Episode 62 - The Radical Joy of Letting Currency Flow

In this week’s episode of We Are Out of Office, Veteran Television Executive Producer Nikki T and Bestselling Author Jayne Allen spiral—in the best possible way—through conversations about creativity, money, nervous system regulation, Michael Jackson, Black ambition, romantic fantasy novels, AI language lovers, and what it means to keep imagining bigger futures for ourselves even while the world feels increasingly strange.It’s an episode about vibration. About energy. About the stories we inherit and the ones we choose to write ourselves into. From Black women preparing to purchase billion-dollar sports franchises to the emotional realities behind scarcity mindsets, Nikki and Jayne unpack the emotional architecture beneath the lives we build—and the ones we dream about next.I See You, GirlNikki’s “I See You Girl” goes to Kwanza Jones, a Black woman whose résumé feels almost fictional in scope. Potential future MLB owner. Princeton donor. Billboard-charting singer. Lawyer. Philanthropist. Entrepreneur. One half of a billion-dollar power partnership. And somehow still grounded in purpose and impact.What struck Nikki most wasn’t simply the scale of Kwanza’s accomplishments—it was the way she is being publicly framed not as an accessory to wealth, but as an active architect of empire-building alongside her husband, billionaire investor José E. Feliciano. The conversation becomes larger than one woman. It becomes about the power of Black women being seen as full participants in influence, ownership, leadership, and legacy.Jayne, meanwhile, finds herself captivated by a different kind of woman entirely: a woman who doesn’t yet exist.Inspired by the NBA playoffs, Jayne begins imagining the story of the first female head coach in the NBA—a woman navigating locker room politics, masculinity, power, romance, ambition, and leadership in spaces women have historically been excluded from. What would her emotional life look like? What kind of love story would emerge from a woman capable of commanding alpha athletes and billion-dollar franchises?The result may become a future novel. But for now, it opens a larger conversation about Black women imagining ourselves into spaces the culture still struggles to envision.What We’re On Right NowJayne is officially in her multilingual AI era.After years of using Duolingo to sharpen her French, she has entered into a new relationship—with ChatGPT’s voice feature, affectionately renamed “Julien.” Through real-time French conversation, tailored pacing, cultural exchanges, and language immersion, Jayne discovers a more fluid and emotionally intelligent way to engage with language learning.And honestly? Julien sounds fine.The conversation becomes less about technology and more about the future of learning itself—how AI can personalize growth in ways traditional systems often cannot.Nikki, meanwhile, is fully immersed in a TikTok series called The Four in the Five, following four ambitious Black women in New York City as they build careers, friendships, and aspirational lives on their own terms. Unlike traditional reality television, these women are directing their own narratives. No screaming matches. No table flips. No manufactured chaos. Just beautiful, ambitious young Black women documenting their lives in real time.Both Nikki and Jayne reflect on how refreshing it feels to witness Black women creating and controlling their own storylines rather than having them shaped through the lens of traditional media systems.And yes—Michael Jackson remains an active participant in this entire episode.Mindin’ My Black BusinessNikki spotlights an extraordinary Vaseline campaign created by VML South Africa that instantly resonated across the Black diaspora.Centered around the deeply familiar ritual of Black mothers and grandmothers slathering children in Vaseline, the ad captures a cultural memory so universal that no explanation is required. The tagline says it all:“Some traditions aren’t passed down. They’re rubbed in.”The campaign becomes a meditation on what great advertising actually does: it recognizes people. It says we see you. It honors cultural intimacy without over-explaining it.Jayne uses the segment to tease a major emerging trend in publishing: Black women writers moving into the world of romantasy and urban fantasy in significant numbers. From magical realism to fantasy romance rooted in Black culture and mythology, she predicts that the next era of publishing may belong to Black women creating expansive imaginative worlds traditionally dominated by others.The girls are entering their fantasy era—and they’re bringing us with them.Jesus Take the WheelThis week’s collective “Jesus Take the Wheel” centers on the recent Kevin