De-Clutter With Me — Journey-Man or Guru?

Okay, so I wonder how this will end because there's a lot going on and I've just recovered from a colossal system crash and I'm walking around the house and if you're wondering what this is, it is a day in the life of an off-duty psychologist. I feel like a coffee, so it's going to get noisy. If you like ambient sound, stick around.

Just rinse out my old cup. You know, I figure I'm kind of just sticking around anyway and some things are seemingly complicated at first, extremely frustrating, highly stressful. And I thought maybe I'll peel back a layer of reality to confront myself and also maybe if you're listening to this, of all things, go and listen to something else first of all.

That's my first piece of a mind stream and if not, it might be something that's useful for you to kind of think about, to be confronted by yourself. Because it gets very cumbersome and it's hard to bring together the elements that require unity, that require unification. And there comes the espresso shots just coming through now. That's a long shot.

It's a long shot. That's a long shot. Give that a rinse. And the portafilter is now clean. Flush it out. Now, what is this? You might skip ahead, you might bounce around. But I have been swinging back and forth between juggling so many things that I'm doing. That's, you know what? Maybe I'll document it. Maybe I will hear myself and sort it out.

So, for a long time I've been trying to declutter my life and I used to think that multitasking was a virtue. And, you know, the whole productivity scene and getting things done and building systems and buying technology and installing software yeah I got sucked in. And I thought, you know what? Do more. Buy more and build more. So now instead of the systems and technology instead of the systems and technology managing my life I have become managed by technology and I am managing its life.

Bismillah. So what are we going to do? Maybe this is a journey. Maybe this is a guru. Maybe it's going to be a breakthrough. Maybe it's going to be revealing. Maybe it's going to be boring. But we're here. So I am going to get this started. Let's see what's crashed what's alive and what's not. Because I have daily work life to manage clinical cases for example and then there is the business management side of things and then there is the parenting life side of things then there is study and the academic side of things 40 plus and still studying and then there is what else is there there is this is what I do with my patients sometimes I get them to enumerate and quantify their their issues and their concerns and it can it's revealing can be really revealing let's see I'm downloading new software updating everything isn't that crazy you spend all this time and effort and money and energy trying to build systems which is you might look at it as yeah it's nice they provide updates and ongoing maintenance so that's good it's not a set it and forget it type of relationship sometimes you just want that you just want the good old days of technology was just you buy something and it just continues to work alright it doesn't need an upgrade it doesn't need a tune up you just look after it an old tape player for audio it was just you put the tape in and you press play and it works as long as you don't stick a kitchen knife in there oh that's good coffee alright if you're into this grab a coffee yourself and you might like this this is going to be audio only for the time being unless if I you know manage to get all this going to declutter unfortunately sometimes the best way through a storm is to go through the storm itself and for a long time it was a lot of withdrawal and a lot of avoidance and you get busy and there's family issues and personal issues and work issues and study issues and so I think it's useful to kind of first deconstruct what's going on and I've just added a kind of live stream on I've got to stop this yeah let's see where I'm up to with my work so I'm just putting in my appointments I have to connect to multiple systems to do that and then you've got the credentials and security gates but what I might do is actually because I've got some phone calls and things to make and I don't know how I'm going to do it while I'm doing this so maybe I just need to not do this which is a big problem that I have in not doing it I know the right thing to do I'm exposing myself a lot here there's a lot of vulnerability and you know I've got phone calls that I'm fielding and multiple accounts multiple emails multiple chats lots of demands for time that happens and so we need to kind of really think about where our time is going where we are allowing it to go if we're managing it and I think it becomes very apparent when either you need someone to check in on you or someone actually does check in on you because you've been so distant and absent so it's tricky but it's not and that's the thing that's the theme of this conversation it's frustratingly simple is what it is we know the answers and we have a series of thoughts about it we toil we stress we lose sleep we kick and scream we yell we cry we laugh we entertain ourselves we distract ourselves but we still learn the answer we need to get it done the only way through is through sometimes and by the way none of this is advice or clinical relationship or therapeutic relationship is not being formed so be responsible for your own actions this is not for children and this is not a replacement for good old fashioned healthcare and so on that note a big one is when we have a desire we have a desire to change and we know what the change is and we yearn for the change and we ask for the change and we want the change it's a want want want and want is a verb that doesn't change anything I can want food I can want a sandwich but it doesn't get it in my mouth it doesn't get it through my belly it doesn't feed me you know and so we need to move and shift that want to an actionable verb something that's going to make an effect a change a transformation it's going to morph reality it's going to transform the situation so instead of wanting a sandwich and just leaving it like that it's a very nebulous goal when you think about it just to break that down for a minute it becomes about it becomes a task about what do I need to do what is the do word that I need to include and I might say I might break that down into simple parts and might say you know get some bread get some tomatoes you know get some cheese whatever you want to put in your sandwich acquire you know acquire the ingredients slice the tomatoes you know you've got to actually move the thing otherwise if you just say I want a sandwich it's not going to happen but if you stand up and walk to the kitchen or walk to the bread shop very simple stuff it's just it's frustratingly simple I wonder if I can put in a put in a sound effect here does it work it's frustratingly simple hey kind of works all right my emulator has popped up I develop stuff by the way I have a background in computer science what's going on here okay I have a background in computer science that was my undergrad and then I kind of went into education and was a teacher at school and then I became a registered psychologist and then it was 25 years later here we are let's see if we can get a bit of a sitrep of my recovered systems now so I am going to just reorganise my windows so I'm building like different kinds of apps everyone is these days it's kind of like saying when you know imagine when MS Word came out or well Word did come out I forgot what it was called there was an Amstrad back in the day green screen green text black screen green text if you want to get technical and what would happen was you would put in a large floppy disk the actual floppy ones not the not the three and a half inch ones it was the five and a quarter inch the bendy ones and so you would load the first disk in there was no installation there was no on system memory but anyway enough nostalgia I signed in see this is the thing this is the problem I know the problem and I just keep going around in circles with it unfortunately is that paused as well yeah that's paused so I'm dealing with my cloud drive I'm signing into remote systems I'm trying to bring up the video trying to get the mouse thing going what was the name of the software for this brand again okay so that's running so the driver's going so I can use my mouse and keyboard features see what I'm saying about maintaining I'm probably going to end up diagnosing myself with something after this okay update successful thank you very much okay battery low so you got to plug that in there's another upkeep job all right good I've got a slow blink on the LED so that's charging and I'm going to open a new desktop and bring still not happening window window just keeps shifting to the side that's crazy move that here move that desktop across if I can start recording maybe you guys can find a way to see me don't want to redeem anything now so minimise that I'm not restarting the cloud sync I will install and restart my containers from Docker Docker from Docker Docker it's a weird one sometimes it helps other audiences or other people listening when Australians pronounce the R's at the end of their sentences or words then you feel like a sellout and then when you speak in an Australian accent then you feel like a bit of a you feel overly native all right let's see if anything's landed here all right I'm gonna grind my teeth because there's a lot of stress going on at the moment and I'm gonna have to rearrange some windows I've got to make some phone calls in a minute so I can't stay too long but suffice it to say let me see if I am able to start a stream or record a video and see what happens because I want to quite simply just synchronize the audio with a video and I apologize if I'm like swallowing and whatever this is like inside your ear quite literally and I know it's going to sound sad but I appreciate you letting me into your ear so I heard that in a podcast once someone said it who was it it was early days early days like we're talking like Tim Ferris or someone might have been Tim Ferris you know thank you for letting me into your life and into your ears or something like that it was like his go away line like his sign off alright let's find some software here close this open developer settings it has docker docker failed anyway don't need it until you need it close that I wonder if I should just start recording let me just start recording and see what happens I'll make it unlisted just in case I'm in your ears that's annoying if I say every time I said ears that happened that would be really annoying annoying I'm putting that in the description annoying ear ramblings dot dot dot dot now why can't this connect hmm don't tell me I've got the same problem again my internet's kind of been unstable recently as well so I'm kind of trying to revive multiple systems here I'm like a technological trauma surgeon just bouncing in and out of wards and rooms and reviving nodes is unstable really bad today diagnose and remediate okay so I've just sent off an agent to get to work and I wonder if I just do a local recording undo the stream hmm let me let me just tell yeah yeah sorry I know it's it's not a radio station so I don't feel the need the need to kill the silence or anything and that's an interesting one as well in my sort of clinical practice during therapeutic conversations you just when there's silence you just kind of let the silence be sometimes you have to interrupt sometimes you are interrupted and that's okay as well let's see what's going on here not really getting anything back yeah yeah I'm going to leave it there and it's going to hit about the 25 minute mark almost we're at 24 and you know join me maybe it's going to be a journey join me on this journey it'll be weird it'll be strange something different something novel you know I'm getting sick and tired of the same old stuff on the internet everything's you know there's a hook there's a problem I'm going to show you how to fix the problem but wait till the end the last one's going to surprise you click on the link below if you don't know who I am blah blah blah blah and then you know it's just it gets into the last frame and then it goes okay if you want to know how to solve the problem click on this video and it's like oh my god I got caught in the funnel so it gets very hyper optimized and algorithmically entrapping so I miss the good old days of just yapping so you know lean in lean into the walls around me and listen to what's going on inside my mind and what life is like in my head and observe and take notes and share what's going on with you what are your frustrating spots and you know what you know it's very niche it's going to be like a strange thing if there's anyone actually interested in that you know be strange with me and we can kind of get there together and you know what who knows maybe I'll take a page out of your book and you'll take a page out of my book who knows let's see how that goes and I don't even know if I'm going to publish this but it could be the beginning of something big or it could just be the beginning of a big flop as well so let's see in any case all the best if you're still sticking around then thank you that's good I hope you enjoyed this my name is my name I'm just a frustratingly simple guy it doesn't matter who I am look around and see if you want anything go and get it don't just want go and do it turn your want verb into a series of actionable sub steps that you can break down go and make that sandwich slice the bread put it in your mouth you have to chew chew is a verb you have to chew the food for it to get to your stomach otherwise wanting doesn't put the food in your stomach so I will see you when I see you next and I don't know when that might be could be in another five years it could be in another five minutes all the best take care thank you for letting me into your ears