The Uncurated Life Podcast

Have you ever been cruising Instagram or Pinterest and found yourself comparing your life to the beautiful people online? Don't lie, you know you do this. It is really easy to forget that what we see online is only part of someone's story, and a real, complicated person exists behind the camera. I'm interested in exploring the reality of life outside of the algorithm, both to remind us that everyone out there is human, but also, to remind us that we aren't alone.

167 | MID YEAR REFLECTIONS + ANNOUNCEMENT! 06/27/2022

166 | THE TALE OF A PAIR OF SHOES 06/20/2022

165| THE FOUR TENDENCIES 06/13/2022

164 | RAGE 06/06/2022

163 | PARENTING TEENAGERS IS COMPLICATED 05/30/2022

162 | GOING ON A DATE WITH ME 05/23/2022

161 | TYPE ABCD PERSONALITY TEST 05/16/2022

160 | I'M A SHITTY BOSS 05/09/2022

AN INTERLUDE 05/02/2022

159 | PHONE ANXIETY AND ME 04/25/2022

158 | EVO PLANNER PERSONALITY TEST 04/18/2022

157 | PATREON VS. THE PLANNER COMMUNITY 04/11/2022

156 | MY HOUSE CLEANING FEELINGS 04/04/2022

MY CURRENT READING CHECK IN | 155 03/28/2022

MY CURRENT READING CHECK IN | 155 SHOWNOTES I know a bunch of you are readers - today I'm giving you a bunch of books that I'm either reading or want to read! • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. • NEWSLETTER • Etsy Shop is open! • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - YouTube - Instagram - Discord - Pinterest - Website - • STUFF I MENTIONED (these are affiliate links - I receive compensation if you purchase through them) The Exorcist - The Leftovers - Courtesan - Catherine The Great - Peter The Great - Burnout - The Fifth Season - We Are Not Like Them - Hello Habits - Inquiries - TRANSCRIPTION We're talking books today, my friends we're talking books, I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about life on and off of the internet. And today my husband is walking around upstairs too. You might be picking up a bunch of that noise and there's nothing I can do about it, but we're going to drown it out with talk of books. One of my favorite things to talk about, I might do this more often if you guys like it, but I'm going to give you three books in three different categories. Those categories are. Three books. I read recently that I enjoyed and want to tell you about three books. I'm in the middle of that. I am enjoying and am hoping that I will continue to enjoy, but books I'm starting and then three books that I want to read that on my TBR list and I'm going to be attacking next. So hopefully somewhere in these nine books, you'll find something that's interesting to you. So let's start first at the books that I've already read recently. They're all fiction. One of them is historical fiction. Uh, these were all first time reads. I believe I may have read one of them years and years ago, but I don't remember. So those three books we'll start with the one. I think I may have read a long time ago, but I don't think I have. And that is the Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. You I'm sure you've heard of the movie. Uh, the book was written before the. The book is excellent. The movie is an excellent adaptation of the book. If you enjoyed enjoy, it might not be the right word. If you, if the movie was something you were into, you may be into the book. The movie is a very straightforward adaptation of the book. I would suggest that there's like a little bit more color or flavor to the book than there is in the movie, as there is with any book adaptation. But if you're not. If you weren't into the movie or whatever, or if the movie was too much for you while the book is not super graphic, it is intense. So there is that, but I enjoyed it. I actually have the SQL Legion, which I know he wrote after the movie came out. And is what the third movie was based on what that one scary fucking scene that's like fucking terrifying if you know, you know, I haven't read that one yet though, but I have it. I'm pretty sure I've read that one before though. I think I remember getting it from a garage sale years and years when I was a kid, but I don't remember it very well. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. So yes, the first book is the Exorcist. The second book on my list that I read recently and really enjoyed was the leftovers by Tom Parata. This is the book that the TV show was based on. I have not seen the show. I've only watched the pilot episode, but have not really made time to sit and watch through the show. But I had heard the show was interesting and I had heard that the book was good. I am a fan of dystopian fiction. I am. Of end times fiction, uh, all those sorts of things. I thought it could be really interesting. And it was, it was a very interesting book, kind of a quiet book, kind of, uh, um, contemplate of almost, but a good book, not high adventure at all. If you're looking for like an adventurous dystopian style book, this is not the book for you, but if you're, if you enjoyed what was one that I recommended in my newsletter recently, uh, never let me go the book about the donor. If you enjoyed that book, you may really love the leftovers. It has that same kind of mundane in a world, surrounded by what the fuck kind of situation. Really liked it. And then the third book I read recently is another one I've talked about on live streams and that is court isn't by Diane Hagar. It's a historical fiction book that is about Deanna , who was the main mistress of Henri. The second, I believe it was on rave. Second of France. He was married to Catherine and they had a whole bunch of kids, but the end of TA was his teres on teacher. On teacher. I believe that's how you, I don't speak French, like the main, the official mistress. Right. And she was his alleged true love and was like one of the main political power movers in the kingdom where I see his wife was kind of pushed to the side, Catherine Domenici, wands Ryan's up taking a lot more power into her own when her husband dies in her kids become a king. That's not what the book is about. The book is mainly about, uh, the relationship between DeAnn, Henri and Catherine. And it was a very, very fun read. I would suggest that if you like reading historical fiction, especially historical fiction, along the lines of say Philip Gregory, where there is some liberties taken with the history, there's recognizable history, but there's also plenty of liberties, especially when it comes to adding in sexy times, you will probably enjoy this. So those are the three that I have read recently that I enjoyed the three books. I am either reading or just cracking into, I have not gotten very far in any of these yet, but I am starting them. So I just thought I would let you know, two of them are books that apparently are the first two in a series of four about the Romanoffs. So, uh, Hear me out here. So I started watching, I watched the great, right. I watched both seasons of it, which I am fully aware that it is historical fiction in the sense that it has, like, it's a little Iqua of historical fiction, right? Like if fruit sneezes in the general direction of a fruit flavored sparkling water, then the great history sneezed in the general direction of the show. And they even, they mention it like in the title of the show, it's like an occasionally true story or whatever. But like most historical fiction, at least for me, what winds up happening is I, I see enjoyable historical fiction. And when I'm done with it, I immediately want to find out what really happened. So when I was done watching the great, I decided to look up some biographies to find one on Catherine. The great, and I discovered that this, uh, reporter named Robert J uh, Robert K. Massey had written a book about Catherine, the great, and he had written a book about Peter, the great who shows up sort of in. In the gray. And I was like, Ooh. So I got both of them. And I started reading them. The reason I went with his books is because I had already read two of his books, which were both about the Romanoffs. They were about Nicholas and Alexander. One's called Nicholas and Alexandra. And the other one is called the Romanovs the final chapter or something like that. It's about like the last year of their lives. And I had read both of those and I had enjoyed them both as books, but also his writing style. It's very important to me. If I'm going to read a biography that I enjoy the writers, the authors writing style. Otherwise, I can't get through it. I need biographies to read at least somewhat like a novel. They could be very much full of facts, but they need the writing style needs to be an enjoyable one for me to read. And I liked his books. And so I was fine picking up those two, but then I realized when I pick them up that they're technically those two books and the two I've already read are a series of four book series about the most famous Romanov. So Catherine, the great Peter, the great and Nicholas and Alexandra and their kids. So I was like, oh cool. I'm just reading it backwards order. Anyway. So both of these books, one of them is called Catherine, the great portrait of a woman and the other is called Peter the great his life and the world. Um, and I will mention these are all linked. All the books I'm talking about are linked in the show notes, other Amazon affiliate links. So using those links will support this podcast. I appreciate that, but if you don't want to, uh, if you don't want to use those links, you can just Google the books and find them. Anyway, just started both of them. I'm barely into them, but I did really like the other books. If you're into biographies and you're into historical biographies, these may be books for you to give you some context as to other biographies that I've read and really enjoyed the writing style. In case you have read biographies and like to know kind of where I gravitate. I really like Antonia Frazier's writing her book on Marie Antoinette is probably one of my favorite biography books of all time. And then, uh, Jeff Gwynne has written some fantastic biographies. The ones I've read of his are, um, his book on Charles Manson, his book on Bonnie and Clyde, which is just fucking outstanding. And his book on Jones. Uh, great, you know, super cheerful reading materials, Cindy. Anyway, that just gives you an idea of some of the biography sort of writing styles that I tend to gravitate towards. So those are books I'm working on. I will report back on how good they are, but in general, They are something that I'm excited about. The final book I'm working on was actually sent to me by the authors, but it was already on my radar. It was going to be a book club book last year before I had to basically shut the book club down until I could figure out what I wanted to do with it, especially with the move. And that is called burnout. The secret to unlocking the stress cycle by Amelia and Emily. Nagorski their sisters. Uh, they S Emilia center. And I am just about to get into it, but one of the reasons I've been looking forward to reading it is because I have been burned out so badly and I'm, I'm sitting on the edge of burnout right now. And what I would like to do is get to a point where I can recognize the signs earlier so that I can avoid it a lot more efficient. Not just for the sake of being productive, but for the sake of my own mental health. So I'm starting that book. I have heard wonderful things about it. It has been recommended to me so many times by so many people who I think see the signs of burnout in me. I actually have it. They sent it to me and I'd actually bought it last year too. I found it on my Kindle. So I've got two versions of it and I'm going to be digging into it. It might be the book I take on the airplane with me to go wild. Um, you guys are. Few weeks later, but I'm recording early. So there is that, but I had, I have just cracked into it. And again, there's there all three books or books I just started, but I am very excited to dig into all of them. And I think what's going to happen is the burnout book will be a travel book. And the two books about the greats will be my bedside books to read before bed. Anyway, moving forward from those three books that are on my TBR list, I actually own two of them and need to buy the other. But I will be starting those ones right away. Two of them are fiction. One of them is non-fiction and the August we'll start with a nonfiction book, which is one that caught my eye while I was at of all fucking places, an Amazon store. I was there at the mall there for something else, and I saw it and I got sucked into it and I bought it. And that is called hello habits, a minimalist guide to a better life by . Now I have no interest in being a minimalist. I love my stuff. I love my stuff and I'm happy with my stuff, but I am interested in habits and how we build them. And I have read atomic habits. It's a great book. But I'm curious to read other books on building habits. And this one seems like an interesting one and I'll be the real, the cover just was fancy looking. And I was like, okay. So I have that sitting on my kitchen counter. That's the non-fiction book that I am excited to start reading, but I have a lot of other nonfiction books I bought because I was excited to start reading them. And then I didn't. So we'll see how that goes. So I'll check back in with you. The two books that are fiction are both books. I am very excited about. The first one is the one I do not own yet. And that is the fifth season by NK. Jemisin many of you in my audience, my patrons, whoever who are fed to see readers have recommended NK Jemisin to me, like hardcore recommended her to me. She's a woman of color. She's black, I believe. And she has written. Uh, apparently some outstanding fantasy. I love fantasy. One of my bucket list items this year is to read a new fantasy series new to me because I'm a reader. And so often I will gravitate towards rereading something like the wheel of time that I have already read a million times before, but I wanted to start with her. It was either her brand in Sanderson. And I wanted to start with her mainly because Brandon Sanderson much like Robert Jordan is, is a girthy writer. He was. Like doorstop books. And I would like something a little less, uh, massive to start with. And her, her BR I think it's the broken earth trilogy, which is what the fifth season is the first book. It's a trilogy, it's three books. So it's an easily digestible series for someone like me who tends to blow through books. I have high hopes for. Um, I don't have a lot of information about it yet, but I'm excited I'm gonna order it. And I will probably start that one as soon. Maybe that will be my reward to myself for when I finished one of the biographies of the great one of the greats, or I might just pick it up because currently those three books that I've got on deck, none of them are fiction. So I might just pick that one up the other, or I might start with the other fiction book on my list, which is we are not like them by Christine pride and Jo Piazza. Now I found out about this book, which is a story about. A white woman and a black woman who are friends and then there's like a police shooting and how they grapple with it. It's supposed to be a really good fiction standalone book. I heard about it because Jo Piazza, the white co-author, the other author, Katherine Christine pride is black. Uh, Joe Piazza is the host of the under the influence podcast, which I've talked about on the show before. Um, and so I had heard about it that way. So. It just sounds like a good book. And I might start with that one because since it's not a series, it's a one-off. I can usually blow through one of those very quickly, either way. All three of those books are books I'm super interested in and what I might wind up doing. Well may wind up happening is I may take like the Catherine the great book and work on that. Set the Peter the great book aside and grab a fiction book and stick it in there. Because what I find is if I overdo it on biographies and nonfiction, my joy of reading plummets, it's like a fucking erection that just like go sad. When you think about, you know, something heinous. Taxes or something. I don't know. My penis goes pew. When I read too much nonfiction and, and biographies now non-fiction tends to be the, the most, not the biographies aren't non-fiction but I like self-help versus biography basically is what I'm talking about here. And even that I was going to spend some time with this podcast talking about genres and trying to avoid, and self-help was going to be like the number one. But then I realized I bought that habits book and that self-help. So maybe I didn't actually think about that too clearly, but what I have found is for me, if all I try to do is read books that I'm reading for like a quote productive reason, or a learning reason, my joy of reading disappears. I do like reading books like that, but they need to be. Balanced with fiction books that I'm just reading because I love reading. There has to be some level of that when it comes to reading. And so that's, that's maybe the lesson I'm leaving you with today's to recognize what kind of a reader you are. Are you somebody who can read more than one book at once? I tend to be somebody who gets made fun of by my family because I leave books open on the couch to the page I'm on. And they'll be like four different books that I'm going with at any given time, because that's just the way that I read. But it's very important to me that I read books that are. There's a mixture of them. Now, if I go all fiction, like I did in January reading those books, we already talked about that's different. I'm fine reading all fiction all the time. But I do like to bring in nonfiction books and biographies and other books like that because I do enjoy reading those, but they are not the books I gravitate towards when I'm really just reading for pleasure and reading for relaxation. My first. Instinct is to go to fiction. And while I can relax reading these other things, I do like to, to spread it out. I will also add I'm not somebody who takes notes in the books that I read. I do, if they're non-fiction and I feel like I need to, but a lot of the times I just read it. That's just my style. That's just the way I tend to do things. I have wanted to be like a book journaler. I have that I'm always fully booked planner. I looked at recently where I'm like, yeah, fuck. Yeah, I'm going to fill this out. Probably not though. So I just wanted to bring that up though. Give you an idea of what I've been reading, what I'm planning to read and how I'm sort of approaching my reading right now. I'm not trying to like schedule time to read. That's never worked for me. I just need to have my book. Available by Kindle needs to be charged. My books need to be out where I can find them so I can pick them up when I feel the moment, especially if I'm trying to aim towards grabbing my phone and opening up candy crush. Instead, again, listen to the boredom podcast. If you'd like to, or the one other one that came out recently about hobbies, talking a lot about that shit lately. And it's true. Like if I have the books available, I will write. So that's what I'm going to work on. I'd love to hear from you anything you've enjoyed reading recently, something that you have on your TBR list. Let me know, tag me in your stories on Instagram at @llamaletters so that I can see what you're reading. I'm curious. Maybe I'll add some books to my list. I love books. If you love books, let me know. This is not a book podcast, but there will be books talked about here, just like. In the meantime, don't forget to thank my patrons. They sponsored these episodes. They're awesome. . And you will find out more. And until next time, my friends, I hope you find a good book to read. I hope you enjoy it and I'll see you next time. Peace out. /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/22234394

I'M FAILING AT HOBBIES | 154 03/21/2022

I'M FAILING AT HOBBIES | 154 SHOWNOTES A big goal for me in 2022 is to reconnect with and discover hobbies. And while this is something I really want to do, I'm having trouble making time for it. • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. • NEWSLETTER • Etsy Shop is open! • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - YouTube - Instagram - Discord - Pinterest - Website - • STUFF I MENTIONED Working To Live Article - Frugal Crafter Video - Inquiries - TRANSCRIPTION So I, I took a look at my goals for the year and how I'm doing on them and so far. And one thing that is standing out to me is that I have been struggling to make time for the hobbies that I would like to pursue. And I want to talk about that. Hi everybody. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo welcome back to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about life, both on and off of the internet. And today, whew. I'm feeling, I'm feeling a little personally called out. I called myself out here in that I am, I want to reconnect with hobbies, but I am not making time for it. When I said about life, both on and off of the internet, part of what I wanted to do was reconnect with hobbies that I didn't feel the need to share with on the internet. And I just can't seem to break that habit. So why is that? Why am I having trouble making time for hobbies? Why, why do I want them in the first place? Why are hobbies important? Let's let's start there. Let's start there. And I would also add that if you haven't listened to episode 1 52, which came out two weeks ago on boredom to listen to that one as well, because I feel like these two are intrinsically connected to each other. I want to be bored. I want more time for hobbies. I feel like these things, if I can solve one, I might be able to solve the. Anyway, the biggest reasons hobbies are important. We know a lot of these things, right? We know that they can help us decompress and help us with our anxiety. They can stimulate creativity. They can make time, help you make time for yourself and spend more time with others. Meet new people. Non pandemic wise when you're going like to groups of like knitting circles or whatnot. Anyway, I mean, I've been a lot of friends through my plan or hobby that's that's one way to meet new people. So there's an article I read on peace, written by, uh, Deondra garner called working to live the importance of hobbies. And I'm going to read from that article because I think it really nails. Quote, hobbies are a great way to decompress after a long day at work or on your day off. When life becomes too overwhelming, your hobbies can help you relax. Doing something you enjoy outside of work can be beneficial for your mental health. Having hobbies can lower anxiety, lower your stress level and help cope with depression. Hobbies help you form a life outside of work. You are just relaxing and doing something you enjoy without any of the pressures of. Side world. You don't have to do something as structured as you would at work or school. You don't have the added stress of attending on time to participate or working with a group or completing a task by a specific time. These aspects are what make hobbies such have such a positive outcome. When you're stressed, you can go paint, exercise, read, or do a plethora of other activities to lessen the amount of stress you have. Hobbies can also increase your interaction with people and the value you can bring to each other. Participating in hobbies with others can sometimes make the hobby more enjoyable because you're doing something you enjoy with people who have the same love and passion for the activity that you have. They get also impact your interaction with your family. When you find a new hobby, you can share it with your family. This gives you more time spent with your family and you're doing something you all enjoy. Another reason you should get a hobby is to gain knowledge. Hobbies, often teach you things that can have a positive impact on your life. The knowledge you could gain from a hobby will stay with you for life. Meaning you could use this knowledge when you're 35 or when you're 85. After you figure out if you want to get a hobby, the next step is finding the right hobby for you. And quote. So the funny thing was, as I was starting to like, look into articles and shit on this. And I was reading that and thinking about the hobby, the right hobbies for me, and then an, an video popped up in my feed from the frugal crafter, which I'll link below. And it was called, do you even like your hobby anymore? And the whole point of the video was like, you know, you might be doing something because you've always done it, but. Is it actually bringing you joy anymore? Do you even like it anymore? D are you buying shit for the sake of buying shit rather than because it's bringing you joy. And that was something that actually caused me to think. Because lately, like I said, I've had some aspirations to reconnect with certain hobbies. One of the things the frugal crafter brought up was saying that sometimes we want to return to a hobby because it's something we used to do, but. We may not be in a stage in our life that we like it anymore. Part of me wonders if this is sort of how I'm feeling about acrylic painting, because I've been trying to work on these paintings for my living room and I just keep putting it off now. I don't know if that's because it's not, I'm not into it anymore. I was never super into it in the first place. Cause I never really took the time. One of the reasons I like watercoloring is I can just spritz the pallet and get going. But with acrylics it takes a lot more cleanup and I fucking hate cleanup. So maybe that. I dunno, I'm not ready to drop it yet, but at the same time it gave me some food for thought. Another thing that I was thinking about was the hobbies. I know I enjoy. But sometimes I'm just not in the mood for them. Examples would be baking. I have not baked for the most part since I moved to Denver. And I know for a fact that part of the reason I haven't been doing that is because I am scared as fuck about adjusting recipes for the altitude. And then there is. Reading, which is something I don't seem to have time for during the day. And then in the evening, when I normally would read, I have been so brain dead from the day that I just don't feel like reading more and I would just rather get on my phone and play candy crush. And that's, we're going to, we're going to head into candy crush land for a second because currently candy crush is my hobby and it's not like I. It's not like I love it. It just, it gives me that short-term little dopamine kit. I can recognize that. I recognize that it's just something to do when I'm starting to feel bored back to the episode about wanting to feel more bored and bringing the candy crush out. And then if there's no lives left, I get frustrated because I'm like, but I want to play it right. I'm thinking I might need to just delete the apps off my phone and I might, I may wind up just doing that, but it seems to be the go-to for me right now when I am bored and needing something to do. And instead of going and finding my book or doing something else, I just grabbed my phone. Scroll, Instagram, play candy crush. It's not a great cycle for me. I'm not like if that was, if you love candy crush or some other game on your phone and that's the hobby you enjoy. Like enjoy partaking in then fucking more power to you. But I can tell when I'm doing it, that this is not something that is great for me either mentally or in any other way. This is just, it's not my, my ideal thing, but it's the easy thing. And that's the thing that I'm just diving into right now, because I'm just so tired all the time from feeling so crappy because that's a big part of it is the exhaustion and the crappiness of how I'm feeling like I'm so tired and I'm dealing with. Pain and misery in my body from being in kidney failure, that the thought of expending more energy on hobbies, is it just, it feels overwhelming and frankly, a little like annoying, like why would I fucking. But I recognize why I need to do that. It it's, there's so much there that would help me. My word of the year is replenish and it will help replenish my thought process. I actually got through both January and February is one little word projects recently because I was waiting for all the shit to come in. It was shipping delays and I can't start something unless I have the right things. Cause that's just how neurotic I am. Did it was so proud of myself and so excited. I shared it with my Patriots and then I shared it with my kids and I was like, look at this thing, blah, blah, blah, did not post it on the internet except to my patrons. So there's that, but it brought me, it brought me so much joy and it wasn't a big. A big deal. It didn't take a lot of time for me to work on it. I worked on it and I put the time into it that I felt like putting into it and I enjoyed it and I was proud of it and it made me happy. And I realized, this is the thing these hobbies can do for me, if I can manage to make the time for them. So. I think maybe one step to making time might be the whole boredom thing, trying to make boredom a habit to then have room for hobbies, and then maybe deleting some of the things off my phone that are distracting me from it. But the other hobby I'd kind of like to pick up, which is not in my goals, but I kind of want to go back to animal crossing. It's been over a year since I played animal crossing. And I'm worried that if I get back into. Suck my life away, the way that it did when I, when I was playing it, when the pandemic started, but to be fair, I'm in kidney failure and I was having a really hard time. And so it made sense. I don't know if it makes sense anymore, but cat's gotten back into it and I've been watching what they're doing and I'm like, oh fuck. I kind of want to do that too. I don't know. I think I need to, re-examine the hobbies I'm trying to pick up. And decide if maybe it's enjoyment that I don't, I'm not anticipating getting, or maybe it's too hard and uncomfortable to get into. Am I expecting too much? Am I expecting to get too much, get too much pleasure out of my hobbies right up front. Do I need to put the little work in the houseplant thing is going okay. I'm not as on top of it as I should be, but I am working on it. I'd love to hear from you, how you make time for your hobbies. This kind of is not a very long episode, but honestly I just sort of needed to get off my chest that I am. I am. I have all the intentions in the world of making time for hobbies for my own. But I'm not following through on it. I would love your tips. I would love your help and your experiences. Let me know, tag me at @llamaletters on Instagram and your stories. And let me know. I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, I'm going to keep working on it. I'm going to try and schedule time to be bored. I'm a delete some shit off my phone. And my next episode is going to be about some books that I've read in books. I want to read because reading is one of the hobbies I've had throughout my life. And it's one that I have still continued to do, even if I haven't always been great at making time for, and so I want to make sure to keep it first and foremost in my mind. So let me know on Instagram, don't forget to check out my Patreon . They are the sponsors of my podcasts and they're fucking awesome until next time, make some time for yourself and your hobbies. This. And I'll talk to you later. Peace out. /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/22234313

WHAT'S MY CHRONOTYPE | 153 03/14/2022

WHAT'S MY CHRONOTYPE | 153 It's time for another personality test podcast. And this one is fun because it also is going to tell me what time I should be doing things. Hi everybody. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about life, both on and off the internet. And this is an episode in an ongoing series. I'm doing that. Really titled anything but loosely known to me, at least as personality tests, test for a cynic when it comes to personality tests. And this week I am talking about the chronotype test. Now there's apparently a chronotype test that has been used for years. Uh, called the morning eveningness questionnaire, but it has been expanded by a doctor named Michael J. Bruce, who has expanded it into four. Chronotypes used to be three, but he expanded into four. Now this has to do with like your sleep and wake preferences. And when the best times are for you to do certain things, when your energy is highest and lowest and blah, blah, blah, he's written a book called the power of when I have it. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, I don't know yet, but the book is all about discovering what your chronotype is and then making sure that you do your best to work along the lines of your internal clock. Now, I recognize that something like this in and of itself is inherently privileged because not everybody. Choose to work at jobs or in careers that respect your internal clock. You know, I don't know what my internal clock is yet. I haven't taken the quiz yet, but I used to have to work at 4:00 AM. When I worked at a grocery store, when I was in the bakery, I'd have to go in at 3:00 AM and that was not necessarily something I use, but it got to pay the bills. I get that. I just wanted to preface it with that mainly because when I talk about being able to. Alter how I do my work or when I could do my best work, I work for myself. And so that is both a blessing and a curse, but the blessing of it is that I'll be able to adapt based on whatever information I get from this shit. Should I choose to? But the curse is that because I can adapt. It means I also sometimes adapt my way into doing nothing for a while and then I don't get paid. I just, I wanted to add the context there. Anyway, let's get. This Dr. Bruce Bruce Wayne situation here. So the tagline, one of the taglines for the novels is, or the book is to learn the best time to do everything from drinking your coffee to have sex or go for a run, according to your body's chronotype. Okay. Well, one out of three ain't bad, right? Anyway. So I'm going to read to you about the chronotypes that he talked about in an article for psychology today, uh, so that we can understand which one is which, and then I will take the test and then we will come back and talk about it. He based the types on mammals, I guess, birds, I think I could be wrong about this, but I think the idea of like, um, an evening, a night owl or a morning Lark or whatever those ideas are from the original Kronos. Framework. He has framed them around mammals because as humans we are. We got the boobies. Anyway, the first one is lions. Lions are morning hunters and people who are the lion chronotype are the early risers of the world. Lions are optimistic, naturally disciplined, including about their sleep routines, practical and goal oriented. They're generally good sleepers with a medium sleep drive. It's rare to find a lion who struggles to stick to a regular early bedtime. Lions have a natural tendency for routine and moderation in their daily habits. And this shows in their overall health picture studies show that morning types of early bedtimes have a lower risk for cardiovascular disease, less obesity, and may have lower risks for mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and others lions leap into their days full of energy the morning and early afternoon, or when lions are at their most productive. Aside from that. I, I don't, I don't anticipate that I'm Elian. He also adds that about 15 to 20% of the general adult population are lions. The second chronotype is bears. Bears are all day hunters and bear chronotypes are go with the flow types with middle of the road, sleep wake preferences of the four chronotypes bears adhere most closely to a solar schedule. Bears are most alert and productive during the middle of the day. From late morning through early afternoon, bears are easygoing and social fun-loving team players. They have a high sleep drive and tend to sleep deeply, but many bears carry a sleep debt. They don't get enough sleep to meet their needs. Bears are prone to inconsistency in their sleep routines. They often under sleep during the workweek and sleep extra on the weekend to make up for their insufficient rest inconsistent sleep habits can put the bare circadian Nicholas. Chronically out of sync, social jet lag has been linked to higher BMI and greater risk for obesity exists. Weight is a common challenge among bears who tend to carry weight, particularly around their midsection. Their vulnerability to social jet lag is one highly likely factor bears are the most common chronotype. About 50% of the adult population are bears because it is the most common chronotype bear time has. Influence over our social time. Six o'clock is the standard dinner hour because that's when bears are ready for their evening meal. Remember settling in to watch your favorite TV show at 10:00 PM. That's when bears are ready to lay low, but aren't quite prepared to fall asleep. And the majority of bear chronotypes modern society as long adopted bear time is the norm in large part. All the other chronotypes live on bear time. When it comes to daily social schedules for schoolwork and social. I will say just from all of that, I think I'm a bear. I'm just going to say right now, bear is the front runner. Uh, the third one is wolves. Wolves are nighttime hunters and the Wolf chronotype has a strong preference for evenings wolves are the people who drag themselves out of bed before 9:00 AM. And don't start really feeling tired until midnight or so. Wolves are creative, impulsive, and emotionally intense. They love to seek out new experiences and are natural brisk takers wolves have a medium sleep drive with peaks of productivity in the late morning. And again, Evening, because if their strong preference for evening hours, wolves often struggle with living. According to the schedule society demands of them. Things like work in school, get going too early and social fund ends too soon. What was, they're highly vulnerable to chronic social jet lag and insufficient sleep. And that can have consequences for their mental and physical help. Health research shows. Evening credit types are at greater risk for. Diseases wolves typically perform at their best with a run seven hours of sleep. Getting that much sleep can be tough for wolves because their biological rhythm is so at odds with society's timetable for daily life, about 20 to 15 to 20% of the population are wolves. Yeah. It's not me. And then dolphins. Dolphins of the mammalian world, our uni hem, what the fuck dude, can I even read this uni hemispheric sleepers? That means they sleep with one half of their brain at a time with the other half awake and active. That is a pitch perfect analogy. The fourth chronotype of restless light sleepers, as I've said, dolphins are wired and tired types. Chronically tired during the day. And wired with restless nervous energy at night, dolphins are light and restless sleepers with a low sleep drive who tend to wake frequently during the night, their minds are active in the evening with often racing thoughts and they feel physically keyed up. There are biological reasons for dolphins, nighttime, restlessness, and agitation. It turns out that dolphins have a circadian biology that's turned upside down. In contrast to other chronotypes dolphins, brain activity increases at night in areas of the brain that promote alertness and unlike other chronotypes dolphins, blood pressure and cortisol levels rise in the evening, which leaves them in a state of physiological arousal at bedtime. Come morning when the other chronotypes are experiencing elevations to blood pressure and cortisol that are fueling their morning, alertness, dolphin levels are playing. Personality wise, they're highly intelligent, cautious detail oriented. Perfectionism is a common dolphin trait and often anxious, as I've said, about 10% of the population are dolphins. I don't think I'm a dolphin, but I do resonate with some of that. I tend to not be able to turn my mind off at night and that will lead me to not being able to fall asleep for hours. If I can turn my mind off, I can fall asleep. But if I can't, if I get going on anything, that's the cause of a lot of my like, slow to sleep until. Anyway, I'm super interested in this now. So I'm going to take the quiz. It [email protected]. Everything will be linked in the show notes, and if it costs anything to get your big info at the end, I'll be sure to let you know, I'm going to take a pause here and I will be back in just a second with my results. Okay, so I'm done. And like I thought I am indeed a bear. I was actually talking to Jesse about it when he popped in here to ask me if I wanted lunch. And I was like, what do you think you are? He thinks he might be a dolphin, which actually would track with a lot of things, but moving forward. So when I, the, the quiz itself, uh, was just a series of questions. It's just, you drop your it's multiple choice type questions, and then you give them your email and they send you your results. Allegedly, I haven't actually gotten my results. There it is. They just showed up. This has been like 15 minutes since, um, since that's the case, now it does say he's going to be sending me a series of emails to tell me all about being a bear. So I'm unsubscribing because I don't want all of those emails and a. But it's just some interesting information about being a bear. I guess I'm kind of interested in reading the book. I'll be real with you. That's not always the case with these personality tests, but I am curious, but I was like, okay, wait, this is not giving me what I want. Like he's giving me all this info allegedly about being a bear. But what I really want is to know, well, if I'm a bear, what am I supposed to drink coffee and have sex and run. So I. Bear chronotype. And I came to an article on the website, bright side.me that has hell ads on it before warned, but it also has the perfect daily schedule that corresponds to your chronotypes. So we're gonna go to the bear. And it says here on there, little infographic that bears are 50 to 55% of all people. They sleep a lot, but don't get enough sleep, lack of energy after lunch and on weekends, they try to recoup the sleep that that's basically me. I will be real. That is basically me. So here we go. They, uh, Ooh, the main rule bears shouldn't sleep more than eight hours. Even during the weekends. I wonder if being chronically ill with kidney disease is changes that because I swear sometimes my body just needs sleep. It feels like regardless. Let's look at the daily schedule for bears morning from 7:00 AM to 11. Wake up and exercise from eight for eight to 10 minutes, eat a hearty breakfast and drink coffee. It'll help to not overeat in the evening. And the excess calories will give you the necessary energy for the whole day plan your day. Maximum productivity from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Do things that demand a lot of energy and concentration. First you'll complete them faster. You'll get tired as lunchtime approaches. That's why it's better to go out for a walk, bright colors, and the sun will wake your organism up and will help fight drowsiness have lunch at 12. It'll give you energy for the rest of the day. By two, you may start feeling tired again. So arrange meetings and coffee breaks to help you get through the afternoon. After work from six to 10 is the best time for a workout. It's hard to start, but only at the beginning have a light dinner after exercising, more protein, fewer carbs. And the end of the day from 10 to 11 bears can stay up late, but they always feel tired in the morning. You better turn off your gadgets at 10 and go to bed. The funny thing is looking at this schedule. A lot of that's already what I'm doing, kind of, I usually try to wake up around six 30 because I get my kids if it's seven for school and it gives me time to take a shower before they get up, or at the very least have coffee before they get up. I don't usually eat breakfast because my stomach is really upset in the mornings, but I've been thinking that it might make me feel better if I eat something once my stomach has mellowed out. The daytime schedule is very similar to what I liked in an ideal day is what I would do. Eat lunch at noon. Take a walk to like wake myself up, schedule things in the later half of the day. Like that's what I try to do anyway, but it's something to keep in mind. I actually have found myself when I do ride the Peloton. It tends to happen more frequently in the evenings, usually after dinner around eight o'clock. That's just what it seems to work the best for me the end of the day is just shoot. Right anyway. So the idea here is, is this schedule actually feels very. Reasonable to me, I should look at a different one and see if they feel a little bit less reasonable, but this bear schedule, I'm looking at it and thinking Yeah. So we'll look at the lions. The morning, people waking up at five 30 drinking coffee around 10 end of the day. Go to bed at 10. And then for the wolves, wake up, set two alarms, 20 minutes apart, postpone all your main test to one PMC that would never work for me because I feel like a lot of my creative work gets done between like 10 and 12 and then dolphins, very neurotic, restless sleep loved to spend time on the internet till late at night. Oh my God. I need to send this to Jesse. I'm pretty sure it's him. Cause it says it's better to start your day with a morning and running some exercise. I've been telling him he needs to do this for years now. Holy shit. Anyway, I think this out of all of the personality tests that I've taken has been the one that I'm most amused by partly because I have been so stressed out about sleep anyway, because you know, being a kidney failure exhausted. These schedules are actually like, kind of give, throwing me for a loop. I may just read this book. I don't know. So I would love to hear from you in the comments or in the comments. This is not a YouTube video, but on the podcast we go to the Instagram and the stories and you tag me at @llamaletters and you tell me what you think I'd love to know what your chronotype is. And do you actually like subscribe to any of this? Does it work for you? Thank you so much for listening. Thank my patrons. They're the ones who, uh, subs who sponsored these episodes. You can find out more at www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo. And until next time I hope you get some sleep. I hope you take care of yourself and peace out. /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/22234193

I WANT TO BE BORED | 152 03/07/2022

I WANT TO BE BORED | 152 I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but holy crap, I would love to be BORED. • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. • NEWSLETTER • Etsy Shop is open! • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - YouTube - Instagram - Discord - Pinterest - Website - • STUFF I MENTIONED Benefits of Boredom - How To Be Bored - Under the Influence Podcast - Inquiries - TRANSCRIPTION Hello, my name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo, and I need to be. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast, or we talk about life both on and off of the internet. If this is your first time here, I am so excited that you're here. And if this is not your first time here, thanks for coming back today. We are talking about boredom and why I need to be bored and why I somehow cannot manage to be okay with being bored. It's a thing that I am coming to terms with. I just got off of a three-day weekend and I had some moments where I got bored and immediately turned to candy crush. I'm actually going to be talking a little, you'll be hearing a lot about candy crush over the next few episodes, but like, it was like, I couldn't just sit and be bored. And I realized that this like constant busy-ness in my mind. Is one of the things that is contributing to my massive sense of overwhelm. It occurred to me that maybe I need to embrace boredom just a little bit. So let's talk about being bored. Why is being bored? A good thing, because it sounds like a bad thing, right? Like when you're a kid being bored is like the worst possible thing ever, you know, like, oh my God, mom, I remember my kids being like, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And I'm like, you can fuck off. I didn't say that, but I wanted to. One of the reasons I think being bored really can frustrate a lot of us is because when you're bored, it's like time moves slower because you're not constantly busy, constantly. Everything else shit starts to drag. And then as soon as you get wrapped up in something and suddenly it's flying by. But I realized with as quickly as like February has flown by for me, uh, maybe being bored and having that time going slow could be a good thing. There's an article. I have a link and the articles I talk about in the show notes, this one is from psychology today. It's by a Dr. . He wrote an article called the benefit five benefits of boredom. And so I'm just going to read through them really quick. The first benefit of boredom is that boredom can improve our mental health. So according to the article, It says that in this age of information, our brains are overloaded with information and distractions. The wealth of information means a scarcity of attention. Attention uses one's limited cognitive resources for productive activities. So taking a break can be a valuable opportunity to help our overloaded brains relax and alleviate stress. It is beneficial to step away from social media and other stressors long enough to feel bored and quote. So right here is something that I think is a distinction between. What I'm doing and what I might maybe should be doing. I'm okay. With stepping away from social media and from other things, I can do that for a few minutes. I don't think I do it long enough to get bored, because I think the moment I'm starting to even brush against the idea of boredom I'm right back on my phone or I'm right back in my book or I'm right back, whatever. So there's a podcast. I'm sure you've heard of it. If you haven't. It's awesome. It's called under the influence. One of the things they're talking about in the newest season is in the fall having a day where women exit social media for a day to show the power that women hold over social media, it doesn't really talk about non-binary or other people, which is something that I've actually been curious about. And I want to message them, but the idea here is to step off for an entire day. And I was listening to her talking about, and I'm like, that's a great idea. And then I was like, do I think it's a great idea because I want to show the power that women have over the internet and like the internet economy, or is it that the idea of just not being on social media is. Refreshing. I don't know, but this idea of stepping away from it long enough to be bored. So not just stepping away from it, but step away to actually our board. It's not something I'm including in my March goals, but it might be something I start to think about. Come. The second benefit to being bored. According to the article, boredom can increase creativity and can provide an opportunity to turn inward and use the time for thought and reflection. Boredom can enable creativity and problem-solving by allowing the mind to wander and daydream. People were in one study, people were made to do boring tasks like reading reports or attending tedious meetings, the boring tasks encourage their minds to wander, which led to creative ways of thinking. The study showed that with mundane activities, we discover useful ideas in the app. External stimulation. We use our imagination and think in different ways and quote, this was kind of where the boredom came from. For me, the idea this, this particular benefit was the one that was at top of my mind when I was thinking about wanting to be board, was that one of the things I want to do this year is more hobbies and really stimulate my creativity outside of work so that it can like benefit my whole life. And I'm just not bored enough. I don't think to really let some of those newer ideas start from. One thought process I had when looking at this article was like thinking about being in high school and being in a class that, or a college middle school, whatever, being in a class that I really wasn't into. And I was a nerd. I was into most of my classes, but there were classes I wasn't into. And so I would start doodling and I'm a child of the nineties. So often those doodles were like the Stussi S that special S or drawing Tweety bird, or Marvin, the Martian. If you are a child with it, like if you were a teenager in the nineties, you know exactly what I'm talking about, the cover of my trapper keeper and so on and so forth. But I was, I would do some of my most fun doodles when I was that bored. So this makes a lot of sense. The third benefit to boredom, uh, from the article, boredom motivates a search for novelty without boredom. Humans would not have the taste for adventure and novelty seeking that makes us who we are intelligent, curious, and constantly seeking out. The next thing, novelty seeking implies dissatisfaction with the status quo and a willingness to challenge established ideas and practices. Great achievements are facilitated with dissatisfaction with the status quo. And I'll tell you right now, this is when I read this benefit. I was like, oh fuck. Yeah, because I am both an very intense creature of habit. Like I get stressed out if my routines and my habits are funny. But I also do get frustrated when I'm doing the same old, same old for too long, in certain aspects of my life, especially creative aspects of my life. I've always been somebody who kind of bounces like a hummingbird from hobby to hobby. And I think that this idea of novelty and seeking out new and interesting experiences is something that I am really trying to lean into this year. But it's kind of fighting against my nature. I want these things, but my nature is to stick, be a homebody stick to the things I know through teens. I know the status quo is comfortable for me. And so stepping outside of that is difficult. And I'm thinking if I can get bored enough, that might motivate me to do it in a way that just saying, I want these things. Does that make sense? I wonder if it does, it's making sense to me, at least from the article, the fourth benefit of boredom is that boredom motivates the pursuit of new goals. Boredom is an emotional signal that we are not doing what we want to be doing. Being bored means we are currently engaged, not only. Uninteresting or challenging situation, but also in a situation that fails to meet our expectations and desires, boredom encourages us to shift to goals and projects that are more fulfilling than the ones we're currently pursuing. And here I think is maybe the crux of why it's so hard for me to be. Generally speaking, I am not in an uninteresting or unchallenging situation with my life. We moved to Denver that in and of itself is challenging. Right. But I, my family has some challenging health problems right now, but I'm relatively happy with the state of my life, with the things I'm doing with whatever. I don't feel very. Dissatisfied with my life. What does she say in the breakfast club? My home life is unsatisfying or my home life is satisfying. And I recognize what a privilege that is, but maybe that's part of why I don't tend to gravitate towards boredom aside from the fact that I've always been someone who just can't manage to not be busy. I also am someone who is relatively content with the state of my life. And so maybe that is one of the reasons why I don't have that, like, kind of wanderlusty achy feeling. And the fifth benefit of boredom, according to the article is boredom and self-control skills boredom affects the ability to focus and pay attention because the interest is lost among students boredom results in disengagement, from class and poor performance, they can feel bored when they lack the cognitive resources to focus. The ability to focus and self-regulate is correlated with the ability to handle boredom, learning, to endure boredom at a young age. Great preparation for developing self-control skills, like regulating one's thoughts, emotions and actions. Yeah, man, like that makes sense. I have always been someone who feels like their brain is moving at a million miles per hour, often faster than I probably want it to. And boredom has always been really stressful for me. And so trying that maybe that's why meditating has never really worked for me. Cause I get fucking bored and I'm like, no, I don't want to do this. I want to do something else. And so I'm thinking by facilitating some boredom in my life, maybe that will help me a little bit when it comes to focus issues I have in other areas, maybe I don't know. Anyway, so I. I was doing some more research into the idea of boredom, right? Like, cause I was like, I know I want to be bored. I know that being bored is something that's almost like aspirational to me. I've joked a lot about when Jesse and I finally go on our honeymoon, even though we've been married for fucking what, like eight years now, I don't even know. He, he knows I'm not good at remembering these things, uh, by seven had a honeymoon yet. But my goal honeymoon is to go somewhere, maybe tropical, where I can like lay by. Like in a pool, be in a pool where the water is filtered, but be in sight of the beach where there's no wifi, so I can be bored, but that's my dream honeymoon. And. I wonder sometimes if I might hate it when I actually do it, because I'd be like, fuck, I'm so bored, you know? But this idea of being bored to me just feels right. It feels like if I can just manage to get to a point where I'm like, fuck dude, I am so bored that it might help me kind of rocket ship off into more interesting or new to me, experiences and things. So I was like, okay, well, if I really want to be bored, and if being bored is something that I've actively pushed against my whole life, then how do I get there? You know, that's, that's easier said than done, but one of the things I came across was another article that was on Zapier, which I think is an app that lets you like connect things to get out of whatever the article is, what I'm here for by Emily Esposito. And it's about the art of being bored, how to be more productive by doing nothing. And the specific thing I zeroed in on where the types of boredom, because if I can identify with the type of boredom I want, maybe that will help me get there. So the five types of boredom that she talks about were developed by a team of German. Researchers led by Thomas guts. They wanted to dive deeper into the types of boredom. And so they did a bunch of research. They studied high school students and college students asked them to answer questions over the course of a couple of weeks. And. They identified five different types with unique characteristics. These types are in, I'm going to read from the article number one in different perhaps than most neutral of the five people with indifferent boredom are calm and withdrawn from the world. They use the words, relaxation and cheerful fatigue to describe. Number two is calibrating boredom, which refers to wandering thoughts and not knowing what to do. You want to change your environment or behavior, but aren't actively finding alternatives. This type of boredom is common when. Performing repetitive tasks. Number three is searching boredom, which is defined by a sense of unpleasant restlessness and an active search for ways to minimize that boredom using two, usually turning to activities and thoughts about hobbies, leisure interests in school. Number four is reactant boredom, which is characterized by feelings of aggression, reacted, boredom, motivates people to leave the boring situation and avoid those responsible for it. People experiencing this type of boredom have persistent thoughts about specific, more, highly valued alternative situations. And finally, there's apathetic. This type of boredom operates at a different level than the previous four. It's a deeper, more negative state of mind that can be linked to feelings of helplessness and depression as well as destructive behaviors. So when I'm looking at these five, I would say that when I am bored, I tend to be in the world of. Calibrating boredom where the wandering thoughts and not knowing what to do and apathetic boredom, which is where I go when I'm in a really not great place. And that is, um, that tends to trigger some of my anxiety and depression. So I think what I want is to bring into my world more of the calibrating board. Which is the board and the happens with repetitive tasks and the indifferent boredom where I'm bored, but I'm okay with it. Like I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm relaxed and I can just be bored and be okay with it. So that's what I think I want to really search for. They offer in this article, a couple of ideas of how to do it. And the first one is about choosing activities, right? So there's a bunch of mundane tasks we have to do on a daily basis, whether they're work-related or house related or whatever the case may be. And the point that the article makes. And I super agree with this is that there are some tasks that. Feel mundane and repetitive, but you still have to focus. The example they bring up in the article is building a pivot table and analyzing data. It's boring and it's tedious, but you have to focus on it. You can't like. You can't let your mind wander right now for me, a task like that would be, uh, prepping vegetables. Now I find chopping vegetables to be kind of relaxing. However, I could also get easily bored by it if I'm just not in the right spot, but I have to pay attention to what I'm doing. I can't let my mind wander or I'll chop my finger off. You see what I'm saying? The other thing the article brings up is that there are tasks that. Are relaxing. That can be confused with boredom. I brought up earlier that meditation makes me bored, but they say that meditation is actually meant to promote tranquility. The idea is to remove the distractions and rid your mind of stimulation. Whereas boredom is when you're trying to find the stimulation and you can't find it. I don't know. I'm still pretty bored by meditation, but the point is, is that might not be the way to find it a. A task that they bring up. That would be a really great example of a way to bring up that like boredom of doing what is the calibrating boredom of doing repetitive tasks is like stuffing envelopes for something like, if you're doing wedding invitations or we were doing life campaign with their, my church to send out things for donations or whatever, stuffing envelopes, definitely a boredom inducing situations. So coming up with ideas, like for that, for me coming up with like a boredom list, I'm going to maybe put that in my bullet journal in March makeup of board and list. I'm gonna write that down. I'm gonna write down a boredom list of activities that I can do that will kind of take the stimulation out to. But give me something to keep me occupied so that my hands are working, but my brain can wander. The second thing they suggest is to banish distractions, which is the one we were already talking about with removing your smartphones. One of the people referenced in the article is Sandy Mann, who is a psychology lecturer at the university of central Lancashire. And she said, That we're trying to swipe and scroll the boredom away. But in doing that, we're actually making ourselves more prone to boredom because every time we get our phone out, we're not allowing our mind to wander and to solve our own boredom problems. So the suggestion is, is to take your, don't take your phone out when you're standing, waiting for something like I do this all the time. I was standing, waiting around. I bust out my phone and I play a little candy crush. The idea here is to. To not to start getting the habit, whether you have to put an app on your phone or something else of not whipping your phone out in those little Mormon moments where you could be bored. So that's something to work on. I might turn that into a habit for April as well. I don't know. And then the other situation, the other idea they bring up, and this is one that I need to take to heart, and that is to stop overbooking yourself. You know, don't accept. Meeting. Don't always be going out strategically block off boredom time in your calendar. You know, some people would say leave white space in your calendar, but this idea of like making sure various time for you to get bored. It says here in this article, uh, for some, uh, minutiae Zomorodi in a GQ article said that being bored is like the stuff that feels super uncomfortable. If you're not used to it, like going to the gym, it really hurts at first. But then you start going maybe three or four times a week and it gets a little easier and maybe you get a little hot, a little exercise high in the sweat starts to feel good and it suddenly becomes part of your life. So the idea is to. Treat boredom like a muscle and train it so you don't lose it. And then you can go find your boredom, find your time, spend that time being bored and make it a habit. Making boredom a habit. That's also a good idea. I should write that down. I'm going to make myself a little list. I'm going to make myself a little list. I want to make a boredom list and I want to do boredom habit. I better write those down. Those will not be in my March video. Cause I already filmed it. You probably already seen it at this point. However, I will be talking about that more come April. I think, I think that is going to be a focus because like I said, in the title of this, I want to be bored. Now what about you? Do you want to be bored? Are you going to try some of these things? Are you going to seek out the boredom in your life? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Go to instant. Tag me at @llamaletters in your story. And tell me your ideas, the things... /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/22234037

FAKING WELL | 151 02/28/2022

FAKING WELL | 151 If you have an invisible illness, chances are at some point you've been accused of "faking it." What most people who don't have these types illnesses don't know is... we do fake it. We fake being WELL. • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. • NEWSLETTER • Etsy Shop is open! • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - YouTube - Instagram - Discord - Pinterest - Website - • STUFF I MENTIONED Inquiries - TRANSCRIPTION So the other day on Instagram, I was talking about, uh, the. The guilt that I feel when I'm having a not so great day and just want to take a personal day. But I feel like I can't because I have to take so many days when it comes to having a really bad chronic illness day. And one of you, Wendy messaged me on Instagram and asked me if I would do a podcast on fake. Well, chronic illness. People think you might be faking sick, but we're actually faking well. And she, I was like, oh fuck. Yeah, I hell I want to talk about that. So thank you, Wendy, for bringing that up to me because that's what we're gonna talk about today. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo on this podcast. We talk about the way we live our lives, both in person and on the internet. And this is a major piece of it. If you are chronically ill. In one form or another, this could actually have to do with mental illness. This could have to do with physical illness or all sorts of different. For a little bit of context. I am in kidney failure. I have polycystic kidney disease. And so I have a lot of the problems that come with kidney failure, the nausea, the, um, the brain fog, the exhaustion, all of that, but also have massive football sized kidneys, and those add their own level of pain to my day, with the size of them pushing on my ribs, pushing them, my organs, I can't bend over. I can't tie my shoes, blah, blah, blah. I am in pain. Or uncomfortable or both every minute of the day. So very much I am, um, chronically ill, however, um, aside from some yellowness in my skin and my large kidney belly, which a lot of people just assume I'm pregnant. You can't see my illness on the surface. I'm not wearing it on my sleeve. The same goes for people with so many different invisible illnesses, whether it's fibromyalgia, whether it's Ehlers Danlos syndrome. And those just both come to mind because my kid is potentially diagnosed with one of those. We're still working on that, but there's all sorts of invisible physical illnesses that can cause pain. And that can make you feel like shit every day. The same goes for a lot of mental. Illnesses things that you're dealing with, like depression or chronic anxiety or all sorts of different things like that. There are so many things that afflict us and impact how we're doing on any given day that people on the outside, people who are not, uh, us basically, they can't see. It becomes a real feeling of stress, especially when people question you, if you're having a bad day, this happens. This happened a lot for me when I was working for, I worked for myself now, but when I was working for somebody else with coworkers, when I would need to take like a moment and people would question because they couldn't tell, it's not like I have a broken arm hanging from my side or something. So they would question me about whether or not it was faking, feeling shitty. I've seen this with my kid. They have run into problems with other people in their life who have questioned them on how they're feeling. Are they really feeling, is it really that bad? I know a lot of people in the chronic illness and chronic pain communities feel this way. I know, especially it can feel this way when you go to the doctor and you are asking for help or relief with your pain or looking for answers. And there are some amazing, amazing medical professionals out there, but there are also some who maybe did not pay. Empathy on their trip through medical school, especially if you're a woman, especially. And I've heard, like if you're a woman, if you're fat, if you are a person of color, your, your, like your concerns are not always taken as seriously at the doctor. If you have the nerve to go to a doctor about it at all. For me, one of my biggest issues is that I am in pain all of the time, and I very rarely have anything to help me with relief from the pain. Because of the stigma around pain management, pain management medication, and with the whole like opioid epidemic, I have an entire rant on how the opioid epidemic and all the situations with that. Some of the people impacted the most by it who don't get talked about the most are the chronic pain patients who. They have to spend their lives in misery because, um, of the way that like people are not being treated like criminals, if they need to, if they need pain management. So there is that all of this to say that it is very easy. If you are somebody who suffers with an invisible illness of any sort to be. Accused of either directly or indirectly a faking it, of faking your illness of exaggerating your illness of, of over-blowing your illness and what Wendy said to me. And what I really started to articulate to myself is that, yeah, I do fake it. I fake it a lot, but I don't fake being sick. I fake being well, here's the thing. When you are somebody who is dealing with chronic pain, chronic illness, you don't need to fake feeling like shit because you already do, but you may decide either purposefully or just subconsciously that it would serve you better to just put on the wellness facade. It's easier that. So I'm going to link several articles that I looked at in the show notes, because there's, there's other people. Who've also said this very succinctly, but I'm gonna just talk about some of the reasons I can think of about why and how I've faked being well, one of the biggest reasons. I'm fucking sick of talking about it. I'm sick of people asking me how I'm doing. I'm sick of having to explain. I'm sick of having to talk about it. I just want to be left to be miserable and peace. And if I present as miserable, people are going to ask me, they're going to be concerned. Maybe I just don't want to talk about it. That. So I fake it. The funny thing is my family's onto me. I can't fake it as well around them anymore. They know me well enough where they can see the changes in my body language. They can see the changes in my face. They can see it. Eyes. They could see it in how I carry myself. They can see it in the way that I move around them and the way that I just move in general, the way I walk, maybe even the clothes I decide to wear. They're very astute at picking up on the signs. Even if I'm trying to present like quote, everything's fine. They can tell. That I'm lying, especially Jessie, my husband. Oh my God. He can pick it out, like out of a fucking lineup, but generally speaking in other relationships. Yeah. I'll just, I'll fucking fake it because I don't want to deal with it anyway. I don't want to talk about it that day. It gets old, man. It gets old and it especially gets old. When you start to feel like that becomes your entire identity, like, look at me, I'm the sick person. And that may not be your entire identity to other people, but it can start to feel that way to yourself. So faking well to, just, to just not deal with it is most definitely something that I, I do like on a regular basis. Another way that I fake well is because I, I don't, there's this dichotomy that comes when you're sick. Right. You see this a lot, especially in like the cancer community, right. There's like the cancer warriors, the people who are like bravely facing on their cancer. And then there's. Like the super miserable sick people you hear about like when somebody is reaching the end of their life and they're just, they're miserable. So they're miserable to everybody else around them. So there's, there's these two kind of archetypes of a sick person. And in my experience, especially being chronically ill. Neither of those really sum up my experience on a day-to-day basis. I'm not a warrior, I'm not battling my illness. I'm, I'm just, I'm doing my best every single day. I don't want to be seen as the hero of my story because it's not that simple. I don't want to be put on a pedestal for it, but at the same time, I also don't want to be seen as like the miserable sick person and. It's hard to push back against those narratives. It's really difficult to push back. It's like pushing back against stereotypes. It can be really difficult. And when you're already exhausted and already in so much pain, it's easier to just sidestep the whole thing altogether. Like people, if I'm not having a bad day, Sickly wise, or if I'm putting on that, I'm not having a bad day sickly wise and it won't come up, then I don't have to deal with it. But as soon as it comes up, it becomes something I might have to deal with. And I just don't want to, most of the time, I don't have the fucking energy for that. Another reason one might fake being well is so that you can kind of. If people start feeling sorry for you because you're sick or they start questioning whether you're faking, being sick. It's a very short leap from that to questioning whether or not you're capable, whether or not you're competent, whether or not you are, you are capable of being like a fully formed adult. It's very easy to infant analyze somebody who's chronically ill. It's very easy to dismiss somebody. Who's chronically ill. It's very easy to other somebody who is chronically ill. And so by faking well, you're blending it. You're blending in with the well people you're blending in with the crowd, and you're not calling attention to any of these things. People don't make assumptions about your state of mind. If they don't know that you are in a haze of pain every day, people don't make assumptions about your state of mind. If they don't know that you have to take Trevor. Every day, people don't make assumptions about your state of mind. If they don't know that you are only putting half of your thought process forward, because the other half of it is dealing with not throwing up. Now, it's not a fair comparison to make because. Even when I was not in pain all the time, there were plenty of days where my thought process was divided and some of it was focused on the task at hand. And some of it was focused on my grocery list or some of it was focused on the drama going on at work, or some of it was focused on reliving last night's episode of flavor of love. Like it's not like chronic illness. People are the only ones who are distracted, but it can be very easy to question somebody's mental competence. If they have another situation going on, because if you are not, it, it, it fits you into this category of sick person rather than person. And, and it just, sometimes you just don't want to fucking deal with it. There's other. Times where one might fake. Well, because you're trying to go down like the fake it till you make it kind of kind of road. Like, well maybe if I fake feeling, well, maybe I've eventually will, you know, maybe if I ignore it long enough, I push it to the side long enough. Maybe I'll actually forget about it for a little while that never happens, but it can help with cheering yourself up. It can help with, with distracting yourself. There are ways we're putting on that kind of cloak of wellness. It can add at least like a superficial level of, I don't know, like peace and that sometimes I'll take it right. Sometimes I will take it a big piece of faking. Well, though, and probably for me at least is one of the biggest pieces is because. I don't want to be seen as the complaining sick person to my family, to my people around me, my friends, everyone else. I don't want to be seen as like the bummer. Right. I don't want people to distance themselves from me because they don't know what to say. I don't want people to distance themselves from me because they're tired of hearing about it. Like, I don't want like being sick, having this shitty genetic disease. Already sucks. I don't want it to be indirectly sucky by alienating people in my life now, whether or not that would actually happen. I don't know. But there is a lot of messaging out there that can at least make you feel that way. It can make you feel that if you are too vocal about your, your chronic illness, if you are, you are. Turning your frown super down on all the time that, that people are going to eventually distance themselves from you. There is messaging out there and it can be easy to internalize that a lot of people don't like being reminded, right? That, that humans, like if you're feeling healthy and everything else, and there's somebody, who's your age, who is struggling really hard with chronic pain or with illness, it can be a reminder of your own mortality and. And so that can cause people to even like, not consciously, but subconsciously distance themselves from you when you're sick. And so by pretending to feel better, you hope to insulate yourself from some of that. And one of the articles I read in the psychology today, article she talks about, um, The idea of the heroic sick person. So like if your illness, this goes back also to like the warrior thing, right. It goes back to the person they use, as the example is Beth from little women, right. She's dying. She meets it with acceptance. She meets it with bravery. She meets it with, with like being. Just accepting and okay with it. It's not icky. It's not stressful. There's no bed sores. Like you don't hear about any of that. You just hear about her bravely heading towards the valley of the shadow or whatever it is for that book a bunch. So that makes that make sense. But that's not usually what chronic illness really is like. And that's usually not what somebody who finally is at a point where they're going to be hospitalized. It's not what it's usually like, but this idea of like the, the idealized sick person, Barbara Hershey in beaches, dying of her woman's disease or whatever, right. When you see people in these movies dying of something, You know, getting cancer, getting whatever, and then they, they face it and they might have some problems facing it, but then they, they go through it like even a movie like step-mom with, um, with Susan Surandon it's a great example of somebody faking well, right. The movie step-mom was Susan Surandon and Julia Roberts is about a divorced couple at Harris is the husband and SU Susan saran. The mom and the dad had Harrison, Susan Sarandon and Susan surrounding gets diagnosed with cancer. And at Harris has a new girlfriend. Um, Nate who's Julia Roberts. And. Susan Sarandon's character. It kind of, it shows kind of two things. It shows the, the, the dynamics of a family dealing with a new step parent and the biological parent, having trouble relinquishing any sort of control to a step parent, blah, blah, blah, which I found fascinating as somebody who was in Susan Sarandon's place with my kids gain a stepmom, but then also. She's hiding her diagnosis from them. Cause she doesn't know how her family is going to handle it. She doesn't want people to see her as a sick person. She hides it for a good from her family for a good chunk of the movie to a point where they think that she's maybe moving to another state or she's having an affair or something like there's a lot happening there where she's faking being well. But then once people know about her being sick, there are some times where she's really snarky and not like accepting it. But for a lot of it, she's like the saintly dying mom. Right. And she's putting on this. This idea of being the, the heroic dying person for her kids, but it also shows through in the. There. There's not a lot of movies made about people who are absolutely like you also. Okay. Let me, let me just continue on this rambling note to mention that like the polar opposite of all of this is the memories that the character Rachel has in Salem's lot. Salem's lot, uh, pet. The character, Rachel and pet cemetery, the memories of her sister Zelda, dying of meningitis, and like the, the scary to a kid sister who is bedridden and on a bunch of drugs. And, and, you know, her room smells like urine because of the bed pan and everything else. I would argue that some of the depictions, not all of the patients have Zelda by far, not all of the fictions of depictions of Zelda, but I would suggest that there is a level of truth there because from everything I understand and from everything I have witnessed from people in my own life, There is a level at the end of a long drawn out illness, where somebody is dying from it, where it's not beautiful, like the movies it's, it's hard and it's stressful for everybody. There's a reason that long-term caregivers suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts and survivor's guilt and all of that. They feel guilty because they feel relieved. All of that, to say that when you hear about these things, when you see the dichotomy of like the heroic, saintly dying people in the movies, and then you hear about the reality of it and the things that caregivers have to go through when you yourself are chronically ill. You don't want to be seen as the saintly dying person, because it's not you, but you don't want to be a burden to the people that you love. And so one of the only ways you can kind of circumvent some of that is to just pretend to not feel so shitty. And so that's at least that's my perspective on it. So I guess what are the takeaway I want you to take from this podcast is if you are somebody who is chronically ill in whatever form it might be, and you fake being. For your own sake, just know that I understand because I do it too. You're not alone. And if you are somebody who is not chronically ill and you have someone in your life who is, first of all, take any assumptions you have, that somebody might be quote faking it when it comes to their pain and put it out the window because chances are, if you know somebody who is chronically ill, And you can see that they're in pain that day. Chances are they've been in pain every day and that day it's just excrutiatingly bad. I know that. That's what my husband actually has said as much to me that he knows that when I actually talk about how bad I'm feeling, it's like way worse, because I wasn't talking about how bad I was feeling before it got bad enough for me to talk about it. So just, just keep that in mind. What you see with the chronically ill person is often what's gotten bad enough for them to allow to the surface or where they can't hide it anymore. This is not the same for everybody. I'm not talking. This is not, you know, everybody's experiences are different, but I think that there can be between, I think the real stigma for chronically ill people is both the long time. Not listening to so many people when they talk about like the things that are wrong with them, as well as, uh, and I'm going just go back to it, but like the, with the opioid epidemic and the problems that it has had with things like pain management, it has become stigmatized to talk about being in chronic pain all the time, because people think you're just talking about it to get. And I just, I wanted to talk about this because I think that there are some of you in my audience who will resonate with this, and I want you to know you're not. I love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Let me know on... /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/21924611

REFLECTING ON LOSS | 150 02/21/2022

REFLECTING ON LOSS | 150 It's been a long time since I lost my parents - 20 years for my dad, 15 years for my mom, and still grief is a constant companion of mine. In today's episode I am reflecting on my own grieving process and what it looks like, so many years later. • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. • NEWSLETTER • Etsy Shop is open! • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - YouTube - Instagram - Discord - Pinterest - Website - • STUFF I MENTIONED Prolonged Grief Article - Inquiries - TRANSCRIPTION I'm going to open this episode up with a quick trigger warning. Um, I'm going to be talking about loss in this episode, loss of parents specifically, um, and. So, if that is something that you are not in a place to think about right now, then I will not have any hard feelings. If you choose to just move onto something else. May I suggest a previous episode I had recently where I talked about my self-care stuff, because that could be a good thing to reflect on instead. Let's jump into it. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast, where we talk about how we live our lives, both on the internet and off of the internet. And one thing that I think hasn't changed in the age of the internet is great. I don't think it has fully changed. At least I'm sure it has evolved in some sense, but we as humans grieving as a part of life, because loss is a part of life. It, we are we're social animals, right? We don't, um, we're not meant to be in a complete silo on our own for our entire lives. There are going to be people who come into our lives and go out of our lives. And when they go out of our lives, whether it is via. Just moving on, whether it is via breakup, whether it is via drifting apart or whether it. Death. When people go out of our lives, there is usually at least some amount of grief. There's also grief that we have for ourselves. When like something changes. We evolve, we change jobs, we move there's a change in our lives. And there is often a level of grief that comes with thinking about. Your previous life, even if you're happy with your new life, there is sometimes a level of grief that comes with that new part of you today, specifically, though, I am going to be reflecting on grief and loss. When it comes to losing somebody very important to you. For me, it was my parents and what it feels like so many years later, because. When it's immediate, it's not always easy to think into the future, how you might be feeling. And I want to speak to the perspective of that, especially for people who might be grieving right now, so that you can kind of hear about it from somebody who is farther down that path. So to give you some context, um, my dad died 20 years. I was 21. He was 40. It happened right after September 11th happened. He died of a stroke. He had a brainstem aneurysm brought on by PK D, which is the kidney disease that I also have. And he, he had a brainstem aneurysm. He went brain dead and we had to take him off of life support. Five years later. So 15 years ago almost to the day this podcast is going live, like it's right in this week, my mom died. My mom died suddenly in her sleep. We never found out what the cause was. The autopsy didn't show anything. She just died when they each time. When my dad died, I was 21 in a new relationship with my soon to be husband. And then ex-husband when my mom died. Um, I was the parent of both of my kids at that point. My oldest was three and my youngest was just about to turn one. My baby sister was pregnant with her oldest. Right around that same time, we actually wound up having to move Becca's baby shower because my mom's funeral wound up being on the day of Becca's baby shower. I didn't deal with my grief very well when both parents. Either of them. I am the oldest of three sisters and I very much went into mama bear mode. My mom, when my dad died, fell apart, she, he was her high school sweetheart. They'd been together for 21 years at that point. I mean, they've been married for 21 years at that point and she was not expecting to lose her husband when she was 40. And then when my mom died, It was like, fuck, really? Like, we just, just did this, you know, so both times I kind of pushed my grief off to take care of others and then it came back and it hit me like a freight train later, especially when I had cat, uh, after my dad died, I had cat a couple of years later and, um, the postpartum depression hit me really hard with a bunch of unresolved grief. It took me a good amount of time to really not be in like full blown meltdown, every few minutes mode. But as the years have gone on. It's evolved. Now, when I was doing some research for this podcast, before I started recording it, I actually learned about something called prolonged grief, which is not what I have. I'm not going to suggest that I have that, but it is interesting. And if you are somebody who is, who is more than a year out from a big loss and it still feels real, like it just happened every single day. You may have prolonged grief, prolonged grief is an actual thing. So I'm going to read, I'm going to read kind of a description of it. Prolonged grief generally presents as an inability to adapt the loss. You wake up and feel like it's brand new over and over again. Uh, it was added to the, um, diagnostic manual of mental disorders saying that it is grief that persists for one year or more. And according to the article I found, uh, prolonged grief. One of the hallmarks of it is that usually. Usually the treatments that are used for like people with like severe depression, don't work on people with prolonged grief. It's, it's different than that. And it can actually bring increased health risks, but they are starting to work on it and work on specific treatments for prolonged grief. Are more effective. So if you are somebody where the grief feels raw and fresh every minute of every day, even more than a year out, definitely seek help for prolonged grief because that's generally speaking when you lose someone, grief is not the same for everybody, but it does start to evolve. As time goes on and we adapt to it. And that's what I want to talk about because that is where I'm at and where I've been for several years. So the best way I can describe being 20 years out from suddenly losing one of my parents and then 15 years from the other parent is that it's become my. It's become one of the many companions that kind of ride alongside me every day. They don't, they're not very talkative. That particular, that grief companion is not talkative, does not stick, like is not constantly whispering in the back of my mind. Like some of my other companions are, you know, But, but it's there. One of the things I have learned in these past years is how to recognize the things, the triggers that will bring that little grief companion to the forefront. Because what I have learned is that I have learned to live with it. It has not become over time. It is no longer the first thing I think about it is no longer at the forefront of my mind. But it's there. And when it does get brought to the surface, it hurts and it hurts in so many ways that are similar to the way it hurt. When I lost my parents, even that pain has been blunted just a little bit. But rather than a constant low grade feeling of grief, it's more like, kind of quiet. And then every once in a while something will happen and it'll bring it to the surface and I'll have a good cry. And one of the things I've learned over the years is to keep an eye out for the things that tend to trigger it now, to be fair, there are often things that trigger it that I'm not expecting. And then I get hit with an unexpected wave of it. But generally speaking, I can tell there are certain kind of specific things. One is certain Elton John songs. I've made no secret of the fact that I love Elton John and B. There are certain Elton John songs. I can't listen to without crying like a baby. I have I can't picture things in my mind. I can't picture my parents' faces. My dad loved Elton John and he loved to play piano and sing Elton John songs. And when I hear goodbye, yellow brick road and Daniel, which are the two hardest ones for me, goodbye, yellow brick road and Daniel. There's a few others as well, but those two are like the top. When I hear them, it's like, I can smell my dad again. I can, I can smell him. And it's visceral and it just sends me, I don't actually have something like that for my mom. I don't have something that just full blown Rex me the way, the way that that does. Well, that's not true. I have a recording of my mom singing Patsy. Cline's. If I listened to that, that wrecks me. But I wonder if the reason that I am so, like my it's memories of my dad that really sent me because you know, my mom and I want up having a really closer, close relationship as adults as I started having kids, even though she moved away, I there's two reasons. I think my, my grief from my mom is not quite as visceral as my grief from my. A I lost my dad when I, he was my first major loss. I had lost like great-grandparents and shit. And like a friend in high school, my aunt had had cancer, but survived it. But like, my dad was my first real loss and I was 21. And then I got diagnosed with PKD right afterwards. So it threw me for a loop. So there's that, but also, and I think this one might be a bigger piece of it. I never got closure with my mom, my dad, we saw him in the hospital. He, we all got a chance. My, my mom, my sisters, I was living an hour and a half away. They came and got me. We went to the hospital, we all got to see him. My dad's siblings got to see him before he died is still living ones. My grandparents were there. Like everybody got to say goodbye to him before we pulled the plug. My mom died in her sleep in Bakersfield, down in Southern California. We never even saw her body. We saw her after she was cremated. So there's a level of like unreality, I think. Whereas with my dad, it was much more like in your face. And so I think that might be part of it, but I'm not sure. I guess that big, the reflection that comes out of this though, is I find it extremely important to recognize the things that, um, can trigger a wave of grief. Although I will also say that when I do cry, like there have been times I've purposefully put on Elton John songs to have a good cry because it's cathartic, you know, it doesn't send me into a deep depression the way you used. So if you're a deep in grief right now, that might be something for you to hang on to, to know that grief might be horrifying to you right now and, and unwelcome. But that the way I see it now, when I grieve either of my parents or both of my parents, whether it's a super hard cry or whether it's just like a wistful thought. It's a reminder of how much I loved them and having that strong feeling still bubble up even 20 years later. It's it's, it's a reminder to me that I. I loved them and that they were a major part of my life. You know, part of the thing I'm really reflecting on today when I'm recording, this is that I'm 42. I was 21. When my dad died, I have officially reached a point where I, uh, have lived longer on this earth. Well, I've lived as long, probably not longer yet because it hasn't hit his anniversary yet. But I'm at a point now where I've lived as many years on this earth without my dad, as I did with him. And it hasn't changed the things he taught me or the memories I have or the way I still think about him. I don't grieve my parents every day, but I think about them every day throughout the course of my day in natural way. And that's also comforting to me when I cry, when I smell. Cause like I said, the Elton John songs, another big trigger for me of grief with my dad is the certain scent. It's a mixture of like, like motor oil and pot, which my dad smell cigarettes too. Sometimes, especially when I'm doing, like getting my car worked on, I catch a whiff of that smell and it throws me. But again, It's just a reminder. There were a lot of times with my parents where things were hard. We grew up in poverty, like lots of hard times, but the love I had for my parents and the love and the memories, all the hard things, they're still there. And I remember them and I think about them when I need to, but like, I'm able to reclaim a little bit of the joy. And I think that was one of the hardest things when I was deep in the initial stages of. Was, it was very hard for me to really find joy in memories because all I could think about with my memories was how much I missed the people I lost. And now that that grief has evolved into being something I can predict a little bit more. I'm able to really embrace all of the memories and even embrace the grief. You know, when I started to think about doing this podcast episode, I was thinking I could reflect on, okay, 20 years later, this is kind of where it's at. And I think as I've been sort of talking through this with you all, I think the thing I'm really reflecting on the most is that the best way I can describe losing someone close to you. Suddenly, I don't, I don't know about with a long illness. The people I've lost in my life with long illness have not been as close to me as my parents, but I lost both my parents suddenly. So I don't know for sure about the feelings that come with like caregiving and survivor's guilt, but what I will say, the reflection, I think that my biggest takeaway from this. Is that I welcome my little grief buddy. We've learned to live with each other. We've reached, we've reached a, a mutually beneficial relationship. We have figured out a way to co-exist and find some amount of benefit. I welcome. The memories of my parents now I welcome the times I cry and I welcome the times when it's hard. And I remember them because again, it just reminds me of how much I loved them. Now I recognize. That grief does not always take that form for people that your grief might be complicated because he might've had a complicated relationship with someone. And I recognize how lucky I was that the issues that we had growing up were not something that traumatized me to a point where, like, I couldn't wholeheartedly love my parents. I had phenomenal parents. They weren't responsible. They weren't great with. But they loved the shit out of us and taught us to be healthy and how we love people. So I recognize that everybody's grief is different and that sometimes it can be more complicated than that, but I can't speak to that experience because it isn't the experience I've had, but I can speak to the experience of being 20 years out from a major loss and having it still cut down. But that those cuts remind me. They bring me back to a time when I had someone I loved so deeply in my life and that I can be 21 years out from it. And still to this day. Remember how powerful that love was in my life. And that is the lesson I take from my grief. And that is the reason I'm fine with metal grief, buddy, hanging out in the car, even if they're quiet most of the time. And I hope that if you're grieving someone right now that one day you'll be able to come to peace with your little grief buddy, too, but just know it's a process and that there's nothing wrong with. For being where you are. And then if you are struggling with acute grief, more than a year after the fact, talk to your doctor about potentially having prolonged grief, you don't have to suffer. You can work. There are things you can do anyway, with all that being said, I'd love to hear from you about your experiences with grief. Let me know, and thank you to my patrons for sponsoring this episode as usual to find out more take care of yourselves. I love you. Big hugs. I might go listen to goodbye yellow brick road now and give myself a good cry, but I'll be welcoming that good cry until next time, my friends peace out. /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/21924548

THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES | 149 02/14/2022

THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES | 149 SHOWNOTES Today, in honor of Valentine's Day, we are continuing the personality test experiment with The Five Love Languages! • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. • NEWSLETTER • Etsy Shop is open! • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - YouTube - Instagram - Discord - Pinterest - Website - • STUFF I MENTIONED Quiz - Inquiries - TRANSCRIPTION What is love, baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. If you want to watch A Night at the Roxbury now you're welcome. Welcome to view and curated life podcast. My name is Cindy Guentert-Baldo, and today we are continuing my experiment of trying out various personality tests, uh, from the perspective of somebody like me, who's fairly. When it comes to personality tests, and today by request, I am doing the five love languages because it's Valentine's day when this podcast goes live, it just seemed appropriate. My original plan was to do this with my husband, Jesse. Difficult sometimes to nail down times, or we can both sit down and do this. So today's just going to be me. But if you are interested in me having him on the podcast to talk about his love language and maybe see what we can figure out between the two of us, uh, tag me at @llamaletters in your Instagram stories and. Anyway, let's just get right into it. And if you're interested in the other personality tests, they are in previous episodes, I've probably done five or six at this point. So yeah, it's an ongoing series again, tag me at @llamaletters. If you have any suggestions for other personalities, You would like me to take, so let's get right into it. The five love languages. I probably don't have to explain this to most of you. Most of you probably already know all about this because it is extremely popular. But if you don't know the love languages are a personality test about how you express and receive love. It's meant to. People, uh, effectively communicate their feelings in a relationship. It was originally a book by Dr. Gary Chapman, who is a licensed marriage counselor. He's also an evangelical Christian. And if you're anything like me, then that sounds alarm bells in terms of taking some sort of a personality test from the quote Christian perspective. If you're not Christian, While his books, there's a series of these love language, books, or languages about different ways to be communicate. Uh, there, from that perspective, from everything I understand, I haven't read them, but they do have that perspective. But according to my basic internet search, anyone can benefit from his material. I don't feel like reading the books. So I went to the Google and I came across like the official website of the love languages. And so let's talk about what they are and there's five, which I've said already a bunch of times, uh, first is acts of service, which are for people who actions speak louder than words for them. Right. Somebody doing something for them is their form of love. Next is receiving gifts. Uh, receiving a heartfelt gift is what makes them feel most loved quality time is the next one. And that is forgiving. The other person, undivided attention. Uh, words of affirmation is the love language, where words are the thing that gives you, the people giving you good, like compliments affirming words is the way you receive love best. And then we do this is that. No physical touch. I knew I missed one left for that person. Nothing speaks more deeply than appropriate physical touch. Now I pulled all of these from the website directly in their little blurbs, but they've got videos and all sorts of other stuff where you can dig deeper into it. Again, I don't really want to, I just want to take the test and figure out which one I am. So I'm going to the quizzes page on the website and there's several quizzes. They've got the love language quiz, but then he's also got the apology language quiz, the anger assessment quiz, the appreciation language. A quiz. And again, if you're interested in me doing any of these, either by myself or maybe with my husband, let me know on Instagram about what I'm going to be doing is the love language quiz, which says what's your love language, trademark for couples singles, teens, and children. Take this quiz to discover your primary love language, what it means and how you can use it to better connect with your loved one. It says here, you need to save your results because they won't save them. There is, as of right now, no cost. So I will let you know, after I take it, if there is a price to pay for like the more detailed analysis, which is what I've been paying for a lot of these, for the sake of science in this podcast. But, uh, I don't necessarily think you need to do that. If you're trying to save your money here or whatever, like I'm doing it for science, man. Anyway, I'm going to pause this and take the quiz and we will talk about it in a couple of weeks. That didn't take very long at all. Probably about five minutes. It was a group of probably 20 or 30 paired statements, which is it's more meaningful, more meaningful for me when, and then two different things. So things like my partner says, I appreciate you. Or my partner does something. That's been stressing me out, whatever the case may be. And so I scored fairly highly on two of, well, no one of them, I scored the highest two of them, my score kind of close to each other. And then two were kind of down in the bottom. I'm not surprised by this breakup at all. Uh, acts of service is my, my primary love language because I just, I love when. Jesse does ship for me. I'll be real. Um, I don't think that that was my love language for the longest time. I think the second one on my list, which is if acts of service came in at 23, at 37% words of affirmation and physical touch both came in close to each other at 23 and 20%. If you would asked me what my love language was. Six or seven years ago before my kidneys really started to fail. Or if you had asked me what, I might've thought myself, just in general, what it would have been words of affirmation would have been the, uh, the one that I expected to be the top, because I know that I tend to really shine when I am complimented. When people tell me that they appreciate me, like I am a pleaser. And so. I also can fight back against pleasing. It's very uncomfortable place to be. But the point being is that when somebody lets me know that they're proud of me or whatever, that always really lights me up inside. However, um, as my kidneys have started to fail and I've gotten more and more exhausted. I have found that people doing things for me, because they were thinking of me because they recognize I was tired or stressed out or that I just have a lot on my plate. And then just stepping into do something without me having to ask has very, definitely become like the top of my list. I, I didn't read the books. I don't know if this is more like, what was the other one was the Enneagram. Now, one of the ones that I did recently said that this is kind of how you are from the day you're born. It was the one that has you thinking about what you were like as a kid, uh, I, I, I would imagine that your love language might change depending on your circumstances. If you're a, for example, in chronic pain, a lot of the time, perhaps words of affirmation goes out of the way when it comes to acts of service. It doesn't surprise me. That receiving gifts is on the very bottom. Yeah. Honestly, I've always been very, um, I've always been very touched and excited when somebody has given me something and thoughtful, but generally speaking, um, gifts are just not something that like lights me on fire. I, it's just not my thing. It's not that I don't like getting gifts. I just, I'm kind of ambivalent about it. I don't think about it a lot of the time, which is probably why I'm so shitty at giving gifts as well. Um, Quality time has been lower on my list lately. And it's not that I don't love spending quality time. It's just since the pandemic, we spent so much time together that quality time, sometimes I just want quality time with myself. Do you know what. And physical touch was the one right in the middle at 20%. Very close to words of affirmation. Again, this is one that I think has changed as I have gone deeper into my kidney problems. Uh, Um, somebody who loves hugging, loves touching, holding hands, all of those things. However, the intimacy side now just be totally real with you. The intimacy side of relationships for me has gotten really. Tamped down. And I think it's a combination of the antidepressants I'm on, but also the fact that I am in large amounts of pain all of the time, my kidneys are massive. And so the thought of anything invading my body, any even pleasurable invading force. Sound like the business right now. So I would imagine that that might have pushed physical touchdown, where it might have ranked higher. I would probably have suggested that maybe six or seven years ago the order might've gotten words of affirmation, physical touch, then acts of service. But currently right now, this, this, this tracks with everything I know. And it's actually very interesting to me to think about the differences between what it is now and what it might have been before. My kidneys had progressed as badly as they have. Anyway, interesting conversation. I really do want to do this with Jesse, so I may have a SQL to this coming up soon, but in the meantime, I would love for you to let me know on Instagram at @llamaletters, both what you would like to see from personality tests. And what's your love language? What is it that lights you on fire? I'd love to hear about it. Thanks as always to my patrons for sponsoring this video. With this video, this podcast sponsoring my foggy kidney brain. As much as they do, if you're interested in finding out more, go to . Once again. Thank you. Have a wonderful rest of your day. If you celebrate Valentine's day, I hope it is lovely. If Valentine's day is at bummer and a half for you, I hope that you find something to do today that makes you happy, regardless of whatever the hallmark card and candy companies want us to sell it. I have a good one, stay safe and I will talk to you next week. Bye friends, peace out. /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/22055957

MY 2022 SELF CARE LIST | 148 02/07/2022

MY 2022 SELF CARE LIST | 148 My 2022 word of the year is "replenish," in large part because I recognize that I need to replenish my personal life, my family life and my health, both physical and mental. Today I thought I'd talk through some of the self care things I am planning to incorporate this year to help me live into this whole replenishment situation. • DISCLAIMER Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed. • NEWSLETTER • Etsy Shop is open! • FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS Patreon - YouTube - Instagram - Discord - Pinterest - Website - • STUFF I MENTIONED My 2022 Goals - Inquiries - TRANSCRIPTION It's so easy to let other shit in our lives takeover while our own fulfillment and happiness and, and care falls by the wayside. Today, I'm going to be reflecting on my 20, 22 self care list in ways that I am going to replenish myself while I do all of the other things in my life that I am required to do that. I need to do that. I, that I want to do. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast. I'm Cindy Gunter, Baldo. And today we are reflecting on some self care and a big reason. I want to talk about this. Well, there's two big reasons for one. Um, part of it is because I think that sometimes this, the idea of self care gets all sort of out of whack on the Instagrams where it's, you know, things like get a facial and go on vacation, all that, which is all well and good. But. I think sometimes self care is doing what we need to make sure that we are leading the life or like a life that is as UN fettered is not the boredom. Maybe an burdened with excessive things like taking care of yourself in a way to prevent certain types of burnout or certain types of pain or certain types of injury from happening to you so that you can go through your life. Uneventful, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, I feel like some of the ways self-care has talked about just feels like both privileged and. Super hokey. And I want to talk about some of the things I want to focus on this year that I know will be more nourishing to my body and my mind. And secondly, the other big reason is that while I am a firm believer in serving others, like I am an over volunteer. I mean, shit. Like I, I fully believe that we can find so much peace in serving others. The cliche of not being able to pour from an empty pitcher, it does. It's a cliche for a reason. It holds true. Right? And this is really smacked me in the face this year. This past year, my life has been very up ended in 2021. Aside from just aside from the global pandemic, which in and of itself has appended so many of our, all of our lives in different ways. But this past year we had to move from California to Denver, uh, because of my husband's job. W our custody situation changed dramatically when the kids decided to come with us. Full-time one of my kids who was already struggling with mental health and physical health problems. Both of those things really spiraled this year. And so, so much of the second half of my year was devoted to them and the needs that they. On top of that, you know, I'm in kidney failure and the doctors appointments and everything else, it's just, it's become so easy. And I've said this here on the podcast and on my YouTube channel, it's been so easy for my life to just be work and doctor's appointments and that's it. And it's, it's just gotten really hard. Things have been, I'm like running on fumes. It feels like now believe me, when I say I know I was needed in all of those circumstances and others that I'm not even going to bring up here. Cause I don't, that's not what this book. I don't want it to go on for that long, but. Those situations needed me and I would not have made other choices given the chance. I knew that I needed to be here for my family. I knew that I needed to be here for my husband here for my kids here in our move and taking care of myself the best I can. I recognize I was doing the best I could in those circumstances, but that MTS pitcher situation, the cliche I was talking about it's me right now. I'm dry, dry a fucking. My picture is, is fucking dusty. So this year a big piece of my goals has had to do with replenishing my life, which is why replenish is actually my word of the year. And I'll link the video where I talk about my 20, 22 goals in the show notes. Uh, it's, it's really important to me this year that I, that I try to, to. I keep coming in the words, replenish and nourish are the words I keep using, but they're really kind of what I want to use because I, if another crisis happens right now, I don't, I mean, I'm sure I'll rise to the occasion, but I am so close to burning out in so many different areas of my life. And I know when I hit burnout really hard, it takes a major toll on my health mentally and physically, and currently, especially with my physical health. There, isn't a lot of. For that, like my physical health is already on a thread to begin with. So burning out really hard. It would just be a major problem and it would impact more than just me. So this self self-care list we're going to talk about today is really. Just it's a list of ideas for me to like, for me specifically, to talk through them with you, but also to give you some thoughts as to things you might want to try and incorporate into your life, this. So that we can all like take better care of ourselves. I also have a free, like little printable infographic thing. If you sign up for my email newsletter this month with some of these ideas on it, some ideas for you. If you're already on the newsletter, it's going to come. I believe today, today is the first Monday of the month. So it should be in your inboxes today. But if you are new, then go sign up for the newsletter and you'll get it as a little bonus. Whatever. Anyway, let's talk about this. Let's talk about my self care list and I invite you to think about your own ideas while I'm talking about this and share them on social media. You can email me Cindy at Cindy country, . You can respond to the email newsletter that goes. I see all of those responses, or you can post it on Instagram, in your stories and tag me at @llamaletters with some self-care ideas. So we can kind of co like collate them and have a big list because that would be. So let's talk about it, right? First of all, and I'm kind of thinking about these in terms of buckets. So the first bucket is to care for my physical health and this, this is probably the easiest one for me to figure out because I am in kidney failure and I have very specific things I need to be doing in order to be compliant for transplant. In order for me to be feeling as good as I can when like, my, my average is not very good, but I don't feel very good on the average. But even that average, sometimes it can be hard to reach when I'm not doing the things I'm supposed to be doing. So. It's it's amazing when you're this deep into a chronic illness, when tiny fuck-ups can make you feel so bad for so long, it really makes you think about that. And you forget when you were back in the day, when you might've felt better on a normal basis, how you took for granted the little fuck-ups and you could do that. And it wouldn't like kill you. Like, even if you're not, even if you're just you're you're fully, you're fully health. And you don't have a chronic illness. If you are older than the age of say 30, you probably can recognize that you, if you try to have like a night out drinking with your friends, the way you did, when you were 21, the recovery period is so much longer like two drinks, and you're hung over for like a day, as opposed to before where you could pound drinks and feel like sprightly the next morning, because you're getting older and your body just can't handle it as much as. Well, for me, it's like that, but it's with all sorts of small things. If I eat three McDonald's singular, McDonald's French fries. I swell up and I feel like I'm going to die for the rest of the evening. Like, that's the kind of thing that I need to keep an eye out for. So for my caring, for my physical health bucket on my list is making sure, taking my meds consistently taking my blood pressure every day, which is a big one that I'm still struggling. Even into this year, getting enough water, giving up soda, going outside every day, going for walks every day, getting on my Peloton on a regular basis, all of these things while they sound just like health maintenance things for me are truly self care because a by doing them, I am ensuring that I'm going to feel as good as I can on any given day and B uh, it helps me so that. Um, when it comes time for transplant, not only am I in as good enough of constitution as I can be for transplant, but also the transplant center will have no reason to thumbs down me. There's all these, you know, articles in the paper about people being denied, kidney transplants or heart transplants, because they refuse to get the COVID vaccine. And all I have to say to that is motherfucker. Do you know anything about organ transplant? It's not just the COVID vaccine, a it's all vaccines B uh, It's a. That's all vaccines. And if you're not compliant, not just with vaccines, but with everything they tell you to do, then they won't do it because getting a transplant not only requires the, the gift of life that is the organ, but so many people and so much time and resources go into a transplant that they do like, and there's a limited supply of both organs and. The teams to actually perform the transplants that they want to make sure the organs are going to the people who are going to make sure they take care of it. Anyway, as a tangent point, being caring for my physical health, it's all the basic habits I know I should be doing, and I just need to be consistent. Next is caring for my mental health and this year, a big piece of that is going to be in reclaiming time for myself. So time off time off that I take with my kids or my husband or both, but also time to take off just for me, like to go have a cup of coffee on my own, or to go to a movie, or I'm probably not going to a movie it's still pandemic time, but like doing things for me just on my own that are not working like. Cultivating hobbies that have nothing to do with work like acrylic painting. I'm working on some for my living room right now and cooking with my walk. Although I haven't been doing that much since my, I had a couple of falls recently and I jacked my hands up and I just haven't had the, the nerve to, to cook with the walk, but that's on my list, you know? Uh, the houseplants I'm trying to deal with that will actually show up in another bucket and prioritizing personal planning over work planning. That for me is probably the biggest piece of self-care that I've already been successful with. And it's already starting to show some subtle results is sitting down every morning with my coffee and pulling my personal planner out first. And thinking about my day outside of work has been pretty epic so far, and I'm using. And I mean, epic, like it's been really great so far in forcing me to really focus on my life as a whole, not just work, which is something I was not doing this past six months. Or even fucking that six years, Jesus, but like it's, it's felt really good. I noticing some changes just in my home life, in terms of the way I'm present in my home life. So that in and of itself of all of them is the biggest piece of this, but really prioritizing time for myself as well as time with my kids. And my husband has been is, is already like high on my list for this year and is going to stay high on my list for the. The next category is my spiritual health. Now I am not someone who believes in, in, in like gods or a God or whatever. I am a humanist, but I'm also a, you, you and I have really been missing my, you you community. I. Had really taken a step away from it during the pandemic because of my kidney function dropping so drastically, I've been so involved with it before being on the board and everything else. But between between feeling like shit and also like everything going virtual, I wound up taking a strong step. Even before we found out about the Denver move. My step back had been pretty, pretty hardcore. Now that we've moved, uh, we have a new, you, you congregation we'd like to start visiting, but with the Omicron variant, they'd gone back to virtual services. And I was I'm, I'm really not a fan of the virtual services just in general. So I wasn't sure, but I'm going to start attending those at least once a month. And I really want to start introducing myself to people. My hope is by the end of, by the end of this year to be. In their choir, like to have joined the congregation and then joined the choir, assuming choir stuff is going to happen. You know? So that is one way to really care for my spiritual health, but in other and other, another aspect of that is reading. I actually have a bunch of books on my Kindle waiting for me to read them. And some of them are fiction. You know, I'm going to read new fantasy series this year, blah, blah, blah. But a big piece of that is reading books that fill me. Spiritual cup and the books in that category tend to be books sort of in a few different veins. Right? I have some books I want to read that are about, they're like deep dives into different aspects of religion, which for me, the seeking of knowledge about other faiths, other religions, I've always been a big piece of my spiritual life. Not because I believe in the things that these books say, but because I like to draw my own bits of wisdom from different faith traditions, even if the dogma of them is not something that I'm super into, but also really learning about other religions is something that really gives me a lot of spiritual nourishment. I don't know if that makes sense, but it makes sense to me, the. There's two other kinds of chunks of books, sort of in this category. Another chunk of books and books in this category are books that are kind of social justice, a bent of social justice. I've got a handful of those that I really want to read. Um, and then finally, the final kind of chunk of those is some books specifically written. There's an author named Kate bowler. She's a minister and a teacher, I believe at duke university. And I've read one of her books. It was called. Looking at my Kindle app because it was called, uh everything's. Um, Whereas it, everything happens for a reason. And I was like, oh fuck you. Right. But then the subtitle is, and other lies I've loved. And this is a great book that she wrote about her feelings when she was diagnosed with cancer. She has another book that just came out. Called, uh, no cure for being human and other truths. I need to hear so that one's on my list of books to read as well as this goes to the more history of other faith traditions. But she's got a book called blessed, which is about the, um, the history of the prosperity gospel and that one I've started, but I haven't finished yet. And so books like that are on my list. To care for my spiritual health, you know, just expanding my horizons, reading about other people's perspectives, reading, things like that. That's, that's kind of on my list. So anyway, that's that bucket then? There's the situational health, which is caring for my situational health, which. A lot of that has to do with the house, the, my space, my, the place around me and everything like that. So on this list is a lot of like project based self care stuff. Right. So working on my home environment with. Organizing and projects. I'm trying to get at least one organization project under my belt each month. This year, uh, last month I put all my Christmas decorations away in reorganize, the big closets down here, which felt so good when it was done this month, I'm going to be working on my closet. I'm also going to be working on, oh, what did I say? I was going to work on this month. You know, it's amazing when you don't remember shit, even though you just said. Uh, the laundry room is on my list. Cause I have some cabinets that I want to reorganize and I wanna get one of those little racks that hangs off the wall that you can unfold to hang, you know, like sweaters and shit from anyway point being, is that working like doing organizational projects around my house is so much fun for me, but I need to actually make the time for it. Otherwise I start to get stressed out and then I don't do it because I'm worried I don't have the time for it. Definitely that I would love to start a raised bed garden in the spring. I could put a garden in the ground if I wanted to, but a, our soul, uh, soil here is Sandy because we are near the dam and they, I guess when they dug out for the reservoir, they put all the sand in RNA. So it takes a lot of work to get the sand really ready for green vegetables. And I'm just, I don't have that many fucks to give right now. Plus I've seen some raised, a friend of mine showed me some raised bed gardens that are like waist high. Like they're up on stand so that you don't have to bend over so much, which is huge for me because bending over is one of the hardest things for me because of my kidneys. So I'd love to do that. Um, I want to find a new farmer's market this year that it's going to be our new favorite that we go to on a regular basis. I want to play with my Layla and my, my Layla puppy and my Lulu kitty. I want to care for and add to my indoor houseplant collection, which one of my goals for this year on my bucket list goals for this year is to get a large one. And we will see how that goes. I actually, as I'm recording this, have a couple of plants that according to my plan to app are going to be, need to be repotted soon. And that's going to be an adventure cause I've never done that successfully. So we will see how that goes. All of those things around the house, decorating the walls and doing the projects, playing with the dogs, going outside, stuff that has to do with my environment. That is my situational health. And that's what I really want to care for this year. And a lot of my goals are kind of based around this, this, uh, particular candidate. And then finally, and this is one that is hard for me to say, because it doesn't feel like self care when I say it. And that is caring for my financial health. I I've talked about it before. I have a very stressed out relationship with money. So the thought of doing stuff with finances does not feel like self care. When I say it it's like seen, it sounds like self torture. But ultimately I know it will bring me peace to feel in control of things because when I feel out of control, I feel very unpeaceful so feeling like I've got at least some level of control over things will help me feel peace, some peace. And also knowing that I have taken care of some of these kinds of adult things will also help me feel peace. So some of the things on this list would be to hire an accountant this year. Um, set up automatic savings and retirement, which I actually did already. And it feels pretty good. We'll see how it feels as it starts happening. Um, and having meetings with Jesse about money, trying to help both my kids with their first bank accounts to have good money habits, and then model them for them as well. Like I flat out told RJ, I was like, yeah, I'm not the person you want to look to for good money habits. Look to Jesse, but we'll do this together. Caring for my financial health is part of it because I know... /episode/index/show/uncuratedlife/id/21924431