some of last year. Like, I don’t know about other people, but I’m really good at doing stuff in the wintertime. I’m an active winter person and a lazy summer person. So that’s my excuse that I’m giving myself right now. But I was doing. Doing quite a quite regular practice and I loved it. I love how it makes me feel when I’m doing it. It just makes me happy, even if I’m like very basic. But I haven’t been doing it lately. In fact, every time a really finishes practicing and I close the piano, there’s this little voice that’s like, you could practice right now, you know?
Katy
And then the second little voice is like, yeah, but you don’t feel like it.
Tiffany
So we’ll see about that. But you know, it’s funny because my niece, she doesn’t really play the piano anymore because she’s got all sorts of other things going on, but she was playing the piano like a really o first grade, second grade, third grade all through elementary school. And my nephew, who’s two years older than her, was at the same time learning to play the guitar. And she’s a much. I mean, this was when they were a bit younger, so I don’t want to pigeonhole them now that they’re both mid teenagers. But she’s very conscientious. She’s a really hard worker. And he’s more of like, you know, whatever I’ll do, you know, I’ll do this for a while. And then he gets bored and changes things. And he’s not, you know, but she is very driven. And she’d be practicing and doing her piano and he’d be trying it with his guitar and he’d. I think it was my mom who said to me that he said, oh, well, of course she’s good at piano. Piano is so much easier than guitar. Like, it’s so much easier. And I think his mom was like, okay, then why don’t you try? Why don’t you stop playing the guitar and you can start piano? And he’s like, yeah, I’m gonna do that. It’s gonna be so much easier. I started taking piano lessons and was like, what? What? I have to do 10 different things at the same time?
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
So it’s easy to look at some else and be like, oh, that looks so easy. And for me, as a. I mean, I studied piano as a child a little bit and then studied more recently a little bit. But I look at the guitar and I think, wow, that looks so much easier. So I had Claudio teach me a couple of chords on the guitar. And I was like, this is the most painful thing ever. Like, it’s painful. I did not expect pressing the strings of a guitar down. I did not expect it to be painful.
Katy
Yeah, I know. I felt the same way when I tried playing the guitar once. Once, by the way.
Tiffany
Yeah. I was like, I’m never doing this. I am never going to do. I had all these, like, oh, I could. I. You know, I know enough about music.
Speaker C
I’ll pick this up.
Tiffany
You know, I’ll pick this up in an hour.
Katy
I guess I’m like, maybe the takeaway from this is that nothing comes in an hour. Nothing.
Tiffany
Well, no, I didn’t honest, honestly think it would come in an hour. Another thing I’ve always, always dreamed of being able to play is a string instrument. I mean, I’ve always loved the idea, like I said, of playing the violin. Or the cello, more likely the violin. I think if you look at someone playing the violin, I think it really can look easy. If it’s a truly great player, they can make it just look like, you know, it’s like, how hard can that be? You know? I mean, you know, rationally, it’s hard. You know, it’s got to be hard. But there’s something about it, the way that they make it look so easy. That’s what I mean about the dancer. I know being a dancer is hard, but when you can make it look effortless, it’s so amazing to watch someone do something so difficult and make it look effortless. And I remember somebody telling me that when you learn the violin, it takes, like, two years just to develop a decent sounding tone. Just playing one note is going to sound awful for about two years.
Katy
Yes. I can remember my sister learning to play the violin.
Tiffany
And you can attest to that fact?
Katy
I don’t know. I could definitely. And no offense, Sarah, I could definitely tell what song she was playing. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, for instance. But was it ever on tone? Not that I can recall. Yeah, I don’t think. I don’t know how long she did it. No, I. I mean, I would totally expect that. It’s funny, because I. It must have something to do with your own personal experiences, too, because, you know, I would look at somebody playing the violin and think, wow, that must be so hard. But maybe that’s because I had a grandfather who played the fiddle. And so I got to see up close, like, how much he’s doing with his hands and stuff. And same with you, like, thinking, well, I know how hard dancing is. And then I might watch it and be like, how easy. Look at them doing that swing dancing. It’s so cool. But I also think, like, going back to that story about your niece and nephew, some of that’s got to be about passion. Like, you’d have to have some kind of passion for it to push through the two years that you can’t get a good tone on the violin. Or maybe your niece is, like, slightly more passionate about this than your nephew is, and he would rather be doing something else, really. You know, and this is a thing that actually taps into something for her and for me. In trying all these new things, how do you get struck by the thing that you’re gonna be so passionate about that you are willing to, like, put up with the failing and the failing and the failing and the failing and the failing? Because all of these things take a bunch of failing. I mean, the pottery guy has said a million times, like, in the two days we’ve been there, you have to break stuff. Stuff has to go awry. Like, you have to lose the bottom of a pot. You’ve been carefully crafting for, like, the last hour to realize what it feels like when it’s about to go. You know, it’s just part of the process of, yeah, you’re going to break things over and over and over, and that’s how you will figure out how not to break stuff in the future. But, you know, you have to also be like, this hits me in some way that I’m gonna break all those pots to figure this out, you know?
Tiffany
Right.
Katy
And it juries out on whether or not I will feel that way by the end of this class. I mean, I still have a lot of weeks to go. This is not just like a pop in at the community center and have a night of making pots. Oh, it’s a commitment.
Tiffany
It’s like, how many classes is it?
Katy
I think it’s like eight.
Tiffany
Eight?
Katy
Oh, yeah. That’s a lot.
Tiffany
That’s a lot. Yeah. You have to fail. Reminds me of. I can’t remember right off the top of my head who said it, but some famous writer like Stephen King. I don’t think it was Stephen King, but somebody like that said, in order to be a good writer, first you have to write again. I can’t remember the number. It’s like you have to write a million bad words. You know, you have to write, you know, a large number of really garbage sentences and whatever, phrases, books, words, until it starts to be good. It’s probably the case for any art or any, you know, anything, really.
Katy
Yeah, anything. Yeah. And that’s the other thing, too, is that sometimes you kind of naturally practice stuff on your own. You know, as long as I can remember, I was trying to write stuff, and that wasn’t because people were like, why don’t you sit down and write us a book? You know, it was just. You get into English class and you’re like, oh, thank goodness. Like, whew, yeah, let’s write something. You know, Rather than, like, walking into math class and being like, do this. Ditto of all these problems. I’d be like, oh, gosh, no, it’s more fun somehow. That’s. That’s the thing, you know, I’m just trying to put myself in the way of finding out what those next fun things are. That’s it.
Tiffany
I love that about you. I love that about you that you, like, do it so purposefully and that you look for these things, because most people don’t, I think. And it’s so. It’s a good reminder to put yourself out there and to look for those things, because like you said, and like we’ve said in that. That earlier episode, like, you never know. You never know what your passion might be until you discover it.
Katy
Right, Right. So true.
Tiffany
We are planning. I mean, it’s a loose plan, but we are thinking and talking about going skiing next winter because we have some friends who have just decided that they’re going to, like, go every winter. They went this past year. We did not have time to go this year because we had a bunch of other trips, but we’re like, we should it out next year. And Claudio’s never skied, never put on skis in his life. I skied one time when I was five years old. First family ski trip. My sister broke her leg. We never went skiing again. Aurelio, obviously, has never skied. So, you know, this is going to be kind of, you know, to see how. How do I like it? Am I capable of it? Will I pick it up or will I hate it? Because my friend. We were just having dinner couple weeks ago with these two groups of friends, and one of them has been skiing for a long time. The other one, it was her first time, and she was describing, and she’s very physically fit, so I just assume, you know, she’s going to pick this up in, like, a day. And she said she was describing how hard it was for her and how it was just, like a struggle. It was just a real struggle to learn how to ski. And I thought, oh, my gosh, like.
Katy
Wait, what did I do to do this?
Speaker C
Yeah, exactly.
Tiffany
I’m like, maybe I’m gonna hate it.
Katy
I just.
Tiffany
That thought didn’t even occur to me. I was looking at people skiing, skiing downhill on videos. I’m like, how hard could it be?
Katy
You just take gravity all the way down to the bottom of the hill. Yeah. Just remember, Tiffany, pizza slice, French fries. That’s the important thing to remember. Pizza slice, French fries. Pizza slice, french fries. That’s your. That’s your skis. If you’re. If you’re about to go off the cliff. Pizza slice, pizza slice. It’ll slow you down.
Tiffany
It’ll slow you down. The pizza slice slows you down.
Katy
And the French fries are like, let it rip, French fries.
Tiffany
Oh, you know that.
Katy
Pizza slice, French fries.
Tiffany
But I feel like doing the pizza slice. I would, like, break my knees or something. Scares me.
Katy
Nope, just not. You’re not tipping your whole foot. You’re just tipping the tips of the skis in.
Tiffany
Just the tips.
Katy
Or you could also take it like, pizza slice, french fries. Let’s go to the lodge. I hate this. Well, I might just be.
Tiffany
I might just end up reading in the lodge the whole time, watching the snowfall.
Katy
Also pleasant.
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Tiffany here, just popping in. If you are dreaming of coming to Italy and specifically to coming to Rome, you’re probably thinking to yourself, I don’t really want to be in those huge groups of tourist hordes trudging through the Vatican Museums, sweltering under the sun inside the Colosseum, wandering around the busy tourist streets, seduced into a tourist trapped restaurant just because you don’t know where else to go and you’re tired and you’re hot, looking at amazing things, but not really knowing what you’re seeing. What’s the point of going all the way to Rome and not really seeing it? Not seeing the true city, not experiencing what Rome has to offer and really getting to know the city.
Because if you don’t know Rome very well, or maybe you’ve been to Rome and you were a little bit overwhelmed by it, couldn’t really take it all in. Or maybe you’ve never been there and you don’t really know what all the fuss is about. It can be easy to be overwhelmed by a city like Rome. But if you come in October with Katy and me, we can guarantee you that you will get to know this city on a much deeper level. And when you do that, no matter where you’re traveling, it makes that time so much more valuable and so much more worthwhile. And I don’t know about you, but when I go deep into a place, that place stays with me. So I wanted to share just a little bit with you about what we’re going to be doing in October. We’re not going to be going to the Vatican, we’re not going to be going to the Colosseum or the Forum. Although if you want to go to those places, we will absolutely make that happen for you and we can set up tours for you. Or if you don’t want to go on a tour, you want to go by yourself, we can help you get the tickets. We are happy to do that, but we won’t be going there together.
We are going to be discovering the lesser known side of Rome. Now, the thing about Rome, what makes Rome so unique as a city, is that some of the churches in this city, some of the small museums and piazzas, if they were in any other city in the world, they would be absolutely the top attractions. But because Rome has so much, Rome has an embarrassment of riches that even the second, third, fourth tier sites, even those places that hardly anybody goes to, are so incredible anywhere else in the world, they would be your number one site. So those are the kind of places we’re going to be going. We’re going to be seeing medieval frescoes, we’re going to be seeing mosaics, we’re going to be seeing incredible works of baroque architecture, paintings by Caravaggio, by Filippino Lippi, by Raphael, churches that are incredibly beautiful, but just far enough off the tourist track that nobody goes there and will be there alone and will experience these sites in a completely different way than you experience a very, very crowded, busy city. There are some piazzas and streets and narrow alleyways in Rome that even in the height of high season, when you walk down them, you feel like you’re in a small medieval city.
After living in Rome for—it will be 20 years by October—I know where to go. I know where to take you. I have the greatest, amazing secret places that I have been collecting and cataloging and quite frankly, in a lot of situations, sort of keeping to myself, because I don’t want them to be ruined. But I do want to share them with you. If you’re interested in coming to Rome, if that’s something that you’ve been dreaming of doing for a while, consider coming with Katy and myself this coming October 2024, because we are going to spend six nights, five days exploring the unknown, the secret side of Rome. I’m going to be telling the city’s stories and really sharing with you what makes this city so unique and really what makes it the way that it is, why Rome is what it is. So if you’re interested, the dates are 6 to 12 October. You can just get in touch with us by email. If you’d like more information, email us at bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com, that’s bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com we have sold out about half of the rooms and it’s a very small trip, so we don’t have a lot of rooms available, but we do have a few left. Please get in touch if you feel like you might be interested in joining us for that magical, unforgettable week. Back to the show.
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Katy
All right, well, we should leave it there. If you have any experience with anything like this, where you tried something out and it was totally different than you expected, whether you ended up loving it or hating it, I wouldn’t mind hearing the story about it. You can send us an email at bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com, bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com or if you’re over on the Patreon, I guess, Tiffany, we can now text through the Patreon app to people. So you can also, if you’re one of our supporting members over there, just send us a text and one of us will reply. And until next time, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Join us again. Bye.