Hello, everyone, and welcome back to a brand new social distancing-friendly episode of The Financial Confessions.

As you guys probably noticed, we've been away for a little bit, and that's because we wanted to kind of recalibrate how we do stuff here at TFC so we could continue to talk to the guests and experts who can talk about all different elements of what's going on right now and our money lives, in general. But as you guys probably recall, our typical set is very much not social distancing-friendly, so we had to rework a few things.

But we are back and ready to go. I'm actually at my desk, here at the TFD office. And our first guest back is a special one because he's someone you guys are definitely familiar with at this point and someone who I'm so, so glad to be in the same room with, even if we are on opposite ends of the room.

And that is our producer, Ryan. But before we talk to Ryan, I want to give a very quick hello to our beloved partners, with whom we make every episode of The Financial Confessions. If you have not heard of Intuit by now, especially with everything that's been going on, you've probably heard of some of their awesome products.

Intuit makes all of the tools that you need to get your finances in order and manage your financial life, no matter what might be going on. Some of these tools you've probably already used, things like Turbo Tax, QuickBooks, Mint, Turbo, et cetera. And for us here at TFD and in my personal life, I've actually been using some of these tools more than ever to make sure we're on top of everything.

We actually recently got approved for our PPP loan here at TFD, and QuickBooks was vital in getting us all of the documents that we needed to prepare easily and quickly in order to apply for the loan. And yay, we got it. Also, in my personal life, I've been checking Mint more obsessively than even I usually do.

Because with all the upheaval going on in my life right now and my husband in another country for the foreseeable future, keeping a very close watch on everything that's happening in our day-to-day financial lives is super important to us. I'll talk later about more of Intuit's awesome products and how they can fit into your life right now, but in the meantime, if you cannot wait to get started, check out Intuit's products at the link in our description or our show notes. So as promised, we have, today with us "in studio," quote unquote, Ryan.

Hello. Oh my god. I'm so happy to be here.

Oh my god. It's May 7 as we film this, but it could be April 13. Who would know?

It could be March 29. It could be-- what year is it? I don't know.

Seeing your friendly face right now is going to be like my main memory going forward in reference. So everything will be like, three weeks is when I saw Chelsea. [LAUGHS] I know. How long has it been that we've been in quar here in NYC?

I don't know, and I know that I quarred like eight days before the general pop. So I know that my little is a little bit more. Your counter?

Yeah. So I got to think it's-- what is it? Definitely around 60 days. 70 days?

Jesus. I know that on the 100th day of quar, Twitter is going to like make that a national holiday, and I'm just dreading. Dreading it.

It's funny because I was on a tour in Canada when all of this was really kicking off. I remember. And it was funny because the day that I had arrived, maybe the day before in Vancouver, was the last leg of the tour.

And it was becoming increasingly unclear every city if we were even going to continue the tour, because things were getting dire. And like the first or second day that I was in Vancouver, I got bad news about work stuff. I got news that my husband had to leave the country in three days.

I had obviously the just mounting horror of everything that was happening with the shut down in New York and all the news. And I literally spent the last day and a half in Vancouver in my hotel room crying. And Lauren was with me, my co-founder Lauren, who a lot of you probably know.

And poor Lauren. I mean, she is just truly the most bubbly, happy, positive, effervescent person. And she's so sweet.

Like I was crying, so she was not even really that sad but she was like sympathy crying. And it was just the darkest, darkest like-- Vancouver seems very nice, you guys. I really enjoyed it, but it is forever just a dark, dark place in my mind.

See, when you're describing that to me, it's like I can't wait for someone to make a really funny, sharp six-episode British comedy about like quarantine, or whatever. What I'm dreading is the independent films that are going to come out of this, like set during the quarantine. Just open weeping while like Snow Patrol plays or something. [LAUGHS] It's going to be rough.

Well, we wanted to come together today to talk-- I thought the first episode back, post-hiatus for TFD, like we have guests coming up we're going to talk about all the more serious stuff, how to deal with your money in this time, investments, organizing, all the kind of day-to-day stuff. But I wanted to start back with a more, I think, fun topic, which is how people have been losing their minds on social media, and especially when it comes to like influencers, celebrities, brands. Things are chaotic in the quar.

And I feel like money and status and wealth and displays of wealth and how all of that plays out on the internet is more pointed than ever and more sort of campy and unintentionally hilarious than ever. Yeah. I think the thing about all of this is that we've never needed wellness checks more when we can't do them.

But also, because the stuff I'm seeing is very worrying, but also all the rules are suddenly rewritten. Oh, yeah. Like the people who have had every advantage and display that wealth and display their healthy, beautiful lives, and concoct this like construction for themselves and for the public-- you know, for some people, it's a job.

For some people it's just something that they feel the need to do. But that kind of falls apart because, I mean, number 1, we all know what you're doing, which is you're on your couch, eating chips, tweeting, just the rest of us. Right.

And like bingeing Netflix, it's not that glamorous. And also, it's much easier to jump right to resentment and rage at people who have so much and are still acting miserable. Oh, yeah.

I mean, the gall of Ellen. Ellen. I knew she was going to be the first one.

She's like, I'm in prison. It's like, are you? Are you in prison, Ellen?

You're in prison with your beautiful wife and your dozens of acres with your army of pets and assistants and people dropping off like Blue Apron for you. That must be horrible. This is like pre-quar, but I imagine has continued post-quar, and has got to be even further ramped up in its chaos.

It's like my favorite celebrity anecdote of them making some assistant to an unhinged thing. So Barbara Streisand apparently has this favorite ice cream. I forget with the name brand is, but it's like from this ice creamery in Santa Monica or Malibu or something.

And she always wants, every day, a pint of this strawberry ice cream. But she will never keep more than that pint, because if she has more than the pint, she will eat more than the pint. So once a day, every day, an assistant has to drive out to this ice creamery and get her her freshly packed pint of strawberry ice cream and bring it to her so she can eat it that day.

Nobody is living larger than Barbra Streisand right now, because while that is probably so rough for her, she is also the person who built a mall in her basement and filled it with things that she already shopped for so she could pretend to shop like a normal person, and she pays people to work in that mall. I remember reading that. [LAUGHS] You know, what is the thing that you would do if you had the endless money and resources and adoration of a Barbra Streisand? I would like to think I'd be like, I would help the children, and blah, blah blah, but I know that there would be a couple weird things I would do.

I would definitely have an enormous trampoline in my backyard, just because I feel-- A trampoline? What a better way to clear your mind, to just go out to your trampoline. And bounce.

At the side of your yard and bounce. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I feel like I would do some fantastical stuff like that that would be super weird but fun for me. Like I would definitely have a faucet in my home that hot cocoa came out of, and it would be someone's job to maintain the hot cocoa faucet, so I could live like Mrs. Claus.

Oh my God. I don't know what I would do. We live in New York, so we've long, long since given up the idea of closet space, but I dream of like a big walk-in closet.

Yeah. Well, I mean, if I was to think like really realistic-- That's not even a rich person thing. Like anyone who lives in any city or any place that's not New York has a walk-in closet.

Yeah, our idea of luxury is a little different than most other people, but I think if I was to be like really serious about what would I actually, really spend that amount of money on in my home? I've always-- this is so stupid. This is similar to my trampoline.

I've always dreamed of a room that's just a big bed. From wall to wall, the whole room is a bed, and you could just go in there and just be like mentally ill. Like I could just go in there and have depression and no one can bother me.

And then I closed that and it's sealed off, and someone changes all the sheets and cleans it off, and I go in there whenever I'm sad. It smells like lavender. That would be such a nice like genie's bottle.

You're describing like a padded room, basically. Yeah, that's what I want. I want the rich person's version of a padded cell.

It's so funny because I think in some ways, because I see people who are quarantining in these expansive homes with gardens and pools and all of these things, and we're obviously in small New York City apartments. But weirdly, I think, psychologically, there is an element of being in a small, confined space that I feel the my world has shrunk down to that space, and I maybe even want less because of it. Like I'm honestly even stressed out to be doing a thing now, do you know what I'm saying?

I'm like a little hamster in a box now and everything else is like stressful. So I think it's actually been particularly hard for me because I was depressed for a lot of my 20s, and my depression symptoms took the shape of basically quarantine, which was like avoiding people, staying home, not spending money, cleaning. [LAUGHS] And so I finally got out of that and got to a really good place with my life. And you know intimately that I was working really hard on balance and trying to create a [INAUDIBLE] life for myself that I felt was really sustainable and flourishing and focused.

And the minute I felt like I was starting to really pull it together, this all started. So it's tough, but I think, yeah, my world has gotten smaller, but in some ways, I feel like it has also really clarified a lot for me, and definitely for my husband, of what was of no value that we were doing and what was of huge value that we were doing, the stuff that I have to get back to or find a way to start doing again, because it's really affected me in ways that I wasn't totally sure the effects of. For example, like cooking at home a lot more, rather than eating out or just doing quick cooking things, where you're like, fruits and vegetables, done.

Stuff like picking out ingredients at the store kind of thoughtfully for the week ahead and then cooking and stuff. Everyone's always talked to me about that and I'm always like, yeah, OK, I'm not doing that. But it actually has given me a really good connection with what I'm putting in my body and how it makes me feel, like the communal feeling of working with my husband on a task like that.

And then also giving each other food and being like, do you like it? I made it the way you like it. That experience I don't want to let go of when this is over.

So I'm not saying I'm happy any of this happened at all, but I do think you can take something away from it, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true.

Like I was saying, I think living in a small space has in some ways worked to my advantage, because by keeping my world small, I think that helps me focus on just-- it gives me a lot of anxiety to think any distance in the future, as I'm sure it does for most of us. But I think the focus on what makes today a good day, can I have a good day today, on today's terms, and then I'll work on tomorrow as it comes. I think that is a healthier approach, that I personally was someone who was always living in a projected future, and I was always very, very focused on what's next.

What's on the calendar? Where we going this summer? What's next for TFD?

What are we making? What are we doing? Who are we hiring?

And in my personal life as well. And I think that ultimately didn't make me unhappy, but I think it robbed me sometimes of the ability to be present in things that were happening. And now I have no choice to do anything but be present 24/7, 365, which I do think has its upsides.

Yeah, I think it's clarified for me, but definitely for my husband, that the point of everything you're doing is should be to be happy and healthy. And if that's not your goal, if being happy isn't your goal, what are you doing all of this for? Fulfilled.

Yeah, fulfilled. And if you can't sit in a moment and just-- there are times now that we're sitting in silence and both read a book and just occasionally be like, hey, I'm going to get tea. And like that moment is so nice and quiet, and before I probably would've felt like, I need to be doing work.

I need to be getting stuff done. I have to get laundry done because I have to be in the office tomorrow and I'm running out of white dress pants. And all of that stuff that I was doing to feel productive so that I could fake the fulfilled feeling, it's already there.

Like you can access that fulfilled feeling whenever you want if you're mindful and you realize that I'm here with someone I love. We're both healthy. We both have enough.

And I get to just sit and read this book. Like there are horrors happening outside my door, and the most responsible thing I can do is sit here and read this book quietly, and so I'm going to enjoy it. And I don't want to lose that.

And so that's why I think when I see people on social media, like the people who are doing it right-- huge shout-out to Florence Pugh, having a great year. What is she doing? What is she doing?

She is cooking in this giant kitchen in like a complete athleisure, no bra, hair up in like a messy pony. She's just cooking and making a mess and laughing, and like not even performatively. She's not like, and then we're going to fry up these shallots.

She's literally like, we don't have any olive oil so I'm going to use the canola. If you've got olive oil, definitely use olive oil, stuff like that. It's not even to the "it's relatable" content.

It's that it's human and quiet and slower and imperfect, and that's what I need to see right now. I don't need to see people being like, me and my perfect children going for a walk around the yard. Make sure you're getting your 10,000 steps.

Which brings us to the topic at hand, influencers and celebs in quar. Influencers right now. OK, so influencers, first and foremost.

So my Explore page has been an education. I've mentioned this before. I don't follow any influencers under the age of like 55, 65.

So all of those influencers, they're taking this shit real seriously, for obvious reasons. They're like very much about the protocol. Like I follow this one influencer, I think she's like maybe 57 or something.

And she's been like showing off all these like matching bikini masks sets that she's like made for herself out of different fabrics. Stunning. Like love that.

But on my Explore feature, I've been looking around at the traditional influencers, who are like still very much what feels like that 2011, 2012, you know, the perfect bouquet of peonies, everything's white. There's like stuff precariously placed on like a tray on a bed, photographing while you're watching something on your laptop. That kind of influencer-- and they are losing their minds.

Yeah. They are absolutely losing their minds. I think, partially, the illusion of what they were building for so many years is just shattered.

Like we know you're not traveling. We know that in order to achieve that, you're running around your house like a crazy person all morning before the light runs out so you can get one shot where you pretend to eat a scone. Like we all realize that's what's happening now.

We can't pretend that, oh, someone must have helped her, or oh, she must be in a beautiful hotel. Like we now know that you're not. You're in your stinky bedroom with the wash piling up.

We know that, and it's hidden behind the camera. So it's kind of over, and also this whole minimalist, super clean, just everything is stunningly placed. Yeah.

It's unsustainable in this environment. So to pretend that you are doing it, it looks increasingly desperate and weird that you would try to keep this up. Especially if you have a personal tragedy, if someone's watching this right now knows someone who's sick or has passed away or is at-risk or is a frontline worker or an "essential," quote unquote, worker-- which I hate that term.

I think like those people are obviously essential, but also those are the people that we're putting at risk, so there should be some acknowledgment of that in the term. Yeah. If you know those people, I mean, it's got to be infuriating to know that some influencer got paid 5 grand to plug a mask brand and spent their morning fixing their hair and definitely had someone come over and help but then didn't tell you.

I scrolled through this Instagram of an influencer. She's like German but she lives in London, and she's very, very popular. And I think there's something about-- because so many influencers, their fundamental value proposition is aspiration, conspicuous consumption.

It's the material goods, consumerism. It's all of these things that hinge on a fundamental quasi-promise. Because they're not quite a celebrity.

They're not quite a magazine. They're not a publication. They're supposedly a person.

And they're supposedly letting you into their life, but with this incredible degree of aspiration and this incredible degree of materialism, but always with that sort of quasi-promise that this could be you, that there are parts of it that you could emulate, that you're looking at a real person's food, not something that was designed by a team of stylists, even though in many cases it is. And I think now, when the value proposition of you could do this, you could have this is so like, no, I could not, nor do I want to at this time, nor do I want to have head to toe designer wear while showing off your acai bowl that you made yourself that morning. What is left of them?

What do they have left to offer? And I think for a lot of them, faux quirky, faux funny captions that they put on these obviously hyper-curated photos, that's all they have left now, is the attempt to be relatable, now that the aspiration element is sort of really hampered. And I think you're seeing now that so much of it is just so thin, and they don't got a whole lot of jokes.

They don't got a whole lot of stuff to say outside of it. And there's something about it, when you look at it now, that feels almost like dystopian in a way. Like it feels so strained and like, ha ha.

Like I saw this one boomerang from this girl, or I guess it was like a video, where she and her husband went through 10 outfit changes to do this quirky real life versus quarantine. And I'm just like something about that now just feels-- like I almost feel bad for them, if that makes sense. Yeah.

I think it's now more clear than ever that what made celebrities fascinating, stuff like plastic surgery, where you're like, I couldn't get that. But like, oh my god, look at Kim Kardashian. Like oh my god.

But now it's like, if she was to go get medical treatments, she'd be wasting a doctor's time. Yeah. And stuff like I'm a model.

Are you in your home? What are you modeling? You're going to model things that were delivered to you by a postal worker that has to go out and brave this, the worst thing happening in the world right now, in order to deliver you some clothes that you can put on and send back and waste their time?

Like that's gone. If you're an athlete, if you can't play the game and you don't have the lighting and the screaming fans and the endorsement deals and all the stuff, you're just a guy in your home who is good at basketball, or whatever. Right.

And that's great, but it just puts back into reference that some of these people, some of these huge celebrities, without the pomp and circumstance, without when they walk in the room they're the most important person, without the assistance, without the lighting, without the interviewers, without the team of stylists, they're just us. And so you could apply all that stuff to any of us and we would be able to pull it off. That's the whole conceit of celebrity, is the before and after and the magical journey.

But the journey is really just consumerism and capitalism. And all of the way that we've rebuilt celebrity recently-- we recently rebuilt celebrity to be about internet points, likes, followers. We've rebuilt it from the ground up so you are constantly on display.

You are your own PR person. Everything you say is recorded by the internet. You have to live a perfect life and be an example, and you have to be perfectly woke and you have to be beautiful.

All of that we thought was inevitable, because it was the march of information technology, it was the march of society's demand, the march of the way we've changed feminism. All of that stuff felt so inevitable, and now we realize it's paper thin. Oh, yeah.

It's so paper thin. Something like Facebook right now feels so powerful because you're just collecting all this information of people sitting at their homes, but it's a good note to realize that one break in that chain and it all goes down. And so people who are cleaning it up on Instagram, being a travel influencer, like that's over.

The gay fitness influencers, who are like two husbands who just duel with their abs, or whatever they do. Like what are you going to do? You're going to videotape each other doing sit-ups in your apartment?

There was that photo that went viral of like the Christopher Street Park, where so many of the people in the photo were shirtless, like beautiful, sculpted within an inch of their life men in Speedos in this public park. And the energy of like, I fucking worked on this body and I don't care if I have to wear a surgical mask and a Speedo and stand in this park in the middle of New York City, someone is going to see it. Yeah.

And it's like that's what we all have to come to terms with, is that A, nobody cares. No one's going to probably see you, and what's going to matter is how you feel. Also, to flaunt a healthy body right now, to flaunt how vibrant-- you're like, my lungs are just taking in so much air.

How dare you, honestly. How dare you. [LAUGHS] How dare you. And you know what's funny, too, is that feeling, like you were saying, about the travel influencer.

Someone on Twitter was like, passport as identity Twitter is screwed. Yeah. And it's true.

And the thing is that I feel like that feeling of what were we really saying when we were showing off every place that we could go? You're not really saying much, other than I can afford a plane ticket. I can afford a hotel.

I can afford to do these things. And now travel is going to be something where you damn well better want to go there. And you better have a good reason.

You better be going to see somebody. You better be going to experience something. Yeah.

And that, I think, is the clarifying-- and I think I've been talking around it a little bit because it's hard to come to grips with it while we're in it. But I think the big clarification for me is that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you went to a hotel that is a nice background for a photo.

It doesn't matter that a brand designed, within an inch of its life, a coat and gave it to you, and then you have to take a picture with it. It doesn't matter that you went to a stylist who gave you a cutting edge hairdo that's super hard to pull off and maintain and you're managing to keep it up. Like that is so meaningless.

What means anything to me right now will be seeing my mom. Yeah. You know what means a lot to me right now is the times I find to be happy within myself.

And it's so weird because I thought I knew what that stuff meant. I think we all kind of thought we knew what that stuff meant. And a lot of us thought that it meant I've got a very centered Instagram. [LAUGHS] And we're learning that, no, it's about-- I didn't even pick up Instagram today.

I mean, I've been writing letters with my grandma, who's like trapped in a nursing home states away, and it sounds so sappy and over the top. That has been so rewarding because I'm like, I would've never gotten this time back. I still use Instagram.

I still use Twitter, all those things. And I'm alone now, so I don't have anyone in the house most of the time, so I do find that the connectivity element of it I enjoy more than ever. I love seeing my friends on it more than ever.

But I do think that there's that hollowness of I think we're seeing now-- I think the difference, because some things that are experiential are still wonderful. Like when someone posts they're a little sourdough bowl that they spent all day making and they're so proud of, that feels better than ever to me to look at. I get to see a friend.

I feel like we're sharing something through social media, and I get to share in their joy in that thing that they did. But the stuff that was always about the way it looks and not about how it feels is worse and more irritating and more grating than it's ever been. That stuff.

Like when you see a photo curated within an inch of its life of breakfast. I feel exhausted. I feel tired looking at it, you know?

And it's hard not to wonder how much of that might continue in the time when we are eventually going places again and traveling again and seeing people again. And I personally hope that a lot of that continues, because I think we were at a time where there was a super high tolerance for artifice and a super high tolerance for like-- There was a worship of artifice. There was a worship of it.

When you went to brunch, it was more about the picture you took at brunch than how much you enjoyed the brunch or what a good time you had with your friends at the table. I think it also is very revealing of people's motives, even people you have parasocial relationships with. So when I see makeup influencers that are still getting together to do collabs, like, oh, I see.

This wasn't I wanted to see my friend and we had an idea for a video. This is clearly you wanted to keep the streams up and make sure you got those likes. Or if I'm seeing people who have always been really conspicuous in their good deeds, continuing to do conspicuous good deeds, even though good deeds right now inherently shouldn't be conspicuous.

And then you see people-- there are celebrities that I think are doing a great job. I mean, she's clearly going through something, but Britney Spears was just sending people money over DMs, who were like, my kids need diapers. She was like, how much is that?

And then just Venmoing or PayPaling them. She also seems like someone who's like happy enough in her home, like bopping around. With her super hot piece boyfriend.

Yeah. [LAUGHS] Oh my god, good for her. I saw him running with like a mask on or whatever. In New York?

No, no, in LA, like right when it started. And I was just, oh, bud, you got to go home. [LAUGHS] You've got to go home to your hot popstar girlfriend. I think it's been super revealing what people value.

And I mean, not to talk about her again, but when celebrities have jumped on to The Ellen Show, the weird stunts people are pulling, because this isn't about them for a moment, like the weird I want to go viral for this. The minute quarantine started, Kim Kardashian was like, hey, guess what, Taylor Swift? It was like, this is not about you.

Someone on Twitter was like, it's so funny in retrospect knowing that those celebs got together to do that Imagine video like two days into quarantine. Yeah. Yeah, they had to stay home from like Sweetgreen for like an hour.

They're like (SINGING) imagine. The best part about the Stanley Tucci making a Negroni video-- which thank you for making that-- the best part of it was he was kind of bored. He was just making the drink.

It wasn't over the top. He was clearly making it for himself and his wife. And that's why Ina Garten, to me, is just such a queen because she's not like us, and she's frankly not really trying to be like us.

She's in her massive expansive Hamptons home showing us pictures of the peonies that she picked from her garden to put next to the chicken salad she made for Jeffrey. And to me, it's like the aspiration, like you said earlier, it's never pretending to be anything it's not. And I think that forced relatability and that forced quirkiness, I think, is hopefully going by the wayside.

I think, also, big media companies right now don't know how to do this. Oh, no. Authenticity is very hard to pull off because there's only one of it and you either access it or you don't, and it's very transparent when you're not being authentic.

And I think a lot of these companies now are trying to put together-- I think Amy Schumer is doing a cooking show, which to me is just the exact opposite of the Florence Pugh cooking on Instagram Live thing, because it's going to be lots of bits and jokes, I'm assuming, and lots of recipes she found on the internet that were changed a little bit. And it's like the stuff that was working before I think we were-- yeah, you're right. We were already trending towards it, because gourmet makes work so great, because Claire isn't perky and happy and pretending to be all the time.

I love Claire. She's just like, I don't want to do this. I know.

And that is like a real feeling. And it's a feeling that I think that we all have now more than ever. I think a lot of these trends were probably going to happen over the long-term because of climate reasons.

I think every person who is coming of age now is more and more a part of a generation that is like, whoa, showing off pictures of your private jet collection, Kendall Jenner, or whatever, that's just gauche. That's not even aspirational. It's just you ruining the planet for your own pleasures.

So I do think that really over-the-top stuff was going to start to trend away, and I feel like that is maybe going to be accelerated now because so many people are in such precarious positions that it feels kind of gross to be watching people you know be so over the top with things. But I think that there's hopefully a move toward a version of relatability that is-- I think there was that weird sort of quasi-moment, especially on Instagram, where it was like Instagram versus real life, and it would be the equivalent of like-- I don't know. A good example would be like a model flexing all of her muscles and showing her perfect body versus leaning over and having an inch of a stomach pooch, and it was supposed to be this big reveal.

And I think now, like you said, Florence Pugh, bra-less, messy bun, no makeup, messing up her food, that is actual relatability. That is actual authenticity, and I hope that that's a continuing trend. Honestly, people at work have joked with me that I'm crazy about this.

I think the social media of the future is things like Zoom, where it exists for a second. You don't feel the need to make it perfect because it only exists for a second. You try to be presentable.

You put on a shirt. You're like, oh, I have sauce on my face. [LAUGHS] Because you want to be a human being, but nobody on Zoom is like, well, I've got the sunset and let's get it in within the hour, and my hairstylist is here. You're just doing a call.

And it exists in the moment it exists and you get to be with somebody and you get to really interact, and then it goes away. I know a lot of performers, drag performers, comedians. I myself am putting together a comedy benefit thing that will be happening on Zoom.

The things that I've participated in and the things that I've felt during it are really intimate, and it feels like you're seeing a show that is like in a small cafe, or like a small venue, and you're just with some people and it's going to be weird and silly and in the moment. And anything could happen. And anything could happen and then it's over and it gets to be over, and you don't have to create a million memes out of it and you don't have to share it and you don't have to wait for everyone to watch it on Netflix.

It's just a thing you saw, and that's OK. Yeah. And I think Zoom is weirdly the place that we've all ended up having those experiences, and they feel so valuable.

And not to say I don't binge watch things on Netflix still. Not to say I don't download AAA video games and get to a certain point and then text a friend, did you get to this thing? I don't want to spoil it for you.

Those things have value, but we were way overdoing them. We were way overdoing the YouTuber stunt thing, where it's like I'm going to pull off this giant moment and it's got a trend and now this video. You have to watch it eight times and share it.

And we can drop that and we can say, hey, I'm just going to listen to this conversation that's on a podcast, and that's cool. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I'm just spending time with people that I want to hear from.

And that, to me, has so much more value. I think we were also asking people for perfection for a long time, and now Instagram Live is the opposite of perfection. It's two people being like, I don't know how to work it, you know what I mean?

And like dropping their phones and saying something, being like, oh, I wasn't supposed to say that. That kind of fun stuff is what life is. Life isn't rehearsed and well lit and perfectly executed and politically expedient and heavily researched.

Life isn't always like that. You should try to do those things, and you can, but sometimes you make a mistake. We're now living in a time where we have to be forgiving of people's mistakes, because everything is so precarious.

I also-- god, no industry from me I'm less bullish on long-term than fricking luxury and designer fashion. Because I mean, experiences will always be experiences, but who is out here trying to have a Margiela belt after all this? Last year, I remember hearing people being like, athleisure is dead.

Streetwear is dead. This is all over. And now it's like things you order online and are comfy to wear, doesn't seem like that trend is going to end anytime soon.

No. We'll be lucky if we're not all like naked after this. [LAUGHS] Because it's just too much of an effort. And I wonder often now, what does aspiration look like after this?

Because clearly, what we know about Miss Rona now is that this is going to be it for a while. We may find a better equilibrium. We may get a cocktail of antivirals that allows people to live a much more normal life.

I'm sure people will go back to restaurants. Things will start to open back up here and there. But there is no way that this reset is not going to have cultural reverberations for the next decade at minimum, if not longer.

And what does aspiration look like in a world where, A, so many people have become economically unsettled, B, there is so much precarity around what the next six months will look like, and C, so many of those biggest locuses of aspiration are not available to us. What does it look like? I mean, if you look at something like 9/11, which, until now, was the defining event of my life-- everything in my life was pre- and post-9/11.

Media that I watched was completely defined by the standards set by-- Security of so many life experiences. I mean, family stuff. I mean, everything.

I mean, it was the end of my childhood, really. It was end of a lot of our childhoods. I mean, whether it happened to you at 19 or happened to you at eight, there was a moment where you were like, 3,000 people are dead.

My parents are crying. School's canceled. Like that leaves a mark.

And it was also a media event, so it was shaped by CNN and it was shaped by MSNBC. It was shaped by Fox News. It was shaped by statements the president made.

This is a social media event and nobody's driving the ship. Like Facebook has algorithms and stuff that are super influential, but they're not in full control of what's happening. And so there isn't a clear story being told here.

Everybody's getting their own individual story in their home with their friends. And there's no enemy. There's no common focus.

Yeah. We can't unite against this because it's not something we can see or feel. And so I think what we're hurtling towards is a reality where the most aspirational thing you can be is happy and self-fulfilled.

Well-adjusted. And intelligent. Yeah, I think, weirdly enough, health has always been aspirational, but now actual health is aspirational.

Not the appearance of health, not the performance of look at the athletic feats I can accomplish. The wellness culture stuff. I'm on a ton of steroids.

Look at my abs, I'm shredded. The actual I am mentally and physically well. For all our talk about self-care moments, which I don't know was very productive for the last few years, actually doing self-care, actually having wellness and not like constantly obsessing about it and talking about it and performing it, is now aspirational.

When I talk to someone who sounds like they're in a really good place-- I'm like, what have you been up to? And they're, you know, I've been meditating a lot. Whenever I talk to them, or whenever they tweet, it's like a couple times a day and it's really thoughtful and funny, or it's really well-informed, or it's a real reflection.

It has actual value for me. It's not just weird shit posting of like the latest meme about its National Cookie Day and like I have a pile of cookies. That stuff isn't aspirational anymore.

Going viral to me is not aspirational anymore. What's aspirational is when I read a post from someone, or I see a video of someone, and it seems thoughtful and it seems like they took a second and they have something that actually helps me and that I can take away and use. And that kind of stuff, we always knew it was supposed to be important, but now it suddenly is actually important.

And actually, being able to feel other people have something to offer me beyond eye candy, I think it's kind of revolutionary for our generation, who was raised on a constantly raising bar of eye candy, a constantly raising bar of novelty and shallowness and memes and all the ephemera. And the ephemera falls away. And as much as we're always going to have memes and jokes, it's different now.

Because generally, I feel like the memes have meant something, or they have some kind of hyperspecificity that makes them really intelligent and sharp. For example, I have family members who are now suddenly very much into politics, and the like psychology and sociology are politics that weren't before, and it's because they feel the threat and the need to take care of it. But also, they feel like they're accomplishing something when they actually get informed on an issue and not just read a Facebook post about an anti-vaxxer.

When my mom reads The New York Times article and learn something, she calls me and she's like, did you know this? And I'm like, that is so cool that at least you were demonstrating the value of these important things. So there is a lot of artifice out there, and we're realizing a lot of stuff that just isn't all that necessary.

But one thing that has been more necessary to me than ever in this time is keeping a close eye on my own personal finances. My husband and I have had our lives kind of upturned with him having to leave the country, and obviously, that incurs many expenses that we did not expect. But having Mint on my phone to check every day so I can get a quick bird's eye view of everything that's happening across our various accounts, our retirement, all that kind of stuff-- and we can get, yes, sometimes information that's a bit of a bummer.

But honestly, it's so much better to know. And frankly, right now, having that knowledge and knowing that I always have my finger on the pulse of what's going on in our financial lives is incredibly important. Mint is a totally free app that will sync all of your accounts and your cards so that you can start to really see and understand all of your spending.

It will categorize things for you. It will tell you when you've gone over budget or when you're in danger of going over budget in a certain category, and help you just live a financially healthy life, which, again, right now is more important to me than ever. Because when it comes to money, it is not about what it looks like.

It's about what's really going on when you pop the hood. So pop the hood with Mint. You can check them out at the link in our description or our show notes.

So who's another person who has been completely unhinged in quar? Completely unhinged? Well, you saw the Vanessa Hudgens stuff?

Oh my god. [LAUGHS] I get it, but like-- It's like people are going to die. People are going to die and I respect that journey, but I need to get my ass to Coachella. It was entirely about Coachella.

It was entirely about like, listen, I don't want people to die, but I bought all this turquoise jewelry. [LAUGHS] And then she was like, oh, I probably shouldn't be saying this right now. And it was like, these people are away from their teams and that is going to-- never underestimate how controlled the messaging coming out of someone who has been famous since they were like 14 is, because there's no way that they're always saying normal statements. They need people there to filter out and provide them with the price of milk, because they don't know it.

And it's funny because a lot of people I think thought reality stars were going to come unglued, but I'm like, no, no. Those people are trained to turn it on and off, and they also have no stakes, because we've seen them all do disgusting, horrifying things on national TV. So like nothing they could do could really upset people that much.

It's the people who are super perfect polished, like I'm a beautiful actress things, that have everything to lose. Like if your Gal Gadot, don't sing Imagine. Yeah.

She kicked that bad boy off. She was like front and center. Yeah.

No, the really polished hypermega celebs, it's like you guys just got to go into hibernation. Yeah. Tom Cruise better be in a Scientology bunker somewhere.

Meanwhile, the Bravolebrities are actively losing their Minds. Yeah. We're both Real Housewives fans, for context.

And I don't know if you saw what Shannon Beador from OC was posting, but I think-- Was it 5G anti-vaxx stuff. No, it was like this is God's purge and we got to let them die, basically. Oh.

Yeah. No, that wasn't Shannon Beador. Sorry, Shannon.

It was Kelly Dodd who was posting this stuff, and she got dragged to hell for it. Shannon, Kelly, Vicky, they've all had-- They've also been hanging out and taking selfies together. However, this will not impact their lives after.

No. Because we didn't expect more from them. No.

But I will say, it is truly, I think, the reality star. Influencers are going insane in their own way because an influencer, even a really big influencer on Instagram, they're not a celebrity. If they walk into a restaurant, people don't freak out.

Most influencers, it's like they're completely interchangeable. Most people, like if you follow a bunch of influencers, you don't know who's posting what. They're like it's just yoga pants and hair.

Right, exactly. So they're always like, what's the next post? And that's that brand of unhinged in quarantine, because they're running on fumes.

Those posts are getting unhinged levels of like forced quirkiness and forced joy and all that. The reality show people are like they had such a tenuous level of celebrity to begin with, and it already had that note of like gotta keep this going as long as I can, and now that they're not allowed to do their appearances or show their products, they're losing it. I will say the people I feel the worst for-- like not the worst.

Obviously, the people I feel the worst for are nurses and doctors and people who are sick, obviously. But in this category of human being that we're talking about, the people I feel really bad for are the Drag Race girls. Oh no.

Because they go into heavy debt to get on that show. None of them are wealthy going into it. Very rarely are they wealthy, and if they are, it's because of their parents.

They go into heavy credit card debt to purchase the outfits and the wigs and stuff on the idea that when it's over, they'll get to tour, do live appearances, and within a year, even if they lose the show, they'll at least break even and then be famous. They're not going to get to do a reunion. The girls on Drag Race this season filmed with a sexual predator, who they ended up having to try to cut out of the series.

And they are constantly flashing this warning of like this person's been disqualified, we understand. So their whole season has been tainted. They can't do any live appearances going forward.

They have to just do, I'm on YouTube Live. And that's fun, but that's not the kind of like moneymaker for a drag queen. Right.

It's an events-driven business. It's an events-driven, appearance-driven, meet and greet-driven business, and they probably heavily invested in clothes and hair and makeup and touring equipment for right when the season started airing. And the season started airing right as quarantine broke.

And they had no way to know even before that. Because even if they were reading the news in December about coronavirus, none of knew. Oh yeah, no.

But also, even if you were to say "they should have known," they filmed this a year ago, so their whole life has been planned on the idea that this is going to air. And I know for a fact, some of them, like Heidi N Closet is a contestant who is America's sweetheart at the moment. She is Miss Congeniality.

She is everything. She's just wonderful. She told the story on the show about how she was working in a gas station for minimum wage and was going into debt to do the show.

And what is going on for her right now? And fans don't have money to put together to donate to something like that, and how do you apply for unemployment? Like I was supposed to be a famous drag queen and now I'm not?

Like that sucks. And so I don't think it's a uniform experience. I think there's a whole spectrum of experiences here.

But I do think that certain mediums and media types and ways of making money incentivize you to act and behave in a certain way. And to have that ripped from you is causing some of these Real Housewives to just like-- Oh my god. Like Vicki Gunvalson is fully crying on her Instagram Live feed.

Like I need to get a haircut. Also, if she doesn't go to like Mastro's or The Palm, or one of those steakhouses for a month, she dies. This is maybe a naive question, but as someone who worked, and works still, in many capacities, in film and television production, are we just not going to have any new shows or movies forever?

How are they going to start producing film and television again? When am I getting Succession back? Well, that, I-- Who knows, because the filming constraints on that?

I didn't even think about Succession. We might need to pause for a minute so I can just weep. Oh my god.

Breakdown. Here's what's going to happen. Every movie distributor is making the calculation of whether they should do VOD releases for their existing blockbuster stuff they had in the pipeline.

Obviously, they should, but they have to figure out if it makes sense for them to break contracts that they had with movie theaters that were exclusivity contracts, like the amount of money they lose versus subscriptions versus operating costs. It's a huge calculation they end up having to make. So a lot of I think what we're going to see is blockbusters way spaced out.

We're going to see like one big movie on VOD every like 45 days, as opposed to every week. A lot of stuff that was way lower on the totem pole, like the independent movie that I was working on. I was going to play at the festival and we were going to hope it would win an award, and then we would put it up on Vimeo, is now going to be like it is dropping on Netflix.

It is a AAA-- like ad campaign for that stuff. And then what we're going to get when we come back is going to be soap operas and reality show stuff, because they're real easy and cheap to throw together. For reality shows, as unfortunate as this is, you can work around union regulations.

If you're like a Quibi, you don't have to obey by union rules. Quibi's a disaster. We can talk about that in a minute. [LAUGHS] That's a disaster.

You can work around union rules and you can make up new ways to shoot. And then there's also the whole thing of Netflix is starting to-- and I think they're going about it the wrong way at the moment, but they're starting to make deals with creators to shoot stuff in their home. Like someone who knows how to operate a camera-- like a Brad Pitt knows how to operate a camera, is obviously very good at his job, and can be provided with a script, and you can cut together a short film from that.

There's also the whole "quarantine" genre of stuff that every screenwriter right now is working on in their home with their Keurig. They're sitting being like, OK, so it's a murder that happens over Zoom, or whatever. [LAUGHS] Like we're going to get a lot of that. And I think those will paper over the hole.

So it won't feel like there's nothing coming out. It will just start getting weirder and more sporadic. The Netflix series that takes place entirely on a computer screen is going to drop the same week as a documentary series that's been shooting for 10 years.

But OK, Disney is more powerful than most nations. Yeah. Are they not going to come up with some kind of solution where everyone is getting a Rona test and they're all on set together?

Totally. Totally, totally. You're going to see that-- When is Succession coming back?

The problem, though-- I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not that shallow.

Please continue. The problem, though, with that whole thing-- and it breaks my heart because I want Succession, my sweet baby child, to come back to my arms-- How you shoot that, though. People aren't going to react well.

Even if they do it "scientifically correctly," they're going to have to do a PR campaign to explain how things were shot and how it's safe and you shouldn't get mad at Disney and you shouldn't get mad at these celebrities. You should actually be really thankful that they worked so hard. Hollywood loves talking about itself and talking to how hard it works and how difficult and important storytelling is.

We tell stories is like the like tagline for every media company. They're going to do that stuff, but it's a harder thing to land, because if they fly a bunch of the actors and crew onto an island and then self-quarantine for two weeks and then start shooting, I'm sure that's perfectly safe. I'm not a scientist.

Ask your doctor. But I'm sure there's a way to work out the logistics there. But then they're going to have to do a whole performative like, and this is how we did it, mm-hmm, kind of thing that's going to be its own genre of media that has to be produced in a safe way.

A friend of mine is an editor for a large cable network, and she currently has to drive to a Dropbox-- a physical Dropbox, not like a cloud Dropbox-- pick up a hard drive, drive home, edit the stuff on her personal computer, put it back on the hard drive, drive back, drop it in the Dropbox. Then someone has to pick it up from there, drop it. And it's like this whole Rube Goldberg machine built to do this editing.

So even stuff that they are able to produce, it takes so much longer to do the post-production. The Good Fight just went on hiatus, not because they didn't have the footage, but because how do you do audio production out of an audio studio? How do you do looping when someone only has an iPhone at home?

How do you do pickup shots for things that don't make sense because the news chains. Like The Good Fight takes place in our current news landscape, so they fill in little bits so it feels more current, even though they shot this-- I thought that show ended. No, that was The Good Wife.

This is the spin-off, The Good Fight. Oh, OK. It's basically The Good Wife, but like they chop off the cast.

Hey, should I watch The Good Wife? I'm looking for a show to binge. Chelsea, you're going to love The Good Wife.

It's so good. That is such a good wife. She is the best. [LAUGHS] Our wife, she is so good.

Our wife, she is so good. The Good Wife is about-- Wait, it that with Chris Noth? Yes.

Love me some Chris Noth. It is about the person you wish Hillary Clinton had been her whole life. Ooh.

Because I did not like House of Cards, I will say. No, no, it's nothing like that. Stuck with it through two seasons.

But all of a sudden, they're faced with a situation where all of the money and fame and access and resources in the world can't buy them what they want, which is to walk into a restaurant and be lauded, or to do the projects you wanted to do or be treated the way you want to be treated. And I feel like now is the same thing. Like you have Justin and Hailey Bieber on their compound-- which, by the way, all these celebrity marriages.

Like fucking Shawn Mendes and Camilla. Yikes. I mean, look at Ben Affleck.

Like what is happening over there right now? Divorce levels previously unheard of. But wait, so you have all these people now who are locked in their mega ranches, and they have space and pools and flowers to pick and horses to ride, but all that money in the world and all that fame cannot buy them the ability to go to Coachella or to walk into a restaurant and be handed a menu or to be in a crowd at a concert, and I think that feeling of why can I not have everything I want is leading them to go insane.

I think a lot of people are realizing that they were miserable, and now they're more miserable. They're like, oh shit. When I'm left alone with my significant other and my internal monologue, things get dark quick.

Yeah. But I think they're even more miserable because now they're like, well, at least before I didn't know I was miserable. You know what I mean?

And they're like mad at us, like we did this to them. And there is a level of combativeness between the audience and the celebrity now. Celebs.

Where it's like, hey, guys, just so you know. Hey guys, just to clarify. Hey guys, we're going to be a little late on this.

There is a kind of celebrity who right now is like angry if fans don't support x, y, or z, or angry if the tech thing isn't working, or angry if fans don't show up for a thing that they're doing. And it's like, we got a lot going on. It's not my top priority in life.

Like I'm so sorry. Like everyone just let it ride a little bit. Anyway, yeah, no.

I do think, though, that the relationship, that parasocial relationship between not just the celebrity and the fan or the influencer and the follower, but all of us with one another, I think, I hope, will improve. I do feel, like you were saying earlier, about people, I think, are starting to be like they're popping off a little less, in my experience. Even just in my anecdotal family chats and Facebook aunt posts and stuff like that, I feel like there's starting to be a little bit more of, listen, everyone's going through it.

We don't need to be screaming at each other. But you have those really loud, ill-informed but poorly-incentivized people who are obviously doing the worst thing in the world. People are being fired from Fox News for this kind of thing.

That's how bad it is, that Fox News is firing people. But I think, for the most part, 99% of people have no trouble admitting they have no idea about disease pathology or virology. And 99% of people, maybe they're armed with a few facts.

Like masks are good or you need alcohol that has a certain percentage of alcohol in it in order to disinfect, stuff like that. But for the most part, in my anecdotal experience, the friends and family that I had that were the most bullheaded about their bad ideas are at least saying, I mean, I don't really know. I know.

What a change. When it comes to economics, people are like, would that help? Is that what we should do?

And you're like, let's ask economics professors. And they're like, let's ask them. And I'm like, oh my god.

You're going to get the right answer. I'm like freaking out. And so do I think the politics-- like I'm on this team and you're on that team-- the politics has gone away?

No, I don't. But I do think that people are willing to say to politicians, that's bullshit. You just said bullshit.

How dare you? And there's, yeah, like you said, a willingness to come to the middle. As a last note, I will say one thing that I was wary of pre-quar that seems to have highly, highly ramped up and I hate as a cultural phenomenon, curious as to your hot take, the binge consuming alcohol as a quirky personality thing.

Like all the memes of the celebs drinking out of a bottle of wine, all of the like talk about how you're boozing it up. A lot of the trends that were happening I feel like have reversed a little bit in a good way. That one seems to have ramped up.

And not only is it like wine mom stuff, where it's like joking about using alcohol as a coping mechanism or showing yourself drinking these obscene amounts. Even if it is a joke, it's still alluding toward the thing. But also, how difficult for people in sobriety with this.

And that is a trend, and I've seen the influencers doing it, the celebs doing it. Like every other celeb is having their like quarantine boozy moment. What's your take?

I think this is really hard for people in sobriety. I think there's only so much a Zoom AA meeting can offer you. There's only so much that phone calls with people can replace therapy.

And I know, myself, that I've been dealing with getting weirdly drunk on a Friday night alone with my husband, that happened a couple of times. And it's like, you didn't mean for it to happen. But you're like, oh, we bought this weird ice maker and we wanted to try it out with liquor, and now we're watching a TV show.

And then like, oh, it's 3:00 in the morning, and I felt like shit. And then I think I was like I don't want to do that anymore. And I think on a larger scale, yes, this is going to ramp up and it's going to be a problem, but I also think we're all going to learn a lesson, hard lesson, maybe the hard way, of we can't use alcohol to solve problems and we can't use alcohol to paper over things or glorify it.

And I think a lot of people are going to have to learn better habits, but we have a lot of time to do that right now. We have a lot of time to sit home and think about how drinking too much makes us feel emotionally. Not just physically, but emotionally.

How it affects our work, how it affects our relationships. And we have a lot of time to be like, is this how I want to live? And the way that I feel like I've changed in my relationship to food, I'm hoping that some people will change in their relationship to alcohol or drugs, especially people that are breaking quarantine right now to use.

That's a really tough situation, and I can't tell someone the exact answer that would be right for them. But I do know that cause and effect has never been more clear, because you're alone and everything that happens happens because of your choices. If you're in an apartment alone, you can't be like, well then that person came in and did this.

You have to sit with the I did that and it caused this and it sucks, and I don't want that anymore. I think, in general, I feel the same way about people really, really aggressively catastrophizing publicly, because that's just so scary for people to read. Just saying, oh my god, we'll never have a normal life again, or we'll never get out of this, or we're all going to die.

Stuff like that I find irresponsible for people to be doing on social media, and that seems to have ramped down. But I hope that people will start to get a little bit more conscious about, sure, I'm not going to pretend like I haven't consumed booze since quarantine. Of course I have.

But I don't, or I really try, really, to never frame it as a coping mechanism through it or something that is my gift to myself. Do you know what I'm saying? And I think there has to be, I hope, a little bit-- I think at first there was the shock, and everyone was just figuring out how to get through each day.

But I hope now, as this becomes a more long-term thing, we come up with a better way to talk about how we're coping and handling things that aren't either spreading or encouraging or validating what is often dangerous behavior. I think when this is over, my overall theory of all of this is that we're going to a place of extremes after this. Everybody has had to change and fast.

And I think people are going to either go whole hog on huge consumption, living on like a compound in suburbia, and they're going to go on every trip they can. They're going to party as much as possible the minute that they're, quote unquote, "allowed." And they're never going to stop and then they're going to crash. But I think a lot more people are going to go-- or an significant amount of people-- are going to go in the direction of the way I was living before was not sustainable and it wasn't fulfilling and it wasn't safe and I wasn't happy.

And with this pause, I was able to contemplate what I want to be doing with my life, what I can actually contribute. What makes me feel fulfilled and what makes me feel productive isn't the things that I thought did. And things like like counts on Twitter-- I mean, social media behavior is so odd.

You see people post things, and then they don't get enough likes so they delete them. I think we're starting to realize like, who cares? Who cares?

Truly, who cares? Just post what you like, and if other people like it-- in fact, it's better to turn off the people who don't like it because now you're just selecting a group of people who like the same things as you. I've gotten so unhinged with Twitter just tweeting opinions and things that I sincerely believe.

And if they're polarizing to some people-- if some people don't want to hear about my take on the economy, but I feel in earnest about it, like I have researched it and I feel like I have a strong opinion about what's best for people, if people get turned off, I used to take that personally and be like, oh, I worded it incorrectly. I didn't teach them correctly. Or oh, I don't want people to dislike me or have bad ideas about my intention.

And now I'm just like, man, go find what makes you happy. Unfollow me, unfollow you. It's fine.

It doesn't matter. This isn't a rejection of you as a person because your Instagram post didn't get enough likes. It's a confluence of events of time you posted and whether or not it's relatable and if it's the right color scheme.

Who cares about any of that? You have to just do the things that make you happy. And the things that make me happy, even on social media, even interacting with people, have changed.

And also, the things that make me happy aren't necessarily coming from those avenues when they really were before. I really enjoyed, when I would go on a trip, creating an Instagram story so that people could feel like they were going on the trip with me. And I could get feedback on like, oh, you're in Paris?

You should go to this place. And be like, hell yeah, I'm going to go that places. Thanks for dropping by and watching my story.

That felt good. That felt like encouragement. And now I'm realizing that it wasn't really real and those aren't real relationships, and that doesn't mean as much as having a two-hour conversation with my aunt, who I haven't caught up with since I was a teenager.

And to sit and be like, what do you think about all this? Yeah. I'm like, what have you been talking about?

Like, oh, what was your favorite memory of when we were young? Stuff like that, I feel like I wouldn't trade it for anything now. I wouldn't trade the letter writing with my grandma for anything.

I wouldn't trade the really beautiful conversations I've had with my husband for anything. And so yeah, this is, of course, not something I am glad happened, but if we can pull those silver linings out and carry that with us, maybe we'll all be better for this. Yeah.

We'll be better people. Some people are going to be way worse, and that's always the case. But maybe enough of us will be better that we can make a world after this that doesn't have to be as unfulfilling and as exhausting as the one that we were in.

Exhausting is totally the word. As I said at the beginning, my focus has become laser-centered on, is today going to be a good day? How can I make today a good day?

And I'll enjoy it while I have it and I'll deal with tomorrow as it comes. And I think living less in the projection and more in the moment is hopefully going to be a big takeaway, and hopefully will inspire at least some of the people who are thought leaders and influencers, and stuff like that, to just drop the act and just be a human being. We made it so easy to run away from feelings and from problems and from things we didn't like and to cover them up and to digitally fix our flaws.

We made it really easy to run, and now there's nowhere to go. So you better learn to be happy, babe. Can't run in a mask.

Well, thank you so much for being here, Ryan. It is such a pleasure to see another person that I care about. This has been euphoric.

Even looking at you from across the room has been euphoric. Oh my god. And now we're going to go eat the salads that we got.

So anyway, before I leave, I wanted to talk to you guys really quickly about another of Intuit's amazing products that has been endlessly helpful in all of what we've been going through here as a small business. TFD is luckier than most, in that we've been able to continue operating. We've had our clients.

But our life has been, compared to many small businesses, pretty good. But we still applied for, and ended up getting, the Paycheck Protection Program Loan, which we are extremely grateful and happy for. And that did require providing a lot of documentation about the business, and we would never have had even a fraction of the easy time that we had assembling all the documents that we needed in order to apply for the loan if we didn't use QuickBooks.

We've been using QuickBooks regularly for years now. It is, in my opinion, the best business accounting software for small businesses out there. And do remember that if you're a freelancer or self-employed, you are a small business of one.

But they made all of the various expenses, the invoices, the payroll, everything super cleanly categorized. It's easy to pull any numbers or reports that you want. And that came in so, so handy when it was time to apply for that program.

So I highly recommend, if you are someone who has a small business or you're freelancing and you want to have better control over and knowledge of your business's finances than ever, which is essential, to check out QuickBooks. I could not recommend it more. We love it and use it every single day here at TFD, and it was indispensable for us in this time.

And as always, thank you so, so much for tuning into The Financial Confessions. I will see you back here next Monday, and stay safe out there. [MUSIC PLAYING]