Summer Jean | Unschooling - Living Without the Need to Prove Yourself

Autogenerated Transcript

Jesper Conrad: 00:00
We're together with Summer Jean. And first of all, Summer, welcome.

Summer Jean: 00:05
Thank you. It's nice to see you again.

Jesper Conrad: 00:08
Likewise. And for the people watching, normally I have my wonderful wife next to me, but we are in Tarragona, Spain, where we are hosting what we call World School Village, which is a giant event where we have invited a lot of world schoolers, and we are around 40 families with teens who all are unschooled, homeschooled, world school travelers who live in the same place for a month. And my wife is super busy with that event. She's the main one running it. But I really wanted to get an episode recorded this week. So here we are, just me and you, Summer.

Summer Jean: 00:46
That sounds amazing and so cool what you guys are up to.

Jesper Conrad: 00:50
It is a, I would say, overwhelming, fantastic experience because a lot of the homeschoolers out there, and you have probably felt that growing up or know that kind of feeling. Many of them they meet so many like-minded people in the same place. And I think we have more than 40 teams around the same age, just hanging out, chatting, no bullying, just relaxed and enjoying life and talking. That's beautiful. It is amazing.

Summer Jean: 01:22
And when we when I was uh when I was a kid, my older brothers, when they were teenagers, they got to go to NBTSC, not back to school camp. And like back in the early days when it was new, when Grace Llewellyn was still leading it herself and everything. So my older brothers were some of the early members of Not Back to School Camp. And that was cool. And I always wanted to go when I got old enough, but then my family moved to Hawaii and it just never worked out for me. But it was a hugely impactful experience for them to get to be around so many other kids who came from alternative or different kinds of families and different kinds of education and upbringing, even though there was this vast, vast range between like my family's style of like not doing schooling and other families' styles. I mean, everyone, it's such a vast, vast range, right? Because the education is only like this tiny, tiny part of the wider world of parenting and relating to children and everything. So even though the range was so huge, there were certain elements of just being together with other kids that aren't in that system that was hugely connective and very like reassuring for them and really like gave them a lot of confidence because we didn't have a lot of people in our immediate life, you know. Like when I was young, homeschooling was barely heard of, let alone like what people are calling unschooling now or self-educated or whatever. There's so many terms. And so it was really cool for them to meet so many other kids that had at least that were at least different from the the set system of public schooling, even if it wasn't quite like our family. Just that it was different was a way that we could relate to other kids that we met who, you know, um didn't follow curriculum or you know, just had some different kind of freedom or structure in their in their education. And so that was really so it's beautiful what you're doing. I think it's really important um for so many families to have to be able to get together and connect and the kids and for the parents just to be like we're not alone.

Jesper Conrad: 03:27
Yeah, it's really sometimes I get very easily emotional, and I actually had a cry about it today when I talked with my kids because I just got so happy uh thinking about seeing some of these teens a week ago and then seeing the now interact, and you can just see the ease of life in them and how they relax in each other's presence presence, and it just made me really, really happy. Uh so I think yeah, yeah. Somewhere, I've been considering some questions, and and one of them is um this it's not philosophical, but it is for me who have been in the system of public schooling, even though I, in many ways, compared to many other people, are kind of rebellious in the way that I didn't want to go to university, even in a country where it's paid and you even get a salary for taking it. I wanted to make movies and creative projects and all that. So I just went ahead and had what people would call six to seven gap years uh before it did anything. But I still run around with this little uh productive um mindset that I need to be productive somehow. And and sometimes when I look at my old the oldest of the ones who have been homeschooled, we also have a wonderful daughter who's 26, but the oldest of the ones who has been home unschooled and homeschooled, he's very good at enjoying life and just being alive. Um and part of me is envious, and I can also, as a parent, be afraid. Will he figure out to make an income and all that? And then the other part of me is considering how must it be to grow up without this constant nagging of you need to create a career, you need to be productive, your life needs to look like this for you to produce.

Summer Jean: 05:31
Yeah, you have to, yes, you have to you have to justify your existence with productivity.

Jesper Conrad: 05:36
Yeah, yeah. And even though, as I said, I told my story of kind of being rebellious and doing a lot of stuff, I still have this justification towards myself, but I don't see it in the same way in my son and you who have been uh unschooled all the way. I'm curious where you are on this um on if you also have it under your shoulder sometimes, or how you're handling it.

Summer Jean: 06:00
No, it's a it's a beautiful thing to consider, and it is philosophical. And I've contemplated that quite a bit, and I have discussions about this with my mom. And I think that to some extent it's unavoidable because we're in this modern society, and it's so it permeates everything. Like you can't really, I don't think that you can raise children without that affecting them to some degree. But I think you can lessen the degree. And yeah, I think that school has a huge, huge bit of that. But I got some of it myself simply from the family I grew up in, from the relatives that I was around, from the parents of my friends, from it's everywhere. It's from TV and movies and everything, everything is pushing this narrative that you have to, that your value is in what you can produce as far as monetary success. So it's not even what you can produce, like, look at this amazing piece of art that I created. It's like, yeah, but how much can you sell it for? That's what's gonna matter. Because that painting only has value if someone's willing to pay a certain amount of money for it. So we've put everything onto it's all about what it's what its value in dollars is instead of just its like spiritual value, it's emotional value, it's like all of these other things. And so I definitely have that programming as well. But I have noticed when I look around, I mean, I'm I'm 37 now. And um, like you described me as being unschooled, and that is still accurate if you're going by the original definition of unschooling. What I say is the true definition of unschooling, because the guy who actually made it up made it, made up the term unschooling to apply to something he'd already kind of formulated, and he's the first one to make that connection. So unschooling, according to John Holt, who created the term, is actually um child-directed learning or self-directed learning, child-led learning or self-directed learning. That's basically that's the like the absolute core definition. So when I use the term unschooling, that's what I mean. And that means 100%. It means there is no adult implemented learning activity whatsoever. There's no pushing on the adult side. There's no, I would say, yes, guiding maybe, but there's no actual like you're gonna do this at this time, ever from an adult. There's no required learning or adult-implemented learning, I would say. So I just want to say that because I see a lot of things today that are saying, oh, we unschool sometimes. That's not a thing. That's called homeschooling. If you're doing the weekend, if you're doing any kind of adult implemented learning, it's some form of homeschooling. Unschooling means there's no schooling perpetrated on the child. So you can't unschool certain subjects or unschool sometimes, or that's not that's not how that works in my world. So that's where I'm at with that. So I was, according to that definition, I was unschooled. There was no adult implemented academic learning in my life. Um, no one ever sat me down and made me do any kind of worksheet. I've never, I've nothing. I've never opened a textbook, or at least not. I mean, I've opened a textbook because I got curious a few times, quickly closed them. And we didn't have a curriculum, we didn't have any of that kind of thing. We had a very my mom focused on relationship and connection. My mom focused on relationship and connection. And she told us, which I'm going to bring this back to your question. My mom raised us constantly reminding us that all she wanted for us was for us to find our sense of rightness in the world, like to find, to connect with a passion, to do what we loved, to find our flow. And she would support us as long as it needed for us to do that. She had no expectations of what that would look like for us. She had no attachment to what we would become or or how that would look. She had no attachment to us having any kind of, you know, success in the world. She didn't need us to be impressive, to get degrees, to do anything. She was like, I don't care if you're the garbage man. I just want you to find peace. I want you to live in a way that is in alignment with your own sense of rightness. Um, so that's the message I got growing up. And I'm super, super grateful for that. And I think that I knew my mom meant it because of how she treated me every day. So it's one thing to think that consciously and be like, of course I want that for my children. And most parents will say that.

Jesper Conrad: 10:36
Yeah.

Summer Jean: 10:37
It's, you know, and they mean it. They're not lying. I know they mean it and there's genuine intention. But the actions and the way that you speak to your child every day and the way that you treat them every day is where the message is. That's the message they're going to get, not from you telling them, I just want you to be happy. Because then you turn around and you say, No, you need to sit here and you need to complete this math worksheet. Because if you don't, you're going to be a loser. Like that's what you're telling them. If you don't do what someone else thinks you should be doing and accomplishing tasks set by other people that are important to other people that you have no interest in, you might be uncomfortable with, you might not be ready for, it might feel totally wrong to you. But if you don't deny your own sense of rightness and what feels safe for you and good for you and comfortable for you, if you don't crush that, your own sense of what is right for yourself and follow someone else's direction, some higher authority somewhere out there always knows what's better for you. And you need to do what they say, otherwise you're going to be a failure. And that's the message that people are telling their kids every time they make them learn something their child has shown no interest in. Every time that you're forcing your child to use their mind in a way in which they are uninterested in, uncomfortable with, unready for. And they're the only ones that can know what they're ready for. You don't get to say. No one gets to say what another person's internal world is like or what they're actually ready for or comfortable with. Um, and when I say things like this, I really like to make sure that people get the point that I'm saying mentally, because you know, you still need to wash your dishes and brush your teeth and like there's things like that. But you can think whatever you want about it. You're free. You can feel however you want about it, you can think whatever you want about it. You can even say whatever you want about it in my family. As long as that person, and when we get into these kinds of freedoms, there's like a where's your freedom, where's my freedom, where do our freedoms meet and curb one another's? Because you might have the freedom to say like something really nasty to me, but I have the freedom to be upset about that and not want to talk to you for the rest of the day. So it doesn't mean there's no consequences, and kids get to just say whatever they want and act however they want. It means that the consequences are natural. They have they're actually natural, they're not planned out by an adult. They're not, there's no adult manipulating and creating consequences, even within themselves. I'm gonna react a certain way so my kid learns a certain thing. It's actually just being super authentic and genuine and present. And that's what I got with my mom. So I got a lot of really beautiful support of being in beingness and not a huge push on the doing. And I wasn't purposefully taught by my mom that my value is in my productivity and what I can create, but I still got some of that programming just because I grew up in this world, and so it happened. And I think there's a little bit, and for my older brothers, this is very much true because they're four and seven years older than me, and they had a lot more pressure and influence from my dad's side of the family, which were the ones that were super, super freaked out about us, and so there's a lot of fear-mongering, and it really gets to you when you're a kid, and those are the people that and we would have to spend weekends like alone. You know, my parents split up, so there was weekends with my dad. So we spent a lot of time alone with these grandparents and aunties and uncles. There was a lot of negative influence, a lot of judgment, a lot of fear, a lot of criticism, and that got to my older brothers more than me because I was a lot younger. And by the time I came along, my mom had really detached a lot more and more from that side of the family. So I didn't get as much of an influence. Then we moved away when I was 10, and I hardly saw most of that family, anyways. But my brothers got a lot of it, and I think it really got under their skin in some ways to where they almost it almost increased that feeling that you're talking about about having to do and putting all of your value in what you um what you achieve, like success-wise, according to society. And I think that my one of my older brothers for sure really felt the need to prove something, like to prove that he could be successful in the system and in the world, even though we were raised in this very different way. And that I I could really see that coming from my grandparents. There was so much disapproval and fear and anxiety that my brother wanted to know, see, I can be good, I can be successful, like and defending my mom and our way of life. I think that all of us had a little bit of a desire to prove something to the world because we were so harshly judged and criticized for so much of our lives for being so different and so weird. And my mom was very unusual in a lot of ways. We're not just talking because you know it's all connected, right? So it wasn't just education, it was also like the medical stuff and it was the spiritual stuff, and it was the health stuff, and it was the all of the things. And so there was a lot of judgment, a lot of criticism. My mom went through a lot. I mean, we had we had CPS at my door. Grandma called CPS to have us taken away from mom because we were being neglected because we were vegetarian and we were homeschooled. And my dad actually and my stepmom took my mom to court and tried to force us to go to public public school and get all the vaccines and do all the stuff. And so um the fear was real, you know, like we actually as children experienced things that made us realize that we could actually be taken away from our mother if we didn't pretend like we were fine. And I learned how to tell a lot of tall tales really young out of survival. I had to survive. I had to tell grandma when I'm six, like, oh yeah, no, I'm sleeping in my own bed because if you're six years old and you're still co-sleeping, something's wrong. So this is the world I grew up in because 30 years ago in California, in Northern California, 30 years ago.

Jesper Conrad: 16:46
Yeah, no one.

Summer Jean: 16:47
No, no one. So it was like my mom wasn't just a little weird, like she was so far to the other end of the spectrum from my dad's super right-wing all American cattle ranching family. And she was this weird hippie chick who decided to do everything different. And so they weren't only insulted because they took it as an offense against their way of life. So they actually went after her. Like there was a lot. It's just uh so my mom really got crucified, and we were all deeply affected. So I think there was a strong urge for us to prove ourselves against that, against that world, against my dad's family, against my dad himself. And my older brothers had it much worse than I did. Being men, for one thing, it's very patriarchal family. Nobody really cared what I did. They just wanted me to be cute and quiet and pretty. There was no real expectation for me. Um, and I rebelled against that by by like getting really tough and strong and loud and doing the opposite and become a glass blowing artist and stuff. But I'm really, really grateful that I got a little bit less of that influence than my brothers did because I can see it in them. I can see, especially in one of my older brothers, that desire to prove yourself to the world and that money being the mission.

Jesper Conrad: 18:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Summer Jean: 18:07
So he makes the most money, he's the most successful. And in my opinion, and he went to college, like he's the one that went to school. He went to college, he got great grades. I remember him telling my mom he got into UC Berkeley, which is kind of a big deal. And I remember him calling my mom. My mom has reminded me of this quite a few times because she's like, I don't know how I got a kid like this. It's so funny. He calls her and he says, This is your moment of glory. Like, I got into UC Berkeley, mom, this is your moment of glory. And she was so confused because she was like, I don't care. Like, why would I care if you get into college or not? I didn't raise you to like prove that you could be successful according to society and the set standards. I raised you to find your own joy. And and I really feel like that had a lot to do with my that all that negative influence and my dad's family and just growing up in that society and all of that pressure. And he's actually like, I uh and I feel like he's the one that went to college. He got the degree, he got the degree in political science, he works for some fancy startup company working on computers from home. He's married, they own a house, they have a little girl, they have a dog, they have the perfect American dream life. And I was just there visiting him not that long ago. And honestly, I think he's the most miserable ahead of all of us.

Jesper Conrad: 19:27
Yeah. But that's the interesting thing, which is what is happiness and when are we really happy and have many of us learn to listen to our bodies and when we are happy and when life is good.

Summer Jean: 19:44
Funnily enough, trying to live up to what success means to other people, like accepting other people's standard of success, accepting society's standard of his success. I know a man here in Mexico. I live in a gorgeous little jungle beach town in Mexico. I know a man here who just walked out of everything, and he lives out in the jungle. I don't know who nobody owns the property. He lives way out in the jungle. He's made himself like a hammock fortress in this like tree. And he's just so happy. He's one of the happiest guys I've ever met. And he lives with nothing, and he walks two miles to come into town, and then he goes back to his tree next to the river and he lights a fire to cook. And he is the happiest, most content, peaceful person that I know around.

Jesper Conrad: 20:31
Yeah, and I almost get anxiety thinking about it because I even as a free-spirited man who unschool my kids, uh or with unschool kids, you don't unschool them per se. I'd be like, who would I be able to do that? But yeah, with the small steps, and I'm trying to remove the layers one by one. Since we talked the first time on our podcast, and people should go listen to that episode. I found myself a hobby after many, many years of not really finding time for just doing what would be looked upon as nothing. I whipped with spoons and I love making spoons, and often when I make them, apparently I make quite pretty spoons. People are like, oh, shouldn't you sell them? And I'm like, hey man, it takes me five hours to make this one.

Summer Jean: 21:20
Right.

Jesper Conrad: 21:21
What can you possibly if you should pay it? I wanted $500 for it. I will give you the spoon. I've enjoyed making it, and I give you it, and you will enjoy using it. But but don't insult me by giving me $20 for five hours of my time. I could, I mean, I could work with whatever if it was, but just that joy of just sitting in the sun, relaxing, talking, and doing stuff. I'm starting to relearn that, but oh my, it's a big journey.

Summer Jean: 21:52
Starting to uncover like your your own curiosities that you lost somewhere because guaranteed they were showing up when you were little, but then you had to be, you had to redirect all your energy focus and attention to to focus on things other people think you should be focusing on. And so you lost your own sense of what you like. I know so many people that don't know how to make decisions. They don't know how to make a choice, they don't know how to make decisions, they don't know what they like, they don't know what they want because they've, especially young people, because they get out of high school and they literally have never had a chance to practice that. It's always been this is where you're gonna be at this time, this is what you're gonna do with this time, this is what you're gonna spend your time. Like it's all it's all mapped out for them, and even what they should be thinking about, they're being told what to be thinking about.

Jesper Conrad: 22:41
Yeah.

Summer Jean: 22:41
And so they get out of high school. And I remember this when I was that age, and my I had a lot of friends who were in high school. And I remember being, I would say any there was a couple years, especially when I was about 20, I think, actually, because it was like a little after high school, you know, and I was living on the big island and I was like work trading on this organic farm type weird hippie community situation. And I remember there was a few other people around me. I dated one guy who was like 23. He'd gotten out of college, he had graduated with all the fancy degrees. He was the valedictorian in his high school. He had a really like super strict religious upbringing and was the good boy, like the perfect golden boy, straight A's all the way through the whole deal. And he got out of college and he was completely incapable at life, at basic living. And then he fell into such an incredible depression because he had no direction and no one to telling him what to do. And he literally had no sense of even how where to go within himself to find what step to take next. He lost his connection to any kind of motivation or curiosity or interest or drive at all. It was gone. And um, and so it was really interesting because we only we dated very briefly because I was the opposite. I had never had a problem saying what I like, what I want, what my opinion is. I know exactly how I feel about this, and I'm gonna tell you all about it. I have no, I can't relate at all to not knowing. And my mom had a similar experience. My mom somehow, maybe she's just a very strong soul. I don't know. But when she was married to my dad, and she tells me this story where she had a conversation with him, I don't even know what it was about, doesn't matter. Where there was some kind of upset, and she was trying to be like, Yeah, but what do you think? How do you feel? And he broke down and he was like, I don't know. I'm not like you. I don't know where to go inside myself to know to find the answers. And I feel like that's a really great example of what happens to so many people in childhood going into the public school system, and then also just from the way parents are parenting unconsciously, is we strip that from children. We because I think we're born with it. I think we're all born with it. With our, we know likes and dislikes and what feels right and what feels safe, and like intuition and gut feeling, all of that's intact. I believe that's all intact. And I think we strip it away from children by denying them the freedom to follow those impulses or explore those impulses or find out which ones are correct. And oh, this feeling, does it mean I should do it or not? Well, I don't know, try. Okay, oh no, I think that meant I shouldn't have done it. I'll pay attention to that feeling next time. We don't allow them to develop relationship with their own signals coming from their own body and their heart and their mind and their gut. We don't allow them to explore that relationship and develop that relationship. We say, uh-uh, cut that off, develop a relationship with an outside authority and follow them no matter what, even when it contradicts your own sense of rightness.

Jesper Conrad: 25:54
And this is how we've gotten here.

Summer Jean: 25:57
And this is how, like, I see, I'm a marriage, I live in Mexico, but I still follow a little bit about what's going on politically in the US. And I'm not on either side, so I'm not here to argue anything, but I see so many people that are just blindly following one authority or the other. I don't care what side you're on, there's so much blind following going on of whatever narrative is being put in front of them. And and if you sat them down and you questioned how do you actually feel about this part, they would they wouldn't know. They would be like, Oh, do you I would be like, Do you agree with this? And they'd be like, Yeah, I'd be like, why? Well, because so and so said. Yeah, not because it actually makes sense to you or feels right to you, or like use your own discernment and sense of judgment. Just because someone else is running into the ocean doesn't mean it's safe. You need to watch the waves, you need to look and see, and you need to use your own experience and your senses and your everything to make that judgment for yourself. But we don't encourage children to learn how to do that. We don't allow them and we don't need to teach them how to do that. We literally just need to allow them to explore that for themselves and remind them they know. Ma, I remember moments in my childhood where I would be like, Mom, I don't know if I should go. And she'd be like, Well, nobody knows, honey. I don't know either what you should do. You're the only one that knows what you should do. And she goes, one of the great things she used to ask me is if you did know, what would be the answer?

Jesper Conrad: 27:19
That's a good one. I like that.

Summer Jean: 27:21
Remind me all the time. She's like, You do know though. You always do know. We all do know, you know, when something feels right or not. Yeah, it's just sometimes we don't really want to know the answer, or we're uncomfortable with the answer, or you know, we don't want to face it, or we trust it, or we don't, you know, there's a lot of different reasons, but I'm really, really we haven't or we haven't learned to listen properly.

Jesper Conrad: 27:44
One of the things I'm on a path to explore right now, and I might end up putting it down in a book, is to relearn the feedback system that are in our body and mind. Uh how to live a happy life. Because if you look at the hormone production and all the things that are released of good stuff in our brain, it's like maybe there's a recipe for the good life just in our bodies. For example, singing together, cuddling, all of that releases oxytocin, which is like a happiness hormone. And or when you run or exercise a certain period of time, you get a little kind dopamine kick. And it's like your body is trying to tell you, hey, this is good, do that.

Summer Jean: 28:33
Yeah, and you see that you see that children, you know, they sing before they can talk, and they dance before they can walk, and they all of those things, and we forget, we forget the things that make us feel whole and healthy, yeah. Um, because we're told to focus on other things. And it brings me to um what I feel like is literally like the underlying basic the thing is um what you actually believe about what you are as a human being. And that's gonna dictate how you treat children, how you view children, and how you raise them and how you educate them is what you actually believe is going on there. Because my mom she saw her babies and she was like, Oh, you're perfect. You're perfect, whole, and complete. You are already totally equipped with all of the tools and intelligence that you're gonna need to live the life that you're meant for. My only job is like, is here to just hold you, support you, love you, be there for you, hold your hand, remind you that you're amazing. That's it. She's like, that's my job. Keep you safe, keep you healthy, you know, help you stay in your natural state of balance. But my job is not to control the direction. It was literally just to hold space for us to find ourselves. And and that's really, really beautiful. But what I think most people the fear is is like what what you're talking about is um. Well, if I do just follow my instincts, follow my feelings, listen to my you know, intuition, blah blah blah, I'll never get anything done. I'll just eat cake and watch movies all day, or I'll just whatever.

Jesper Conrad: 30:14
Like you're not even a fault cake, or you won't have a house to sleep in.

Summer Jean: 30:18
You won't have a house, you'll end up homeless, crazy lady on the street, you'll like or I'll be in a straitjacket in a mental institution, or I'll end up in prison, or I'll do whatever. That's what you're afraid of for your children. You are afraid that if you trust who your child is as a human being and what they're equipped with, yeah, that that somehow they're gonna end up horrible losers and you'll have failed as a parent by not forcing them to be good people. So you actually think what you actually believe, if you admit it to yourself, you actually believe that there is something inherently flawed with your children and with yourself at birth, that something is wrong with you intrinsically, that you cannot be trusted. And you were taught that. You were not born with that belief. That's not a knowing, that is a belief. You do not know that to be true, you believe it to be true because it was rammed into your head so forcefully and so repetitively your whole childhood, that you cannot be trusted. That left to your own devices, you will be a loser, you'll be crazy, you're a you'll be a raging monster, you'll be out of control, or you'll just be lazy and weak and stupid, you'll have no skills, you'll have no abilities, you'll have no friends, you'll have no job. Like we that's what people actually think. That's what they think we are, and that's what they think we are as humans. But but someone crazy, lazy losers with no motivation, no intelligence, no, like that's what you think.

Jesper Conrad: 31:47
Yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 31:48
But someone did just then end up homeless and all these things. Oh, you're an okay human being.

Summer Jean: 31:54
It depends on your standard, and that's the thing is that people have different standards and they don't recognize that they're imposing their standards on their children. It's like my friend out living out in the jungle. His parents probably think they're whole that he's a horrible loser, that they failed, and that he's lost. But he's happy and he's content. So what's your problem? And he's not a burden to society. He comes into town and he mentors young kids and he and he tutors like teenagers, and he's amazing. He's a brilliant, beautiful human being. He just prefers to live without money and live out in nature and mind his own business. And it's like, well, who are we to say that that's not a like a valid way of living on this planet?

Jesper Conrad: 32:38
Yeah.

Summer Jean: 32:39
So I think it has to do with what's your standards, what's your judgment. According to my standards, I think I'm doing just fine. I'm doing fine. I live in Mexico. I moved to Mexico. I was, so I spent, I mean, I think I probably told you a little bit of this before, but for anybody who's listening, I was a very successful glass blowing artist for many years and I had my own business. I started as a teenager and making glass on a torch. And then I got into furnace work, large-scale fine art, glass blowing in my 20s. And then I pursued that career for many years and uh worked out of a couple different hot shops on Maui, Hawaii, and um and sold my work in fine art galleries. So I did pretty well for myself for quite a while as a glass blowing artist. And then, like most people, um, I was deeply affected by all the lockdowns through COVID, and it changed a lot of things for me. Or I should say it sped up a lot of things for me. And long, long story short, but my mom and I ended up moving down to Mexico, and I was still doing my jewelry business, glassw, and I have my studio here in my house, and I do still do some of that, but through a series of magical happenings that I can't quite explain and would take describing so much. Um, my mom and I ended up opening our own cafe, and it's a tea and chocolate cafe. So it was actually a dream from when I was about 14, and my mom took me to, it was my 14th birthday. My mom took me to the Boulder de Shaugneby tea house with a couple friends to have high tea for my birthday, and it was the most magical experience. And I just decided in that moment that I wanted to give that experience to other people. I wanted to share that with people because it was exquisite, and I just felt that's how life ought to be lived, is in that kind of moment. And I wanted to share that. So I told my mom that I wanted to have a tea house and she was totally on board. She's like cooked everything from scratch my whole life. And so over the years, through my teen years and everything, we actually almost did it a few times.

Jesper Conrad: 34:42
Yeah.

Summer Jean: 34:42
Um, opened a bed and breakfast, or like we even looked at places for rent, but it was Hawaii and the the prices are, it was just totally insane in Hawaii, like to try to pull something like that off and all the rent tape and all the everything was just so ridiculous. So it kind of became like a just a some nice fantasy we had at some point. Occasionally we would take it out and dust it off and and and you know, brainstorm again. And I had a Pinterest page for it, but it was more like it was so long now, you know, that it became this like dream I had once upon a time. And then living here in Mexico, everything just kind of shifted. And my mom wanted to start up her chocolate business here because it turns out there's not really any good chocolate in this area. There's a lot of Canadian and American expats, and they want their chocolate. And um, so my mom was like, I'm gonna start making chocolate again and just selling locally because she had a chocolate business years ago. And I also love making chocolate, but I also love baking sourdough bread and I love making different fermented elixirs and drinks. And so we stumbled upon this place one day, and it happened to be for rent, and it was the spot that I said I had wanted if I was ever gonna have a place, even though I knew I would never have a place. And then it turns out now it's my place. So it's really, really crazy, a lot of coincidences, a lot of magical things kind of coming together and happening. But we're in the third year now. Um, yeah, I've been flows for the last couple of months because it's slow in the summer. I'm reopening on Sunday, and it's called Andanza, and it's a tea and chocolate cafe in San Pancho, Mexico. It's like a super magic little town, beautiful community, very creative, full of art, full of everything. It's it's uh my mom came here years ago and she called me and she said, I found your town. And I was like, Yeah, whatever. And then and then, of course, she was right. Mom's always right.

Jesper Conrad: 36:31
Um, uh, but it leads me on to one of the things that I, along the years, have come to load or be more curious about how we can change and what we can do to change it. Is uh the way the nuclear family have been like the altar of good a good life is you live in your own house with your own kids and your family lives somewhere else. And now you're starting a multi-generational uh business with your mom. Yeah, and for me that's it's a nice dream. Where for some other people they would be like, oh, but your parents should live somewhere else, you should have outgrown them or something. And I think it's a loss for society, for culture that we remove ourselves from our families in that sense.

Summer Jean: 37:23
Yeah, definitely, for sure, especially like coming from American society. If you just start looking into the history and why some of these things were implemented, and you'll see that it was very carefully organized to destroy the family, to tear the family apart, and so the state could raise the children. So it was industrial revolution and this whole idea of a nuclear family living in a house to begin with, one family living in one house, and then a man leaving the home to go make money, yeah, while a woman stayed in the home, isolated, without community, without support, without her husband, without blah blah blah, right? And then the kids, and then of course, like through the feminist movement, and don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for a lot of what was going on there, but there was an agenda to remove the mother from the home as well, so that the kids could go in school. And the material that was actually originally intended to be taught in school was really only like what, two, three hours in it, or so it was like it was maybe two hours, I think, something like that, and would have taken a couple of years. And they actually purposely said, how can we fill in more hours? How can we stretch this out so that we can actually have more time with the kids for brainwashing, basically? And I'm not making this stuff up. Like you can look, you can find, I'll send you links to the history. I've got the books, I've got the facts. It's not hearsay, it's not a theory, it's actually legit historical fact. And John Taylor Gato, he's the one that you want to listen to if you want to get into the nitty-gritty history of it all. He talks about how the public school system was very specifically designed to raise the next generations of humans and to have less influence from the family and more influence from the state. And it was all about creating a compliant workforce that wouldn't ask too many questions and would just go along, pay their bills, pay their taxes, pay their medical, but then not question, not look at labels, not read ingredients, not any of that. And that was the whole point and the whole purpose. And it's not even hidden, like it's there. You can look it up. And the thing is, too, is now you have a lot of people who are like, oh, you know, going back to tradition and the nuclear family and the this going on. That was not traditional either. That was like a tiny blip in the 50s where you had stay-at-home housewives and men who went away to make money. Before that, throughout most of history, all over the planet in many, many cultures, families lived in communities that were basically larger families in a town, a village, or whatever. And then you worked together. You had family businesses. It was like, oh, yeah, my dad is the butcher. So you're raised in the butcher shop, and the wife is usually there and she's helping manage the business, or you have a farm and the man is working on the farm, and you're not so separated from your spouse or from your children for so many hours a day. So you're actually able to have stronger relationships and connections. And it's so weird to me that we expect a family to function or get along when they barely spend any time together. You're all off in different worlds and different lives with different people and different influences and all of this. And then you come home and parents are mad that their kids are not adopting their values. Well, dude, they're not even like being raised by you, they're being raised by strangers. And then, of course, why wouldn't your kids want to get out of your house as soon as possible? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, at their own place, and then not want anything to do with you, and then not, you know, it's like, and I have my own family has has we got pretty scattered, you know. My mom and I are probably the closest. My older brothers, like I said, there were they had a bit of a different life than I did because a little bit older, and then so much influence from my dad, and spending so much more time with my dad and being boys, which was a very big difference in my family on my dad's side. Um, and then my younger brother is from my stepdad. So that was a whole nother influence. And so my family was pretty there was a lot of things going on, a lot of different parts. So my dad remarried and had my little sister who was raised totally different than we were by my stepmom. And so there was a lot of that going on. So it's not a mystery to me why my family is scattered. Like we started out that way. We were never really um that full-on nuclear family. But my mom and I have have stuck together on and off over the years. We've even lived together on and off over the years, probably more than we should have. But part of that is because it was kind of us against the world in a way. And um, and it could be, I think that there was a lot of negative and positive aspects of that in a sense. And we've worked through so much, like as an adult, having an adult relationship with my mother, like it's a whole different world. And we've worked through so much of that, and we've both evolved and transformed so much through that. And we know that we shouldn't live together in the same house, but that's partially because we're both very strong women who like things the way we like things, and we want things the way we want things, and we're both homemakers, and we're both we want to be the woman of the house.

Jesper Conrad: 42:23
Yep.

Summer Jean: 42:24
My mom and I both are the woman of the house, and so it doesn't work out so well for us living together, just the two of us. But we'd love to be neighbors and share resources. Yeah, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 42:39
But how are you handling the whole thing? Am I productive enough? Is it a question that comes to your mind, or have you actually just found a life where you're like, I like doing this, this is meaningful, and then the whole money thing, well, money, yeah, we need money.

Summer Jean: 42:57
So it was still I've been through I've been through a lot. I've been through a lot over the years with that question in myself. And this is where I think like people that fear got to me myself as well, is like wanting to be part of the world, but feeling like it's not made for me, in a sense. So I think that that's what people are trying to do oftentimes is we're trying to raise children to fit into the society as it is already, and that's where we're making the mistake. And I recognize that in myself where I'm still trying to fit myself into this because I think that's the only way that I can have these things that I want.

Jesper Conrad: 43:39
Yeah.

Summer Jean: 43:40
And telling myself I have to do things the way other people do things in order to achieve a certain way. And in in in some, so it's it's very, very difficult, I would say, with the way that modern society is set up, for me to remain true to myself because I think so much of it is just absolutely ridiculous. Like, um, it's a little more free in Mexico, which is why I'm so much happier and more comfortable here. Because living in Hawaii, the American government controls. I mean, down to the part where like this beautiful little old Hawaiian lady can't sell banana bread on the street anymore because she needs to have a cottage food license. And so she has to go and apply at the county and fill out all this stuff and do all this paperwork and pay all these fees and then be investigated and have her kitchen checked and so that she can sell banana bread on the street. And so I don't want to play the game. And that's where it's difficult for me, is because I don't, I don't align with, I don't trust the government. I don't believe in a lot of, I don't trust American society, most modern society. I don't like the way it's set up, I don't like the systems, I don't like the things you have to do to be part of the system. And it's really hard to be part of it a little bit and live outside of it a little bit, and it's a weird deal. But I would rather go through all the pain and struggle that I go through than just give in because I think it's wrong. Um, I think a lot of it is is wrong, and I refuse to participate and play along and play that game. And so I left. I live in Mexico where I can have a cafe. No one's breathing down my neck about any of that. The rules and regulations here are so different. And I felt like in the US they were so ridiculous and pointless and arbitrary, and you're not allowed to question them, and they're unchangeable. And if you want to do this, you have to pay all these things and you have to fit into this box and you have to go through all these hoops and all this stuff for like for what to be myself, to bake bread? Like, I can't just bake bread at my house and sell it to my neighbor. It's illegal. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, that's bullshit. I don't want to be part of this system. So I and I don't want to raise kids to fit into that either. I don't want to raise children and teach them that you need permission to go to the bathroom because that's setting them up to need permission to give their neighbor a loaf of bread or to grow tomatoes in your yard or to catch your own rain in the backyard.

Jesper Conrad: 46:09
Yeah.

Summer Jean: 46:09
I'm sorry, no, that's wrong. You don't get to tell me if I can drink the rain coming out of the sky, okay? Like, I'm not gonna play this game. So when you ask this kind of question, that's where I go with it. I'm just like, no, I live in and out of this world. Like, I have to play parts of the game in order to participate to some extent, but I'm this close to joining my friend in that tree in the jungle because this is getting ridiculous. I'm this close. Because no, I don't want to accept credit cards at my cafe. I want to be cash only. I want to be a cash-based business because that's like between you and me. You want to pay for something and I want to sell it to you, and that's between us. I don't think a bank should be making any money off of that. So, can you just live according to your sense of rightness in this society? You might have to leave. You might have to leave. I don't know. And maybe that's what people are really afraid of, and that's why we keep controlling ourselves and controlling our children because we're too scared. We're too scared to stand up and say no and do our own thing because we're gonna lose a lot. There's a lot to be lost, and I get that, and it's scary. But we all have our threshold, right? We all have our threshold is like how far will you go before you're you can't do it anymore? How far, how much will you participate in this? What I think is just wrongness, um, as far as people controlling other people and all of this. Because to me, it's the same. Public school is just a microcosm of the greater authority dictating. But some and I don't it doesn't even matter like what how you want to live. I'm not even you want to live however you want to live, just leave me alone. Yeah, and that's some reason it's difficult for me to live according to that sense of rightness, and I have to every day, it's a struggle because I have to check myself. Am I compromising too much in what feels safe and right for me? And being productive, I am naturally a very productive person. Do I make a lot of money? No, I was when I was blowing fine art glass, but now I'm working probably harder than I ever have, and I'm hardly making any money. But I have these interactions with humans that I see the look on their face, or I have, and it makes everything worth it. It's like I have a different calling and purpose that I'm fulfilling here now, and I'm not making a lot of money, but I am I'm deeply fulfilled in what I'm doing here. And I am teaching dance and I am still doing my some of my glassware, and I'm just one of those people that has like a million passions and projects going on at any moment.

Jesper Conrad: 48:54
So do you think that it came from being not controlled that you have this perspective of seeing where other people might been to the rules or are not free? Um it's the real built in.

Summer Jean: 49:15
Yeah, I think partially, partially. I think that it's it's it's impossible to know for certain, right, how much comes from what. But I would say, from what I can tell in myself, in my own personal investigations into that, because I got super curious pretty young, why am I different? For one thing, I think that my mom is an extremely unique person. And she did go to public school and she had a very normal kind of life, a very normal upbreaking, pretty darn normal in in most ways. But both of her parents possess, I would consider a high level of intelligence and empathy as well. And and so my mom was very unusual from a child, you know, she made very strong decisions for herself as a child and like became vegetarian at 13 all by herself, not because anyone, no friends, no family, because she saw something on TV about factory farming and the animals were suffering, and that was it. She had that kind of that kind of personal conviction, yeah, unshakeable by others. And I don't know where that comes from. My grandfather, very similar though. So I don't know if there's a hereditary thing going on, but she had this very strong sense of personal conviction and very strong sense of her own sense, like of of what I call sense of rightness, and and was unable. She says, she's she's like, I'm not special, I'm not people would call her, oh, you're so courageous, you're so brave, you know, for doing things different. And she's like, I don't feel like I am, I'm terrified. She's like, I don't do it because I'm brave. She's like, I do it because I feel like I don't have a choice. I can't not do what I feel is right. She's like, I can't know, I can't unknow what I know, and I can't not do what I feel is right. And so I feel similarly. And I don't know what that is or where that comes from. And I think that part of it was fostered in the way that my mom raised me, yes, but I think that there has to be a maybe a little bit of it inherently, and I think every human being has a little bit of it inherently, and then it can kind of go one way or the other.

Jesper Conrad: 51:20
Then we compare that lying towards ourselves. I I remember when I re-found being a vegetarian, yeah, I stopped lying towards myself on more on different many more different levels. It was as I couldn't accept the dishonesty I had taken. And people can eat meat and do whatever they want following their convictions, but mine was that I don't like the kill of the animal, um, and then claiming oh, it's okay, they're bread to it, or whatever excuses I made for myself when I ate meat. Where does that moral-breaking thing go in your life if you start in one way and accept that you don't follow your convictions? I'm not talking about eating meat or not eating meat. I'm talking about you have a conviction, you have something you feel deeply, but you compromise it for some reason. Maybe it's to fit in among people, maybe it's to not be the weirdo when you go to work, whatever it is. I just felt when I took that step and kind of came more in sync with my convictions on this area, I could see how I cleaned up in many other ways. And it's consistent.

Summer Jean: 52:41
Yeah, it was kind of like you admitted something to yourself. It was always true, but you finally came to terms with it, admitted it, and accepted it about yourself. The only thing here is I can I can I'm hearing other people's voices, like what people might say about this conversation. And I'm I'm recognizing that it's important to make a distinction between just like what's a true sense of rightness and like what I just feel like right now. Like it's not that's not it's not the same thing. And also, it's not about a belief either, because I I very strongly I love the quote. It says, never form attachments to beliefs that are unchangeable in the face of a higher, more sensible truth. So I find for myself that it's also very important to be open to new information changing that conviction. So you might have a conscious conviction of, you know, what that vegetarianism feels right for you, but be open to that changing at some point. To not like, to not like bet your life on I'll be a vegetarian forever kind of thing. You're just saying that this is what feels right for me right now, and I need to be in alignment with what feels right for me now. And that's beautiful. But and but allowing space for transformation always. So when I, and I'm just saying that because when I talk about this, like doing what feels right for you aside from whatever da-da-da, I think some people are gonna take that to be like, oh, so you're just gonna do what you think, even when there's evidence to suggest that you're wrong, or that's gonna be this or whatever. And I'm that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that, like when someone says, you know, uh no, you how do I say this? It's like when someone gives you rules and a structure and they tell you you have to follow this whole structure or you're gonna be a loser. All I'm saying is check that. Check that against what does it doesn't something just feel a little funny about that for you? And then maybe that is what investigate. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying you should just stick to like, oh no, that's all wrong because it doesn't feel right for me in this moment. I'm saying like listen and follow that, and then you can use your mind still, use your logical mind, but when that little funny feeling comes up, it's just telling you where to look. So, like, check it out, do some research, which is how I got into finding out about the history of the public education system, and it's just how I went all down all of these rabbit holes. I'm I'm not really great at talking about certain topics. Like I'm a lot like my mom. I'm a deeply feeling person, and I I much more prefer the emotional and psychological aspects of things. I don't retain facts and data and and dates and things like that very well enough to like go and argue about the efficacy of this or or whatever when it comes to like politics and medical stuff and whatever. Like, I don't get into those arguments because to me, that's all on top of something else. It's all on top of something else. But I just wanted to say that there's a difference between like what you're saying is like something didn't feel right for you, and then you were willing to look at that and make a choice and realize this doesn't feel right for you. And it's not about like you're not denying anyone else's experience, you're not saying this is right for wrong for everybody else, and you're also um not just denying probably whatever evidence comes up that might say, eh, maybe you should rethink that one way or the other.

Jesper Conrad: 56:09
But the interesting part was when I stopped compromising my moral morality, um, or my feelings of my sense of this is right and this is wrong. Yeah, when I stop compromising that, I think a lot of people have gotten used to compromising their inner beliefs of of uh what is good and what is right. In small labels, yeah, you beats. Yeah, one one of my big things is I'm sitting here with my iPhone, something big, and my MacBook Pro, and I know how they're produced, and I'm I'm happy still to compromise that because I love the computer, and at the same time, I'm like, oh my god, I wish I had a stronger conviction on this and wanted fair trade inside the whole computer world, but I'm not yeah, yeah.

Summer Jean: 57:04
Like I said, I'm aware that at some point I might get to I might get to where I can't do this anymore and I'm gonna end up in a tree in a jungle. I don't know.

Jesper Conrad: 57:13
No, no, no.

Summer Jean: 57:13
I I don't know. I don't, I don't know. But before that, Somerji, then from the time that we're tiny, you know, you you you do, you have to ignore those things because it's like, no, you you don't get to follow that urge to go be barefoot in the sunshine, even though that's what your body's craving, that's what your mind is craving, it's probably exactly what you need right now for your natural development. You actually have to sit here and do this math problem. So we're constantly being taught to deny those that those impulses and those urges and those what feels right for us and what our body needs, what our mind needs, what our emotional body needs, all of that. Because we think that if we allow our children to just run out in the sun and play all day, that they'll never be become anything, they'll never achieve anything and they'll never succeed at anything. But if you look at, if you just even just take a two-year-old or a three-year-old, like they will display everything you need to have faith in the human spirit. Because I have baby, I've spent so many years in childcare, and I don't understand how anyone can think that someone would just grow up to be lazy and do nothing if you if you allow freedom and you focus on emotional well-being and connection. Because I mean, kids will literally push your hand away so they can climb up the stairs themselves. They will push your hand away so they can feed themselves. They want to walk on their own, they want to run on their own, they want to do it themselves. And then they're incredibly thrilled when they gain a new skill and they become more capable. And if we just stop controlling that process, it'll continue. I don't know why we think that at a certain age we have to come in and derail that process. It's already happening. They learned how to walk and how to talk, and they would do that even if you tried to stop them, they would do that. They would do that and they will learn how to read. I did because I wanted something for myself that had nothing to do with anybody else or what anyone thought of me or what they thought I should be doing or achieving some success someday. It was literally because right now, I have a strong enough desire to find out what happens next in Harry Potter to overcome the discomfort of learning how to read. That was it for me now. That's it. You know, and guaranteed you're not going to have a 16-year-old who's like, no, I'm not gonna get my driver's license because I don't know how to read. They will literally go and teach themselves if they have to. You cannot stop the human, human nature and a human desire for independence and achievement. We all want to achieve, we want to build, we want to create. We are natural born creators. Now we've created these ridiculous systems to try to monetize those creations into something we call money that then we can tax and we can do all of this stuff. But but we're natural born creators. And yeah, maybe you won't have money making wooden spoons, but I'm super happy for you that you found your a creative outlet for yourself because it's important for your health and well-being.

Jesper Conrad: 01:00:09
It is. It is.

Summer Jean: 01:00:10
I don't know what I would be. I am, that's what I do. I make things ever since I was tiny. That's all I do is craft and make and build and play with fire. I was pyro obsessed, and I'm so grateful that I had a mom that trusted in my innate nature and my abilities enough to allow me to explore that at a young age. She bought me matches and made sure I was safe. You can play with fire, but let's do it right here in the fireplace while I'm in the room. And then as I got older and I got more safe and more comfortable with it, I was allowed to have fires in the yard. I got to build little fires in the yard and cook on them and do my own thing. And I was a total pyro. So was my older brother. And then I became a glass blowing artist, melting things in fire. Like there's a reason. And if I hadn't been allowed to explore that from a young age, I wouldn't have developed the understanding of that element and that material and that substance. Like I knew fire so well by the time I got into glass blowing that I got to just skip the first year of learning, you know, because I already had this. And people would tell me that the first glass blower that I worked under, oh, I'd already been working on a torch for a while. And I caught onto that really quick at 14. And I'm self-taught bead maker. And um, and then when I was about 20 and I got into a hot shop and I was working for this artist as an assistant, I just was literally like standing there opening and closing doors, and then I got into doing a little bit of myself, and he was shocked. And he was shocked. He was just like, I've never seen one pick seen anyone pick this up so easily. Like you're so comfortable in here. And I was like, fire doesn't scare me. Like I am so comfortable with fire. I have this relationship with fire. I know all about how it behaves, what makes it grow, what makes it small, what makes it like I already knew all of that from my own relationship with it, my own experimentation through my childhood. So I'm a safer, I was a safer glassblower right off the bat. And I was much better at it, like from the beginning than most people, because I was allowed that exploration of something that interested me when I was young. I wasn't told to take that time and that energy and attention and focus it on something I didn't care about. I was allowed to spend hours playing with fire in my front yard. And I was allowed to spend as many hours as I wanted doing little crafting projects. And then I brought those two things together. I brought my love of like fantasy art and crafts and my love of fire, and I put them together.

Jesper Conrad: 01:02:32
It's wonderful.

Summer Jean: 01:02:34
And I couldn't have done that, you know. I don't know if I'd ever found that if I hadn't been, I everyone else was in high school. I remember 14, 15, 16 years old, those years. 15 and 16, the same thing.

Jesper Conrad: 01:02:46
And you were just burning shit up.

Summer Jean: 01:02:49
I got well, my mom actually bought me a torch. I I fell in love with glass bead making, and my mom could see that this was like not just a passing fancy, but like a legitimate passion because I was obsessed. It's all I could talk about. Everyone wanted me to shut up. And so she actually bought me invested what little like we were not wealthy, so it was a big deal, and bought me my own equipment and set up a little studio. And I spent, I mean, I was it was ridiculous, hours and hours like this, and I self-taught. Everyone else was in high school while I was doing this, learning my craft. And so then by the time I was um 16, I started selling my work to local like gift shops and galleries, farmers markets, craft fairs, all that kind of stuff. And then in my 20s, I had I didn't know I was good. I didn't know there wasn't a lot of glass makers around, I wasn't in the community, I didn't know. When I got into my 20s and and people started taking notice, um, like posting photos online or whatever, and other bead makers were like, Who are you? And then they'd be like, I haven't seen anyone, you know, like how long have you been doing this? And at that point, I'm like 24. So I'm like, oh, like 10 years or something. And they're like, in your 24. Like, most people don't get into bead making until they're it's usually it's more like women over 40. Yes, is a beading thing. So then I was getting asked to do tutorials in in bead making magazines and uh and people telling me I should enter my work to win awards and all this stuff, and and that's all because I was allowed to obsess and direct all my energy and attention to perfecting a craft at a very young age instead of learning lots of random shit that had nothing to do with the life I was going to be living. So I got to focus it all and become a master at something really young. And I'm super grateful for that. And I did turn it into a business and I did pretty well with that for a long time. And it's a business that's still going. Like I still make all this stuff to send back to the States. I still sell to some of those glassblowing studios I used to work at. And so it's like uh a skill I have for life. And and it's not, and when you're young, when you're young and you you don't have to make a living and you're a teenager, that's the time you should be obsessing and working on these bizarre interests of yours, like instead of being in school. Like work on the bizarre interests, master a weird thing. Do it when you're young, because then you have that skill for life, and then you're not 40 and wondering what you've done with yourself, and you know, realizing you had a career that you hated, and then not knowing what your passion is and not having any curiosity or enjoyment of anything. Do I like painting? I don't even know. Do I like, you know, like you don't even know what kind of interests or skills you have because you've just had to been making money this whole time at a job you don't like. So yeah, I had to make money the whole time, but by the time I had to make money, I already had a skill set of things I enjoyed doing.

Jesper Conrad: 01:05:48
Yeah.

Summer Jean: 01:05:49
Things I knew about, things I knew at a level higher than people older than me. I was already an expert in certain things. And then I'm as I got older and older, and I got into the hot glass studio and working with people who'd actually gone to school, like art school, people who'd gone to glass blowing school, and they're walking up to me and being like, I've never seen anyone use a tool like that. Why did you do that? I'm like, I don't know. I had a need, the tool was there, I figured it out because no one taught me how to use that tool proper properly.

Jesper Conrad: 01:06:24
I love it. Yeah, so summer, it is time for us to round up. I really have enjoyed our talk, and I look forward to when we find time together the next time. For people traveling to Mexico who wants a good tea and chocolate experience. Can you please plug what is the name of the city and again the name of your cafe? And also if they want to find your uh glass online, please share so people can find.

Summer Jean: 01:06:54
Yeah, so my cafe is in San Pancho, Nayarit, Mexico. It's about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta. So if you're coming to the Puerto Vallarta side, it's not too hard to get to. And it's a beautiful, magical, magical little town. And my shop is called Andanza, and it's right near the beach on the corner of Plaza del Sol, next to a little wine shop and a little health food store, and and uh the plaza where all the kids, there's a lot of really cool homeschool families around here, too, and very cool like alternative schooling going on and a lot of really amazing, very family-oriented town, gorgeous community center with kids all the time hanging out. It's amazing. So, yeah, come to Mexico, come check it out. It's beautiful. And then if you want to check out my glasswork, I'm mermaid art glass on Instagram and all those places. There's not much new going on there, but you can go and check out all my my blown glass work and and uh see the studios I've worked in and and all that kind of stuff. And I'm hoping to, I would really love to do it someday. Open my own little hot shop here doing only recycled material. And I'd like to teach, I'd like to share the skill with other young people and just there's not really a lot of that in Mexico. There's not a lot of glass art in Mexico. There's really only a few hotshops scattered throughout the country, and they're mostly focused on production glassware. And I would love to have a little like art studio where I could introduce and teach and have it be from recycled glass because the material's here, it's free, it's easy. All we need now is some propane to melt it and a few tools. And so that's my next project after this cafe situation.

Jesper Conrad: 01:08:32
It's under control.

Summer Jean: 01:08:33
Um, Pacho and blow glass with me, which would be what I would really love.

Jesper Conrad: 01:08:38
And we're here in Tarragona, Spain, uh, now a world school village with the 40 families. And we have actually been dreaming about should we we were in Mexico in 24, the winter 24. And I've been considering should we go over there again, spend some months. Uh I miss the food, I miss the vibe.

Jesper Conrad: 01:08:59
Yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 01:08:59
And why not have a village in your village? That could be fun. It could. But thanks a lot for your time. It was a big pleasure.

Summer Jean: 01:09:08
Thanks, Jasper.