The Blindboy Podcast
Hosted by Blindboy Boatclub
Original podcast
Winning awards and Autistic burnout. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
9,409 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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Gargle on the Garibaldi barbell, you scandalous Anthony's. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. If this is your first episode, please consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. I've been nominated for another award.
I found out a couple of days ago that a documentary that I made last year called Blind by the Land of Slaves and Scholars. It's a documentary I made on RTE One. Um, it was framed as a documentary about the history of Irish Christianity.
I mean, this is how it works with television.
I didn't really wanna make a documentary about Irish Christianity. I wanted to make a documentary about the Irish literary tradition. But what was being commissioned was a documentary about Irish Christianity because it was being commissioned by the religious department in RTE. So I was like, okay, I wonder, can I get this documentary funded by the fucking religious department? But still make it a documentary about writing, which that's a very enjoyable way to approach any project. You'll hear me speaking frequently about the value of failure, try to fail.
That right there is an example of beginning a project with failure.
The only department in RTE that are willing to fund a documentary is the religious department. I don't really wanna make a documentary about religion. I don't give too much of a fuck about religion to tell you the truth. I adore certain religious writing as mythology, but the solemn reverence of belief system, I'm not particularly too interested in that. But I am a writer, I write fiction, I'm hugely interested in writing. I'm interested in the Irish literary tradition. I wonder, could I take this funding from the religious department? Tell them that I'm gonna make a documentary about early Irish Christianity,
but really it's a documentary about writing. So I've started the project with failure there with a pretty large problem. Blind Boy, why didn't you go to RTE and say to RTE, I want to make a documentary about the history of Irish writing? Because they'd say, fuck off, no one wants that, the money doesn't exist for that. There's money over there in the religious department for a documentary about religion. Would you like to pitch for that? This is often how television works. Like in the 1970s on the BBC, there was this explosion of incredibly creative horror,
like weird English pagan horror. But they were children's TV shows. I mean like. There was a thing called Pendles Fen from 1974. There was a TV series called Children of the Stones. Another one called The Stone Tape. Like Charlie Brooker would be obsessed with these. A lot of Black Mirror would trace its roots to this particular era of children's television on the fucking BBC in the seventies. Thing is, it wasn't children's television.
It was deeply strange, unique, original horror and fantasy and science fiction. But the reason these things got made and the reason they were so good and so original is because the artists who were creating them had to fly underneath the radar.
They didn't go to the BBC and say, I want to write some very difficult horror. Otherwise, the BBC would have said, A, we're not commissioning that. B, we will commission it, but we're going to be heavily involved. So instead, all these really strange and unique horror writers went to the children's television department and said, we want to do some scripted drama for children's TV. And because children's television, like this is, you're talking 1972, children's television as a concept was so new that no one really knew what it was supposed to be. There wasn't a lot of involvement in it.
There wasn't huge oversight. So horror writers had huge creative freedom in the fucking children's department. So if you're a British person, maybe in your 50s now, and when you were a child, there was really terrifying children's television about stone circles and weird English mythology. It's because of that that the really creative horror and fantasy writers went, fuck it, let's just pretend we're making children's television. Traumatized a bunch of kids, but brilliant television was made. So this documentary that's just been nominated for an award, it's.
It's the Grierson Awards, right? The British Documentary Awards. Really, really fucking prestigious. I'm very, very honoured. And especially, this is RTE. This is an RTE documentary. I don't know what the fuck it's getting. I don't know why the Brits are nominating it. The Irish Times reviewed it and called it a piece of shit. But again, to be honest, that's a good thing. If, if the Irish Times are saying that your RTE one documentary is, is bad, it probably means you're doing something challenging. Sometimes bad reviews are actually good for, for art. Anyway, look, I've been nominated for this award. And this is my 11th documentary.
So this is the 11th documentary that I've written and presented for television in the past, I think 10 years. And you know why I have 11 documentaries? Like, why did I start writing documentaries? Do you know why? Because I wanted to write comedy. Now, you might be thinking, well, if you wanted to write comedy TV shows, Blind Boy, then why didn't you go and ask for, to make comedy shows? Well, I, I, I tried this. 10, 15 years ago, I, I used to go to RTE all the time and pitch comedy shows. I pitched to RTE in 2011.
A version of the time, the great Irish epic myth written in the fucking, the Iron Age. I, I pitched a version of the time, but set in contemporary Limerick. And do you think they said yes to that? No, no. The RTE comedy department, their attitude is like, "We noticed you're doing something really good online. Here's an idea, here's an idea. The stuff you're making online is great. You have a lot of talent, it's very popular. Let's make it fucking shit.
Let's get some funding, the money, and let's make a piece of fucking shit and put it out. All this stuff that you're doing online, that's working really well, that people are loving. Let's, let's get that and let's make a piece of fucking shit. How about that?"
That, that was the RTE comedy department. That was my, that was my experience with the RTE comedy department. How, how can we make fucking shit? Because the commissioners, and the commissioner is the person with the purse, the commissioner is the person who decides what gets made and can have serious input. The commissioners, they weren't comedians, they weren't writers, they weren't artists, they weren't creative people. They were fucking accountants who just ended up as working and commissioning in comedy for some reason. In England, slightly different. I worked, I did a pilot for Channel Four years ago, I mentioned it, it didn't get commissioned.
But when I was making that pilot, the commissioner was a fellow called Phil Clark. This is someone who had worked as a producer on Peep Show and fucking Brass Eye. So not only is the person highly qualified, but when I'm a young fella going to them with my scripts, I'm walking out of meetings having learned something about the process of writing. Like, my commissioner is someone I bow down to. It's like, holy fuck, I'm speaking to someone who worked on Brass Eye. Like, I grew up worshipping Brass Eye. Brass Eye would have been one of the reasons I was like, I wanted to write comedy in the first place.
So that was Channel Four, 2011 Channel Four. But in RTE, the comedy department, it wasn't being manned by people who I would even consider to be, to be artists, to be creative. So what I started to do was, in RTE, okay, I wanna make comedy, I want to make comedy, but I don't wanna work with a fucking comedy department. Um, where I've got someone going, "I think we need some fart noises, put some fart noises in, what about boobs? Think it needs more boobs. Could you do another song about a horse? Do, do the horse song, do, do the one."
The horse one and it's in Limerick and everyone's got knives. Could you do that?
So I was like, what if, what if instead of making comedy for RTE, we go to the factual department and make documentaries? Like, TV's a fucking dying medium, but I'm trying to give you inside tricks here. I'm trying to give you some insider trading information. I don't even know if people are interested in this. But the thing is, so in, I think it was 2015,
made my first documentary called The Rubber Bandits Guide to 1916. I made that documentary as my master's degree. So I was doing my masters, but also making this documentary and combining the two of them together, two boards at one stone. When you write a documentary for the factual department, all they care about are whether the facts are correct or incorrect. Which meant if there was comedy, if there were jokes, the factual department don't step in and say, that joke isn't funny. Can you do that joke differently? That joke didn't land. Can we have some fart knives? Can you do another song about a horse? Can you make jokes about knives?
Because people from Limerick have knives, don't they? I have a suggestion for a joke that's slightly racist. Would you like a slightly racist suggestion for a joke? Are you up for that? That's done now, that's gone. Because the factual department are like, is this historical fact correct or incorrect? And then the comedy bit, they don't care. They don't care, that's not their job. Now suddenly, this whole creative palette is unleashed, completely unleashed, to do what you like comedically and artistically, so long as it's factually correct and verified. What's the downside? You're not getting paid.
The downside is you're not getting paid. So a factual documentary, the commission, you're getting paid to make a fucking documentary. You're not getting paid to write scripts. If you go to the comedy department or the drama department, you're being paid to write scripts. So when I was making comedy shows, but that were quote unquote documentaries, you're no one's getting paid. You're not getting paid. You're doing it for the the love of it, for the love of it, for the joy of it, for the creativity of it. That's why I was like, I'm doing this as a master's degree because I want to get something out of this. To be to be creative within the television industry, it's it's consistent deception,
deception. You have to deceive people. You have to deceive the commissioners. They release funding to do one thing. You then do another, but it's not dishonest because my heart is in the right place. I am deceiving the commissioners so that I can make the best piece of work. Like I've I have a documentary from 2018 called The Rob Bandits Guide to Reality. This was supposed to be a documentary about reality television. It's not a documentary about reality television. It's documentary about the history of Western philosophy. But what is philosophy only thinking about what reality is? So I pitched it as
the guide to reality and the commissioners were like, great, can't wait to see my reality TV fucking documentary. Are you going to interview anyone from It's Made in Chelsea or whatever the fuck it's called? No, this is a documentary about the history of philosophy. This was the one, actually no, I did. Yeah, I interviewed some fella from apologies for forgetting his name. He was a nice fella. He was on Made in Chelsea or one of those and interviewed him because I had to show on paper that they to make it appear to RTE that like this is actually a documentary about reality television. Look, look who I'm interviewing. This guy from Made in Chelsea interviewed him, but.
Tried to destabilise his sense of reality by using interrogation techniques that the CIA had developed, and by the end of it, got him to pledge allegiance to the IRA. This really nice, part English fellow.
Fuck was his name? Stevie, Stevie Johnson. So anyway, I did it again. Look, so my documentary, Blind by the Land of Slaves and Scholars, was commissioned by the RT Religious Department, and it was supposed to be a documentary about the history of Irish Christianity, which in a way it was. Really, it's about writing. It's about the history of writing. The point I'm trying to make is that that approach, that approach is actually quite conducive to making work that's unique and creative, because you begin with a problem that you have to write yourself out of. You begin with failure.
What's the problem? I don't want to make a documentary about early Irish Christianity. Well, what if we viewed early Irish Christianity, not necessarily as just the introduction of a new religion to Ireland, but a new religion that brought with it the new technology of writing? So that's what I did, and now that's been nominated for a really prestigious award, the Grierson Award, and I've been nominated for Best Presenter, and I'm up against Louis Theroux.
And the thing is, that's enough for me. That's enough. That is, I'm not even gonna think about winning or losing it. And genuinely, I mean that. Okay, put it this way.
I mentioned
I was also nominated for another award about six months ago for my short film, Did You Read About Ars and Fogarty?, for an RTS award. I won that. I forgot to tell you. I forgot to tell you that I won that award. I'm only telling you now, and about four or five months have passed. I actively don't care about awards. I actively do not focus on whether I win or lose awards, because to do so is dangerous to my creativity. So I ignore them. If you focus on awards, if you reduce art to a thing that you can win, you'll start to create what you think other people want to see.
You'll lose dialogue with your own creative voice. Whereas what I focus on is playfulness, passion, curiosity, and the feeling of flow, and trying to fail, and the enjoyment of the process. The process, the bit in the fucking middle. Whether I'm making a TV show, or writing a book, or writing one of these podcasts, it's the bit in the middle that's fun. It's the doing, the process, that's what I love. So thinking about, "Oh, I'd love to get that award", that pulls me out of all that. And I'll most likely get creative blocks, so I don't think about awards.
But I am hugely honoured to be, to be in a fucking list. I'm on a list of names of rewards beside Louis Theroux, who is one of the greatest documentary makers on the planet, and someone, I've been looking at Louis Theroux since I'm a kid. I remember being a child and flicking on the television, and his documentaries would come on, I'm like maybe 10 or 11 years of age, and his documentaries come on, and they felt so exciting and new, and they made me feel like an adult, and I'd never seen anything like his, the way that he was presenting things, and the subjects that he was doing documentaries about,
it was just, it was fucking inspiring as a kid. So to be on a list...
Up for a fucking documentary award and I'm there against Louis Theroux. What I have to take from that without sucking my own throat is that means that
as far as the industry is concerned, I've made a piece of work that's at the highest possible standard, that the standard of this work is at a level where it can be up against Louis Theroux's work for an award. So that's enough for me, that's enough. And the thing is with that is, see, that's about the work. That's about the piece of work, an aspect of my behaviour. It's not this ego shit, this ego shit or the ideal self, as Carl Rogers would call it. The, the me that I, that my insecurities would like other people to see.
And the other thing I focus on too with awards.
Um, so awards and praise, external praise, very dangerous, threatening stuff in this industry. The biggest killer of creativity is the fear of failing. I'm a firefighter and what I mean by that is a firefighter, their job is to put out fucking fires. But when there's not a fire, a firefighter spends their day putting out fires. Firefighters will set a fire in a controlled environment just to put it out. Or in Limerick, I see the firefighters training by the river. Sometimes firefighters might have to jump into the river to save a person who's drowning.
So I, I see the firefighters jump into the fucking river in their full clothes just to train so that when the moment comes in their job where they need to put out a fucking fire or jump into the river to save somebody, they're not afraid of fires or rivers. Well, fire and, and the torrent of a river to, to an artist, to a creative person is failure. And the best way to not be afraid of failure is to fail all the time. Make failure part of your process, but it also means ignoring what we define as success.
Or having a different definition of success. Success for me is, do I get to work? Do I get to enjoy the process? Did I enjoy the process? Was this project fun? Am I enjoying this project? That's success.
If I define success by awards, external praise, then you begin to hold on to that award and that praise and that feeling of being loved by other people. You hold on to that and you're like, oh no, I hope I don't lose this. I hope I don't fail. And then you become afraid of failure. You become afraid of fucking failure and you get creative block. So I look at awards differently. What are awards good for? Awards are good at bringing more work. That's all awards are good for. Um, I've got a production company now, Connell as well. And we've only made two things. That short film, did you read about Arsene Fogarty? And this documentary?
And both of them have been nominated for awards. So what that practically means is the chances of receiving more commissions goes up. And then I get to work another day and also employ lovely fucking talented, hardworking people to make these things. So that was a very unexpected turn.
In my week, I really wasn't expecting that at all. And it threw my week into turmoil because I've been doing loads of interviews with newspapers about it and stuff. What I'm hoping is that the local fucking newspaper, I want the local Limerick newspaper to pick up on it. So that's my ma has something to show the neighbours. I've mentioned it before, but I get a great buzz after that. I get a wonderful buzz when if I do something and then it's in the local Limerick paper and that Limerick paper goes into the doors of everyone's houses. And then my mother, who's in her eighties and all her friends are older too.
If I'm in the local paper for fucking anything, then she becomes the centre of attention with all her friends and has loads of chats and conversations. And it really lifts her spirits. She adores it. But local newspapers, there's two in Limerick. There's the Limerick Leader and there's the Limerick Post. If I was like a farmer harler and I'm opening a dog grooming parlor, then that would get into the local Limerick newspaper. But getting nominated for an international award for making a documentary, that won't get you into the local Limerick newspaper. I'm blacklisted in Limerick because I draw too much attention.
I bring too much international attention to the bird shit problem. If I ever get assassinated, if I ever get assassinated, it'll be a conspiracy from Limerick City Council. And they're gonna assassinate me because I speak too much truth about the smell of bird shit, starling shit in Limerick City centre. It's been communicated to me indirectly several times to stop speaking about the starling situation, to stop speaking about the bird shit, to stop referring to Bedford Row as the bird shit district. My bird shit whistleblowing is not making me any friends in Limerick City.
We're at peak bird shit right now. Um, all along the city centre, the starlings shit and the rain awakens the stench. And there's so much starling shit on the ground that people slip on it. And one of the reasons people slip on the starling shit, this is what they don't want me talking about this, but I see it every single day.
Peep. So when people go to the bird shit district and there's so much starling shit on the ground, the smell is so overpowering that people put their t-shirts up to their mouths, right? But the act of doing that, the act of needing to cover your mouth with your t-shirt, this then puts people off balance and then that's when they slip on the bird shit. You see people walking around Limerick City and on their shoulders.
Is is a stain of bird shit because they've just slipped on the bird shit and then fell into it. And when I see that the white stain on people's shoulders, I call it a Sarsfield's gash. The city centre where we are tormented with the shit of starlings, utterly tormented. What did Limerick City Council do to try and address the starling shit problem? Painted a giant mural, a giant mural of a starling in the bird shit district as if they're proud of it. It's a beautiful mural, but it does feel like a type of animist cult.
It feels very pagan. But this sudden award nomination, it it threw my week into disarray. My, this is the reason I'm doing a phone call podcast this week and not a rigorously researched hot take. The other thing that freaks me out about awards is it just means I have to be incredibly social. I receive multiple phone calls from well wishers, people who work with me, fair play to them. But then I guess the autistic, a little bit of the autistic burnout that happens when I have to deploy my my speaking to people
personality, my my neurotypical mask, my neurotypical mask. And see, here's the shitty thing about being autistic. Certain aspects of being an autistic person can make you an asshole under neurotypical rules. So being congratulated for things, so getting nominated for an award is, that means loads and loads of people who work with me and know me calling me up on the phone and congratulating me for getting nominated for an award. Congratulations.
And happy birthdays. Meeting somebody at a wedding reception off a small talk.
These scenarios are all scripted. They're kind of heavily scripted and ritualised. Like, happy birthday. Oh, it's your birthday. Oh, you're getting on now. Any plans? Sure, I just had a quiet one this year. Wedding receptions. Oh, don't they look great? Isn't it a wonderful day? Isn't it great that the groom's father came out and his health has been so bad? See, certain social situations, they become ritualised, heavily ritualised and heavily scripted, where when people enter these situations, they're actually playing a little character for a small while.
So when I, if I get nominated for an award, I get loads of phone calls and then people who ring me, even people that I know, they briefly slip into their character that they play when they congratulate someone for, for being nominated for an award. Oh, that's magnificent. Oh, that's brilliant. I'm so happy for you. You really deserve it. I'm really happy for you. These are very well-meaning, good things. Very nice things are being said to me. Nice people are doing kind things and, and ringing me up to think about me and wish me goodwill.
Wonderful things are happening, but because, because these specific conversations are ritualised in our culture. Like, when you say happy birthday to someone, you drop into your little happy birthday character that you've learned, okay? If you're at a funeral, that's a big one. If you're at a fucking funeral and you're going up to shake the hand of your friend because their parent died, you slip into funeral character for a little bit. You slip into condolence character. Sorry for your troubles, sorry for your troubles.
And then you leave that and then you see a person who you haven't seen in, in a while, but they're your friend, but you're still at a funeral. So then you have to slip into your... Meeting a friend at a funeral character, which is, oh, they looked very peaceful. They looked very peaceful in the coffin, didn't they? Didn't they? Oh, must be very tough. Makes you think, makes you think. I suppose, I suppose we'll all be up there in the front row someday. If, if you're neurotypical, you're probably hearing me saying that and you're going, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That is what happens, isn't it? I've never really thought about that, but yeah, we, we, we play these little characters sometimes in certain social situations. I've never really thought about it that way.
And like, that's the point, yeah. Because for neurotypical people, that's instinct, pure instinct. You just pick it up and you absorb it and learn it and deploy it. And it's, it's a natural flowing thing. For some autistic people, it's jarring. And then we go, what's happening here? What's this? What, what, what is this new thing? What, what's this new way of talking? What's this that I'm seeing? I need to learn and watch how to do this and really make sure I know what it's for and when to use it and how to respond to it and why it's happening. And it's tough going and it's difficult. And it carries the, the massive threat of getting it wrong.
Having a social faux pas, being publicly embarrassed, being stared at, deviating in any way from the ritual that other people just understand as instinct. Like for years, when I was a kid, people used to say happy birthday to me. And sometimes I'd go, what are you congratulating me for? I haven't achieved anything. This isn't an achievement. Loads of people are seven. I didn't have to do anything to become seven. It just happened. Why, why are you congratulating me? Why can't, why can't you congratulate me for something that took effort? Something like, I, I have a painting over here. What, what about this painting? I don't understand. Happy birthday? Why? I haven't done anything. It just happened to me. Time did it.
You should be congratulating time. And I remember this, I was. Was it one of my fucking neighbours? It was a neighbour who, again, one of these people who believed that children must be polite. So I, I, I wasn't having this happy birthday anyway. And I was like, you, you should be, you should say happy birthday to time. Because time is what did my age to me. And the neighbour, she was in my kitchen, my ma was there. And I picked the clock up off the kitchen table. And I said, say happy birthday to the clock.
I thought this was a brilliant idea, a far more rational solution than saying happy birthday to me. Say, congratulate the fucking clock, the clock is after doing age to me. And then depending on the adult, some adults would, would look at that and they'd, they'd find humour in it. Or they might enjoy that, the lateral thinking involved. I got in trouble, I got in trouble for being cheeky to my neighbour because she was just trying to wish me happy birthday. Her husband had recently died, that was it. Her husband had recently died and she was fragile. But those little experiences add up and they form as a ball of anxiety in your stomach. In, in any of these ritualised situations.
Like my dad, I used, I used to be a kid and I'd watch my dad. And my dad, when, when, when my dad would meet a stranger and he would engage in, in ritualised conversations. He used to have phrases that he'd say, he used to say, and as the man says. Always wear sun cream when it's sunny, or as the man says. Don't have your tea too hot. It didn't matter what he was saying, but he would prefix statements with as the man says. And I'm there as an autistic child going, what the fuck is going on here? Why, when my father speaks to strangers? Why only, only when he speaks to strangers does he use the term as the man says?
Who is the fucking man and what is he saying? Why doesn't my dad say to me as the man says? It's, it's difficult to describe these things.
But neurodivergent people, autistic people in particular, can struggle with these particular social rituals because they're structured but unwritten social performances. It's like a cultural theatre and they rely on, you need to be able to interpret hidden cues, to conform to group norms and suppress personal authenticity. You have to suppress what you actually want to say in order to deploy this character in certain social situations.
So when people ring me up to congratulate me about winning an award, very kind things, very wonderful, lovely, kind, well-meaning things, when people ring me up to go, "I just wanna say congratulations on that award, congratulations on that award." And then I'm going, "What type of tone is this? That's not, I know you, that's not the normal tone that we speak in. What's this one?" "Oh, that's your learned social performance for when you congratulate people. This is something that you've learned from watching. This is a social ritual." But of course, while I'm thinking that, I'm not listening to the fucking person, I then feel a bit like I'm in trouble. Now, I can't explain that, that's some shit
from my childhood, but autistic people would prefer sincerity over convention. When someone hits me with conventions, the, the character, the performance that they have when they're congratulating someone, when I get hit with these conventions, that then gives me a performance anxiety and I don't know how to respond to that. But I do respond, I go, "Oh, thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much." And I go kinda quiet and awkward and I really want the phone call to end. And then I feel awful. I then feel like a bad person because
I'm aware, this person's just, they're thinking about you, they're ringing you up to congratulate you because you've, you've been nominated for an award. I mean, what, what, what's a way that would?
What's a way that a person could ring me up and wish me well? Without me experiencing a performance anxiety or it draining my social battery, they'd have to ring me up and instead of congratulating me for being nominated for an award, they'd have to ring me up and ask me, "What do you think about the bird shit situation in Limerick City?" Then I'm comfortable. See, I can't talk about that bird shit in a ritualistic way. If I'm to speak about Limerick City's starling shit situation, I have to use skills of observation, critical thinking, I have to be passionate about it. Maybe what I'm so enamored about with the bird shit is how it disrupts social norms.
I swear to fuck, I swear to fuck, on a wet day, wet day, when's a good time to catch it? About nine or 10 a.m., about nine or 10 a.m., before the council come out to wash the bird shit away. You can see people standing on the street, having chats with each other, right? But without them even knowing it, they have their t-shirts up over their faces, they're covering their mouths and noses. And I watch people and I don't think they even know, I don't think they're consciously aware that they're changing their behaviour because the stench of bird shit is so great.
I could talk to 16 people a day about bird shit and not experience burnout or... I can have enjoyable, engaging conversations with people and come away feeling energized. Long conversations, like an hour long, just talking about bird shit, but multiple five-minute conversations, where it's something like someone ringing me up to congratulate me for an award nomination, those are the conversations that can deplete my social battery, the ritualistic small talk.
Eventually leaves me feeling kinda dizzy and disoriented and then forgetful. Forgetful and kinda ditzy. That's the real, the complexity of being neurodivergent there because it sounds like I'm complaining about people congratulating me. Under neurotypical rules, you'd be a fucking asshole. No.
This very kind, compassionate, lovely thing that people are doing to ring me up to congratulate me. This wonderful thing that people are doing. That also happens to be very overwhelming for me as a neurodivergent person. And also, I'm not gonna ring a bunch of people up and say, "The next time you need to congratulate me for something, instead of congratulating me, speak to me about bard shit." No, I'm not gonna do that because that's mad. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna keep doing it. Because awareness, awareness is half the battle. Noticing.
"Oh, I feel very forgetful. I feel a little bit dizzy. I'm in that headspace where I might lock myself out of my office or do something careless." "Ah, that must have been all the small talk, all the ritualistic small talk that you had to do this morning." "That was quite a large cognitive load. I asked my brain to engage in a fairly complex interplay of social, emotional and linguistic processes that are particularly challenging for me." You might be thinking, "Oh, come on. A load of people rang you up and congratulated you." "How was that that hard? Just get on with it."
Different brains. A dyslexic person might struggle greatly with a body of text that you and I consider to be simple. Or how would you feel if you're neurotypical? How would you feel about?
Sitting down and only reading about bird shit for 17 hours straight. I mean focusing on, on learning everything you possibly can about bird shit. Now, I've done this before. I've got a podcast called An In-Depth Thesis About Bird Shit From Last Year. Asking a neurotypical person to sit down for 17 hours straight and focus only on bird shit and research bird shit and think only about bird shit. That could be classed as a very strange type of psychological torture. Very difficult, very uncomfortable, incredibly draining. For me, that's just a Monday. That's a fucking Monday and that's...
I can't, I can't imagine doing anything else. I'd feel very energized and I'd be pissed off that I had to go to bed. Let's have a little Ocarina pause now. I don't have my Ocarina. What do I have?
I've got a manual for a radiator. I've got a little manual for a new radiator that I got for when the weather gets cold. I'm not using it right now, but I have the manual, which is quite small and slick, and I'm going to hit myself into the head with this manual. Um, while you listen to adverts for bullshit.
Sounds far worse.
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Than it is, this is actually a very pleasant hit.
Doesn't sound great.
I know, but lovely gentle manual, nice little slaps on the head, even though it sounded loud, that was not an unpleasant experience. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. This podcast is how I earn a living, it's my full-time job, it's the reason I show up every single week. This podcast, it pays my wages, it's how I rent out my office, it's how I buy my equipment. This podcast is literally how I earn a living, it's my full-time job. It's how I'm able to, even to make fucking documentaries on TV.
It's this award that I said that I got nominated for, there's no money in TV, there's no money in making a one-off documentary for television. It's eight months' work, you get paid for about six weeks of that eight months. And also with this documentary, it was my production company, so I didn't bother taking any money from it, I put the money back into making the thing. But I only had the time to make that documentary, the time and space to make that documentary because of my Patreon subscribers, because I have a fucking full-time job and my full-time job is this podcast.
And that allows me to have the time and space to be an artist. So I'm eternally grateful to all my patrons. If this podcast brings you mirth or merriment or entertainment or whatever the fuck, please consider signing up for the Patreon, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it, listen for free, listen for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. So very quickly, gigs.
Next week, on the Sunday, on the Sunday, and I think at like 2pm, I'm at All Together Now, the festival, I'm gonna be doing a live podcast. If you are at All Together Now, come along, come along for the crack. Sunday at 2pm.
Lovely, lovely time to be doing a live podcast. They offered me a later slot. No, it's a fucking festival. If I'm doing a spoken word event, 2pm on a Sunday is actually perfect. That's the worst time in the world if you're doing music. If you're doing a music gig, you do not want 2pm on a Sunday. That is a terrible slot. But if we're doing something like a live podcast, it's fucking perfect. Because what you get at 2pm is
people, they've had their lion, the Sunday morning lion, they're fucking wrecked, they're hungover because it's a festival. But by 2pm, people have had breakfasts, they're thinking about how to celebrate their Sunday night, but they're not there yet. So you get that wonderful lull, a lovely lull, we're coming along to a live podcast, sitting down and just listening to speech. It's actually quite an enjoyable therapeutic break in the middle of hovering ketamine up your arse, or whatever the fuck you're doing nowadays. Then gigs after that, what have we got? September,
I'm up in Derry at the Millennium Forum on the 19th of September. It's going to be wonderful. Is that a Tuesday? I think it is. No, no, no, it's not, is it? Oh, that's a Friday. A lovely, that'll be an energetic, an energetic Friday gig in Derry on the 19th of September. And then, on the Tuesday, the 23rd, I'm up in Vickers Street. Wonderful, wonderful Vickers Street. And that, I believe that gig is nearly sold out. So that's down to the very, very last tickets. So get your tickets for that. I know it's only, it's eight weeks away or whatever, but tickets are almost gone for the Vickers Street gig. People come from abroad for my Vickers Street gigs. So I
mentioned before the break. Like, when I got diagnosed as autistic three years ago, I gained this completely new toolkit around my mental health that I didn't have before diagnosis. And, as I said, awareness is half the battle for me. So for me to be able to be aware, to notice, "Oh, you're feeling a bit forgetful and ditzy and dizzy and confused. This means that you've done something incredibly taxing for your neurodivergent brain and you need to have awareness around it."
I want to tell you a fable, an Aesop's fable called "The Fox and the Crows." Now, this story, I think it's about 2,000 years old. Aesop, we don't know if Aesop was one person or several people, but Aesop left a lot of fables behind, their stories that have a moral tale. Aesop was apparently a slave and wrote these wonderful stories. "The Fox and the Crows." So there was this crow, and crows are really fucking smart. Crows are very smart animals.
And this crow had gotten itself a piece of cheese, big tasty piece of cheese. And the crow went to the top of a branch on a tree to eat this piece of cheese. And then along came a fox. Now, the thing is, foxes are known for being, you know, clever and sly. Crows, crows are known for being intelligent. But crows are not known for being beautiful. Crows, with all due respect. They're ugly birds, as birds go. They're scruffy scavengers and they don't sound very nice.
You never want to wake up to the sound of a crow's caw. It's not peaceful bird song. Crows cawing, it sounds like a warning. So this fox, anyway, looks up at the branch and he sees the crow. And the crow has eaten this piece of cheese. And the fox is thinking, "I want that piece of fucking cheese."
So he speaks to the crow and he says, "Oh my god, you're looking fantastic today, you are. Oh my goodness me."
And the crow stops eating and holds the cheese in its beak and is listening. And the crow is thinking, "What? Me? Beautiful? Gorgeous? I'm a crow." "But fuck it, if this, if this fox is complimenting me, I feel kinda good with these compliments."
And then the fox continues, "You are the most beautiful crow I've ever seen. Forgive me, I know that they say that crows aren't beautiful, but you are exceptional. Look at your gorgeous plumage and your shiny beak." Now the crow is really feeling it. The crow starts spreading its wings and showing off a little bit and really feeling fucking flattered by this fox. "My god, I've never been given these compliments before." The crow is thinking, "Maybe this fox, maybe the fox is telling the truth."
And you're kinda disappointed in the crow because it's like, "Crows are fucking smarter than this. You're getting, you're getting flattered here? What's going on? I, I thought you were better than this." The whole thing that you have going on as crows is, "We know you're not attractive looking. We know you don't sound good, but you're real fucking smart. You're so smart." And you make up for it with that shit, alright? But no, this crow is like, "I'm, I'm feeling like a chaffinch here. I feel gorgeous. I'm like a bird of paradise. And look at all these compliments I'm getting from the fox. This is amazing." But the whole time the crow is holding the cheese in its mouth. Hasn't opened its mouth, holding the fucking cheese in. And then the fox goes,
"You're so gorgeous. I, I just have to hear you sing. I have to hear you sing. I know they say that crows' calls aren't very nice to listen to, but you are so physically beautiful that you must have a voice to match." Now the crow is bowled over with the compliments. Fucking head up its arse with the compliments.
And the crow just basically listens to the fucking fox's compliments, takes them on board and says, do you know what, maybe I do have a beautiful voice. So the crow opens its mouth to sing and lets out a big ugly caw. And as it does that, it drops the cheese onto the ground and the fox eats it and runs away saying, you stupid ugly prick. I was undertaking the piss. Thanks for the cheese. Now, it's a wonderful fable. That's a gorgeous fable. It warns us about the dangers of vanity, about the ideal self. If you try
to live your life in accordance with the approval of other people, you will never find happiness. You can never chase the approval of other people because it's continually changing. What you can only do is focus on approving of yourself, loving yourself, but don't be chasing other people's approval. It teaches us that. It teaches us to be cautious and wary of people who are too forthcoming with compliments, especially if those compliments feel like fucking bullshit. We know when someone's bullshitting us with compliments. But sometimes the compliment is nice and you want to believe it, even though you know
it's bullshit. It's a wonderful story, but the reason I'm thinking of that story is... So like I said, when I'm faced with feelings of burnout because I've been overstimulated, I try to be very self-aware. And one thing that gave me real self-awareness yesterday was I noticed that I was walking around my office, down in the canteen, with my credit card in my mouth.
Now, this is something I've been doing for ages, but I only noticed it yesterday. When my social battery is down, I become very wary of any potential small talk. I become terrified of taxis, for instance. I can't get into a taxi in case that taxi driver wants to have small talk conversation. I avoid small talk. And one thing that I do is if I'm walking down to the canteen in work, I'll put my credit card into my mouth. I might be holding a cup of coffee and I'll put my credit card into my mouth.
In the way that sometimes if our hands are full, we will hold things in our mouth. A set of keys, a card, whatever. But I noticed yesterday, oh, when I don't wanna engage in small talk, I put this credit card in my mouth because no one will talk to me. You're not gonna talk to someone who's got a credit card in their mouth. It's the perfect excuse to not have to talk to someone. You can publicly mumble at people and leave the conversation if you've got a credit card stuck in your mouth. And I realised yesterday, oh, fuck. This is a little artistic accommodation that I've made for myself that I'm not even aware of,
that I do when I'm feeling burnt out to avoid small talk. And the reason I fucking figured out that I do it is there's one person in my office building who knows who I am. It's the barefoot accountant. If you're deep in the lore of this podcast, you'll know who the barefoot accountant is. I won't explain him, but he's someone in my office who knows who I am. And I was in the canteen yesterday and the barefoot accountant came up to me, nice and discreet and quietly because he keeps the secret of who I am. And he said to me, Congratulations on the award nomination. I saw the article. And then what did I do? I said, "Thank you."
And I dropped the credit card on the fucking ground out of my mouth, like the crow in the story, which was awkward and strange. And then I had to step down on the ground and pick up the credit card that I'd just dropped out of my mouth. And other people looked and it was a little bit socially awkward. But it was that exact moment, because as soon as that happened, I instantly remembered the story of the fox and the crow.
And I said to myself, "Oh, fucking hell, you put a credit card into your mouth when you're starting to feel afraid of small talk." And just that, just that little incident and that awareness was enough to bring me into a a mindful, self-reflective state where I'm looking at, okay, how do I feel? What's going on for me? And when I want to heal myself and recuperate from, we'll say, potential burnout, what I do is I avoid chatting to people, that's fair enough. And then I set aside, we'll say, a half an hour. And I say to myself, "In this half an hour, I'm going to
draw a list of small tasks that I've been putting off and I'm gonna do them." And they have to be boring tasks. And it can be as simple as hovering my carpet, paying a bill, answering an email, or even responding to a text that I hadn't responded to. And that little half an hour of identifying tasks, initiating them and completing them, whatever that does to my brain, to my confidence, it's like getting my head and plugging it into a really rapid iPhone charger. And then I don't feel that confusion, that dizziness anymore. I feel capable and comfortable and confident and happy.
All right, so this week's episode was a, this was a pure phone call. This was a phone call podcast. It wasn't prepared. I never want a half hours of hot take. But yeah, my week was thrown into disarray because of the unexpected award nomination. So I'll catch you next week with a hot take. I'm really considering.
I'd love to do something about the fucking Bible, the Old Testament. I'd love to have a good crack at the first bit of the Old Testament from,
from fucking Adam and Eve, no, from, from creation up as far as the Tower of Barbell. And I know I don't give a fuck about religion. This is, this is mythology, this is mythology. And I've been thinking about the Old Testament a lot, especially in the context of simulation theory and AI. So I might, I might chat about that next week if I get a spicy enough take. In the meantime, rub a dog, genuflect to a swan. And I said a couple of weeks ago that if you see a snail and the snail is like in the sunshine, to maybe pick the snail up and put the snail into a nice, wet, dark
place where it's happier. But someone mailed me, interestingly, to say, so if, if, if you do see a snail, right?
You have to be careful about how you pick up a snail. So what you should do with a snail is gently tap the snail's shell first and give the snail the opportunity to go back inside its, its shell. And then, once the snail is in its shell, then pick it up. Cause apparently, when you pick a snail up and it's out of its shell, when it's like its arse and its head are sticking out, when you pick the snail up that way, it can actually damage their organs. So tap the snail on the shell, give the snail the opportunity to go inside and then move it to a darker, wetter area. All right, dog bless.
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