Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
IF YOUR LIFE IS BORING, YOU MAY JUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jaimee joins Ross to ponder whether change really is so good. Tangents include: The Simpsons; travel; attacking baby crabs; Gloria Vanderbilt glasses from the '80's; stuffed antelope hoof; moving; stress; swifts; Crohn's disease; finger pickles; life stressors; "bubble of sameness"; old photos; haunted red balls; Mount St. Helens; porch bathrooms. Take a drink every time you hear the word "junk".
Notes:
- https://www.stress.org/holmes-rahe-stress-inventory
- https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/what-is-crohns-disease
- http://www.horrordvds.com/community/threads/films-with-balls-bouncing-down-stairs.12579/
- https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2020/05/harry-r-truman-still-believed-in-love-as-mount-st-helens-eruption-loomed-refused-to-leave-the-mountain-that-gave-him-everything.html
- https://www.decadesvintage.com/eyewear/f378.shtml
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
Entertainment.
SPEAKER_02If you haven't seen a grown person drop a load on a public sidewalk, you have not lived your life.
SPEAKER_03No, you don't live in Portland, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder, what? And why? I'm Ross, your host, and today I am excited to welcome back a delightful friend who always has interesting experiences and thoughts to share. Jamie! Hey Jamie!
SPEAKER_04Hi Ross!
SPEAKER_02And welcome everyone. Friends, as I always say, you can help us grow the show. And the best way to do that is to share the show with anyone you can, any way you can. But this week, I want to encourage people to like us on Instagram or follow us, I guess. And it's at SmellsLikeHumans. And um when we first started this show last year and we got on Instagram, I have a sister who's sort of a social media maven, and she said, You'll never get a thousand people. It's really hard. Well, we're more than halfway there.
SPEAKER_03We're so close.
SPEAKER_02But it would be really cool if wherever you are right now, if you're on Instagram and you can go and follow us at Smells Like Humans, and we could just suddenly bust through the thousand threshold.
SPEAKER_04That would be really want to stick it to her.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But we are uh very appreciative that you listen to the show each week, and at the end of the show, I'll tell you more about how you can help us. So let's get to it. All right. So we know that some of us humans receive conflicting messages when it comes to change. On the one hand, we're told that change is good. Change is good, right? You've heard that? And at the same time, we're encouraged by our loved ones in particular and society in general to seek stability, homeostasis, be on time, be consistent, be predictable. And for a lot of us, having a steady, predictable life is not boring at all. In fact, it's quite comforting. Not only that, but some of us work really hard to create our bubble of sameness. Yes. And to establish our routines. So, spoiler for the show if your life is filled with routine, but it's comfortable for you, my take is that you are actually winning right now. Change for you might be the worst thing. So here are some examples of how many of us seek sameness in our lives. We watch the same shows, we read the same kinds of books, we wear the same kinds of clothes. Every once in a while I'll go into my closet to like edit because you should do that every once in a while. And like I have like 10 blue shirts and eight black shirts. So it's like, what? Yeah. But um obviously that's the color I want to wear. Um, and then if you ever talked into you ever have a salesperson talk you into buying something out of your comfort area, you never wear it. Never you wear it that one time and people look at you weird and you're like, I don't it just stays in your closet and you don't get rid of it because it's new, right? You never wear it, you can't anyway. We eat the same food. So think about it. Like some people I just got a note from someone who was talking asking me if I was a food adventurer, and I'm like, what? And it's like, yeah, I'll try different kinds of foods, but if I'm hungry, you know, I just want to go to my pasta, man.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like this stuffed antelope hoof. Yeah, that's not what I'm looking for when I'm hungry. I want to go to what I what I like. Um, we choose the same kinds of friends. We find ourselves with the same kinds of partners over and over again. Yeah, they're different people, but really are they not different? I remember when I was on uh Facebook, uh, all of the hundreds of friends I had, they were all basically the same people who believe the same things. It's still irritating though. But anyway, so we date the same kind of people, we listen to the same kind of music.
SPEAKER_04Yep, over and over.
SPEAKER_02And how many of you listening to this really go outside of your presets that often?
SPEAKER_04When I do, I always go back and regret it and go back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like, I don't want this underground.
SPEAKER_04What the kids are listening to these days.
SPEAKER_02I mean, again, it doesn't mean that you don't once in a while try something new, but normally, if you're by yourself and you're in your car, whatever you're listening to, you stick with what you know. We do the same kinds of exercise workouts. Even when we think about like those cool, dangerous people that we know or see, and we think, well, they're obviously they're doing something different, they're all about novelty. You ever notice how they all look about the same? You know, they're doing the same kind of cool, dangerous thing with other people who are in cool who are cool and dangerous. They're in their own little subgroup. You know, we may operate in a niche group, but we're in the group. And we do whatever the group does, and we dress like the group. Novelty possibly is more upsetting than it's worth. And sameness makes us feel cozy and comfortable. We like predictability, we like patterns. We're pattern seekers by nature. We see patterns in random events. Familiarity, rather than breeding content, breeds comfort. By the way, I was at the dentist yesterday, and they want you to wear glasses while they do dental work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, why is that?
SPEAKER_02You know, it's a that was never a thing before.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the sunglasses, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, or some kind of glasses, but this particular dentist only has what I would call like Gloria Vanderbilt style glasses. If you don't know what that is, you have to Google it. But they're big Gloria Vanderbilt style glasses. And so I picked uh I think they gave me a pair that was more like uh leopard print glasses.
SPEAKER_04Oh, fancy.
SPEAKER_02But I said, you know, do you have anything else? And they pulled out this big giant pair of pinkish Elton John glasses, and I picked those.
SPEAKER_04So I think they looked great on you.
SPEAKER_02I was Elton John at the dentist yesterday.
SPEAKER_04I hate it so much because I have eyelash extensions, so when I go to the dentist, they make me, you know, they like lean you back and they make you put on the sunglasses, but my eyelashes always bump up against the lenses. So I have to get like a little cotton thing and put it under the nose pad.
SPEAKER_02I am noticing problems. Your eyelash extensions.
SPEAKER_04Aren't they beautiful?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, they're very striking, but I really hadn't focused on them. But yes, that would be a problem if you were wearing it, it's a real problem. You could not be a welder.
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_02Because you couldn't put on those. You couldn't be a welder or a scuba diver or a I am a scuba diver.
SPEAKER_04I have my license.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_04Well, how do you wear I haven't scuba dived since I got the lash extensions.
SPEAKER_02That's a that's a I think you might have just bended yourself right out of the scuba, the scuba life. But I'm glad to hear that you are a scuba person. That will come up. So um when you make a change, when you're either forced to make a change or you decide to make a change in your life, we quickly try to normalize the routine. As to whether you've moved or changed jobs or change partners or whatever you've done, you quickly try to find the pattern and the routine so it gets comfortable. And my only point is maybe it's okay. Like maybe it's okay to be boring. Maybe there's nothing wrong with doing it the same way as long as you feel comfortable that way. Maybe that's the goal.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What do you think?
SPEAKER_04I agree. Yeah. I'm so boring. I'm so boring and I love it.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I would never describe you that way to anyone. A, because the eyelash extensions, B, scuba, we found that out, and C, you have had a very interesting life. Yeah. Uh I might even argue that your life has been so chaotic at times that maybe finding some sameness and boring qualities would be a relief to you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, maybe that's why I'm so boring now. I did it all already. I'm over it.
SPEAKER_02So if if any of you have listened to previous shows with Jamie, she shared things about growing up in a chaotic household with an unpredictable uh mother and with other issues, including spending some time in a locked basement. So if you haven't listened to any of those shows, you should, because there's always um interesting stories that she has shared. But suffice it to say, you have um you're probably kind of old on the inside.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You're not old on the outside, but on the inside, you've probably lived two or three lives.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02So can you give me an example of how your life is boring?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Um I I mean, I guess I stick to like a pr pretty strict routine in my life. Okay. Um I have Crohn's disease. So I have I have to tailor my life very specifically because if I um if I eat something that I'm not supposed to, it affects my stomach a bunch if I don't get enough sleep, if I don't stick to like a very strict sleeping schedule. I feel like that one is almost like worse. If I don't get enough sleep, my I I just get like really sick. So I'm like, I have a very strict diet, exercise, and sleep schedule, and I generally stick to that. Um when I do go out and do stuff, I I do go nuts. I go way off the routine and then I like pay for it. But uh generally my I I am very boring and I stick to a strict schedule.
SPEAKER_02So what is Crohn's disease if you understand it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's it's like uh intestinal uh disorder.
SPEAKER_02Is it like one of those autoimmune things where the body decides I don't like your this part in your stomach hates me and it's gonna rebel against me?
SPEAKER_04I call it uh when I have like a Crohn's flare-up, I call it the baby crabs because it feels like I swallowed a bucket of baby crabs and they're like pinching my insides.
SPEAKER_02Baby crabs.
SPEAKER_04The baby crabs, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it's that sounds also like another thing that it could be, but I I'm not gonna argue with the way you're using it. So attack of the baby crab. So the threat of baby crabs causes you to seek out a um a certain regimen of activities that keep things in check. So diet, exercise, sleep, all of that figures into it. How about stress management?
SPEAKER_04Is that yeah, stress stress is a big uh trigger for it too. So uh and I'm always stressed. I own a business, I'm always stressed. So yeah, so I have to stick to a pretty uh tight schedule and I hate it when my schedule is disrupted.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_04Like if someone wants me to like stay over at their house or something, you know, like go stay with them for like a night or something like that. A sleep over there. I will stress about that. Yeah, because I like I like my bed and it's very comfortable, and I go to bed early and I read my book, and you know, I have a a a set schedule, so like, yeah. Or like going out to dinner, I'll sometimes like stress about going out to dinner, um, just planning what I'm gonna have on the menu, right?
SPEAKER_02So you check out the menu in advance. Oh yeah, you develop a strategy, totally okay. And so part of that is, or most of that is um a biological necessity. You have to manage that. But are there any other things that you do that would be considered um pursuing the comfort of sameness in your life, whether it's entertainment or totally, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, I think my siblings and I can quote like every single word to every single Simpsons episode from seasons like one to ten. Wow because they're horrible after season ten.
SPEAKER_02So you watched so The Simpsons was something you watched when you were younger.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, growing up, my siblings and I would always uh when it every time The Simpsons aired, we would be together watching it. It was like something that we did um all together as as siblings. Right.
SPEAKER_02And you you still watch the show to this day.
SPEAKER_04And when you watch it, I'll put it on for like background noise while I'm cleaning or something, you know, or like Saturday mornings while I'm having my coffee.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Is it like, and is the feeling, and I don't know if I'll ask this correctly, but is the feeling like you have this instinct, like I just want something comforting on something that I can just feel cozy with.
SPEAKER_04Totally. It's like I think as kids, like, um, because like our childhood was kind of chaotic, and that was like one thing that we like all we all did together and we knew it was gonna be like fun and good and nice for that 30 minutes or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_02Right. And then you'd realize you were still locked in the basement. Sounds like I'm joking, that's a real thing. Um so I also when I was a kid, I watched old shows. Um, really old shows. Like, even though I'm really old, these shows were older than me.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Impossible.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to imagine that there was um electricity actually when I was a kid. But the um, so like shows like I Love Lucy, the old black and white, uh, a show called Father Knows Best, a show called Ozzie and Harriet. These were all before my time. The reason I watched these shows is because I like TV, but when I was a kid, TV was stupid. There was nothing. Right. It was broke, there was nothing on. There literally was no shows.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um for anybody. All the shows are bad, but especially for kids, there was nothing. Um, and so you that if you wanted to watch television during the day, if you were allowed to, you had to watch one of these old reruns. But I liked watching them beyond the fact that that was my only choice. And uh what I liked was most of these shows were had normal-ish families. Um, whatever situation came up, it was pretty mild and it always got resolved.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And everybody came together at the end. And I grew up in a moderately dysfunctional uh family, and so just having a little place to go and sort of have that fantasy of, well, this is how it could be.
SPEAKER_03Totally.
SPEAKER_02Because I remember thinking that as a kid, is like I would go to other kids' houses, and I'd always think their house was so much more normal, like their parents were cool, yeah, and their life seemed to be just more normal and more fun, and my house was like a traveling circus at all times. You never knew what was gonna be happening, but something was always going to be happening, nothing was gonna be right the way the way it would be in my fantasy. There was a facade, it was a facade, but I kind of wanted that facade. I wanted the facade of those old TV shows. Um, and I watched them over and over, and it didn't matter that I knew all the episodes, I didn't care. Um, I I liked watching them all the time. And even today, and we just did a show that was broadcast last week, um, and it was on how um we use media today. Adults use media to help them go to sleep at night or to soothe them in the same way that we did when you and I were kids. And so um, we talked about that extensively, and I mentioned that for the longest time I used reruns of The Office as my go-to-sleep like bedtime story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And the way the reason it worked is because I was so familiar with the episodes, having watched every single one many times, that my brain didn't really have to engage in a serious way. And so I can just kind of shut it off and let it play, and I would go to sleep instantly. And then if I would wake up in the middle of the night, I would put it on again. And then when it went off Netflix, I was like a little worried because how am I gonna sleep? Yeah, I was kind of like, oh wow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But I found a new one.
SPEAKER_04Okay. I love 30 rock.
SPEAKER_02Here's my thought about this. In some situations, if your situation is negative, yeah, you need to change. If it's if you're suffering, if it's toxic, of course, you need to seek out change. But mostly change is scary. And here's my thinking about why.
SPEAKER_04Let's hear it.
SPEAKER_02I want to bounce it right off of your extended eyelashes. Okay, so I'm guessing that this quest for predictability started when we first showed up on the scene a few hundred thousand years ago.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02So imagine that we're cave people, cave dwellers, tree dwellers, wherever we were hanging out. Everything to our ancestors, our ancient ancestors, was random and unpredictable. So, like you can imagine cave people like who do I got to sleep with to make the sun come up again? You know, how do I make sure there was food? Um, how do I keep grog from busting me over the head with that club? I think instinctively we, since we grew up in a world that was random and it was frightening and we didn't understand it, we tried to come up with ways to make us feel more protected, more comfortable, and insulated from the stress of all that. So we came up with gods and religion and magic. Um, you know, if we can just keep the gods happy, um, everything's gonna be okay. So that kind of magical thinking is a source of comfort, right? And it's also a de facto recognition that the world is random and unpredictable and chaotic, because that's where that comes from. If you realize your world is frightening and unpredictable, then if you invent a system that explains that world and also at the same time protects you from it, you could see how compelling and addictive that would be. Cults work the same way, right? They suddenly they cults tell if you join a cult, which we all should.
SPEAKER_04You gotta at some point. Everyone should join a cult.
SPEAKER_02Just get into your cult. Um, but that's one of the things they do is they provide you with a structure for controlling your world, which also often means isolating um you from everything you know and everyone you know, and that's part of the negative aspect of cults. Other social groups of all kinds um provide the same kind of uh feeling of belonging and sameness that we look for. And um, you know, because all groups they have structure, they have norms, they have rules, they have expectations. There's an old joke about something about I wanted to join the anarchist club, but I could never make the meetings. Um our beliefs, our diversions like sports and music and art, talk radio, Fox News, all of those kinds of diversions provide us with a predictable world to live in, a comfort. There's not going to be a lot of surprises, big surprises that make us feel uncomfortable. And all of that protects us from this unpredictable reality that we're actually facing, that the world is this random, chaotic place and we're all doomed. Yeah. Nobody wants to think about that. We want to feel safe. And we're not the only people doing this. We're we're the only people doing it. There's no other people.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02Um, we're the people. Okay, let's make sure we've established that. But animals do the same darn thing. If you're watching an animal in your life, have you seen a squirrel?
SPEAKER_04My dog's basically a squirrel. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Your dog's a squirrel. What's his dog's name again?
SPEAKER_04I have two. I have Mouse and Millie.
SPEAKER_02Oh, Mouse and Millie.
SPEAKER_04Mill House is her name, actually.
SPEAKER_02Uh from the show.
SPEAKER_04Tiny little eyes like Mill House from The Simpsons. Okay. So I named her Mill House.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, you've probably noticed your pets doing a lot of the same things, sticking to a schedule. So, yeah, so we're not the only ones migrating birds. In uh Portland, where Jamie and I both live, there are these birds called swifts, and every fall at a certain time they show up every night and go down a chimney.
SPEAKER_04And I steer clear of them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because you don't like a phobia. Yeah, we talked about that a couple weeks ago. Jamie does not like birds. But birds are migrators, they just repeat the same patterns. Whales, wild animals, all of them are doing the same stuff. Those bastards are just like us. They just like the same junk over and over. Uh so then we're told there are there are external changes that we can't control or have no very little control over at this point, like climate change. So we see, and that's scary, right? Yeah. Climate change is gonna get us. And so what do a lot of us do? We just pretend it's not happening. We we're we're living in right now in pandemic time, and there's a lot of people just pretending that there's no pandemic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02This is not a thing.
SPEAKER_01Super frustrating.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's not a thing, it's not happening. So there's this whole denial sort of mechanism that we have. Like if we can't find if the change is so pronounced, and if we can't control it, then we just pretend it's not there. Um years ago, I think it was like 1980, um, a volcano near where we live blew up, Mount St. Helens.
SPEAKER_04I wasn't born yet. Well, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_02You were not born. But you've heard of Mount St. Helens.
SPEAKER_04I've heard I've heard of it.
SPEAKER_02You've noticed it looks like half a mountain now.
SPEAKER_04Oh, is that why?
SPEAKER_02It's an ugly, ugly ass mountain now because it blew up. But there was a guy who lived up there, and he was warned that the mountain was about to blow up. He's like, I've lived on this mountain my whole life and I'm never gonna leave. And he was right, he never left. He never left. He just was there to see it or hear it or feel it. I don't know what his last thought was, probably oops.
SPEAKER_04Whoops.
SPEAKER_02Made a mistake. So, when, like the guy living on the mountain, when change is like put right in our face, uh we we momentarily have to confront it. Obviously, that life is insecure and it's chaotic and we have very little control. But um, other than those very, very clear situations, we're pretty good at quickly adapting to any changes and just now it's the new thing. That's the beauty of humans and why we've survived so long is we're pretty good adapters.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We we there's probably times in your life, I know for a fact, listening to you tell stories where like you just, well, this is how it works now. We're in the basement, this is our life now, right? Yeah. Same thing happens like when we move, like we have to move for some reason, or we decide to move. You know, especially if it's out of where we live, like significantly far away. So you have to leave friends and family behind and go to a new place. What do you do? You just reinvent the same thing you had before. Yeah, you meet a bunch of other people, they're new people, but it's the same kinds of people typically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They're slightly different. Maybe their eyelashes aren't that extended, but it's the same crop of people, and you figure out where you shop and where you go to get a coffee or beer or whatever the thing is. And the next thing you know, you're in your new same space. It's new and it's the same. And that's why I love moving. It's my favorite thing to do.
SPEAKER_04But I really I hate it. I hate moving.
SPEAKER_02Well, I don't like the process, like I hate the packing and the stuff gets lost and broken and just ruined. But putting that part aside, I like, I really like leaving a place that I've lived at and going to a brand new place and meeting new people. But I realized a few years ago that I was doing that as a way to solve some inner feelings of restlessness in my life.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02And so moving will provide you with a couple of years of distraction instant because you have to do all the things to figure out what your new routine is and who your new friends are and all the things, right? And so um, after those two years are up, you're like, okay, well, it seems like I've got everything pretty much under control and it's all comfortable. So if you have these inner like I do, if I have these inner feelings of restlessness, then the only way to deal, there's two ways to deal with that. Well, there's three ways. One is just self-medicate with alcohol or whatever.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Just numb yourself. Another thing you can do is move again. But another thing, which I've been experimenting with, is instead of moving, try to say yes to more things and try to use that restlessness as a motivation to explore other interests or meet new people or do things um so that I don't actually physically have to pack a box and hire a truck.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you know those guys, and they're off always almost always guys that show up to move you. If you've ever had a professional mover, those guys don't really work for the moving company, they just pick them up off the street, so they don't know what they're doing. You know, on I was thinking as when I was preparing for this show, it's kind of a tangent, but I have this like weird little thing I like to do.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02It involves scuba gear and a chicken. No. Um so I every once in a while you're somewhere and they'll have old photos, like really old, like over a hundred years old or more. Um, and they'll have these photos for whatever reason. And I love looking at them. And these are people I don't know or have any connection to, but I love looking at them. I like to look at what they're doing, I look at their expressions, and I like to imagine what they were doing the moment before this picture. I like to think about well, what happened right after? How were people feeling in the photo? Were they happy?
SPEAKER_04I feel like this is like the beginning of a scary movie. Yeah. You're looking at really old photos, something spooky is about to happen. Oh yeah, maybe.
SPEAKER_02I never even thought of it that way, but it does sound a little like it could be a little eerie. Um, I like to think about what their life was like. I like to think about what, especially if they're younger people, I like to imagine like in that moment their whole life was in front of them. And so just kind of imagine like what that actually turned out to be like.
SPEAKER_04I feel like this is when the little red ball rolls out from the dark room towards you. What is that from? I don't know. Every scary movie has that scene. I feel like the child ghost like throws you a little ball.
SPEAKER_01A child throws you a ball?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. What? Have you never watched a scary movie?
SPEAKER_01I've watched a lot of scary movies. I've never seen a child throwing me a ball.
SPEAKER_04A little like red ball rolls out of a room and like lands at your feet from nowhere. It's the it's the kid in the photo. Spoiler alert.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I do remember the shining where Jack uh Nicholson's character ends up in the photo at the end. And that's the kind of photo I'm talking about. It's those kinds of old timey photos.
SPEAKER_04Um you're gonna find one one day and you'll be in it.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow, that was so awesome.
SPEAKER_04Well, in my case, that wouldn't be so it wouldn't end well for you, I don't think, but it would be spooky.
SPEAKER_02The older you get, the more likely it is you're gonna be looking at an old photo and you're in it. Oh wow. That's another thing, too. I want to come back. Well, as I'm gonna get distracted here.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But I I want to come back to um so the one thing I want to say about looking at those old photos is that I wonder if the people in them ever got to see it.
SPEAKER_04The photo? Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because back then that was a whole thing, right?
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02And it wasn't like today where it's like, let me see. Because it's like take this.
SPEAKER_04I even uh I found like a box of photos, like my old photos from like dances from high school and stuff, and I found a roll of film in there.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04And I'm like, I haven't developed it yet, but I'm like, I wonder what's on there.
SPEAKER_02Now that's spooky.
SPEAKER_04When was the last time you developed a roll of film?
SPEAKER_02That's spooky. Yeah. That's where you're gonna that's where you're gonna see the kid with a red ball, isn't that?
SPEAKER_04It'll just be a series of small red balls rolling across.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. This just turned into a very spooky, yeah. Um, when people say like they're uh people might be listening to saying, Well, I'm not a conformist, I don't look for sameness. Just if you're old enough and you can look back at photos of you like in a certain era.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like the early 2000s or the nineties, or if you're old enough, you can go to the eighties or beyond.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you look at pictures of yourself and you look like you're from you're living in that era. Like with the 80s, you remember like the big hair and the clothes and and the nineties had its own look, and I don't know what was going on in the early 2000s. Is that the grunge thing?
SPEAKER_04The early 2000s was not the time for fashion. Yeah, but oh my god.
SPEAKER_02But if you look at pictures of yourself, more often than not, you're gonna look just like you're from there. Like you found a way to fit into the sameness that my Hollister tank top with a t-shirt underneath it and low rise jeans. There you go. Yeah, I've seen pictures since because I'm ancient, I've seen pictures of me at different times. Like, what was I doing? Yeah, why didn't anyone alert me to how disgusting this was, this fashion of what I ever think? Why did I ever think this was okay? Yeah. And you know, if you live long enough, people listening to the show, take a picture of yourself right now and save it for 20 years. And in 20 years, you'll look back and you're gonna be embarrassed. Yes. Also, you will definitely you will see a red ball. So the other, so there's another group of people that I know are listening to this, going, no, I'm an adventurer. I'm not only a food adventurer, maybe I'm not, but I'm a traveler. I travel. Yeah, I go all over the world and do cool things. So I I'm I'm a novelty seeker. And I say, well, maybe you are, maybe, but a lot of people when they travel, they travel the same way. They go to the same basic places and they do the same junk. And the most obvious, obvious example of this, I'm gonna go for the low-hanging fruit.
SPEAKER_04Getting drunk on a beach.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for sharing that.
SPEAKER_04That's a vacation, right?
SPEAKER_02That is apparently, yeah. I think if you want it to be, it sounds relatively inexpensive. I have watched people preparing to go on a cruise. So I was in Seattle one day and I was watching people line up to get on the cruise ship, and they're carrying these huge luggage um carts with their luggage all stacked up for their cruise. And uh I just started thinking about that. It's like they're bringing so much junk with them. And I think that's when we say, Oh, I like to travel. Well, a cruise ship is the most predictable way to travel.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because it's self-contained. You know what all the experiences are gonna be because they're right there. It's like being in a floating hotel, right? Right. You know what the food's gonna be like, you know how you're gonna spend your time, you know what the activities are gonna be. And you know when you stop somewhere, it's all very controlled and and you know, you just have a little very narrow slice of experience in these ports that you go to. But also, if you're going on a traveling experience and you have tons of luggage, what does that say? You're bringing your life with you, you bring in everything with you that you can bring, your clothes and all their accessories and all the things. Why? So it'll be this like the same, like when you're at home. You have all your stuff. And then how about these jokers that have like a vacation home and they just go to the same place? It's like every single time. Yeah, what's that about? Isn't that about like, okay, I love to travel to another place that's all the same, and I want to make sure I can watch my shows and I have what I everything the way I want it, right? And I know what everything is, and oh, we always go to that same cafe, isn't that great? Yeah, we love going there. It's like, why are you even going there?
SPEAKER_04We've already done it.
SPEAKER_02On the one hand, yes, it's fun to go to new cultures, meet new kinds of people, see have new experiences, see beautiful things, but do you do that at home? Do you seek out new have you explored your own city? You know, like people in LA always bragged about, oh, we're an hour from the beach, an hour from the mountains. Have you been to the beach? Well, no, there's too much traffic.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02I just stay home. But we could go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's a it's true with a lot of people. Like people live in these great cities around the world, they haven't even been to see their own junk yet.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They haven't even like been to the cool places in their own place. Yeah. What are you doing with your steamer trunk getting on a cruise ship?
SPEAKER_04Um, you gotta live in an exciting apartment like mine. I'm on the first floor in my apartment and I'm right off public transportation. So people come up on my porch all the time and like can I say take a shit? I think you just did. I just did. Uh yeah, I see all kinds of exciting things on my porch from my apartment. I don't even have to leave home, free entertainment.
SPEAKER_02If you haven't seen a grown person drop a load on a public sidewalk, you have not lived your life.
SPEAKER_03No, you don't live in Portland, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_02Well, yes, exactly. Um, and any of us that live in town have had that experience. I feel like I instead of trying to beat them, I'm just gonna join them. So watch out, everybody. Just give them a thumbs up. It's uh it's gonna be rolling at you, but it's not gonna be a red ball. This travel thing, I think, and I'm a big traveler, so I'm not trying to be hypocritical here. I've always loved traveling, but I have re-evaluated a lot of that. Um, and I my latest feeling is, and the pandemic has sort of helped me kind of focus on this because we haven't been able to travel the way we did. And um, I'm really thinking about I haven't explored so much of where I live right now. And I haven't explored some of the cool things that are right here in front of me. And um why not spend some time doing that? If I need some novelty in my life, I don't need to travel 6,000 miles and then get on a mule and I mean, and then I just I'm not I guess my only I guess what I'm wondering is I think for some people travel can be just a routine. Anyway, it's another thing that you do that makes you feel comfortable. Yeah. But it's not really, you're not really seeking that much novelty. Or in my case, if you're seeking so much novelty, maybe you're trying to replace something else, you know, that you should be working on. It's an idea. I came into this just being interested in this whole sort of idea that change is good, and I just spent a lot of time thinking about that that maxim that we hear. You know, something happens and you're like, oh, I had to move or I had to get a new job, and people are like, change is good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it's like often it's stressful.
SPEAKER_01Totally.
SPEAKER_02There's this there is a a measurement tool called a life stressor scale, and I I think there are variations on, but basically you check how many items pertain to you, and there's about like 30 items, and there are a mixture of things that you would think were good things, like got a new job, had a baby, got married, moved to a cool place, went on a trip, and then there are a bunch of negative things, you know, we've got fire, death of a loved one, on and on. And you get points assigned every time you check one of the things. And so there are three basic levels, and the higher you get, the more points you get, the more likely it is that you're suffering from uh uh enough stress where you're going to have some sort of physical complication.
SPEAKER_04I feel like I should take this test as soon as we're done. Yeah, you should.
SPEAKER_02Everyone should. It's really interesting. I just took it recently and I'll put a link to it in the notes. But what people tend to um forget or not realize is that positive life events can also be stressful.
SPEAKER_05Totally. Positive changes. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02So when you get that new job, it's maybe like your dream job, but it just brings a lot of stress into your life. Or you get the new uh partner or you move to the new place. All of that stuff can be extremely stressful and have a it takes a toll on you physically, and you can get sick or be at risk for um serious illness. And for someone like you, it's managing an autoimmune disorder, you know, that's something to pay attention to, especially during, of course, the time we're in now, where there's so much, it seems like so much is unsettled in the world, those vents can take a toll as well. So it's definitely worth like looking at your stress score on a periodic basis just to see, because you do we do kind of ignore the fact that we're constantly be being put under stress and that takes its toll. Um, and I think being able to create a world somehow where we have some predictability and sameness, that's relaxing, man.
SPEAKER_01Totally.
SPEAKER_02Come on, let's relax. Um, and there's a lot of pressure though. There's a lot of pressure out there, you know. You should have a better job. These same people who tell us, hey, stop that when we were younger, stop being so random, cut your hair, wash your face, put on some shoes, get off the beach, you're drunk, whatever it is. Um, those people and the world seems like to be all about, no, you should have a you shouldn't be doing that job. You should do a better job. You should be making more money. And we tell this to ourselves too, but also the world tells us make more money, get a better place to live, get a new partner, get someone who's better for you, or doesn't do, you know, their weird stuff they do is different from the weird stuff that the current person's doing. Uh, move to a better city. We talked about moving. And again, I know there are times when the situation is dire and you need to make those changes. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just this constant stream of pressure to constantly change. And I think a lot of this pressure comes from the people who are trying to sell us junk all the time. Like, uh do you have the latest uh iPhone? Oh, you don't? Well how are you gonna live? Do you have the latest whatever, right? Is your car old? Do you have a car? What about your bike? Is your bike cool? Is it you know what I mean? It's like constant.
SPEAKER_04I sat through a a timeshare pitch one time because they were my my ex-boyfriend's mom had one of those timeshare things where that you could go to like a few different places and we were staying on the coast and they were offering like I don't I think it was like a $250 gift card or something if you sat through their little sales pitch. Yeah. And I sat through this whole thing, and she basically said the gist of it was like you guys are gonna break up if you don't buy this timeshare. She was really pushing it, and it's like a a relationship savor. And we did break up.
SPEAKER_01So she was right, but you broke up because of the No, not because of the time share.
SPEAKER_04Plenty of other reasons. But the the sales pitch. Try to change your life, do better things, travel more. She was really pushing it hard.
SPEAKER_02So there's I think there is there's a constant stream of subtle and sometimes. Not so subtle pressure for us to change, and it comes from family, it comes from marketing, you know, it comes from commercials and just all this pressure to be being some kind of person that we aren't, um, and that somehow we'll be happier when really we'll be happier if we can just turn on the Simpsons and kind of be relaxed and do the same kind of thing that we like to do, follow our routine. That if you have figured out a way to create your comfort bubble, to create your sameness bubble, and you are feeling pretty content about it, you shouldn't feel embarrassed. You are doing it the right way. You're doing you as I said early on, I think you're winning.
SPEAKER_04So I can go home and watch four hours of true crime and not feel bad about it.
SPEAKER_02Right. You and your true crime. Do you have a go-to snack?
SPEAKER_04Um a snack?
SPEAKER_02Do you have a go-to snack while you're watching true crime?
SPEAKER_04Um I've been doing uh pistachios lately. But maybe it's not my go-to. I don't have a go-to. You don't have a go-to snack? I don't really have a go-to snack. Mine is popcorn. Oh, pickles, maybe pickles.
SPEAKER_02Whoa. So you sit there with a big jar of pickles?
SPEAKER_04I'm a pickle fanatic.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_04I have a pickle problem. Or a pickle solution.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, I've got so many images. So do are you sitting there around a big oaken barrel of pickles? Yeah. Just do you pull them out with your fingers?
SPEAKER_04Just like a sheet tucked into my shirt. Yeah. A barrel of pickles.
SPEAKER_02You're pulling them out with your hands. You're doing the finger pickles. Just pull them out.
SPEAKER_04If you've never made a peanut butter pickle grilled cheese sandwich, you're not doing life.
SPEAKER_02Oh, shut up and go back to Mars. That is crazy talk. I'm gonna make you one. Whoa, that's too many flavors. So good. That is wow. Okay. And this is a person with Crohn's. Uh yeah. So I don't know. It's not You know what you can do. I'm not judging.
SPEAKER_04Pushing it to the limit.
SPEAKER_02Well, this has been a fun discussion. I really had fun talking about this topic. And I was really glad you could join me for this show. Thanks for doing it.
SPEAKER_04Of course, anytime.
SPEAKER_02And thank all of you for joining us on this episode. If you like what we're doing, you know we need your help. Already told you about the Instagram challenge. That's an easy thing to do, and it'll make my sister mad. And also, any place you can rate the show and give us a glowing rating that helps grow our community. We're on Patreon. You can support us that way. And you can also send us emails and make suggestions about topics or just interact with us as you will. We do so much appreciate your support and your joining us every week, and we look forward to seeing you next week. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are straddling an oak barrel filled with finger pickles or just someone watching a red ball rolling up to your feet, whatever that is, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Bye, everybody.