Episode 1: Author Robin Riback on moving forward after a bump and a detour in the road

Host: Hello and welcome to The Storied Human. I'm Lynne Thompson. And with me today, I'm very honored to have my inaugural guests on my podcast, author Robin Riback. And she's going to share her story with us today about surviving a bump in the road, about bouncing back from that. And I'm just so happy to have you here. Welcome! Lynne, I'm so happy to be here with you on your inaugural podcast. It's really a pleasure. Thank you. 

Robin: Let's go back a little bit to the fact that I worked in the same career at the same place for over 30 years. And it was the non bump in the road. It was smooth. I enjoyed it. It was data management, and it included some writing, although writing was never the main focus. So flash forward, like most people or like many people, I had a Covid incident. And for me, that meant being laid off after over 30 years. And in the scheme of things, there wasn't much notice considering the fact that I was there for and when I say 30 plus, it was 30 plus years. Basically, what happened is I got let go for me within a very short period of time. And following that was a period of what I recognized right away to be grief. I likened it to decades ago when my father died. It was the only other time that I felt a deep unmooring, a deep spin. I didn't know what I was doing, where I was or who I was. So that brief period lasted a while, a few months, the deep part of it. And I knew I was coming out of it a little bit when I was able to function a little more day by day. And so basically, there's a lot in between, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But fast forward to now where I am writing pretty prolifically, working on my first scifi novella novel, doing a lot of other writing projects, and being very, for the most part, happy, optimistic about every day. And with that, of course, is equal parts struggle and fear, to be honest, that's it in a nutshell.

Host: I do love how you came out of it. And I'd like to know just a little bit more about how you got you gave it time. That's what I hear. It's like you acknowledge the grief and you gave it time. And I think that's really important. I think sometimes people stuff it down. So how did you move through it? What did you say to yourself or what did you do? 

Robin: Yeah, well, I'm a very impatient person. This was not my conscious doing. I had a period of a few months where I was really just like when my father died. I was really operating at probably 25% capacity, which means I'm able to eat, drink, get up, talk to people. I'm quite functional, but my mind, which is usually very logical and see the next three steps. That was shocked. So what did I do? I had to wait. I had no choice. I did not want to wait. I have to be honest with you, I'm not an evolved person who says, oh, just give it time. I'm not like that. I'm like, let's go. I had no choice. And looking back, I learned that that's the way it had to be. I was very unhappy about that. After the fog started clearing, what I noticed was I started to be able to think very clearly, much more clearly than I had been able to think. I would say in years. And I don't want to say that I couldn't think for years. There was just a different quality of thought. There was a crispness and a sharpness that came back to me that I hadn't had for years for a reason, for a variety of reasons. So that thought process also led to a lot of energy, a lot of, I guess, sort of physical energy. I'm not really a physical person, so I'm not going to go run a marathon. I'm just going to think more thoughts. Me too.

Robin:
Yeah. I'm not going to waste my energy hiking. I'm just going to sit there thinking. So I really was able to now we're in the era of Zoom and in the era of technology for communication because I worked in It and Data for many years. I'm very adaptable to teams and to Zoom and to Slack and all that. So it was a really easy format for me to learn and to be comfortable on. So I went to YouTube. I still do almost every day I learned something new. It's free learning. I love it. And I sort of booted up my learning process. I had to learn everything from how to write a resume to how to network with people. It didn't come naturally at first. I'm a little bit of a loaner and I'm a little bit I have two sides. I'm a loaner and an extrovert at the same time. So it was a little bit difficult in some ways. The start of it was I would just say the energy and I like to learn. So I really everyday I tried to learn something new about moving forward. It was sort of at first there was so much anxiety. It was like 1ft in front of the other. So learning and putting 1ft in front of the other and doing something every day and keep doing and keep scheduling and keep doing every day. And it was very hard and it still is very hard, but that's what I guess I just naturally did. And it worked. It worked for me. Yeah. I mean, I'm telling you what works for me, this does not work for everybody.

Robin:
This is how I'm built and I always have been like this. I like to learn and do things one step at a time, one step at a time, repetition, habit, that all comes. It's sort of common knowledge or make a schedule, make habits for me. I'm a very habitual person. So how would you not have a habit of waking up every day at 715 and doing X and Y till eight? That's just how I am. So part of it is natural to me. And the learning process was really about learning that what I was doing was working. Yeah. Because that's what I didn't know. Yeah. And it was that period of time where you just don't know. Like you said, one step in front of the other, but you're not getting feedback that it's actually working. 

Host: And that is the hard part. I think you kept going when you didn't really have a sign yet that you were getting somewhere. 

Robin: I did not know. What are the alternatives? I mean, my alternatives were to do something new every day. I was used to working and commuting every day for years and years. I would be engaged and busy from the time I got out of bed until 07:00 p.m. When I got home. So I'm somebody who worked every day. And part of my unmooring when I left was I didn't have that structure and I didn't have the work. Whatever the work was, it doesn't matter to me. I didn't like having nothing and I couldn't abide by it. That was the thing. I could not abide by nothing by having nothing. And so I had to create something. I guess that's the best way I can say it. 

Host: But that you were able to do that. I really admire that. 

Robin: Oh, thank you. 

Host: But you said something earlier that really intrigued me. You said you were able to think more clearly after a long time. And I get it because to me, it sounds like the work, as absorbing as it might have been, took up a lot of space in your head. Right. And you suddenly don't have the work. And now after a long time, you're able to remember sort of the writer brain. Right. Like sort of that whole other you almost forgot that it was still there. 

Robin:  Exactly. Right. Before you said it, I had that phrase in mind. Oh, we need to talk about the writer brain. We talked about it before. I love that. I love it. Yeah, right. My writer's brain, which has always been with me and even as I was doing data management and I would confront some ugly spreadsheet, I would think, oh, boy, this would make a funny little story. But I didn't have time and I didn't have the bandwidth to talk about whatever frustrating thing was going on. So I just didn't do it. And sometimes I would take walks and I'd think, oh, you know, I can write this thing that I've been thinking about, about politics or about social or whatever, and I just never did. So now at first, I did not put it in my schedule. My whole reason for being was I needed to sort of move to another. At the time this has evolved, I was thinking I need to have another nine to five so that I'm just like I was before. But you hear the error in that. It's natural, though, right? After so many years, you want that same thing, right? So I did that, and I've had a couple of ventures, and I'm sure I will have more. I need to be employed, and I'm also working on that. But what started to emerge for me was the writer brain, which I think I started May or June 2021. I scheduled I'm a morning person and I'm a morning thinker. So my thinking time. So I knew I needed to block out time if I wanted to write in the morning. So every morning from June till now, I have from either 830 or nine till eleven, where I write so good. It's helped me in many ways. 

Host: So I heard some wonderful things that I think we can learn from you is that I heard that you waited, even though you hated waiting through that grief, you decided you were going to create your own schedule. You realize that's what was missing. And you started to do that, and you engaged your writer brain, like you really said. Okay, now I'm going to do this, too. I still need a job, but I'm not going to let go of this part of my brain. And I love that because should we reveal our bond? Let's reveal the secret bond. 

Robin:  I'll let you reveal it. 

Host: Oh, okay. I was going to say, why don't you reveal it? 

Robin: No, you reveal it. 

Hoast: Okay. The secret bond is Robin and I have known each other a really long time, and we got reconnected. We had been out of touch and got reconnected on Facebook. I think I stalked you. 

Robin: Actually, I talked to you, but Lynne Thompson is too much of a common name, so I put you. So you had to find me. 

Host: It's like the top ten most common names in America. So anyway, I found you again. And I was so happy because I just remembered when we lived in College together, we were College roommates in an apartment. I just remember I enjoyed your sense of humor. You're such a great sense of humor. And I loved being around you. So I remember that year, I was a senior and you were a junior, and we both wrote poetry. And we decided to submit a poem to the Julia Carly Prize in Original composition. And it was a cash prize given at graduation. I don't know if it was to a junior or a senior. I don't know if there was a limitation. But anyway, we both submitted poems. We worked really hard on them, and I don't know if they did this very often, but we tied.

Robin:  Never. It was unprecedented. Let's put it that way. They were shocked. Yeah. And I was like they were shocked. 

Lynne: And I remember we were so close. I just made this joke like, oh, great, you couldn't let me have all the money. You had to make me split it. And I loved your poem. And you love my poem. So that was one of those things that was just so wonderful. It doesn't happen that often in your life where you get to just enjoy a moment like that. Right. And I love that connection, and I love that you're bringing that poem back to life. Could you talk a little bit about that? 

Robin: Sure. I recently rifled through some papers, which I actually don't like doing. I'm not really a nostalgic person, so it's hard for me to look back at things I've written. They're very cringeworthy, most of them. And I just but I wanted to find this poem because I can still sort of recite part of it in my head. So I looked for it, and it took me a while, but I did find it at the top of my closet, and I spent a couple of weeks just gently revising it for me. It's one of the better things I would say. I'm more proud of this than I am of a lot of things that I've written. And I said, you know what? I've already started submitting short stories and articles to various places. Let me submit the poem, which is called Our Hands. Let me start submitting it to Journals. So that's what I'm doing now. And we could spend a whole other hour talking about getting rejected, because that's what's happening. So I have my system, of course. I have my spreadsheet of which places I'm submitting to, and I use this wonderful program called Duo Trope. It's awesome to find the exact right places to submit each kind of piece of work. So I found the exact right kind of places. I have a schedule. I have my first tier. My first tier are the ones that I really want to get this Pullman. And I thought it was going to be easier than it is. Apparently not. So I got three rejections, and I'm waiting for two more, whether they're accepted or rejected. If I get the rejections on those, I go to the second tier, probably next month or the month after. When I get the results of the ones that I really want, I will go to the second tier and try again. No has always been hard for me. No, we're not publishing it. No, we don't want it right now. Like I said, I watch a lot of stuff on YouTube. I learn a lot. I've been learning a lot about, quote, failure, which isn't failure. It's just no. And it's no right now. So that's how I'm thinking about it. It's just no right now. And it's hard. It's really hard not to take it personally because anybody who has anything that they do that they care about, it's part of them. So when you hear no, whether it's a job application, whether it's a poem, whatever it is, the more you put yourself out, the more you're going to hear no. And so you have to get good at you have to get good at no. You have to get good at those like, Oogie, bad feelings of this didn't work out. I really wanted it to, but it didn't work out. So that's also part of my process with taking the poem and putting it out there. I now know that I'm going to get a lot of Nos and I just have to deal with it. 

Host: I love how you shifted, how you look at Nos. And one of the things they talked about in the podcasting course that Cathy Heller ran and that really lit me up was that failure is part of it. Like Nos are part of it. And I started to listen to some self-help things and positive thinking things. And it's really like you're saying because we're visual. Right. Both of us. I started to see this pathway to success. And the Nos are just rocks on the pathway that every time you get a no, it's still you're progressing. And that was not what I was taught at all as a child or I was taught that the minute you get a no, the minute you fail at something, that's a sign that it's not for you. That's right. 

Robin: Exactly. Hard to change that. 

Host: You did. Right. Tell me about when you didn't get a no, because I really want to talk about your horror story. 

Robin: Okay. All right. Well, you told me, I think it was last summer, you got in touch with me and you said, hey, Robin, there's this contest where you write a hundred words and it has to be a whole story. And so I tried it and I was given the hand. I was dealt with horror story, with horror genre. And I don't like horror. I don't like it. But I had to write one and we had 24 hours to write. So I wrote 100 words in 24 hours. And I looked at it, I said, Gee, I like this. And I submitted it. And I think two months later I got a no. But I said, you know what? I like this well enough where I'm going to take this 100 words, and I'm going to expand it and I'm going to make it a real short story. So I did I made it a short story, and this was the first piece I really submitted to something outside of Medium.com. So it's a whole new arena. It's a Journal. And for me, that's really, like amazing. So I don't know, beginner's luck. I don't know. I got it accepted. No, it's a great story. Is that in the UK? The Journal? It's in the UK. It's called Sine in Worden. It's posted on my Medium page, and I was allowed to do that. I found out. So it's posted there. It's in sign and Wordon. And yeah, it's the first story that I've had published in a literary Journal. So amazing. It happened quickly. Now I'm on round two, like I said, with our hands and I'm getting a lot of nos. And I said, oh, I think the return was beginner's luck or it's a good story. So I'm glad it was published. I'm not just saying it was all luck. 

Host: No, it's not luck. Right. And sometimes you can't tell why something doesn't get published. It's like, who knows why it doesn't? We can't take it personally, even though you said it's hard when you're so invested not to take it personally. Right. So one of the things I remember about you was how funny you are, just naturally, you're just funny. And I always enjoyed that. And I want to know about some things you did with comedy in your past that really intrigued me. Can we talk about that and how it might have helped you get through this? 

Robin: Sure. Well, actually, I mentioned my father died in the 1990s. That was my first introduction to major grief and what it does. So I was younger, it took longer. It was a more tragic for me experience. It was really hard. Yeah, it was really hard. It was really hard. So after a longer period of time and when I started booting up again, I decided that I was going to try something that I've always wanted to try, which was improvised stand up comedy. So I had a couple of classes and I did a few stand up comedy, stand up comic routines. And I also performed for a major conference. So I did that for a while. I also took an awesome improv class. My teacher was the Amazing Kat TO, and I sort of jumped into that. And the first day I came in, sort of in the middle of the class, middle of a quote semester. Not that there was really a start. What I really want to say about this is I've taken a lot of the rules of the attitude of comedy and the rules of improv with me all these years. And I didn't really know that until the second round of grief and Bump in the Road, how much it has helped me. Because the three rules of improv are never deny, never ask why. Always reply, 

Host: Wow, tell me more about that. That is fascinating. 

Robin: Okay, so I'll do it the other way.  Always reply. Never deny, never ask why. Always reply. So if you and I are doing a scene and you come up to me and you say, I'm a green lizard with 25 horns, I never say, no, you're not. I have to say, oh, yes, I see what a beautiful lizard you are. And you're under an awesome rock. And then I give that back to you. I never say no. So that's how a scene progresses. That's how you start any scene in improv, Improv's life. Right. So I started interviewing and the process for jobs in the process of thinking about writing. And as hard as it was, I never denied I have had some very weird, funny job interviews. Some of them, I didn't think they were going to be a good fit, let me put it that way. I didn't think it was going to be a good fit, but you never know. That's why you never deny. And I've had one. It was like selling insurance, and it was a hoop because the person who interviewed me was a character, and she spent most of the time telling me about her life and her kids. So I couldn't get into word edgewise. I mean, obviously, that's not the kind of job I want, but it was funny. And then the other just briefly, it was people who are interviewing for jobs now they have to endure something called the one way job interview, where you literally log onto a computer, there are written questions in front of you. You press play, and you are just talking to a camera and answering questions and pressing stop when you were done and everybody complaining about this, and it's the most awful thing and how rude it is. And so I got my first one way video interview, and I said, okay, I'm not going to say no. I'm going to say yes. It was a hoot. I loved it because it was like filming TV. I thought, oh, I'm doing a screen test. This is great. So did I get the job? No. Did I get ghosted? Yes. But it was a lot of fun, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I got an article out of it. I got a funny article out of it. 

Host: I remember that article was really funny. So you have such a great attitude and such a great sense of humor about stuff. I think it keeps you going.

Robin:  I think so. We all like to present the good part of us. There are days where there are moments, and there were days where I don't feel like this. Yesterday, I had a bad day, and I didn't feel like this at all. But the main thing is to know that it's temporary and tomorrow would be better. 

Host: Well, I have to say I'm Super inspired with your story. I feel lucky that I got to see you during it and see the progress that you were making. And I felt like I learned from you about persistence and about just being up for stuff. Like it was all new to you, but you were up for it. You were up for learning how to interview. I've never endured a one-way interview. I love that it didn't freak you out like you thought it was fun.

Robin:  It was not funny. It was a little fun. It was a little fun because I did have a film and TV class way back in the day. Grief Part one, Grief 1.0, which it was a very difficult class for me. 

Host: You just have to express yourself differently, right. It has to come across differently. And that's intriguing to me. 

Robin: And you have to be authentic at the same time. And that's what you have to be in a job interview, and that's what you do. Like I said, I think I did well, I may have really bombed it. I don't know. I never heard from them again. But it was fun again. 

Host: That doesn't mean anything either, because I've been out there and I've been posted more times than I care to admit. And I just learned to not even pay attention because that's just the job market now. It's just kind of horrible. And it's nice to let people know whenever anyone asks me for advice. And I am like the interview Queen, I've just gone on so many interviews. Right. It does boil down to and this sounds so sappy, but it's really true. For me, it boiled down to just being, first of all, I would never allow myself to be submitted as a contractor, as a consultant, for something that didn't match exactly or very close, something I knew was a good fit. And second, because so many stuff comes across, I'm just talking about me. Yeah. And second, I would just be sort of radically myself. Like, honest. Like, really honest. And I love to talk. So I trained myself to shut up, which is hard. And when they asked me a question, I would think about it. I would have a couple of beats where I would really think about it. Like, what were they really asking? And I would answer it as honestly as I could, because then if they said no, they said no to the real me. And I was like, okay, it isn't a fit. Right. I wasn't faking it. They didn't say no to some made up character me. They said no to the real me. And if they said yes, they said yes to the real me, and they got real me on the job. I know it sounds basic, but it really has helped. I have a really good hit rate with my interviews, and it's not because I'm so good at them. It's because I set it up for success. I think you'll get this way, like, you won't allow yourself to be submitted. You'll begin to know, like, this is a waste of time. 

Robin: Yeah. I wouldn't say my problem, but never deny say, oh, yeah, sure, that's good, too. For selling shoes. Yes. No, I can do that. Why not? 

Host: I think that attitude is great, and I think you learn so much as you do that. But I think eventually, when you get in that networked world of recruiters and jobs, and stuff like that, that you learn to say no gently because they'll try to put you in any square peg, in any round hole. They'll just try to, oh, you'd be perfect for this. And I'm like, well, it's odd, but you have to kind of tell them, no, I really wouldn't. Of course, the good recruiters already know that. The really good ones. 

Robin: There's many tiers. There's a lot of good ones. I've had some good. I just had one or two sort of questionable. And then there's the whole arena of scammers and stakes, which I don't even want to get into, but complicated. Yeah, you can spend half day vetting a real recruiter for somebody who just wants to damn and fish you. It's very hard to tell the difference, but I can now. It's a new landscape. 

Host: It is a new landscape. Difficult. And I have a son who's going to be looking for a job soon, and it's like a whole new world. It's just so hard for them to get seen because a lot of resumes fall into a black hole like it's automated. It's all searchwordy. I don't just admire how you came back. I admire how you learned this new landscape because it's radically different from what we remember years ago. 

Robin: Yeah, it is. I'm thinking about the last couple of years. It may be because I hadn't Ironically, because I had not had an opportunity to look for a job for many years that it's so abrupt so many years ago. I mean, I could tell you funny stories about getting my original job.
I didn't feel that I was adapting to anything. I just felt like, okay, this is new. It's not like I have to do something different because I had never done it before. Got it. So I didn't have to revise any of my processes. I didn't have processes.

Host:
You just said, okay, this is new. I guess I have to figure out how to do this. And I do think your IT skills helped enormously. You were already in that, Baileywick. You already had those skills. You were comfortable on a computer, and so you just moved forward into Zoom and slack and all those teams and all those things. Oh, yeah, you're comfortable. And that worries me, too, because some people who are older are not as technical as us. And it's even harder. So I just hope they can find resources because it's just tough being older and being out of work. It's tough looking for work and being older.

Robin: Yeah. I guess when you said that, I thought, oh, is she talking about me? 

Host: No, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about me (laughs). Well, you don't look your age.

Robin: thank you. I forget my age. I forget. And there's a lot of talk about ageism and all that out there. I don't have that problem. I don't have that problem because I don't see myself as old. I forget. And in fact, just another story. I recently was going to apply for a writing fellowship. I put in about 6 hours on this application. And I literally woke up two nights ago with a lot of anxiety and I didn't know what it was. And I was thinking about this fellowship. And I woke up in the morning and I said, you know what? I am not going to apply for this fellowship. I don't feel good because it's not for me. And one of the premises of this fellowship was how this fellowship is for people who are marginalized by age or by this or by that, for whatever it is. And granted, I could put myself in a few of the I am in a few of the categories, but because I don't think of myself like that, I felt really weird. I felt like I was playing a game, like I was saying something that wasn't me. So as soon as I said to myself, you know what? It doesn't matter. The point is not to get a Fellowship. The point is to get a Fellowship that matches what you want to do. As soon as I retracted it, I said, oh, God, I don't have to pretend I'm old. 

Host: I hear you. I hear you have good instincts. And that anxiety came from a place that you honor, that you paid attention to it. And secondly, I think that both of us just I don't mean to brag, but we both have like a young energy. My energy never got older. I get out of bed and my knees might hurt a little, but my mind is like ready to go.

Robin: yeah. 

Host: And if you have that and you can talk to any age person and you're young and you're thinking, I think it is easy to forget your age, and that helps. It's an advantage. Let's face it, it's an advantage. 

Robin: Well, also, it also helps being in the workforce for so many years. And like I said, since the last bump in the road, I had a couple of contract jobs, another job where I worked with a variety of ages, mostly young people. When I'm working with younger people or my friends who are younger people, I don't think of them as younger people because also if somebody's talking to me in a certain way, I'll talk back that way because you're adaptable. Someone's going to (funny voice) talk to me like this, I'm going to talk back. Just like, (funny voice) oh, yeah, this is how we're talking now. 

Host: (laughs) I do impressions, too! I've always done impersonations, but you are adaptable, and I think that's so important. And I don't think that's necessarily.... I think we're both adaptable. That's our personality. But I think you can learn it. I think you can learn it. It's a learned skill. I think there's a lot of stuff you can learn and people shouldn't give up. And I want to get back to your daily learning on YouTube. I think that's a gem. It's like a thing you figured out naturally, that a lot of us don't do. I don't do it. And I want to do more of, like, reading good books for my head. And jumping on YouTube is a great idea. Tell me more about how you got into that habit, because it's a great habit.

Robin (laughs) I didn't want to spend money on people's programs. And there are some great thought leaders and great people with wonderful programs who I was tempted by and who I'm still tempted by. But there's so much great free learning on YouTube now. Some of it is good and some of it is not. You have to learn to vet what it is. For instance, I spent ten torturous minutes and I could have made it three, but I was glued to the screen by this woman who was talking about Scrivener, which I'm now thinking of joining, which is a program for writers. It's a computer program for writers. It's software. I wanted to find out more about it. So what I do is I go on YouTube and I key in Scrivener tutorials. Or what do you think about Scrivener? And there's good and there's bad. I mean, there is bad. Was this woman saying, oh, my God, I love Scrivener. No, wait, I really can you see my eyes? I love Scrivener. It was five minutes of can you see my eyes? Can you see my expression? That's not what I'm in for. So I clicked off of that. Then I found another one, which was very straightforward. And I'm an author, and I'm going to show you I'm going to do a tutorial with you. And I watched along. That's how you learn. We're visual. I'm watching him go through the screens, and I feel like after the next ten minutes, I have an idea of how Scrivener works. I think it's for me, but I do this with Scrivener, with whatever it is. There are other things that I need to figure out. Something's having to do with a website, LLC. Do I need an LLC? Something's having to do with WordPress? How do I get a Disclaimer on whatever it is, these nuts and bolts things that if you don't think about it, you'll think, Gee, how do I do that? I don't know. Maybe I'll ask a friend, go on YouTube, whatever you need to know. Somebody has to put it on YouTube. 

Host: I love that. And I love that you made it a habit. I think that's a great nugget to take away. I see a lot of stuff going into my show notes for this interview, because you just brought up a lot of really good points. And also we can point prospective writers, we can point them to some of the things that you've gone to, and there's a lot of good places that people can start. So you're good at this. You're good at being an interview guest.

Robin:  I guess. 

Lynne: Yeah. Well, I think you are. I think you answer questions, like directly, you know how some people don't? 

Robin: Yeah. Well, let me tell you about let me tell you about being a guest on a podcast. Well, guess what? It's a whole subculture. And I got TMI much too much information, things that didn't relate to me, things about things that I'm not up to yet. So. But like we were talking about in the beginning, how do I roll if I know that I'm going to do a new venture, I'm going to be a guest on a podcast, whatever it is. I'm going to apply for a Fellowship. I'm going to do something new. I'm going to spend a few hours each day researching it and for, you know, writing about it, preparing about it. Same thing with interviews. You know this when you get an interview, let's say you get a job interview and it's going to be in four days. Usually it doesn't come right upon you. It's four to six days if you're lucky. If you're lucky. Right. Okay. You're going to have a job interview next week. There's not much you can control in the job interview, the job interview itself. So because I'm a control freak, I try to control things beforehand. I go to YouTube. I've followed a lot of the career coaches on YouTube who talk specifically about how to do specific parts of interviewing. It's so good. Yeah. So there's that. And I'll go to the website. It's a known thing that one of the techniques in interviewing is you have stories, and they're real stories about who you are and what you've done in the past. And your five stories will take you through any job interview. Because if they ask if somebody at five or whatever, if somebody asks you what's the worst thing you've ever been through, you can take one of your stories and say, well, and you frame it as such and how you've learned from it. Or somebody says, what's the best thing you've ever been through? Well, guess what? It could be the same story with a different twist. I love it. You have the stories that represent you, that are you in the workforce and who you are and what you did. And they carry you through because they're you. So you just practice. So the thing is you just practice. 

Host: And you know, that's what this whole podcast is about is we learn through stories that are really old. It's how people have always learned. So I love that you brought that up. And I think I've done that clumsily and intuitively. I wish I'd listen to YouTube because it probably would have saved me some time. 

Robin: Oh, see, I thought you were going to just say, I wish I listened to you. I(laughs) I was getting all. Oh, well, thank you. 

Host: (laughs) Well, that too. I love that because first of all, what I hear and I know this is different. What I hear is that you respect yourself and honor your own time enough to prepare and to give yourself the best shot. Like, to me, that's just a wonderful thing. It's like, well, I'm not going to take this lightly Or I'm not going to just jump into it. I'm going to give myself a shot. I'm going to honor myself. I'm going to respect myself. I'm going to prep, I'm going to give myself every advantage and then you feel better when you go to the interview. That's a really good point. You know what I used to do because back in the day you were always driving to an interview, right? Right. I would talk, I would answer the questions. I would imagine the questions. It's sort of like an athlete says they do like they see themselves doing the play, right? Yeah. And I did this just naturally over the years. I would have the 50 minutes drive or whatever, and I'm sure people that pass me were like, what is she doing? I was like talking to myself, but I would imagine a typical question that they would ask me and I would just rehearse it. It's definitely rehearsal, interview rehearsal. And I would talk through it. So when I got there, it seems so simple, but it was such a help when I got there, I had already said it to myself. It just kind of rolled off my tongue. Imight change it a little, but it wasn't like starting from scratch.

Robin:  And you weren't memorizing. You were talking about you. And to that point, part of the fun of job interviews for me is as a kid, I always wanted to be on a talk show, so that was okay with me. "So, thanks, Johnny, thanks for asking". (laughter). "Funny you should ask about that experience"

Host: (laughing) So true! So true!

Robin: Oh my God, I'm on the interview couch.

Host: What a great analogy! See you just have such a great attitude Robin, how could you go wrong? That's why I wanted you as my inaugural guest! 

Robin and Host: Laughter.

Host: So I guess I will wrap this up if it's OK with you...

Host: And it was OK with her. I just wanted to thank Robin again. It was a wonderful interview. I really enjoyed it and I think people will really learn from it. Robin has a great website -- www.robinriback.com with her contact info, so you can shoot her an email 
and she has her publications on there and it's just so fun to take a look at her writing. It's wonderful. She also offers some services if you want to check that out, some editing and some consulting. So yes, definitely go to robinriback.com and thanks so much for listening. 

Next week we're going to have just me solo. Well, not really solo. I'm interviewed by a very good friend, John Chao. He lets me talk about myself So that you can get to know me a little more And I don't have to just drone on and on without anyone there. So I really appreciate that he did that for me. And then the following week, we're going to have a chat with Sue Ryerson, who happens to be my ex sister-inlaw, and find out more about how she gets through her life, dealing with a mental illness and finding success in spite of it. She's very inspiring. So thank you, listeners, and I'll talk to you before you know it --signing off.