The Blindboy Podcast - Crosby Stills & Hash

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

The widening gap between online and mainstream media. Mental Health during the pandemic. I answer yere questions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings you fetching endas. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. Thank you for the feedback for last week's podcast where I had my wonderful guest Adam Curtis on for a chat to speak about his documentaries. I hope you had a chance to get a look at his documentary Can't Get You Out of My Head which is on the BBC iPlayer. So this week I want to speak about contemporary issues. I want to speak about what's happening right now, which I generally tend to avoid.

I tend to prefer doing this podcast as an act of escapism, something which allows you to escape from the current environment. But two things. Act of escapism. Something which allows you to escape from the current environment. But. Two things. Firstly. We're kind of coming up to the one year anniversary. Of. The pandemic. More or less.

What is it now? 16th of February. Shit started getting real. Around March. Of 2020. That's when shit started getting real. And we 2020 that's when shit started getting real and we had to start thinking about a pandemic but this time last year you know we were thinking about the coronavirus we were thinking about it it was it was at that stage where the world health organization hadn't declared it a pandemic yet they were like it might be an epidemic and it was looking real so for that reason i want to do a little mental health episode

and check in with mental health around the pandemic the other reason i'm doing it. Is because. I did a little interview. In the Sunday Independent. In Ireland. This Sunday. Which is an Irish Sunday newspaper. And they contacted me. I think that the journalist. Or the editor.

Was listening to my podcast. And they contacted me. And said. Blind boy. Would you do something. In the newspaper. Which speaks about mental health. During the pandemic.

So I did. And I got. I got a huge response for it. I got a lot of mails from people. Who wouldn't be listening to the podcast. Because that's the. That's the mad thing. It's the mad thing about my fucking job.

Is. I have two concurrent. Kind of levels of notoriety that exist separately, and it's really strange. So I exist mainly on the online world. Like, we celebrated 25 million listens to this podcast about a month back, which is, this podcast has a lot of listeners. This podcast has more listeners than quite a lot of Irish newspapers would have readers or it has more listeners than big Irish radio shows and I've got a my online following

on like Twitter Facebook and all that shit is like 1 million but there's also this other world of mainstream media whereby there's people who read newspapers and people who listen to the radio and watch TV who aren't involved in listening to podcasts or on the online world. And if you don't interact with those people via mainstream media, you might as well not exist. So I'm in that weird position where I have like online notoriety so if you're on the internet or listening to podcasts you know who I am but if you just listen to the radio or just watch tv or

just read newspapers I might as well not exist which is just really strange and it's happening more and more and I'll tell you why it's happening I'll tell you why this is happening because it's not just me in 2021 you have people who have huge YouTube channels or they're massive on TikTok or they have a huge Instagram following or they have a large podcast and these people are well known on the internet but then and they're not known at all on mainstream media they wouldn't even be written about in the paper and then on mainstream media you've got radio presenters tv presenters who are big on that platform but if they had to exist as a podcaster or as a youtuber like there's people on radio with huge radio shows in ireland and if you said to them you have to write and produce and put out your own podcast and promote

it yourself they wouldn't have a fucking hope and you wouldn't listen to them they wouldn't have the skill to do it i'm not saying they're they're lacking skill i'm saying the specific set of skills to do it by yourself they wouldn't have that because they're in radio or TV where they have a team of people helping them and it was amplified during the pandemic when you had all these big

presenters on Irish TV or Irish radio and they're recording their radio shows at home in like their shed or in their ironing closet. And it's like, hold on a second, you're on 2FM and you're recording your radio show in your fucking closet? Why don't you have a basic studio? And then you realize they don't have the skills.

They don't have the skills. They're panicking. They don't have the skills. They're panicking. They have to record their radio show. In their fucking ironing cupboard. Because they've never had to think about. How do I convert a bedroom into a studio.

But why is this happening? Why is there a huge gulf between. People with online notoriety. And people with mainstream notoriety. It's been happening since about 2013, but it's been amplified. The gulf between mainstream and online is now completely separated because what we refer to as clickbait sites

started to collapse around 2018. Sites like BuzzFeedeed Huffington Post and then in Ireland sites like Joe.ie the Daily Edge these sites all started to disappear around 2018 and the thing with clickbait sites they were the media the mediators Joe.ie will say or the Daily Edge was the middle ground between online and mainstream. It used to mediate between the two. Like back in 2017, if I did a tweet or a Facebook post and it got loads and loads of retweets, and it got loads and loads of retweets, then someone like Joe.ie or the Daily Edge that were clickbait sites,

and I don't mean that in a mean way, they were internet click sites. If I had a tweet with loads of retweets, they would write an article about the tweet, and then that would appear in news feeds alongside news about mainstream stuff stuff and that acted as a mediator but now those things are gone so online and mainstream are completely separate and if you're thinking but blind boy i can still visit buzzfeed i can still visit joe.ie i can still see

these sites yeah they still exist. They're still up. But the content websites that dominated the cultural discourse of the 2010s, they've all let off their staff. They just exist by name. They're not doing what they used to do. BuzzFeed is still there. But they don't have the journalists anymore. It's just there by name.

It's not what it was. Daily Edge in Ireland is literally gone. And again, Joe.ie just exists as a name. It's not doing what it used to do. It's not implying who it used to imply. So now, I only get written about in newspapers or on news sites if the thing that I say happens on a mainstream platform and that's really really strange so I put out this podcast

every single week and I say things on this podcast. But you never see an article. About something I say on the podcast. It just doesn't happen. But if I go on radio. And I say anything. On radio. Then news sites write articles. About the thing that I said. Just because it was said on radio.

Which is just fucking bizarre. I'll give you an example. When was it? Like fucking. In November. which is just fucking bizarre, I'll give you an example, when was it, like fucking, in November, Newstalk, who are like a Today FM company,

I don't know what happened, they were short of a guest or something, they were short of a fucking guest, and Newstalk just rang me up and said, will you come on to Newstalk for five minutes, and talk about your memories of the Celtic Tiger, and I was bored or whatever and I just said okay grand I'll go on the radio and talk about the Celtic Tiger and I should have said no I should have said no because the thing is why don't I like going on the radio because when I go on the radio that's when someone's da hears it and then they go that fucking prick with the plastic bag.

And then someone's father is writing angry nasty things to me on the internet. So when I step into mainstream spaces. I then. My presence irritates angry people who then say mean things to me. And then the quality of my day is reduced. So that's why I tend to stay off the radio. But this day anyway. I was like. Alright you're stuck for a guest grand ring me up and i'll talk about the fucking what i remember from the celtic tiger for five minutes at lunchtime on news talk so i did

and i spoke out of my fucking arse i spoke out of my absolute arse I just talked shit for five minutes and then as soon as I got off the radio they'd written articles about what I'd said on the radio and I was talking shit so I pulled up an article and it's like the horse outside singer said

like horse outside was 2010 10 years ago, The Horse Outside Singer. But Horse Outside happened on TV, you see, so they're not going to say podcaster. So The Horse Outside Singer said, it was about 2008, so we didn't really have the internet, so no one really questioned how absolutely ridiculous it was. But that's what I think of when someone says to me, what was the Celtic Tiger like in Limerick? People in Limerick were drinking gold to try and slit their own throats with it.

It's so beautifully irrational. Like that's a quote from me in a news article. People in Limerick were drinking gold to try and slit their own throats with it. And I'm talking about Goldschlager or whatever i'm talking out of my fucking arse because i agreed to go on the radio in november for five minutes for god knows why because they don't pay you that's that's an important thing if if a radio station rings you up they're not paying you money to come and talk they're they're going come and talk for free and you get our platform similarly like i you

know i if i have a book to promote i'll go on the late late show and then i see comments online going they must have paid him a hundred grand to go on the late late he's cleaning up up in rte with all our tax money they don't pay you to go on the late late show either and this business of they're all up in RTE getting paid huge salaries on the television that's like 5 people there's like 5 RTE presenters

and they're getting huge wages and everyone else doesn't there's not money in Irish TV or radio unless you're in a very small circle of the biggest uh fucking presenters like the the when i was doing sketches on rte fucking 10 years ago like horse outside horse outside is a music video and a song guess how much i got paid by rte for horse outside 250 euro 500 quid between myself and mr crumb i got paid 250 euro so and why am i saying this you know uh that 250 euro was welcome i was in my early 20s i was like fuck yes 250 euros yes please i didn't have this yesterday that's a lot of money but it's just you know horse outside wrote all the music performed all the instruments produced it mixed

it took about four months of work and then you get paid 250 quid and then it goes on to have 20 million views on youtube none of them are monetized so there's no money from youtube 250 quid from rte and i'm just saying it because there's a perception that if someone is on television, that they're being paid huge amounts of money. Not at the bottom level. Only a small minority at the top. But on Facebook, blind boys getting paid 100 grand for being on the Late Late Show. Taking all our tax money doing cocaine up in Dublin

but I suppose the point I'm trying to make is there is a huge massive gap between mainstream media and online media back in 2010 would have been the start of it and that gap has grown further and further and further apart to the point that now it doesn't make any logical sense at all and I can't I can't make sense of it so back to the radio interview that I did in November where I'm talking out of my hole talking shit on the radio just because I said words and the words that were said happened on a mainstream platform like radio and the particular radio show would have less listeners than my podcast. Because I said words that happened on the radio it was therefore newsworthy and someone decided a news article needed to be written that contains such

quotes as the horse outside singer said he also said he believes that people who have gone to australia since the crash will probably not come back they've stopped feeling irish they don't want to return home they don't want to pay the house prices they don't want to pay the car insurance they're in australia and what they're doing is putting solar panels on their roof and selling electricity to the government talking out of my fucking hole talking shit but someone decided

this needs to be in a news article because he said it on the radio and I'm not like I'm not complaining I'm not giving out it's just I say things on this podcast every week I say things on this podcast that are certainly more important than me talking about people in Limerick trying to slit their own throats by drinking gold and I say more interesting things than that every week on

the podcast to hundreds of thousands of people but it never gets written about or mentioned in a newspaper and I'm not being all like why aren't you talking about my podcast in the newspaper why aren't my words in the newspaper when I talk on the podcast if that's not that's not the angle I'm going for what I'm saying is if I ring up Today FM now and go on the radio and say I'm gonna bleach my hair and headbutt a photograph of Eamon de Valera until I knock myself unconscious someone will write a news article about that quoting me just because I said it on the radio but on any week on this podcast I could be speaking about the housing crisis or I could be speaking about mental health issues that are facing Irish people

and you can clearly see online that people are engaging with this content and finding it relevant but then cobwebs from the mainstream media it was the same a few months back when i did i went on rte1 and i did an interview with joe duffy and i spoke about spirituality and mental health and it's like all shit that i speak about in much greater detail on my podcast all the time but that loads of people listen to and i speak about this all the time on the podcast but because I said it to Joe Duffy on RTE1 then it gets loads of news articles about it and I think that's really strange and weird

and I don't know what it says about media right now I tell you what it does says it says that mainstream media is doing a disservice to contemporary culture. By mainstream media kind of pretending that content doesn't exist. If it doesn't happen on mainstream media. They're not reflecting the actual tastes of the Irish people. And this isn't just in Ireland. This is the same in the UK.

It's the same in fucking in America. Everywhere. And it's changed because i remember back in about 2010 when people would use the term viral video and a viral video was treated as a novelty then you'd get invited on tv and it's like this video was on youtube last week and it gained a hundred thousand hits here is the creator on to talk to us about their viral video ha ha ha ha and they bring you on TV and talk about your viral video this stopped in the mid 2010s because viral videos will say 10 years ago used to be really shoddily made quickly put together pieces of video or audio that did very well on the internet and then kind of

disappeared and this wasn't threatening to mainstream media you could bring that person on and go tell us about the video you made tell us about the cool video and you could do that but now you can't do it because viral videos don't really exist anymore you don't get one video that does really well and then the producer of that video disappears instead now we have is content creators who go viral regularly and have a regular following that's what the environment is now and that's what the algorithm rewards if a tv channel brings on a youtuber or a podcaster and says um your your podcast or your youtube channel is getting millions of views it's really really huge all around the world can you talk to us about this you see they can't go with

that novelty angle now because if a radio show brings me on and goes blind boy your podcast has got 25 million views all around the world, or 25 million listens. Can you tell us a bit about that? Literally, the answer I give is, yeah, I'm literally doing what you're doing in this radio station, except I edit, produce, and write it and put it out by myself at maybe 1% of the budget that you have. But more listeners. And then they have to go,

oh, oh, right, and how are you doing that? And then I have to go, I just, I'm just doing it, man, I'm doing it. But I don't need to have 10 researchers here, and I don't need to have this big studio, and all these mics, and all this branding, and even all that advertising budget I'm actually just doing it by myself

radio can't have that they can't have someone on saying that or TV can't have someone on talking about tell us about your YouTube channel that's got millions of views all around the world I'm doing what you're doing

except I film it I edit it and i put it out myself and it's professional quality and that's why people are liking it and you're here in a tv studio with huge budgets and massive teams here and i'm doing the same shit uh with a much smaller team and a smaller budget and more people are engaging with it that's incredibly threatening that's really really threatening to the media so why would they platform that why would they platform that because the advertisers are listening the advertisers are watching and listening you can't treat online creators now as novelty, as fluke, novelty, kids in their bedrooms just doing something funny, fun and silly on the silly internet. It's like no professional content is being made and it appears that people prefer this.

And it's not just me, it's anyone who's making content more online than in mainstream so mainstream media is in this weird position where it will only acknowledge that something has happened if that thing has happened on another form of mainstream media and that's really really weird and it doesn't matter if you have a podcast that has loads of people listening to it or it doesn't matter if you have a youtube channel with loads of people watching it it doesn't matter if you have a if you have a podcast and lots of people are listening to it or if you have a youtube channel and lots of people are watching it that means it's it's relevant to culture it's culturally relevant but if it if it happens online and doesn't intersect with the mainstream media in any way mainstream media won't record it or acknowledge its existence and i don't know why that is it's really weird i don't know why that is. Maybe it's because mainstream media is afraid of online media.

Maybe. But like, and the other thing too, what is mainstream media trying to do at the moment? They're trying to start their own podcasts. The big Irish newspapers all have their own podcasts. Radio stations have their own podcasts. But they're not necessarily doing well they're not necessarily people aren't choosing to listen to these things and it's getting it's i'll tell you what it's dodgy and i'm not going to name names but in the past year i've seen a newspaper that has a podcast and they announced that their podcast recently got a sponsorship by a huge brand for a massive amount of money so this newspaper's podcast huge sponsorship for this podcast and then when you click on the podcast and go to the SoundCloud page where the podcast is you'll see that the podcast has been there for about a year putting an episode up every week and for a year

they've got like 2,000 listens in total but this podcast is getting a massive sponsorship deal but it only has 2,000 listens throughout its the entirety over several episodes over a year something about that is iffy that's iffy to me so then why would you then bring somebody on to go can you tell us about your hugely successful podcast and what you're doing no you can't because we have fucking loads of podcasts that no one's listening to and we're getting huge sponsorship deals for it and the advertiser might be listening going what the fuck am i sponsoring your podcast for when you're talking to some cunt who's got millions of listens or this youtuber who has millions of views why am i sponsoring your podcast that no one's listening

to and not sponsoring this person who you are talking to who's doing a much much better job why isn't anyone listening to your podcast or looking at your youtube channel you're a giant newspaper you're a giant tv channel or you're a giant radio station i thought you knew how to make professional content why aren't people choosing to listen and engage with your content this is strange so the gulf is widening the there's the the gap between the online world and the mainstream media world are widening far apart like two plates two tectonic plates and here's why i think why the mediators are gone buzzfeed used to be a mediator huffington post and in ireland we had joe.ie and we had the daily edge the daily edge is gone that was the journal.ie's i don't want to say youth website, it's silly website. It was fucking brilliant. The Daily Edge was fantastic.

It had wonderful, talented, funny journalists on it. And it left about two years ago. Joe.ie in its heyday was very good as well. Like, I think Joe just got bought out by someone. I don't even know if it's still going. Paddy McKenna, who was the editor of Joe.ie left there about a month ago and the heyday of Joe.ie as a quality website was

when Paddy McKenna was running the show and he's gone now so the mediators are gone so now online content and mainstream content exist in two completely separate worlds why the fuck am I talking about this because I didn't intend to talk about this em

cause nobody's talking about this and the reason it's intriguing me is I suppose I have a unique insight into it because I exist in both the online and

mainstream worlds I've got my podcast and my following online but then I also dip my toe into the mainstream by working in television my fucking BBC series that I had doing books so I fluctuate between both worlds so I can see this gap

and it was very evident to me this week because like I said I contributed to an article in the Irish Sunday Independent newspaper and this article was about managing my own mental health during the pandemic and as soon as this article went out in the paper my inbox and my my manager's inbox was inundated with media requests from all the radio stations all the newspapers going we saw blind boy's piece in the Sunday Independent where he spoke about mental health we feel that what he said

was incredibly valuable and we'd like to have him on our radio show or have him on our newspaper or our TV show to talk about these things and it was just like fucking hell lads

I've been speaking about mental health on my podcast to hundreds of thousands of people every week for the past year are you literally not aware of it or are you only allowed to speak about something when i've said it in a mainstream platform so i got all these requests and i said yes to a few of them because if if i can get a platform to speak about mental health i'll always take it if i think it won't if if i think they won't sensationalize it and i can responsibly speak about my mental health and then that helping a person who wouldn't be listening to that podcast then i'll do that no bother at all if i

think the people will be ethical so i'm gonna do it on uh tv3 are they even called tv3 anymore virgin media whatever the fuck they're called so basically because i said words about mental health and these words happened in the newspaper now that means it's okay for me to say. The words about mental health. On the television. So that's what I'm going to do. On Wednesday night at 10. And I think it's called the 10 o'clock show.

And it's going to be live. And I'm happy to do that because. I can. Again. I could be speaking to somebody. who needs to hear some shit. Who wouldn't be listening to my podcast or wouldn't be following me online. And I usually wouldn't do that. I'd usually just say, you know, when these shows ring up.

It's like, will you come on and speak about this? No, I won't. Usually I won't. Unless it's, like I said, promoting a book or something. Like there used to be this. I can't remember it now. It was, I won't give it away. I won't unless it's like I said promoting a book or something like there used to be this I can't remember it now it was it was I won't give it away I won't give it away but Irish daytime tv chat shows of which there's a couple but I never do them I never go on them purely because it it's it just doesn't suit me it's, it's three o'clock in the day, sitting on a fucking couch with a plastic bag on my head.

There's no way I can make that work. Do you know? And the tone of the shows. And you'd be sitting on the couch, and they're talking to you, and then all of a sudden it's like, we have to move over to the kitchen area now because there's a chef from Galway

cooking a big bowl of chowder. And the presenter's like, Blind Boy, will you have a taste of the chowder we got good chowder here from Galway made out of mussels taste the chowder and I'm like I can't be eating soup man with a bag in my head I have a fucking bag in my head

I can't eat any food with this on unless you want me drinking chowder through a straw and now i'm here catastrophizing about non-existent tv3 chowder that hasn't happened like i i got off i got offered that thing uh living with lucy lucy kennedy where she she lives with a celebrity for a weekend and it's like what are you gonna do Lucy's going to come down to my gaff, is it? And me with my plastic bag on for 48 hours in my house that I walk around in all the time with my plastic bag on,

living my normal life with my plastic. Is that what you want? I can't make it work for you. I can't make it work. Here we are in Limerick. There's a closed down industrial estate welcome to my house sometimes I stay up working so late

that I just sleep on a pile of clothes that's my neighbours dog never stops barking and then here we have the back garden that's a small little house that I built myself inside that is two emotionally distant feral cats that I feed.

Brother and sister called Napper Tandy and Silken Thomas. One of them's deaf and albino. That over there, that's the garden shed. We can't go in there because there's a queen wasp inside there that's hibernating for the winter. Is that good enough fee and do you wear the plastic bag all the time like around the house no i don't at all i just have it on now because there's cameras here but i don't wear this this bag at home at all i just have a normal a very normal boring life and then they're like they get back to me. Okay, would it be okay if instead of Lucy coming to live with you for the weekend,

that you just have a dinner together? And we film the dinner. And then I'm like, I can't, I have a plastic bag in my head. So I can't eat a dinner even. You know, I can't do it. I'd happily sit down and have a fucking dinner with Lucy or have a pint with her with no cameras around and I'm not wearing my bag in a normal social setting. I'm sure she's sound. Not a bother.

But not with a bag in my head on TV. I just can't make it work. Blind Boy, would you be interested in coming on Dancing with the Stars? I'm afraid I can't help you there, lads. I have a bag in my head. i don't think i can do that i can only really wear it for about maybe an hour or so but if i'm if i'm wearing this for a a long duration while training and dancing it's not gonna be pretty it's not gonna be nice and the bag will rip off guaranteed someone will spin me up in the air and the bag will rip off

then i'm fucked i've brazy's number in my phone if you want it i had this long so there's one particular daytime irish tv show and the producer for this show rings me has been ringing me twice a year it's been different producers this show has been ringing me twice a year since about 2010 and it used to be will the rubber bandits come on to this show at 3 p.m in the day and talk to our hosts and it's just like no no nothing against ye it's just not gonna work the tone is too wrong i can't i can't see any way how this would benefit us or benefit ye let's just leave it be but they'd keep ringing because there's not a lot of people in there's not a lot of people in ireland if you're running a daily tv show in

ireland there's only so many people you can ring like so you have to go through the list over and over again so we'd be getting calls and we eventually came to an arrangement it was around 2014 where i finally said to this daytime tv show because they wouldn't stop ringing and asking us to come on and i said to him okay the rubber bandits will only appear on this daytime tv show only if ye pretend that we are launching a new type of pudding which is an amalgamation of black pudding and white pudding it's it's a pork product and it's a rubber band it's gray pudding and if the presenters on this show with dead serious faces will say here's the rubber bandits to tell us about their new gray pudding and they do that with straight faces and pretend that we're now marketing gray pudding like no more songs no more comedy sketches

here's the rubber bandits dead serious and they are now grey pudding magnates only in those circumstances will we come on the show and we almost had him we almost had it the producer it was about 2015 the producer was like okay let's see how we can do this and then i started saying now are the presenters really going to play along with this they're not going to wink they're not going to play it and then the producer was like look they're going to have to a bit they can't the presenter can't lie and pretend that you're selling gray pudding and then i'm like well then i'm not doing it i want to do this as as an artistic stunt as an active performance piece the rubber bandits are on tv at three o'clock in

the day on a talk show because we were marketing grey pudding this new food stuff and it needs to be only if the presenters play along will we do it and they wouldn't do it so we said grand we're not coming on because this doesn't suit us and it won't help us it won't help you it'll just be weird it'll be really weird and i'm nothing against the daytime irish tv talk shows it's just the tone of it is so far from uh the bandits or even myself it's just the tone is far removed and i'd be sitting there with a bag in my head in the middle of the day and a couch just doesn't work we did vincent brown once about 2014 we went on the vincent brown show us and Mary Harney and we wore flares

and we had we wore flares and we had wigs wigs that looked like do you know your man David Crosby like a skullet

so it's like bald but have hair around the sides long hair around the sides like David Crosby from Crosby, Stills and Nash

so we had that with flares on Vincent Brown and drinking cans out of bags and your man Tom McGurk was on it as well

and we got shit faced on cans that we brought ourselves because TV3 didn't TV3 didn't even have cans we had to bring our own cans for an hour talking about serious politics with Mary Harney beside us

oh man I'd love to see that episode again. Fucking ridiculous. And fucking, I had Vincent Brown. Vincent Brown was on this podcast. I had him on as a guest, and Vincent's a fucking legend and an absolute gentleman. But the gas thing about Vincent,

and I learned it when we did that show. And Vincent's from Limerick. Vincent's from County Limerick like when Vincent Brown is on TV you can understand him but as soon as Vincent Brown gets off TV

he goes back into this kind of a country Limerick accent and you can't understand him and he's very gesticulate and he was just telling us all these stories about meeting charlie high and we couldn't understand him the fuck am i talking about that's that's i haven't done a long ramble like that at the

start of the podcast now in a while my ma's gonna give out to me tomorrow now I haven't done a long ramble like that at the start of the podcast now in a while. My ma's going to give out to me tomorrow now. I stopped. I went through a period about a year ago where I would do a 20 minute ramble at the start of the podcast before I even got close to the subject of the podcast. And I stopped doing it. Because my ma would ring me and say,

I like the podcast, but you did an awful amount of rambling at the start. So because of my ma killing me over that i started getting straight into the topic of the podcast and didn't do any long rambles because there was no point in that ramble at all why the fuck did i talk about media for a half an hour sure it's time for the fucking ocarina pause now. Yeah, look, it's time for the ocarina pause. I'm going to play you a Spanish clay whistle and you're going to hear an advertisement and I don't know what it's going to be for. with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living

with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's the 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, girl, is 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 omenina pause support for this podcast comes from you the listener this is a fully independent podcast all right it's my full full time job and support for this podcast comes from the Patreon page

patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast as I've outlined there isn't really a place for me in mainstream media I don't fit really well with it I occasionally dip my toes in

but I can't do what I want to do as an artist in mainstream media i just simply can't this podcast i love doing it because i can do what i want i've got full editorial control and i get to every week create a piece of work that i'm genuinely passionate about that i would not be allowed to make anywhere else so if you like this podcast and you get something from it and it entertains you and you enjoy it and you listen to me then please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing that's it all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month

okay patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and you can become a patron of this podcast and pay me for the work that i'm doing because this is my full-time job and it's a lot of work and i love the work i love it but it's an alternative to that horrendous world of mainstream media that I don't suit. It's another option and I'm glad that it exists. If you can't afford to be a patron, you don't have to be one. You know, you can listen for free. Don't have to feel, don't feel shitty about it if you're listening for free.

You don't have to. But if you can afford to be a patron and you can afford, if you met me in real life and you're like oh fuck it i like your podcast blind buy can i buy you a coffee or a pint you can do it via patreon but also you're paying for someone who can't afford to listen it's as simple as that everyone gets a podcast i earn a living what more could you want it's a model that's based on soundness and kindness and it's fantastic and it keeps me going lads i'd be fucked without it so also join me on twitch once a week thursday nights 8 30 twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast come watch me play video games and write music to

the events of a video game and chat with me it's good fun like the podcast share the podcast if you're not from Ireland and you're like Canadian or American or Spanish and you're the only person you know who listens to this podcast then please recommend it to some friends because that's what helps it grow all around the world i love getting new listeners from all around the world and to the people that do share it thank you so much we don't have an advertising budget either so word of mouth is what gets this podcast out thank you to everyone who is sharing it yart and i've spoken about mental health as it relates to the pandemic on the podcast in particular about a year ago when it first started i spoke about how to deal with the pandemic and how to deal with mental health around the pandemic so i'm gonna do a little

i'm gonna check in on it this week. I'm going to do a bit of a refresher on my mental health during the pandemic. What I do to have good mental health because I do have good mental health at the moment. I've had good mental health for the duration of the pandemic. For the past year, I've had good mental health for the duration of the pandemic for the past year I've had good mental health does that mean that I've been happy? no that doesn't mean that at all

but it means that I've I've had good mental health I haven't experienced anxiety depression I haven't been in any unnecessary pain for the duration of this pandemic

and the reason this is the case is because i have a solid mental health regime throughout i'm going to speak a little bit about that how it worked for me and i'm going to reiterate some of the points that i made in the newspaper at the weekend. Now am I a mental health expert? No I'm not. I did study psychology for a couple of years at third level when I thought I was going to become a psychotherapist but I'm not qualified. What I am qualified in is to speak about my own mental health. I have a rigorous mental health regime which is based in psychology and it works for me so what I do is I speak about that and by speaking about my own process and my own emotions sometimes this is helpful to people who listen everybody's different everybody has different

needs everyone has different approaches that work for them So I tend to just focus on the human condition because that is a commonality. And if I can, I'm going to address some questions that ye asked me on Instagram specifically about mental health and the pandemic. And it's a bit late to say it, but if you're a brand new listener, go back to some earlier podcasts.

And if you're a listener who's listening in the future if you're listening from 2022 then this podcast is going to be a very current contemporary episode it's going to be about the pandemic and if you're listening from 2022 whatever the fuck 2022

is going to be like or 2023 hopefully there'll be no coronavirus maybe you don't want to listen to this podcast about the coronavirus mr 2023 in your flying car with your tinfoil costume so my mental health at the moment i have been. Have been living with the pandemic. For. 11 months. Let's say 11 fucking months. Quarantine started.

In March 2020. It's now February. 2020. So let's say 11 months. Am I happy? I'm not happy. I'm not happy. If you've been listening to this podcast.

A while. You. One thing I often say. I'm not happy. I'm not happy. If you've been listening to this podcast. A while. One thing I often say. And I've said it over the years. Because of my mental health regime. And I have. I have a very solid mental health regime. Really solid.

I check in with my emotions. I check in with my self esteem. My sense of identity. I try to live meaningfully, I do all these things and as a result of this traditionally if I was to rate my happiness, if I was to rate my happiness in 2018 we'll say or 2019, my happiness was always out of 10 a 7 or an 8 which is a pretty high level of happiness I am generally happy

right now I'm about a 5 and I've been a 5 now for 6 months but I can manage with a 5 a 5 is manageable. I'm not happy. I'm very frustrated.

How am I with anger? I'm occasionally angry. I'm feeling sorry for myself. I'm. Irrationally disappointed in myself. I have sudden feelings of guilt that come from nowhere. So I have all these things

which are not welcome and they're negative things in my life. So, but does this mean that i need to be concerned about my mental health as such not really so what i say to myself is that because we're in exceptional societal circumstances which we are there's a global pandemic and there's lockdown because of that i don't assess my mental health under the same criteria that i would if there was no pandemic i'm sad i'm frightened i'm worried about the future i'm not socializing with other people

i'm not achieving my goals i'm not living my life in a way that used to bring me meaning My goals. I'm not living my life in a way that used to bring me meaning. But. There's a pandemic. And there's lockdown. So being frightened. Upset.

And sad. Are appropriate responses. To a frightening. Upsetting. And sad situation. I'm not socialising with other people because there's a lockdown. So I can't. I'm not achieving my goals because

my industry as a live entertainer and as a tv writer have shut down effectively and also and this is a big one and I don't want to be speaking for anyone else but I think this this is quite a relatable one. Because over the past year, I've had to live my life as a response to lockdown measures. Staying inside all the time. Not going outside. Not being able to go to the gym. Fucking lockdown. Because of this. For the past year, on a day-to-day basis basis my lived experience is that of a person with mental health

problems if i know what it's like to have bad depression bad anxiety i know what it's like to have agoraphobia i've lived like that i've had extremely poor mental health and my body my body not my mind my body is basically saying to me you've spent the past year doing fuck all you've spent the past year with agoraphobia you've spent the past year staying inside you've spent the past year not socializing with other people staying inside you've spent the past year not socializing with other people all of us it's it's like we've had a a serious illness or something for a year we've all had to take a year out of society as such and it doesn't matter really that like the reasons why it's it's a fact i i'm not as fit as i would be if there was no pandemic i haven't been able to go to the fucking gym i used to go to the gym three days a week and lift weights i haven't been able to do that in a year it's a little bit around

the summer i haven't had the opportunity to exercise my emotional muscles interacting with other people interacting with strangers interacting with groups of people requires the use of empathy empathy's empathy is really powerful like I'm an introverted person so I prefer my own company and my comfort zone is to be by myself but I also like a bit of extroversion every so often I do like being in the company of other people but it's really it can be draining and it's draining because empathy empathy is you're using quite a lot of your brain we're social animals human beings are social creatures

and to speak with another person to be relaxed with another person to listen to another person requires the use of empathy to read another person's face do you know what i mean that's one thing that i i'm interested in with this pandemic is

like anytime i do meet a person in a shop we'll say if it's the cashier and i'm dealing with him and i'm speaking first of all the conversation that i have with strangers during this pandemic it's not authentic conversation it's all underpinned with fear and urgency when i'm in the supermarket and i'm speaking to the person who is behind the cash register I'm having small talk but I'm conscious of my distance I can't hear them properly because they have a mask on their face or there's a plastic screen and I can't fully empathically engage with their faces because all I can see is their eyes and not their mouths I've spent the bones of a year not having to emotionally interpret

the curves of a stranger's mouth neither have you obviously I've got a few people close to me who I meet every so often but as regards the complexity of Obviously I've got a few people close to me who I meet every so often. But as regards the complexity of empathically engaging with another stranger. I haven't done that.

And I'd be interested to see what that. What is that doing to our empathy? I'll tell you what has me thinking right. So there's a study. They did a study in, I think it was in Hollywood. It was an area of California where people are very wealthy and there's a huge amount of plastic surgery, right? And they did this psychological study around empathy. And what they found was, in this area where a lot of people got facelifts okay the people who had gotten facelifts

they no longer have as much control over their face or as much expressiveness in their face as they would have had before the facelift. I don't know how facelifts work. But it restricts facial expressions to an extent. So they did this study and they found that. The people who had gotten facelifts. They weren't smiling as much. They weren't frowning as much. Because the physical thing they had done to their face kind of stopped it. But the interesting finding of the study was over time because they weren't smiling or frowning they started to lose

the ability to empathize with other people they started to lose the ability to read other people's smiles or other people's frowns because they themselves weren't doing it and i'm concerned we'll say for my emotional relational health i've spent a year not having to read someone's mouth or for my brain to engage in the complexity of interpreting a person's emotions based on their facial expressions or to simply have a spontaneous relaxed conversation with someone i haven't had a relaxed conversation in public with a human being in a year because everything is underpinned with fear danger and distance so that's something i'm concerned about regarding my emotional health so back to something i was saying there earlier regarding how i've been living the past year so if there was no pandemic right the pandemic didn't exist and for the past year i was staying inside

all day feeling upset and frightened not socializing not achieving my goals then i'd be experiencing depression like i've had depression that's what it is those are symptoms of it when things but I'm not depressed because like I said those things are there an appropriate response they're an appropriate emotional response to what's happening if you look at cognitive psychology cognitive psychology says that depression there's a cognitive triad when depression is present right where a person has a negative view of themselves negative view of the future and a negative view of other people

but with depression usually these negative views they're not rooted in reality they're excessively irrational the negative view of self the negative view of other people the negative view of the future that if you challenge them there isn't a rational basis for them but during a pandemic there actually is a rational basis for it like negative view of self i'm not achieving goals at the moment

I'm not living my life how I'd like to live it it's not my fault but it's a fact so I struggle daily with you know having to fight a negative lens of myself negative view of other people it's normal for me to be kind of scared of people at the moment there's a pandemic I for me to be kind of scared of people at the moment. There's a pandemic. I'm supposed to be standoffish and not necessarily wanting to socialize with people because it's unsafe.

So a negative view of people right now is actually rational. Negative view of the future. Yeah, I think it's okay to have a negative view of the future right now, because the future is unpredictable and a bit negative, so the cognitive triad of depression, is actually a kind of a rational position right now, but yet I don't feel depressed, I'm just kind of sad, and I'm getting on with it,

I'm okay, if someone was to ask me what's my mental state, I'm okay. I'm still able to look after myself. I'm able to prepare meals for myself. I'm able to do my work. I'm able to get up out of bed. It's just a little bit more difficult.

With depression, these things can fall by the wayside. You know, things like personal hygiene, or even enjoying things. I'm well able to sit down and have a nice dinner and watch a box set and enjoy it so what have I been doing every day the past year that despite the negative circumstances I'm still keeping my mental health in check because my mental health is in check just because you're sad just because you're frightened or just because I'm sad and I'm frightened or just because I'm disappointed or upset that doesn't mean I'm suffering from poor mental health so what I what I've been doing

really and I said this I said this a year ago on my first mental health podcast about the pandemic I set out the goals that I had for myself and there's two main things number one on a daily basis I remind myself of the givens of existence and I accept the givens of existence right I genuinely accept that life contains suffering that suffering, pain, rejection grief are all givens of human existence they can't be avoided sadness is a price

that we pay for joy and love and right now there's a global pandemic and that is suffering it's simple as that, That's a bad thing. It's not a good thing. We're experiencing the suffering of human existence right now. Each of us at varying degrees.

And it's frightening. And it's sad. But I also accept that it's completely outside of my control. I can't control a global virus. And the restrictions that exist to keep us physically safe. I can't control it. There's nothing I can do to control it. And I give myself over to that reality.

Bad things are happening. And bad things are happening outside of my control i don't fight that i don't let that get me down excessively i accept it and acknowledge that it's there every single day and then what i do is having accepted that i look at what I can control and what I can control is my attitude towards this shit so that's what I do every single day

I accept that life contains suffering, right now we're suffering I can't do, it's outside of my control so but I can control my attitude towards it and I can control how I respond to it, that's 100% of my control so but i can't control my attitude towards it and i can control how i respond to it that's 100 in my control how i respond to quarantine how i respond to coronavirus i've got the control there and that feels very empowering because it's that's real and you have control over that too so having accepted that right now suffering is happening in the world.

And having accepted that that suffering is outside of my control. And having accepted that I control how I respond to it. How do I respond to it? Well what I do is I set myself one goal every day. Right? Every day I have one goal and the only thing that goal is to cope that's the only thing I don't expect anything more of myself because the circumstances that we're going through at the moment are so exceptional

the only thing I expect of myself is to cope every single day with my reality so i'm not being too hard on myself i look at and what is coping coping for me is trying to live my day-to-day with a sense of meaning now my meaning is different to your meaning okay so i identify ways to fill my day that give me personal meaning so what gives me personal meaning is i like making this podcast this podcast making this podcast thinking about what it's going to be gives me a sense of personal meaning knowing that when I make it that it's helping ye or it's making you laugh or entertaining you that gives me a bit of meaning but then something as simple as making a nice meal for myself gives me meaning every day i have to feed myself

nourishment and food so i make a point of doing that mindfully and meaningfully if i'm making a dinner for myself i really think about what that dinner is and i fully enjoy the journey of cooking it and then I enjoy eating it and I do it all mindfully in the present moment and that gives me a sense of meaning going for a run gives me a sense of meaning I love running I run mindfully and that gives me a sense of meaning writing when I can gives me a sense of meaning now that's important there I said when I can Writing when I can gives me a sense of meaning. Now that's important there, I said when I can. Like, I'm supposed to be writing a fucking book at the moment and it's really difficult.

Because I'm only half as motivated as I usually was. Alright? But I'm not beating myself up. I'm only writing when I want to write. So, if the pandemic didn't exist, I'd be saying to myself, 500 words a day, no exceptions. But I'm not doing that to myself now

because I can't like go to a cafe and write. So if I'm not writing my 500 words a day now, I'm just, I'm letting it slide. I'm letting it slide. And I'm saying today you tried that's all I do today you tried and if I didn't try and I wanted to play video games instead I go that's fine there's a fucking pandemic man absolutely grand your only expectation of yourself today was to cope and what is coping to make sure whatever I'm doing I'm doing it with a sense of meaning

and purpose that's it and if you want to do something and and even if you're struggling because some people struggle and they say I don't know what gives me meaning I don't know what gives me joy I don't have any hobbies some people are like that and that's fair enough well what i would suggest then is look at the things that you're going to be doing anyway like you're definitely you're definitely going to be brushing your teeth you're definitely going to be having a shower you're definitely going to be eating whatever things you're doing in your day just make sure that you do them in a way that's present so if you're brushing your teeth you brush your teeth mindfully you're not brushing your teeth autonomously and spending all that time worrying or thinking about something that has nothing to

do with your teeth or being angry about the pandemic or being sad that things aren't how you'd like them to be if you brush your teeth while your mind is there then you're not brushing your teeth mean meaningfully you're brushing your teeth meaninglessly so do whatever fucking microphone's being a cunt do whatever it is you're doing in a meaningful way was that a meaningful interaction there with my microphone i got a bit angry with the microphone there but then i moved it no i've got a meaningful relationship with this microphone right now i'm moving it so that i can meet my needs and my needs at this very moment are to record the podcast and now I've solved the problem

the microphone was actually going off to the left and I was talking to the side of it and now I've solved the problem because I've meaningfully changed my microphone in a here and now fashion so that's what you should be doing washing the dishes washing yourself

washing your teeth whatever the fuck it is you're doing if you're worried that you don't have something that bring it gives you meaning do whatever it is you're doing meaningfully and mindfully and that just means when you brush your teeth all you're thinking about is tooth brushing and do that enough throughout your day and you're injecting your day with little units of meaning and if you can do that then you're coping and identify what behaviors lack meaning a lot of social media activity right now lacks meaning um i'm really struggling i'm struggling a lot with the with the fact that my main social outlet at the moment is twitter and twitter as a social media platform does not contain a huge amount of meaning because the thing with twitter i enjoy twitter twitter can be

tremendous fun but out of all the social media sites twitter isn't really social media twitter is a video game that people don't know they're playing because the thing with twitter is you're always engaged in an act of performance so people on twitter i won't say people on twitter twitter encourages people to create a characterised version of themselves and to perform this character and you like a role playing game Twitter is a giant massively multiplayer online

role playing game text based where it rewards hostility like people are real nasty on Twitter people you real nasty on Twitter. People. If they're not being.

You get rewarded on Twitter for having really good complaints. Alright. If you can think of a really good complaint on Twitter. You'll get lots of points. In the form of retweets and likes. But the thing is. If everyone on Twitter is complaining. Because this is what gets you likes and points then Twitter becomes an excessively negative place

which it is. The other problem with Twitter is people don't have authentic relationships on Twitter people who are friends on Twitter are Twitter friends you rarely see people on Twitter who are actual real life friends

instead they're Twitter friends they're people who have met each other on Twitter but the problem is nobody on Twitter is actually themselves they're playing a performed version of themselves that's a little bit more hostile than they actually are so everyone is involved in this giant video game. Where hostility is rewarded. And I have to be real careful around that. Because if this is my main. Because Twitter can also be loads of fun. That's the thing.

Twitter can be great fucking crack. And it's where artists and writers tend to hang out. As social media sites go if you know what I mean so it's a double edged blade but I have to be really mindful at the moment that if I spend too much time on Twitter I tell you what

you know what spending too much time on Twitter feels like it's like if you're living in a house and your two housemates are fighting and they're not talking to each other and that sense of excessive tension that a fight could break out at any moment that's what twitter feels like and that over a long enough period of time is meaningless and very painful so i have to mind my boundaries around that twitter is a meaningless activity for the most part and occasionally i

can find a bit of meaning in there but identify what's your relationship with social media is it is it creating meaning or is it creating meaninglessness are you coming away from social media feeling more stressed more angry more frightened or happy that you're chatting to your mate. I would imagine the best, I know that some people are really enjoying WhatsApp at the moment, because with WhatsApp, you're talking to people you actually know, and there's no performance.

Twitter is all performance based. It's, people fight with each other on Twitter, and the fights become unnecessarily nasty because as soon as you argue with someone on twitter it's not a private argument it's on a stage and other people are watching and other people award points in the form of likes depending on the turn and response nature of your combat twitter Twitter is a video game, a very toxic video game, if you want it to be. Or it can be crack.

It can be good crack too. So before I look at a couple of your questions that you sent me, one other thing that can give you a sense of meaning and that can really help with coping and helps me with coping is to exercise self-compassion on a daily basis. And self-compassion... Self-compassion is a bit like acknowledging

the givens of existence. In... Like, what would I... If I was to be self-compassionate with myself, the type of things I say to myself is... if I was to be self compassionate with myself the type of things I say to myself is I accept that I'm fallible

I'm a fallible human being which means I'm not perfect I make mistakes I tell myself I'm deserving of love and I'm deserving to love other people everybody is deserving of love. No aspect of my behaviour defines my worth as a human being.

I'm better than nobody else. Nobody else is better than me. Because human beings are too complex to evaluate against each other. No matter what has happened to me in my past, it doesn't define my future or who I am right now. I have the power to determine who I am and who I will be and I deserve to be the best version of myself. The best version of me is unique to me. the best version of me is unique to me life contains unavoidable suffering

I'm going to be hurt rejected disappointed and I'm going to hurt, reject and disappoint other people everybody I know and everything that I love will die and they will suffer.

And I will experience one or more crushing tragedies. As part of being alive. And all of this is the price. That I pay for. Love. And fun. And crack. And warm sunshine. And the nice smell of a breeze. The taste. And warm sunshine.

And the nice smell of a breeze. The taste of my favourite meal. Or the feeling of waking up on the first day of a holiday. With the morning ahead of me. This is the tapestry of human existence. Is what I'm trying to get at. Unavoidable suffering. There's unavoidable suffering in the universe

in life pain exists you can't turn away from it and none of us are perfect we're fallible your fallibility is innate to your humanity you're gonna fuck up

you're gonna disappoint people you're gonna disappoint yourself these are givens of being alive you can account for things you can always account for and change and be it and become a better version of yourself and become the best version but if you don't accept your own fallibility if you don't acknowledge and accept that failure is part of being human if you try and turn away from that you'll never you'll never be accountable you never will change you never will grow you have to acknowledge the fallibility first if you get me and all of that

is is self-compassion learning to love and accept yourself the way that you love and accept a person who you love unconditionally there's someone in your life that you love unconditionally you don't give a fuck what they look like you don't give a fuck if they say or do things that are cringy every so often. You don't care. You love them no matter what. And you can separate their behavior from the innate love that you have for them. Everyone has someone like that in their lives. A partner, a sibling, whatever the fuck.

It could be your cat. It could be your dog. Do you know what i mean self-compassion is about working through towards having that for yourself so these are some of the things that i meditate on on a daily basis to keep myself my happiness at a level five and to keep me ok and it's grand that I'm not happy every single day it's actually ok to be scared, lonely

frustrated annoyed, sad disappointed these are all normal things to feel right now because bad shit's happening but it doesn't you you don't have to feel them excessively to the point that it eradicates your quality of life that's what i'm getting at that

that's what i'm when i set my goal every day to be just to cope the reason I'm doing that is I don't want to be so anxious that now I have anxiety or panic attacks or so sad that I have depression and I can't enjoy things or get out of bed or I'm not caring for myself and that would happen if I was to be excessively harsh on myself right now if I was to be excessively harsh on myself if I was to be excessively negative about the pandemic if I was to not accept the suffering that's happening if I was to not accept that bad things are happening and instead attach myself to if only there was no pandemic wouldn't things be so lovely if only there was no pandemic my career would be in in a different place if only there was no pandemic i might live somewhere else I might be on holiday if only if you focus on the if only

too much throughout the day and think about what things would be like if there was no pandemic but in a way that it really upsets you or it makes you more angry or more scared then that's attachment that's not acceptance or you have to accept bad shit's happening and it's outside of my control so if I'm thinking about wow I could be on holidays right now or wow I could be at the

hairdressers or I could be at the gym or I could be out meeting my friends it's okay for these thoughts you notice those thoughts it's okay for them to pop up but if you if you obsess about them then you're the only thing it does is it makes you more upset and obsessing about them and thinking about these things excessively it doesn't improve the situation and it's not gonna it's not gonna make the fucking pandemic go away so instead what what do i do i accept that i can't meet my friends i accept that i can't go on holidays i accept all these things as things that are outside of my control and i go that's shit isn't it that's a bit shit but sometimes life is shit life contains suffering life contains disappointment life

contains pain and i've also had tons of laughs and i'm gonna have a lot of laughs again at some point i just don't know when this is all part of the beautiful tapestry of human existence grand i've accepted that what's inside my control today what can i control oh i can make myself a lovely dinner i can go for a run i can live do all these things with meaning and this keeps me okay so let's look at a few questions i got these from instagram do you know what i wouldn't have i wouldn't have even asked twitter i wouldn't have even asked Twitter I went on to Instagram and I said uh lads can you tell me some mental health worries you've had over the pandemic and Instagram's generally a positive place I wouldn't have gone on Twitter because people

would have a big competition to see who can have the best complaint so i asked instagram and i got some nice heartfelt genuine responses from people who weren't on a social media platform that that asked them to perform and a lot of the responses i got were true direct messages so amy says i'm feeling generally unmotated. The nice weather today has been my only source of a better mood. But I don't think many workplaces are coping with employees' lack of motivation lately. They've increased the workloads and are wondering why people are taking days off. And Amy's question got a ton of likes. And I got loads of other questions about motivation. So a general vibe i'm getting

from instagram at the moment a lot of people are suffering suffering right now from inability to motivate themselves and another thread i'm seeing is people are comparing this lockdown to the first lockdown that we had in July. And in the first lockdown, people were quite motivated. People were making sourdough bread. People were getting into crafts, colouring books. People were filling their time. I mean, that's because the first lockdown was terrifying, lads. The first lockdown was really, really scary scary we didn't know what coronavirus was it was really frightening and we had to collectively adopt a

keep calm and carry on attitude and fear it can freeze you but sometimes it can also motivate you and i think that's what happened with pen with the lockdown number one it motivated us but now we're not really scared of the coronavirus anymore we're healthily cautious of it is what i'd say back in june we were terrified of it really terrified i remember the early days of the pandemic and people ringing me up talking about sure man fuck it one of the first cases of coronavirus in Ireland happened at a gig that I did in Ennis I did a gig in Ennis in March last year or could have been late February and one of the first cases in the country was at my gig,

and all the people at the gig got a phone call from the HSE, saying you've been at a gig where someone had coronavirus, and this was the start of the pandemic, and people were fucking terrified, and I remember getting the call from the venue, to tell me somebody at your gig had coronavirus, and the person speaking to me their voice was trembling and my voice was trembling it was fucking terrifying but now coronavirus isn't terrifying

anymore i'm not playing it down i'm just saying now we're just scared of it in an appropriate rational way here's a disease you shouldn't get you should avoid this this is bad keep yourself safe keep your friends safe keep your family safe that's an appropriate response to it but a year ago we were fucking terrified so that's a bit of an issue because now we're in lockdown and there's this thing we're not that scared of that's not that important so this lockdown feels really fucking boring and meaningless and it's winter so it's hard to feel motivated this time around also we don't the sense of hope is gone a bit and we're just fucking tired man i'm really tired at the moment so a lot of people are

are quite unmotivated at the moment including myself now the thing with me i can't afford to be unmotivated because i rely upon creativity to earn a living so i have to make this podcast every week and I have to make sure that the podcast is fucking good and that I'm putting time into it I also have to write a book at the moment and I'm not being too harsh on myself but for me if I'm not motivated I can't earn a living. It's that simple. So what do I do to motivate myself? When it comes to, we'll say, kicking myself in the arse and doing the thing that I must do. Alright?

What I do is I remember a time when I was... I remember a time when I was hungry. That's what I do. I remember it. I focus on times of being very motivated in the past. When you kind of have reasons to be motivated. You know what I mean? You can go, I'm going to work really hard and then at the weekend I'm going to go out and meet all my friends and have crack. We don't have these things anymore.

You don't have, you know, what are our reward systems at the moment? a lot of them are non-existent so that can stop us from being motivated but i focus on a time when i was motivated and remind myself of that and when i focus on that it just helps me motivate myself because like i said i fucking have to be i have to be motivated or else work doesn't get created and then i can't earn a living it's that simple dh says i feel like the lockdown has made me a bitter person who can't access softness or empathy and i don't know what to do um you know kind of coping will do that to you it's okay

to have feelings of anger or bitterness coming up if that's what's coming up for you that's okay because a spanner has been thrown into the works of your life and you now have to live your life, you have to live your day

in this really different, inconvenient way. We're greatly inconvenienced every single day even by just going to the fucking shop. Queuing, big giant queues because there's only so many people left into the shop are, a big one for me is when i'm in a public area with people all i'm doing is thinking about whether their masks are in place or i'm judging other people who aren't keeping distance so i'm angry frequently um the advice that i would give for you have a think about meditating now meditation isn't for

everybody i always mention this especially if someone if you're worried that you might have any body trauma meditation can be risky but meditating on specific emotions can be a good way to access those emotions. You can find, like, I use a thing called Headspace. Now, Headspace isn't free. You have to pay for it. Headspace is a really good meditation app. They have meditations on it, on compassion and empathy. If you don't want to meditate and your bitterness and anger is towards other people right i don't know why you're bitter or angry and if it's about other people but if it is about

another person if the bitterness and anger towards another person let's just say it's you're in the supermarket and there's some fucking prick walking around with his mask hanging around his face and that's really triggering that made like that makes me quite angry because it's here's a person walking around with a mask down around their nose and they're risking my life and the life of everyone around them and then i feel angry about that but what i always think with anger it's that old buddhist parable right there's these two buddhist monks and they're walking down the road now buddhist monks aren't allowed to touch women right buddhist monks are celibate

so these two buddhist monks are walking down the road and both of them come across a woman and there's like a little stream and the woman because of her dress she's not able to cross this stream without wrecking her fucking dress and getting it all wet so one of the buddhist monks says to the woman hop up onto my back there and i'll just carry you across the river and you don't have to get the bottom of your dress or your clothes wet so she says jesus thanks a million jumps on his back he brings her across the little river she gets down and says thanks a million thanks for that as she fucks off and then the two buddhist monks walk on now as they're walking on the other buddhist monk is fucking furious and he's seething and bitter for the entirety of the journey and then eventually the buddhist monk

who carried the woman across says to your man why are you angry what's going on here man you haven't even been talking to me and he goes you fucking know we're not supposed to touch women you put you let that woman up on your back to help her across the river and you know the rule about touching women we're monks and then the buddhist monks the other fella said to him i carried that woman across the river and it took me 30 seconds i carried her on my back you've been carrying her on your back for the past six hours and that's a lovely analogy because it's like when you get excessively bitter or angry about another person because of their actions that can

stay with you all day so if i'm in dunn stores or aldi and a man walks past and he's not wearing his mask properly and i'm fucking furious about it he walks past gets his newspaper and fucks off home and then three hours later I'm sitting on my own couch fantasising about giving him a headbutt now I've just carried that man around at me all day he took his mask off

and now the quality of my day for several hours is fucked up because I'm thinking about this prick who won't wear a mask so I now have to accept and take responsibility for that anger so I can stop carrying him. And the only way to do it is you have to, as a thought experiment, use empathy and compassion.

So I, in my mind, have to say to myself, that man, that man who wasn't wearing his mask simply doesn't think about other people the way that I do and it's outside of his awareness and it's possible that

he just hasn't given it enough thought he's not the type of person who understands like the other thing too someone with and this is this is a this is a hot take now but that man could have such low self-esteem that man could be suffering from low self-esteem and low confidence that he doesn't think that his own germs could even infect another person that's one angle that you can look at all right now that's that's possible people with excessively low self-esteem they can't understand how their own bodies or actions could even impact another person that man mightn't have been aware that

his mask was around his chin he could have been you know that man could have other tragedies in his life that are hugely distracting and stressful and that is why his mask was down around his fucking chin that man could be so terrified and afraid of the pandemic that as a defense mechanism he's become an anti-masker and I as a thought experiment have to use empathy to think about that man's positions and why he wasn't wearing his mask and only upon doing that can I stop being angry with him because carrying him around for three hours and being angry and bitter on my couch that has nothing to do with him

that has to do with me he's broke my personal rule if you get me so that's what I'd say about anger and bitterness what is the object of the anger and bitterness and you gotta use everything in your power write it down if you have to to try and see

things from their point of view Throwing Shapes asks can you speak about the difficulty of wanting to keep up with friends but hating Zoom calls and not having anything interesting to talk about because nothing is going on, that's an interesting one

I mean all I'd say there is that's when you gotta start getting corny that's a real difficult one like you know you're you're trying to speak to a friend and ring him up and it's like what's going on it's like fucking nothing all i know is the four walls of my house nothing's going on and that's a common conversation nothing is going on I've nothing to talk to you about then you gotta start doing zoom quizzes you gotta do zoom quizzes you gotta watch a film together

on the fucking internet I don't know start getting creative and injecting fun and purpose into your zoom calls if you want to have meaningful chats with your friends before you get together on Zoom.

And, I don't know, fucking dress up as Shrek. Dress up as Shrek and eat magnums. I don't know. What do people do? Queen of Dog Shite asks, A lot of people I know, their sleep is fucked up. Sleep isn't happening.

Yeah, sleep is a tough one. Like, I'm recording this now at half four in the morning. Because my sleep is all over the place. Usually for me, the podcast fucks it up for me because my concept of time is off. But when I want to get my sleep back in check, go to bed early. You can't be going to bed early go to bed before 12 o'clock don't look at your phone read a book that's made out of paper

those are basic things you can do to really help your sleep can't guarantee sleep but going to bed really late looking at your phone or looking at a laptop in bed you will fuck your sleep up simple as that if you're in a work from home situation and your office is now your bedroom because you live in fucking dublin in a small apartment try as best you can can you move it out to the kitchen can you move it to the small bathroom can you just get out of your bedroom for a little bit throughout the day because if you're working in your bedroom all day it then becomes difficult to sleep in your bedroom brendan asks asks can you talk about alcohol during the pandemic look alcohol any substance lads any substance that you use to make yourself feel a certain way

just always assess your relationship with it i haven't drank alcohol in six weeks i did dry january and now it's the middle of February and I haven't had any drink because I really wasn't enjoying alcohol I was I was drinking because I was bored and I was having my cans once a week as I'd normally have. And then I realized, I'm just trying to sit down here and drink emotions. That's what I'm doing here. I'm sitting down in my studio. And I haven't left the house. And I'm putting on music.

And I'm hoping that this can that I drink can give me some good emotions. And it doesn't happen. It just makes me feel really bored and I realized ah drink is a social alcohol is a social drug so if I drink alcohol in complete isolation without the possibility of human interaction or fun or crack then alcohol becomes quite depressing so I was drinking once a week I wasn't getting a nice buzz it was making me feel a little bit sad and then the hangovers the next day were terrible and the reason the hangovers were terrible is I couldn't say to myself at at least I had crack.

Because when you get a bad hangover, you kind of go, well, fuck it, though, last night was fun. Last night in the pub was a great crack, you know? Fuck it, I earned this hangover. Fuck that, man. If I'm on my own drinking cans, listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival, and then have a roaring hangover the next

day, I could have listened to music on my own, so now what I do, is on my Friday nights, where I'm, it's, it's, it's me time, and I'm not working, I just listen to music, like I, I listen to music, and I drink tea, and I go to bed at a reasonable time and it's absolutely fine and I don't have a black and white rule about alcohol but I'm six weeks off it and I'm going to see how long I can go I certainly don't have a desire for it I have no desire for cans none

so I think that's all I have time for this week that was a very long rambling podcast sometimes I need one of them every so often lads think that's all I have time for this week. That was a very long rambling podcast. Sometimes I need one of them every so often lads. I need one of them every so often. We might have a hot take next week. There's going to be a bonus podcast this week. One of the days this week I'm going to release a bonus podcast and you'll find out why I don't know which day it is so it'll balance out

if you don't like rambling podcasts it'll balance it out God bless, I'll talk to you So so 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 center 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 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you