Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 55 - We don't get no respect!

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

In this episode the guys talk about things that they expect to get credit for but never do, and Soren gives tips on how to constantly un-addict and re-addict yourself to mobile games! Big thanks to our TWO sponsors this week, Skillshare, 2 free months of unlimited access to thousands of classes at Skillshare.com/qq.  And make sure to visit MyBookie Online today. and use the promo code qq when creating your account to double your first deposit.

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, a podcast where two best friends and TV writers ask each other questions. I am one half of this show, writer, comedian, historian, and person who as a child demanded to dress like Sam Neill in Jurassic Park because he thought that was a sexy look. Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hello, everybody. I'm Soren Bui, a writer, constant gardener, father, Fiesta Ware owner. And in third grade, Justin Fitzpatrick found out where Mrs. Krako kept the book at Starz, and he told me, and then I privately told her to move them before all that power fell into the wrong hands. That's a lot. That's a whole lot. Can you, are you prepared to run through that one more time?

Sure. Yeah. So I'm a father. I got it. Right. Let me, let me, let me make sure I get it all here. You know, writer, constant gardener. I thought, obviously, although we'll get to it later,

but garden's not going great. Fiestaware owner. Are you familiar with Fiesta Ware? That's the one that I wanted to ask about. What do you mean? What is that? Ah, you're not familiar with Fiesta Ware. It's a brightly colored dish. There are plates, bowls, ramekins, dinner-sized plates,

small snack plates that all come in these like bright, bright colors. It's very lacquered type of dish. And you see it at a lot of Mexican restaurants. Usually they're sort of like an orangish mango color or they'll be like a bright red. And it's porcelain, but it's called fiesta ware. It's like this very specific type of dish. Okay. And very, very famous in the Southwest.

I've got just a bunch of it. Okay. That's like, that's our China ware. So much that you associate with it. Yes. Okay. I think it's good. The stuff never breaks either.

All right. Oh, that sounds like a challenge. And then you're not curious about Book It. Did you have Book It when you were a kid? No. Okay. Book It was, you had these little pins and you'd read books and after you read a certain number of books you'd get a little star on your pin and if you collected five stars on your pin you went and got a personal pan pizza from pizza hut they would all you did is you wore your pin in there

they saw it and this was back when pizza hut was an establishment where families would go yeah and they and and they actually uh like they had the the hut part of it like the like the towering awning part of it a lot of pizza huts a lot of modern pizza huts don't have that but in the past you really felt like you were stepping into a hut they're very literal about it you You had a big, yeah, that big red roof on it. Yeah. And you'd walk in, there was like a salad bar, there's an arcade, you were meant to stay there for a little while. Yes. And you go there and you get your own personal pan pizza because you read a bunch of books. Yeah. Now, the only way to get that was your teachers were in on it. They had to give you the stars every time that you had read a certain number of books.

So it's hard to earn these stars. You get like five before you get a personal pan pizza. Justin Fitzpatrick, a boy who famously was about to run away from home in third grade. Famously. Found out where Mrs. Crako was keeping those stars. And he told me. And I took that information right back to her and said you got to move them narc yeah yeah like the worst kind i i respect it i love it i'm a i'm a uh a narc through and

through so i'm i'm on your team he confided me. Thanks to MyBookie for supporting Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. Winning season returns at MyBookie. Winning season means Survivor, Super Contests, and Squares. Invest in your intuition. Use promo code QQ and double your first deposit. New players get up to $1,000 in free play. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question. Break up the routine of a day spent indoors. $1,000 in free play. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question.

Break up the routine of a day spent indoors. Explore workshops, classes, and more in topics such as graphic design and productivity. Get two free months of premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ. That's Skillshare.com slash QQ. Did you have, man, I don't even know the name of it. Like the schoolastic book club thing, man, I'm not, that's not helpful. A couple of times a year growing up, there was just like a book fair where you could just go and look at books and then like take them off in a magazine if you wanted them. And then you hand the magazine to your parents

and then they buy those books for you. You didn't have that? No, we had that. You did. What was it called? Book Fair, I think. Is it Book Fair? Okay, yeah.

And yeah, we had, I'm trying to remember. Yeah, I would just like, and I was like, the only thing you could really do is judge a book by its cover. Yeah. At that point. You just was like, oh, this like, the only thing you could really do is judge a book by its cover at that point. You just was like, Oh, this one's got squirrels on it. That's pretty neat. Oh, cool. Cool guy with a green, a little green guy with no eyes and a mouth on this hitchhiker's guide to the

galaxy. What's that? That book was not for me. I was way too young for that. It's really, it's a, I, I think back on this time of my life a lot about how every time I got my parents to spend money on buying a book for me, I thought I was getting away with something. It felt like such a coup. It was like, oh my God, mom is buying me three fucking Goosebumps books. What a clown. What an easy mark she is. And I'm sure she was like, good, he's reading. That's nice. I don't know if you remember, but at the book fairs, you could also, at one point in the magazine, there were also posters that you could get. And so we had a basement that was finished right around the time I was maybe six years old. Before that was just a, only skunks lived there. Then at some point my dad finished it and we would get posters for the walls because it was just a, it only skunks lived there. And then at some point my dad finished it and, uh, we would

get posters for the walls cause it was just a playroom down there. And the fact that we were allowed to get whatever posters we wanted was the same situation where I was just blown away, but it was not a birthday. It wasn't Christmas, just book fair rolled around. And all of a sudden I was allowed to have a no fear poster down there. And it was the coolest thing in the world. You really felt like you were pulling something over on your parents. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, like, you're not asking for drugs. You're not asking to like, I want to stay overnight with some shady characters. It's like,

let's see if I can trick my mom into buying me a book and, and letting me take voice lessons. Let's see if I can trick my mom into buying me a book and letting me take voice lessons. Let's see if I can accomplish the coup of the century. You're not used to getting what you want. I'm assuming you have good parents. You're used to having to like talk them into it or like they had to be convinced that it's something you really want and as a parent now i understand that because i don't give my son stuff that he wants sometimes just to not give it to him because i don't want him to think oh it's so easy everything's for me it's all made for me right and so it's like no maybe for your birthday maybe for christmas or sometimes he'll ask for things and i'll just be like no we're not it's too expensive or whatever other thing he's five so the most expensive thing he's asking for is like thirty dollars but uh i i just

won't give it to him because it there's some part of me that's like no that's how you build character that's how you raise a child that's uh that's good I was just, uh, I'm doing the opposite. Cause I'm an, I'm an uncle and not a dad. And I just wanted to go see my niece and nephew and my nephew, who is a little over three now. Uh, I, I, I drove down to Jersey to, to visit him. And he was like, I want to see your car. I was like, all right. And I took him to my car and he was like, I want to see the engine. It's like, I'm not sure if you're allowed to see the engine. He's like, no, I want to. He's like, all right. So I popped the hood and I just showed him the engine. Yeah. I don't see any harm in that. Unless he's sticking his hands in there.

No, he's not. It's I did. I found myself, um, completely out of my depth because I was like, that's the motor part and that's the oil part. And he was like, no, no, no. How does it work? I was like, oh. So the motor part shakes and then the car moves. And he's like, no, no, no, no. What does that do?

And he's like pointing to specific parts of the engine like it sounds like it's past your bedtime i think it's time to go i don't know man it came off the manufacturing block and a witch blessed it or something don't understand it any more than you do you're not gonna understand it either yeah it makes the car go and if the car stops moving you yell at someone until they make it work again. Yeah. There's a lot of things that Ronan has questions about now that I don't, I cannot explain to him. And it's not just like mechanics or like how a computer works or things like that.

It's like when I found, we found a live mouse in my fountain, and I had been setting out kill traps all over the house for mice and i was like we saved this one and he's like why let's just kill it and i was like no we don't that's not how we do it we rescue this one we drive it 15 miles away right like i don't know how to tell you any more than that and sometimes i'll sit down i'll try to explain stuff that's heavier to him and And in the middle of it, he'll be like, I farted near my ladder and now I can't climb it

because it stinks over there. What's the, what is like the, the heaviest question he's asked you, do you think? He's asked me, like watching TV,

seeing people who cry out of a deep sadness and him asking, why are they sad? And it's hard to explain the idea of depression to a kid. Or he's asked before about death a lot and why things have to die. And if there's a city where people don't die and can we move there and do you tell him that that um things have to die and it's it's uh is it's his fault because he didn't follow the rules he didn't eat all his vegetables and that's why things have to die it's such a precarious situation because you want to get the answer so right i guess it's not that precarious because

at the end he doesn't it never registers he's like he'll ask you four six times before he gets anything sunken through but i try and be as honest as i can in those situations about like no there's there will be a time when we won't be here, but there will also be a time when you won't be here and no one quite knows where you go. Or if that's just it, you just get this stuff, like that kind of stuff. And, uh, I can tell some of it is maybe a little early, but just like, I'm just trying to be honest with him. Should we get into the fucking show that we do?

Oh, the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, I've,

I feel like we like the intro and the quarantine update and the show itself have bled into each other so much at this point that I don't even know how to transition. You just, now we say quarantine update. Okay. Do you have an update? Yeah. I can't nap anymore.

That's what's going on in my life. I used to be an A plus napper, Dan. Okay. And that's how I would, that's how I catch up on my Zs was I didn't always sleep well at night because I'm a bit of a night owl. And the really crucial time for me to sleep is that like five to eight period in the morning. That's when I'm in my deepest sleep. And when you have children, especially a newborn, you can't do that anymore. And with him, it was very easy because whenever he napped, I could just lay down and nap. And with him, it was very easy because whenever

he napped, I could just lay down and nap. And I was so good at it that I could just, as soon as he went to sleep, I could, I didn't have to like turn off or like wind down or anything. I could just go lie down on my bed and I'd fall asleep. And something has taken a turn. I don't know if it's COVID related or what's going on, but I can't, I cannot fall asleep in the middle of the day anymore. And I'm just listening for noises in the house that mean I have to be up. And it means that I'm not getting any sleep anymore. Are you drinking enough water?

Oh, yeah, probably not. Every time that I have sleep problems, I like to imagine that the problem is bigger than it is. But the reality is always I'm not drinking enough water. That's probably really good advice. I think that probably will solve about 80% of the problems I've had in my life. I'll try that. I'm sorry you're not sleeping, buddy. I'm not a nap person that's

never been my thing okay i think uh my college roommate was very good at like napping for 20 minutes yeah and like that does something for him and it's uh mind-boggling to me because like if i'd ever fallen asleep in the middle of the day i would sleep for like three hours and then wake up and it's somewhere between daylight and nighttime and i'm groggy and disoriented and useless and i can't do anything it hasn't helped you at all it's no i will say it regardless of whether i get 10 minutes or I get two hours, I wake up feeling great after a nap. Man. Every single time. And I mean, I was good at it in high school, but I really became varsity.

Like I took my game to the next level in college where I had 20 minutes before my next class. I could rush back to my dorm. You napped in high school? what the fuck are you talking about yeah i had a job in the summers that was uh that had me it started at six in the morning but technically it'd be there at 5 45 and then it was done at noon and then there's six days a week and so i would just go home after that and just nap i think if if there's one thing that I've enjoyed about quarantine, quarantine update, it's so normally our schedule was like 10 to 6 at the office. And it's still mostly that. And when I had an office to go to, I like built my alarm around that time and built my entire schedule around that.

And now that we don't really have that anymore and I can wake up naturally, I wake up about 630 or seven every single day and feel great about it. I'm like an early riser and I enjoy my time in the morning and I go to sleep at like 10 p.m. and it's great. in the morning and I go to sleep at like 10 PM and it's great. I don't get it. I don't think I was that when I was a kid, but I just, it, there was a switch that flipped at about eight years old where I just became a sleeper in the mornings and I wanted to stay up late. I'm, I can be, if I, before I had kids, I was at my most productive from about 9 30 to one at night. There was nothing else bothering me. I was my most creative. I could write then. And obviously that time has been eaten up now. So it's just me, like a ship without a compass, just looking for some other time that I can use.

This is the right schedule for me. This is like waking up early, not really needing to be anywhere and starting my day a couple hours before everyone else that I work with starts their day is the right thing for me. That's how my wife's father is. Although he gets up even earlier. He gets up at about 4.30 or 5 every single day. Good Lord. As since college has gotten up that early um and he's a type of person who cannot fathom why other human beings wouldn't get up that early so he's he whistles he plays around with dishes in the cabinets and stuff like has no concern for the fact that other people are sleeping because in his mind it's like why the day has started the thing the reason that i like getting up at like 7 30 or 6 is uh

you can like go for a run and it's not too hot yet and it's not too crowded you can like do things i if you get up at 4 30 in the morning, what are you doing? What advantage do you have at four 30 in the morning? It's nothing is open and it's dark. What the fuck are you doing? He used to run. He used to be a big runner. So that was a big part of it. I think now he does his crunches and then he reads the paper. He makes breakfast. His, he loves making food for people, which is great. Um, or like like he's got a, I think he's just like sitting around looking at his watch waiting for the time when he can finally make pancakes because he's got like two hours before it's going to even come up.

And so I think now that he's retired and everything, I'm not sure what he's filling his time with in the morning. He's way into tinkering with stuff and he builds some really beautiful things. So that might be part of it. All right. At my bookie, winning season means hitting all your parlays and props with your feet up, watching your team trounce their rivals.

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This is the show where we ask each other questions. And Soren, I have a quick question for you that's kind of based on stuff we've already talked about. It's – are you ready for it? Yeah, go. Okay. It's about things that you would like to get credit for. And this isn't like legacy stuff. It's not like you demand credit

for covering a certain thing on the internet. This is very basic everyday stuff. Like we talked about previously where you want the dentist to say that you're doing a good job if your tongue is in the right spot. That's the kind of thing that I want to talk about. And I can give you my examples if that's helpful. Yeah, go ahead. I know that it's irrational, but I really want credit for every time I have ever paid a bill or not every time. And like, this is certainly a holdover from when I was younger and much, much poorer where paying bills like a credit card bill or rent or a car payment was like really touch and go, where I had to make a decision, oh, you're paying this bill instead of getting a haircut

and having dinner this week. That's the kind of like dichotomy that I'm dealing with, where I'm like, I made a real choice to pay this bill instead of doing a thing that I wanted to do. And I want some kind of credit for that. I understand. I know how money works. I know that if I'm paying off a credit card bill that they don't need to compliment me because they already gave me the thing.

Like I, I swiped the card and bought the plane ticket or gas or whatever it is. And now I'm paying off that. So like, that's a fair exchange, but I still, there's some part of me that wants credit for paying my bills on time. And like, especially like, especially with student loans, I felt like anytime I paid that I wanted like once a year for my student loan company to be like, hey, you know, not everyone pays their bills on time we're dealing with a

lot of people in a lot of different circumstances but you you from day one have paid your bills on time and we noticed that we just want you to know that we noticed it and we recognize what you did and how hard it is. So attaboy. That's all I want. I want an attaboy or if I'm being truly honest, I want like my landlord to be like, Hey, you pay your rent on time every single month and you've done it for years. So like you get a free month. I know that's unreasonable. I absolutely know it's unreasonable because I signed a contract that says I'm going to pay my debts for this credit card bill or this car bill or I'm going to pay rent every month. And what I get in exchange is a place to live. But still, just someone saying,

hey man, we noticed this good job. Yeah. That would go miles for me. I feel that because you pay it all on time and nobody else is doing that, it feels like, in the world. It feels like credit cards. Everybody's got some credit card debt and you don't because you've been responsible the

entire time. And every month you're like, no, no, no, I'm on top of it. Even if I didn't get the bill for my company, I started thinking it's about time that I should be paying that. I wonder if it didn't get, if it got lost in the mail, I'll go look it up online. Ah, this is how much I owe. No problem. Put it in. No one's ever like, oh man, you know, we flaked about sending that to you. That's so cool that you gave us this. Here, have a six pack, whatever they give you. As simple as that, or it's like when I paid off my first car or when I paid off student loan debts, I really wanted them to be like, hey, this is a huge milestone for you. Here's some cookies or something, anything, literally anything other

than just like, okay, our affairs are settled now. Goodbye. Yeah. That's how my last mortgage was too. I had a mortgage on my house that was just a lot of money to me. And when I finally bought a new house and sold that house and I could pay off that mortgage, I was like, lump sum, here you go. And the bank was like, okay, we've registered that you paid this. Your balance is zero. Disrespectful. I've got one that's, when I, this is one that you probably don't get a lot of anymore, Dan, but when I drive, I am so good about making sure that the traffic flows smoothly and that everyone can get where they're going. I focus if I'm at the front of the line at a left turn and there's

going to be a green arrow coming up, I'm, I'm ready for it. I can get maybe three more people through that light by how quickly I get through it to be at the front, as opposed to the person who's just meandering. It's like, Oh, Oh, you know what? I think it's, Oh, it is green. All right, let's go. I, uh, if I could sense coming up on, uh, somebody who's trying to get in, their lane is going to end and they're like several yards away, I'll get way over, give them a wide berth so they got a chance to get into my old lane. I just want a thumbs up from people. I let people in all the time when they need to get in. I just assume that they made some sort of mistake and that they're not just being an asshole.

I am cool and calm on the road and I just make, I make the process easy. And there aren't at the end of the year, there aren't like annual good driver awards. You're not going to get that, but you deserve it. I want a thumbs up or something. Like I want another driver to just be like, I recognize what you just did.

And that was great, man. That was a lot, took a lot of foresight, what you just did. I love that you're focusing on the road and just the road. It means a lot. But nobody's going to give that to me. Not even a cop.

I knew that you were also going to have the same feeling, but I also know that we are both wrong for this. Like this is an incredibly needy thing because like being a good driver and paying your bills on time, that's not extra credit. That's not. But I see so many people doing it wrong that's the thing when they're doing it when i when like so much of the population is just messing that part up then i'm like come on but i know you have to grade on a curve at this point and take a look

at this fucking outlier over here i'm doing great right i know I can't trade in any of these gold stars because Soren's teacher had to move them to a separate location because they were found out. But I still want them. I still want someone to like notice that I did something good and be like, hey, not everyone does this, but you did. So here's a sticker. The other one for me is that things break around my house all the time or they go wrong and I don't always know how to fix them. So I sit there and I watch YouTube tutorials on it. I read up on it. I try and get like the terminology of what the parts are that I need. So if I have to call Ace Hardware or something, I can tell them exactly what it is. I put in so much work to fixing these things in the house

and getting them back to zero. And if I can do that and get it all worked out, sometimes like a project can take a week to get it all, the parts order and everything. Like we had a washing machine that shut down the other day and started leaking all over the floor. A lot of things had happened. Like the balance had fallen off the front of it. Um, and there was a hole in the drum fixing that took a

very long time. It was catastrophic to not have that stuff. But once I got it fixed, I basically just got us back to where we were. So like that felt, I wanted somebody to be like yes you get it you did it here's your here's your success you you get a trophy or whatever whatever it is but all i had realistically done was gotten us right back to exactly where we were and no one's going to come up to you and be like thank you for that i feel that same way but not for fixing stuff but just for knowing stuff like i had a co-worker who was talking about how this is a an observation that we made it cracked years ago about how in fiction uh people who work in morgues are constantly eating and someone was like why are they always doing that why why is like someone who's doing an autopsy, eating a sandwich? And I said, well, it's because formaldehyde

is present in autopsies and it activates, uh, it like, it makes you hungry. The smell makes you hungry. The smell of formaldehyde activates this thing in you that makes you hungry. And they were like, oh, and I was like, do I get no points for knowing that? Oh. And I was like, do I get no points for knowing that? You must know that, like, I had the thought that you had. And the difference between you and me is that I did research and looked into it and learned a thing. Do I not get an attaboy for learning a thing? Where's my attaboys? Yeah. Someone should be like, thank

you, Daniel, for doing this kind of investigative work. And it's like, no, it's just like, oh, I learned a thing. Thanks. Bye. When I was in second grade, there was a tire swing on our school playground that you could only have two kids on at once. And everybody, I mean, there's always, that was a hot commodity. Everybody was out there in line for it. So it was rare that you'd actually get to get on the tire swing. So I had this plan one day where I was like, Kyle Gates and I are just going to pick up trash around the schoolyard

and we're going to make it really conspicuous so the teachers see what we're doing. And we're going to spend the entire recess doing that. And so we were picking up trash. And like the teachers are kind of like registering it a little. They're not giving us attaboys or thumbs up or anything like that. They're just sort of seeing that, oh, those fucking kids are picking up trash. That's weird. And picked up a bunch of trash, threw it all away in front of them, made a big display of it. And my plan was that because I'd spent my entire recess doing that, when everybody else went back into class, Kyle and I surely should have had to get, we should have gotten a recess now.

Right. Because we did this altruistic thing. And now we get to reap our rewards. And the teachers laughed at that prospect of that. And at that point, I was like, I'm never doing a nice thing again in my life. I remember thinking in my head, no, that's it. You're the one who messed this up, Ms. Krakow. I'm never doing a nice thing again.

Yeah. Justice is dead. Good lesson. Important for me to learn this very early on. Yeah. Of course, I was doing it for the wrong reasons i see that now but at the time i was like yeah i let me have the tire swing to myself i just cleaned the earth right and i especially know like as a as an adult and uh a thoughtful religious person, I know that this is not the reason to do... We don't do things to get attaboys,

but at the same time... Give me an attaboy. Come on. Come on. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting this podcast. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. Look, you're stuck inside right now.

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compare it to in-person classes and workshops. This is all right here on your computer in front of you. It couldn't be easier. And now's the time to start at an annual subscription of less than $10 a month. A class that I've recently been taking is mastering illustration, sketching, inking, and color essentials. And it's taught by a guy, Josiah. I love him. He's good. Jazza is what he goes by on it. But he, if you ever remember those commercials from back in the day where they were like, send in to find out what kind of artist you are. And he was like, you either drew a picture of a turtle head or a picture of a pirate. I wanted to do that desperately. I wanted to know what kind of artist I was. And I wanted to know how to grow in my specific field. And this actually helps me do it. This teaches me

exactly what I need to do to advance to the next level in my own sketches. And it's not for anybody but me. I'm not going to be doing, making a career out of this, but it's something that I enjoy doing. Hey, Sorin. Yeah. What the hell are you talking about? The turtle, the cartoon turtle and the more realistic looking pirate head. You had to draw either one and you sent it away to this art school and they told you what kind of artist you were. So you, so the school asked you to draw either a turtle head or a pirate well it wasn't even that specific it was like trace this or uh draw which style do you draw draw one of these and you just copied it okay this is a commercial it's back on tv in like the

late 80s this doesn't ring a bell for you not at all no i thought it was universal i thought it was more universal than that okay but since then do. But since then, you've learned and you've grown as an artist. I wouldn't say that I have mastery over this stuff, but my sketches have certainly improved. And who cares? It's for me. I'm not going to show these sketches to anybody else. This is just something that I'm trying to improve about myself. You can explore your creativity and get two free months of premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ. That's two whole months of unlimited access

to thousands of classes for free. Whoa. Get started and join today by heading to Skillshare.com slash QQ. Daniel, that's two free months. Oh my. Unlimited access to thousands of classes at Skillshare.com slash QQ.

All right. Well, well dan i have actually a related quick question for you okay do you play mobile games at all uh i play two do you feel comfortable saying the names of them or just describing what they are uh gorgoa is a puzzle game that i love so much like you can only play it you're only supposed to play it once really because it's it's a a beautiful game that looks very fun and you just you solve a puzzle so you should be done by the time you end it but i i play it over and over again because i just like i like the look of it so much uh the other game i play that is the opposite of that is a game called crossy road which is like a modern version of frogger you're a chicken crossing a road and you get hit by cars

and every once in a while a fucking hawk will come and eat you and there's nothing you can do to stop it and every single time you die it's funny it's always good and i i'm i'm obsessed with it it's called crossy road crossy road all right i'll check that out i asked because i will get if i put a game on my phone i know the consequences after that i know that i'm going to be playing that for about four hours a day for the next month oh my god yeah i get so invested in them regardless of what it is it could be very very simple i'm playing one right now called war zone that's granted you can you can play with other people like i'm playing with my brother his brother-in-law and a bunch of other guys it's very fun but you

can also just play the by yourself as well so they need to be do they need to be live when you play it no okay no you have like a day to put your turns in it's a lot like risk um the design of it it's just like you're conquering territories and you're building up resources very simple but it's also like there's some strategy to it it makes you feel smart which is like the most important part of a game for me. And I get so absorbed in these games that there's like a part of my brain that's like, surely the people who are tracking this kind of thing are seeing me play and they're like,

yes, this guy's figuring it out. Wow, he's moving fast. Wow, he's already got that armor. That's incredible. Like, I want to know that there's somebody on the other side who's registering how hard I'm working at this thing. Because it's just like when you start working out, you're dedicating a huge chunk of your life suddenly

to something that you weren't previously dedicating to it. You're like allocating all this time and everything. And now you want to talk about working out. It's why CrossFit people are so intolerable. Like you want to talk to somebody about this new thing you're doing, or you want somebody to acknowledge that it's that you're doing it. Yeah. And nobody else gives a shit.

It's this like endless frustration. And I just hope that there's some designer on the other end. It was like, finally someone playing it the way it's supposed to be played. Incredible. We should call this kid. Yeah. I've certainly felt that way playing Animal Crossing

when I've, like, at this point, I've done everything that you can do in Animal Crossing. So I'm just fucking around

and, like, building mini golf courses and, like, making my own Jurassic Park. And it's for no one. No one can see this.

It's for nothing. But I hope that the person who made Animal Crossing can hack into it and be like, ah, finally someone gets it. I built this game engine so someone would make a Jurassic Park in it. And this guy's doing it. This punk from New Jersey is doing it i'm like yeah that's right i am i just and i'm sure that they must have they'd be able to see how quickly because they have to continually update the game that's the whole point of mobile games is like yeah you put out like a

beta version that's then you you fix as you go that's's like how you build a mobile game. And so they're tracking that kind of stuff. Like they're tracking how people are getting through certain levels, places where they can't get through, places where it's clearly too hard or somebody's overpowered in the game, a weapon or something. And they're constantly making modifications.

So I feel like there's gotta be somebody who's like checking in. They're seeing me work that grind. They're seeing me do the grind. And they're like, okay, yes, this guy's playing it right.

This is why we made the game. We made it for him. This guy who's neglecting his children to play this tower defense game. Yeah. Anyway, I, I know i have to frequently here's how the the pattern goes i don't have a lot going on for a little while like i get on my hiatus i think to myself one night while i'm watching tv i i should download a game yeah And then I'll go look for something that fits my wheelhouse. I'll download a game, whatever puzzle game it is. And like, I just start playing it and I get obsessed with it.

I get obsessed with it to the point where I'm like, I can't just play this at night anymore after everyone's gone to bed. Sometimes like in the middle of the day, I'll just slip in there and put in a couple of moves, whatever it is. And then my wife sees me doing it. She ignores it for a long time until it's clear that she can't ignore it anymore. She's like, what are you doing?

Like, your daughter is right there. Can you just interact with her? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I have to be like, you know what? This is unhealthy. I have to delete this entirely. And so all the progress that I build up and everything, I just let it all go.

And that moment actually feels really good too because you just like your whole game this whole thing that you built for me and that i worked so hard at means nothing to me it goes off my phone forever i'll never think about this one again and that's the cycle i don't think i have anything like that. I do have my only relevant gaming experience, and this isn't even mobile. It's my friend Jacqueline was like, hey, you should get this game Dead by Daylight and we can play it together.

And I got it. And this just shows how out of touch I am with gaming and how old I'm getting that I had to report back to her and just say like, Hey, I tried to get that game and I did a training exercise and I got impaled on a meat hook and died. I don't think this is for me. Yeah. That makes me very anxious when other people want to play a game with me

because then I'm on the hook for something. People are counting on me and I, I don't like that. No but uh i those like games where it's just me versus the computer i go nuts for those i used to have um there's some sort of civilization game i can't age of empires that's what it's called i had age of empires that I'd gotten at a thrift store and I would play that every single night levels that I'd already beaten several times just because I liked the process of starting from scratch, building everything up, getting it already, building up my resources and then just wiping everybody else out.

It was so satisfying over and over again, but I could just do it forever. And finally, there has to be a moment in my life. I don't just get bored of a game. There just has to be a moment where I say, you know what, this isn't healthy anymore. I'm going to be done. I do think you would like Gorogoa.

Okay, that's terrible news. Okay. You're not competing. It's just puzzles. You're not competing with anyone. You're not competing. It's just puzzles. You're not competing with anyone. You're not building anything. You're just solving puzzles, and it's like a beautifully done game that I was very disappointed

when I finished it, because I was like, what else is like this? And there's nothing else like it. All right. I'll check it out. It's just seeing those reports come back weekly from my phone that are like this is how much time you spent on your phone this week it's just as soon as i start playing a game it's such a bummer to look at that no i think what helps is that i um out loud reason with my phone when it tells me like this is how much time you spent on your phone this week i was like well i like things are different you know it's quarantine and like i'm

not in an office so like obviously i'm near my phone all the time so you don't you don't know you yelling novel coronavirus at your phone alone in your apartment it's really funny it's like hey phone some of the time i'm like doing a workout app on my phone so that's another thing i'm not napping anymore also working out has become an impossibility for me oh really yeah i i used to go for bike rides with my son but i can't do that he's going to school again now he's going to preschool also it's like 113 degrees that's the thing I can't do that. He's going to school again. Now he's going to preschool. Also, it's like 113 degrees. That's the thing. I can't go on runs. He's at school. So I should have some more free time, but I can't run in the middle of the day. Cause I would die in the pavement. He's like physically, this is maybe this is not the podcast. He's

physically going to a place for school. He's going three days a week to a preschool. Oh shit. What is that like? There are seven other kids with him there. Not a huge group, but about the size of like a pod would be. I know what seven means. Actually, I was going to do some more jokes about that and like do some math we're like it's actually just four plus three but then i wasn't like confident my ability so i just paused and did nothing um he's going to go to school three days a week and they take it we went through walked through did a walk through where they showed us all the precautions that they had taken and what they do. And like the kids never really touched the same toys during the time that they're there. They have, they'll get out like those absorbent balls. I don't know what they are. They're like little rubber balls that, or they feel very gummy, but then you put them in water and they get a little bit bigger.

me but then you put them in water and they get a little bit bigger like they do like tactile games with those but each kid has their own bucket with and then if a kid is still not done playing with a lego set or something like that then they'll put that away in his cubby until the next day they've taken like all the kids wear masks except when they're outside and they all eat outside they do wipe down several times a day they do temperature checks several times a day okay and i've just sort of accepted that this needs to happen because the tuesdays and thursdays he's doing actually homeschool with us for what would be kindergarten but he's doing it with us and then three days a week he needed it was clear over these past few months that he needed some social interaction from other kids

yeah and when you're doing the homeschooling, there's, it's not, it's not virtual at all. No, it's okay. Yeah. So we signed because virtual you're tied to, you have to be there every single day on a zoom call for a certain amount of time. And we didn't want to do that either. So basically we've got this curriculum, we have the lesson books and then we're his teachers now. And then he does a weekly check-in with a teacher that just my wife and I do

where we're like, here's what he's doing. Here's what he's done. Here's the, here are the things he has mastery over. Here are the things that he's still working on. Wow. It's chaos. Yeah. That sounds very difficult. I'm sorry you're going through that, man. Well, it's, there's not another really good solution out there. So this is it for the time being. I still, I don't know why, maybe it's I'm being too optimistic, but I have treated COVID this entire time like, well, I can do this for a little while. Like I can pause my life for a little bit and really just, we're all going to

get through this, but I have never at any point treated it like, okay, things need to change. Yeah. It's always just like, this will be in the future. This will be a part of my history that I'll just fast forward through. Like, this was not the interesting part. This was a pause until things got interesting again. It was, it's just like, I'm not prepared to continue in this way for like another six months. Yeah. Yeah. It's very tempting to think of it as like looking back at a high school yearbook and like in my experience, the high school yearbooks always end with like, this is what 2004 looked like in pop culture. They'd be like, oh man, that was a wacky time

that lasted a year and then ended and then we never talked about it or thought about it again. It's tempting to think that that's what we're going through now. Yeah. So there's like stuff that I don't think I can do when I go back to work finally if this

covid continues the way it is because i'm home with everybody else in the house and there's no time to sit and write alone which is what i need to write i need a chunk of time and i don't it just doesn't exist anymore you know yeah i i don't know what they're it end. It will end at some point. It will, yeah. Do you get to... Have you considered a solo trip? No. Or is that like a non-starter at this point?

Because you have a newborn at home. Yeah. You can't be like, honey, I need to go to Big Bear. a newborn at home. You, you can't, you can't be like, honey, I need to go to big bear for the weekend. I want to try it just to see what happens.

That seems like a really funny joke I could try and do. Oh, I, we, we try and give you, cause she's working too. we try and give each other time we're like i know i for instance today i did some other podcasts and so i was like i know today i'm gonna need these chunks of time but to write you need weeks i you know like that's gonna be every

single week for a long period of time yeah and i just don't don't have that what are your uh dates with your wife do you have do you have dates at this point no okay no we are uh we are a a couple of co-workers who work really well together well that's a that's an end to an episode, I guess. I'm going to track down our social accounts. But before I do that, while I'm searching for them, because I don't have them handy, a lot of people ask, like, what is a thing that you would tell your high school self or your teenage self? Soren, what is something that you can tell your 20 year old self? Anything you're, you're just going to give me this softball. You're not going to hit me with anything hard here. Yep. Wow. Okay. I would tell myself that

there are going to be people around you who are already on their bus to their respective successes and that that's okay because not everyone's going to be traveling the same way and that it's okay for it to take time for you to be doing what you want to be doing and that you shouldn't compare yourself to those other people because a lot of them what they consider success now won't be what they consider success in the future. It's monetary. It's climbing a corporate ladder. It's things that you don't actually want. So even though they have these elements that you're jealous of now, don't worry about it because they won't necessarily be happy in the future. You stick to your plan.

You stick to what you're doing and you'll get there. Very interesting. So Soren would tell his 20-year-old self, do nothing different. Stick to your plan. Instead of something like invest in, I don't know, Tesla or Apple or something like that. Amazon, for instance. No. Soren says, stay on the bus the bus are you gonna go change the future

are you so you're gonna go back in time and you're gonna be like hey listen the red socks are gonna finally win a world series no one's gonna believe it because they've had the curse for so long sorry let's go back and do the cubs instead yeah i don't remember you said the red socks famously had the curse not the cubs the cubs uh all right i would go back and i would tell myself in a in a few years you're going to be doing a podcast and you're going to say the red socks when you mean the cubs don't fucking just say Cubs first. It'll say a lot of embarrassing. Yeah, that's good. Only fix that and nothing else.

You would go back and you'd change. You'd go back and make yourself rich. Yes. You don't want to be rich. But what about the lethargy that follows that? You needed the desperation to get where you are, Dan. No, if I go back to when I'm 20 and I could find a way to make myself rich i would

absolutely 100 no questions do it i think your life's worst all right yeah also you change i mean my life my my life's not great now i think you have a great life in the next episode. I'm going to tell you how great your life is. If I could do this, but also rich. Sure. That sounds neat. Anyway, you can find Soren on Twitter at Soren underscore LTD. You can't find me anymore because my account is private now and I don't want

anyone to follow me, but you can find the show at QQ underscore Soren and Dan on Twitter or Instagram at QQ underscore with underscore Soren underscore and underscore Daniel. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com if you want. You can also hire and compliment our engineer, editor, producer. I want to just say it at this point. Boss Gabe at Gabe harder.com. We also have a Patreon. You can donate to us via Patreon,

but you can also donate to much more worthy causes right now. God, I'm just like looking around to see if there's anything else to say. I don't think I have anything else. I don't think you got it all. All right, good. Bye. Yeah.