Goes Without Saying - thriving vs surviving: a year of, like, rEaLiSiNg tHiNgS

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

kylie jenner was really onto something. it's our final episode of the year and we couldn't be more ready to get the hell out of 2020 and into 2021. join us (sephy & wing) as we discuss how bizarre this entire year has been, and delve into all the things we've all learned and accomplished. from redefining success to living with ~authenticity~, we're seeing out the year in true sephy & wing style. see ya later 2020, it's been real. join the conversation every monday. speak your mind on instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Here's a show that we recommend. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world.

The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Hello! Sephie and Wing here for another episode of Goes Without Saying. Lucky you that you found this podcast episode. I hope you enjoy it if it's your first time here.

And if it's not your first time here, wow, you returned. I really hope you enjoy it. This is a bit of a bizarre episode covering all things end of year taking stock of life authenticity how to live your best life in 2021 and is that even possible who knows i guess we'll just have to wait and see you there okay i feel quite sick actually yeah same i feel nervous i wanted to start by saying that i am literally crying my eyes out at all the messages yeah everyone's feeling crazy at the end of the year right everyone has had whole years and whole lives filled with

shit and good things and it's just so stunning yeah it's been a whole year two messages what i love in particular is when two different people from like completely different countries miles apart send in a really similar or like complementary sentiment at the same time on the question box on the story so and they sit right next to each other yeah and i thought that's quite beautiful so one person said that they are scared of the future because they're scared that they're going to be behind due to covid somebody else said they're scared because they're running out of time to do all the things that they want to do i just wanted to talk about this because we have this conversation quite a lot off of the podcast don't we seffy

yeah because i often will be like i just can't imagine what our lives would have been without this pandemic and blah blah things that we'd be doing yeah in our joint life i think i almost take like a bit of like a sadistic pleasure in wondering what my life would be without this but as we keep saying i mean i said to you yesterday it's a redundant thought to imagine what i would have done in the September of 2020 without a pandemic because I don't live there in a parallel universe where COVID didn't exist absolutely that's not the reality I'm dealt with and I also I kind of think we can have a bit of a good combo on the idea of running out of time because what a bizarre concept whose time are you running against well

I'm gonna have to have some cold tea god it's really like there are demons in my throat like don't speak they're like the this is the last one of the year right you need to shut up yeah it's kind of dobby you will not return to our course this year please close the barrier there's something about the idea of running out of time which feels really specific to women as well because there's the idea of like your biological clock is ticking this is another one that i wanted to talk about i think they all feed in the idea that we have we're fucked if you're in your 20s and covid hit you're fucked because these were crucial years for you to sort of procreate find a mate it's like who whose narrative are you buying into here you were

supposed to be chosen by now yeah you were supposed to be chosen you were supposed to be meeting sorry i'm just taking my earrings out when i can hear that i'm really annoying and jangly we're kind of not with it today i feel i think it's good because this is an informal ep it's the last ep of the year well we've just had like an hour conversation kind of got ourselves into a bit of a state kind of had a really lovely conversation about how much we've grown and blah blah but now i'm feeling quite like i've got a microscope on me yeah it's suddenly like i've done a bit too much navel gazing i think and now i'm feeling quite existential the navel gazing thing is an issue because i mean you cause problems that aren't there yeah yeah we go in too deep but we basically yeah okay we're feeling quite dreamy

but i think it's quite a dreamy time dreamy saturn saturn jupiter conjunction was yesterday was it saturn and jupiter i don't know yeah yeah it was something and jupiter conjunct yesterday joined weather and we're feeling dreamed do you feel like you're running out of time does anyone well i know you all have it my number one rule in life i have two rules in life one don't fantasize about people you know i break that on the daily and two don't solve your problems at night i break that on the nightly so i just am in a rotation of breaking my own rules endlessly and i woke up at about 4 a.m in the middle of the night and i was like i'm running out of time my birthday's in a few days 27th of december i'm gonna

be 24 what have i done who am i blah blah blah yeah you were feeling quite agey all of a sudden i suddenly was very aware of my age and i remember saying to you i've never been worried about age before yeah yeah it's because you're 23 it's like yeah because you were turning 21 like obviously you weren't worried about age but i do also think it's a thing people i've seen and i used to be that annoying person no offense but i do find it annoying to be like oh my god i'm turning 18 that's just so old like i feel like i'm 14 it's like can we all just grow up literally can we just get out of this thing yeah exactly like these aren't your fears they're somebody else's fears put on you and you're just replicating them because it's like a cutesy thing to say and because of pedophile culture we've been through it in the last episode of course we prioritize youth

my mum always says um because she's got quite a good attitude to aging she's like well the alternative is i'd be dead so i can either turn 52 53 or i can die yeah so okay i'll turn 54 55 what a blessing to be turning an age that so many people don't it's like yeah i'm just grateful for more time people don't reach it like even though i'm having a shit time sometimes i'd still like to have some more of it and fuck about it for a bit longer totally and also we've spoken before about that old woman that we saw that old woman that woman we saw with the gray hair in the shop in the vegan cafe that time mother nature as i call her in hindsight mother nature the goddess of the world the queen yeah she was most beautiful woman i've ever seen and she was probably in her 50s 60s and she was prettier than i've than anyone i've ever seen in my life. It was basically, I don't know when we said this story,

but I mean, it's not really much of a story. We just went for lunch one day and sat next to us. Unbeknownst to her, was the most beautiful woman in the world. And we were just kind of staring at her the whole time. I can't believe I used to see you in public, in person, by the way. I know that feels like a long time ago.

Which feels really weird, but yeah. We're just sort of virtual pen pals these days yeah exactly but this is why it's easy to get yourself in a rut of like but what would i be doing it's easy to open up that dream world of what that universe would look like if covid didn't exist for example and kind of all the things you would have done but it's actually there's no proof to say you would have done any of these things oh but i would have this by now i'd be this by now and blah blah is actually scrap that that's fiction you're writing stories you're writing short stories for yourself cut it yeah scrap it well it's like let's not weaponize a parallel universe that we're not even sure exists against ourselves let's not use that as a tool against ourselves a stick to beat us with yeah

exactly a fictional stick to beat our poor little selves with when actually we've just been through a pandemic and we're like but i'd probably be prettier if i hadn't been in a pandemic like yeah we all probably would yeah we all probably would be thriving but let's cut it also probably not i was gonna say i saw someone recently talk about i'm not gonna name them but like a big influencer who has a lot of money quote unquote and they were like oh if i had his money i would be doing this and this and this and this and this i would have a chef and i'd be going to the gym every day it's like would you would you be going to the gym every day because you have a gym membership right now and you've got a free hour after work and yet here you are you're not going

so let's not romanticize and weaponise the fictional version of ourselves that lives in a parallel universe that we will never access. So how do we get ourselves out of this feeling like we're running out of time? I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that, unfortunately, even though everyone in their private life or internally feels as though they're running out of time and blah, blah, blah, nothing's getting done and blah blah blah publicly and like in our external we are performing all of us in this show that makes it look like we're all doing so much and we're all thriving we're thriving

we've said it time and time again and many people have said it before before before us and it's an old old narrative social media is fake we've been hearing this for the last like 10 years social media is fake of course everyone looks like they're thriving but it's so common that then you sit down with your friend that you've been looking at on social media or whatever and then you have this conversation like yeah we've both been going through shit right now yeah and it's just a really weird symptom of the whole like because i've always hated the you're not alone narrative i've always hated that as like a soundbite you're not alone like i've always felt like okay no matter

what's going on in my life that really doesn't make me feel better also i don't take any comfort in that because it's like i am and so are you i just think so are you and so are you and so are you we all are like don't delude yourself yeah the social media thing is just another symptom of that where it's like as we spoke about in previous episodes when people say how are you and you just say i'm fine how are you yeah fine but it's like we're all participating we're all perpetuating this cycle that is keeping us in misery because we are so desperate to believe that we are the only people struggling with something well it's convenient isn't it it's convenient to think all the world's problems are on my back everyone else is just living their own lives it's convenient isn't it it's convenient to think all the world's problems are on my back

everyone else is just living their own lives it's all going so well for them and then you can kind of live in your misery a little bit which is at times quite a nice place to live it's quite nice to live in like the comfort of like almost like being a bit dissatisfied with everything we all want to comment on oh everyone's just miserable in private everyone's miserable in private but it's like i'm not ready to be miserable in public. Absolutely not. No, no, no, no. Do you know what I mean?

So I can comment on and say, oh, social media, as if from an outside perspective, is completely fake, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, yeah, I'm upholding that more than I was a year ago. Absolutely. I'm not only upholding that on my personal experience of social media,

but I'm here on my little podcast and on my little Instagram, making everyone feel bad about themselves. Oops. Well well do you remember when we first started this or not even when we first started this when it started to get a bit of attention let's say when it wasn't just like literally you listening to it back and nobody else you were our only listener for about four months just to check I'd said no names involved because we had a scare the other day oh god when we beeped some names the other day i was reeling off names from sephie's past and she left them all in this was the most horrific moment of my life i was about to

fucking upload the episode i was like let's just go to a random point in the episode just check the fuck check fucking nothing just listen to a random point and i literally said the name and i was like you idiot even more embarrassing that i'm saying it because it's like they you think they're important enough that you've told me about them and i don't know these people and i'm saying their name yeah erin didn't go to my school and they're important enough from my school that i haven't spoken to about 10 years that i'm not speaking on a podcast and erin knows it was mortifying so i then had to like torture myself go through that entire episode i just spent about fucking six hours editing and scour it start from the beginning

and just listen to it so now I'm saying no to names because that was absolutely a close shave yeah when we started getting a few listeners yeah there were definitely people that would sort of try and push a kind of agenda of like authenticity onto us of you should be more authentic you should be more authentic online because they kind of associate um the facade the natural facade of social media and potentially wearing makeup being in a bit of an outfit i'm not you sitting in your pajamas kind of crying into a bowl of cereal they associate that with authenticity well almost as if well sephie i know you and i know that only your misery is real your happiness and your beauty is not something that's real to be celebrated in public as if reality only

exists in the negative and anything positive is therefore um artificial and fake it's just such a weird narrative and there was definitely there were definitely people in my life that tried to push an agenda of like be ugly on the internet and therefore you're real be ugly on the internet stop crying on the internet there there you go or what you're saying will be more valuable if you don't look good while you're saying it it reminds me of we went to an event which was great before covid and megan barton hansen was speaking this was one of the most stunning days of our life by the way yeah it was really good this is why it's hard not to think about like the pre-covid life exactly a little bit of insight for you guys fun fact any Megan Martin Hanson fans out there so Megan Martin Hanson was on Love Island if you don't know and she

I mean I find it obscure situation where you would know who we are you found yourself listening to this and you don't know who Megan Martin Hanson is but she was on love island she used to work in a strip club correct um and was like a performer and now then she went on love island and she had had like plastic surgery and things like that lots of different ways that she was villainized i mean i'm sure she's not a saint but it still stands true there were lots of different ways that she was villainized and she said that you know her use of social media massively affects like her mental health and things like that like she gets attacked on the daily by all ages all genders etc and she said like you know so i'm gonna be open about the fact that i would edit and photoshop my pictures i'll tell you that i have i'll still do it but

like yeah like of course i edit my pictures because I have like a million people looking at me and then a man in the audience put his hand up and said okay but my daughters for example might one day look at your social media page and think oh well I need to look like this I need to do that blah blah blah so wouldn't it be more revolutionary or better if you weren't just transparent by doing it why don't you just stop editing your pictures which is a you know a sentiment that I'm sure we all at one point would have taken on as our own however i think most of us would think that that lacks the nuance to understand that if you were in a position with a million eyes on you alongside living your own life with your own struggles etc etc that just to be honest and go without saying. Are you ready to give up any security

blanket you have when you're already in a position that is so terrifying and so demanding? I don't think so. Exactly. And also, does she owe a response to a man in an audience? I would say not. There we go. Yeah, it's a lot to demand authenticity from a position that you will never and have never experienced i think a lot of people there's kind of like a weird authenticity agenda that it's like i really want everyone to be real real real but it's like that but you're operating in a space that prioritizes artifice like fakeness you're not operating having real conversations i think this podcast is so authentic for the fucking internet we are authentic within this space but i

agree people have a different perception of what authentic is like you have to look ugly otherwise it's not authentic otherwise it's fake it's the most bizarre thing i think that's one of the things i've learned from this entire year of doing this is it will never be good enough for all the eyes that are watching you one set of eyes will want this one thing someone says like no actually you've just got to do what you want to do and hopefully people resonate but you can't be performing especially as you're a woman exactly but to perform realness is inherently fake it's just bizarre to be like okay so i've got to make an effort to be more real it's like well then it's you've just discounted the whole thing it's bizarre yeah completely one that i loved this is

kind of a two-parter they said ditched my shitty grad ditched my shitty grad fuck ditched ditched my shitty grad program got on antidepressants moved to a new city still an ever-evolving mess but that's okay sparkle sparkle sparkle emojis sparkle vibes yes so true honestly you're sparkling that is so beautiful i love it so much growth yeah so stunning so what's she done she's but this is what i love about this is that your success has taken i think most people this year like the wins in your life have taken shape in a way that you never would have perceived i.e going on antidepressants is something that a few years ago may not have society been being viewed as a success but now it's like fuck off that is so successful yeah i saw a message that they said i caved and got on antidepressants

and now i'm not depressed best cave ever and it's like yeah best cave ever like fuck this world that tells you that you're not allowed to be happy yeah there's only one way to look it's kind of be natural be natural and miserable please yeah there's only one prescribed way to be happy and it's just do yoga in the morning and be thin and don't really eat eat whole foods and and fuck your boyfriend suck his dick yeah that's how you'd be happy yeah yeah so what have they done um so let's go through the one by one yeah she ditched her shitty grad program we love to see it okay i love the sound of that also i love that they said i ditched my shitty grad program in reality it was probably

cancelled because i'm going mad and they were crying about it they were like i fucking wanted this grad program so bad but what a beautiful sentiment but what a beautiful sentiment you came out of uni thinking with your little ego your little bags packed thinking i'm gonna do my grad program and then you think fuck it yeah this world is fucked this isn't bringing me happiness this isn't bringing me joy really brave to ditch that so brave we were saying again we say all of our best bits you should you guys should turn up earlier i don't know why we say all of our good things before you're here the warm-up act is quite a lot better than the main performance actually yeah yeah we were saying before we started recording about how we spoke about months ago you either choose like fun and a laugh and maybe real

happiness and anxiety or you choose stability and security and boredom and boredom so your options in life are fun and anxiety or stability and boredom take your pick and i think that is the case for a lot of people if you feel like you've been prescribing two ideas or goals or achievements that weren't really yours and you were just told that that is the idea of what you would be as successful when from a young age you kind of thought oh yeah i'll just go to uni and then i'll do a post-grad of course i will yeah and blah blah blah yeah people in our generation or people who are around the same age to us are coming out of the other end of the times of prescription in the sense that if you've been in education you've been indoctrinated into an ideology from you can't

remember otherwise so this is your first experience of no wonder you feel like you're running out of time because you're looking around at where your peers would be and there's suddenly only a handful of them and they're all doing either something that you think is really similar they're all doing the same thing but you don't want to do it or they're all doing completely different things and you don't know where you fit into that and that feels so scary because you've never been faced with it it's not actually a scary um time to be in it's only because you've only ever known looking around a room full of peers and you've all been in a similar ship when you meet someone that is very attached to a goal for example they they've got their sights set on being a vet i was thinking that too well

it just kind of is the most vague thing that i don't really know anyone that wants to be that so like no one can get offended i feel like growing up all i knew were girls that wanted to be vets is that all kind of um wait what did you want to be when you grew up when you grew up when you were like a kid well funny you should say that because big old vet i'd never wanted to be vets. Is that all kind of um wait what did you want to be when you grew up when you grew up when you were like a kid? Well funny you should say that because. Big old vet. I'd never wanted to be anything. Oh really? No no no and I used to think I wish I was just a girl who wanted to be a vet. Quite gaspy. I wish I was a beautiful little fool. Not that there's any problem obviously with being a vet whatsoever. When I was younger I used to really wish that i could just be someone who would just like pick a clear vocation yeah and follow my life through clean and easy but i

just think of course i was five years old i didn't know what i wanted to do because why are you ingrained with capitalism what i'm doing didn't exist exactly yeah yeah i do not dream of labor i don't have a dream job i don't dream of. But it's almost like I actually am glad that as a child, I didn't prescribe to something that made adults happy. Because it's meant that I'm like difficult as an adult. Like I've been so lost, but it's so much more rewarding to do something that I know I enjoy and to really push for it and fight for it

than to just kind of give in to what I felt like was expected what about you what did you want to do when you were little be a vet no no no straight up actress from day one I was I mean think of the Doctor Who no I was yeah pushing to I wanted an agent so badly when I was younger like I wanted I was so convinced I wanted to be on Disney Channel did you I more wanted to be on Tracy Beaker and now I'm like thank god I wasn't on Disney Channel what about like Hannah Montana yeah I mean I would definitely want I formed a band with my friends that we all wore wigs we were called the Ice Berries oh I love it have you not heard this no what friends give me their name and I'll announce it and you won't edit it out no it was if you're listening hey but it was me and my sister and our two friends when we were younger

we had a band this is actually hilarious if you're listening we started a band when we're younger we'd clearly watch hannah montana we all bought wigs and we were called the ice berries and we recorded four songs one was called i hate you and it went I hate you I hate you and it would go like that wow and my name my Hannah Montana name was Zinnia White why do I feel like that's something you would come up with tomorrow like you literally that's the same you yeah no completely I would come up with that now Zinnia White yeah Zinnia White I thought was the most stunning thing I've ever heard I had a big black wig and we did a concert so yes I did want to be on Hannah Montana as a short answer to your question yeah yeah yes thanks but yeah straight up actress just actress actress actress but I think what I was really getting at as a kid was that I

liked sort of fiction I think that's basically what I was getting at I like Tracy Beaker for some reason that I couldn't explain and I thought okay so you just go straight to Danny Harmer Justine Littlewood blah blah blah you go straight to them but actually it's like no what you actually like is the the fact that they're they're playing characters that were written and all of I think actually it's like no you liked the behind the scenes but as a five-year-old you can't access the behind the scenes so you go to the you go to the surface level that's my theory anyway I don't know if you wanted to say this on the pod but you've had an interesting epiphany with ego this year oh my well this was like two weeks ago Wendy's small frosty is the ultimate

summer refreshment and not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. This is a show guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world.

The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. ACAST.com and that really goes in yeah okay and don't you think that completely fits into your childhood dream i'll say the epiphany the epiphany one of my many epiphany maybe a bit of context okay so the first bit of context is that i listen to the rickyervais show with Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant

and Carl Pilkington every night of my life and probably have done since I was about 14, 15 years old and I literally listen to old things, I know them off by heart, they're kind of like as I'm going to sleep I just listen to them, they're like my loves, they're my kings. It's them kind of dying of laughter, like kind of jumping around the room, bouncing off the walls being insane and i can't get enough honestly when i first found this when i was like i maybe about 13 even i remember where i was when i heard it and i just thought what the fuck is this this is perfect this is hysterical i need to know everything about them and i'm still obsessed with them like literally 10 years later and i've never had a dip in my love for them really which is quite mad they probably

mean the most to me of any celebs which is hilarious yeah all right I said a little bit of context also it's like so they're so problematic it's like it's not like okay so I love Gina Martins I know I love Ricky Gervais yeah yeah it's like god it's not who you want to admit because also I disagree with so much that he says well I think he's I think he's quite known for being hot hot yeah oh well I I disagree although I don't okay I don't as well but my big epiphany was so I have always thought okay so Ricky's obviously really successful Stephen Merchant is his co-writer of the office extras they work together and he is less famous and I've always perceived as oh he's less successful i almost feel a bit bad for steve i almost feel like oh god it didn't go as planned

that's awkward i had this huge epiphany because i was like to my sister random which one would you rather be ricky steve or carl and she said steve i'd rather be steve obviously because he doesn't have the ego of ricky and he doesn't have to do anything with that press but he gets to write all the stuff and he gets to be behind the scenes and i was like you're so fucking right and i had this big moment where i realized you've been going for the surface level your pinnacle of success is the person that's hosting the golden globes just the person just the person that is present the most. No. The figurehead of glory. A true Slytherin.

You're going for the mockingjay. Don't go for the mockingjay. Go for the people behind it. Go for Haymage. Do not do that, you imbecile. Well, it's stunning. I think this year has been massive for people's egos. I just think looking at the old signifiers of success,

or to be honest, current signifiers of success, which are money, fame. Glory. Just like wealth, basically. Gloryering vibes i think this year has really reshaped um kind of you've got to get her she's got to get her priorities straight away for that quote i was thinking of wicked after they say about like the triwizard cup and i thought that's literally alienate anyone who listens just leave it that's rubbish yeah that's rubbish you don't know what you're doing yeah that's rubbish i love when they're like crumb crumb crumb

like victor i love you victor i do when we're about my heartbeats only for you okay yeah um if you look at the old signifiers of success so 2020 hey this year has re-aligned everyone's priorities of like no it's actually health safety my family my priorities are very very much based in the domestic sphere now i've kind of returned to the 1930s yeah i, I agree. But then I also think it's annoying that I was saying yesterday again off the pod. Fuck, we need to just record everything and then do the best of the week. I know, everything we say. Best of the week round up.

Yeah, literally. Yeah, best of Seve and Wing. I was saying just yesterday that I was nostalgic for like the April quarantine. Yeah, Tiger King, banana bread vibes. In a local way, obviously I'm not nostalgic for like global pandemic vibes because I'm really happy to see lots of other countries and lots of other people move on from COVID safely.

But in the way that in April, if I went on Instagram, I was confronted with even the most glamorous people telling me to stay home. And the novelty and the romantic aspect of struggling through a pandemic, which I think is important to romanticize your life in whatever shape it takes, obviously, at least in a private sense, at least in your own mind, be intentional with the way that you are not only navigating your wins, but also like struggling with your deepest and darkest struggles.

But I think the problem is that yeah like we've all gone back to this private domestic sphere but i actually think we had in april but now it's become more sophisticated in the shape that it's taken and actually the facade is still very much there it's almost like well do quarantine the best you've ever done quarantine be productive and the best productivity you've ever been productive before like everyone else's quarantine looks better than yours whereas before and obviously this is a really binary and like reductive way of looking at it but i think when the when this is all very new stay at home and return to the domestic sphere it was quite like everyone was finding a new the new normal everyone was finding a new normal but everyone was finding a new way of normal everyone was finding a new normal but everyone was finding a new way of dealing with things i love how everyone that said that kind of thought

they were the first one to say it's like no you've heard that about a million times that's why you're saying it whereas now i just think the lies have become more sophisticated so and no one's telling you to like isn't it's just not cute anymore it's now it's like oh everyone's looking back it's like shit they kind of wrote a book and two albums in that quarantine and i have just been working from home every day from nine to five do you know what i mean so i think it just becomes more sinister the the roots the patterns the behavior the ways that we find a way to compare ourselves to others will just become more sophisticated as things are stripped away because also you're confronted with the reality of you could have done all of this stuff

you could have written but you've had you've had all the time but you didn't you chose not to and i think that's one of the most painful bits of it of okay so i could have done all of these things but i didn't and it's like actually redefining what you actually want, because it's all there's almost like if you really wanted it, would you have just done it? Do you actually want that? Or is that something you've a narrative you've held on to for years and years and years? I don't know. Yeah, because it's the same as looking at like a celebrity and thinking, well, if I had a private chef, I'd be eating the most healthy, I'd be so skinny, I'd be doing this every day. And it's like, no, you wouldn't, you would still be going to the McDonald's drive through. Yeah. And there's

nothing wrong with that. No, that sounds stunning. But I and it's like no you wouldn't you would still be going to the mcdonald's drive-thru yeah and there's nothing wrong with that no that sounds stunning but i think it's easier to get ourselves out of the misery that we have in the reality of our day to day it's easier to romanticize like an alternate parallel universe version of you if these things had happened then i would be this and i think that's why people hold on to when i'll be a size six i'll be this when i have a boyfriend i'll do this when i've got a million pounds i'll do this it's like it's very nice to be like so the one thing stopping me from being happy is i don't have a million pounds it's like it's actually not about a million pounds it's that you feel shit about a load of stuff in you and yourself i think you have some responsibility in there yeah yeah

exactly and obviously there are major constraints put on us in the shape of class gender race ability all of those things and i also think don't look down on people and assume that if you were in their position you would be doing things differently because i guess we'll never know i guess we'll never i guess we'll never know we had so many messages of people saying they came out as lesbians or came out as bi came out as gay we have dare i say the floss effect i'm joking okay funny isn't it the second the male gaze is kind of taken back a tiny bit there's kind of a cohort of women realizing that they're gay i just think it's really interesting especially with like the rise of tiktok and all

this stuff during lockdown and during 2020 i guess the access to information and kind of other people's lives and especially like the whole narrative like you're either on gay TikTok or you're in straight TikTok and it's like actually pretty much everyone is on gay TikTok it turns out well everyone in the circles I'm in everyone is on gay TikTok well it's almost straight TikTok is Trump TikTok you do not want to be there and anything else is normal TikTok it's kind of I guess it's addison ray i don't really know what's going on in straight tiktok it's kind of the hype house yeah yeah bryce yeah don't know who these people are just names i've heard but yeah i think that there's something really amazing about the

amount of people that have kind of realized that heteronormative ideals are not serving them and it's like actually i don't want to there's this trend on tiktok that i fucking love where it's like the audio is like i hate wasted potential that shit tears you apart it really does and then it's like and it's like watch me glow up or like watch me um come out of my straight girl phase and realize i'm bi or whatever and there are like photos of them in like um to that little audio present it's a photo of them in like their kind of abercrombie and fitch t-shirt yeah when they're like 13 and then it goes on and on and now they're like so stunning so hot like so

themselves and beautiful and it's like god this year has been like growth this year has been huge for like people coming out which i obviously love a lot of navel gazing going on this year i think no other option but to go if you can't go outside you might as well go inside yeah so true though right might as well go inside your own head so true yeah it's true I think people haven't been finding so much distraction yeah or they've been finding new ways to distract themselves but I think a lot of people have found that in questioning themselves because it's true it's like if you have been spoken down to your whole life but now suddenly you're an essential worker it's like oh so you do value me or you value me

enough to sacrifice me you're gonna clap for me but you're not gonna pay me yeah fine yeah it's a bizarre fucking thing i think it's meant that a lot of people obviously have had to evaluate their purpose in life when you think everything has been stripped from you and also it's been um a catalyst for people to live more authentically well there's there's no nothing that breeds like authentic god this is the authentic episode authenticity like being on your own being isolated from everyone you're just with kind of your family or like a few people or on your own and it's just like actually what do i want to do and i think this is why people didn't write two albums and write a book because they thought they would at the beginning of the year with their like naive optimism because it's like actually you want to

watch tv actually you want to find out that you're a lesbian fuck like there's actually a lot more important things that aren't intertwined with capitalism that you want to be doing actually you haven't you never got around to watching game of thrones and you want to finish that there's just there are more important things than oh fuck well i've got to write my novel and i've got to do that it's like actually no fuck off yeah i completely i completely agree so true because and i also think it's being taken out of society while still performing with a digital society yeah and then one day being put back into the physical society again we were saying the other day and i've said

this to so many people like this year i feel like i've just been every week was just trying on a new me did i like that fit for size no try on a different one next week okay and someone next week i'll be someone else and actually i loved this message that we got oh i love this so much they said they're proud of themselves this year for being better than the sum of their phases oh wow yeah i love so true love because it's all of us this year have had to go through so many different phases just to get through just to get to the other side of it we're adaptable turns out it's like yeah maybe you did have that phase where you did two albums and a novel maybe you did but then you also did all of these other things we've been just been and i think that just is age too just try on different things for size and see how it goes but i think it's less

attachment to outcome and more attachment to like authentic experience and like the process the journey yeah i love that that's so great doing work. Did we do our work this week? We never said what we did. Affirmation vibes, which you know we're a big fan of. Affirmations. Yeah, so tell me your affirmations. My affirmation is... Okay, so we said for everyone to do affirmations, self-acceptance affirmations.

And I completely forgot about this, to be honest. But it turns out I've been doing them anyway. And I told you my affirmation that I made up the other day. Yeah, can I repeat it back? Yeah, let's see see if you can this is one that just came to me I was going to sleep and it just was replaying and replaying in my head it's a weird word that's why why oh yeah I relinquish yeah I don't remember what you relinquish this is why I remember that you can tell it was made up in a delirious mind but but it's just stuck. And it just gives me a feeling and I love it. It's, feel free to use this too.

I relinquish all control and trust the timing of life. So stunning. And I have picked those words very carefully to not say my life. I want it to be of life, of life on this earth. And I just think it's so stunning. To me, it's like just fucking surrender to this universe and see what happens it doesn't mean you can't have goals and all of this stuff but if you live authentically

within yourself just trust that something will happen trust trust that you're going in a direction but it's also incredibly wanky and also fuck fuck everyone that does affirmations well affirmations kind of are we are kind of a bit wanky but i think that would be so useful to so many people wrote in saying that the thing that they're scared most for in their future is uncertainty yeah we must have i literally have seen the word uncertainty about 500 times this morning and i normally see it like one time also the idea of running out of time it's like i'm running out of time it's like coming from this for what a mentality of lack and desperation of shit i need to like gather up all the time i have and be really productive it's like no i relinquish all control and trust the timing of life yeah it's like

fucking chill out chill out i love that i think it's one of my main problems in life that i'm inherently a control freak well it's funny's funny. Again, we were saying, because I think I'm really laid back and I'm like blah, blah, blah, blah, and just like perpetually unfazed, I would have always thought I'm not a control freak. But until you realise that you are a control freak and you're like, fuck, yeah, those two things can coexist.

I can be kind of really laid back in relationships and X, Y and Z, but also be a control freak with my own state of production for example i think you can easily trick because i think people would look at me and maybe think i'm not a control freak because it's kind of like i don't really have external i don't perform externally as controlling i kind of think i would come up as a bit of a woohoo not controlling type not very not very type a for example yeah but actually it's i'm very it's kind of holding

yourself to high standards that are actually unproductive in the end and all of this stuff i think it's actually like take a look inside and where where your behavior is actually coming from more often than not they're coming from a need to control control and kind of orchestrate your life like against your own goodwill completely that yeah and it's just the preoccupation with yourself as not like a full being but yourself as something to be perceived and to be like built it's like ultimately it's more important for you to be perceived as someone who wrote two books over quarantine than the reality of who you would be if you did that exactly you don't really care to be the person who does that but you want to be seen as the person who does that it's so fucking

true waste of time waste of time preoccupation with perception waste of time waste of fucking time one girl did write in and say that she's just got her book published i saw that congrats that she wrote during quarantine just to make us all feel bad um she's one girl actually did get her book published um let me find that one because it's it's really beautiful i submitted a novel i wrote to a scheme and now it's going to be published with like a celebration emoji honestly this calls for celebration i'll be raising my wine glass of pepsi max to you tonight that's what i've been doing i think also i think we should all really take a minute now to realize

how far we've come I'm quite like it's a hand-holding moment should we hold hands with the listener let's all hold hands everyone let's all hold virtual hands around the globe I'm really feeling that actually do you know what it's reminding me of though yeah I'm really feeling the hands but it's reminding me of but it's reminding me of that scene in us where they all hold hands around the earth oh my god that's just what it freaked me out i freaked myself one way to ruin a moment that's horrific everyone's got their jumpsuits on that's disgusting if you haven't seen that film it's my it's probably my favorite film on earth but it's terrifying it gives me shivers to think about it that's spooky that's a spooky thought but we're all holding hands around the i was thinking of the

in-betweeners film where they're sat around the fire and he's like yeah like what do you want to throw he's like um discrimination he's like i said that whatever i'm actually a really big in-betweeners fan all of a sudden that's so funny because i've been re-watching we watched the first movie which i because i couldn't remember what happened i was like i know the second one off by heart but what is the first one in the second one they go down the slide and and there's poo in the slide oh shit yeah so good i wonder if people outside of the uk know the in-betweeners they don't there was an american version called like four four in one or something i remember like that getting roasted though i remember seeing like a scene by scene comparison of that and being like the americans are so dumb they don't get like my racism was coming out like uh the u.s do not have a good sense of humor

when i was like 14 or whatever really in my own at my own ass it's so fun we're just repeating everything you get told which i think we do at 14 but also you keep doing that's why everyone's saying i wrote two books in quarantine because like yeah we we never stop just repeating what's being sold to us okay so should we have a hand-holding moment handhold everyone hold hands with um the fictional person next to you oh i'm holding both hands yeah same i've got both up here so i've got on one one side and **** on the other. I was going to say. I just said two usernames. Look, if you think we don't know who the **** you are listening,

if you've been participating with us online, we know you. I notice when your profile picture changes. Yeah, fully. I remember we had a comment before we started. We were saying, if you notice thingies, profile pictures change. It's like, yeah, we're a **** obsessed with you all we like know you okay let's hold hands if you message in if you're one of the people that like messages in a lot we know we know you by name we know you yeah we know what you're up to we see you when you're sleeping we're outside your window right we know

when you're pretending to fake an orgasm holding hands everyone we have come so far this year so far we've grown in ways that we never imagined all of those ways all of those things that you overcame in 2020 i see you for that this is your moment if you haven't been praised enough this year i am praising you you are mind-blowingly amazing. You're going to have to beat that little squeak. Blow that out. No way. It's real. We're doing it for authenticity.

Authenticity. Just the biggest fan of you always. And Sefi, biggest fan of you too. Thanks so much for coming on this incredible journey this year. Biggest fan of you too. What a time we've had. What a time this has been. This is actually quite crazy.

I'm kind of gonna cry i kind of i'm feeling like a lot of wind in my hair all of a sudden i feel like i'm out in a big field somewhere i'm feeling a lot of eyes on me basically if you've been here we sincerely thank you from the bottoms of our hearts souls e Yeah, if this is the only episode of ours that you catch, we are eternally grateful and really hope that you have been enjoying yourself, not just listening to the pod, but in your life. I hope you're having a pleasant life right now.

And while some things might be unpleasant, here you are getting to the other side of them. I could not be a bigger fan of you right now. Big fan of you and all your work honestly you thought your year would go in one way and it's gone completely the other way and you've grown in ways that you would have never imagined in your wildest dreams you would not have thought this was possible your wildest dreams are a bit far actually you never in your wildest dreams thought that we would be talking to you right now right now harry i now speak directly to you

genuinely thank you guys if we can ask one thing of you don't say we don't treat you i've just remembered we thought we'd do something at the very end now i've got you if i can just ask one thing of you is that you would leave us a review on Apple because it really does mean the world to us the universe to us when you leave us a review because Apple love it they love love love it well I haven't I don't really know if they do love it they haven't seen I haven't heard from them told me they like it but I like it I know that much I know it makes me cry so i've heard that steve jobs um has wet dreams over reviews so let's try and do it for him r.i.p right is he dead steve jobs he's

dead now isn't he yeah yeah rip well god bless capitalism god rest his soul should we leave it here let's leave it here oh we'll see you next yeah we're having one week off and we'll be back yeah if you'll allow us one seven days of peace. Come on. Seven days. Seven days of peace. Collect ourselves. Collect our thoughts.

Progress and recuperate. And we'll be back again. See you there. See you then.