In Which I Almost Lose My House - The Pod Of Alan - S1:E5
FIXME: PodcastLinks
FIXME: PodcastPlayer src="https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/f900955e-9fdd-4695-bf12-22eeee2f4d9e/episodes/96d260b6-0a17-484e-bf96-4523127576f6/audio/61f66ada-9dba-49c6-abfa-28ef3af87109/default_tc.mp3"
# Topics Include
- Vulnerability in general and in public - How I almost lost my house - The memory hole of depression - The uncomfortable parts of art
# Transcript
_NOTE: This is an autogenerated transcript. Sometimes the computer get is wrong. Let me know if you see something that's out of whack_
00;00;06;06 - 00;00;27;29
OK, OK. OK. Blog or podcasts? That is the question for today. Clearly, we have gone with podcasts. They had a thing go on today that we'll talk about here just in a minute. That was kind of stressful kind of whatever I was trying to figure out, like how I wanted to deal with it in terms of exposing
00;00;27;29 - 00;00;44;19
it to the public. The long and short of it is I missed property tax payments, apparently for not apparently I miss property tax payments. I wasn't aware that I miss them, which will get into a little bit, but found out a little while ago that they're actually putting my house up for auction in order to pay off
00;00;44;19 - 00;01;04;14
property taxes. This is going to be a talk about vulnerability on the internet. There's a chance I'm not going to post this one. I think I'm going to go is kind of driving back from the tax collectors office where I paid everything off and I was thinking about like, what is the exposure that I want to open
00;01;04;14 - 00;01;18;22
myself up to here for all the other times I've been doing the videos in the car. I've been very open about lots of stuff. Typekit many mental stuff, right to bipolar stuff, some struggles work, whatever. I mean, I guess that's really kind of bad.
00;01;19;07 - 00;01;32;21
I'm fortunate enough that those were the only negative things that I have to talk about, but this is one that's embarrassing. I didn't pay my property taxes. I don't remember not paying them, but also the times that I did pay them.
00;01;32;21 - 00;01;45;12
I don't remember that either. Turns out I paid them over the past couple of years, but not the year prior. They basically said, Hey, cool, that's you don't want to pay, and that's fine. We're going to auction your house off and will use that to get it.
00;01;46;00 - 00;02;01;19
I found that out a little while ago. And so like, this is embarrassing, right? You actually, as I'm saying it, it's not as embarrassing, but it's still kind of embarrassing. Talking about it out loud now doesn't feel as good as I thought it was going to.
00;02;02;09 - 00;02;15;11
Now part of that is I'm in performance mode, so I'm doing a podcast. I'm doing the thing. I disconnect a little bit from the way that I normally operate when I do these things because I'm kind of in performance mode, so I'm kind of in observation mode.
00;02;15;18 - 00;02;30;25
But it's still not the easiest thing to talk about other than I've actually had a lot of practice talking about this stuff. And to be clear, I'm not advocating for people to disclose things like this publicly, largely across the entire internet.
00;02;31;16 - 00;02;43;19
I'm happening to do it because it's in line with where I've been on this kind of like ride with the podcast. I basically don't hold anything back. This is where it gets a little weird for me, but they're not weird.
00;02;43;27 - 00;02;58;01
I feel some type of apprehension to this that I can't super describe other than the fact that I can feel it, and maybe we'll figure out how to describe it later. But some of the stuff that I talk about and the reason I talk about it is mental health awareness that feels like a big thing.
00;02;58;08 - 00;03;14;10
So they got mental health awareness. We're talking about this. There's Mental Health Awareness Month, and like all the other stuff, I'm not trying to operate at that level. I'm not trying to make this really a big thing. This is just an example of a thing that happened to me that is mental health related.
00;03;15;02 - 00;03;32;00
The year that I missed the taxes was a year when I was still very much in a major bipolar depression and in healing from the depression as well. Not really sure if I was all the way down in it or if I was coming out of it, and it was just the brain damage that was still healing
00;03;32;06 - 00;03;47;27
. I basically have no memory of 2019. And the other thing that got me, I don't know if this is like mental health related specifically in terms of like, I don't know if this is an aspect of bipolar disorder or being medicated for bipolar disorder or whatever.
00;03;47;27 - 00;04;02;07
But like, I found this out a couple of weeks ago. The auction is going to be two days from now, and it took me till today to get everything lined up and actually get it done. There is this weird stack of things where I also didn't have my ATM card.
00;04;02;20 - 00;04;13;03
The way that the bank operates is they want you to have your ATM card to do any transaction on your account. Almost certainly, I could have worked with them to basically say, Look, this is an emergency, I need to have this dealt with.
00;04;13;24 - 00;04;29;25
And by the way, even if, like two weeks ago, they had required that I could have had them send me another ATM card. At work and in public, I present pretty well having things together. There are things that I do not have together and I have not been able to get my brain around.
00;04;30;03 - 00;04;41;23
I don't know like what percentage of this would be the bipolar stuff or the medication stuff. But I also think there's a huge portion of those the isolation stuff. For me, that was like a triple whammy of sludge in the brain.
00;04;42;11 - 00;04;56;21
I've got taken care of, so that's awesome. I don't like this, but it is the way that I'm doing the thing like this is part of the performance. This is an uncomfortable thing to do. I don't like doing it, but I like making the thing and this is part of making the thing, I guess.
00;04;57;03 - 00;05;14;02
I don't know how to like, wrap all that stuff up. There's all these different parts of feelings in there that any one of them you can kind of recognize individually. But when you start merging them all together, it seems like you're inventing a new color of weird feeling this Hey, we've got these three colors that all were
00;05;14;02 - 00;05;26;22
great independently, but we must them together. Something is new here and different, so we're taking care. We got it. And I don't mind, I guess, the better way to say this is I mind, much less folks who I don't know learning about this.
00;05;27;08 - 00;05;44;26
The thing that gets me much more is coworkers, knowingness and then friends and family. Actually, the more I talk through this, the more I'm kind of OK with this. It's still going to be odd. But the other thing that's going to help me in the situation that I'm as I'm thinking through right now is there's going to
00;05;44;26 - 00;06;02;00
be a time separation between me saying this and other people knowing it. I wouldn't expect coworkers to see this anytime soon. I'm probably going to wait a little bit longer than normal to actually put out this episode. In the past, I've been doing them basically the next day after I recorded, I'm going to give this one a
00;06;02;00 - 00;06;20;23
little more time, I think not because it needs to come down from the thing, but I need that separation once we've done it. An uncomfortable thing like doing the thing is the uncomfortable part of it. And then afterwards, it can also be uncomfortable, but it like that diminishes over time when I don't know some type of graph
00;06;20;23 - 00;06;34;12
that goes down quickly. Isam topic. I don't think that's right where it all was, the one where it's like a line goes down and it approaches some point, but it never actually hits it a asunto. Pick something like that, whatever.
00;06;34;12 - 00;06;48;25
We'll figure that out for this unit was the one thing is I am also feeling the relief from having done this big thing because like my house was at risk. But like also, it was so weird. Part of me was like, Maybe I'll just let them do that and I'll just move like that was a thought that
00;06;48;25 - 00;07;01;02
entered my head a few times. I just had to do these few things like I had the money I just needed to get the money to the tax collectors office. And then in order to do that, I need to find this ATM card, which was basically in a stack of mail because I have like a year's worth
00;07;01;02 - 00;07;15;06
of mail that I go through, and I had to figure out how much money I owed. So that required a call. None of those things were big, but my brain just kind of shut down thinking about it. The way that I see people in general, that's not a thing that would happen.
00;07;15;23 - 00;07;25;26
So that leads me to believe that is a thing that would happen, and I just don't see it because nobody talks about it. So, hey, I'm talking about it in case you're struggling with some of the stuff, too.
00;07;25;27 - 00;07;41;13
Other people don't have the problems, and maybe it is like mental health related, which probably some degree, maybe, but also like the isolation thing. I really don't know. The thing is, I have the relief coming back from having done it and the reason I'm still coming down from this and like feeling the shoulder is kind of relax
00;07;41;13 - 00;07;54;27
back a little bit, which, by the way, take a second right now. And check this out. Just relax your shoulders and kind of stretch and forward a little bit and then pull them back a little bit. And then just let them down.
00;07;56;15 - 00;08;10;17
Then I feel good. I think we all need to do that more often. I need to make a tweet or write a tweet that we bought a Twitter bot, a bot that basically just says that every now and then it just tweets out to say, Hey, relax your shoulders and like, that's the feeling that I'm having right
00;08;10;17 - 00;08;26;12
now with this kind of relief. I've been surprised at how much doing something physical, like relaxing one shoulders can help ease the brain a little bit or give you a sense of relief, even if it's not big, it's just like a little bit of like.
00;08;28;21 - 00;08;46;20
OK, now. Onward. So I'm going to write this up on the blog, too. I've got a prose version of this starting to bubble up in my head. I'm on a discord where folks talk about celebrating wins and one of the things I want to do is actually want to say, Hey, I just had a big win today
00;08;47;02 - 00;08;55;09
where I did the thing. I actually want to point to the post like, Hey, if you want more details about how I saved my house or how I didn't lose my house? Oh, that's interesting. We could look at that.
00;08;55;09 - 00;09;07;15
Either way, I could either say, this is the way that I saved my house, or this is the way that I didn't lose my house. I really like the language of saved it. I did a thing and I saved my house.
00;09;07;28 - 00;09;26;13
It was in jeopardy because of me, but like, that is a thing that happens. Things that we do can put ourselves in others and things in jeopardy. Hopefully much less severe than losing your house. But things happen. And so we can look at that as I didn't break this or I didn't whatever or say I saved it
00;09;26;13 - 00;09;44;13
. I saved this thing from happening. Yes, I saved my house today. Saved it for me. Sure. But I saved my house today, and that's the important part. So I think that'll wrap it for now. I am going to go sit in the dark and just relax and then maybe play some video games or I don't know what
00;09;44;13 - 00;09;55;18
, but just kind of like the chill here for a little bit detail. No chill and wind, unwind the wind. It's an instrument. There will, of course, be an after show. I'll do that for a minute. Probably not very long.
00;09;55;18 - 00;10;02;03
And then we'll we'll wrap this up in and do another one another time. As always, be kind, be cool, and we will see you next time. Cheers.