June 2, 2023 • 29 mins
The expression “a fish out of water” means different things to different people. Since fish can’t exist for very long out of water, it clearly has something to do with being out of one’s normal habitat or comfort zone. On this episode of All the F Words, Gabi and Joanne will talk about the history of the term, instances where they’ve each felt like a proverbial fish on dry land, what you can do if you find yourself in such a predicament and what it might mean if you dream about fishes flapping around on the shore of a lake.
Check out Joanne’s new podcast: “In This Story…with Joanne Greene”. In each episode, Joanne shares a flash nonfiction essay, showcasing tales and observations from her animated life. Find it from wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is available for pre-order from your favorite online book seller. Release date is June 20, 2023. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!
Follow us on social media @allthefwordspod
Write to us! allthefwordspod@gmail.com
Fish Out of Water Meaning https://www.theidioms.com/a-fish-out-of-water/
Fish Out of Water Background https://www.bookbrowse.com/expressions/detail/index.cfm/expression_number/581/a-fish-out-of-water
Dreams About Fish Out of Water (Spiritual Meanings and Interpretation) https://www.ententechicago.com/dream-about-fish-out-of-water/
Check out Joanne’s new podcast: “In This Story…with Joanne Greene”. In each episode, Joanne shares a flash nonfiction essay, showcasing tales and observations from her animated life. Find it from wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is available for pre-order from your favorite online book seller. Release date is June 20, 2023. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!
Follow us on social media @allthefwordspod
Write to us! allthefwordspod@gmail.com
Fish Out of Water Meaning https://www.theidioms.com/a-fish-out-of-water/
Fish Out of Water Background https://www.bookbrowse.com/expressions/detail/index.cfm/expression_number/581/a-fish-out-of-water
Dreams About Fish Out of Water (Spiritual Meanings and Interpretation) https://www.ententechicago.com/dream-about-fish-out-of-water/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to All the Efforts, apodcast where two writer friends nearly thirty years
apart, explore everything we given upabout. I'm Gabby Moskowitz and I'm joe
Anne Green. On each episode ofAll the Efforts, we focus on a
theme, starting with the letter F, things like freaks, fanaticism, and
fad diets. We'll share stories fromour lives and our distinct generational perspectives,
(00:27):
and we'll look to the experts forinsights and ideas. Today we're talking about
the expression fish out of water.You know that moment when you find yourself
in a situation that is totally unfamiliarand then you somehow have to make it
work. Such an odd expression,right, A fish can't exist for very
long out of water. And ifyou dream about a fish out of water,
(00:49):
I don't know. Does that meanyou're dreaming about death? Oh?
We will talk about the meaning ofthe phrase irl, which for the folks
my age means in real life andin dreams. On this episode, were
you able to find out anything aboutwhere that brave came from fish out of
water? Yes, Gabby, Idid, And there are different answers.
(01:11):
Of course. The earliest reference isin the fourteenth centuries. Isn't that insane
when Canterbury Tales were written? Also, also that was amazing. I had
no idea Canterbury Tales were that old. So it's in the general prologue and
it says then. In sixteen thirteen, Samuel Purchases Pilgrimage featured the quote the
(01:32):
Arabians out of the deserts are asfishes out of the water meaning what exactly,
I guess, meaning the Arabians wereout of their comfort zone. Maybe
they were uncomfortable, confused, perhapsawkward. Gabby, tell me about a
(01:53):
time in your life that you feltlike a fish out of water. So
I am somebody who, especially laterin life, has really experienced I have
kind of intense This might seem strangeto people who've interacted with me socially.
(02:15):
Maybe maybe it's not doesn't but Ihave pretty intense social anxiety at the beginning
of most group situations. I amreally a one on one person, and
I mean certainly I am thinking of, you know, big group situations.
I've been in very beginning of goingto camp, even though I had spent
all this time there as a littlekid, I felt like a fish out
(02:38):
of water. My first day ofcamps, first day of college, first
day of high school. But thething that sticks out to me the most
is when we first started filming Youngand Hungry. If you're just listening to
this for the first time, youdon't know anything about me. Young and
Hungry is a sitcom that is looselyinspired by my life that ran for five
(03:00):
seasons, and I was present fora lot of the filming, and I
remember I got used to an eventually, but specifically when I went down to
watch them film the pilot. Idon't know if you've ever been on the
set of a of a sitcom before, but there are all of these rules,
(03:22):
like where certain people are supposed tostand, when you're allowed to talk,
who you know, sort of unofficiallywho you're allowed to talk to.
And I am not somebody who isintuitive about rules like that. And I
just felt even though the show wasliterally inspired by my life, and you
(03:45):
know, I should have felt soconnected to the experience, I was so
self conscious and felt like I wasin another dimension. One of the things
about being a fish out of water, I think, is that it isn't
intuitive. In other words, youare in a situation that is unfamiliar in
some fashion, such that you're notsure even what the rules are, or
(04:12):
you know what the rules are,but that you feel like at any moment
you're gonna inadvertently break one of themand get in trouble. I think on
some level, feeling like a fishout of water recalls a feeling of being
a little kid and very vulnerable andnot sure what you're supposed to say or
(04:32):
do. Do you have any memoriesof being a feeling like a fish out
of water? I have so many, of course, and I don't know
how far back I can go.I think as a little kid, I
didn't so much have that feeling,which is funny given that I just said
(04:54):
it makes you feel like a littlekid. My fish out of water memories
are more or from a little bitlater on in life. Although no,
I take that back. So Iwasn't the most athletic kid in the world,
and I remember like I was nevergood at PE. We didn't call
it PE, by the way,physical education. We called it Jim,
(05:16):
Jim and Jim prior to Okay,here's another one of those old ster references,
putting something into some historical context.The President's counsel on physical fitness happened
in John F. Kennedy's administration,when our country acknowledged that fitness was a
(05:39):
thing and that not only should webe educating children on reading, writing,
in rithmetic, all the three rs, but we should also be making sure
that they exercised their bodies. Andso that was when all this money and
attention got put into JIM or ultimatelyphysical education, which is where we got
(06:03):
the PE. And now I don'teven think anybody calls it anything but PE,
right, It's just pe right,right. But I digress. So
I pretty much sucked at PE.And I remember you had to climb the
ropes, and that was the worst. Do you remember the ropes? Oh
my god. So there were theropes that had knots every so many feet,
(06:26):
and then there were the ropes thatdidn't right. And if you were
like a loser, you could,you know, you had to stay with
the rope that had the knots.I for some reason, I couldn't even
really do the ropes with the knots. Let me talk about just for a
second, the fact that maybe thisis just because I was a kid.
Everything seems bigger when you're a kid. One thing I remember about that is,
(06:46):
for the most part, what wewere doing in pe when I was
a kid was running laps, doingsit ups, push ups, and then
we had to climb ropes. Andnot only was it so physically challenging because
it's like your full body strength,but in my memory, we were climbing
like twenty feet off the ground andthe only thing underneath us was a mat.
(07:12):
So exactly, it was like itwent from this pretty standard, generally
safe forms of exercise to all ofa sudden, like hugely risky, physically
daunting. It was. It waslike the difference between most of what we
were doing and rope climbing was insane. It was like, all of a
sudden, you know, all right, run around the gymy couple times and
(07:32):
now you're gonna jump off a cliff, right, Okay, But I want
to add I'm so glad we're talkingabout this. I don't think I've ever
talked about this, and this absolutelyneeds to be discussed. Dodge ball kidding
me? Yes? Are you kiddingme? Stand in the middle and be
a target for boys who want tolike see how funny it would be to
(07:55):
throw this hard ball at your face. How about Red Rover Rod Rover,
Did you overplay that? Yeah,Like, why don't you stand on a
line and we're gonna pick you?And it's definitely meaningful. If we don't
pick you, it means something.The whole group is going to conspire to
who they're gonna pick, and you'regonna find out right away whether you're wanted
(08:16):
loudly in front of everybody. Worse, but sometimes if you're picked, you're
being picked because they think that youhave no chance of breaking through the line.
And the whole thing it was sobarbaric. And I don't think of
myself as a whoosy person. Doyou think of me as a whoosy?
No, not at all. Iclimb mountains, I you know, I'm
(08:37):
a physical badass for gosh sakes.And but as a kid, all that
stuff was so unbelievably threatening. Swimmingin a lake, who fish, I'm
all this happened for Jim. Youswim No? No, I'm sorry.
I made a quick transition to camp. Oh yes, yes, So here
(09:00):
was the thing. To get outof swimming at camp and to get out
of Jim, you could feign havingyour period. You could say, here
was the code in Jim. Itwas called light Jim, you just went
up to Miss Brodie who was Holdon a second, my pe teacher's name
(09:20):
was also missus Brodie. Get out. Maybe I couldn't have been the same
one. Probably couldn't have been thesame one. No, first of all,
my Miss Brodie definitely was never missusBrodie. She was Miss Brodie always.
Okay, So here was the thing, like Jim meant you didn't have
to do as much. But thebest thing about light Jim was that you
(09:41):
didn't have to take a shower.And who wants to take a shower in
the middle of the school day whenyou didn't even sweat, which I never
did. Yeah, I mean evenright, Like, why would I sweat?
Totally out of the questions. Sowhy was I having to take a
shower in the middle of the day, making myself naked when there were all
these other girls? So what Iwould often do is take off my clothes,
(10:03):
put the towel around me, gointo the shower, and then stand
in the corner so I didn't getwet, and let the water go down
for a certain amount of time,and then come back out. Check this
out. Miss Brodie got a ladderand she stood up on a ladder and
spied on us in the shower.That would be caught. I mean,
(10:24):
she would be spier if that happenedtoday. Oh my god, that's crazy.
I mean she was just doing itto make sure we were showering.
I think, why didn't you just, I don't like, touch you and
see if you were wet when youcame out of the shower. That's horse
well I was gonna I don't know. It seems like if somebody is not
(10:48):
going to shower, then it's sortof out of her hands, you know,
one would think anyway, back tobeing a fish out of water,
or in this case, I guessI was a fish out of water literally
literally other memories of being a fishout of water. Yes, freshman year
in college. I grew up inNew England, just outside of Boston,
(11:11):
very cosmopolitan. I went to schoolin the Midwest. Granted it was just
outside of Chicago, but in factit was the Midwest, and I'd been
kind of a hippie. This wasnow fall of nineteen seventy one, and
one of the things that hippies didn'tdo was shave their legs. Fortunately,
I had like three hairs on eachleg, so nobody really could notice.
(11:33):
But somehow the girls in the bathroombrushing their teeth on the first night of
freshman year, one of them noticedthat I hadn't shaved my legs and started
whispering. And the whispering was she'sJewish. Maybe that's why. What a
(11:54):
bitch, that's so messed up?And I thought I might have to go
home and not go to school there. Can you imagine how? And then
and then I had to explain toher that this was a choice. It
had nothing to do with my religion. I wasn't even observing my religion.
(12:16):
Da da da dah. Yeah,I remember her. She was from Bermuda,
that girl, and she drank aton, that's what I remember.
I remember her being very drunk alot. Anyway, So that was one
thing. And then later that sameyear, I was exploring spirituality of all
kinds and I went to a zenmeditation place. It wasn't really a class
(12:39):
I think it was just like aplace you could go and make a donation
and then sit and meditate. Andit became very clear to me in about
three minutes that sitting on a hardfloor, cross legged, not speaking was
not for me. I thought Iwas going to go out of my mind
and I went running screaming out ofthe door, which is like I could
(13:03):
not sit still in silence. SoI'm telling that person that that joe An,
that you know, I have figuredit out and now I can sit
in silence and it's great. Howabout starting a new job, Gabby,
how have you felt starting a newjob? Yeah, Well, like I
said, anytime I enter a newscenario, I experience that fish out of
(13:28):
water feeling. But I think thething that stands out to me the most
was I worked for a tech companyfor a couple of years, first startup.
It was a food startup, butit was still startup and a couple
of things. One was I wasabsolutely the oldest person there. I was
thirty three, thirty two. Itwas right before right before young and hungry,
(13:50):
and so I was totally different fromeverybody else. Most everybody else had
been working in tech for a while. I had been right about food and
kind of was in between books andneeded a job. But I was also
it was at a time when millennialculture was It was like around the time
(14:11):
we first really started talking about millennialsin the same way we now talk about
gen z. Like Millennials were sortof the dominant young people, people in
their early twenties, early to midtwenties. Really, but I wasn't you
on the line of millennial, AndI guess gen X, I'm like an
(14:31):
elder millennial. And I just rememberI had I was in a serious relationship
and with Evan. I'm not marriedtoo, and I just had a totally
different kind of life. And Iremember right away being completely overwhelmed by the
amount of it was like the highera of tech startup culture. Like social
(14:58):
office culture was obviously way before thepandemic, and it was back then where
everybody used There would be drinks inthe office like twice a week. Everybody
would stay late and play ping pong, they would all go out to eat
there were And I was like,I really liked the people that I worked
with for the most part, Ididn't want to go to the beach with
(15:18):
them on the weekend. I didn't. And it wasn't about them. It
was that I was not a partof this culture. I did not connect
to it at all, and everyoneelse it felt like I was in a
foreign country. Everyone else spoke thesame language and had the same sort of
set of values. From what Icould tell, and I didn't understand it
(15:39):
at all. And I definitely realizedthat I would make friends and I would
make connections, and I'm still friendlywith some of the people I worked with,
But I was going to be onmy own island. What about you?
Oh yeah, Well, first ofall, I haven't had that many
jobs in my life, and myearlier early career was in radio, and
(16:04):
I always was one of the fishswimming around in the sea, feeling really
a part of things, even ifI felt like I wasn't fully at the
same level as the other people,I could, you know, just fake
it enough. I mean. Sothere was a little bit of imposter syndrome.
(16:26):
And that's a topic I think wecan fold into this fish out of
Water because it's very much related thatfeeling of acting like you belong and acting
like you fit in and that you'rea part of things, but in some
part of your mind you feel likeyou're just getting through, just getting by,
(16:48):
just somehow convincing everybody that you've gotthis when really you don't, and
that at any moment you might beexposed. So that happened to me at
various times during my radio career insmall ways. But the time that really
jumps into my mind is when Iin my late fifties, after having had
(17:11):
this successful career in broadcasting and thenabout a decade of freelance work, which
was also very successful writing and producingwebcasts. And this is even when the
word webinar was brand new, soway back, I got a full time
job at the JCC in our community, the Jewish Community Center, running programs
(17:34):
and entering an organization at in mylate fifties, where all the systems were
on PCs and I had always onlyused Max, where I had no idea
how to print something, for instancefrom my office or where the printer even
was. There wasn't one in myoffice, and I felt like I constantly
(17:59):
had to ask questions of people,and people were so busy that they didn't
have time to explain things to me. My boss was only part time,
so she wasn't there every day andleft early a couple of days a week
because she had kids or whatever.She had some kind of arrangement where she
(18:19):
just was not there all the time. And then I was told to create
to create a budget, and Ihadn't yet figured out what my whole department
was going to be. It wasa grant funded position and I had to
create it from nothing. But thenbefore I had created it, I had
to make a budget, and Ihad never made a budget, and I
(18:41):
think I had sort of said Ihad or you know those things you do
when you're in a job interview,Oh yeah, I know how to do
that totally, and it was broughtto my knees. I remember we went
away to Colorado for a wedding,and I remember sitting on the bed in
the hotel with my laptop sobbing becauseI didn't know how to use Excel.
(19:03):
It's very sad. So I wastotally a fish out of water. And
then obviously I was there for elevenyears at that job, so things worked
out. Things worked out just fine. I figured it all out and and
everything was fine. But that feelingof, like like you were saying,
that feeling of I'm older than everybodyelse, you know, learning technology when
(19:26):
you are when you did not growup with it, when the whole thing
is a brand new language to you, and it's a steep, steep learning
curve that for me was really roughand humbling, very humbling. You know,
this all makes me think about howthe fish out of water feeling connects
(19:48):
to imposter syndrome, which, youknow, I think that we should do
an episode and we'll call it,maybe call it fake it till you make
it, because I have struggled deeplywith imposter syndrome, and it's hard to
It's hard to know sometimes when you'rein when you're in a situation when truly
(20:11):
you are a fish out of water, or when it's something that's inside of
you that you're perpetuating. I don'tknow, And why don't we pick up
on that right after these messages fromour sponsors? How do we know if
(20:33):
it's the situation, if we're afish out of water, or if it's
it's actually inside of us? Youknow, have you experienced imposter syndrome where
you feel like you're full of it? And I find that sometimes it's I
can't tell if it's I sometimes havea hard time telling the difference between what's
(20:55):
me and what's the situation. Andof course, when I'm in a new
and challenging situation, and that's whenit's so easy to attach what I'm feeling
inside to the new and challenging situation, and I don't know, it seems
to be getting easier as I getolder. I don't know if it's that
a care less or that I knowmore, but there's definitely a connection between
(21:17):
the two. I think it's both. You do care less as you get
older. You definitely care less asyou get older. Have you ever seen
the graph about aging as the olderyou get, the less you care.
Yeah, it's good. But Ialso think as we get older, we
can take a breath and realize thatthis is just a moment and that if
(21:41):
you don't know the rules, youcan learn the rules right, and that
this moment will pass, and maybenobody really knows the rules. Maybe you
know you can just you can talkto yourself and sort of talk yourself through
it. What we're talking about here, basically is how to deal with anxiety,
(22:03):
right, because at its core,that's what imposter syndrome is is questioning
our worth, questioning our knowledge,questioning how we got here. In the
writing of my book, very oftenI would stop and go, who the
hell do you think you are?Thinking you could write a book, thinking
(22:26):
you have something valuable to say thatsomebody would pay actual money for to read.
You know, it's like that musthave happened a million times, and
then of course the times where aboss or in my case, the editor
would look at something I'd written andsay, no, no, this is
(22:48):
going nowhere, or this makes nosense, or this you haven't followed through
with this other theme that you startedover here, And then that feeling of
being def feeded and you have tosort of lick your wounds and you know,
hang out in that spot for aminute or two, right, and
that minute or two could be aday or two or a week or two,
(23:10):
but it's that moment of humility,you know, being humbled and realizing
you are not the greatest thing thatever walked the face of the earth.
When it comes to writing and workingwith an editor, I what I've always
it's so hard. It's like,you know, if you ever wanted to
turn your insides out and have themgraded, write a book. It doesn't
(23:36):
matter if it's fiction, nonfiction.I'm sure with memoir in particular, it's
it's it's challenging because you know you'rewriting about you, right, and when
someone says that's wrong, it's kindof tricky. Yeah, absolutely. But
what I what I try to tellmyself when that's going on is the editor
is united with me in making thisthe best possible thing, and so together
(24:03):
we must shut our egos and moveforward. But boy is it hard.
But that is a good lesson,you know, to try to apply to
the workplace in general. So maybeyour boss is also on your side and
trying to help you be successful.Not always. We've all been in situations
where our bosses are out to getus or whatever that they have their own
(24:29):
issues going on, and you haveto account for that, you have to
placate them in these certain ways.But I think in general it's about learning
to work with the people you're workingwith, learning to work with your own
weaknesses or inadequacies, whatever those are. I have found that being honest about
them is a great way to goto wit. Doing budgets is not my
(24:53):
thing. I don't have a headfor it. And at this stage of
my life, and as I say, I started this job in my mid
fifties, so I was in myearly sixties, I didn't really want to
learn a whole new thing. Andwhat I was really good at was raising
money and building relationships and planning programsand getting up in front of groups.
I had all these skills that wereof great value to the organization, and
(25:18):
I remember saying to a different bosslater on down the line, you're looking
at all these numbers anyway, becauseyou're in charge of my department and others.
So why do I have to doit too? You're doing it,
You're doing it anyway. Wouldn't itbe a better use of my time to
go out there and raise money?So you know, that's kind of interesting.
(25:40):
Before this episode ends, I definitelywant to talk about what it means
when you dream about a fish outof water, because there is so much
written about this you can't imagine.I mean, there's just so much.
So it could mean if you dreamabout a fish out of water that perhaps,
in your waking life, if youfeel as though you're lost in an
(26:02):
environment that doesn't suit you, Ie. You're in the wrong job,
you're living in the wrong house,you're in the wrong city, you're in
the wrong marriage, you're whatever.Or maybe you feel constrained as though you're
in a cramped fish tank right andyou have to get out into larger waters.
(26:22):
So a fish out of water inyour dreams can mean change. It
can mean something's coming that's going torock your world, and you should be
ready for anything including disappointment or orthe opposite, maybe something really amazing.
It can refer to unfulfilled dreams.So fish in general can symbolize our dreams,
desires, and goals, and thewater symbolizes our emotions in that situation.
(26:48):
So the fish ending up outside ofits natural habitat represents a divergence between
the two. Got it kind ofcool? In any cultures worldwide, fish
carry symbolic meanings of fertility, andthat's probably because they can lay hundreds of
eggs at the same time. Yeah, I've heard that before, lucky them.
(27:12):
So it is said that if awoman dreams of fish in her dreams,
that either she or one of herfriends can expect a pregnancy soon now.
Also, it depends on what kindof fish you're so a dream of
koi fish out of water, youknow, those enormous goldfish that are sometimes
(27:33):
white or black and white, ororange black and white, my personal favorite.
A dream of that is also considereda sign of good luck, fortune,
pride, and friendship. Dreams ofgoldfish out of water the little ones
represent financial gains landing perhaps right infront of your feet, or that a
lifelong wish will finally come true.Coming days true, this is maybe this
(27:59):
is all b I don't know,but this is what I found dreaming of
sharks, for instance, catfish outof water. Those can be taken as
a sign of our insecurities being releasedinto the world for all to see.
I've had a lot of dreams aboutsharks. I was never really sure what
it meant, but my insecurity isbeing released into the world definitely tracks,
(28:21):
so that makes sense. I thinkit's crazy that there really that there even
is this whole notion of what dreamsmean and symbols mean to everyone, because
if we didn't know the symbol beforewe had the dream, then how is
it that our subconscious did. Yeah, I mean I think that we interpret.
(28:45):
I think that signs and symbols meandifferent things to different people. And
I've also heard that when you havea dream, every thing and everyone in
the dream represents you. So thereare probably lots of different interprets patients,
but it's always interesting too to readabout what are some commonly understood symbols.
(29:07):
Absolutely, thanks so much for listeningto all the efforts. Today. She's
Gabby Moskowitz and I'm Joeanne Green,and we have more cooking for you in
the kitchen. You can find uson social media. We are on Instagram,
(29:29):
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube atall the Efforts POD, and we
would love to hear from you.We are at all the Efforts POD at
gmail dot com. Have a greatweek. Bye bye bye
Welcome to All the Efforts, apodcast where two writer friends nearly thirty years
apart, explore everything we given upabout. I'm Gabby Moskowitz and I'm joe
Anne Green. On each episode ofAll the Efforts, we focus on a
theme, starting with the letter F, things like freaks, fanaticism, and
fad diets. We'll share stories fromour lives and our distinct generational perspectives,
(00:27):
and we'll look to the experts forinsights and ideas. Today we're talking about
the expression fish out of water.You know that moment when you find yourself
in a situation that is totally unfamiliarand then you somehow have to make it
work. Such an odd expression,right, A fish can't exist for very
long out of water. And ifyou dream about a fish out of water,
(00:49):
I don't know. Does that meanyou're dreaming about death? Oh?
We will talk about the meaning ofthe phrase irl, which for the folks
my age means in real life andin dreams. On this episode, were
you able to find out anything aboutwhere that brave came from fish out of
water? Yes, Gabby, Idid, And there are different answers.
(01:11):
Of course. The earliest reference isin the fourteenth centuries. Isn't that insane
when Canterbury Tales were written? Also, also that was amazing. I had
no idea Canterbury Tales were that old. So it's in the general prologue and
it says then. In sixteen thirteen, Samuel Purchases Pilgrimage featured the quote the
(01:32):
Arabians out of the deserts are asfishes out of the water meaning what exactly,
I guess, meaning the Arabians wereout of their comfort zone. Maybe
they were uncomfortable, confused, perhapsawkward. Gabby, tell me about a
(01:53):
time in your life that you feltlike a fish out of water. So
I am somebody who, especially laterin life, has really experienced I have
kind of intense This might seem strangeto people who've interacted with me socially.
(02:15):
Maybe maybe it's not doesn't but Ihave pretty intense social anxiety at the beginning
of most group situations. I amreally a one on one person, and
I mean certainly I am thinking of, you know, big group situations.
I've been in very beginning of goingto camp, even though I had spent
all this time there as a littlekid, I felt like a fish out
(02:38):
of water. My first day ofcamps, first day of college, first
day of high school. But thething that sticks out to me the most
is when we first started filming Youngand Hungry. If you're just listening to
this for the first time, youdon't know anything about me. Young and
Hungry is a sitcom that is looselyinspired by my life that ran for five
(03:00):
seasons, and I was present fora lot of the filming, and I
remember I got used to an eventually, but specifically when I went down to
watch them film the pilot. Idon't know if you've ever been on the
set of a of a sitcom before, but there are all of these rules,
(03:22):
like where certain people are supposed tostand, when you're allowed to talk,
who you know, sort of unofficiallywho you're allowed to talk to.
And I am not somebody who isintuitive about rules like that. And I
just felt even though the show wasliterally inspired by my life, and you
(03:45):
know, I should have felt soconnected to the experience, I was so
self conscious and felt like I wasin another dimension. One of the things
about being a fish out of water, I think, is that it isn't
intuitive. In other words, youare in a situation that is unfamiliar in
some fashion, such that you're notsure even what the rules are, or
(04:12):
you know what the rules are,but that you feel like at any moment
you're gonna inadvertently break one of themand get in trouble. I think on
some level, feeling like a fishout of water recalls a feeling of being
a little kid and very vulnerable andnot sure what you're supposed to say or
(04:32):
do. Do you have any memoriesof being a feeling like a fish out
of water? I have so many, of course, and I don't know
how far back I can go.I think as a little kid, I
didn't so much have that feeling,which is funny given that I just said
(04:54):
it makes you feel like a littlekid. My fish out of water memories
are more or from a little bitlater on in life. Although no,
I take that back. So Iwasn't the most athletic kid in the world,
and I remember like I was nevergood at PE. We didn't call
it PE, by the way,physical education. We called it Jim,
(05:16):
Jim and Jim prior to Okay,here's another one of those old ster references,
putting something into some historical context.The President's counsel on physical fitness happened
in John F. Kennedy's administration,when our country acknowledged that fitness was a
(05:39):
thing and that not only should webe educating children on reading, writing,
in rithmetic, all the three rs, but we should also be making sure
that they exercised their bodies. Andso that was when all this money and
attention got put into JIM or ultimatelyphysical education, which is where we got
(06:03):
the PE. And now I don'teven think anybody calls it anything but PE,
right, It's just pe right,right. But I digress. So
I pretty much sucked at PE.And I remember you had to climb the
ropes, and that was the worst. Do you remember the ropes? Oh
my god. So there were theropes that had knots every so many feet,
(06:26):
and then there were the ropes thatdidn't right. And if you were
like a loser, you could,you know, you had to stay with
the rope that had the knots.I for some reason, I couldn't even
really do the ropes with the knots. Let me talk about just for a
second, the fact that maybe thisis just because I was a kid.
Everything seems bigger when you're a kid. One thing I remember about that is,
(06:46):
for the most part, what wewere doing in pe when I was
a kid was running laps, doingsit ups, push ups, and then
we had to climb ropes. Andnot only was it so physically challenging because
it's like your full body strength,but in my memory, we were climbing
like twenty feet off the ground andthe only thing underneath us was a mat.
(07:12):
So exactly, it was like itwent from this pretty standard, generally
safe forms of exercise to all ofa sudden, like hugely risky, physically
daunting. It was. It waslike the difference between most of what we
were doing and rope climbing was insane. It was like, all of a
sudden, you know, all right, run around the gymy couple times and
(07:32):
now you're gonna jump off a cliff, right, Okay, But I want
to add I'm so glad we're talkingabout this. I don't think I've ever
talked about this, and this absolutelyneeds to be discussed. Dodge ball kidding
me? Yes? Are you kiddingme? Stand in the middle and be
a target for boys who want tolike see how funny it would be to
(07:55):
throw this hard ball at your face. How about Red Rover Rod Rover,
Did you overplay that? Yeah,Like, why don't you stand on a
line and we're gonna pick you?And it's definitely meaningful. If we don't
pick you, it means something.The whole group is going to conspire to
who they're gonna pick, and you'regonna find out right away whether you're wanted
(08:16):
loudly in front of everybody. Worse, but sometimes if you're picked, you're
being picked because they think that youhave no chance of breaking through the line.
And the whole thing it was sobarbaric. And I don't think of
myself as a whoosy person. Doyou think of me as a whoosy?
No, not at all. Iclimb mountains, I you know, I'm
(08:37):
a physical badass for gosh sakes.And but as a kid, all that
stuff was so unbelievably threatening. Swimmingin a lake, who fish, I'm
all this happened for Jim. Youswim No? No, I'm sorry.
I made a quick transition to camp. Oh yes, yes, So here
(09:00):
was the thing. To get outof swimming at camp and to get out
of Jim, you could feign havingyour period. You could say, here
was the code in Jim. Itwas called light Jim, you just went
up to Miss Brodie who was Holdon a second, my pe teacher's name
(09:20):
was also missus Brodie. Get out. Maybe I couldn't have been the same
one. Probably couldn't have been thesame one. No, first of all,
my Miss Brodie definitely was never missusBrodie. She was Miss Brodie always.
Okay, So here was the thing, like Jim meant you didn't have
to do as much. But thebest thing about light Jim was that you
(09:41):
didn't have to take a shower.And who wants to take a shower in
the middle of the school day whenyou didn't even sweat, which I never
did. Yeah, I mean evenright, Like, why would I sweat?
Totally out of the questions. Sowhy was I having to take a
shower in the middle of the day, making myself naked when there were all
these other girls? So what Iwould often do is take off my clothes,
(10:03):
put the towel around me, gointo the shower, and then stand
in the corner so I didn't getwet, and let the water go down
for a certain amount of time,and then come back out. Check this
out. Miss Brodie got a ladderand she stood up on a ladder and
spied on us in the shower.That would be caught. I mean,
(10:24):
she would be spier if that happenedtoday. Oh my god, that's crazy.
I mean she was just doing itto make sure we were showering.
I think, why didn't you just, I don't like, touch you and
see if you were wet when youcame out of the shower. That's horse
well I was gonna I don't know. It seems like if somebody is not
(10:48):
going to shower, then it's sortof out of her hands, you know,
one would think anyway, back tobeing a fish out of water,
or in this case, I guessI was a fish out of water literally
literally other memories of being a fishout of water. Yes, freshman year
in college. I grew up inNew England, just outside of Boston,
(11:11):
very cosmopolitan. I went to schoolin the Midwest. Granted it was just
outside of Chicago, but in factit was the Midwest, and I'd been
kind of a hippie. This wasnow fall of nineteen seventy one, and
one of the things that hippies didn'tdo was shave their legs. Fortunately,
I had like three hairs on eachleg, so nobody really could notice.
(11:33):
But somehow the girls in the bathroombrushing their teeth on the first night of
freshman year, one of them noticedthat I hadn't shaved my legs and started
whispering. And the whispering was she'sJewish. Maybe that's why. What a
(11:54):
bitch, that's so messed up?And I thought I might have to go
home and not go to school there. Can you imagine how? And then
and then I had to explain toher that this was a choice. It
had nothing to do with my religion. I wasn't even observing my religion.
(12:16):
Da da da dah. Yeah,I remember her. She was from Bermuda,
that girl, and she drank aton, that's what I remember.
I remember her being very drunk alot. Anyway, So that was one
thing. And then later that sameyear, I was exploring spirituality of all
kinds and I went to a zenmeditation place. It wasn't really a class
(12:39):
I think it was just like aplace you could go and make a donation
and then sit and meditate. Andit became very clear to me in about
three minutes that sitting on a hardfloor, cross legged, not speaking was
not for me. I thought Iwas going to go out of my mind
and I went running screaming out ofthe door, which is like I could
(13:03):
not sit still in silence. SoI'm telling that person that that joe An,
that you know, I have figuredit out and now I can sit
in silence and it's great. Howabout starting a new job, Gabby,
how have you felt starting a newjob? Yeah, Well, like I
said, anytime I enter a newscenario, I experience that fish out of
(13:28):
water feeling. But I think thething that stands out to me the most
was I worked for a tech companyfor a couple of years, first startup.
It was a food startup, butit was still startup and a couple
of things. One was I wasabsolutely the oldest person there. I was
thirty three, thirty two. Itwas right before right before young and hungry,
(13:50):
and so I was totally different fromeverybody else. Most everybody else had
been working in tech for a while. I had been right about food and
kind of was in between books andneeded a job. But I was also
it was at a time when millennialculture was It was like around the time
(14:11):
we first really started talking about millennialsin the same way we now talk about
gen z. Like Millennials were sortof the dominant young people, people in
their early twenties, early to midtwenties. Really, but I wasn't you
on the line of millennial, AndI guess gen X, I'm like an
(14:31):
elder millennial. And I just rememberI had I was in a serious relationship
and with Evan. I'm not marriedtoo, and I just had a totally
different kind of life. And Iremember right away being completely overwhelmed by the
amount of it was like the highera of tech startup culture. Like social
(14:58):
office culture was obviously way before thepandemic, and it was back then where
everybody used There would be drinks inthe office like twice a week. Everybody
would stay late and play ping pong, they would all go out to eat
there were And I was like,I really liked the people that I worked
with for the most part, Ididn't want to go to the beach with
(15:18):
them on the weekend. I didn't. And it wasn't about them. It
was that I was not a partof this culture. I did not connect
to it at all, and everyoneelse it felt like I was in a
foreign country. Everyone else spoke thesame language and had the same sort of
set of values. From what Icould tell, and I didn't understand it
(15:39):
at all. And I definitely realizedthat I would make friends and I would
make connections, and I'm still friendlywith some of the people I worked with,
But I was going to be onmy own island. What about you?
Oh yeah, Well, first ofall, I haven't had that many
jobs in my life, and myearlier early career was in radio, and
(16:04):
I always was one of the fishswimming around in the sea, feeling really
a part of things, even ifI felt like I wasn't fully at the
same level as the other people,I could, you know, just fake
it enough. I mean. Sothere was a little bit of imposter syndrome.
(16:26):
And that's a topic I think wecan fold into this fish out of
Water because it's very much related thatfeeling of acting like you belong and acting
like you fit in and that you'rea part of things, but in some
part of your mind you feel likeyou're just getting through, just getting by,
(16:48):
just somehow convincing everybody that you've gotthis when really you don't, and
that at any moment you might beexposed. So that happened to me at
various times during my radio career insmall ways. But the time that really
jumps into my mind is when Iin my late fifties, after having had
(17:11):
this successful career in broadcasting and thenabout a decade of freelance work, which
was also very successful writing and producingwebcasts. And this is even when the
word webinar was brand new, soway back, I got a full time
job at the JCC in our community, the Jewish Community Center, running programs
(17:34):
and entering an organization at in mylate fifties, where all the systems were
on PCs and I had always onlyused Max, where I had no idea
how to print something, for instancefrom my office or where the printer even
was. There wasn't one in myoffice, and I felt like I constantly
(17:59):
had to ask questions of people,and people were so busy that they didn't
have time to explain things to me. My boss was only part time,
so she wasn't there every day andleft early a couple of days a week
because she had kids or whatever.She had some kind of arrangement where she
(18:19):
just was not there all the time. And then I was told to create
to create a budget, and Ihadn't yet figured out what my whole department
was going to be. It wasa grant funded position and I had to
create it from nothing. But thenbefore I had created it, I had
to make a budget, and Ihad never made a budget, and I
(18:41):
think I had sort of said Ihad or you know those things you do
when you're in a job interview,Oh yeah, I know how to do
that totally, and it was broughtto my knees. I remember we went
away to Colorado for a wedding,and I remember sitting on the bed in
the hotel with my laptop sobbing becauseI didn't know how to use Excel.
(19:03):
It's very sad. So I wastotally a fish out of water. And
then obviously I was there for elevenyears at that job, so things worked
out. Things worked out just fine. I figured it all out and and
everything was fine. But that feelingof, like like you were saying,
that feeling of I'm older than everybodyelse, you know, learning technology when
(19:26):
you are when you did not growup with it, when the whole thing
is a brand new language to you, and it's a steep, steep learning
curve that for me was really roughand humbling, very humbling. You know,
this all makes me think about howthe fish out of water feeling connects
(19:48):
to imposter syndrome, which, youknow, I think that we should do
an episode and we'll call it,maybe call it fake it till you make
it, because I have struggled deeplywith imposter syndrome, and it's hard to
It's hard to know sometimes when you'rein when you're in a situation when truly
(20:11):
you are a fish out of water, or when it's something that's inside of
you that you're perpetuating. I don'tknow, And why don't we pick up
on that right after these messages fromour sponsors? How do we know if
(20:33):
it's the situation, if we're afish out of water, or if it's
it's actually inside of us? Youknow, have you experienced imposter syndrome where
you feel like you're full of it? And I find that sometimes it's I
can't tell if it's I sometimes havea hard time telling the difference between what's
(20:55):
me and what's the situation. Andof course, when I'm in a new
and challenging situation, and that's whenit's so easy to attach what I'm feeling
inside to the new and challenging situation, and I don't know, it seems
to be getting easier as I getolder. I don't know if it's that
a care less or that I knowmore, but there's definitely a connection between
(21:17):
the two. I think it's both. You do care less as you get
older. You definitely care less asyou get older. Have you ever seen
the graph about aging as the olderyou get, the less you care.
Yeah, it's good. But Ialso think as we get older, we
can take a breath and realize thatthis is just a moment and that if
(21:41):
you don't know the rules, youcan learn the rules right, and that
this moment will pass, and maybenobody really knows the rules. Maybe you
know you can just you can talkto yourself and sort of talk yourself through
it. What we're talking about here, basically is how to deal with anxiety,
(22:03):
right, because at its core,that's what imposter syndrome is is questioning
our worth, questioning our knowledge,questioning how we got here. In the
writing of my book, very oftenI would stop and go, who the
hell do you think you are?Thinking you could write a book, thinking
(22:26):
you have something valuable to say thatsomebody would pay actual money for to read.
You know, it's like that musthave happened a million times, and
then of course the times where aboss or in my case, the editor
would look at something I'd written andsay, no, no, this is
(22:48):
going nowhere, or this makes nosense, or this you haven't followed through
with this other theme that you startedover here, And then that feeling of
being def feeded and you have tosort of lick your wounds and you know,
hang out in that spot for aminute or two, right, and
that minute or two could be aday or two or a week or two,
(23:10):
but it's that moment of humility,you know, being humbled and realizing
you are not the greatest thing thatever walked the face of the earth.
When it comes to writing and workingwith an editor, I what I've always
it's so hard. It's like,you know, if you ever wanted to
turn your insides out and have themgraded, write a book. It doesn't
(23:36):
matter if it's fiction, nonfiction.I'm sure with memoir in particular, it's
it's it's challenging because you know you'rewriting about you, right, and when
someone says that's wrong, it's kindof tricky. Yeah, absolutely. But
what I what I try to tellmyself when that's going on is the editor
is united with me in making thisthe best possible thing, and so together
(24:03):
we must shut our egos and moveforward. But boy is it hard.
But that is a good lesson,you know, to try to apply to
the workplace in general. So maybeyour boss is also on your side and
trying to help you be successful.Not always. We've all been in situations
where our bosses are out to getus or whatever that they have their own
(24:29):
issues going on, and you haveto account for that, you have to
placate them in these certain ways.But I think in general it's about learning
to work with the people you're workingwith, learning to work with your own
weaknesses or inadequacies, whatever those are. I have found that being honest about
them is a great way to goto wit. Doing budgets is not my
(24:53):
thing. I don't have a headfor it. And at this stage of
my life, and as I say, I started this job in my mid
fifties, so I was in myearly sixties, I didn't really want to
learn a whole new thing. Andwhat I was really good at was raising
money and building relationships and planning programsand getting up in front of groups.
I had all these skills that wereof great value to the organization, and
(25:18):
I remember saying to a different bosslater on down the line, you're looking
at all these numbers anyway, becauseyou're in charge of my department and others.
So why do I have to doit too? You're doing it,
You're doing it anyway. Wouldn't itbe a better use of my time to
go out there and raise money?So you know, that's kind of interesting.
(25:40):
Before this episode ends, I definitelywant to talk about what it means
when you dream about a fish outof water, because there is so much
written about this you can't imagine.I mean, there's just so much.
So it could mean if you dreamabout a fish out of water that perhaps,
in your waking life, if youfeel as though you're lost in an
(26:02):
environment that doesn't suit you, Ie. You're in the wrong job,
you're living in the wrong house,you're in the wrong city, you're in
the wrong marriage, you're whatever.Or maybe you feel constrained as though you're
in a cramped fish tank right andyou have to get out into larger waters.
(26:22):
So a fish out of water inyour dreams can mean change. It
can mean something's coming that's going torock your world, and you should be
ready for anything including disappointment or orthe opposite, maybe something really amazing.
It can refer to unfulfilled dreams.So fish in general can symbolize our dreams,
desires, and goals, and thewater symbolizes our emotions in that situation.
(26:48):
So the fish ending up outside ofits natural habitat represents a divergence between
the two. Got it kind ofcool? In any cultures worldwide, fish
carry symbolic meanings of fertility, andthat's probably because they can lay hundreds of
eggs at the same time. Yeah, I've heard that before, lucky them.
(27:12):
So it is said that if awoman dreams of fish in her dreams,
that either she or one of herfriends can expect a pregnancy soon now.
Also, it depends on what kindof fish you're so a dream of
koi fish out of water, youknow, those enormous goldfish that are sometimes
(27:33):
white or black and white, ororange black and white, my personal favorite.
A dream of that is also considereda sign of good luck, fortune,
pride, and friendship. Dreams ofgoldfish out of water the little ones
represent financial gains landing perhaps right infront of your feet, or that a
lifelong wish will finally come true.Coming days true, this is maybe this
(27:59):
is all b I don't know,but this is what I found dreaming of
sharks, for instance, catfish outof water. Those can be taken as
a sign of our insecurities being releasedinto the world for all to see.
I've had a lot of dreams aboutsharks. I was never really sure what
it meant, but my insecurity isbeing released into the world definitely tracks,
(28:21):
so that makes sense. I thinkit's crazy that there really that there even
is this whole notion of what dreamsmean and symbols mean to everyone, because
if we didn't know the symbol beforewe had the dream, then how is
it that our subconscious did. Yeah, I mean I think that we interpret.
(28:45):
I think that signs and symbols meandifferent things to different people. And
I've also heard that when you havea dream, every thing and everyone in
the dream represents you. So thereare probably lots of different interprets patients,
but it's always interesting too to readabout what are some commonly understood symbols.
(29:07):
Absolutely, thanks so much for listeningto all the efforts. Today. She's
Gabby Moskowitz and I'm Joeanne Green,and we have more cooking for you in
the kitchen. You can find uson social media. We are on Instagram,
(29:29):
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube atall the Efforts POD, and we
would love to hear from you.We are at all the Efforts POD at
gmail dot com. Have a greatweek. Bye bye bye
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