The Blindboy Podcast - Bunsens Junk

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

Procrastination, what is it? Why do we do it? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bowl a bus, you ten-speed decklins. Make a gentle noise with the heels of your slipper on the kitchen floor. Record it. Send it to Jim Carr. Tell him it's a weeping ghost. What's the crack? Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. My name is Blind Boy. And you are listening to my podcast.

Um. Before I continue. I need to. I need to plug some fucking gigs. Cause I'm shit at. At plugging my own gigs. I very rarely mention them. Even though I should.

And do you know what? I usually don't have to because they sell out anyway. And people seem to find out when the live podcasts are on. But the promoters of the gigs get very annoyed when I don't actually mention that the gigs are on. So here are some upcoming live podcasts that you should come along to because as you can tell from the odd live podcast that I play, they're fucking great, crack. It's a very enjoyable night. So this Friday, the 15th of February, I'm in Mayo.

I haven't got a guest picked yet. I will be picking a guest guest that one's almost sold out there's only about 30 tickets left for that because it's this friday so if you're in castle bar in mayo come along this friday the 15th march the 4th vicar street dublin again that one is is about that was sold out and then what i did was usually when you do a gig like vicar street what happens is that i'd have a guest list and the guest list could be we'll say 30 tickets right if i wanted to invite a lot of journalists or whatever the fuck but i never i never used the guest list to be honest you know maybe one or two people so I released the guest list basically so those tickets are now on sale so Vicar Street the 4th of March there's a couple of tickets left for that the

very last few tickets but on the 6th and 7th of April, I'm doing two more Vicar Street gigs. 6th and 7th of April. And those have just gone on sale, so there's a lot of tickets for them. So 6th and 7th of April, Vicar Street. Belfast. We always have a good time in Belfast. To the point that... Like the last two Belfast podcasts the point that like the last

the last two Belfast podcasts that I put out for you the first ever live podcast was with Donzo which was fucking amazing Donzo was the doing the historical tours of the areas in Belfast

that were impacted by the war or the troubles or whatever you want to call it and then of course we had Bernadette Devlin Michalinski so with Belfast I've really got done some high quality

podcasts in Belfast so the next Belfast gig is the 12th of April in Whitley Hall and I'll tell you why of April in Whitley Hall. And I'll tell you why I'm choosing Whitley Hall. The podcast that I did with Bernadette in Ulster Hall, it was good crack, but that venue is very wooden. And there was a large echo. It was quite echoey. And I wasn't crazy about the sound of that when it was recording. So I'm moving it to Whitley Hall.

Which is the same size I think. But possibly better sound to record. And then on the 10th of May. Dolan's Warehouse. Limerick City. Back home. Limerick City. I'm in Dolan's doing a live podcast.

There might be one or two other ones. Somewhere in between as well. But these are the ones that are in front of me right now, so... People who are booking those gigs for me, there you go. I've advertised it on the podcast. Okay? Chill out. Relax. Take a yoke. You'll be grand.

So, how are ye getting on? Has your week been gentle um great response to last week's podcast it was a live podcast recorded in the sugar club and we had collie ennis who was trinity college research, expert in frogs and insects. Very enjoyable. Got a lot of people talking. Got a lot of people talking and thinking about insects.

Do you know? I think I can hear a tomcat. I could have sworn I heard a tomcat outside, outside the window of my studio. I fucking can hold on you're not gonna hear that oh my god can you hear that fuck me listen to him

is he taking the piss he sounds like a fucking house alarm or something yeah so that's a tomcat what the fuck does he want they're very forlorn aren't they do you know maybe it's February he's

he could be looking for sex like that could be yeah that would be some type of sexual call that that tomcat is doing

and yet he sounds sounds like a house alarm that's just received a lot of bad news you know a house alarm who's been told that a relative

has just been diagnosed with an illness. So he's there, fucking... I wonder if he'll say anything back. Yeah, I can hear him outside. But I've no doubt that Tomcat, because it's like February, it's probably like wanting to have sex

and create kittens which is joyous you know for him that's the equivalent of throwing on some fucking aftershave and firing up the tinder see who's around you know but instead he walking around the side of my alleyway interrupting my podcast

and sounding quite morose and miserable you know But instead he's walking around the side of my alleyway. Interrupting my podcast. And sounding quite morose and miserable you know. Bringing bad vibes. Bringing bad news into the podcast. Maybe that's his thing. Do you know? Like. Maybe like.

He just happens to be the one. Tomcat who's.'s uses his sadness as a a technique of sexual selection like you know maybe other other tomcats around the gaff maybe there's one of them who's you know really big and good looking and that's how he finds a partner and then there's other tomcats who are maybe class at hunting you know they bring back the most mice but this fella is neither so his way of attracting a mate is kind of true I won't say pity but by wearing his sadness through his call. Like, he's an artist, Kat.

He could be like a poet. Do you know? He advertises his sadness, and that's his way of getting attention. It's like, oh, I can't catch any mice, and I'm not very strong. But you can hear in my heart that I have depth do you know like a fucking lad up in the

smoking area the workman's up in Dublin standing in the corner smoking a rollie looking sad and then hopefully a girl comes over and wants to

wants to fix him you know maybe maybe maybe the type of cats And then hopefully a girl comes over and wants to fix him. You know, maybe the type of cats that this cat is attracting are the type of female cats who, for some reason, want to cradle a cat who's emotionally wounded and then six months into the relationship they realize they're changing the emotional nappies of an adult man or an adult cat maybe that's who that cat is am i over analyzing his call i don't want to be too flippant about that either because that that situation is a real, that's a very common role play in relationships that can be toxic, do you know, and it, just from my experience from talking to friends, it does tend to be women will end up finding themselves attracted to a wounded man or a man who they feel they can fix now it can happen with either like i i know a lad who's like that with girls but because of gender roles and because of you know how society says the gender should be

you know women are caring that type of thing it just tends to be more i think women who end up in that situation of being the carer we'll say and yeah it's it's an interesting one it results it causes quite a lot of unhappiness, the Freudian reading of it would be, I don't know, Freud would go straight back to the parents, so, maybe the lad, the tomcat in that situation who's wearing his wounds as a way to attract female attention Freud would say that

that tomcat or the lad would have had a strange relationship with its mother with his mother when he was a kid that maybe for whatever reason the child felt that it was difficult to get attention or love from his ma so this has developed into an adult man who as a way to resolve and to make that childhood connection with the mother is crying, you know, and hoping a woman

who has now been sublimated into a mother figure unconsciously will come along and soothe those tears. But they're never satiated because it's essentially based on an irrational childhood desire that needs to be worked through you know a child like that could find themselves fake and illness as a way to get attention from the mother and then the female or the woman who's attracted to that type of man or who finds herself in those type of relationships where the attraction is to fix a broken person could have come from a family where either a mother or a father or a sibling was particularly kind of like dramatic or there was a high level of drama or

pain and this left a kind of emotional unease in the person whereby they now as an adult seek out partners who are sad or unhappy and they want to fix them and you know that's ultimately sounds like a noble thing a good thing but what can happen then in the relationship is that the person who's fixing the broken person right first off first off it's an inauthentic relationship if we take it back to like the transaction analysis podcast a few weeks or a few months back it's a complementary toxic cycle that doesn't have an end so one person has a wound and another person wants to fix the wound but the wounds it doesn't exist you know so what can happen in the relationship is that the person who's the fixer the healer can completely end up ignoring their own needs ignoring their own needs by putting the other person first at all times and then the other person is toxically playing up to it and it's a continual cycle of crying and fighting and

and the love in the relationship which in an adult relationship should be based upon equality mutual respect empathy compassion you know that's healthy adult loving relationship instead what it's about is one person really hoping that the other will change so and where that can get dodgy is all levels of toxic and abusive behavior can become normalized because one party is no no they will change. If only I work harder. If only I try harder. I will change them. And then we will have the happy relationship that I know we can have.

But then the relationship is just about work for one person. And for the other person. A continual kind of toxic cycle of sad and upset behaviour that's never challenged do you know it's never challenged it's fed

it's when the child cries the mother comes and offers a hug but at no point is it like, you're not a child, you're a fucking adult, and you might need to take some personal responsibility, personal responsibility is abdicated in that form of relationship, essentially what it is, is no actual genuine adult connection is made no on on behalf of either party the person who's wearing their wounds to try and get attention and the person who is trying to fix and change that person in the relationship

at no point is a true loving adult connection made because ultimately it's two parties who are trying to resolve a kind of an issue around love and intimacy that's rooted in childhood so it's like like a like with transaction analysis which which is a psychoanalytic therapy so it has one foot in Freudian therapy but what you're talking about is two people as actors in a relationship

acting out a script and a role over and over and over again and no genuine intimacy reached and that's very common so I might have highly overanalyzed now that fucking particular cat's call but that's that's just what it brought up for me that's what it brought up for me you know and and you know what as well most likely the cat that we just heard there because i as i mentioned on a few podcasts a few weeks back.

I've got two stray cats out in my back garden. Who I've been feeding and sheltering for a couple of months. And they have a little hut that they sleep in. So that male cat is probably the male cat that I feed out in my back garden. But he sleeps with his sister. The two cats. The two wild cats that I feed out my back garden. But he sleeps with his sister. The two cats. The two wild cats that I have. They're brother and sister.

And they sleep together in the same bed. So. Yeah no wonder he's going around the place. Howling and screaming for fucking mate. And he's sleeping in the same bed as his sister. All they do is bicker with each other all the time. Actually an update on that situation when i spoke about those those two cats a couple of months or a couple of weeks ago the little hut that i made for them the male cat the tom cat was sleeping in there himself on his own and he was kicking his sister out, and she wasn't allowed in at all,

and she has now successfully managed to get in there, and now the two of them sleep together in a very cute, warm looking ball, alright, I did not expect the fucking, this to be a cat rant, but sure, that's what happens, do you know what, that wouldn't happen on RTE, But sure that's what happens. Do you know what? That wouldn't happen on RTE. If Joe Duffy or whoever was doing his radio show. I can't imagine him stopping it to listen to a Tomcat. So.

In the interest of what this podcast is. Which is essentially a free jazz type of broadcasting. I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable with the diverging into cat themes, and the subject of fucking RTE, actually, and this will show you the, just the lunacy of the national broadcaster, so when I was doing the podcasts, the live podcasts in sugar club there two weeks ago i got an email from an rte researcher right and the email was asking for permission for rte to come to my live podcast right and to record it to video record it so that they could take that footage back into RTE and use it as internal research to develop some program so this is RTE going wow the blind by podcast has got

a lot of listeners it's it's it's getting more listeners than most of our actual fucking radio shows that we spend a lot of money on so let's ask Blind Boy if we can come to his gig record it observe what he's doing then take that and try and copy it

inside with no irony whatsoever straight up asking me I said fuck off but like this is why it annoys me right like four years ago i went to rte and said to them i basically pitched this podcast to rte right i didn't whatever was going on in my head i didn't think i should do it as a podcast i thought the smartest thing to do would to be would go to rte and say to them give me a one-hour radio show where i just talk or i play music give me an arts show basically that's what i wanted give me a

radio art show i reckon i could have a crack at it i didn't even get a response because the pitch of that was so ridiculous to them it's like you could have had this podcast lads it's a bit late trying to come and copy it now it was offered to you and you weren't fucking arsed because you didn't have the imagination or capacity to take risk to allow it to flourish and even the the tv stuff i've done for rt over the years massively underfunded like our guide to 1916 which got nominated for a fucking ifta we to make that on a shoestring and then they broadcasted it at 11 p.m on new year's eve which is the worst slot you could possibly give anything ever because they just thought it was too weird and risky i suppose and anything we've ever made for rte has been pushed into these really weird slots where no one would ever see it because there's a lack of ability to spot talent

a lack of creativity a lack of a fear of failure all the things that you need to have something successfully creative are not present in under the structure and system that exists in the national broadcaster so for me that's very, it's just annoying, that's annoying to have him come to me and say can we video what you're doing

because we now recognise that what you're doing is worthy but we'd like to copy it please if that's alright but you know what i'm much much fucking happier doing what i'm doing now with this podcast because i answer to nobody and i don't have any pressure to have balance the fact that. RTE were. Lazy. Lazy is the only word to use it.

They were lazy with myself. With the rubber bandits. And with a fuck load of other. Like young talent. In Ireland over the years. Who should have been given decent platforms. But. I'm happy to be doing this.

Because it's funded by you. The listener. Do do you know it's not funded by the BAI it's not funded by the the what you call it the TV license and with that comes a lot of freedom um a huge amount of freedom I don't have to balance balance is the word that's used like if you're funded by the tv license if you express an opinion you also have to kind of express the counter opinion because you're using taxpayer money but often that means platforming pricks do you know so there'll be no hot takes put it that way lads there'll be no hot takes so I'm happy doing what I'm doing here for ye delicious cunts

and I couldn't say cunts but anyway wait for it now next week on the Ray Darcy show they'll have a tomcat in the studio Ray Darcy commenting on it's balls so right anyway that tomcat has so far dominated the fucking podcast. We're 25 minutes in, and I've just been detoured by a screaming cat at the side of the studio. Let's do the, let's pause, pause for the adverts, will we?

Troubling news, lads. It is week number three with no ocarina. Let's pause, pause for the adverts, will we? Troubling news, lads. It is week number three with no ocarina. And I was in London and I had the ocarina with me. So I threw it into my luggage, or so I thought. I can't find it. The ocarina may be lost. I may have left the ocarina

in London so I'm going to buy a new one, I'm going to buy a new ocarina, hopefully it'll sound the same but it served me well 70, no about 68 episodes

of the ocarina for the ocarina Pause but I there's a strong chance it's no longer with us I may need to get a new Ocarina and I bought it in Cordoba in Spain about 4 years ago

and I haven't been able to find that same Ocarina vendor, it's a handmade one out of clay but I'll get a new Ocarina but this week I don't have an Ocarina to do same ocarina vendor. It's a handmade one out of clay. But I'll get a new ocarina. But this week I don't have an ocarina to do the ocarina pause. And I can't think of, even though I'm in a room full of instruments. There's a guitar. Fuck it, we'll have a crack at the banjo. There happens to be a banjo beside me. And I don't know if it's in children we'll have a fucking banjo pause will we?

yeah alright so every week there is adverts inserted into this podcast by Acast so normally I play an ocarina to notify you that there may be an advert coming up but this week I've got a banjo

so we'll do a banjo pause and hopefully we can get it even remotely in tune with the song On April 3rd You must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't.

The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year.

It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th,

when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. There you go, that was the banjo pause. Somewhat in unison with the piano music in the background.

And you know what it sounded more like a koto which is a Japanese a Japanese stringed instrument because I was bending the strings I own a banjo but I can't play a banjo in

playing a banjo is a particular type of style which i can't do i can play guitar so i can play a banjo like a guitar and and bend the strings in a way that it shouldn't so also this podcast is sponsored by you the listener um i rarely have corporate sponsors on the podcast instead what keeps this podcast going is you via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you like the podcast if you're enjoying it if it's performing a service for you in the week with a bit of entertainment there is an opportunity for you to give me a few quid for my efforts um if you if you met me in real life and you'd be like i'd like to buy that cunt a pint or a cup of coffee here's the way to do it patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast

please sign up it's a monthly a monthly fee and you become a patron of this you don't have to whether you do or not you still get the same podcast I'm kind of

asking people to do it out of goodwill more than anything you know and it's going quite well so thank you to everybody who is a patron of this podcast and please consider becoming one but if you can't afford it that's grand so we've taken a bit of a queer turn from where i thought this week's podcast was going to be, but, because of the cat, but that's grand, that's grand, I'm alright with that, em, at the moment, I'm, I'm stupidly busy, I am ridiculously fucking busy, I have too many projects, oh yeah, that sound, there's an interesting sound, I have a, I have a water bottle, you know, I'm trying to make sure I'm drinking enough water an interesting sound. I have a water bottle, you know. I'm trying to make sure I'm drinking enough water every day, but I have a water bottle that makes a very pathetic whistling noise.

I could have used this actually instead of the banjo. Hold on. Yeah, it makes a very pathetic whistle. Hold on. Listen to that. Sounds like a grieving mouse in the distance maybe the fucking the grieving

water bottle mouse could hook up with the the forlorn cat and they could just be grand together without bringing their toxicity into our lives

so yeah I'm balls deep in the middle of a lot of projects and and I'm and I'm making things worse for myself. So I'm currently in the kind of, I suppose, editing stage of the BBC show, which is taking up a fair bit of time. I'm obviously doing this podcast writing my second book which is

between 500 and 1000 words a day and also this week i in my studio where i record this podcast i set up a camera for myself and the end of a movable arm with the eventual goal of what I wanted I said this at the start of this podcast what I wanted was to have the facility where I have at all times a high quality camera ready to go at just the click of a button so that I can create vlogs are increasingly what I'm looking at now is the possibility of streaming on a website called Twitch. Maybe either playing video games or answering your questions or just talking shit on Twitch.

Don't hold me to it because like I said I'm incredibly busy, so I'm going to try and figure that one out, but what I intended this week's podcast to be about, because it's a huge theme in my week as such, is procrastination. When I get up in the morning, like I've all these projects on board, I manage myself. I don't necessarily have a boss, so I have to be 100% on the ball

and efficient and disciplined with my work output. I have to get up in the morning. And crack my own whip. And I have to put my arse down in the seat. And I have to write my book. For a certain amount of time. Then I have to take a break.

Then I have to dedicate some time to doing the BBC stuff. Then I have to have a think about this podcast. And then on top of that. There's organising all the social media. So what's required for that is discipline daily discipline and the enemy of this is the desire to procrastinate okay procrastination is everyone suffers from procrastination. It's an absolute cunt of a thing. And this is what I battle with every single day.

And I successfully conquer it. I rarely give in to procrastination. I can nip it in the bud very, very early so that it doesn't become an issue, even though the pang is always there. And I can, I'd confidently wager that you too suffer from procrastination. I have yet to meet a human being who does not suffer from procrastination. It's a very common thing. But as with anything, it's a spectrum do you know if i let if i let

procrastination get the better of me and i go weeks and weeks without doing work that for me i know that is a known trigger for me for mental health issues to start creeping back. If I go three weeks to a month, every day getting up, not doing my work, and giving in to that urge of procrastination, it will chip away at my self-esteem, my sense of self-worth, my happiness,

my confidence, and eventually, I will start to experience the beginnings of anxiety and depression. Now I haven't had that in about four years. I have you know in about four years I haven't had a situation where I've allowed procrastination to stop me doing what I need to do mainly because I I have identified it as for me in particular being a very very dangerous thing and often with procrastination is the more you leave it go the more severe it becomes, the more severe it becomes, and the more painful it becomes.

So what I want to do this week, and I might be possibly overlapping or revisiting shit I've spoken about in previous podcasts, but I want to speak about procrastination this week. I want to talk about what it is and why we do it, I want to talk about what it is and why we do it and what you can kind of do to overcome it in your own life. So ultimately, you know, what is procrastination? Procrastination is when you continually put off an important task okay now i'm not kind of some shit we procrastinate because it's unpleasant you know if i i don't like cleaning my studio i like i'm i'm kind of messy

so i don't like cleaning things i find it boring and unfulfilling so if I'm procrastinating that, it's because the task is not pleasant and I don't really want to do it so that's a form of procrastination but it's not it's fairly simple, you know it's okay to not want to do something that's unpleasant you just have to pull your fucking socks off and do it pull your socks off pull your fucking socks off and do it pull your socks off pull your socks up see that's typical me now if i was to sit down and try and clean my room

because i don't want to do it i'd do something stupid like take my socks off and go oh i wonder what the floor feels like in my bare feet so there's a friday and slip you pull your fucking socks up and you just go no the room needs to be cleaned I know I hate doing it I'm gonna do it that's let's call that healthy procrastination healthy procrastination is a thing it's grand we all know what it is unhealthy procrastination is what I want to talk about this is the shit that can have a real and meaningful negative impact on your life, and can eventually, it can really fucking, people can procrastinate for years, and end up very, very unhappy At the end. Because time has passed.

And opportunities are gone. Do you know. So. Procrastination. The most common form of procrastination. Occurs because of a fear of failure. Right. But the failure. The specific type of failure.

It's more than just. just failing at a task. People who suffer from procrastination in whatever area it is, what you'll often find is that bubbling underneath the surface is some very maladjusted coping mechanisms around self-worth okay now here's the thing with human beings are what we would defend most right you know where our insecurities live is our sense of self our identity and our self-worth and let's just take it from the artist's perspective because i'm an artist and i procrastinate in areas around creativity okay i don't procrastinate in other areas it's around creativity so a person who procrastinates has some kind of faulty assumptions and they would be um let's just say it's it's let's just say you're a writer all right what i produce right what i write is a direct reflection of how much ability I have.

Okay? Then my level of ability determines how worthwhile I am as a person. So the higher my ability, the higher my sense of self-worth. And then finally, what I produce reflects my worth as a person these are faulty assumptions of self that a person who suffers from procrastination probably has and what I mean by that is

you have to go you have to kind of again go Freudian on it if you're creative okay if you're handy at painting, handy at music, handy at writing, whatever it is, okay, if you're an artist, or not even art, all right, it could be sport, it could be whatever endeavor you're engaged in, I'm just going to keep it creative, because that's what I know about. Chances are, well no, not even chances are,

if you're particularly skilled in an area, you probably showed signs of being skilled in that area from a very young age. So for me, it would have been music, painting or drawing and writing shit like that when we're kids the adults around us give us praise when we do these things so if you're a four year old

and all of a sudden it emerges that you're very good with crayons or you're handy at drawing the adults around you will pat you on the head and go wow look how good you are at drawing and that shapes our sense of identity we then start to feel oh fuck it if i'm handy at drawing that means that you know and the adults are saying well done you i must be a good person when I'm good at drawing. So that then manifests itself as an adult whose sense of worth in themselves

has now become attached to whatever kind of ability or talent that they have. So I'm a professional fucking writer. My job and my living depends upon my ability to write good stories or write good fucking tv scripts or do good podcasts or whatever my livelihood depends on this but also what I have to be incredibly fucking mindful of But also what I have to be incredibly fucking mindful of is that my sense of self and my self-esteem and my identity and my worth as a human being is not intrinsically linked with my creative fucking output. Okay? Because when we contextualize that set of conditions in terms of what failure means, failure now stops being bad at writing, or not bad at writing.

Failure no longer is about the task that you're doing, but it becomes about your worth as a human being. the task that you're doing but it becomes about your worth as a human being so if i sit down to write a short story for my upcoming book and my worth and identity from childhood is based upon you know being witty or being clever or being creative or being you know handy at writing if this is the way that i am it means that if i sit down to write if i write a pile of shit which happens several times a week because that's part of the process but it means that if i sit down sit down if I shit down and write a pile of shit if I write a short story that isn't good if I'm not careful it means that I'm interpreting

the failure at that task as me failing as a person as me feeling that I'm a shit human being because I just wrote something that is shit so the fear now the fear of failure is the fear of failing as a human and these are all unconscious processes but as you will know the feeling of personal failure or the feeling of you know feeling less than or thinking you know saying to yourself that you're a piece of shit that you're not good enough

these are very painful emotions they're those emotions are where mental health issues start do you know and we will really go out of our way to not feel this way

to not feel to not put ourselves in situations where our self worth is lowered and where our self-worth is lowered and obviously the issue there is allowing an aspect of behavior such as writing to define self-worth that's toxic it's toxic and it's irrational so i have to consistently have in my awareness that because as a child i received praise for being creative that just because i'm a fucking adult whether i'm good or bad at music art writing. Does not define my worth or value as a human being. That's my fucking mantra.

When I sit down every day to write. Or to edit. Or to do whatever the fuck it is I'm doing. As part of my job. And I have to. I have to think like that. Or else I'll get creative block. If I get creative block.

I can't pay my bills. It's that simple. block if I get creative block I can't pay my bills it's that simple a kind of a very simple case study of you know how does procrastination stop us how does procrastination the fear of failure manifest itself as procrastination. Very simple. What it essentially does, it puts you in a situation whereby you can never really try your best. So let's just say you have a task. It's a Monday and you have a task to complete on Saturday.

So you procrastinate Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then you do all the work on Friday and you cram and work like a lunatic and eventually deliver what you're supposed to deliver on the Saturday okay if you're happy with the piece of work

that you deliver on the Saturday you can say to yourself wow this is really good and I didn't even try I did it all in one day imagine how amazing it would be if I'd have actually tried but then if the piece of work is something you're not happy with you get to say to yourself of course it's shit I didn't even try and in both situations there, you're protecting yourself from giving it your all. Because the ultimate fear is, if I try my utter best at this task, and I give it 100%, and I work on it every single day.

If I do that, and at the end I'm left with something that isn't good, then truly am a fraud I truly am a real piece of shit and this idea that I have of myself as being good at this thing is all lies it's bullshit because I tried my best and I failed that's the big big fear and ultimately the problem there is it's associating something that you do like an aspect of your behavior whether it be painting fucking tennis, swimming, golf, whatever. If you attach your identity to a hobby or to your profession, that's very, very dangerous. It's very dangerous and you will ultimately end up completely unfulfilled and with regrets. So it's something I have to have in my awareness at all times.

And it's tough going because I not only grew up being, you know, like I was shit at school. I was really fucking badly behaved. behaved the only time i was ever told i was good by either fucking my peers my parents my teachers the only time i was told that i was good was when i painted a picture or wrote an interesting short story or creative writing or if i said something funny only when I was being talented was I ever told that I am, did I ever get praise. And because society rewards behaviour, but I obviously along the way internalised that as if I am getting external praise from people when I express talent, then I've managed to sublimate that as I must give myself internal praise when I express talent. And we covered how that works in a podcast a few months back on the theories of Carl Rogers, the psychologist.

You know, that's pure Rogerian. Psychology right there. But. I ask you. If you suffer from procrastination. Evaluate it on those terms. And a good way to find out. If you want to find out. Is your identity. Tied up up with something that you do the key is to

fucking do you want your friends to see you as the person who is good at tennis or good at painting or good at writing is this how you see yourself is that the ideal version of yourself and if that's the case if you want to be if you want to identify as that then you should probably in the interest of being better and being professional at the thing it is that you're doing separate your self-worth from that task because the stakes for failure on a personal level are too fucking high and it's unrealistic it doesn't have to be that way at all that's bullshit if me for instance you know i'm writing my fucking book if i if i introduce fear if i introduce the, if me sitting down to write a short story,

if that short story being bad means that I have to feel like a piece of shit, how can I possibly be creative, how can I achieve a sense of flow, creativity is, is about freedom and having fun and exploring negativity and criticism all these things need they don't they can't exist in a creative space creativity is is a childlike state that has no judgment if i sit down to write and the fear is at the end of it i have to hang my head in deep shame if i don't do well fuck that not only do i not want to sit down and write i'm not gonna fucking go near it i'd be terrified so every day i have to remind myself this aspect of my behavior writing or creating music these do these things do not define my value as a human being at all

the only thing i can i have intrinsic value and so do you we all have intrinsic value and the only aspects of your behavior that it's not bad to kind of hang a bit of value on is being nice to people showing empathy being compassionate listening to another person's needs you know um like taking yourself out of the selfish kind of bubble that our heads are in all day and listening to another person and trying to do something kind for him if If you can. That's not a bad kind of. Aspect of your behaviour to. Look at your worth around.

You know being compassionate to other people. But whether it's like. Being good at creativity. Or being good at sports. Or being good at your job. These things don't define your worth as a human being. So. That's what I do every

day when I sit down to get my work done or remind myself of that fact and I also failure is is is a I've started to introduce failure as an inevitable and necessary aspect of my creative process you have to fucking fail all the time because you learn from it so sometimes sometimes if i'm sitting down to write i almost stare failure in in the face and i try and set myself up for failure not in an unconscious unhealthy way healthy way but in a consciously healthy challenging way like there's a short story in my book um i wrote it last year it's called reha karki and in this short story i remember when i sat down to write it i was feeling procrastination i was feeling i here was the problem i didn't have an idea about what i should write a story about and and this was making me feel insecure and it

was making me feel uncomfortable so i was avoiding sitting down to write so what i did instead is i said no fuck this this is procrastination creeping in i I need to fight this now. I need to sit down. I need to write something. And I'm going to embrace failure here. How should I embrace failure? I started it off with how it should end. The story starts with two fellas. Deciding that they're going to go to Rory Gallagher's concert. And they're going to. Skin him. Take his skin off.

And then wear his skin on stage. And try and pass themselves off as Rory Gallagher. I literally. Started the story off with. Something as ridiculous as that. To put myself into this really fucking difficult corner that my creativity had to work its way around and by doing that by

I stared failure into the face ultimately is what that was it was such a stupid ridiculous way to start a story that I had to write myself out of, that there's no way that I could have failed beyond it. I'd given myself an impossible puzzle, and I did it, and then completely entered a flow state, and I entered flow because the fear had subsided. There was no fear, because I'd set myself up for failure.

And I just let the flow happen. And I managed to creatively get myself out of that conundrum. And ended up with a good story. That was quite creative. So that's an example there of how I. Introduce failure into my creative process. If it's a piece of music. I might deliberately try and start off a song with

sounds that are incredibly ugly or at a beat, a tempo that's too fast it's do you know what I mean, it's a challenging puzzle that sticks it's two fingers up to failure

by ultimately failing at the start as a kind of a playfulness and through doing that and incorporating that into my creative process over the years it's meant that sitting down to create something is no longer frightening for me. So that there is my, that's my personal style of procrastination. That's what I have to battle every day in order to do my job. There's other types of procrastination that, not ones that I suffer from from but there's many reasons that we procrastinate another one is perfectionism if you're kind of a secret perfectionist and you mightn't even be aware of it when you go for a task you'll actually set yourself it's like you've you have an unrealistic evaluation of your own capacity and ability

so the perfectionist procrastinator will create a massively unrealistic goal and schedule something that is far far beyond their ability because they're searching for perfection so you're immediately setting

yourself up for failure at the start so let's just say it's a fucking dinner party and you want to have a dinner party for next week instead of you know sitting down planning thinking doing something manageable it's like all right there's eight people coming over what should i do instead of doing something logical such as I don't know if someone told me I'm feeding eight people next week I'll just say right I'm going to make one giant pot of stew or I'm going to make a lot of meatballs and it's all going to be in one pot and there's going to be loads of it because that's the most practical way to feed eight people

if you're a perfectionist instead what you'll do on a monday is you will plan no i'm gonna i'm gonna ask every person what their favorite dish is and i'm gonna make a different meal for every person depending on their favorite dish so you've already set yourself a hugely unrealistic goal but aren't aware of it. And then you procrastinate that. You end up doing fuck all. And of course you'll be doing fuck all because the task itself is completely unachievable. But your perfectionism stops you from realizing that that is an unachievable goal so there's another style of procrastination sometimes people who are perfectionists have an irrational fear of being mediocre this can happen with children who are what do you call it when you don't have brothers or sisters only children only children

who are kind of over parented whose parents do nothing but tell them that they are special and that they are brilliant that child can turn into an adult whose experience of being told that they're special that they have turned this into thinking that being ordinary or being the same as other people is contemptible and is you know can lower that person's self-worth so this person's self-worth is dependent upon being different and being better all the time so this person can again like the perfectionist this person can project manage by creating something completely unrealistic and then procrastinating the fuck out of it because how are you supposed to complete a task that you could never complete in the

first place anyway. Another form of procrastination can emerge when some people can be afraid to be successful. A deep unconscious fear of succeeding. This can kind of come about again like it a lot of it is all rooted in childhood and then self worth like if

your parent is overly critical or if you had a parent who would strive all the time for you to have humility, to be humble, you know, don't accept compliments, don't get a big head, don't be big headed, you're not that great, don't lose the run of yourself, this type of thing. From a very young age, if a child receives that type of negative encouragement or a caution around appearing to be big-headed then that child can develop into to being an adult who has an unconscious terror

of being successful a good way to kind of identify that in yourself is you know how do you feel when you get a compliment does it make you go red know how do you feel when you get a compliment does it make you go red does it make you feel that you don't deserve it does it make you feel shame does it make you feel like you should apologize if you receive a compliment this can manifest in procrastination by kind of a self-sabotage. Again, you're given a massive project. Instead of going at it rationally, planning it, what happens is you're fearful of it,

but the fear isn't failure. The fear is succeeding because your kind of sense of self and self-worth is not based around being the best. Or is not based around being a person who succeeds. And that's a rare enough one. But it is a procrastination style. It is a procrastination style. I would guess that that particular one would be common with women because of how we're raised in this society.

You know, success is kind of a male thing climbing the ladder is a male thing being number one is seen as a male thing and when you're raised like that i wouldn't be surprised if there's a gender element in fear of success If you didn't have that many. Successful icons in the field. To look. Towards when you were a kid. But that's just me hot taking. But.

I would wager that's a possibility. Em. I'm definitely. Trodding over certain territory. That I've spoken about in previous podcasts. Because I just know from speaking about it. I've most likely mentioned procrastination before. But I don't see a harm in. A lot of this podcast.

I like to talk about what I'm going through. As I live my life, you know, so in order for me to be authentic with the podcast, I need to reflect that, even if it means sometimes kind of going over stuff that was covered in previous podcasts, but like, yeah, that's my life right now,'m i'm so busy and i have so many projects that i have a daily ritual where i have to be very mindful that i don't procrastinate that i don't allow my insecurity to creep up that it doesn't matter to fuck if my creativity is good or bad that doesn't affect my value as a human

being it just means that i might be staring at a shit project and so what so fucking what i that's inevitable of course i'm going to create something that shit you have to that's what happens and the classic mantra that i've mentioned several times lads and it's a great way to start your morning I am better than nobody else nobody else is better than me because I have intrinsic value and the other one because of this intrinsic value

no aspect of my behaviour can define what that value is it's intrinsic it can't be taken away from me and at the same intrinsic value as you and you've the same intrinsic value as me and that's all that counts so before i sign off um yeah because i have to fucking finish this podcast now and do a lot of BBC editing but before I sign off I have a cunt of a cough now sorry about that unnecessary loudness in your ear

before I sign off I spoke a few weeks ago about UFOs and I've never seen a fucking UFO I think I saw something once that was a bit ufo ish but uh i asked g for like ufo or ghost stories or whatever and i found this lovely ufo story that i thought i'd read out to you and i'll keep it anonymous but I got sent this as a Twitter direct message on the very early morning of the 23rd of September 2013 between 2am and sunrise

myself and two other friends, Cian and Mikey were left stranded without a car at a pier by Loch Derg that is sometimes referred to as Holy Island Lookout which is close to Mount Shannon in County Clare. It was relatively calm and clear, with stars in the sky. After some time, Cian turned to me and said, I didn't want to say anything, but look up into the sky and tell me what you see. My mind was blown. As I walked to the end of the pier, looking up into the sky,

I said, fucking God, no fucking way. The stars were no longer visible, and across the sky above the lake, there were 40 to 50 of these hovering objects that I can only describe as UFOs. Each had three lights on top in a triangle and underneath there seemed to be flashing green red and ecclesially blue lights giving them a flying saucer type shape they were all completely silent and were zigzagging in position and seemed to partially zapping in and out of existence at

the same time there was one that looked different to them and it was like a red triangle and was a lot lower than the rest. We observed them for about four and a half hours. Thousands of questions and possibilities of what they could be and what they were doing went through my mind to try and come up with some sort of logical explanation.

The electricity seemed to have been out on the Tipperary side of the lake, and when they gradually moved over our way and were above us, there were power cuts over our side of the lake. At one point, a plane was taken off from Shannon Airport, and was very clearly beside one of these crafts, and I said. Surely they can fucking see that. Then that UFO.

Actually leaned down towards it. To look at the plane. And then straightened back up again. To go about its business. We eventually got freaked out. And started to walk back to Mount Shannon village. Still observing the things above the lake as we walked. As the sky was getting bright, they began to fly off one by one at serious speed, like Star Trek or something.

One shot the whole way across the sky, leaving a trail of white light. They left flying upwards. When we got back to a friend's place, there was one of them left in the sky and I asked her did she see it and did it have three white lights and she said yeah and then it just disappeared never have I ever seen anything like that before or have I since

wish I did it was fucking cool bit scary too only earlier in the night where we call him bullshit on other friends UFOfo stories and then they decided to reveal themselves to us or something i only had a shitty basic phone with no camera and the lad's smartphones were dead typical no photos i'll have to paint it someday

instead i tried to find out what the plane was or i tried to find out what plane it was that took off from Shannon that morning, but I found strange forums of pilots saying that they have almost crashed trying to land in Shannon due to flying saucers in their way. I don't know what the fuck I was reading. I could spend a lifetime obsessing and still never see anything like it again. People find it hard to believe us when we recite the story, but we know what we saw. Fucking hell. So, yeah, I just thought I'd read that out. Like, either the person who sent it completely made it up, but I don't think so.

It's just a lad on Twitter who was like, you asked for UFO stories, here's my story. you know I know people who've also seen things like that it's 2013 so I don't think it could have been drones you know drones would do that but I haven't a fucking clue I have not a clue but that was an interesting story that gave me some food for thought if you have any fun stories about ghosts or ufos actually don't send me ghost stories because they freak me out ufo stories then please send them in all right good luck god bless have a

lovely week i hope you enjoyed this week's podcast and the incident with the cat wasn't too em too odd for you yart Thank you. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30 p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.