In Bed with Bel

Is this weird? I'm going to run through Plato's Symposium, in bed and weave through a few thoughts about life, self help, reaching goals and finding yourself... a symposium for tow. And there's wine.In tonight's episode Bel raids her bedside reading stack to bring you the ancient texts that understand heartbreak better than most modern self-help books combined. Recorded late, candid, and with messy left-handed notes she can barely read herself.Books discussed:The Odyssey — Homer, translated by Emily Wilson The original complicated love story. Penelope waits twenty years. Odysseus island-hops with goddesses. A meditation on commitment, infidelity, and how much you're willing to put up with. Bel recommends the audiobook narrated by Claire Danes above all else.Sappho: Fragments Willis Barnstone translation recommended. Less than five percent of her work survives — destroyed by patriarchy and time — but what remains is stunningly alive. All longing, all passion, all limerence. Written 2,600 years ago and she still makes you feel seen.The Symposium — Plato A dinner party. A hangover. A group of ancient Athenian men taking turns explaining what love actually is. Only eighty pages. Contains the most famous origin story of romantic love ever written — the round humans split in half by Zeus, doomed to spend eternity searching for their other half. Also contains the only woman in the room, who turns out to understand love better than all the men combined.The Love Poems of Rumi — edited by Deepak Chopra Thirteenth century Sufi mystic. Every poem a painting. Words that are heartbreaking and lucid and somehow completely modern. For when you need to be reminded that longing is not a now problem — it is a forever human experience.The question this episode leaves you with: Who has really loved you — and what was your role in that?In Bed with Bel is the podcast and YouTube channel for women who are not winding down. New episodes twice a week. Subscribe wherever you listen.I'm Bel. Artist, designer, scholar, and chronic overthinker. Join me in bed for art history, esoteric rabbit holes, midlife reinvention, and whatever my mind is chewing on this week.🔔 Subscribe so you don't miss whatever happens next.Listen to my other little podcast @sacredmechanics#midlife #artistlife #genx #arthistory #phdlife #startingover #sapiens #philosophy #selfhelp #selfhelpbooks #stoicism #Sapiophile

Have you ever loved someone so completely it felt dangerous? Turns out you're not alone, and you never were. In this episode Bel takes you through the ancient texts that somehow, impossibly, know exactly how modern heartbreak feels. From Homer's Odyssey, the original story of a woman waiting twenty years while her husband island-hops with goddesses — to the heartbreaking fragments of Sappho, the woman who invented the language of longing, to Plato's Symposium and its theory of why we spend our whole lives searching for our other half. And finally Rumi, the thirteenth century Sufi mystic whose love poems read like they were written last night. This episode is for the lovers, the brokenhearted, and everyone who has ever wondered why loving someone can feel like handing your soul over with no guarantee of getting it back. Spoiler: the ancient Greeks wondered the same thing. And they wrote it down.#sappho #theodyssey #rumi #plato #symposium #philosophy #love #lust #desire #soulmate #grief #heartbreak #breakup #lostlove #fallinginlove #midlifelove #divorce #marriage I'm Bel. Artist, designer, scholar, and chronic overthinker. Join me in bed for art history, esoteric rabbit holes, midlife reinvention, and whatever my mind is chewing on this week.🔔 Subscribe so you don't miss whatever happens next.Listen to my other little podcast @sacredmechanics#midlife #artistlife #genx #arthistory #phdlife #startingover

In tonight's episode Bel discovers the term pretirement — and falls down a rabbit hole of thousands of women saying the same thing in the comments of a single YouTube video: we are done. What follows is an honest, unscripted late-night conversation about what it actually costs to want out, what happens when you let go of something without a plan B, and why the life you are going to be remembered for might not have started yet.In this episode:What pretirement is and why it's hitting Gen X women hardest right now - are we ehausted?The sandwich generation trap — caring for boomer parents while adult children are still at homeWhat Bel saw in corporate comment sections that genuinely shook her: colleagues retiring only to be gone within five yearsLeaving a Paris executive creative career in her mid-forties — and what she discovered on the other sideWhy you cannot backtrack once you let go, and why that's actually the point38 years of graphic design work and the confronting truth about legacy"I have nothing. I have everything." — rebuilding your interior when the exterior falls awayThe one thing Bel wants you to do before you go to sleep tonightThe question this episode leaves you with: What will you be remembered for — and has it happened yet?In Bed with Bel is the podcast and YouTube channel for women who are not winding down. New episodes twice a week. Subscribe wherever you listen.

The danger of creativity. We humans are the most dangerous being on earth… and I don’t mean in the most obvious violent sense. I’m referring to our most powerful weapon that is unlimited, unmatched and cannot be replicated by the most advanced technology on the planet. We’re all born with it in equal measure and what differentiates us all is how well or how much we dare to use it. We’re may choose to weaponise it or may use it to express our love and feed every desire. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Creativity.Imagine atomic strength levels of creativity lives in a jar in our head. We all get the same sized jar. Some of us struggle to even loosen the lid during our lives, some of us lost the lid and might be locked up because of it… and some of us have figured out how to poke holes in the lid and shake that stuff everywhere as needed and to taste. The spice of life.Where do you sit on this scale? What’s your relationship with this jar or pure creativity? The kryptonite to boredom?If you haven’t used your creativity enough, you’re going to think it’s dangerous. Too spicy. If you’ve used it a lot, it doesn’t cross your mind that it will ever run out - because it won’t. It gives you a hardwire to your soul.Some people confuse creativity with artistic skill. They’re not related. Any artistic skill can be learned and must be treated as an outlet … a tool.Here’s another way to visualise Creativity. It is like walking around with a box of matches… Imagine the power on that box of matches. From zero, we never strike one and they go through the wash… all the way to lighting a toilet paper warehouse on fire. So here, we can see creativity can be muted m, and it can be powerful and very very dangerous. This dangerous level of creativity is what society, and I can only speak for the West, strives to control, reduce, capitalise and if necessary, neuter. Do you see AI a bit differently now? You should. When you are about to undo that jar on your head, just a little… don’t let it know what you’re doing. Don’t ask its opinion. Just do it. Think it. Write it. Draw it. Sing it. Design it. Protect it. Then do it again.Right now we are running in a race, the race of our lives, and the oxygen of our sanity is creativity.Use it. Breathe it in. Breathe it out. Be defiant and create.Give your soul some voice. Let it laugh, let is wail if you like, heal it with this fresh oxygen that is the ultimate human gift, that’s not for sale on Temu… it’s impossible to fake. You are rich. You own it in spades.Go. Make. Create. Dangerously.------------I'm Bel. Artist, designer, scholar, and chronic overthinker. Join me in bed for art history, esoteric rabbit holes, midlife reinvention, and whatever my mind is chewing on this week.🔔 Subscribe on YouTube youtube.com/@belbare?sub_confirmation=1In Bed with Bel is part of Fauun Haus.#midlife #artistlife #genx #arthistory #phdlife

Hi, I'm Bel. Welcome to my bed.I'm a graphic designer, artist, writer, clairvoyant, and mature-age university student on the Gold Coast, Australia — currently doing my undergraduate degree with my eye on Honours and a PhD in art history. I record from bed because this is a small apartment, I have three kids, and honestly the bed is the best place to think.This channel has no fixed format. It has a mind. Expect art history, esoteric history, midlife reinvention, creative practice, books I'm obsessed with, and whatever my artist's brain is connecting this week that probably isn't supposed to connect.I cut my own bangs. I don't wear makeup on camera. The bar is low and the conversation is real.Come in.#midlife #50s #singlemom #university #midlifestudy #vlog #arthistory #phddiaries #phd #phdlife #confession #artist #art #literature #fired #history #middleages #aiwreckedmylife #australian #genx

I have two days to memorise 25 Renaissance artworks for a major university exam worth 45% of my grade — so let's do this together.In this video I run through the key works, artists, and movements from the Byzantine era through to the High Renaissance — including Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto, Masaccio, Bellini, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Hieronymus Bosch. I share what I actually find interesting about each work, including a few observations you won't find in the textbook.Topics covered:Byzantine vs Renaissance naturalismTempera, fresco, and oil painting techniquesLinear perspective and BrunelleschiChiaroscuro and contrappostoThe Scrovegni Chapel and Giotto's first kissMasaccio's Trinity and Tribute MoneyBotticelli's Primavera — is it a stage set?Leonardo's Last Supper and why that's definitely JohnBellini's sacred conversationThe Garden of Earthly Delights — and what I think the middle panel really meansSpoiler: I think I'm ready.-------That wild Bosch painting - not for kids!https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-c...-------#arthistory #renaissance #studywithme #italianrenaissance #davinci #botticelli #bosch #hieronymusbosch #university #matureagestudent #arthistory101 #studyvlog #inbedwithbel #genx