What Was I Talking About? - The Pod Of Alan - S1:E10
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# Topics Include
- Memory issues - Getting source material - Talking in tangents - Low grade fear - Getting started with the mechanical parts - Creative momentum after then mechanical start - Getting the figures moving
# Transcript
_NOTE: This is an auto-generated transcript. The computer goes off the rails sometimes. Let me know if you see anything weird._
00;00;05;05 - 00;00;17;06
So here's the thing about my memory these days, it is not as good as it used to be, and I mean, not like by a lot. There's a few things going on. So one, I've gotten older and rumor has it.
00;00;17;06 - 00;00;33;12
As you get older, your memory becomes less good, too. I'm on medications that can affect your brain. The stuff that I take for my bipolar disorder is lithium, the motor gene Abilify and then another one called modafinil that helps counteract the sedation of those other ones.
00;00;34;13 - 00;00;48;06
My understanding is that like the lithium and maybe some of the other ones also affect your memory. And then also one of the things that happens with bipolar disorder, if you have a major episode, either manic or depressive, is there some brain damage that happens like your brain kind of repairs itself to some degree over time?
00;00;48;06 - 00;00;58;27
But I think my psychiatrist said something like you can lose like 5% of your brain mass or something like that during an episode and whatever. I don't know. The number is terrifying, but like there's holes in lesions in my head.
00;01;00;13 - 00;01;13;12
That's not something I had ever heard about with bipolar disorder. That's kind of terrifying, but apparently some amount of it comes back and like I can tell that my brain has come back. Generally speaking, but the memory is still one of the thing, but probably that's not as big a part of it.
00;01;13;12 - 00;01;24;24
But those are part of the keys of water are part of the keys, part of the aspects that are in there and kind of mess with my brain. For example, I had some ideas driving home from work today to do with this podcast.
00;01;24;24 - 00;01;42;07
Like what to do with today? I don't remember what any of those ideas were. Also, another indication of this is I started listening to an audio book again yesterday. I haven't listened to one in a long time like my brain just wasn't into audio books or other audio stuff for a long time.
00;01;42;07 - 00;01;58;09
And it's still kind of isn't. It's really kind of interesting to me where I used to just consume and consuming, consume and consume information where I would do the thing, where I would put podcasts and audio books on to speed because the people weren't talking fast enough for me.
00;01;59;07 - 00;02;13;19
Now, I'm like one and a quarter speed, so like I've definitely slowed down a tremendous amount compared to what I want like you to X just feels too fast now. But in the past, before all the meds, that was the right level for me, anything less than that was too slow.
00;02;14;14 - 00;02;33;26
Now cool. But like I still, I'm just much less interested in hearing new stuff. The thing is, throw me a little bit is for recording these podcasts, part of my idea behind it is like, I have this new information coming in and then that triggers some thought in my brain and I go through and like, talk about
00;02;33;26 - 00;02;56;16
it. That is what this is. Is me talking about things that have sparked my interest. If I'm no longer getting new stuff coming in, what does that do for the longevity of this? Also, there's this feeling that I have about getting started on one of these because without like I no longer have this kind of cauldron of
00;02;56;16 - 00;03;13;23
ideas just bubbling up, constantly ready to go where I could just pick one and I'd have five things that would all bounce through. I could think about one thing. And as I was thinking about that one thing, I could jump to jump, to jump, to jump, to jump to five or six different other things and just kind
00;03;13;23 - 00;03;27;21
of tangent all the way around. And that doesn't happen anymore. It kind of happens now when I'm talking, like when I'm actually doing this, that will be a tendency of the thing as we'll move from topic to topic to topic around kind of a central vortex.
00;03;27;22 - 00;03;43;01
Yes or no? Who knows? Sometimes it moves off to something completely different. But it used to be that that was something that was just automatic and almost instant, I'm afraid a little bit to do these now because that I'm going to call it capability.
00;03;43;01 - 00;04;03;19
That capability, that aspect of my thinking and personality and brain is no longer a thing. I don't have that anymore. And there's this. I don't want to call it a fear, but it's like a low there's like a low grade fever, so it's not like a fear that there's a bear that's about to eat me or a
00;04;03;19 - 00;04;19;22
fear that I'm about to fall off a cliff. Well, it's this low, subtle fear of can I actually do this anymore and that that fear has kind of permeated across other aspects of my life during this run with depression?
00;04;21;02 - 00;04;35;18
The only way that I can deal with that. Is to not think about this. I'm trying to describe the process that I go through that lets me actually do this because it used to be that I could just like turn it on and go it.
00;04;35;25 - 00;04;57;26
And now that's not the thing. So how do I how do I make this happen? Part of it is just that I have done it enough that I have some amount of confidence that if I find a little nugget of a thing to start with and move into the position like ready myself to turning on the camera
00;04;57;26 - 00;05;11;03
, setting up the software to do the recording, like getting the mic in place, all of that process is kind of this movement towards the. I was an avid ability nurse, but like that is the movement like that is starting the process.
00;05;11;10 - 00;05;32;17
I get to move the first part out of the way, easily. The part that scares me, the talking and the actual doing the podcasts proper isn't actually the first thing. I'm kind of realizing this right now, and that's one of the reasons it's so cool to me talking through these things and figuring things out is I just
00;05;32;17 - 00;05;44;20
realized that if I back up in my brain and kind of say to myself, You know, the start of the podcast is not when I start talking with the start of the podcast is when I turn on the lights.
00;05;45;17 - 00;05;57;06
And then once I've turned on the lights, I turn on the camera and then I'd set up the software and then I put the mic in place. Then we go. That gets me those first steps and that gets me that little bit of momentum.
00;05;58;01 - 00;06;16;24
As long as I don't super hesitate when I sit down and not turn on the mic or go, I don't know, look at tick tock or something. I'm going to go. I've gone down and started the process. It's downhill, but not like in a terrifying way of downhill, but in a downhill way of like, OK, I've unblocked
00;06;16;29 - 00;06;35;07
the blockage. I don't know the thing, and I've got a little. I've overcome the inertia of getting started, and I did that prior to actually doing the thing. Now what I'm thinking about is like, if I'm working on some other project, if I'm working on some code thing, for example, I'm kind of struggling on where to get
00;06;35;07 - 00;06;46;08
to it or how to start. I could maybe start going through and be like, OK, like actually, the first part of this process is go through and quit all the applications that don't need to be open right now because they're taking up resources on your computer.
00;06;46;24 - 00;07;09;01
That gives me a known starting thing that I can approach and get that momentum going. That's really interesting to me. Like, I wonder. What other things I could kind of apply that to now I'm thinking about it because the other aspect of some of this stuff is when you're running into things where you don't have the capability
00;07;09;01 - 00;07;24;17
of doing that. I'm setting up the podcast now, setting up the hosting for it, and I don't know what I'm doing there. There's kind of overwhelming ness of all these things in terms of trying to figure out like which one?
00;07;24;28 - 00;07;40;11
Thankfully, I know somebody who's done some this before and they were like me. I just use this one. Somebody knowledgeable about the thing that I'm interested in pointed me to one specifically and said, Just do this. And that's another thing that I wish we had more of, and I don't know how to get us more of that
00;07;40;11 - 00;07;59;13
is the level of effectively mentorship for giving things that's basically like, Look, you're in this new world and there's all this stuff about this new world that you're going to have to figure out. But we can take away huge portions that initial learning to get you to the one part that you really are going to be effective
00;07;59;13 - 00;08;13;06
for getting you to know what's happening if you have a mentor, if you have somebody to guide you that basically says, Look, here's what you do. We're not going to worry about these other 50 things right now. Just do this because this is the infrastructure stuff that we need to do.
00;08;13;16 - 00;08;29;09
That's just the foundation that we build on top of. And we're more interested in building than doing the foundation. Somebody has already provided the foundation. There's 500 out there. We can pick this one and then we can actually get in and do the thing that we're working on, which is building, for example, a podcast.
00;08;30;16 - 00;08;43;27
But even with that, there's still this little bit of having not set it up before. I don't know how to set it up. And I mean that in the in the most basic way in terms of like, I haven't done it before, so I don't have knowledge of how to do it like I have some expectations of
00;08;43;27 - 00;08;54;14
what we're going to do. I have a pretty good idea of what we need to do to make it happen. But I haven't actually done it, so I don't know how to do it. In that little extra bit of energy that gets taken away is energy.
00;08;54;21 - 00;09;11;14
We then don't have available to do the creative work if we can get somebody in a mentor position to show us, that's awesome. And then going back all the way to the podcast aspect of it. If we can get started because starting one of these podcasts, for me, there's that little bit of mental energy that gets drained
00;09;11;14 - 00;09;28;19
when I get started and it's energy that's fired away or burned away. Just thinking about how to actually start the word, start the first few sentences and start going. By rolling back a little bit and by getting in my head where the start of the thing is actually turning on the lights.
00;09;29;16 - 00;09;43;21
I'm no longer burning that energy nearly as much as I would like. I'm still thinking about it, but like I'm going through the motions, like I'm making physical actions to do the thing in. Like, I've really just realized that making that part of the process makes it a lot easier.
00;09;43;21 - 00;09;52;26
Like, I'm already going at that point, like in my head, I'm like, I'm moving at that point, and this is in today's the first day I've done this. So this is this is cool. Check in in ten episodes, we'll see if this is still a thing.
00;09;53;20 - 00;10;06;01
I don't know, I think it's something really interesting to play with this idea of just getting started and maybe even getting started prior to getting started. I used to write every morning, and I'm debating whether or not I want to get back into that.
00;10;06;17 - 00;10;21;08
But one of the ways that I would write, especially because I didn't know specifically what I was going to write about, is I would just start with the sentence I am in the office or I am at the house or I am at the beach or whatever, wherever I was when I first wanted to write.
00;10;21;17 - 00;10;36;23
I would just write that sentence. Sometimes it would be like. And there is a coke can on my desk. It was taking away the responsibility of my brain, of having to actually do the creative work, of actually having to come up with the thing to talk about.
00;10;36;23 - 00;10;51;17
Like I knew specifically, I was just going to always start it this way. And the amazing thing is, once my fingers started moving just a little bit, my brain was like, Oh, OK, we're writing cool now. We can get into the writing mode, but we've already started and we've already done the hard part, which is the start
00;10;52;11 - 00;11;06;01
that has been very effective for me. And I think this is kind of the same thing where it's just like re examining what the idea of starting is. So starting isn't me turning on and it's starting. Isn't me saying the first sentence starting with me, like firing up the lights?
00;11;07;27 - 00;11;23;28
OK, I tell you what that'll run this one. I still this is one of the things like I still feel like because these are all just not expounding, Oh, somebody told me the word I was looking for, but like expositional or whatever, like I don't like these aren't edited to the point where I can just, like, bring
00;11;23;28 - 00;11;33;20
them to a nice, cool ending in terms of like and now we have learned the moral of the story or whatever. So we just got to we just got to hit the button. Sometimes sometimes the land more gracefully than others.
00;11;34;01 - 00;11;43;12
Sometimes they won't. This feels like one of those. They won't. So we'll just sign off for now. We'll do an after show and then we'll we'll see what happens from there. You'll have a good one. Take it easy.
00;11;43;12 - 00;11;45;19
BeKind we will see you next time. Cheers.