Welcome back to the podcast where we ask the question, What Makes You Happy.

Our guest today is a writer who ignites the imaginations of children and their parents through their limited-edition animals and touching storybooks. A fun fact about our guests is that they grew up in a small farm town with only one traffic light. And this was a fun little discussion and made me think about how many traffic lights we grew up with in my hometown as well.

Please welcome Kristina Pezza from Jackson Heights, New York. It is a pleasure to have you with us today. How are you? I'm well.

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so happy to be here. We're here to talk about Kristina's happiness today.

Kristina, would you mind sharing with us what makes you happy? So many things make me happy. It's the small things and it's the big things. I get happy packing a bag and taking a trip.

I love to travel. The same sense of freedom, the same sense of just being in the moment and when I illustrate is very much like that, because you can't control your creativity. You really have to just be in the moment.

And yes, if you make a mistake, you're going to work through it, but it's not a controlled situation, which is why I love creativity so much. Where did that creativity come from? Because from a small country town to now pretty much New York, that's a huge, huge lots leagues apart in terms of living situations. So where did that creativity start for you? How did you tap into that? When did you know that you were just a creative being or had a creative soul and that was sort of your path? I always leaned towards it ever since I was a little girl.

I'm also a competitive Latin dancer, and so I was always dancing around the living room. I was always gravitating towards my imagination. And I still have a very big imagination, which is why when I'm with my nephew or my goddaughter or my friend's children, I feel I gravitate towards it so easily.

I've always had a big sense of imagination. And so what would you say then to Alyssa's or watchers who they're struggling to find happiness in a way that you have and they're hearing you and they're kind of going, well, I haven't found my thing, and I'm kind of jealous. What's your message to the person that's having those thoughts right now? Absolutely.

So one thing I did when I first started, and granted, I was very well along my healing journey, which is a constant process. It's never over, which is the beauty of your journey and not science is that I focused on one thing when I first started, and I started building out from that one thing, and that one thing I started was so when I first started this brand, all I had were the characters. I had these crocheted stuffed animals, and I knew they'd lead me to an answer.

And when the pandemic hit, it hit, like, right after I declared myself an entrepreneur. Basically, I was literally, like, less than six months in when the pandemic hit. And I got up every day and wrote a blog post and just consistently wrote a post.

And then I started drawing the characters every day as well. And my takeaways from that were consistent, the discipline to just keep trying it and then take a step back, like, is this working? For me, it was working. That's why I kept doing it.

And from doing that, I actually write two blogs now. One is my original blog, which I still avidly write. I have a second blog I developed.

I actually do broadcasting as well. I do lives and et cetera. I do other things like that, which has been really amazing, but it all came from being consistent with it.

And the other piece I learned from that consistency is that by putting my blogs out there and I love sharing the things so important, 90% of those blogs I wrote those first couple of weeks have never been published. But they gave me my voice, they got me writing, and they got me thinking, and I was like, oh, okay. I like how I'm doing this, but let me try this.

It gave me time to play in a ball. So now when I blog, I feel much more confident. And the blogging led me to writing.

The blogging led me to realize I'm a writer. It's a beautiful journey, and I just want to touch on that, too. Before we wrap this up, it is all consistency and finding your level of consistency that works for you.

Like, we could slave away at something for a month and then step back and go, okay, maybe that's not for me. You might find if you're a listener or a watcher, that you try something for a week before you realize, okay, this isn't working. You might do it for a couple of days, but at least you've given that opportunity to have its place in your life, to see if it works for you.

Just give it the opportunity. It doesn't matter if you do it for a year, three days, more than two. Just give yourself the opportunity to try.

And you'll never know how you feel after you give it that first sort of chance. Kristina, thank you so much for sharing all things that do make you happy, bring you happiness, and have brought you joy. We really appreciate your time today here at what makes you happy.