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Nov. 24, 2020

Hannah Wells

Hannah Wells
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This week I unfriend Hannah Wells, Lululemon Compensation Analyst and former American Eagle Co-Worker. 
We discuss the low stakes of making friends as a kid, the archaic way we used to write Facebook messages, how to leave big cities, and best practices in distracting your co-workers at your minimum wage jobs. 
Don't forget to check out friendlesspod.com for more details on the upcoming collection BUTTHEAD and December's very special Average Advent Calendar. 

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Transcript
James Avramenko:

Friendless is presented by the Saskatchewan Podcast Network. Hello, my sweet babies. We are back. This is Friendless the only show about how to lose all your Facebook friends one hour at a time. I am as always your host James Avramenko. This week on the show I unfriend an old coworker of mine from my time in the stockroom of American Eagle, Hannah Wells. Hannah is a compensation analyst for Lululemon. And yes, we do explain what that means in the interview, as well as the mother of three of the most cherubic children you're ever going to see. We discussed the low stakes of making friends his kid, the archaic way, we used to write Facebook messages, how to leave big cities, and best practices in distracting your co workers at your minimum wage jobs. One note, before we jump in, we had some tech issues in the first recording of the interview, and we actually had to go back and rerecord the first, roughly 10 minutes of the episode, you'll notice there's a bit of an audio quality shift. So just bear with me as I do my best to navigate editing way above my training level. I do have some really exciting announcements for friendless at the end of the episode, so do be sure to stick around to them. I'll tell you all about the amazing December all the plans we have going forward with the show and with some really fun gifts. So stick around to them. But that's then this is now so for now lay back and enjoy my interview but Hannah wells here on Friendless. So it's, it's it's crazy that we like I don't think I've actually I don't know if we've actually seen each other since probably when you moved away from Victoria in like, what would that have been about? 2006 2007?

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, like, I was probably 18 or 19. Yeah,

James Avramenko:

like just babies. We were all just babies. My God. Um, and so. So in that interim, what's what's been up?

Hannah Wells:

Just a few things. I went to i, we met while I was living in Victoria, which is where I grew up. And then I went to school in Vancouver, I went to UBC. So I got my degree there in finance and I spent time living and working in Vancouver for the next 12 years. I guess it was about two years ago that I left. I left Vancouver, but in the in the time that I was there, I just went through school and then had a myriad of different jobs and ended up working for Lululemon for the last seven years.

James Avramenko:

Right. And what were you doing there?

Hannah Wells:

I work in the head office and I work on as a compensation analyst. So yeah, working with our pay programs for Lululemon, which is funny because it's sort of a round round trip back to where we met at American Eagle.

James Avramenko:

Right. Okay, so that's the funny kind of connection. Is that so, like, is that that's sort of what brought you to Lululemon right was sort of like there was echoes of American Eagle there or was it purely just that like it was a job that you could get into?

Hannah Wells:

No, it definitely I've always been interested in like working with retailers. Obviously. At the time I was working at American Eagle. I was like 15 years old. So obviously, I'm not thinking career level work. But um, yeah, I love I'm not like an overly fashionable person. But I do like, working for retailers. I feel like it's a really interesting, like industry to work in. So yeah, it is. It did come sort of full circle for me, with where I ended up.

James Avramenko:

And now and now you're now you're now in Vernon, right?

Hannah Wells:

Mm hmm. Yeah. And it took us a while to get here.

James Avramenko:

Okay, well, yeah. So So what's the story behind kind of you escaping the drudgery of Vancouver?

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, I actually, I think I loved living in Vancouver. And I was I moved there at 18. And I think by the time we left, I was about 30. So I lived there for 12 years. I absolutely loved it. And when you're young and childless and living the life It's so fun and such a great place to be and then once I met my husband, and we started having kids And we have three kids, and they're all born really quickly together. So they're right now they're one, two and four, we just realized pretty quickly that our lifestyle was just not going to work in Vancouver, just in terms of literally, affording a house that can fit all of our human beings. And then just yeah, lifestyle, like I felt like, it got to a point where it was 45 minutes to drive to do anything, we love to be outdoors, we'd love hiking, and biking and all that stuff. And it just felt like Vancouver just like wasn't the place for us anymore. Um, but it was really hard to figure out where where was the place for us, because we had to keep in mind, our jobs, both my husband and I both work in like business, I luckily, have been able to keep my job through this whole thing. I work remotely, which is amazing. My husband wasn't able to. And so we had to keep in mind where we could work and where the lifestyle seemed to make sense for us where we could afford a big house and a yard and all that. So we briefly dipped back into Victoria for like six months. And I think we moved there at the end of summer. And I think by like six weeks after we moved there. I told my husband like just kidding. I don't want to live here.

James Avramenko:

you know. It's funny, Victoria like for as as, as treasured a time as it is my memory. It's also a place I don't really ever want to go back to

Hannah Wells:

Yeah,

James Avramenko:

and I can't help but feel like, you know, I went there only for school. I can't help but wonder like what you must feel for having grown up there.

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, I loved growing up there. And I felt like in my head, I had this like beautiful, magical thing. And when I actually moved there, I was like, I feel like this is sort of like Vancouver, but just not quite as big, but very similar. So, it just like was not the lifestyle change. I thought it would be. And I also just found I grew up in Oak Bay, and it's a really small community. And so everywhere I went, I was just surrounded by really the people that I grew up with, which isn't bad, but it just wasn't. It wasn't what we were looking for. Yeah. So we eventually ended up to moving to Vernon. And we love it up here.

James Avramenko:

That's amazing. I you know, I like we're currently in Saskatoon. And as much as I you know, as much as I do enjoy it, I do feel like there's still something not quite settled for us here. You know. And so I just I love hearing stories of people who pick up stakes, especially leaving big cities like somewhere like Vancouver, I love stories of people getting out of there. I do love. Um, I love the, the how flabbergasted people are when you say you're gonna leave Vancouver because it's one of those cities that so many people are convinced is the end of the line. It's like, it's like, it's like this dream city that they're always trying to get to and once they're there, they're done. And it's like Vancouver kind of sucks though. Like, in a lot of ways. It's great in a lot of ways. But in a lot of ways kind of blows and, and this sort of like it you know, I don't know if it's like incredulity, or something about like, about there being other places that are worth living.

Hannah Wells:

Yeah. I mean, people in Vancouver, they're always like, oh, but the lifestyle the biking. Like they have to drive like 45 minutes to get anywhere like and here like in Vernon, you aren't like our closest Park is a five minute drive and, and when we move we're moving soon and it'll be a two minute walk. So everything is just so much smaller here and you could just do a lot more but yeah, people feel very shocked, especially moving to a place like Vernon, which is not like I wouldn't say it has the cachet of it's pretty much what everybody else thinks is kind of like a hick town, but I love that.

James Avramenko:

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, there's something really to be said for just for just knowing what you want and living there. It's it's kind of I mean, we're in the era where it's not like you need to go to stores. In fact. You shouldn't be so it's really good to do like online ordering and stuff. But yeah, but speaking of speaking of shopping, though, so that brings us to where we met, doubling back is so we met at American Eagle. And so what what kind of got you into that role, like into that job? Is it like is it as simple as like, I needed a summer job or was it like something more?

Hannah Wells:

Pretty much I mean, I think like I said, I think I was 15 when I started there. So yeah, like I I don't think I had much of a thought other than like, I should probably work somewhere where I get a discount on clothes. So that was pretty much the full thinking but then I ended up working there for three years. Yeah I mean, it wasn't, it ended up being a really good choice for me and a really good place to work. But I don't think a lot of forethought went into working there. So yeah, when I was preparing for this podcast, I went through our messages from 2006, at the very beginning of when I ever had Facebook, and I wanted to see what we were up to, in those days. And I realized that I had this like, love for our stores assistant manager at the time. And, and I was laughing so hard reading all these messages, because I'm now looking at it as like, somebody in my 30s. Like, I have no idea how old this person was that I was, like, in love with and I think he probably was. I don't know what he thought of it. I definitely don't think he was interested in me. I was like, literally 15. But anyways, these messages were quite funny. I just tried to read into everything. And yeah, it was it was like a good trip down memory lane.

James Avramenko:

Outrageous just talking about people. Oh my god. That's one thing that I don't do enough. And I feel like I need to is like going back and rereading old messages. I think the reason I usually forget is because a lot of the time I didn't really use messengers. So it's like, there's not really anything there. Like, I can't tell you how many people come on the show. And it's like, the very first message we've ever sent each other is me inviting them to come on.

Hannah Wells:

Oh, really? Oh, my goodness. Well, after this, you should go for a little trip down memory lane.

James Avramenko:

I'd really love to hear about what you do at Lululemon. So you were saying you mentioned that? You, that's where you met your husband through the financials? Is that is that still where you are? Or?

Hannah Wells:

So? Yeah, my husband and I met working in the finance department. Um, and I still work for Lululemon, but not in that department. So I work our our department is called people and culture, which is like Lululemon for human resources. Okay. Basically, everything we say at work is like, no one would understand we have words for everything. But yeah, so I what I actually do is i'm a compensation analyst. So I my role is sort of, like, in between what somebody in finance and somebody in human resources would, would do. So I, I work with data to, to work on, basically the base pay ranges and incentive programs for all of Lululemon.

James Avramenko:

Oh, like through the whole, like, do you have like a, you know, a Western Hemisphere? Or is it like the whole thing? Like how big is your range?

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, our team, we have a big team, I think we have 10 people in North America. And then we have two people for APAC, and two people for EMEA. Sorry, Asia, Asia Pacific, and Europe, Middle East, Africa, and other.

James Avramenko:

Oh my God I love insider language like that. Awesome.

Hannah Wells:

Um, but yeah, so we've got a big team. So our team, in particular is responsible for everything North America, so but our team is split up. So we have one team that focuses on executive comp, and one team that focuses on the head office, which we call store Support Center. And then so what I mostly am responsible for is our GEC, which is our call centers, and our distribution centers. And then we also have for a long time I worked with North American retail so like the actual retail stores, that's what I did for the bulk of the time that I was in this role, but since coming back from maternity leave this time, I've taken on a different group.

James Avramenko:

So what would be what would be sort of an average day? Would it be something like you know, like, cuz you're saying you're doing partially financial partially human? Yeah. So like, would it be like somebody coming to complain about a paycheck or, or like how like, how, what would a day look like?

Hannah Wells:

we're so are. So okay, so for a day for me, I would say I spent about half of the day on zoom meetings and half of the day in Excel. And we one of the sort of like more task oriented things that we do is calculate the bonuses. So we have obviously a lot of different incentive programs for our stores. And even for like our guested Education Center, and for our DCs, they all have different bonus programs. So we need to calculate all the bonuses. But the bulk of the work at my level, there's like all the different levels within our team and what I spend the most amount of my time doing is sort of in like incentive design, and comprehends design. So we pull, we get data from these really large survey companies that all of the like all retailers in North America are submitting data every year to these huge survey companies. And then they give the data back to us. And that's been anonymized. And we use that to determine where we want to pay our employees, because we want to pay them, we have like a pay philosophy of what part of the market data, we would like to pay them out. So for example, if we would pay them at the 75th percentile, that means we would pay them better than 75% of other similar retailers. And so yeah, basically, a bulk of my work is pulling together data points like that to create base pay ranges. And then the incentive design part is actually really interesting, because really, what we're looking at is ensuring that we're like driving behaviors through our bonus programs. So no matter like, depending on how you bonus, you can drive really different behaviors. And so a lot of our work is ensuring that our bonus programs are working and everything changes, especially through COVID, obviously, there's been a huge change. So primarily, we were brick and mortar before, like most of our business was through the stores, whereas now like e commerce is like, a huge component now, and our distribution centers are working at a higher, faster pace than ever. So now most of my work right now has been working with trying to like redesign, how we're how we're paying bonus and, and salary to these people who are working in, in, like distribution centers, and Guest Education Center, which is the call center, which previously was not as big of a deal. And then now it's it's huge, like the

James Avramenko:

biggest deal. Yeah.

Hannah Wells:

And it's, it's really changing, like we're seeing it's really changing, like the face of retail, and how how retailers are, are facing this gonna be really different. And we're gonna feel like a lot of change.

James Avramenko:

I feel like since so much of our friendship was around that sort of year, year and a half where I was around American Eagle. I guess I'll jump, I'll start with that question of what is your most vivid memory of our friendship?

Hannah Wells:

I have a couple of vivid memories. And I remember my two most vivid is one. When I was in university, I was still coming back to Victoria to visit my parents, and you were still living in Victoria at the time, I assumed going to university, I don't even remember it. Um, but I brought my girlfriend back with me as well. And we just went over to your place with your friends. And this is the part where I won't expand on what we were doing. And we just had the most hysterically funny like, we were watching a movie or something. And we still talk about it to this day, just like we both remember just having the most fun and I thought that your group of friends were just so hilarious. And that you guys, I just think I felt at that time that you guys were so much older than us, even though I'm pretty sure you're maybe a year older than me.

James Avramenko:

If that even

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, but at that time, it just felt like this like and especially because I wasn't really overly artsy or creative. And your friends were just so different than the people that I was normally around. And you were so different than my other friends that I had. Yeah, I have this vivid memory of just just laughing so hard all afternoon. And yeah, it's just it's stuck with me. And then the other kind of memories that I have are all like you in the stock room at American Eagle just making me laugh endlessly. And yeah, I don't even know like, I think I had been there so long and knew I was leaving. I don't think I was in a place where I really cared about my, my job at that point in time. I was just there to like, have fun. And like, I don't know, I just you were so funny and so different than the other people that I had been like exposed to up until that point. And generally the crowd that I was with wasn't really, they weren't super similar in interest to like what you were into. So yeah,

James Avramenko:

you know, it's funny, because that's how I always remember, especially you but but like basically the entire like American Eagle crew is like, because I remember when I got hired. I originally got hired as a salesman, and so I was on the floor with everybody. But I didn't. I didn't give a shit about the job because I was like, No, no, like, I am here for a paycheck. I'm not trying to like work my way up. I don't want I want to be assistant manager. I don't want to be a key holder. I am literally just here for my paycheck and I'm gonna go home at the end and I'm gonna smoke a big joint and I'm not gonna give a shit. Right, you know? Yeah, I mean, that was the what was in the in the lore of my friends that was called the Mayfair house and that was,

Hannah Wells:

yeah. Yeah.

James Avramenko:

It's just that place was just utter debauchery.

Hannah Wells:

Yeah. Oh my gosh I remember that,

James Avramenko:

but I remember. I remember though, in American Eagle, they after like, maybe two weeks. They put me in the stock room because I was distracting everyone too much. Because I would just like, I'd be like, yeah, that's shirts great. Do you are you gonna buy it? Okay, cool. Let's, let's bring you out. Oh, like, and then and then I would just talk to everybody. Right. And so I was like, you know, and I was like, 18, and I didn't give a shit. And so yeah. So they put me in the stockroom. And then, and then everyone ended up just coming into the stock room like, everybody. Everybody just always needed something from the stock room.

Hannah Wells:

I remember when I was looking at these old, old old Facebook messages between us. I guess back in the day, people used to find messages like I would be like, from Hannah. Like, even though clearly it was from me. And you always find you find it Faithfully Yours, the Stockboy. So funny.

James Avramenko:

Does money spark joy in your life or cause you stress? If you said stress, you're not alone. For 42% of Canadians, their biggest stressor comes from money. I connexus. They care about your financial well being money doesn't have to be stressful. And connexus is here to help. The connects is hashtag money talk blog provides expert advice, tips and solutions for all life stages and events, getting married, buying a house budgeting, saving, they covered all and more. And did I mentioned it's free? Check it out today at connects us money talk.ca and start feeling confident and stress free about your money. How do you define friendships?

Hannah Wells:

That's a really good question. I think for me in the place I am in my life. Now there's so many facets to it. Um, I think I am a person who like really values a long term connection with people. So I am a person who has a few good friends and not a lot of acquaintances. So my true true friends I've had for a long time. So the ones who that I, who I, the people who I connect the most with and are my closest friends. They don't live at Vernon, like I did not meet them in the last year and a half that I've lived here. And I've met them and, you know, most of them more than 10 years ago. So in that way, you know, our friendship is mostly over over a, you know, text message or over social media. Like, I have one friend who she's one of my very closest friends, Beth and she and I have lived together in Vancouver but we only live together for I believe about a year. And then she lived in the city with her boyfriend for about another year. And then since then, for the past, like 10 years, she's either lived in Calgary or Toronto, and we have just maintained friendship through texting each other and I we fly to see each other. But then, then there's also like all these other aspects of friendship to me, like there's that big, true friend and that deep friendship, but then, like you say, like, my kids are starting to socialize mostly at their daycare these days, because of COVID we're not allowed to have friends outside of like, your friends. But they're like trying to, you know, meet friends and my kids are my youngest is one, my middle child is two and my eldest is four. So they're still quite little to really be figuring these things out. But my four year old has recently become began to be more clear about who is his friend from daycare, and he really like wants to see them and he wants to like invite them over for sleepovers like and like you're four I don't think that your friends can come over for sleepovers. But for them it's just like this new world of of anyone that they want to play with can be their friend for the day like they don't see things. So long term and Like deeply the way we do. Um, and then yeah, I think the most interesting thing these days for me is just being in a new city for the last year and a half. And I've found that it's actually been a pretty big struggle to make. In person friends, I feel like friendships these days, means like, I have a connection online. Like, it's so hard for me, at least I have found to find in person friendships, like people who really want to get together and like, go for a hike or get together for wine, or whatever it might be. I, I'm like a pretty outgoing person, I definitely want to make friends where we are. And I am the person who's like at the park, giving the other moms my phone number. And like I've joined, you know, everything I can try to join here, like run clubs and everything. And yeah, I've just found it has been a lot harder than I would have thought to make real in-person friendships. Because I think that with social media, and with everything being online these days, and I think that is how the vast majority of people maintain their friendships, that's just right. E-friends.

James Avramenko:

Do you think do you think that we've lost some ability to be vulnerable in front of live people? It's, it's something that I think about a lot with, yeah, okay. It's, it's something that I think about with, with meeting people in person, is that, because I'm having the very same experience, my wife, and I moved to Saskatoon, just over three years ago. And, you know, we only really have maybe two, maybe three, like, what I would call like, pretty good friends. And even then it's still sometimes shaky, because it's like, even after three years, we're still sort of figuring out who each other are. And there's this almost like, I don't know if the word I don't know, I don't know exactly what the right word is. But there's this sort of like, concealment of who you really are in person that I think a lot of people reveal much more easily online, because of the, you know, whether for whatever number of reasons, right, if you're behind the screens, you can be anonymous, or whatever it may be, but but I definitely understand that that that struggled to make live friends. And I wonder, what the like, what the impact of social media is on that.

Hannah Wells:

And I think for me, I mean, I think there's a few things in my life that helped me bring that vulnerability into relationships that not everyone gets. So my husband, for example, has like, these guys, like two friends that he's had his whole life since he was a kid, and they'll just be friends. And he's fine with that. Like, he doesn't need to go out and meet all these people to like, have a social drink, but like he could care less. Yeah, whereas I do want that connection. And for me, I have found that two things really bring down the barriers. One is being a mom, I feel like those. I do think like you have to have, like, I don't know how people bring down that like vulnerability and vulnerability barrier in person unless there's like a connecting thing. So for me a lot of times, being a mom, because being a mom and like being a parent is like so full on and humbles you so greatly. That you have your life together. And then you have kids and you realize that you are like an absolute disaster and can't keep anything working. So I think that Yeah, Mom will be like the first ticket. Like, you'll often hear mom's like, in, like, out of like a park or whatever, talking about, like, super intimate details of their lives and their bodies and everything where you because you're like, Well, whatever, she's a mom, she's been through it, like you have that connection. And then for me, also, I've found that activity has been that thing. So with my running friends, I feel like when you're doing like a physical activity together, and you're not looking at each other, it's a lot easier to be vulnerable. So running alongside somebody, you're like, the things that people share and talk about, I think are like a lot more deep and meaningful than what they would share if I was to just like, meet somebody at work and try to become a friend with them.

James Avramenko:

RIght. How do you like how do you talk when you're running?

Hannah Wells:

I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess if you ran a lot, it's not that hard.

James Avramenko:

Right ok, cause for me, I'm like, Oh my God. I take a run around the block and I want to vomit, right?

Hannah Wells:

Yeah me and my girlfriend. We run in the park. Like on trails or whatever. And we always say like, Oh, we don't need to bring a bear belt, because all we do is like, natter at each other loudly. So we don't run so fast that we can't breathe.

James Avramenko:

We are in a time that nobody was expecting, you know, nobody was really socially ready for, and I think that all the all the social interactions that we had normalized and grown accustomed to have all been completely thrown out the window. And so I wonder, with these new contexts, and with these new types of interactions and zoom calls, and you're on mute, and all these other things, what do you think it takes to be a good friend in? You know, I guess now it's almost 2021?

Hannah Wells:

I think. I think what it takes is still showing up physically, for me. Yeah, I mean, when possible, not to say that my friends who live across the country aren't being good friends, but I think when you can, to be there to show up, even if it's six feet away, like, I think that means something to me, I don't know if it means something to everybody. But to me, there is a difference between face to face contact and seeing people's emotions on their face and trying to read it through text. I think that I think that it's still important. And these days, it's so difficult in order to have that contact that I think it's maybe like, I guess my worry is that people will De-prioritize that and stop viewing that as, like a part of friendship. And, um, you know, especially these days, like in, I don't know, obviously, all the regulations are different everywhere. But here right now, you can only have, I think you can have six guests over to your house. And, you know, I'm a family of five. So, like, we can go to like, one, like, so my in laws or whatever, we can go to their house and not that, like we can't, it is like limiting our social interactions in person so much. And yeah, I think for me, being a good friend means showing up in person, and I think it means being vulnerable. Because vulnerability for me is really, like, very important. And yeah, not to be like, oh, Brene Brown about it, but like it is.

James Avramenko:

Brene Brown is the best.

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, she's a big, big love of ours for Lululemon. I think those two things really are it for me. And I think everybody, I think everybody has a different view of what they need out of friendship. And like, for me, I have, you know, I have a busy household. I, I, I have that interaction all the time, but I was like, like, real deep interaction with other people who are willing to be vulnerable with, like, where they're at in their life as well. And I would say that I still am finding it and still am able to maintain it through through, even through COVID. And I just have to be like, very creative, I say, or you have to really like running.

James Avramenko:

Yeah, right. Exactly. You know, that's really interesting, because the idea of, it's something that I'm really hearing a lot of, in a lot of the, in a lot of my interviews and something that really resonates with me is that it, it hasn't really changed what it takes to be a good friend, it hasn't really changed what it takes to be a good person. It's, it's and and i agree so wholeheartedly with the idea of honesty and vulnerability, you know, it's like, just live open and live, live nicely, you know? Like, it's, it's, it's it, you know, maybe this sounds very, like bleeding heart hippy to some, but it's like, I'm shocked that more people don't realize how easy it is to be kind. And I'm shocked at how many people don't realize how easy it is to worry about other people's well being and how, how that doesn't take away from you, you know, like there's no I don't know where we got it in our head that if I'm nice to you, then I'm somehow diminished, you know, and I and and and if these people are helped, then we're somehow not helped I just, I just do not know where that mentality came from and it makes me so sad to hear it time and time again, in all the different variables, you know, whatever it might be and and, and I think you know, Facebook is such a core element of that toxicity is this like weird, rugged individualism or whatever it is, you know, and how awful it is.

Hannah Wells:

I think for like, even just with having little kids, like, every single day, when I dropped him off at school, I, I tell them to have a good day and to be kind to their friends. And like, for me, they know like, and they read, we get books as a library, like, flash is kind stuff like, there is like, they don't understand a lot about like adult relationships. But I think that if you start at a really young age of showing them, like, I always tell them, like, I don't care about what you end up doing as a job, I don't end up like, I don't care what kind of house you live in, I don't care any of those things. If you are like a kind person who's like loving towards others, and helps other people out when they need help. I that's that's all I'm like, that's my expectation of my kids. And I always say like, you know, we'll read books, we we read this, like, it's a Dr. Seuss book called Hooper Humperdink. Which other parents will be like, Oh, yeah, but everybody else is like Hoover?

James Avramenko:

I'm sorry, excuse.

Hannah Wells:

It's a whole book about how this guy's inviting everybody to party, but not Hooper humperdinck. And he doesn't like, I always ask, like, when we're reading it, I always ask the kids like, every time like, what would you do if you saw like Hooper humperdinck sitting there? Like, he's just sitting there reading a book under a tree? Like, it doesn't look like he's, nobody's really talking to him? Like, what would you do? And I, my kids are always I mean, because I ask them a million times, like, we would go and ask him if he wants to play and stuff. But I just think like, starting young and starting that as like, a core value will hopefully mean that, you know, in person friendships and like kindness, and all those sort of things do continue to exist.

James Avramenko:

Gets kind of baked in. Right? You know, if you get up get up young.

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, too young think for themselves. Right?

James Avramenko:

I do really like the, you know, coming back to something you you were saying about your son and how how he doesn't think with this long term worry and how he just like, he sees somebody wants to have fun with so he does. Yeah, and I just think that that's like, I wish we could get back to that somehow, obviously, I understand. You know, there's, there's I get it, there's, you know, business to be done. And there's jobs and we have to pay taxes or whatever, whatever dumb excuses we have. But it's like, but it's like at the core, there's got to be some way to get back to this idea of Let's just be nice to each other right now. Because that's all we got. You know, we've just got right now. So let's be nice. Yeah. Yeah. You know, man, Hannah, it's so nice to talk to you. It's so they say hear from you. And I, I really hate to we have to we have to move on to the last little chunk. But it's Yeah. It's so it's so wonderful to hear how well you're doing. And you know, I, I, you know, I see your growing family and they're just the just the cutest friggin kids in the world. And I'm just saying, you know, it's it's really awesome to see, you know, where likes taking you right from from a weird little back room American Eagle to Vernon, It's amazing.

Hannah Wells:

Ya know, yeah, it's been a huge journey of, of time since when I met you to now.

James Avramenko:

Yeah, yeah.

Hannah Wells:

That's a change period.

James Avramenko:

For real. I mean, that's one of the things about this show that always ends up kind of leaving me feeling a little sad, really, is that, you know, I always think about, like, Man, you know, 14 15 years, like, how do you sum that up in an hour, like, there's just no way and so you had, you kinda have to you pick a lane and you go for it, you try and get as much as you can, but like, I just feel like, there's so much we could still talk about, and I, you know, I'm just really, I'm really grateful you came on the show, and, and I've just, you know, like I say, I'm just so glad you're doing so well.

Hannah Wells:

Yeah, I'm really happy that we were able to do this and one of the reasons that I wanted to was that I had thought about you over the years, but you don't share a lot of personal stuff on Facebook and I, I I miss it. Like I was, I was wondering, like, how are you and how you're doing in your life and where you're living and stuff. I feel like from some certain people share so much online. I don't need to like dig in to find out what they're doing in life. Yeah. I wanted to connect with you to find out Yeah, where where life had led you.

James Avramenko:

We have one last thing we got to do before I let you go. So I'm gonna pull up your Facebook accounts here. Okay. Okay, here we go. Hannah wells, with your adorable daughter as your cover. And oh, here we go. We are no longer Facebook friends.

Hannah Wells:

Oh, man. I'm gonna have to find a new friend to keep my face doesn't count up, I guess.

James Avramenko:

Right, exactly. Yeah, you gotta you gotta keep the balance up. And that's it. Thank you once more to Hannah for coming on the show. was just such a treat to catch up with her. And I just wish her all the best going forward. If you like this episode, tell your friends, share the links. Let everyone know what a great podcast This is. And if you can, please rate and review the show on Apple podcast, giving five friendless a five star review. It just it helps out so so so much and I will be eternally grateful for you. So it's the beginning of the holiday season. And a lot of us I know are trying to buy less from Amazon and maybe, hopefully, trying to be a little more environmentally minded. So I thought why not this year give the gift of poetry or digital poetry that is I'm offering two different ways that you can do that. One will be a repackaging of my last two ebooks along with a brand new series of poems, all collected in one big package that I have lovingly titled, butthead, all collected together for the low low price of $10. Now that's like getting two of the three books literally for free. But that's not all. Half of all the proceeds for butthead will go towards the Saskatoon Food Bank. So not only are you supporting a local artist, but you also going to be helping support a good cause. So you know, you're amazing. And if that's not enough for you, why not give the gift that keeps on giving all December long? In what I am tentatively calling an average advent calendar. Once a day, starting December 1 all the way to Christmas morning, I will send you a brand new holiday themed piece of writing. These will be short poems microfiction or any number of other surprises whatever I come up with. All this is going to be $25 literally just $1 a day to get brand new writing by your favorite trash poet straight to your inbox first thing in the morning. How cool is that? All the details for these two gifts can be found on my website friendlesspod.com or on any s cial media. Just search for f iendlesspod or my personal acc unt is anaveragemango. That s it for me my sweeties. Have great week and I will catch you next time. Be kind to yours lves and others. Fun and safet y'all