Adulting - Let's Talk About... The Covid Hangover

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

 Hello and welcome to Adulting, and the ninth episode of Let’s Talk About… a broadening of Adulting... where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school, this is almost like seminars on life; where my audience (that's you!), get to chat anonymously about things they couldn't necessarily discuss over lunch with their friends, or feel like they don't have anyone to talk to about whatever it may be.  To get involved, follow me on Instagram @oenone, where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let’s Talk About… The Covid Hangover! The submission read – The Covid Hangover – people being less sociable and not making the effort to go out. I hope you enjoy  as always, please do rate, review and subscribe!   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fandu Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Hello and welcome to Adulting and the ninth episode of Let's Talk About, a broadening of adulting where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school. This is almost like seminars on life where my audience, that's you, get to chat anonymously about things you couldn't necessarily

discuss over lunch with your friends or just feel like you don't have anyone to talk to about whatever it may be. To get involved, follow me on Instagram at Anoni where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let's talk about the COVID hangover. The submission read, the COVID hangover, people being less sociable and not making the effort to go out. Some initial messages. It's severely impacting my mental health. People are so much less willing to go out of their way to make plans work and there's no spontaneity. I used to be a massive extrovert but I feel like ever since Covid I've just been tired, lol. It's so normalised to be antisocial, avoidant of other people and as a society that's alarming. It's completely changed how we meet people and people are lonelier than ever.

Maybe it's just because we're four years older now so initially when people sent in this submission obviously you guys all voted on it but I was like I don't think this is my lived experience I feel like I'm going out then I actually realized so untrue but I don't know if it's just the specific period I'm in right now where I'm really enjoying hibernating and that that is quite unusual for me. I normally am 365 party girl. That also could just be age. And I think perhaps I'm really lucky in that even though I did have COVID during my 20s, I think that I experienced my 20s to the full. And it was kind of a conscious decision in a way where I remember thinking, I kind of am going to say yes to everything now because if I ever do end up having kids or I ever end up you know living a life

that's maybe a lot more busy and a lot less free because my job at certain points can allow for a lot of freedom it's not always the wisest thing to be going out in the weeknights but I could allow for it because I didn't necessarily have to get up really early and I did that consciously thinking that I'll always know that I had that period of my life where I was like a yes woman saying yes, having loads of fun. I must say at 30 and at this point in my life, I'm absolutely exhausted. And I just thought that that was a me thing, but actually these messages are really interesting and gave me a lot of pause for thought. So another message read, I feel like I've turned into a stay in it and that

going out always feels like an effort. I would say I'm social, but the thought of making plans often fills me with dread and I don't know why. I don't know if it's COVID making staying in normal and more of a comfort or just how life goes when you get older. And life does actually slow down. I miss nights out and often think I should be doing more, planning events, seeing friends, filling a weekend with dates, but then the comfort of a night in or a chilled day reset always seems to win and I don't know why. Another message read, with this one I genuinely cannot decipher if it's a Covid hangover or everyone getting older lol, even within myself I'm a lot more easily drained now than pre-pandemic, but then I'm comparing my 26-year-old self to me as a 31-year-old. I also don't know if it's all necessarily COVID. I think all this therapy and boundary talk over the past few years has given everyone a you-don't-know-anything

attitude and has made being selfish, cancelling plans as something to strive for. And if you don't, you're just people-pleasing. It it is upsetting though I had a lot of friends cancel on my birthday recently and I know most of them weren't actually ill they just couldn't be bothered I think COVID made everyone's social battery decline but I don't think it's all down to that and it's more down to the whole cancelling plans thing being so normalized and accepted on social media we've almost taken it too far I think that's such an interesting thing um I go to both ways on this because I'm one of those people where even if I am ill I'll feel so worried about not going to someone's birthday even if I really don't want to go because I'm worried that they won't believe me that I will go and often make myself more ill and I'm not saying like if I have COVID but just like

just feeling run down or whatever because I feel like if I mesh them and say I'm ill, they're just not going to believe me. So I think that there is, I think it is a good thing that we're getting comfortable in setting boundaries and, you know, not exhausting ourselves. I'm not the best at it, but I'm getting better. But I do agree that I think we've got really comfortable with wanting to just be on our own and be in at home. And we've been romanticizing that a lot. There's a really amazing sub stack, which I shared whilst we were doing this. Let's talk about, and I'll read bits of it later. But I wanted to come onto more of your messages because I found all of these responses so interesting. Another message read, I was definitely in a rut with this, but I've recently relocated to the other side of the country. And this has been great for changing

my mindset. I'd convinced myself I needed to protect my downtime or needed a lot of time to do life admin or chores etc probably because over Covid you stretch those things out to fill up all that dead time. So it can be easy to stay at home, decline plans or not even put the effort into making any in the first place to not become overwhelmed but I felt the world was passing me by. Since moving and setting new routines, there are so many more hours in the day than you think. TV will always be there. If the night out is terrible, just leave, but at least you gave it a go. There's so much life out there for the taking. New city, new me. Love that message. Okay, so one of you sent in an article from The Guardian by Sarah Manavis, which was titled, and I'll put this in the show notes,

Beware the Beige Influencer, Cheerleaders for a Life of No Surprises. And one of you responded to that saying, this article really spoke to me, especially the quote, the noise of social media may also make quieter lives seem more appealing. Maybe people are socializing less because we're all spending so much more time on our phones and looking at other people's lives we unintentionally feel like we've done our socializing and know what everyone is doing anyway perhaps we then feel exhausted by all of the content on social media and comparison which leads to not making plans to meet in person it goes back to what was said on another topic of let's talk about recently when we mostly see what everyone is doing anyway which leads to less social plans i really don't like the way it's having this effect on us and I'm so desperate for this to change I actually think this is one of the most pertinent threads throughout this

conversation because we've spoken about Covid we're going to come on more to like talking about the cost of living crisis I do think we're in a perfect storm I said to my friend that I live with yesterday there are just not enough hours in the day for me to get everything done that I need to do and then I was like that can't be right like I don't have that much stuff I do have a lot of work on the minute but surely that's not right and then I realized it's because we just have so much sunk time without realizing we spend so much time on our phones and you can be better at it but even I think I think even when you're good at setting parameters around how much you're going on a phone, I think it does create a level of exhaustion. I can't believe that there was a time when I would

kind of work all day, then go out with my friends, then go to bed, then wake up in the morning and be reading loads of books. I used to read so much. I used to paint. Even in the last year or so, I've really felt that my time is starting to crunch more. And I do wonder if it's our brains on our social batteries just being completely exhausted from the amount of content we're consuming because I guess pre-social media and our parents generation you would go to work you'd be in an office you'd be in a hospital or a school or wherever you taught you socialize with those people at your office job and then you would do your work obviously then you'd finish work at whatever time and then you maybe go to the pub or hang out or do something and then you'd go home and maybe see your partner or whoever you live with and that feels so simple and like almost unimaginable

to think that you wouldn't have viewed every single person you went to school with every single person you went to uni with all of the famous people that you follow the influencers the celebrities the gossip websites whatever it is that you're plugged into the mail online celebrity news I know that I host a pop culture podcast um which is about dissecting that and I do really enjoy that but there is something that I can almost see like if you're looking at my day it's funny because when I'm recording I can see like my voice like the sound waves and it's almost like as like a bridge along the top of your whole day you have this sound bar of all the noise that

you're getting from all these social media platforms and I wonder if that is where our brain exhaustion is coming from and so when it gets the end of the day the idea of socializing somewhere I guess in our brain the way that we've absorbed all of that information about people and stuff going on just means that the idea of like getting up and out and going into the wild is too tiring and I really think that that's quite worrying and that really rung true I hadn't necessarily thought about it in that much depth before but I think that's absolutely true and another message read I personally don't think the faster battery draining is COVID related but rather due to the issue with lack of focus these days. We are all constantly bombarded with things, comparisons on social media and even

if you haven't actually done anything all day the mental drain can be so intense we need to rest. Another message, I work from home from 2020 to 2023 and last year I changed my job to four to five days in the office. It is amazing. I feel like my brain turned back on and I'm so much more productive and socialized with work. Highly recommend getting back into the office. It does mean you have to prep your food every day and commute and go to the gym at peak times and clean at weekends, but I feel awake again. I was so sleepy all the time before. That's what made me notice the trend and submit as a topic. I kind of feel I had to switch up something as a singleton to be honest.

So I don't know if you guys remember, but I worked with Lingo, that biosensor that tracks your glucose. And I found it really interesting in terms of just like foods and stuff. But one of the things I found really interesting that really rings true with this message is when you feel that slump, I often get it around 3pm where I really want to have a nap and have a crash. They were like, the best thing to do when you feel like that is actually get up and go for a walk it's like the best way to hack your sleepiness unless you obviously are genuinely like exhausted or fatigued is to actually go and move your body it's kind of you've got to act in resistance to what you're feeling because movement gives you energy and I think there is an element of this with socializing and I even think it's like true with sex and stuff.

It's like the more you do something, the more you wire your brain to adapt to doing it and you become better at it. And I've slipped into periods of depression before. And I think one of the worst things about depression is you don't really want to do anything. So then you feel exhausted. So then you don't get out of bed, which then makes you feel really depressed. And it can be like a really self-fulfilling vicious cycle of sort of negative action and so when you're depressed that's obviously a slightly different thing so you're going through a period of real mental instability but day to day I think we can also do this where you can get into a bit

of a rut and having a habit with exercising or going out to do that thing that you feel like you can't really be bothered for sometimes it gives you this massive surge of energy and you're like where has that come from I've had it with friends before in fact quite often lately when I'm like oh I've got to go for this dinner or like I've got to go not because I don't want to see my friends but I believe that within my body I don't have the energy to go and then I get there and I come back and I'm full of energy and it's because socializing and exercising and getting outside are all things that bring us so much joy and energy and I can even remember like when I was little like going around to a friend's house and when I'd come home I'd be like bouncing off the walls like we really do get energy from each other and I think we've

got so used to being comfortable in our homes it's become sort of the norm perhaps because of COVID perhaps that is a hangover of sort of the norm perhaps because of covid perhaps that is a hangover of sort of just like our default position is that oh we can stay in um that we've forgotten that there are loads of benefits and yes sometimes it might be tiring and yes sometimes it might mean that you feel a bit more tired the next day but actually i think that it really helps with your mental health and it really actually does help with your energy levels and this message about someone saying working from home i I completely believe that's true. I've always worked from home and I have had to set up really strict boundaries around

that, like trying not to work from my bed, trying to give myself structure in my day, because also there's something about being at home, which I think is quite soporific. It can make you feel quite sleepy purely because you're in the space that's supposed to be the place where you sleep and you hang out and you eat rather than your place of work so if you can carve out even a little corner with your desk in and try and set really strict parameters like make sure you have a shower try and change into something even if it's just like a clean tracksuit because so much of this is around like the way that we're mentally approaching our days and and I think that you can

change your system to react to things differently but um sorry that was probably all waffle another message read in my experience covid enabled unhealthy work boundaries to thrive and take root I work in advertising which is already known for unhealthy boundaries but during covid we could literally be always on and the demands because that much bigger taking up an even greater amount of time it wouldn't be unnatural for me to work 8am to 8pm every single day that culture didn't go away after covid and as seen in response to this message i felt i needed to protect every ounce of downtime i had and became quite reluctant to make plans because i knew i'd be so exhausted at the weekend. I think a COVID hangover is more nuanced than just being used to be inside. It's greater fear of disease, bad work practices becoming the

norm, changes in priority. Our internet culture makes us think we need to be doing stuff all the time, but maybe the fact that people are protecting more of their time shows that they actually need to. I think it's such a good message, that one. And again, something I was talking to my housemate about is because I've always been freelance, have really quite quite bad boundaries around when I work I've always um it's not that my work is always hard but I'm never not working I've never not worked on holiday I think I've put an out of office on once just because I feel like I can't really take annual leave because that could mean you know like missing out on a job so I've really had always had quite unhealthy boundaries around work and I definitely think that during Covid because you're in the

house people just assume that you've got all of this extra time and I think that when we were locked down it was that kind of thing where it's like well you're at home anyways you might as well do the work and we have really lost the ability to prioritise or recognise how important it is for everything for productivity creativity, to have rest and relaxation and downtime and socializing. I think that everyone's workload would be done more efficiently if we weren't overworked. I mean, this is just obviousness that I'm saying now. Another message read, I feel like there's so much to be tired about though, lol. I wasn't furloughed so I worked insanely hard during the pandemic years just so i wasn't made redundant like a third of my national team i'm also permanently

tired of video calls and whatsapp ever since the pandemic so i'm useless at replying to messages now i was so overwhelmed by the amount of socializing i felt compelled to do after the pandemic because you couldn't say no anymore that was exhausting too there's been constant stress over the last few years fear of covid fear of redundancy for some actual redundancy poor economy no one is recruiting so putting up with jobs that aren't good for our souls cost of living crisis super stressful the world is awful and getting worse climate change female rights afghanistan abortion laws etc etc it's exhausting not to mention it's too expensive to socialize now the tiredness is real again completely relate to all of those messages um one thing i will say when you're feeling really nihilistic and in despair about

the world is there's a book by i think it's hans resling called factfulness which is about how the world isn't actually worse now but we're just so hyper connected that we're so aware of everything happening and that actually overall the world is kind of better like statistically it's still obviously we are living in a fucking shit show but um things aren't actually kind of getting worse things did used to be more more barbaric and more evil but because of hyper-connectivity and us being bombarded with the news and there being a negative bias towards the kind of stories that are fed to us it does feel like the i mean it is hell but it's not worse. The climate change thing is worse. But I think going back to what the other person said is we are, we're so over, like,

I just don't think we're designed to live in this world that we're living in, in this like hyper-capitalistic, hyper-productive, it's like, it's just, we're all trying to optimize to the nth degree. And Gia Tolentino wrote about this really well in Trick Mirror, where it's like, optimization is the thing. It's not good enough to be a bit into fitness. You have to be the fittest. It's not good enough to be X, Y, Z. You have to be this. I think there's so much pressure to look younger, to be hotter, to be the best at your job, to make the most money, to have the most perfect life, to then be broadcasting all of that 24-7 on social media, to have the most perfect life, to then be broadcasting all of that 24-7 on social media, to have the best therapy speak, to have that. There is no space for human fallibility in so

much of modern day living. And we have such high expectations of ourselves and we're being rewarded less for our time. House prices are extortionate we have this kind of arrested development in our generation where we're working so hard trying so much but we'll never be able to necessarily achieve the milestones that our parents generation did i saw a tweet that was like why is everyone in our generation so depressed and it was said because we've done everything our parents told us to do and then they changed the world and i think that is really true so i think there is this just collective exhaustion and i also think the disparity in wealth and I've spoken about this before but as we see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and those chasms growing

even more and as we feel that relief quite greatly that also causes a lot of unhappiness within a society and Rutger Breckman writes in this in Utopia for Realists that the societies that have the biggest disparities in wealth report to be the least happy. And even if a country is overall quite poor, if everyone is the same, you feel much better. And I think that exacerbates it. Also, the social media comparison is just causing a low-level hum of dissatisfaction with our lives. I mean, this podcast, every single episode we do is kind of about how that low-level hum of social media and that kind of noise is causing all of these issues so um shall we all delete it but don't know where I will make my money so don't do that right now I'll come up with a solution as I was talking then

about the optimization thing I was thinking about how much this does play into what we're seeing unfold now I think I don't know if you guys read my sub stack called On Desire, Beauty and a Zen Pick, which was sort of about this. It was about how we are so obsessed with health and wellness and longevity. And I think that there is a massive boom in wellness industries and beauty industries. And that as much as people might want to dress up to other things, the people that are quitting drinking and saying you know I feel so much better completely believe you I've actually been drinking way less and it is amazing not to have a hangover however I think that what is happening is we are prioritizing looking really fit acting really healthy taking

every single supplement available to us getting a really good night's sleep trying to embalm our youth into our bodies. This is what I wrote in the piece, so that we look and feel younger, so that we can live for longer. And actually, that is also, to some extent, unhealthy. There is a real benefit, and there's so many studies on this, and medicine completely agrees. And as we know, we had to have a minister for loneliness because it was becoming such an issue. That social interaction and human interaction is really important for your health. And it makes a massive difference to someone's life expectancy if they have a good group of friends around them. And not to say that the only way to achieve friendships is through going out, but it is a massive part and has always been a part of human bonding. Dancing, drinking, socializing. And because we are working from home, we, a lot of us,

are going to have to make an extra effort in order to maintain and cultivate those friendships that bring us that human bonding and human interaction. It's really interesting that the focus that we're putting on health is often to do with things that are going to change the way that we look, you know, thinking about, yes, we're talking about wearing sun lotion. And yes, that's really good for skin cancer prevention. But also a lot of it really truthfully is people worrying about wrinkles. Yes, we're talking about exercising and, you know, keeping our body fat lower and making sure that our bones are stronger and that our bodies are fitter, but fundamentally boil it down. And maybe a lot of the people that are selling you these things, it's very what they look like focused. And there's nothing wrong with that.

You know, and I used to talk about this all the time, having a fit and strong and healthy body is often a byproduct of living a healthy life. But I think that we are coming to a point where we are really over-egging the basket. That's not the phrase, really over-egging the pudding on health or dressing things up as health, which are actually about abstinence, abstaining from drinking, abstaining from hedonism. And I don't think it's good to swing the pendulum so far back the other way. I do think all of this is a reaction to COVID. It's a reaction to ill health. It's a reaction to having those really stringent laws put around our movements every day. And it's about control.

It's about controlling what we can control. We can try and control our own intake and our own actions and our own activities. But I think that that is going to have a really negative impact in the long run. What is the point of having a six pack and flawless skin if you're literally just sitting in your house scrolling through your phone there is something to be said for allowing a little bit of space and room to be fallible be human to do things that aren't directly healthy in that action but promote health in other areas of your life because you're socializing you're bonding anyway that is the hill that i will die on a million times i'm sure fandu casino daily jackpots guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m with your chance at the number one feeling I'm sure. day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded or 11pm Eastern. Research

and supply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Another message read, I can't speak for everyone, but certainly in London, I think COVID definitely did have an effect on spontaneity for events at certain venues. It seems impossible to just go out somewhere nowadays that isn't a pub or a park without needing a booking or a ticket. I'm sure it wasn't always this way. Oh my God, this I actually think is the biggest man in the works of my socialising. There's so many things I want to do. I now live really in a house in Heath and I love swimming in the ponds and swimming in the Lido, but you have to sign up at like 12pm onm on a Monday for all of the slots I always forget definitely didn't used to be like this um even going to pub sometimes you know you have to have a booking even the ship in Wandsworth a famous snogging ground if none of

you've been there used to just be like you'd rock up on a Sunday and you get a table and I tried to go there with Poppy probably last year and they were like no it's like a ticketed event now you need wristbands and that has definitely impacted how I approach doing things because I just forget I'm also very much a spontaneous person I always have more fun when the plans are kind of not fully arranged that is kind of gone and I definitely think that is a hangover from Covid and that is boring and annoying and I wish that that wasn't the case but I also think that we're seeing and we talk about this in this week's episode of everything is content as well but because of COVID there was so many hospitality industries lost so much money so many pubs closed

so many clubs closed so many restaurants and again it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy no one was going out so all of these venues closed down and then there's less places to go so less people are going out everything is more expensive it does really worry me for culture and the arts like when was the last time you went to the theatre I haven't gone for over a year I don't think and concerts I mean we could talk about Oasis for days but even that you know the dynamic pricing the cost of everything it's like even when there is an appetite to go out and do something often it feels like you can maybe do one thing in a year and that's your whole ticket. And that's really sad. And another message read, everyone seems to have a side hustle these days, a hobby that pays or they hope will pay in the future instead of having a hobby simply to do

something fun or socialize. Again, I think this is a reaction to the cost of living crisis where, yeah, maybe we're using a lot of our time where we would be socializing to try and boost our income because so many people are falling under the amount of money that they need to be making just to be living sort of like a barely comfortable life. And that's something that we've kind of lost as well in our generation is a nine to five, like just a normal nine to five job that could pay the bills for you to live. That is kind of a thing of the past. People are working over hours, people have two jobs, people have side hustles, and that's really eating into our socialising time. And whilst that's sad, I also think for some people, I guess that is the only way. Another message read, I'm being tired. Weirdly, I find that social fatigue begets

social fatigue. And this is the case for introverts and extroverts so it doesn't surprise me but it's a bit like exercise in that being tired out by one discrete activity is in a way more satisfying than being low level low energy all the time sometimes life is in the surprises for me summer hasn't started until i've had at least one weekend where i plan to see someone in the day ends up with staying out longer than expected and just a general yappy old so-and-so. And inevitably, it's the day where I'm most tempted to ignore the text that says, fine. I completely agree with that. It's always the nights out that, again, like I said, that weren't really planned or I wasn't really sure

about going to that end up being the most fun. Sometimes the organized fun is not as fun, but we seem to have to organize everything. So I wanted to read a bit from this sub stack called The Mainstreaming of Loserdom from Tell the Bees on sub stack. I don't actually know the name of the author, so let's go. I know the title is provocative, but let me make my case. Over the past few years, something has shifted in the perception of acceptable recreational behavior or the way people talk about their hobbies. People are gleeful to admit they have no hobbies, no interest, no verve. Somehow one of the main hobbies accepted by the masses is staying home, laying in bed, scrolling on their phones and watching television. What happened? This piece is so good and it really reminded me of our social media addiction episode where I think we spoke about how much more shame there used to be around kind of going on a phone

and we used to collectively sort of be a bit embarrassed if we were on our phones in public or sort of be like to our friends or our parents, like, guys, get off your phone, we're out in public. And then something changed and everyone just collectively decided that actually, no, it's fine. Let's all just plug in to the metaverse of our phones and never really come out. And it is so much easier. But like often the most easy or comforting choices, it's not always the best. We all know that we could spend five hours scrolling on our phone, looking at Reels, looking at TikToks, Twitter, whatever is your cup of tea. And that's a really

easy way to spend the time. It's sometimes comforting to know that you can get rid of two hours and two minutes just by going on your phone. is really scary and as much as I think it's a really droll kind of sardonic silly reaction to perhaps a culture of malaise and low-level depression I also think the jokes maybe are starting to run dry a little bit and that actually we should kind of be checking each other and saying this isn't cool I really don't think that we should be loving rotting as much as we talk about it a message I got read I unfollowed all the big meme accounts which constantly made jokes about loving being in bed and looking forward to cancelling plans because honestly it made me depressed and I could feel myself getting more

and more insular and not going out for what it's worth I agree with the opinion that COVID sped everyone into the next stage and made everyone's worlds a little shorter, coupled with the fact that it takes effort to plan things to do, which a lot of people can't be asked to do. So that was a message which is really true. And it happened to me where lots of people perhaps moved in with their partners or moved out of big cities or just kind of went into that next stage of life when we were in lockdown because the things that make you want to stay young or make you want to stay in a state of maybe not having dependence or singleness was stripped away. And actually in a COVID world, being in a relationship or

living in the countryside was much more alluring than living in a city. And so many people perhaps made a choice they would have made in a decade's time at that point in time. I wanted to go back to the piece. It reads, on social media, we've seen this belief that once you get a partner or turn 25, the adult thing to do is to be home with them every night and that going out is childish. On Twitter a few weeks ago, someone was saying that this is an odd belief. There are entire jobs that rely on people networking, going out and partying, well into higher levels of responsibility. I've been to my fair share of literary events. I've worked at advertising

agencies. I've seen people much older than me getting down. It's not looked down upon because it's part of the job, and the people hired for those roles are much more inclined to create that level of social interaction. But there isn't some switch that flips when you turn 25 that makes you believe leaving your house is ungodly. Putting all of this together, I do think that a combination of loneliness, social anxiety, unlimited internet access and economic crisis are possibly combining into something. We have viral TikToks of people saying, people think I'm depressed because I'm always in bed. And a viral tweet of people clamoring for an oddly shaped couch, promising they'd never leave their house if they could own it. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. If someone's saying the only thing

they want to do is sleep, it's not strange to wonder if something else is going on. As Buffy once said, I didn't jump to conclusions. I simply took a step, and their conclusions were. I think that, I mean, I just thought the piece was amazing. I'm cross I didn't write it. But with the rise of overconsumption and kind of people as well, it's all sort of coming together very neatly into this quite dystopian reality. You know, when we see these videos of people stocking their fridges and kind of putting all their cereals in these containers and they have a million of every single cleaning product it's almost like we're all preparing like preparers you know people that

prepare for like the end of the world or pandemics it's like we all are somewhere we have maybe a really low level ptsd from the pandemic and there is this fear that we're going to run out of toilet rolls somewhere in the back of our minds and these people that stock their homes so full and they have all these accessories that go on their Stanley Cup. And actually they maybe never really need to leave their home because everything they could possibly want. They have every streaming service. They've got the fluffy pajamas. They've got the comfy sofa. They've got a million and one things to do. But where is the joy in that? There's something fun about popping to the shops. I really enjoy it. It's nice to get out of the the house the guys that work in my corner shop see me about eight times a day I don't always need something but I like an excuse to get out of the house and stretch my legs and I think

with the rise of next day delivery on Amazon and Prime and with people creating so much content and with everything being online with Zoom calls and WhatsApps and this massive hybrid connectivity we could all just be living in bunkers and never leaving the house. And there is some safety in that feeling. And maybe for some people, that's really enjoyable. But I agree with the piece that says I really don't think that the majority of humans are built or designed to live this way. It's simply not how we've evolved or how our brains function. It doesn't really make any sense. I think it's another really important thing to remember that capitalism loves to sell us this. It loves to make us think that by buying another thing, by hoarding belongings, we're going to seek and find happiness. But actually, you could

have very few things and a handful of great friends and very little money and have a gorgeous day. And obviously, we know that there is a really significant threshold of money that people need to have. Money can't buy you happiness, sure, when you're a billionaire. But if you're on the lines of poverty, it really can. There is a difference between surviving and thriving. And many people now are falling into the parameters which might create unhappiness, which might create despair and depression. And instead of thinking that you need to buy something new or you need to compare yourself online, I actually think that where we should be putting our energy into is cultivating those human relationships,

which annoyingly do cost money. You know, you might have to get on the tube to see your friend. You may want to go for dinner. But I think that if we can try and reorganize our resources on our resources being our time and our attention then that could be and we spoke about this in the social media episode about that book the attention economy whatever you feed grows I think about this all the time so you know the plants you're watering are the ones that are going to grow if you're spending a lot of time dedicated to hyper fixating on other people's lives that you see on Instagram and cancelling all of your plans that is the part of you that you're going to cultivate

that is the way that you're going to train your neural pathways to feel comforted it's going to be your natural response and I think exercise is always such a good example in this because when you're in a habit of going to the gym when you're in a habit of exercising you find lots of pleasure and joy in it and the barriers to get you to do that exercise start to come down a bit. It becomes a lot easier. I found it on my running journey. I'm going to go on a run after this. And this is my third run this week.

And today I've got a 7K. Yesterday I did 8K. Sunday I've got a 12K. There would have been a time when I would have thought that was A, physically impossible, and B, I didn't want to do it. And now I am so excited. can retrain ourselves we can adapt and we are have so many pressures that want to tell us whether it's advertising platforms whether it's the addictive level of these social media platforms whether it's capitalism that will make

us feel like the best option is the easy option, which is staying in and scrolling. And I have to say, you know, I love to rot from time to time, but I really don't think we should be holding up as a bastion of what to do with our free time. And I think it was funny for a time. I think it helped elevate shame when we were all struggling. But I do think there comes a point when we have to have accountability for our actions and also when we think about health you know health is such a big conversation and we all purport to be so invested in our own lives and our own health and I think we're really forgetting that it's such a big proponent of health when you look at the statistics from Public Health England it really shows how much an active social life and having friendships and people that care about you

actually can really prolong your life and so as much as it's great to get a good night's sleep and to drink your green juices and to get all of those vegetables in I also think that we need to be prioritizing social socializing and unfortunately because we live in this late stage capitalist world where everyone is super busy and we have hustle culture and people have side hustles and our time is really restricted maybe it does mean that we have to have to actively plan for those things I mean I have to do it anyway my friendship groups will organize plans like months in advance which I also find really sad because I wish we just all lived on the same street and then just wandered into each other's houses I do actually really miss being at university when I lived in a house with seven girls and every single night we'd sit down and watch tv together from like 5pm till 10pm but talk the whole way through. It was amazing.

I'm going to once again refer to the last bit of that Substack piece because she or they have said it so much better than me and I just think it's really great. So it reads, I promise I'm not attacking, I'm questioning. I do think an over-identification with the introvert label, as both millennials and Gen Z are wont to do, and the rise of bed rotting and the ease of opting out of society has created an illusory committee around not doing anything. I think these people need to be shamed. I'm sorry for the title of this post, but it's too good to change. But I wonder if they need to be brought into community. People aren't going to church. They aren't joining civic groups. they think posting online is activism, they aren't making friends or their friends live too far away or their friends are married etc. When I wrote about

situationships I came to the same conclusion. Loneliness makes us do strange things. Whether staying with someone who treats your heart like garbage or creating an online campaign to make us believe being home is the answer, I think a lot of posting is a genuine cry for the warmth of other people. If you need me, I'll be outside. That's from Tell the Bees on Substack. I will post it on the show notes. But damn, what an amazing piece. And we constantly talk about this, the lack of community. I don't know if you heard a dog barking then, sorry. The reduction of community spaces, the reduction of organized religion, which I think in so many modern minds we've seen as a positive thing, but we have really lost that sense of community as well. And so if we don't have those natural building blocks of community like we used to

have, if we are living in a more individualistic neoliberal society, then I think we do have to take this action on ourselves. And I think it's really important that we rot a little less and try to get outside a little more I've really enjoyed this episode it's given me so much balls for thought I kind of want to write about this now I hope you enjoyed listening as always please do rate review and subscribe and let me know your thoughts I will post all of these stories to a highlight as well so you can revisit everyone's responses and I guess I'll see you here next week bye FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling

winning which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning. In an exciting live dealer studio. Exclusively on FanDuel Casino. Where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call

1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca Please play responsibly.