The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP010: Mental Health

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

It's our 10th Episode!  Thanks to everyone who has supported the show especially our sponsor Flanders Scientific!  If you enjoy this show, or any of our episodes, please subscribe and like!In this installment of The Offset Podcast we're talking about something that's important to all of us - mental health. The pressures, deadlines, and sometimes difficult interpersonal things in post can be crippling - leading to bouts with anxiety, depression and general unhappiness.  We'll explore why talking about mental health is so important to talk about, battling imposter syndrome and uncomfortable situations, how projects shouldn't equate to self worth, how social media contributes to 'keeping up with the Jones', perfectionism/OCD, managing general business anxiety, the dangers of self medicating to manage anxiety, how bad habits contribute to stress, why exercise is so important, finding health hobbies, and much more.

Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Offset Podcast, and today we're talking about something that's really important to all of us. Not just in post-production, but everyone. And that's mental health. Stay tuned. This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific, leaders in color-accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIT, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at flanderscientific.com. Hey guys, I'm Robbie Carmen, and that is Joey Deanna.

And Joey, we are here today to talk about something that, you know, as I think as a person in post-production, luckily this is something that is on the minds, literally, of more and more people these days. But it's the idea of maintaining, you know, our mental health as a post-production profession, right? You know, fortunately mental health, is something that has been pushed to the front of a lot of discussions,

not just obviously in post-production and production, but just in general in the world these days. And that's good. I mean, you know, the world has been going through a lot. You know, we finished a pandemic, you know, whatever. You know, economics and politics are always stressful. There's always something bad in the news happening, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I think it can be just in general, not even working in post,

difficult sometimes to maintain and then we just find ourselves in an industry that is full of stress. It's full of deadline-driven things. Unfortunately, it's sometimes full of not the nicest people in the world. There's a survey that came out that went

all over the internet that said being a TV editor was, I think, the second most stressful job. I buy it, man. I totally buy it. And so, you know, we want to talk about kind of our feelings on some of these hot topics. I have been trying over the past couple years to be, you know, having these discussions, being more vulnerable about my own problems and, you know, issues, and just have that conversation

with more people because, you know, the one thing as I've started talking more and more to friends and peers about mental health stuff, it just seems that there's a lot of, you know, people were like, oh, yeah, that's happening to me too. Oh, I feel that same way. And so I think it's easy sometimes in, you know, especially the nature of how we work in dark rooms, often by ourselves, to kind of feel isolated and alone and that you're the only person struggling with potentially struggling with these problems. I just think it's not true, right? I think the more that we can talk about it and the more that we can be open about it and, you know, try to overcome some of these challenges or at least manage some of these challenges, you know, the better. I think

it's an important topic for us to go into. And so I do want to start off by saying, though, you and I are not psychologists. We play psychologists in the suites with our clients, but we are not psychologists or psychiatrists. We are not mental health professionals. We're not qualified in any shape or way to give you actually any concrete mental advice other than our own experience. So if you do find yourself really challenged and really struggling, You know, let us know, let somebody know. There's always somebody there to help. If you're in crisis, please find somebody that you can talk to and help you.

And hopefully, you know, some of the things that we'll talk about today can give you a little bit of guidance as well. So, Joey, the first thing that I want to talk about in mental health is just, you know, I think why, you know, why is this something that we have to focus on? And I think the reason why we have to focus on is because it's a real crisis for a lot. lot of people, right? We, we always put so much, you know, effort into physical health, which is important, right? Especially for, you know, guys like us who are sitting in dark rooms, sitting down all the time, not moving a lot. But, you know, mental health traditionally has been one of those things that's kind of like, oh, whatever, just get over it. You'll be fine. Suck it up, you know, you know, be tough, whatever. And I think that's to the detriment of a lot of people,

you know? Yeah, and I think it is important in our industry specific because, uh, no matter where you are in post-production, I've always said this. It is a people business first. Yeah. Right. So we are dealing with people of all personalities, of all stress levels at various parts of different projects.

You know, it is negotiating the pile of people's feelings and emotions across the production pipeline is a very important skill to develop. And we've talked about it in terms of how to communicate with clients, but we haven't really talked about how everybody's mental health kind of plays into this too. And it's a people industry, but it's a pretty stressful people industry. So how do we make it less stressful for both us and for the clients and for the coworkers and colleagues? Yeah. And in general, I think we as an industry are doing better weeding out the people who are just, you know,

bringing that drama. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Because I had my wife worked for a large post-production facility for a while. And, you know, she recalls a scenario where, you know, if TV's on, we're working, you know, kind of thing. And it's just like, you know, that old school kind of, you know, work until you drop, don't have any breaks. You know, I just want to say TV movies, it's livelihood, but it's not life or death, right? It's not like we're not saving lives here.

It's not life and death. And it doesn't have to be as stressful as it is because when people are under stress, they perform not as well. So you might want to go in and be like, I'm going to be the best. I'm going to grind. I'm going to, you know, work 24 hours a day and really kill it. But when you do that, your work quality goes down. 100%.

Nobody wants that. Yeah. So I want to talk about a few kind of general areas that I see, you know, talking to colleagues and peers and, you know, on message boards and stuff, people dealing with. And the first one is something that I think universally, everybody who is in our industry, everybody who's and pretty much in any creative industry, has felt at one time or another. And that is the idea of crushing self-doubt and like kind of what's generically called the imposter syndrome, right? That is the idea that I am not qualified. I am not good enough. I don't have the

skill set. I don't have the knowledge to perform up to what I think the client is expecting of me to do, right? See, I've never had that. Yeah, neither one of us have ever had that, right?

And I think this is something that, again, everybody faces, that you're working with a client for the first time. You know, I, for a long time, I let imposter syndrome get in the way of opportunity, right? And that was that I would sense a scenario, I would have this crushing self-doubt of I'm not good enough,

doesn't look good enough, right? And I would bow out of opportunities because of that self-doubt. And that took a long time. And I still, as you know, I still have that problem sometimes. And I, luckily, I have, you know, you as a partner or something, I could be like, Joey, I think you need to take this one because I just can't handle it. I'm too worried that it's going to be right. And, you know, we all handle that in different ways, but I think it's one of those things that's a natural occurrence, the imposter syndrome and self-doubt. But the way I've started dealing with it is that you, if you succumb to the imposter syndrome and you succumb to self-doubt, you do not know how that opportunity is going to potentially turn out, right? Putting yourself, and I think back, every semi or really uncommon. comfortable situation that I put myself in a professional context. I can't think of a situation

where it actually ended up the way the story in my head was telling me the way it was going to end up. In fact, almost every time I force myself to go into that situation, it has been rewarding on the other end, right? And it's stage fright like that is really bad, but getting out there and trying to get yourself to do it, I think does pay dividends. I'm just curious, like, how, do you have any strategies for dealing with kind of this feeling? Yeah, and I think that you got to really,

I try to put things in the analytical context because when you make things more objective, it makes it easier to take the emotional part out of it. Yeah, yeah. I don't think, and I don't think you're saying this, that you should just take on any project, even if you're wildly unprepared for it, right? The idea is that you should,

have a good idea of what your capabilities are, what you're willing and ready to take on, and maybe just add 10 to 20% of it to it. So you can put yourself in something slightly uncomfortable, you know, take some risks. You can't develop your artistic career without taking some risk, but have an honest conversation with yourself about, you know, is this project something I am even close to ready for? You know, if somebody comes to me with something that's completely out of my skill set, I need to be honest with myself and with them that's saying, hey, this isn't the job for me.

But if someone says to me, here's a project, it's got these challenges and I'm like, wow, I've never done exactly that, but I can kind of see a route to figuring it out, then that's exactly the balance point that you need to strike with this. Now, for me, it's weird because this kind of, the self-doubt, I think, can take multiple different,

you know, manifestations. There's what I think obviously it's happened to you before where you feel like you might not be able to do a project to the quality level. Yeah, I can't even get started with it. Right. It's like that's one thing. It's this wall that says, nope, can't even do it. Another that I've seen very common, especially among colorists, is tying their own self-worth to the quality of their clients work. Right.

Like, oh, I've got a bunch of jobs that were not really shot well. and didn't come out looking amazing. I feel really bad about my capabilities, right? Well, no, every job is not hard. And that's a hard thing in our industry, because nobody knows, and I think the reason that I, because, yes, I've suffered the first one you described, and I've suffered from that feeling as well.

And it's hard because nobody sees what the original stuff was like. Nobody knows that the DP shot at 17 stops over exposed with no lights, right? Nobody knows those answers. And so you're right. It's very easy to tie that, you know, crappy result into some valuation of like your ability and worth to make things. And I think. And for some of those projects, you're, you know, your value is that you build it and the client paid their bill. you know or you improved i mean i don't think that there's anybody who would ever make the argument

that you know if you i mean there's that you know you're making lemons what is that phrase making lemonade out of you know lemons or whatever i don't forget what the phrase it is but like it's true and i i try to when i when i experience that that self doubt of things like that i try to tell myself no no no no i am adding value here i you got to look at the end product from where it started and say hey i actually really helped this client their project in the best possible light. No, it will never be a cinematic masterpiece, but it's way better than what it started with.

And that's good for the client, that's good for you. Now, the third way I think that this does manifest itself, and this is the way that I've kind of experienced it. As people that know me know, when it comes to like some of the technical and creative abilities, I'm pretty confident in myself. Sometimes too confident, I'll admit. But I don't really suffer from this. in the way that I think some other artists do.

Where I get into this, and you've seen this with me dozens of times, is when it comes down to the business side, right? When I have a client that I've worked with for like 10 years, I love working with them, never raised their rate. They're still paying the rate from 10 years ago when I was way more junior, way less experienced, and had way less equipment investment and everything. From a business perspective, everything says we should be charging them more.

and I am like frozen in fear to tell them, hey, we need to raise our rates. Yeah, no. I feel like it's the exact same thing just from a different perspective. It's I, it is the same thing. I mean, I see that self-doubt and that that imposter syndrome feeling all the time in that regard from a lot of people, not just you obviously. And that it is, it's hard to play. I can see how it brings anxiety to people playing bad cop at the same time they're trying to play good cop, right? And actually, just for full transparency, transparency, that is one of the

great things about the dynamic of the partnership that Joey and I have, right, is that because there are two of us involved in this, that conversation of having to play bad cop of like, hey, well, I'm going to charge you extra money for this, or we're going to charge your line on for that or whatever, just naturally plays out well a lot of the times because Joey can be sitting with a client and I can have those conversations or vice versa, right? And I think that is one thing. thing that a lot of people do have crushing anxiety and self-doubt about is how do I get value or apply my value and get something out of it that makes me feel whole on a project? And that anxiety in doing so is a hard ask when you're simultaneously sitting next to somebody trying to make

pretty pictures and also like, oh, by the way, you haven't paid me and you're 60 days late and I'm going to need that money, right? So that is a hard thing. In that regard, I would suggest if that is something that affects, you know, our listeners, having somebody who can handle some admin side of things, operation side of things, or whatever, and letting you, you know, do what you love and where you shine is something to consider it because I think, you know, Joey, I'm not saying that I do this for you always,

but I do think that doing a lot of the admin work for us, you know, billing or, you know, email communication has taken a lot of that anxiety and that pressure off of you to where you can do the things that you love and you're good at. And also having that second perspective of, hey, we're really not billing this client the appropriate thing for this work. And we need to talk about that is something that me, by myself, I would never do. I would just go forever. Cool.

I'm happy to have the work. It doesn't matter that we're billing them a completely under market rate. Cool. I 100% agree. I think the other area where I think self-doubt is a good thing and a bad thing is that in, it's the nature of our desire as artists to make things the best they possibly can is at the intersection of anxiety and OCD, right? And I see this, I see this happening more so with me than you, but I see it happening to a lot of peers and colleagues. where the marginal improvements that they're making on something lead to this obsession and compulsion to not be able to let it go, right?

And I feel like, and this is just to be vulnerable and open about it, I feel in the early part of my career, I did this because I associated that obsession and compulsion to improve things as hard work. right? And I felt like, you know, it was just something part of my, my ethos was to never give up, to keep pushing, to kind of keep doing it. And that led, I think, to a lot of stress in my overall relationships. And early on in my career, you know, when I wasn't married or whatever, I was just doing that to myself, right? But later on, that obsession, that anxiety impacted my relationship with my wife. And one of my big regrets is that I didn't learn some of these lessons

early when having kids. I mean, I feel like to a certain degree, I'm like, man, I was coming home at one, two o'clock in the morning when my kids were, you know, let's just say one to five years old. And my wife oftentimes tells stories about like, this happening, that happening, this happening. I'm like, huh, I don't remember that. And, you know, the universal answer is, oh, you're at the office.

You know what I'm saying? And so I think sometimes our desire as artists to, to chase perfection actually is a slippery slope of chasing and inviting in anxiety and obsession and compulsion into our lives to do a work. Said a really simple way, not set a really simple way. Not everything is art, right? And that's a lesson that took me a long time in my career to learn is that sometimes it's about improving it,

getting it through the pipeline and calling it done and stop thinking about it, right? And here's the thing. Like, I think, you know, we touched on this a little bit earlier, but I think you've got to think of the relationship between how much effort is going into something and the ratio of diminishing returns, right? If you're putting in super late nights, if you're really, really pushing and you're, you know, you're just going back and forth on something and you're making tiny little adjustments, you're really probably not making it better. You might be making it slightly different over and over and over and over again. But in all likelihood,

you're not making it better with those kinds of obsessive adjustments. You could be utilizing your time in a more creatively effective and productive way. I agree 100%. And this is something that I've learned probably in the past 10 years. And that is, you know,

as I tell my kids sometimes, there's like, there's nothing good that happens after midnight. night, right? And it's kind of the same way. It's kind of the same way with projects. Based on what you said, I have learned that I am much better off at the end of a hard day at, you know, whatever, six, seven o'clock to turn it off and walk away with it, get quality sleep, find something, you know, whether it's go for a walk or play guitar or whatever I do to, you know, release some stress and come back to it the next day fresh. Because it's remarkable how our habits can also increase the, the, this self-doubt, this anxiety, this subsuptuulsive, one of the things that I, and this is kind of transitioning into something related, but a slightly different, is that our habits outside of the color suite

or the edit suite or whatever also play into this general level of overall anxiety as well, right? It might not be imposter syndrome. I'm not good enough, kind of per se, to do it, but that obsession kind of works its way in other things. And here's case and point. I am the absolute worst with email and devices, right? I drive myself, I did it this week.

I'm sitting on the couch watching TV with my wife, and all of a sudden I get a look at the iPad, right? And it was a note about some, you know, innocuous kind of benign note about something that I'd worked on earlier in the day. What I should have done is just let that be tomorrow's problem. You say that phrase all the time. tomorrow thing. That's tomorrow problem. That's a tomorrow problem. And I would have been better. Instead, what did I do at 1030, 11 o'clock at night, got off the couch, went back down to the

basement, fired up the rig, made the changes. And the next thing you know, it's 1.30 in the morning. I've made a marginal improvement. But you know what happened? The next day, after I got some not-so-great sleep, I came back and looked at it and realized that the two or three hours I had spent 11 o'clock were totally worthless anyway because- Yes, that's something that really important to mention here is specifically for the colorists, right? Our eyes and the relationship between our brain and our eyes is only good for 8 to 12 hours in a day, depending on the person and the work. You know what I mean?

Like just in general, you can't keep looking at images critically for a huge contiguous amount of time and your perception of them not start to shift and adjust and get tired. Totally. And my point about this was that some of that anxiety is self-induced, right? And so, you know, one of the things I've been trying to get better at is, you know, at the end of a day, you know, six, seven o'clock, whatever, turning off notifications, not, you know, not having the phone or the iPad or whatever with me on the couch, checking email and, you know, all of those kind of things, right? The other related thing to that kind of habit of trying to get some of that stuff on my life is that it sets, it sets boundaries, right? I shouldn't, I don't. I don't. don't ever want to set the expectation with our clients that I'm available 24 hours a day to do whatever you want and make any change. And having the home suite is a double-edged sword, right? Because you have this inkling. You have this feel.

I could do it right now. Yep. You shouldn't always do it right now. Absolutely. And it opens the doors to that expectations that client. Hey, if they're not paying you to work at midnight, why are you working at midnight, right? And sometimes, you know, like some of it is. And when you get into that situation too, this is not to say, never do it.

If a client comes and says, hey, we got an emergency. We need to do this right now. It's a crisis, whatever. You can jump in and save the day and work, you know, burn the midnight oil and push through. But it needs to be a real reason to do it. Exactly. All the time. If it's not the exception, if it's the rule, when it is really important and there is an emergency, you won't be at your best.

Yeah. And you're right about that. It has to be a conscious decision for a reason. So there's great reasons for it, right? Like, hey, you know, tomorrow is your kid's birthday and you want to be, you know, totally be 100% focused on that. Then, yeah, sure. Getting ahead tonight and working a couple late hours makes sense. But I'm saying setting up that expectation with your clients is a bad deal.

But I want to mention something else about the devices, email, social media and stuff that I think is really vital to this conversation and specifically points at anxiety that I suffer. from and it's more of this feeling of keeping up with the Joneses right and like the anxiety that's produced by that and this social mediated world that we find ourselves in right and also kind of the echo chamber of that right so I find myself you know I'm following on the various social media platforms you know a level colorist you know the Walter Vopato's Dave Hussies Stefan Sanofelds you know whoever those guys you know and there's a tier of of those guys where I'm like, oh, cool, it's cool to see their work

and their huge mega million projects are working on. But that doesn't actually give me the same level of anxiety as the people that I kind of look at as in my peer group, same level of business, maybe a little above, maybe a little below, whatever, volume, right? I have a real problem with that kind of stuff because I look at, I'm like, my God, did you see that project?

So-and-so did, right? And then all of a sudden, it's just like, oh, I suck. I work on nothing but crap. I work on nothing but crappy projects. Here they are, you know, working on this. And like, and it builds up all these really strange feelings that you know are not all that healthy, right? Feelings and jealousy, feelings of like, you know, kind of like, you know, like, why them, not me, you know, all that stuff. And I. So let's look at it objectively. Like I like to do, right? Let's look at it from a purely analytical standpoint. When somebody posts something on their Instagram. Say you have an hour long film with 1,200 shots in it. They're posting

five stills of the best five shots of out of one of their best projects of like the month, right? So it's the best of the best of the stuff they've ever done because they're obviously trying to make it look really good. And you're comparing that to every single shot on every single project you've ever done. Absolutely. And nobody stands a chance. And the analytical side of my head goes, well, those three shots probably had nothing to do with together, and they probably didn't really match, and they probably brought it into Photoshop once they got the shots kind of picked out, and they probably improved them a little bit more,

and that kind of stuff. But I have gone from a place of like following every colorist and every post, you know, vendor in the world and looking at their work to kind of trying, like, consciously not to pay attention to that stuff as much as I do, because it can be crushing. I mean, we talk, you know, this mental health aspect has talked a lot about teenagers and, you know, self-worth and the doom scrolling and all that kind of stuff that teenagers might be affected by social media. I think, you know, people in our, you know, the 40s like us are just as vulnerable to it as kids, right?

And looking through that and scrolling. And it gets to a point where you just kind of have to accept that, yeah, there are people who do better. and cooler work than you do in the world. But all of that- People that did better or cooler work than you this week. Right, exactly. But equating that to a sense of self-worth or an assessment on your abilities or your value

is a really, really slippery slope. And so when I get in those, when I get in those feelings, honestly, I've just tried to put it down as much as possible, right? I've tried to, you know, my family and I were trying this new rule where every night at 7 o'clock, the phones and the iPads go into a pile, right? We went for eight. Right. And we're, you know, for a couple hours, you know, it's a hard pull. It's like a really strong magnet, right, those devices.

But for a couple hours, the whole family is trying to do things like, I don't know, let's actually sit around a table and eat together. Let's, let's, you know, if we're going to watch a show, let's do it as a family. like let's be resident, right? And I think that that has, you know, in a really good way, that's helped kind of the overall positive mental outlook. And there's nothing wrong from taking breaks as far as I'm concerned with this kind of stuff. There is absolute value in social media and promoting your business and all that kind of stuff. But occasionally, it can be just too much.

And so there's nothing wrong with, hey, you know what? I'm going to take Instagram off my phone for this week. And I'm just not even going to be bothered by it and have that temptation to look at it. Things like that nature have helped significantly. you know another thing i wanted to ask or kind of talk about is it's this kind of i don't know how to say it kind of this idea of fighting burnout but kind of the balance of healthy and non-healthy outlets to it right and and i think we have all been a victim of non-healthy healthy outlets to our stress and our you know a management of stress um and i i have found that the physical

physical side of what we do really plays into the mental side of what we do. And that is, I find myself sitting in this nice, expensive ergonomic chair, but still sitting all the time, right? And I have found that when I don't get the endorphins going a little bit, that really leads to bad mental states. And what I mean is that if I'm going to have a hard week in a suite, I need to get my brain and my body going, or I just get more down the rabbit hole of stress, anxiety, etc. And I used to think this was total BS. You know, you hear these stories about people who are gym rats,

and they talk about endorphins and that kind of stuff. And I know you started to experience this a couple years ago as well when you started getting back to the gym, right? Back to the gym. When I first walked into a gym for the first time of my life two years ago. But to be clear. Speak to a second. speak for a second about that outlet of, you know, moving heavy objects, right?

Like, what is it done for you in terms of your overall kind of management of stress and stuff? So there's a lot going on there. I think the most important thing is, yeah, like you said, there's healthy and non-healthy outlets for this stuff. For years, for me in particular, my unhealthy outlet was drinking myself to death, right? I drank an astronomical amount. And just to be clear, I don't think it's just you, Joey. I think it's actually an issue with our industry in general. Absolutely.

Whether it's drinks at the end of the session, whether it's going out to the bar after a day of work, it's true. And I get it. I get like that numbness that happens through self-medicating that kind of stuff. And whiskey tastes really good. Like let's be honest, whiskey's amazing. So I drank a drastic amount. And the first thing that I kind of did when I kind of decided that I got to do a better job of this in general life thing was I quit drinking. And the really important thing that I think people can take away from kind of my experience here and is that I'm not saying everybody in the world needs to quit drinking.

I'm saying you need to take a critical look at your relationship with alcohol and other substances as an individual. For me, that meant stopping drinking altogether for quite a long time. Then it meant easing back in in very simple, you know, rules-based situations almost. Like, okay, if I have a really important social event where I'm like on vacation or I'm traveling somewhere and it's a limited context, I'll give myself a pass and I can have a couple of drinks, right? but I'm not going to go home to a full bar of whiskey like I used to have and just have it there and drink by myself. Right. So these days, I would probably say like once or twice a year, I'll have some drinks at a special occasion.

Like my best friend's wedding, I had some drinks. And it was nice. I wasn't driving anywhere. We stayed at the hotel. It was beautiful. I didn't have a whole bunch of drinks. I just had a few. And I've been able to moderate myself surprisingly effectively once I can't.

kind of got it out of my house and made it a separate thing. Well, listen, I applaud you for being open and vulnerable about that. I think it's something that not a lot of people, it's not easy to do. And I will be the first person to say that your example of that was an inspiration for me as well. I found myself in a similar situation only, you know, I had a, you know, past, couple years have just been tough for everybody right there's been the industry's changing a lot um you know the pandemic obviously you know a billion things going on in life and it is very easy i think to kind of you know want to undwind if you will or relax uh with this kind of thing but just the nature of it is

i have the personality i'm like frank the tank in that movie you know um old school right it's like once it hits your lips you just can't stop like i always say it's like a can't of peringles man once you pop you can't stop you know but here's the thing and there's so much things associated with the idea of over drinking and quitting drinking and all this stuff that it's not the same for everyone no i would say this don't let you know perfection be the enemy of good if you feel like you're drinking too much just cut back you don't if you when i started looking at it again analytically the reason why i stopped drinking was because i looked at my bank account and i calculated how much I was spending on whiskey and it was astronomical.

And from there, I kind of said, well, wait a minute. How am I spending this much money on whiskey? Then I thought to myself, when was the last day I didn't drink whiskey? Right. And I couldn't remember. Then I thought to myself, how many bottles of whiskey do I go through in a week? And then I looked at how many days there are in a week. And I started running the numbers and all this.

And I'm like, this is absurd. Yeah. This is absolutely absurd. And then, right, so I never took the attitude of, and if you're listening to this and you think and you're starting to think, hey, maybe I drink on the, I drink after work too much. You don't have to look at it as like,

well, I have to quit drinking altogether. And that's just a big bummer. And so I'm not going to do it. Right. You just have to take a hard look at your relationship with whatever your substance of choice is and decide what's best for you. Yeah.

And I think, you know, that I made, I was in a similar place. And I specifically, and again, I don't want to sound preachy about this because as you said, everybody's scenario is different.

this is a personal thing, but I will say in general, I think our industry veers towards a little self-medication. I would say massively. Whatever substance that might be, right? And I looked at the same situation, and specifically when it comes to alcohol and me, I just decided, you know, listen, this is just not, this is not going to end well. Nobody, nobody goes, oh, I can drink a liter of whiskey a day for the rest of my life and totally be fine, right?

Like it just doesn't happen. And you're right about the small chunks. When I started doing it, I'm, you know, I'll be coming up on two years this August, right? And when I made that choice, I took it in like days and weeks. And I, you know, there's varying degrees of this. I never felt like I had an actual physical addiction to this. This was just a routine thing. It was a pattern thing, you know, that kind of stuff.

And I looked at it as, oh, I got a week. Oh, I got two weeks. Oh, I got a month. I got two months. I got three months, right? And now it's become one of those. things where it's just more of like, well, I'm further ahead than I am behind. So why don't I just keep going to go in it? Keep it rolling. It's a personal choice for people. We're not telling

people how to leave their lives at all. But the byproduct in this conversation for mental health was something that I, I maybe from reading some sort of article or whatever I kind of knew might have been a byproduct of it. But it was ridiculous how much one thing, you know, the, you know, self-medicating part of things led into the anxiety and OCD things being turned to 11, right? Yes. It was an amplifier. It was an absolute amplifier the next day. It's all well and good and fun when you're in the middle of it and having fun, right?

But the next day when you feel like shit and you have something important to do, you know, everything from being short with my clients and my kids to, you know, full on like panic attacks about shit. because, you know, I'm not feeling great. That stuff became, it subsided substantially for me. And I was finally able to actually have some better understanding of the triggers that were causing these feelings of self-doubt and anxiety and OCD and address those things without the veil of something else in front of it, right? Yeah. And the last thing I want to kind of say about the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the alcohol aspect of this is that, you know, there are, you know, stereotypical people that have the stereotypical alcohol problem, right? I was never that. Yeah. I was great at drinking. I didn't beat my kids. I didn't yell. I didn't get my car and start crashing into buildings. I was very responsible and I was, you know, I was not in any way kind of like, you know, I, nothing was really indicating that there was something wrong, right? I wasn't. acting bad, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't a bad drunk. I was just drinking way too much, you know? Totally. I get, I get it. And so, I mean, it's just one of those things where I think you're right about, you know, if you're having the thought at all about, you know, self-medication

and am I going, pushing it too far with whatever it might be, you know, taking a break is, you know, a good, a good thing to consider in your lifestyle, even if it's just for a couple days, for a week, see how you feel, see how you're analyzed from that. It's something to strongly consider it has changed my life for the better. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that I'm better in all aspects of my life and my relationships than I was before, right? And I will one another final last thing, a last last thing when it comes to the alcohol discussion is that I, I, I don't know what changed, but the technology of non-alcoholic beer has like advanced a million fold in the past few years. Non-alcoholic IPAs taste better than real IPAs.

Dude, it's so, it's funny. My wife and I call it water beer because, you know, it's basically just water that tastes like beer, right? But it is, it is phenomenal. There's some magical chemistry going on. I don't know how they do it. And honestly, in situations where you might feel that compulsion, right, and you're, little, you're wavering because, hey, you got two years in or whatever it may be. There's situations now that have become so incredibly less stressful in that regard.

For example, we're going on vacation to Mexico tomorrow, actually, and we're going to an all-inclusive resort. And like, what's the point of an all-inclusive resort is to get, you know, wasted and just, you know, drink margaritas until you're blue in the face. This resort has like two different, three different kinds of non-alcoholic beer. They have non-alcoholic wine. Of course, course they can make mock tales of things, right? So like that situation where I want to feel like I'm fitting in, like, you know, and just it's, it's easier and less stressful to explain. Like, not that I feel like I need to explain to people, but like that kind of situation is indeed better. But going back one thing to the gym part, because that's where we started this physical

part off, right, is that I have found in turn instead of, oh, it's five o'clock, let me go to the whiskey bottle. It's five o'clock, let me go for a walk. around the neighborhood has, I'm not, I mean, listen, I'm still a little chubby husky, you know, ball of dough, right? I'm not, I'm not admitting that I'm a personal physical specimen, but that half an hour walk around the neighborhood has done, I think, three things for me. One, it's like a physical improvement getting out from, you know, where I used to have back problems, tight hips, whatever, from just sitting all the time. It helps significantly with that kind of stuff, right? I'm not getting any younger.

Two, it gives me time to kind of break, we'll talk about this next, but kind of break away and kind of find an outlet for stress, right? Like when I'm on that half an hour walk, sometimes I don't bring headphones, I just walk and kind of listen to, you know, nature sounds or whatever. Sometimes it's a great, wait, wait, wait, wait, I've been trying to catch up on this podcast or, you know, those kind of things, right? And third, what it has really, really done is that you always hear about, and that's why I was just trying to, kind of say when we started this, you hear about Jim Raths being like, oh, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, if I go for a long walk, like, I go for a, you know, four or five mile walk. It takes me an hour or so, like, I feel like, really like jazz for like the hour or two afterwards,

because those endorphins have, have run. And it's a good, you know, so I think even if, even if, if, if and you know that kind of stuff is not your thing like literally just from sitting in the suite all time some physical movement whether whether that be riding a bike going for a walk doesn't have to be hard right um and in fact joey i will sell this is going to be the door i don't think i told you i bought this thing it's under my desk here i bought it's the stupidest thing but where it's awesome i bought an under the desk treadmill right oh my god i know i know i know i know it was a lightning dale on amazon but it moves at like one or two miles an hour, like really slow. And it's awesome because all day I can just sit here.

I'm sitting it down, but sit it down, but like you just kind of lose the legs. Anyway, that's a thing I knew you'd laugh at. So for me, I, like I said, about two years ago, I started trying to focus on my health a little bit more. And part of that was I started getting into weightlifting. Yep. And for the first time in my life, I went into a gym.

Literally, like, I'm not exaggerating when I say, I spent my entire life and never exercised. I define exercise as, you know, exerting physical effort with no actual goal to do work. It had never happened. If you see Joey in person, do yourself a favor. Don't bring up like NFL, MLB. Like he'll just look at you and be like,

it's all sports ball. What? I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't. Absolutely nothing for me. So when I actually started lifting weights, intentionally, it really surprised me how much I enjoyed it. And then I enjoyed making progress and lifting more and getting better at it.

And then it becomes kind of a pursuit in and of itself. And it has made more of a difference in my overall life than I could ever think of. And that leads me into kind of the next thing that I think we should talk about, which is different outlets for your stress and things like that, right? I think everybody should have hobbies, mental things, physical things that they like to do outside of work. I have a lot of those. That's never been a problem for me. However, the problem for me has always been, I got a bad back.

I'm tired. I don't feel like doing this today. My number one outlet for stress, I think, always has been, always will be. It will be no surprise to anyone who knows me is getting on a motorcycle. A motorcycle is the greatest stress relieving mind clearing device the human race has ever devised. Because it's never-endingly fun, right? There's no not being happy on a motorcycle. It is incredibly focused.

You can't let your mind drift into your problems because you're focusing on a thousand different inputs at the same time while you're dealing with control. Trying to stay alive on a motorcycle, right? Yeah. Right. You are. It helps with the self. doubt as you're going down the road realizing that you are literally cooler than everybody else that doesn't have a motorcycle, you know, that's awesome. But there's a big physical aspect

to it. Bad back. I couldn't ride bikes for as long as I wanted to. I couldn't do things. I couldn't work on the bikes as much. Since I started lifting weights, I can get on a sport bike and ride it for hours. I've never been able to do that. My back doesn't hurt when I'm moving things around in the shop or I'm, you know, working on any of the other pursuits that aren't work that bring me happiness into my life. The physical barrier involved in those is so much improved from just two years of weightlifting. So like, if you want your mental health to get better, get your physical health health better enough and improving enough that you're not tired. You're not, you know, putting off things that you'd rather do.

because you've got back aches or your shoulders are messed up or whatever, right? Yeah, I agree. And I mean, not everybody's going to, you know, ride a motorcycle, but I think your greater point is finding that hobby, finding that thing to do that is a stress reliever to you. And I think for a lot of us, we'll even find very tangential things to what our day jobs are, right? So for me, for example, as you can see one of my many racks of guitars here, right,

music and playing guitar and building guitars and all that kind of stuff has always been like therapy to me, right? Like when I'm having a stressful day, sitting down and noodling on the guitar for a little while. But I have made a conscience effort to really dive into it full bore. Like two or three years ago, I started building my own guitars. I just recently bought a CNC machine so I can cut bodies. Like I can route bodies. Like I can do all this kind of stuff. And it is an outlet for me.

that is not one where I'm answering to anybody else except for myself and what satisfies me. And there's a billion things that people can do, whether it's photography, it's music, it's various sport. Like golf is another one like that for me, right? Like there's something about playing golf that is simultaneously like energetic and therapeutic, right? Like I'm, you know, I'm guessing, I'm getting some exercise, I'm moving, I'm swinging a golf club. But guess what? I'm also walking a couple miles, you know, playing golf. I'm out in nature and getting some, like, actually, we shouldn't even, we shouldn't like, mis-downplay that at all. Like, the fact that we work in cold, dark rooms all the time

is, like, it's actually an important thing to get outside sometimes. That's a big thing because I've always said this. I've always, you know, and most of my clients know this too, like, I like to try to get out for lunch any day that I can. Yeah. it's not just because I want to have some lunch it's because I want to walk away from the office for an hour in the middle of the day and be outside and be not in this room focused.

And there's something that we forgot to mention at the top of this when we were talking about imposter syndrome and self-doubt that I think plays into that but plays into what you just said too. And that is one of the things I think feeds a lot of people's issues in working in post-production production is the fear and the feedback of what others say about our work, right?

The, you know, whether it's a frame I.O comment, whether it's an email, whether it's a text, right? You know, I am, I have learned so much from you over the past decade or so of the way watching you and the way that you deal with comments and notes about things that is so, like, I really, I'm not that great at it, but I really try to be. more like you in this regard every day because, and you know this, Joey, I get so flustered sometimes by feedback and, like, it's just like, sometimes it's like, it's like, why are they attacking me? Why is, like, why do I, like this, like, it's a hard thing. And then there's not a solution for everybody about how to deal with that feedback. But one thing that I have really

been trying to do. And I think it's worth this for everybody to find to find something like this. So let's just say I log on a frame I.O. And there's 200 comments on that five minute video, right? And I'm going, oh, Jesus, right? Like, this is the end of my life. I, in the years past, what I would do is I would immediately have an emotional reaction to that, right? The step number one. And then step number two, pull open the project and in like an angered way, start banging through the notes and be like, God damn, yeah, I'll make it pink, sure. Whatever, right? What I try to do now is not let my first initial emotional reaction to things cloud what I'm going to do.

And that parlays into the fact of it's not an emergency. Nobody's going to die, right? So what I've tried to do is process, read and process that feedback. And then play guitar for a while. Go for a walk. Go play nine holes of golf, right? and then get on it. And it is remarkable about how giving myself some space between anxiety-laden thing

and hobby exercise kind of thing. If you use frame I.O. Dropbox replay, any kind of comment-based review system, turn off notifications and never turn them back on. Because they come in blocks, right? You'd be like, okay, here's the comments. Here's more. Here's more.

And then you get this, like, it's never ending and it's stressful. Turn the notifications off. And because of the asynchronous nature of it, right, it can come in at any given time. Yes. So all of a sudden, it's 11 o'clock, as I described earlier, and you're sitting on the couch and you get this comment. And this feeling that's a, this feeling of immediacy, like I need to do something about this. Yeah.

Your client is not sitting there at 11 o'clock saying, oh, God, what was. Robbie thinking, I'm going to ruin his night. No, that's, it's just, that's the time that he found the time to do the review. And also, there's ways of managing that stuff too. Like, I think time and space is number one, but also number two. And I know we talked about this on our very first episode about dealing with client feedback. But there's ways of dealing with this, I think that you can, to reduce the internalization, right? So if I read a comment, and let's just say the first time I read a comment, I'm like, what? Like, no. Like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, right? Instead of letting that story percolate in my head, the very first thing I'm trying to do when I get situations

like that is ask for clarification. Can you tell me that story of that comment on a Zoom call, a phone call, or ideally in person, and I can better understand it. And 9.9 times out of 10, the story that I was telling myself in my head about that comment is not at all the story that the client is telling me about that comment. In my head, it's Doomsday. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. This is an attack of my livelihood. It's over.

And they go, just did you have some time. That'd be great if you could fix that. It's no big deal. And you're like, what, wait, what? I read your comment. I thought it was the end of the world. This goes back to where we started, which is this is a subjective artistic thing.

where nobody dies and everything is a gradient of not a right or wrong answer. Like, your self-worth is not tied into what one person thinks of one grade on one shot. 100%. And I think it ties into the last. And people can not like the same thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that ties into the last thing that I want to talk about in this discussion

because we could go on forever. And that is just the value of having some trusted peers as well as staying social in a positive light. You know, I'm not talking about just getting on social media and doom scrolling, but that social aspect. You and I have been a part of various groups, you know, private groups and stuff over the years online. I'm also a member of a couple like dad focus groups now, you know, with other guys. My point is, is that that social interaction stuff is vital, I think, for our industry and what we do. Like, you can sit and talk to your partner or your spouse or your kids or whatever about the stresses that are going on in real life. And everybody can empathize and have some level of understanding with those particular stressors.

but I can't explain to my wife, you know, it's really every time they ask me to do this BS key framing, why can't they just give me a conform of that instead of the bake of that? Like there's details, right, that she's just not going to groanck because she's not a colorist doing the things we do. And so I have found, you know, you're an eye relationship, my relationship with other colors, my relationship with other industry peers that maybe are a mixers or VFX parts. having interactions with them that are not around a project that are not around any particular need, but just like, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about it?

It's vital, man. And like, you know, some of these groups that were part of do things like, you know, like a little Zoom happy hours, right? Where like, you know, on a one day a week, we'll get together and, you know, and talk about various things. And those conversations vary from everything. And it's just so important in these days and age where more people are working from home. more isolated than ever, the days of the large facility. I mean, you mentioned going out to lunch. I'm sure part of that is also, you know, catching up with people from time to time and, you know, and, and doing meetings and stuff.

That stuff is so vital. So whatever it is, whether it's a group of peers, whether it's a professional organization that you're going to tag along with doing some networking, whatever it may be, those things are also a great stress relief because you can commiserate with other people who understand what you're going through to a certain degree. and the pain, and like, that stuff can't be underrated. And also, it gives you a fresh perspective on stuff. Like,

I often tell you a story and you're like, did that, I mean, you say stuff to me sometimes like, did that really seem as bad as it was in your head? I'm like,

oh, now that I talk about it. No, it wasn't as bad as it was in my head. And that's a key thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And, uh, the home office is definitely a huge double-edged sword, right? Gets you two hours back in the day of commuting. Yep. at least in both of our cases.

You know, and that's a great thing. Gets you accessibility. If you need to do something quickly, that's a great thing. Gives you flexibility for your scheduling. That's a great thing. Also gives you isolation and overwork tendencies. Sometimes a tendency to get into some drinking, substance abuse problems, things like that.

And it just puts you far away from everybody that you would normally interact with in a day-to-day kind of traditional working environment. So just be aware if you're working remote, if you're working from home, just kind of think about, okay, this is a different situation now and it's missing some things. It's got some advantages. It's got some disadvantages. And you can do some of the things that mitigate that. And even if you're not feeling those stressors yourself, somebody is. Right. And so one of the things I've been trying to do is just reach out to colleagues and peers, you know, every so often and be like, hey, man, we'd love to just catch up with you and see what's going on. Right. It doesn't. It doesn't have to be anything specific, but those check-ins, because, like, you know, I always think back to, and I don't know why this one hit me so hard, because unfortunately, these tragedies happen all the time. But I often think back to the loss of Robin Williams, you know, his suicide, right? And I think back, and I go, how can somebody so comedically gifted and talented, like, be, you know, everything about them screams happy, everything is fine, telling the next joke or whatever. And like, I think in our industry, you never know what people are struggling with. You never know what they're battling with, right?

And those kind of check-ins on people can literally be lifesavers sometimes, right? And can literally, you know, that fact of letting somebody know that you care about them can have ramifications that you can't even begin to fathom, right? That conversation might, you know, just really make their day on a small level. on a big level, it might really help them get out of some funk that might have been potentially dangerous. So think about that as well. And I would also, the last thing I have to say about that is we as a industry, but also just as a

culture, I think we've gotten a lot more short, a lot more mean, a lot more intolerant, right? And one of the things I'm trying to work on that has helped my mental health is when I interact with people, whether they be, you know, whatever, industry peers or clients or whatever, and they're short with me, they give me, you know, a bunch of, you know, whatever. feedback that I don't like or they're nasty in some way. I'm trying to convince myself like, you know what, Rob? You don't know what that person's going on. They could have a fight with their spouse in the morning and now they're just being nasty

to you. They might have, you know, whatever. They might have gotten rear-ended on the way into your office. Like, there's a million things that could happen. And so trying to not give back venom when venom is given is something I'm trying to work on a lot that's helped me just kind of be a little more low-key. not letting somebody else's circus affect my mental outlook. And I've been a lot happier with that, just being like, you know what? Like, it's not, sorry, it's not my problem, you know, and try not

to internalize it. Yeah. Not my chair, not my problem. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Exactly. Exactly. So a lot of good stuff here. We blabbed on for about an hour about this, but I think this is something that is vitally important to keep these conversations, whether they're structured, you know, or semi-structured like ours, or not structured at all. I mean, literally just telling somebody how you feel or asking somebody how they're doing or how they're feeling can go a long way. And everybody deals with stuff differently. We unfortunately work in this very stressful industry that sometimes I think it's self-induced stress,

sometimes is drama for no reason. Like I said, nobody, it's not, we're not doing open-heart surgery here on anybody. And keeping things in perspective like that, finding an outlet, exercising, finding some stress release that's not being abusive to yourself. All those kind of things can help and go a long way. And so if there are strategies that you have or things that, you know, techniques for reducing stress, other things that come to mind that we didn't talk about, by the way, today, things like meditation, breathing exercises, all that kind of stuff definitely plays a role and can help.

But if you have anything like that, just feel free to let us know, you know, either in the comments on YouTube or on our site. also of course if you are checking this out on whatever platform you're watching on whether or listening to spotify apple music wherever do us a favor if you like the show please give us a thumbs up and a rating if you wouldn't mind same thing on youtube the more followers we have the more that the show can get out to people and the more episodes we can do so good talk joe i think this was really this is something that's near and dear to i think to both of us and i just want these conversations to be more open with people and the more that we can talk about it as an industry whole. The less stigma is about this. And again, if you're in a place where you're

really suffering and you're really struggling, there is no shame with reaching out to somebody. There are amazing services now, online, you know, services like I've utilized like better help. I've even know we didn't talk about it in detail, but like I even have like hired a personal coach who's helping me out with a lot of this stuff. There are ways to overcome and fight some of these these problems. You just have to make that first step in doing it. And if we're, We can help it anyway. Just let us know. So for the Offset Podcast, I am Robbie Carver.

And I'm Joey Deanna. Thanks for listening.