blossom, your awesome podcast episode number 60 today on the show. Best selling author Alka joshi is here with us and I am so excited. We are going to be talking about her book, the henna artist and her other book. We're going to be talking about cream creativity, the writing process, how to stay inspired success and so much more, I cannot wait to get into this with her. Okay, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom, insights and light with us today. Welcome to the show. I am delighted to be here soon. Thanks so much for having me. Oh I am so excited to get into this with you. So I'm gonna say we start with your background, I know you're this best selling author now but give us a little bit of a background on you know, prior to this and then how you got here.

Well you know it's so interesting, I think this is my fourth full time career as a full time author. But let's see, I started out thinking that I wanted to be an artist and that wasn't gonna go anywhere because I wasn't that good at it. Uh and then I eventually found my way into advertising which really married my love of art and design and also uh you know, production and tv and you know, I was enamored with all the tv shows that I used to watch as a kid. So I thought okay, you know, I remember all the jingles to all the ads that I used to listen to. So let me see if uh there's something I can do in advertising, and it turned out to be a good fit for me, The people who ended up hiring me, the creative directors hired me with no prior experience in my portfolio. I had never done anything like this before, but they saw something in my portfolio that said, you know what this girl can write. And so they hired me as a copywriter, which is not what I expected.

I thought I would be an art director, right? Because I was still thinking of myself as an artist. So I go off and I'm a copywriter for many years and I'm doing uh, tv ads, I'm doing radio ads, I'm doing print campaigns and so on. And then finally, um, I thought to myself, hey, I could do this on my own right. I was actually at one point lured away by a pr firm that was owned by BBdo. So I did that for a while. But then I thought, you know, I have this melange of skills that I can use for my own clients and why didn't I do that? And I started my own uh marketing and advertising agency. And that was really fun because I got to hire whom I wanted and the people I wanted to hire were women. So I ended up hiring a lot of women who don't a lot of opportunities in advertising, frankly, even when I was in the advertising corporate world in the eighties mostly, um it was men who dominated the field, it was a lot like the Mad Men series, in fact, you know what, so I couldn't even watch the Mad Men series because it was too much like real life for me.

Uh and it made me crazy, you know, the all the sexism and uh you know, all the one upmanship and all of that. So in my agency I decided I was going to hire mainly women and that they were gonna get opportunities to work on some juicy projects and they did, so that's what I did for about 25 years. But then there came several recessions during that time and in one of those recessions, I thought, well, you know, my business is going to slow down for a couple of years, what else am I gonna do? And I thought, well my husband's been telling me for such a long time to be a writer, a novelist, uh and it's just something I never thought I could do. So I thought, well the best way to do that is to maybe learn through one of these um you know, master's programs how to write a novel. So that's what I ended up doing. And so, lo and behold this is the fourth career that I've had, wow, I love it, like I think that's so cool cause you know, we're kind of taught, okay, you've got to figure out what you want to do and then you got to go do it and it's like, there's, you know, like this kind of shame or stigma around, okay, well doing something for five or 10 years and saying, hey, this is not what I want to do or I'm not passionate about it.

Yeah, and I think this is one of the biggest lies that we are told. First of all, at the age of 18, we usually enter college between 18 and 20 somewhere and we are told that we need to declare a major, how can you possibly know at the age of 18 or 20 what you wanna do with your life? You really don't? So you're just guess you're just throwing darts at a board, so, okay, so you think, alright, so maybe I'll do this or that whatever and then because you're on that path then that eventually leads you into, I'm going to go into business school or medical school or law school or whatever it is that your parents really think would be the right thing for you to do. Uh And so you get sort of on a track and at some point you really do have to say to yourself, is this what I really want to do in my life or is this what other people think I should be doing in my life? And that gradual awakening that comes with maturity, It comes with experience and oftentimes where you find yourself at work, um can help you direct yourself to where your passion is.

So you can actually glide into something else within the same company, that might be something you really want to do, or maybe you will quit your job as I did come completely my very first job and decided, you know what, this is not serving me, I need to go learn and do something else. So, these are all I think life lessons that we learn. And now in my sixties, I have learned a lot of those lessons and I wish I could go back to my 20 year old self and say, look, you don't have to have life all figured out, it's okay. You will eventually find your path and I know this is not making you happy to go to work, you know, 9 to 5. Um and I know that there's something better in store for you, but just stick with it because everything you're doing now is going to help you with whatever you end up doing in the future. And that is absolutely true. All my marketing advertising pr work, everything I have ever done in my life. All the artwork that I did in my life, all of that has come into play since I became an author and managing my own business.

That has also come into play because I know what it is to meet deadlines, I know what it is to talk to clients. And right now my publisher and my readers are basically my clients. Right? So I know how to handle that and I know you know what it takes uh to be authentic in this world because working the pr agency, that's what we were always coaching people to do is be your authentic self. That is what really appeals to people. So these are all life lessons and work lessons that I will take to my grave and I have used throughout all of my various careers. Does that give you a good background on me? It really does, and that's so awesome. I love it. It's so insightful and such kind of practical um wisdom for us all, you know, because I think we all are so hard on ourselves and get hung up on, oh, am I doing the right thing or am I what is my purpose or I'm not, you know, so now it's interesting because at one point you said I wanted to be an artist, but you know, I mean you are an artist, right?

I mean you're writing, so how do you kind of, it's, you know, there's this kind of dichotomy there if I want to be this artist, But do you see yourself as an artist now with, I mean, the level of creativity you bring to your writing, it's just incredible. You are such a phenomenal writer. I loved reading the an artist. I haven't read the next one I'm going to, but um yeah, what are, what are your thoughts on that? Well, um, you know, thank you so much. Those are wonderful things to hear from readers. But yes, I think what I'm doing now is painting with words the kind of things that I couldn't do with watercolor and I couldn't do with oils. I'm able to do with words. And that is to really immerse the reader, the viewer in a paintings case uh, in the experience of whatever it is in front of them. I want to be immersed myself. And so I want to take all the readers with me on this journey. I want them to be in the scenes that I'm describing.

I want them to be in front of the characters uh that I'm portraying. It's very important for me that they feel that they are in the end because that is what we're all looking for. Right? When we read we want to escape. We want to escape from our the world that we're in right now and we want to just have a very different place that we can go to when we read. And then when we close the book and move on with the rest of our lives, we can be thinking about that other world that we were just in. So that's what I want my reader to experience. And yeah, I think what I'm doing now is painting with words. I I love that and it's absolutely what you're doing and yes, readers are experiencing that. Like, it's just it's been amazing. I'm so inspired by your work as a writer myself. Now, let me ask you, you know, I know you said you went to school for this, but do you really believe, I mean, that it's it can be learned in some sense, right? It's a skill that can be taught writing, but there's also like, you have a gift, you're an exceptional writer and there's a level of, right?

There's like that painter who can go to school and learn, but some will always just be innately, like, better, and it'll just come naturally to some people than some other students. So tell us talk to us about that, like, you're gifted and yes, you went to school and learned, but what are your thoughts on that? You know, I think that yes, so much of it is things that we absorb um just in our environment. I have always been a reader. So I have been reading since I was a little kid and I think through reading, you learn what pacing is all about in a novel, you learn how to develop characters and you learn the transformational arc of characters, you know, Emma uh jane Austen character does not stay the same throughout the book. Um you know, none of the characters ever stay the same throughout the book and that is something that you learn when you read books, there is a journey that that character is on, they're taking you with them on that journey and hopefully by the end you're gonna learn something about yourself through that character also, you are actually, in a sense, I think when you're an author, you're teaching other people lessons that maybe you want to impart them to them.

So I think that some of it is just absorbed through a lot of the reading that I have done. Um and then I think that informal classes here is what I learned uh taking classes at night while I was working on my marketing stuff in the daytime and then taking a full time MF a course for two years. What I learned is that uh you are with other people who are critiquing your writing. And it's very important to have readers and writers critique your writing because they're going to see things in your writing that you're not able to see yourself. And through that you're going to um you know, get an idea of what a reader outside of this sort of very celebrated environment of what a reader, what a common reader is going to think about your work as well. And when you critique other people's work, you are also looking at it with that I like if I were picking this book up in a library or a bookstore, what would I think about it?

So it's those workshops that you learn uh a lot about your writing from and you learn about other people's writing from, you learn about the mistakes they're making and you think, oh I'm not gonna make that mistake in mind. Um you learn about the mistakes that you're making and you're thinking okay in my next draft, I'm gonna make sure that I don't make that mistake again. Um so I think that it's both innate and learned, I think that the craft can be learned. Um but I think that the passion of that you impart in your writing, you know, the passion of describing characters of describing scenes of being in that environment, uh that is something that you can't teach people that has to come through you. And for me these are passion projects. My books are all passion projects and the passion project for me came about number one because I so strongly believe in the power of women, I so strongly believe in the ability of women and their absolute right to be able to make choices for themselves, a choice that my mother didn't have right.

So that's where I started the character of luxury and the henna artist, I wanted to give my mother a character who could be her but who gets to do all the things that she didn't get to do. So this is why luxury is so independent and why she's so determined to remain independent. Uh so that was a passion project for me to describe this character of luxury and the journey that she's on. And then as I was writing, it also became a passion project for me to talk about India in a very different way than it's usually talked about. And I think so much of that has to do with my own experience as an immigrant in this uh, in this white world and as an immigrant growing up around a lot of white kids who didn't really understand the eastern world and didn't understand why we smelled like curry or you know, couldn't understand why my mother wore a dot on her forehead and why she wore those saris and feeling like the other feeling so different feeling.

So like, um, not really accepted into the normal society. I wanted to give people an experience of what India is like. Why are women the way that they are? Why do they have observed certain customs that are not understood in this country? Why are there arranged marriages? What is so important about the festivals of the gods that are celebrated all over India and um, why it's so important to understand how a country that was colonized for over 200 years, uh, deserves to be admired for how resilient they have been in coming through as a democracy 70 years later. So, um, I think that all of these things are, you, you know, really at the core of me, things that I wanted to explain to people that I couldn't explain before I started writing novels. I I you know, it would take a treatise for me to explain all of that, but I can do it through fiction very naturally.

So that is another thing that can't be taught. You know, the passion for your project cannot be taught. It has to come through you through your heart. I love that now. Um you know, this story wanting to kind of express your mom or give her this, you know, agency in this way that she might not have had. Is this something I know you were working on the book for some time before it actually came out, but how long have you been kind of mulling this over? I mean, had this been like years in the making before you even got to the writing stage? Or you know, I think I started before I got to my uh m. F. A program, I was taking a couple of evening classes and that's really where the germ of the idea came in. It also came in because I was starting to travel with my mother back to Jeff or where a lot of our extended family still lives. And as I was taking these trips with her, I was asking her, you know, I was curious mom, you know, what was it like for you as an 18 year old?

Was it like for you as a 22 year old? Um you know, did you were you scared when you met dad for the first time? Uh you know on the monday up, you know, getting married the first night um you know, what was it, what was it like for you to be a young mother and to have three kids in rapid succession. Were you able to handle it all? So she was starting to answer these questions for me and I think what was really prescient for me at that time is that she was remembering things as we were in India um references to that past that I think she had not also thought about in decades. And so she was able to be very honest with me to to mention some details that I had never been privy to and I could incorporate a lot of those details in some of the characters of the henna artist. And then in addition to that I I was talking to my father a lot and I was like dad, you know they use the word uh you know um that you know they say similar here, They don't say Shimla, why do we say Shimla, you know, so there's a lot of those kinds of differences.

And I started to talk to my dad and my dad then started to open up a lot more about him being a young engineer in Rajasthan at the time that I'm writing uh you know about and what it meant for the country to have all of these young engineers and architects, you know, rebuilding India. How that was really important for him. He really heard the call and he wanted to be a part of India's rebuilding. And um how he used to go on Gandhi marches when he was a teenager. He used to skip school to do that. Um you know, he grew up in a village where he studied by the street street lamp, you know, because they didn't have electricity and they didn't have running water in their home. So there's a lot of things that I also learned from my dad. Uh and I think just trying to imagine my mom and dad in that environment, I was so helpful while I was actually there while I was visiting villages while I was visiting cities in India. Um and just, you know, trying to be as authentic as I could to their experiences.

So a lot of that had started prior to my education at the M. F. A. Program, but then during the M. F. A. Program you have to complete something for your thesis. Right? So I completed a version of the Henna artist. It was probably my third or fifth draft that became my thesis. And so I was working with my mentor and several thesis advisers throughout to get this to get the book out. It was a little different from what you read now 10 years later because it would then take me another eight years after my MFA program was over to get this published. And it wasn't because I was sending it out to a lot of publishers. My path was very different. Um Initially, my mentor sent my manuscript off to her agent and then her agent called me and said I'd really like to represent you. I never went through the experience of sending my manuscript out to several different agents and trying to get an agent.

It happened that quickly. And she said, you know, you really got something here. I know this is something that is not being published anywhere else. I would really like to help you with this. So I thought we were going to get published right away and she said, no, no, no, you still have a lot of work to do on this novel. Well, I didn't realize that at the end of an M. F. A. Program with this manuscript intact, that I wouldn't get published right away. Like, nobody tells you that, right, nobody tells you you're not ready yet. You have not gone through enough drafts, enough revisions, enough learning about writing a novel and pacing and character development to be able to publish a novel right away. It doesn't happen like that. And so my agent had me working on it for so many years before she would agree to send it out to a publisher and I'm so grateful to her for keeping it. Um you know, in the Safe until she really felt it was ready. If we had sent this novel out, when I thought it was ready, we would never have gotten it published.

It wasn't developed enough, the characters weren't developed enough. Lakshmi's transformational arc wasn't developed enough, neither was poverty's, neither was hurries, you know, all of those journeys that they were on were only half complete at the time that I thought we were ready to be published. And I think that anybody who's out there, who is developing a novel, what I would say to them is don't think that because you're ready, you're actually ready. You need to have a professional looking at that novel, either a professional freelance editor or an agent who's seasoned and has been in the business for a long time, you need to have people like that telling you whether you are ready to send it out, don't be anxious about sending it out right away. Make sure your very first foray into the publishing world is a winner, because then you do get a second book contract and the third book contract.

So, my third book is coming out next March and I am working on my fourth book now, wow, oh my God, I love it now, you know, is like kind of more of a some tips for writers. So, when you are going back to Jeff poor and you're kind of there and this idea is being born about putting these characters and the story together and you're kind of enquiring, you know, from your parents and stuff, You're are you know, taking at that point because just the vividness of you know, the color and how you describe things, it's so descriptive and so intricate. So are you really, you're incorporating these little scenes and things you're seeing in colors and um what not? Is that kind of, was that part of the process? I don't take notes like that. That's so funny that you mention that. So I don't take notes like that and I don't even record it on video or anything like that, I just remember it I think because I have a visual memory, some people do write, Some people have a verbal memory, they can remember word for word, a conversation they had with somebody else.

But I have a visual memory. So when I try to recall something, it comes to me fully formed with all of the colors, all the patterns, all the people, everything is right there in front of me and I just start writing down what I'm seeing. So uh yeah, I think for me it's a visual memory and maybe that is something that comes from my art background, right? Because when you learn to paint or sketch or draw, you are told to observe things so carefully, you know, like if I were to um draw, let's say you right now, I would say, oh, you know, your hair has a little bit of brown, but also strands of gray and maybe even a little green, so that's how I would pull out the paints in order to do your hair. Uh and I would say that, you know, your blouse, even though it looks like it's black, really? There are tinges of silver and also I would think a little bit of yellow, I'm gonna put a little bit of yellow where the highlights are.

So this is how you really learn to observe tiny, tiny, tiny details of everything that you're looking at. And it really helps with the writing because it's, it's just visually so vibrant for me to remember all those details and then to write them down. I love that. Now, tell us, is there something you do? Um other than the writing to kind of spark creativity, is there some kind of, do you get into nature, is there some level of soul work or what else are you doing to kind of keep yourself inspired and stay, you know, on top of the creativity? Um I move a lot, so I walk a lot, I will ride my bike, I will swim, I love to do this water aerobics class that's near my house. Um So I move and um let's say that I'm sitting for a couple of hours and writing. Well I need to get up and do something else now because I'm gonna stop thinking maybe about what I've been writing and just get into the movement or I'm still thinking about what I was writing, but I have a question about it, like I don't know if the carry is going to laugh here or cry or whatever.

And so I am going to start thinking about it as I move. And the beautiful thing about movement is that it actually starts moving the brainwaves, it starts moving the ideas that you have in your head. There is a physical one on one that happens with your brain as well as with your body. And I love that because oftentimes if I'm stuck with a character and I'm not quite sure if they're gonna go in direction a or direction be the movement will help me uh you know, get them out of that that mode that stuck place and start them moving again to uh So I do a lot of movement. Um I'm not a big music person, I know a lot of people listen to music while they um while they write, I need to have quiet. Actually I need to have absolute quiet. Um You know my husband can write while he is listening to music and I'm like, oh my God, how that that is just too much distraction. I need to, you know, just be thinking about what I'm writing at the moment.

Um What else do I do I talk to people uh you know, I talked to friends, I um when I'm walking I often will walk with a friend and that's always a really nice thing to do because you know, they'll ask so what are you writing today? And I might tell them about a scene I'm doing and where I'm stuck and maybe they have ideas, maybe they don't, but in talking about it, I am able to figure out some directions. I often do that with my husband, I'm talking to him and I'm like okay I'm in the scene and I've got Malik here and I've got luxury here and I've got rather here and I'm trying to blah blah blah blah blah. And then just in talking about it, I'll go, oh I know what she needs to do. So that is also super helpful. I think a lot of writers think that if they tell somebody about what they're writing about that they'll steal the idea. Believe me, that does not happen. Your you can only write what you write, Nobody else can write that for you, nobody else can take your idea and write it.

You know, think about all of the adaptations that have been made of the jane Austen books bright and prejudice and um and uh you know, Emma and sense and sensibility. All of these books have been taken and then they've been developed into more modern fiction. Um think about how nobody else could have written that, right, it's the same premise, but nobody else could write any of those adaptations the way that they did. So, don't ever worry about sharing your ideas with people. Talking about your idea is a way to develop it further. So, think about that. I always used to worry about people, you know, stealing ideas when I first started, and I realized, no, everybody's on their own journey, everybody's got their own idea about what they want to write, and they're not gonna take your idea and run with it, because it's it's not their idea. That is awesome. And it was that for you what guided you? I mean, was there at any point, like, a little inkling of fear or fear of failure, as you're, you know, going on this journey of, like, okay, I'm gonna devote myself to writing a novel.

That's a huge undertaking, right? So, well, that, kind of, come in there at any point. Yeah, but do keep in mind that, you know, I didn't quit my day job, so, I was still doing my marketing and advertising, I still had a way to pay my mortgage. And uh so I was, you know, I was meeting my bills at the same time that I'm working on this novel. And so, for me, there was no fear about the money, you know, like, how am I going to support myself? That wasn't an issue for me? I thought, if this novel gets published, it's gonna be great. That's all I read, Really wanted. The fear that I had about the novel was along the lines of this, which is very different. I worried that a lot of people from South Asia would say, you don't get to write about India, you don't get to write about our lives back in the 50s, you were around and frankly, you've lived in the United States since you were nine, you don't get to do that. And my biggest fear was that they would say this is not authentic. So, I went way out of my way to make sure that I did the research that I talked to the people who were alive back then, that I um you know, read the books and watched the movies from that era, just to really make sure that I could inhabit this time period and and help my readers inhabit it.

And so now the comments I get back from people are, oh my God, how did you make this so authentic? How did you make this feel so real? Uh you know, we we we know that you haven't lived in this era, we know that you haven't lived here in such a long time, but people from jaguar will tell me it's just like Jack, where, I mean, it's it's just like I remembered it when I lived there when my mom lived there when my grandmother lived. It's it's exactly the way that it is. So, um I think that you just I just had to be super, super careful about making sure that I could handle that, I could combat my fears doing something very realistic. Does that make sense? You know, your, your fear is only as big as you allow it to be. If this is the fear sitting in front of me, I have to think to myself how can I allay those fears? What is it that I can do to handle this and then start doing those things and so once I did all of those things I just sat back and thought well I've done my best, let's see what happens and then it was wonderful that it happened the way that I would have wanted it to happen now.

Do you believe in fate and destiny? I think in a way I do, I think that everything has pointed me in this direction, I just didn't know it at the time, I think I was always meant to be a writer but I didn't know it at the time, you know, I haven't known it for all those decades. Uh and I do think that a lot of this is my mother is doing like I think that my mother is always with me now, she is always behind me, she is always watching me. I think that none of this would be possible had it not been for my mother, the life that she lived, I got a chance to immortalize her which I didn't really even realize I was doing uh and you know I was at this conference in santa fe and after I did my keynote, a woman came up to me, it was a writers conference and she came up to me and she said you know I hope you don't think I'm crazy. But I saw your mom standing behind you, you know three ft behind you while you were talking and she had on this golden sari and she was talking to you in hindi.

But the woman said I I don't know hindi so I don't know exactly what she was saying when she I know she was talking to you in your language and um she was just beaming with pride and so I think to myself, well maybe other people can see my mother on my journey. I don't know but I feel that none of this would be happening if it hadn't been for her being behind all of this. And I think she is somehow propelling it to go further and further and further. Mm I love that. That is so beautiful. Um Now what you know the success like what is it like what has it meant for you? How is there a sense of inner fulfillment? What's coming up for you through all of this. Yeah, I think the fulfillment comes in uh in the two parts that I really wanted to make sure I could um help realize and one of those was uh to help my mother have a life in fiction that she didn't get to have.

And number two, I got a chance to, I think correct some of the misperceptions about India or to even educate people and inform people about what happened to India after independence. And you know, how much of what India has been able to accomplish has nothing to do with the british, we cannot give the british all of that kudos that I think the world gives them today. Uh I think so much of it is just indians saying we have our country back, it's much smaller than it used to be now. We no longer have Pakistan, we no longer have a salon. Uh you know, now it's just us and we need to figure out how to educate our kids and how to build our schools and build our universities and which industries are we going to focus on going forward. And I think that just informing people about all of that has been really helpful and I hear that from readers every single day, I hear from readers, um You know, I've done something like 742 book clubs at this point now on zoom in the last couple of years.

And um one thing I keep hearing from readers is I didn't know this much about India and now I've never wanted to go and now I really want to go, I want to see what it's all about. Um and I think that there is no greater satisfaction in me than having somebody say India to me is now more positive than negative. Oh I love that. And now for you, what is so are you just gonna be writing now forever and ever? Is this where it's at? Yeah, I'm gonna be writing and um you know, I keep telling people that I'm gonna work on my new yorker cartoons about my dogs because that's also another fantasy I've always had and I thought, hey, I'm not getting any younger. I may as well get started on that too. Um and I am putting together because so many people like you and your audience are asking me about, you know, can I teach them how to write or you know, can I school them in some way with their novels? So I thought, okay why don't I do my own master class?

So I'm putting together a master class this summer and it's going to be like six, you know, half hour videos and um it, you know, people can just buy it online if they want to, but it's gonna be all about those things that you don't learn in a class that you don't learn in your master's programs. Um and it's just like practical stuff, you know, I don't know why they don't teach any of this stuff. You know, they're they're trying to get you into this kind of lofty artistic space, but there's so much of the practical stuff that you need to know in order to get on becoming a full time author. Okay, last couple of questions for you. So one what has this done for you? Like as far as your own kind of soul evolution? I think it's helped me to find my voice. I think for so many years I wanted to say all these things to people. I wanted to talk about why I believe that women deserve more than they're getting in this world. Um, and why I think India deserves more positive accolades than negative ones.

Um, I just didn't have a voice. I didn't have a platform. Now, I have a platform and I can couch all of my messages in fiction, which is very um pleasurable to me. Uh, and a lot of people can hear it and believe it and, you know, um, change their minds about things. Uh, and I think I hear from so many women across the world who don't have luxuries independent life still to this day, who would love to have more of the control over their destiny. And I wish for all of those women that at some point they will have the kind of freedom that you and I have to realize our best selves. That is awesome. Now, last question for you. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you so much for your time today. I am like so honored and just um so inspired and I just thank you for your time here today.

It means so much to me. Oh, you're so welcome to. It's it's lovely to be here. It's lovely to chat with you know, people who understand books and who want to talk about writing. I'm more than happy to talk about that anytime. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much. And now in closing, if there is a message, some words of wisdom, your hope for us all, what would you like to leave us with? You can do this, whatever it is that you want to do in your life, put one ft in front of the other, take the baby steps and you can make it happen for yourself. I think it's very hard in this lifetime to be perfect at everything or to have success immediately at at anything, but that's not why you're doing the things that you want to do in your life, the things you want to do in your life are coming from somewhere in here and as long as you follow that you are going to be successful here.

Okay, so that matters more than anything is to be successful in your own person, to feel that success, to feel that you have a voice and a platform and I hope for all of you that success. I hope that that brings you a lot of joy. I love it, Thank you so much, You're welcome.