Aftershow for S1:E5 - The Pod Of Alan

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# Topics Include

- Procrastination is new to me, maybe? - Learning to live without manic energy - Experimental poking at the brain - Earbuds in a dark room - The invisible weight of stress

# Transcript

_NOTE: This is an auto generated transcript. Sometimes the computer goes wonky. Let me know if you see something weird._

00;00;03;29 - 00;00;16;18

Welcome to the aftershow. OK, I'm going to take a little sip like some bubbly drink. That was the wrong man. That was the organ that was flat. So it less bubbly than I expected. But now we're gonna have a drink of water.

00;00;17;03 - 00;00;29;26

So this is the commentary of commentary of consumption. It's not a bad title for something I don't want. It would be probably a book. I don't know what the book would be about, but commentary of consumption isn't a bad book title.

00;00;30;04 - 00;00;41;12

That's another thing. If you haven't yet seen that I like doing is when I hear phrases that are like good turns of phrase, I like saying whatever that thing was is the name of my new band. And sometimes they're like band names.

00;00;41;12 - 00;00;54;06

Sometimes it would be a great album name, but not a band names. It's just fun. So I try and collect interesting collections of words like good turns of phrase. What if turn of phrase would be a turn of phrase, not a bad band name?

00;00;54;07 - 00;01;11;03

See, there you go. That can be the name of my new band. So I didn't lose my house. That's awesome. I was not as stressed about that, knowing about it for a couple of weeks as one might think I was in my own head of like, I'm going to take care of this, like this is going up

00;01;11;03 - 00;01;23;22

like I'll just take care of this. But the trick was I kept not taking care of it. That's where it got weird. I would just have this thing, and it was a thing that happens to me. And it's procrastination is what it is.

00;01;24;04 - 00;01;38;29

It also feels like not procrastination somehow, which doesn't make sense. But I don't understand the root cause of it. And that's what's throwing me because it will be a thing where it's like, Oh, I need to do this thing, and then I'll kind of like, make these little deals with myself in terms of like, OK, I'm going

00;01;38;29 - 00;01;48;23

to do this after I wake up or after whatever. I'll do this tomorrow, and once it's tomorrow, it's like, Oh, I'll do it at eleven in the morning, I'll do it after lunch, I'll do it at three. I'll do it.

00;01;48;23 - 00;02;01;16

After I eat dinner, I'll do it at eight. Like, sometimes that's hard for me to deal with. I kind of keep pushing it back and keep pushing back. I can't tell it like, I don't understand why I am unable to do the things that I'm trying to do.

00;02;01;26 - 00;02;18;09

That did not used to be a problem. Some of that again, was just the jet engine, a bipolar disorder and hypomania. So I don't have that now. And the question for me is was the was the mania and hypomania pushing me past how I would normally operate.

00;02;18;16 - 00;02;27;08

And I kind of don't think so. The way that I used to do stuff in the way that I used to get into things in the way that I used to like propel through them. I didn't finish as much stuff.

00;02;27;13 - 00;02;42;10

I definitely started a bunch of stuff. But the way that I propel into things, I don't have that energy anymore. That rocket ship of oof. And I was excited about stuff all the time. Like, I was just like, Oh yes, go do the thing I got to do, the thing I got to do, the thing I got

00;02;42;10 - 00;03;01;27

to do, the thing like, that's not a way that my brain operates anymore on the meds, I think. And having talk with my therapist, she agrees that some portion of this is me having to learn how to do stuff without that gunshot or starting pistol of a brain.

00;03;02;22 - 00;03;19;01

So I had my bubble and manic episode when I was 42. It's taken a few years to like, get over that and it feels like I was 22 all the way up until I was 42. And now it feels like I'm either 46 or 56 or 66.

00;03;19;15 - 00;03;33;11

Even up until I was 42 years old. I would have all of this energy all the time because my brain was just doing the thing that it was doing. What that means is I didn't get the adaptation, the slow adaptation that most people get as they age.

00;03;33;23 - 00;03;53;05

Like, I was still 100% at 42, and then I went to 500% during the manic episode, which was wild and then crash way down just into depression. But depression really wasn't about that energy stuff like depression was its own thing, like it was this other universe of nothingness.

00;03;53;21 - 00;04;09;14

But now, as I'm coming back now is the times where I'm trying to figure out how to, like, do stuff without having the warp drives strapped to my back. Or maybe the mania was counteracting my natural thing. And who knows?

00;04;09;16 - 00;04;17;28

And that's one of the tricks with this is like, I want to know all the things like, I want to know why all these things are happening. I want to know the details of them because that helps me like figure out how to work with them.

00;04;18;18 - 00;04;37;02

I'm not really going to know those things, like what part of it is, what the only thing that I can see is the behavior. My brain is kind of this black box of machinery that I can't really get into or dig into the best I can do as you look at it from the outside, which is my

00;04;37;02 - 00;04;52;06

thoughts on my behaviors. And then from there, try to infer maybe what's going on inside, but also just kind of experiment to see like if I do X, what happens if I don't know? Set the alarm and get up at 5:00 a.m. every day.

00;04;52;10 - 00;05;02;05

What is the impact of that on my life and how do I feel and how do I do all those things? I know exercise was a thing for me the right before all the pandemic stuff. I started going to a gym and I was great.

00;05;02;05 - 00;05;14;17

I felt better. This is not a surprise to anybody who goes to the gym, but then the pandemic shut down. I'm about to start going back because I really like that now is going to take me some effort to get back into that because I haven't been doing it.

00;05;15;00 - 00;05;33;17

I've lost the momentum, but like I know, that is a change that I can make that will make me feel better. Maybe it'll make me procrastinate less. Is there other things I can do to procrastinate less? one of the things I discovered was it's easier for me to get going on stuff if I put in earbuds in

00;05;33;17 - 00;05;45;11

a dark room. And like those two things are both kind of required to get this level of easiness, of doing things, of getting started on things they can't be like full blown over your headphones. It can't be just my speakers on the stereo.

00;05;45;20 - 00;06;00;07

They have to be like physically in my ears, like touching, touching the inside of my ears with the earbuds, with the music up decently, not super loud. And then the room needs to be dark to pull the curtains and shut the door and like, Get it as dark in here as I can get that help.

00;06;00;09 - 00;06;18;07

Helps me get going. Somehow, I can bring a focus into working on stuff that I am unable to do without having that kind of set of circumstances. I still like can still work and whatever. But like the other thing that's interesting to me that I discovered over the past little while is going back into the office has

00;06;18;07 - 00;06;31;11

provided kind of that same thing. So the earbuds with the dark was when I was working at home in isolation. Now that I'm back in the office. Something about that energy is very similar to the earbuds and the dark.

00;06;31;27 - 00;06;45;19

That's great. And I still wear about sometimes the office because like office noise and like, sometimes that does help me focus and concentrate, like getting the earbud space or the headphone space of getting yourself your own kind of private environment.

00;06;46;14 - 00;07;00;16

I'll continue to kind of figure this stuff out, but the other aspect of this is I didn't realize I kind of realized, but didn't totally realize how much the health stuff was weighing on me. I don't think it was weighing on me nearly as much as it would where most people, because I don't stress that much, but

00;07;00;16 - 00;07;11;00

like it was still there in the way that I know that it was still there. Like I couldn't I couldn't really like feel it, feel it while I was there. But the way that I know it was there is because now that I've taken care of it, I feel better.

00;07;11;11 - 00;07;23;23

Not surprised about that in the least, and I don't feel like great better. But I feel better. I can feel the relief from not having a thing. Even though it wasn't front of mind, it was taking up that space in the back of my mind or the side of my mind.

00;07;23;23 - 00;07;36;28

And like, I really was interested in this idea of like things weighing on you. When I really thought about that statement, it really does feel like something has been pressing on me kind of there all the time and like, you kind of stopped noticing it.

00;07;36;29 - 00;07;47;11

It's just there. The closest thing I can think of is carrying a backpack. If you want to hike and you've got a kind of a heavy backpack. It's there and it's kind of constant, but you kind of forget about it.

00;07;47;12 - 00;08;00;29

But then when you take the backpack off and you're like, Oh my God, that's better. Like, that's kind of the thing that happened to my brain, which is super cool. I mean, even cooler would be if that hadn't had to happen in the first place because I'd figure out how to do all the tech stuff hadn't been

00;08;00;29 - 00;08;11;28

in depression and totally missed them. Yeah. So like, I don't know, it's cool and interesting to me. So this is, you know, as we continue this little podcast journey, this is the thing that will happen a bunch where we like.

00;08;11;28 - 00;08;24;24

I'm kind of like trying to look at my brain and think about what's happening and do like the metacognition of it. This is a big one in terms of like a big opportunity to kind of do that and try and take an outside look at the situation and go, OK, how did that work?

00;08;24;24 - 00;08;36;14

What broke down or whatnot up or down? But like, let's break it down, a better way to say that. So that wrap this one, you'll have a good one. We will do this again soon. In the meantime, be kind of be cool and we will see you soon.

00;08;36;25 - 00;08;37;04

Cheers.