Britt Skrabanek

Love Your Enthusiasm with Ra Avis

“The blogging community went to prison with me. They went to my husband’s funeral with me. They physically showed up at my husband’s funeral so I wouldn’t have to be there alone—or with people that didn’t understand or didn’t know him. And when you have something like that in your life, that is a family.”

Because so many of you are engrained in the blogging community, it is highly likely that you already know today’s guest on Love Your Enthusiasm, Ra Avis of Rarasaur.

I’ve followed Ra’s blog for many, many years. Her writing has always been exquisite and electric—and to play off her name—every piece is beautifully and unapologetically raw. I was one of the people in the blogging community who was there in spirit as she went to prison, as she lost her husband of ten years just two months before her release.

Through blogging, we build indescribable connections with one other, even if we are never able to meet up in person for that coffee or that drink. What I appreciate about Ra is her openness about her life, how she shares her stories and experiences to help others understand their struggles and find a way to heal when everything is broken.

In this episode, Ra talks about how the practice of forgiveness has impacted her life, bringing in her perspective as a widow who was formerly incarcerated. Ra has lived through more than many of us will ever experience in our lifetime—or even begin to grasp—yet she continues to approach life with admirable vulnerability and an unstoppable belief in the power of community support and radical love.

Kick back and enjoy this deep, beautiful conversation with Ra.

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Love Your Enthusiasm with Jane Leach

2020 is an inward journey for all of us. We are pausing and reflecting more, and we are spending more time at home. As a result, many of us are suddenly paying attention to the home life we neglected all those years when we were busy commuting and traveling.

We’ve started looking at our homes as the new epicenter of lives for working, relaxing, loving, cooking, exercising, and sleeping. Which is why, while other industries hang by a thread, home improvement is booming this year. And, why it was a highly relevant time for me to talk to the founder of iarchitect, Jane Leach, on Love Your Enthusiasm.

On the show, Jane shares how she uses her passion for eco-home architecture to help people live more intentionally and consciously, starting with our most important environment…our homes. In Jane’s words, “Everybody deserves to have a home that supports the best version of their life.”

Jane taught me that approximately 21% of architects are female, a stat that blew me away as I expected that number to be higher at this point. It’s great to see that Jane is doing something about it as one of the few female architects, ensuring women’s needs are better represented in their homes and that homeowners are making conscious decisions to protect the planet along the way.

Jane is such a lovely person. I hope you get tons of ideas and inspiration from this episode.

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Keep Some of Your Writing to Yourself

I have a confession. I’ve been writing things and not sharing them with you. I’m keeping some of my writing to myself for a change. It feels like a secret, one that means little to anyone else but means everything to me.

I used to keep writing all to myself. I kept a journal from a very young age and I always hid my journal beneath my mattress—as if to protect my words from the prying eyes of the public.

In school, I felt the teacher betrayed us when she gave a writing prompt, encouraged us to spill our secrets onto the page in solitude, then turned on all of us by turning quiet writing time into show and tell. If any student refused to share their writing with the class, then the teacher would do it.

I never shared my writing. I cringed over the years as teachers read my work to the class. Thankfully, most of my teachers kept my work anonymous as they read it aloud—but anyone who bothered to observe me would see the sweat and the blushing, every ounce of fear and anxiety releasing through my skin before I imploded.

Eight years after launching this blog, four novels later, and thousands of pieces of content released into the business wild, I still sweat and blush anytime I share my work. That anxiety never left, that selfish urge to hide my words beneath my mattress.

But, I kept giving my words away, away, away. Away to everyone and forgetting to keep some of them to myself. Until recently when I started taking up my childhood nighttime ritual of journaling in bed. Journaling about nothing in particular, for nobody else, for no objective or reaction.

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Love Your Enthusiasm with Marina Sofia

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I launched Zoom to interview Marina Sofia. Would she speak with a Romanian accent? What does a Romanian accent even sound like? As soon as Marina sang out “hello,” I realized those years spent as a translator living in the UK and all over Europe resulted in an unexpectedly legit British accent.

Marina was a longtime writer and reviewer I knew in the blogging community—we always connected over our mutual obsession for words and linguistics. In recent years, I lost touch with Marina. She moved around, I moved around. She changed professional paths, so did I. She started a business, and I started several.

When Marina reached out about being a guest on Love Your Enthusiasm, I said “yes” with zero hesitation. I was excited to learn that she co-founded an indie publishing house this year.

Marina and the other co-founders at Corylus Books are bringing authors from lesser-known regions (think: Romania or Iceland) in front of English-speaking audiences by translating and publishing works of fiction that in most cases would be overlooked by publishers.

Starting Corylus Books was largely made possible by Marina’s failed attempts to launch a career in mainstream publishing. This failure became a bonus, leading Marina down a different path where she had the freedom to support the kind of literature she wanted to see translated and published.

In Marina’s words, “If a door bangs in your face, try another door. Try a side door.” Marina knows how to pivot and reinvent herself, while staying committed to her passions. Hope you enjoy this fantastic episode.

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Love Your Enthusiasm with Bex Shapiro

“Every human has the same vulnerabilities, the same desires. Everyone wants to feel happy. Everyone wants to feel secure. It really comes down to that base realization that humans are more alike than they are different.”

Bex Shapiro is the Senior Editorial Manager at Intrepid Travel…and one of the brightest women I know. At this point in the writing game, I am very picky about the people and brands I write for. Bex is one of the best editors I’ve ever worked with and Intrepid Travel is an incredible brand to be a part of.

Every time I wrote a travel article, whether I was discovering the joys of Costa Rica, writing a love letter to Havana, or revealing the surprises and delights of Mexico City, I felt good about my work. I owe a lot of those good feelings to Bex.

I’ve never met Bex in person, but I always felt a solid connection with her. Or, as she puts it…we are like-minded souls. It was inevitable that we would get together one day outside of travel writing projects—and here we are with the latest episode of Love Your Enthusiasm.

Bex’s perspective on the state of travel in 2020, how we can shift to a more mindful way of traveling AND living, and her message of hopefulness for the road ahead are just some of the takeaways from this episode.

Very excited to have Bex on the show today. I highly recommend taking an hour out of your week to listen to this one.

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