Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm prepared for a pretty odd episode today, to be honest.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I think, uh, listeners, Myke and I are quite a pair today, I think.

00:00:08 ◼   ► There's a reason it's been a thousand years between episode recordings.

00:00:13 ◼   ► How you doing, buddy?

00:00:16 ◼   ► We'll talk about this in a little bit more detail later on,

00:00:19 ◼   ► but I'm in a bet- I'm in a better place now than I've been so far.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I'll put trajectories and all that. How are you?

00:00:25 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure where the stock market of me is right now.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Let's just say COVID has had a 100% success rate in the last two months in Cortex.

00:00:34 ◼   ► That's setting the stage. You know, the last time we spoke it was me. Just me, you know.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Now it's both of us.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it's both of us.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I messaged you and I was like, "Myke, whatever is the furthest day from now that we can possibly

00:00:53 ◼   ► record this show, that has to be the recording day."

00:00:56 ◼   ► And today is that day.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - My expectation is it really is the very, very last moment

00:01:02 ◼   ► when this episode gets posted,

00:01:04 ◼   ► in which we are contractually obligated

00:01:06 ◼   ► to post said episode.

00:01:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:09 ◼   ► But before we get to all of that,

00:01:11 ◼   ► I wanted to let our cortexes know about MoreTex.

00:01:14 ◼   ► You can go to getmoretex.com

00:01:16 ◼   ► and you will get yourself longer, ad-free episodes

00:01:19 ◼   ► of not just this episode of Cortex,

00:01:22 ◼   ► we're going all the way back multiple years

00:01:24 ◼   ► for bonus content.

00:01:25 ◼   ► So you get an extra segment at the end

00:01:28 ◼   ► of every single episode if you're a more Texan.

00:01:30 ◼   ► And if you wanna go right the way back

00:01:32 ◼   ► to the very beginning of this show,

00:01:34 ◼   ► every single episode of Cortex

00:01:36 ◼   ► has no ads in it for more Texans.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And remastered in higher audio quality as well.

00:01:43 ◼   ► - That's my favorite part, remastered edition.

00:01:45 ◼   ► - For your listening pleasure.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And as I said before, in case you've forgotten

00:01:49 ◼   ► over the last couple of years, you probably have

00:01:51 ◼   ► because who keeps track of this other than me,

00:01:53 ◼   ► There are subtle tweaks to some of the episodes.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Some of the timing has changed a little bit

00:01:58 ◼   ► in some of the episodes.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I've gone in there and give it the mic of 2021,

00:02:03 ◼   ► hands, rather than, you know, 2016.

00:02:06 ◼   ► He didn't know what he was doing.

00:02:07 ◼   ► So you can always go and get that at getmoretext.com.

00:02:09 ◼   ► But now, as an added bonus,

00:02:12 ◼   ► our 2022 crossover special is now available.

00:02:15 ◼   ► So over the last, I think maybe six years,

00:02:19 ◼   ► we've gotten together with Jason Snell,

00:02:21 ◼   ► who I host the Upgrade podcast with,

00:02:23 ◼   ► and we were doing a bunch of text adventures,

00:02:25 ◼   ► and the last two years,

00:02:26 ◼   ► we've recruited our friend Tony Sindala

00:02:28 ◼   ► to be a game/dungeon master for us.

00:02:30 ◼   ► So we've been going through an RPG,

00:02:32 ◼   ► an epic RPG adventure story,

00:02:35 ◼   ► which this time had us dealing with a supply chain crisis.

00:02:39 ◼   ► It was a great time.

00:02:42 ◼   ► We put it together, it came out a little bit late,

00:02:44 ◼   ► 'cause I wanted to give it the edit and touches

00:02:46 ◼   ► that I always give it,

00:02:47 ◼   ► so lots of sound effects and stuff like that.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Because of COVID, it took longer than I wanted to,

00:02:51 ◼   ► but it is available now.

00:02:53 ◼   ► All Relay FM members get this in the crossover feed.

00:02:56 ◼   ► But if you become a More Texan,

00:02:58 ◼   ► you also get the crossover feed,

00:02:59 ◼   ► which has bonus specials from a bunch of Relay FM shows

00:03:02 ◼   ► going all the way back to like 2015, 2016.

00:03:06 ◼   ► So there's tons of fantastic content in there for you,

00:03:09 ◼   ► along with the longer ad-free episodes

00:03:11 ◼   ► of More Tex every month.

00:03:12 ◼   ► So go to getmoretex.com and you can sign up today.

00:03:16 ◼   ► - I don't want to spoil it for anybody,

00:03:18 ◼   ► But in this most recent members episode,

00:03:20 ◼   ► you created what may be the best sound effect

00:03:23 ◼   ► that has ever existed in a podcast.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I really appreciated your editing work on this one.

00:03:28 ◼   ► It really made me laugh.

00:03:29 ◼   ► - I will say that that's a particular thing.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Many people have contacted me to tell me

00:03:34 ◼   ► how weird and/or funny they found that,

00:03:37 ◼   ► which is hilarious to me because when you mentioned it,

00:03:40 ◼   ► I did not know what you were talking about.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I had no memory of it.

00:03:44 ◼   ► 'Cause there's so many, I make so many peculiar choices

00:03:47 ◼   ► There's a ton of Easter eggs in the editing of this that really only I will ever get.

00:03:53 ◼   ► So like, another little spoiler, there's a moment where two pieces of music are playing

00:03:57 ◼   ► over each other.

00:03:58 ◼   ► One of them, which you would not be able to tell because of the way I edited it, is the

00:04:01 ◼   ► girl from Ipanema, which is a long running Cortex joke at this point.

00:04:07 ◼   ► So that's in there.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't even catch that one.

00:04:10 ◼   ► I didn't catch that it was the girl from Ipanema.

00:04:11 ◼   ► No, because there's another piece of music laid over the top of it.

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's inaudible.

00:04:15 ◼   ► But it's in there, you know?

00:04:17 ◼   ► in there so there's a ton of great stuff you can go and check it out for yourself

00:04:21 ◼   ► get more text.com now before we get into the meat of the episode today I just

00:04:27 ◼   ► wanted to put something on your radar mm-hmm so you know I'm a big keyboard boy

00:04:31 ◼   ► you know yeah I know you're doing my twitch streams all that kind of stuff

00:04:35 ◼   ► yeah there is a company that has a licensing deal with Wizards of the Coast

00:04:40 ◼   ► And they are producing Magic the Gathering keycaps, desk mats, and cables.

00:04:48 ◼   ► And I just, one, wanted to let you know this is happening, and two, I just wanted to know,

00:04:52 ◼   ► like, does this keycap set really say Magic the Gathering to you?

00:04:56 ◼   ► Like, does it do the job?

00:04:58 ◼   ► Like, I don't understand what a magic cable would be.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Oh, it's just colors.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Oh, see, it's hit something.

00:05:04 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:05:05 ◼   ► I was like, how much do I need to explain this?

00:05:08 ◼   ► Alright, this makes the moment I was like,

00:05:10 ◼   ► what on earth could this possibly be?

00:05:12 ◼   ► But as soon as I clicked it, it's like,

00:05:14 ◼   ► oh, this makes a million times more sense.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Okay, so for non-fans of magic.

00:05:18 ◼   ► - Muggles, I think they're called Muggles.

00:05:21 ◼   ► - No, that is still no. - No, is that wrong?

00:05:23 ◼   ► - It's creature type human is what they are.

00:05:25 ◼   ► - See, that was a joke I don't get.

00:05:27 ◼   ► - Don't worry about it.

00:05:27 ◼   ► - I can imagine there are a bunch of people that are like,

00:05:29 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:05:30 ◼   ► right, you know, I don't know.

00:05:31 ◼   ► 95% of our audience is like, just shrugs that one off.

00:05:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, so roughly every season or so,

00:05:37 ◼   ► They come out with a new collection of cards.

00:05:39 ◼   ► The new cards always have a little theme

00:05:42 ◼   ► that goes along with them.

00:05:43 ◼   ► But this year, they kind of broke tradition a little bit.

00:05:48 ◼   ► And they came out with a theme that instead of basically

00:05:51 ◼   ► everything is like medieval magic land,

00:05:55 ◼   ► like very traditional fantasy kind of stuff

00:05:58 ◼   ► with little spins on it.

00:05:59 ◼   ► This time they went to, they had a set that came out

00:06:02 ◼   ► and it was like, oh, it's the future.

00:06:04 ◼   ► And it's in our fantasy version of Japan.

00:06:06 ◼   ► and everything is neon and I freaking loved it.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Like I think they did an amazing job

00:06:13 ◼   ► and they made it seem like it really fit in with the game

00:06:16 ◼   ► even though it was really out there.

00:06:18 ◼   ► But it also makes a thousand times more sense to like,

00:06:21 ◼   ► oh, if you were going to try to license

00:06:24 ◼   ► cool looking USB-C cables and key caps,

00:06:29 ◼   ► you would pick not magic as a whole thing,

00:06:32 ◼   ► but this particular set of cards

00:06:35 ◼   ► and the aesthetic to be like, look, it's all neon and cool.

00:06:38 ◼   ► - I like the colors of this a lot.

00:06:40 ◼   ► I really don't like the legends or the core,

00:06:44 ◼   ► but like the characters, the letters and the keys.

00:06:46 ◼   ► I can see where it's come from.

00:06:48 ◼   ► This is the font of the game, which I get.

00:06:50 ◼   ► - Oh, let me see.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - It's like if you go to the key caps,

00:06:53 ◼   ► you scroll down the page,

00:06:54 ◼   ► you see like an exploded view of all of the keys.

00:06:56 ◼   ► - Oh, I see, interesting.

00:06:57 ◼   ► - And it's got that like Magic the Gathering font to it.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And I really don't like that,

00:07:01 ◼   ► but like I understand why they've gone that route.

00:07:04 ◼   ► it fits, but this is one of those things where it's like now kind of to me they've made this

00:07:09 ◼   ► product just for Magic the Gathering fans, which I know that there are many and I'm sure

00:07:13 ◼   ► it would do very well, but.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's interesting. I can see what you mean. I feel like, yes, that font does not

00:07:19 ◼   ► look great on keys. I do think it's cute. They have, I guess those are the escape alternates

00:07:25 ◼   ► are the five different mana symbols, the little sunshine, water drop, skull, fireball and

00:07:30 ◼   ► tree. So I guess those are alternates for escape.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, well you could use them anywhere on the top row of the keyboard.

00:07:34 ◼   ► There's like the same...

00:07:35 ◼   ► Ah, okay, so this is like the function key stuff. Interesting.

00:07:38 ◼   ► It's a very complete set, I would say, for like fun stuff.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And they've done a decent job, I think.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And they've got a bunch of like the desk mats, you know, like that you put down on the desk,

00:07:47 ◼   ► put your keyboard on top of, they're like down to page two.

00:07:50 ◼   ► And they've got like a bunch of amazing designs.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Like, and I assume there's some kind of like big boss monsters from Magic the Gathering.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, we've got Jin Cataxis there.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And obviously, beside you who endures, you know, everyone is...

00:08:03 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a tree, that's not a boss.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Beside you is the name of a tree, but nice try.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I mean, a tree could be a boss, you know?

00:08:11 ◼   ► Myke, that's ridiculous.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Oh yeah, come on!

00:08:14 ◼   ► Why would the tree be a boss when there are dragons?

00:08:17 ◼   ► Yeah, so I think the answer to you is that this doesn't scream magic to me,

00:08:23 ◼   ► it screams Kamigawa and Neon Dynasty, but they did a great job.

00:08:27 ◼   ► It's funny to see.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And never in a thousand years would I have imagined

00:08:32 ◼   ► that you would have ever had any piece

00:08:35 ◼   ► of Magic the Gathering related anything to pass on to me.

00:08:39 ◼   ► So thanks for that.

00:08:40 ◼   ► This is fun.

00:08:41 ◼   ► - I don't think this will be the last one either.

00:08:43 ◼   ► So like this company, Clack Keys,

00:08:46 ◼   ► they've got the licensing partnership

00:08:48 ◼   ► with Wizard of the Coast now.

00:08:50 ◼   ► So if this one does well, I'm sure they'll do more.

00:08:54 ◼   ► And I think you're right.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Like they chose maybe the one that they could most easily translate visually to something

00:09:01 ◼   ► that looks like really appealing to a wide like amount of people.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:09:07 ◼   ► This would be this would be the best one to start with for sure.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:09:11 ◼   ► I'll be curious to see if they do New Capena is the next set, which is like art deco stuff.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Which yeah, I'm a big fan of art deco.

00:09:20 ◼   ► But I just as much as Kamigawa was awesome, and it totally worked.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I'm not a big fan of the Nucapenna Art Deco stuff.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I just think it sticks out in the game like a sore thumb.

00:09:30 ◼   ► It is like, ooh, they had a real high,

00:09:32 ◼   ► and then what I think is like a real low.

00:09:34 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, I'm looking at some of these cards.

00:09:36 ◼   ► They look nice on their own, but maybe that's the problem.

00:09:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do think you could make

00:09:41 ◼   ► a pretty sweet-looking keyboard with Art Deco design.

00:09:45 ◼   ► So Nucapenna, not an amazing Magic set,

00:09:48 ◼   ► but probably an amazing keyboard.

00:09:50 ◼   ► (chiming)

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00:11:43 ◼   ► So today's episode, originally, I was considering that we would do a review of our yearly themes

00:11:51 ◼   ► so far because we haven't really spoken about them very much since say January, February

00:11:56 ◼   ► time.

00:11:57 ◼   ► Like that was something that I was thinking we would do today.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Long ago in January or something we discussed, oh, we should we should halfway through the

00:12:04 ◼   ► year talk about our themes.

00:12:06 ◼   ► And I put on my little calendar as like, oh, mid year theme review.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I've been looking at that coming up on the calendar

00:12:12 ◼   ► with a lot of mixed feelings,

00:12:15 ◼   ► as I imagine you might be feeling.

00:12:17 ◼   ► - Well, basically, I think we're both gonna talk now

00:12:21 ◼   ► a little bit about our COVID experiences

00:12:23 ◼   ► and how it's affected our work.

00:12:25 ◼   ► And essentially, it has made a pretty big impact

00:12:31 ◼   ► on my year theme.

00:12:33 ◼   ► So I've kind of taken a look at my theme a little bit more,

00:12:38 ◼   ► and I've actually been able to flesh it out

00:12:40 ◼   ► a little bit more because of this.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - And so I do wanna talk a little bit

00:12:44 ◼   ► about my theme today,

00:12:45 ◼   ► but it's not at all what I was expecting.

00:12:47 ◼   ► You know, what I was originally planning to do today

00:12:50 ◼   ► was to talk about how my year has changed so far

00:12:53 ◼   ► with the year of structure and kind of how I'm doing.

00:12:56 ◼   ► And that's, I'm probably now just gonna leave this

00:12:58 ◼   ► until the end of the year

00:13:00 ◼   ► and kind of talk about some more things

00:13:04 ◼   ► that are being added in or changed to my year theme

00:13:08 ◼   ► because of having COVID.

00:13:10 ◼   ► So the year of structure, that was my whole idea.

00:13:15 ◼   ► And really the idea of it was to put some immediate plans

00:13:20 ◼   ► in place, but ultimately be thinking about what changes

00:13:24 ◼   ► would I make for next year moving forward.

00:13:27 ◼   ► So it was like a foundation area really.

00:13:30 ◼   ► It's like setting the structure for the future.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And this past two months has really kind of recommitted me

00:13:37 ◼   ► to making some more immediate and short-term actions

00:13:43 ◼   ► rather than just, I've done a few things

00:13:46 ◼   ► and now I'm gonna just keep this in mind for a while

00:13:48 ◼   ► until I get ready to work out for 2023

00:13:51 ◼   ► what stays, what goes.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So as a little bit more background,

00:13:55 ◼   ► as a conclusion to my trip, right?

00:13:58 ◼   ► So cast your mind back to the WWDC, me and San Jose with COVID.

00:14:05 ◼   ► The world's saddest boy.

00:14:06 ◼   ► World's saddest boy.

00:14:07 ◼   ► The second half of the trip was way better.

00:14:10 ◼   ► We were able to leave San Jose cause we had to, we got kicked out of our hotel.

00:14:16 ◼   ► I tried to extend it, but really I did want to go.

00:14:19 ◼   ► So we were able to move to San Francisco.

00:14:21 ◼   ► I started to feel better there and I was able to like, there was just more to walk

00:14:26 ◼   ► and be a little bit more active and it just felt,

00:14:30 ◼   ► it felt a little bit more removed from the sadness,

00:14:33 ◼   ► you know, because I wasn't in that same place anymore.

00:14:37 ◼   ► We did then get stuck in Dallas again for a day.

00:14:40 ◼   ► We had another connecting flight issue,

00:14:42 ◼   ► so back in Dallas, back in the same hotel,

00:14:44 ◼   ► went back to the same place for lunch as we did in March

00:14:47 ◼   ► and then came home again.

00:14:48 ◼   ► It was just, you know, but this was different though.

00:14:51 ◼   ► We knew before we got on the plane

00:14:53 ◼   ► that it was gonna happen.

00:14:55 ◼   ► We actually, we could see the delays, delays, delays,

00:14:58 ◼   ► so we ended up changing our trip

00:15:00 ◼   ► and ended up taking a flight just to Dallas

00:15:02 ◼   ► and then the next day going home.

00:15:04 ◼   ► - I feel like Dallas is just,

00:15:06 ◼   ► has a magnetic force pulling you towards it at this point.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Like at some point you're going to be trying to fly to Paris

00:15:12 ◼   ► and still end up stuck in Dallas for a day somehow.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I'm just gonna wait for that to happen.

00:15:18 ◼   ► - It's like the Bermuda Triangle for me, right?

00:15:21 ◼   ► Now I am like eight or nine weeks, I think,

00:15:25 ◼   ► since catching COVID initially.

00:15:28 ◼   ► I am a long COVID sufferer,

00:15:29 ◼   ► 'cause I still do have symptoms.

00:15:32 ◼   ► I am on an upward trajectory.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Some of the symptoms took a couple of weeks to drop off,

00:15:37 ◼   ► and you know, so they're like one by one, I'm losing them.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Mostly now I still get a little chest pain,

00:15:43 ◼   ► I still get a bit out of breath.

00:15:45 ◼   ► I've seen a doctor,

00:15:46 ◼   ► everything I've got is consistent with long COVID,

00:15:48 ◼   ► and I've had a bunch of like tests done

00:15:51 ◼   ► to make sure there hasn't been any damage,

00:15:53 ◼   ► and it doesn't seem like there's any damage.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Now it's just the case of me waiting it out.

00:15:57 ◼   ► - When you talk about damage,

00:15:58 ◼   ► are you talking about like lung capacity tests?

00:16:01 ◼   ► Is that the kind of thing?

00:16:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, lung damage, heart damage,

00:16:03 ◼   ► we've looked for these things.

00:16:05 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:16:05 ◼   ► - A lot of the symptoms that I have,

00:16:08 ◼   ► it seems like it can be, you've either got lung COVID

00:16:10 ◼   ► or you've actually had something go wrong

00:16:13 ◼   ► because of having COVID.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Nothing seems to have been an effect.

00:16:16 ◼   ► I did like this whole like lung study thing

00:16:19 ◼   ► where I had to like do a bunch of breathing tests

00:16:21 ◼   ► and everything seems basically fine.

00:16:24 ◼   ► You know, obviously we didn't do a test beforehand,

00:16:26 ◼   ► so we don't have a baseline to compare it to,

00:16:28 ◼   ► but I'm within regular range.

00:16:31 ◼   ► So the doctor did tell me something really interesting,

00:16:35 ◼   ► 'cause one of my main symptoms right now

00:16:38 ◼   ► is I get out of breath quite frequently

00:16:40 ◼   ► and also sometimes quite randomly,

00:16:43 ◼   ► and he was saying that one of the things

00:16:45 ◼   ► that he has observed or has been observed

00:16:49 ◼   ► is that what it seems like is there's nothing actually wrong with the lungs.

00:16:53 ◼   ► It's that your brain and your lungs kind of get out of sync from each other.

00:16:57 ◼   ► And you think you don't have enough breath, but you do.

00:17:01 ◼   ► But you start to breathe differently.

00:17:03 ◼   ► It's like there's something about COVID which gets them out of sync.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And he says, in most people and in himself,

00:17:09 ◼   ► just all of a sudden one day, it just goes away.

00:17:12 ◼   ► So I'm just waiting for that day now for it to go away.

00:17:15 ◼   ► So very strange.

00:17:16 ◼   ► - That is very strange.

00:17:18 ◼   ► But all of this is to say, the effect that COVID has had on me has been playing on my mind.

00:17:26 ◼   ► So over the last two months, it's been harder for me to produce shows.

00:17:30 ◼   ► Like I've not had the same level of energy.

00:17:33 ◼   ► For the first month, every show that I would do would completely wipe me out.

00:17:37 ◼   ► I would be exhausted afterwards, would have a burning sensation in my chest.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It was rough.

00:17:44 ◼   ► So this has kind of given me a bunch of things to start thinking about.

00:17:48 ◼   ► I realize I'm bad at resting.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Maybe this is people were telling me from the beginning

00:17:54 ◼   ► to rest, but I am very much, my mentality is

00:17:59 ◼   ► if work is to be done, I want to do it.

00:18:03 ◼   ► I still have this like, I have to work feeling

00:18:06 ◼   ► or that I need to be the one doing everything.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Like if I want things to be done right,

00:18:12 ◼   ► I need to be involved in them.

00:18:13 ◼   ► And this is purely a me problem.

00:18:18 ◼   ► It's not like I don't trust my colleagues

00:18:21 ◼   ► because I take vacations every year

00:18:23 ◼   ► and have no problem with that

00:18:24 ◼   ► and I'm fine with everyone looking after poor me.

00:18:27 ◼   ► But if I'm sick, I wanna work.

00:18:31 ◼   ► 'Cause there is something in my brain,

00:18:33 ◼   ► which is definitely wrong, which is saying,

00:18:36 ◼   ► you can just do this, you'll be fine, you can just do it.

00:18:40 ◼   ► And so now that I am doing a better job of realizing this,

00:18:45 ◼   ► I've been taking a longer look at myself,

00:18:47 ◼   ► thinking more about what I wanna be doing with my life.

00:18:51 ◼   ► And I definitely know, as I did at the start of the year,

00:18:56 ◼   ► that I want to be able to reduce my working time

00:19:00 ◼   ► to be able to spend more time not working,

00:19:03 ◼   ► spending time with family, taking more time for me.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And I have done some of that this year,

00:19:09 ◼   ► But being sick like this has reminded me I need to do more

00:19:14 ◼   ► so that when I get myself in a situation like this,

00:19:17 ◼   ► the amount of work that I feel like I need to do

00:19:21 ◼   ► is already smaller.

00:19:22 ◼   ► - Like when you said before about making short-term changes,

00:19:28 ◼   ► like what time scale is short-term?

00:19:31 ◼   ► Because I'm just thinking your podcasting schedule

00:19:35 ◼   ► hasn't really changed since the start of the year until now.

00:19:38 ◼   ► - No.

00:19:39 ◼   ► is still the same. So that was always the thing of like I didn't want to cancel any shows this year.

00:19:45 ◼   ► Yeah yeah. For a bunch of logistical reasons it's not great to just do it. It just it's just

00:19:51 ◼   ► complicated, gets complicated and so the plan was that before we started with the 2023 planning that

00:19:58 ◼   ► I would have an idea as to which shows I would stop doing. So I'm still working on that because

00:20:04 ◼   ► 'cause it's very complicated.

00:20:06 ◼   ► And it comes with a lot of emotion

00:20:09 ◼   ► and it comes with the impacting other people.

00:20:11 ◼   ► So I'm still finding it very complicated,

00:20:14 ◼   ► but I'm feeling better about it.

00:20:18 ◼   ► I have made some shorter term changes now.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Like I've done some stuff to try and help with the balance

00:20:26 ◼   ► and with finding structure in different ways.

00:20:29 ◼   ► And then I've also got some things

00:20:30 ◼   ► that I'm going to be doing over the next couple of weeks.

00:20:32 ◼   ► The biggest change that I've made is I have let go of the edit of Upgrade.

00:20:39 ◼   ► Oh wow.

00:20:40 ◼   ► This is very difficult for me.

00:20:43 ◼   ► I have edited this show every Monday, pretty much, for seven years.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I can't believe you're letting go of the edit for Upgrade.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Wow.

00:20:53 ◼   ► How are you feeling about that?

00:20:55 ◼   ► Not good.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Not good.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Not good.

00:20:57 ◼   ► So this is nothing on who we've got to do it.

00:21:02 ◼   ► So I'm using our friend Jim Metzendorf.

00:21:06 ◼   ► He is an incredible audio editor.

00:21:08 ◼   ► He's better than me for sure.

00:21:11 ◼   ► He edits a bunch of my shows and a ton of shows at Relay.

00:21:14 ◼   ► So it's nothing about this.

00:21:17 ◼   ► It is letting go of it.

00:21:20 ◼   ► I feel like I have been able to craft some of the show

00:21:25 ◼   ► in the edit.

00:21:26 ◼   ► If I'm editing, all I have to do is just have trust in me to get it right.

00:21:30 ◼   ► I just, I don't have to think about anything.

00:21:32 ◼   ► It's, it's, I just do it.

00:21:34 ◼   ► But now I'm, I'm letting that part go.

00:21:37 ◼   ► And then Jason's going to be posting the episodes instead of me.

00:21:40 ◼   ► And so it's like, I'm letting go.

00:21:44 ◼   ► I'm having to let go of the control of that part of the process.

00:21:52 ◼   ► So like the show will probably be posted when I'm asleep now,

00:21:57 ◼   ► which makes me feel very uncomfortable as well.

00:21:59 ◼   ► - I don't blame you for feeling uncomfortable with that.

00:22:01 ◼   ► - But it's time.

00:22:03 ◼   ► So the reason that I chose to do this is

00:22:09 ◼   ► it is between one to two hours of work every week,

00:22:13 ◼   ► but it's not the amount of time,

00:22:16 ◼   ► it's the time in which it happens.

00:22:19 ◼   ► So the beginning of the edit of upgrade begins around 7 to 8 p.m. on a Monday.

00:22:28 ◼   ► And I don't want to be working that late anymore.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Like, I don't want to still be in the studio at 9, 10 p.m. I don't want to do it.

00:22:40 ◼   ► So that's why this is one of the immediate things that I'm changing.

00:22:47 ◼   ► It starts with the next episode, so the first of August.

00:22:50 ◼   ► Jim helped out with some stuff that we did in a previous episode with some guest interviews,

00:22:55 ◼   ► but the actual like letting go of the entire edit of the show starts in August.

00:23:00 ◼   ► There is a bittersweet feeling to it for sure, like I will be happy for the time,

00:23:06 ◼   ► I want the time, I want to have the freedom more of like we finish and then I just leave.

00:23:14 ◼   ► but it's something that I've taken great pride in too, so it's hard to let it go.

00:23:19 ◼   ► But if I can't do this, I'm never going to be able to cut anything else.

00:23:24 ◼   ► This is one of the most simple things in theory for me to get rid of.

00:23:30 ◼   ► There is no reason for me to still be the one doing this.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I'm not bringing any particular skills to the edit of these episodes.

00:23:38 ◼   ► I tidy them up, I go through them, and then I add in the metadata that we need.

00:23:44 ◼   ► it takes time because I put time into it but like Jim will put more time into it

00:23:49 ◼   ► the show will come out better because the thing that I don't do for upgrades

00:23:53 ◼   ► on the time to it's like listen back to large portions of the episodes which he

00:23:56 ◼   ► will be doing so the edit will take longer but it will still come out Monday

00:24:00 ◼   ► but it will come out later on Monday but I can't spend that amount of time

00:24:04 ◼   ► because then I'm working till past midnight right you know right and so

00:24:09 ◼   ► So it's a no-brainer to do, especially because I've done it for so long too.

00:24:14 ◼   ► But it's just really difficult to let go of this part of the process for me.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I think this also, I mean obviously this is always the thing that I am sensitized to,

00:24:24 ◼   ► but you're also getting rid of that pressure every Monday.

00:24:29 ◼   ► This needs to go up today.

00:24:30 ◼   ► This is the schedule, it needs to go up today.

00:24:33 ◼   ► And you're also staying late at the office to get it done.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Like removing that I also, I think that will have a bigger effect than you think.

00:24:42 ◼   ► It's just like the relief of, it's not even, "Oh this is an hour."

00:24:47 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh it's an hour or two before I can go home late on a Monday because a thing

00:24:53 ◼   ► has to happen."

00:24:54 ◼   ► Yeah I've felt it before.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Like I used to edit connected and then when we had to change times and record later and

00:25:00 ◼   ► I said I couldn't do it anymore and Steven very thankfully took over the edit.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And I remember what that was like.

00:25:06 ◼   ► It actually became even easier for me

00:25:08 ◼   ► to enjoy the recording of the show.

00:25:10 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:25:11 ◼   ► - Because I was not thinking,

00:25:13 ◼   ► oh, I still gotta edit this.

00:25:14 ◼   ► - Right.

00:25:15 ◼   ► - Or like, you know, there's like a thing going on

00:25:16 ◼   ► in the episode and I'm like,

00:25:17 ◼   ► oh, this is gonna be hard to edit.

00:25:19 ◼   ► - Right, these two guys are clowning around, right?

00:25:21 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Now I'm sure Steven feels like that,

00:25:25 ◼   ► that he's a trooper.

00:25:26 ◼   ► But I mean, the thing is, like, it's the time.

00:25:30 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:25:31 ◼   ► If me and Jason were able to record at 12 p.m. my time,

00:25:35 ◼   ► it wouldn't be an issue for me to keep doing the edit.

00:25:37 ◼   ► It's not the amount of time it's taking,

00:25:39 ◼   ► it's the time in which it's occurring

00:25:41 ◼   ► has become the problem for me.

00:25:43 ◼   ► It is time for me to let go of this,

00:25:48 ◼   ► but it's just a thing which is like,

00:25:51 ◼   ► wow, I've always considered this as part of the thing.

00:25:55 ◼   ► This is part of the show.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It's like my edit is part of the show,

00:25:59 ◼   ► but I've been able to give up a bunch of,

00:26:03 ◼   ► this was the last one really.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Technically, I still do the edit for the pen addict

00:26:09 ◼   ► and for the back markers, which is like my pen show,

00:26:12 ◼   ► my F1 show.

00:26:13 ◼   ► But the edit for those is take the files, match the audio,

00:26:17 ◼   ► put them into Logic, match up the music, export them.

00:26:22 ◼   ► There is an editing going on in those.

00:26:24 ◼   ► Like I'm not going in and tightening stuff up

00:26:26 ◼   ► and cutting things out.

00:26:28 ◼   ► and then with the member shows, right,

00:26:29 ◼   ► then there's two files.

00:26:31 ◼   ► You have to then take the second file, remove all the ads,

00:26:33 ◼   ► make sure the time is all there, upload to,

00:26:35 ◼   ► you know, it's long, it's a longer process.

00:26:38 ◼   ► But with the other two, it's like it's nothing.

00:26:39 ◼   ► So all I will be actually actually editing is this show.

00:26:43 ◼   ► - I think you should give up even the technical editing

00:26:45 ◼   ► of those other two shows though.

00:26:47 ◼   ► - It takes 10 minutes.

00:26:48 ◼   ► - I know, I like, here, I hear you say that.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I still feel like you should give that up, right?

00:26:56 ◼   ► If it, no, no, no, don't you nab me on this.

00:26:59 ◼   ► - No, I really, there's no need,

00:27:01 ◼   ► especially for the pan-adict,

00:27:02 ◼   ► especially for the pan-adict,

00:27:04 ◼   ► because when I record it,

00:27:06 ◼   ► all I'm doing is waiting to start connected,

00:27:08 ◼   ► which happens like an hour later.

00:27:11 ◼   ► So I can't really get involved in anything particular

00:27:13 ◼   ► or any other big projects.

00:27:15 ◼   ► It is nothing for me to take those files.

00:27:17 ◼   ► - I know, like I'm hearing all these words.

00:27:20 ◼   ► - I time-track.

00:27:21 ◼   ► It takes 15 minutes for me from when we record

00:27:25 ◼   ► to when I publish.

00:27:27 ◼   ► Look, hey, I've already done a big thing here.

00:27:30 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

00:27:31 ◼   ► - You gotta just leave me be for a little while.

00:27:34 ◼   ► - I believe you.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Let me just put this over here for you to think about,

00:27:40 ◼   ► that part of trying to make your life easier

00:27:43 ◼   ► is even what you've done with upgrade here.

00:27:45 ◼   ► It's not the time, it's not the amount of time

00:27:48 ◼   ► it's when it happens,

00:27:49 ◼   ► and it's one less thing to worry about.

00:27:51 ◼   ► In trying to make life simpler,

00:27:53 ◼   ► a really key feature is the absolute number of things

00:27:57 ◼   ► that you have to think about and reducing that number.

00:28:01 ◼   ► And I feel like people really do get tripped up

00:28:04 ◼   ► in having a very large number of teeny tiny things,

00:28:08 ◼   ► each one of which is like, oh, this is nothing.

00:28:11 ◼   ► But they do add up and so that's why I feel like,

00:28:13 ◼   ► oh, Myke, if this story that you're telling me is true,

00:28:16 ◼   ► that it's no big deal to do this,

00:28:18 ◼   ► then it really should be no big deal to pass it on

00:28:21 ◼   ► and to just have something that you never have to think about again.

00:28:24 ◼   ► But I'm not going to push it, I'm just mentioning it here.

00:28:27 ◼   ► You keep doing what you want, and we'll talk in December.

00:28:30 ◼   ► [Music]

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00:30:11 ◼   ► But I'm not going to give up the edit for this show. It's a whole different beast.

00:30:16 ◼   ► that's never gonna happen.

00:30:17 ◼   ► And I will say this now, it's never gonna happen.

00:30:20 ◼   ► It's too complicated, I'd be too particular.

00:30:24 ◼   ► I would still not be able to leave it alone.

00:30:27 ◼   ► So really, in my mind,

00:30:29 ◼   ► the only show I'm actually editing is Cortex now.

00:30:33 ◼   ► The others, it's a different process,

00:30:35 ◼   ► no matter what Gray says.

00:30:36 ◼   ► It's just assembling, it takes 10 minutes.

00:30:39 ◼   ► And I'm totally fine with it.

00:30:39 ◼   ► - Very easy to outsource, yep.

00:30:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, but then you add time and money.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Like, anyway, the amount of work that they take,

00:30:49 ◼   ► I just don't think is even worth somebody's time.

00:30:52 ◼   ► - I'm not pushing you on that now.

00:30:54 ◼   ► - All right, all right, all right.

00:30:57 ◼   ► So that is one thing that is the biggest short-term change

00:31:02 ◼   ► 'cause it has long-term ramifications.

00:31:07 ◼   ► And I've done a couple of things to try and detach more

00:31:12 ◼   ► from work outside of work time.

00:31:15 ◼   ► And I would like to reintroduce to the show

00:31:17 ◼   ► my friend focus modes.

00:31:19 ◼   ► - Oh, right, okay.

00:31:20 ◼   ► - So being on iOS 16, so much easier to set them up.

00:31:24 ◼   ► I now have a weekend focus mode and a weekend home screen.

00:31:29 ◼   ► And I'm using the sleep focus mode now too.

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Oh, were you not using the sleep one before?

00:31:35 ◼   ► - No, I had no reason.

00:31:37 ◼   ► I don't do sleep tracking,

00:31:38 ◼   ► although I'm thinking about trying it out.

00:31:40 ◼   ► I'll get to that in a bit.

00:31:41 ◼   ► and I don't want Apple to be setting an alarm for me every day, I just set my own alarms.

00:31:47 ◼   ► So I never felt like I needed it, but now I've done it just so it does the screen dimming

00:31:51 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff, because then it's forcing me to think about the fact that you're

00:31:56 ◼   ► going to bed. But the main reason I did it is I am now no longer looking at my phone

00:32:03 ◼   ► in bed before sleep. So when I go to bed now, my iPhone's in the sleep mode, it's got the

00:32:10 ◼   ► sleep focus going on and I have previous sponsor not sponsor audible I'm listening

00:32:15 ◼   ► to audiobooks now so I get into bed get my air pods press play on an audiobook

00:32:20 ◼   ► put the sleep timer on put my head down I have a really dumb question here I

00:32:25 ◼   ► don't know what the sleep timer does I see that as a button and I've always

00:32:28 ◼   ► wondered what does this do oh when it hits the time limit the audio just stops

00:32:33 ◼   ► Oh, okay. So it's it's for me, right? Like I put on like 30 minutes and then leave it

00:32:40 ◼   ► because if I didn't it will play the whole book by the time I woke up in the morning.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Oh, okay. Because it would just keep going, right? Okay, that makes sense. So you're

00:32:48 ◼   ► not listening to sleep stories like you're listening to an actual book. Currently I'm

00:32:52 ◼   ► listening to a book called After Steve, which is about Tim Cook and Johnny Ive. Hmm, okay.

00:32:59 ◼   ► which is very interesting actually.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I'm enjoying it so far.

00:33:03 ◼   ► But what I'm having to do every morning

00:33:05 ◼   ► is try and find the part where I fell asleep.

00:33:07 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:33:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's what always hung me up

00:33:09 ◼   ► on the sleep timer.

00:33:10 ◼   ► It's like, what problem is this solving?

00:33:12 ◼   ► I don't know if it is solving a problem.

00:33:14 ◼   ► - It's making it so that the book hasn't,

00:33:18 ◼   ► 'cause it's way easier to find where I was

00:33:20 ◼   ► within a 10 minute window,

00:33:22 ◼   ► than it is within a six hour window.

00:33:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I also imagine,

00:33:26 ◼   ► you must run into the problem where,

00:33:28 ◼   ► Like the book starts to drift into your dreams, right?

00:33:32 ◼   ► I feel like there's gotta be a fuzzy border

00:33:34 ◼   ► for like what do you remember.

00:33:35 ◼   ► - I don't remember my dreams anyway,

00:33:37 ◼   ► so this isn't a problem for me.

00:33:38 ◼   ► - Ah, okay, you're one of those, all right.

00:33:40 ◼   ► - When something is particularly vivid, but that's rare.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Like if I wake up and you tell me

00:33:45 ◼   ► what you're dreaming about, I wouldn't be able to tell you.

00:33:47 ◼   ► - Right, okay.

00:33:48 ◼   ► - So I've been doing this for a week, right?

00:33:51 ◼   ► The audiobook thing, and I'm liking it.

00:33:53 ◼   ► It's too soon to tell, but what I will say is

00:33:55 ◼   ► I have noticed a difference in how I feel in the morning.

00:33:59 ◼   ► - How so?

00:33:59 ◼   ► - Well, one, I'm getting more sleep, for sure.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Between 30 minutes to an hour, more sleep every night.

00:34:06 ◼   ► Because I'm getting into bed and putting the AirPods in

00:34:11 ◼   ► and usually I'm asleep for 15 minutes.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Where before, I would be on my phone

00:34:14 ◼   ► for maybe half an hour to an hour

00:34:16 ◼   ► before I would try to go to sleep.

00:34:19 ◼   ► So the immediate part is more sleep.

00:34:21 ◼   ► And the other is, I think potentially being sucked

00:34:26 ◼   ► into all of the things that can exist on the internet

00:34:29 ◼   ► maybe isn't a great way to set yourself up for sleep.

00:34:33 ◼   ► I don't know this is true, but it's what I believe.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And so I'm working on that assumption.

00:34:37 ◼   ► And so I think that that's been pretty good for me.

00:34:40 ◼   ► The weekend focus mode has less social stuff available

00:34:45 ◼   ► like on my home screens, no work apps on my home screens.

00:34:51 ◼   ► and I've automated them to turn on as well.

00:34:53 ◼   ► So it's just trying to like remind me

00:34:58 ◼   ► to look at things less.

00:35:00 ◼   ► It's actually pretty similar to my travel home screen,

00:35:03 ◼   ► which is also built as an idea of like

00:35:06 ◼   ► de-prioritizing anything work related.

00:35:09 ◼   ► So I'm just trying to set up my phone to encourage me

00:35:14 ◼   ► to be more present in other things

00:35:19 ◼   ► than the things that my phone is usually used for when I'm working or in work time.

00:35:24 ◼   ► So I think that that's actually been pretty nice, I've been liking that.

00:35:27 ◼   ► How long have you been doing it for?

00:35:29 ◼   ► A week.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Okay.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I'm pretty happy with this setup and I'm going to keep tweaking it.

00:35:33 ◼   ► What I have done, I've done a little bit of the focus mode stuff where it limits notifications

00:35:39 ◼   ► and I'm tweaking that with the weekend one.

00:35:41 ◼   ► You know, so it just like, it hides them and I really like the way iOS 16 presents a lot

00:35:45 ◼   ► of this stuff anyway.

00:35:46 ◼   ► notification stuff is grouped together really well there's this new option like

00:35:50 ◼   ► a display option called count and so on my home screen right now I have the name

00:35:54 ◼   ► of my current focus mode which says recording and it just has the number

00:35:57 ◼   ► three next to it and that means that there are three notifications that I can

00:36:01 ◼   ► scroll up to see if I want to but they don't put them on the home screen huh

00:36:04 ◼   ► this is just like a general notifications feature that I really like

00:36:08 ◼   ► in ios 16 like it's deprioritizing all of the notifications unless I go for them

00:36:13 ◼   ► And then if you use some of the tools in focus modes, it then puts them another level down

00:36:19 ◼   ► What's the other level down?

00:36:21 ◼   ► So if I swiped up to see my notifications, there's then like a stack that says while in

00:36:27 ◼   ► Weekend focus and I have to tap that to see those ones. Hmm. So I don't even glimpse them if I'm looking for other stuff. Oh

00:36:34 ◼   ► Okay, I see what you're saying. Right? Okay, that is that is an improvement. Yeah, that's always been my frustration with this is

00:36:42 ◼   ► accidentally seeing stuff even if it didn't notify me?

00:36:45 ◼   ► You get the names of the apps, but none of the content.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Huh, okay, that's better.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it's way better.

00:36:50 ◼   ► So I've been leaning into some of that and I'm really digging it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► That's working really nicely for me.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Then I have some other things that I am thinking about now as part of the year structure.

00:37:04 ◼   ► One is how do I spend more time at home?

00:37:08 ◼   ► I love having my studio and I love being here for work.

00:37:12 ◼   ► So what this means is not working at home, right?

00:37:17 ◼   ► It's not just being at home and sitting on my MacBook

00:37:19 ◼   ► and doing whatever.

00:37:21 ◼   ► This is like doing things at home,

00:37:23 ◼   ► spending time with family, spending time with friends.

00:37:27 ◼   ► I wanna do more like home projects,

00:37:33 ◼   ► all of this kind of stuff.

00:37:35 ◼   ► It's just like a thing that I feel more,

00:37:37 ◼   ► I think in my advancing age,

00:37:39 ◼   ► have more of a draw towards.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - Do you wanna become handy, Myke?

00:37:45 ◼   ► Is that what-- - I think I do.

00:37:47 ◼   ► - Do you want those jeans where you can slide a hammer

00:37:50 ◼   ► in the side of them?

00:37:51 ◼   ► Is that what you're leaning towards?

00:37:53 ◼   ► - Okay, people get a tool belt for that.

00:37:55 ◼   ► They don't put the hammer in the jeans.

00:37:58 ◼   ► - No, you have jeans where they've got the little loops

00:38:01 ◼   ► you can put the hammer in them.

00:38:02 ◼   ► - All right, clearly you're more handy than me.

00:38:03 ◼   ► I didn't know about hammer jeans.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I want some hammer jeans.

00:38:08 ◼   ► - I know what to get you for Christmas.

00:38:09 ◼   ► - I cannot tell you where this feeling is coming from,

00:38:12 ◼   ► but it's happening to me.

00:38:15 ◼   ► - Do you wanna wire some plugs?

00:38:17 ◼   ► Is this a background and stuff?

00:38:19 ◼   ► - I wanna hang some pictures on the wall.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I wanna build some furniture.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Like I wanna do stuff.

00:38:25 ◼   ► I've mentioned this to some other people

00:38:27 ◼   ► and they've said, "Ha ha, your biological clock is ticking."

00:38:29 ◼   ► I'm like, "Great, thank you for letting me know."

00:38:31 ◼   ► But like, I just like, "Great, you're gonna like this."

00:38:35 ◼   ► I've found myself smiling at dogs.

00:38:37 ◼   ► - Oh, really?

00:38:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I see dogs in the street and I'm like,

00:38:40 ◼   ► that's a cute dog.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And then immediately think, why do I care about that?

00:38:43 ◼   ► But like, there's this part of my brain

00:38:45 ◼   ► that's like firing off for dogs now too.

00:38:47 ◼   ► So something's going on with me.

00:38:49 ◼   ► I don't think it was the COVID that did this,

00:38:51 ◼   ► but it's just made me reevaluate some things differently.

00:38:55 ◼   ► So what I've been wondering is like,

00:38:57 ◼   ► if I wanna spend time at home,

00:38:58 ◼   ► I could do some work to like condense my schedule a bit.

00:39:02 ◼   ► So for example, we'll go back to talking about Mondays,

00:39:05 ◼   ► which is when I record upgrade.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So I try and get to the studio between 10 and 11 a.m.

00:39:11 ◼   ► and I will do my morning work,

00:39:14 ◼   ► I will do all my prep for the show,

00:39:16 ◼   ► but we don't start recording until five.

00:39:18 ◼   ► So I always have a little bit of time in the day,

00:39:20 ◼   ► maybe an hour or two, depending on what's going on,

00:39:23 ◼   ► where I'm just like hanging out here, which is nice,

00:39:26 ◼   ► but maybe it'd be nicer to do the hanging out at home

00:39:29 ◼   ► and come to the studio at like 1 p.m.

00:39:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, for sure, for sure.

00:39:33 ◼   ► - So I'm starting to think about what would that mean,

00:39:36 ◼   ► what would that look like,

00:39:37 ◼   ► and that's another thing that I'm considering

00:39:39 ◼   ► of like rejiggering the way that some things are

00:39:43 ◼   ► to further make like home and work defined.

00:39:46 ◼   ► 'Cause like I've been taking advantage while I'm here,

00:39:48 ◼   ► like if I have time,

00:39:50 ◼   ► this is something I'm doing with the year structure,

00:39:52 ◼   ► like if I realize that I have free time to use that for me.

00:39:57 ◼   ► So I've been playing video games,

00:39:59 ◼   ► I've been doing a lot of that this year,

00:40:01 ◼   ► loads of video games,

00:40:02 ◼   ► because that's something I wanted to do.

00:40:04 ◼   ► It's something I spoke about in the year theme itself

00:40:06 ◼   ► of like creating a structure for me to be able to enjoy

00:40:10 ◼   ► some stuff that I want to enjoy.

00:40:11 ◼   ► And this is one of those things,

00:40:15 ◼   ► but should I be doing that at home

00:40:17 ◼   ► and then coming here and just doing the work

00:40:19 ◼   ► and then leaving?

00:40:20 ◼   ► Rather than there being this like one to two hours

00:40:22 ◼   ► in the day where, right?

00:40:24 ◼   ► So like this is the kind of stuff

00:40:25 ◼   ► that I'm starting to think about a little bit more.

00:40:28 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:40:29 ◼   ► like you totally want to compress.

00:40:31 ◼   ► I'm just thinking of like, oh, you know,

00:40:33 ◼   ► a morning here and an afternoon there,

00:40:35 ◼   ► if you can compress those down,

00:40:37 ◼   ► you can like get rid of a day at the office

00:40:39 ◼   ► or like have a day where it's like almost entirely clear.

00:40:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm trying to do that too.

00:40:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I'm having flashbacks

00:40:44 ◼   ► to both when I was in college

00:40:47 ◼   ► and just being really obsessive

00:40:49 ◼   ► about that same kind of thing with the scheduling

00:40:51 ◼   ► of like, man, the advantages for like compressing

00:40:54 ◼   ► a bunch of things that you have to do

00:40:56 ◼   ► all into one day and into one afternoon.

00:40:59 ◼   ► It's like, makes such a big difference.

00:41:01 ◼   ► So yeah, like when you say you go to the office

00:41:04 ◼   ► and you've got like this middle time

00:41:06 ◼   ► where you can use as personal time,

00:41:09 ◼   ► I always feel like that's just, it's never as good.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Like you should be at home if it's going to be personal time

00:41:15 ◼   ► and totally rework the schedule.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Like I'm really glad to hear

00:41:18 ◼   ► that you're thinking about that.

00:41:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, this one is nebulous,

00:41:22 ◼   ► but I had like a flash idea the other day, right?

00:41:25 ◼   ► I was like, oh man, the first place I went to is I got to write this down in my Cortex

00:41:29 ◼   ► Notes.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Like, this is something I want to talk about with Grey, but I'm pleased that you feel that

00:41:33 ◼   ► way, then I feel like I'm on the right track for that part.

00:41:35 ◼   ► So I don't know what that means yet, but I'm thinking about how I can do it.

00:41:40 ◼   ► And I do feel like it would help me achieve the handyman-ness that I'm aiming for in my

00:41:45 ◼   ► life.

00:41:47 ◼   ► The last thing, which is, it just doubles down on the thing for the future of like the

00:41:52 ◼   ► importance of Cortex brand and Cortex brand products to me, which is this idea of what

00:41:58 ◼   ► I am calling mostly passive income. Now the mostly part is because a ton of work goes

00:42:04 ◼   ► into making these products, but once we have something available for sale, the amount of

00:42:10 ◼   ► work that goes into that product almost disappears for long stretches of time. Because one of

00:42:17 ◼   ► of the things I noticed during my COVID recovery is the sense of understanding

00:42:24 ◼   ► that my main work right now requires me participating actively in it for it to

00:42:31 ◼   ► continue and for me to be able to pay my bills. If I needed to take a break

00:42:36 ◼   ► for some reason and the shows couldn't be produced that's a problem. Now the way

00:42:41 ◼   ► we have things set up again if I had to take two weeks off I would be covered.

00:42:46 ◼   ► people would help.

00:42:48 ◼   ► But that's kind of not the point.

00:42:51 ◼   ► It is realizing a risk factor in my work.

00:42:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there's a big difference between,

00:42:57 ◼   ► like as you can see, ooh, taking two weeks off,

00:43:00 ◼   ► that's very doable.

00:43:01 ◼   ► A situation where you need to take two months off,

00:43:05 ◼   ► like ooh, right now that's a real problem.

00:43:08 ◼   ► - Yep, because again, just something to underscore

00:43:11 ◼   ► like the difference between mine

00:43:13 ◼   ► and your major income source.

00:43:16 ◼   ► So like for me it's the podcasts and for you it's YouTube.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Now once we record and publish our podcasts,

00:43:22 ◼   ► all the money that episode's ever gonna make has been made.

00:43:25 ◼   ► Because of the way we choose to do our advertising.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Which I think is the best way to do advertising.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Which is we embed it all in the episodes,

00:43:33 ◼   ► it's recorded by us, nothing's being dynamically inserted

00:43:36 ◼   ► and all that kind of nonsense.

00:43:38 ◼   ► But with YouTube, if people continue to watch the videos,

00:43:41 ◼   ► some amount of money continues to be made always, right?

00:43:46 ◼   ► And so for me, if I needed to take two months off,

00:43:51 ◼   ► I don't know what would happen.

00:43:55 ◼   ► - Right.

00:43:56 ◼   ► That's what I mean, it'd be a big problem

00:43:58 ◼   ► in the current situation.

00:43:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so having a line of successful products,

00:44:04 ◼   ► which is what we are trying to achieve,

00:44:08 ◼   ► that are then actively sold constantly,

00:44:14 ◼   ► does not require the amount of focused effort

00:44:19 ◼   ► on a weekly basis that the podcasts do.

00:44:24 ◼   ► And so if we can continue finding things that work for people

00:44:30 ◼   ► like the journal has, that is a very smart thing for me

00:44:35 ◼   ► and you, but in this sense, I feel like more for me

00:44:39 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have this kind of income source right now.

00:44:43 ◼   ► It has already been a great help this year,

00:44:47 ◼   ► and I think will continue to be

00:44:49 ◼   ► as we have other stuff that we're working on,

00:44:51 ◼   ► and that's the hope.

00:44:53 ◼   ► So that's like, it's reinforced to me

00:44:56 ◼   ► something I felt was the case anyway,

00:44:58 ◼   ► like I was thinking about this,

00:44:59 ◼   ► but now I feel like I have brushed up against the risk.

00:45:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:45:05 ◼   ► - Because one of the things me and you spoke about a lot

00:45:10 ◼   ► during the lockdowns was our major worry for COVID considering the type of work that we do

00:45:17 ◼   ► was the kind of brain fog confusion stuff which I had a lot of during COVID but has gone away now

00:45:27 ◼   ► I think mostly how would you know but it's mostly gone away because considering the type of work

00:45:33 ◼   ► that we do which is talking for a living thinking for a living and like communicating for a living

00:45:38 ◼   ► "If I can't do that effectively, that's a big problem."

00:45:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I saw some colleagues get really screwed

00:45:45 ◼   ► by that, and it's like, holy moly,

00:45:48 ◼   ► this can be very alarming.

00:45:50 ◼   ► - And so that was my biggest worry,

00:45:54 ◼   ► and so I've brushed up against that now,

00:45:57 ◼   ► and it's put that fear back in me.

00:46:00 ◼   ► And so it's made me kind of rethink again

00:46:03 ◼   ► about this kind of work.

00:46:05 ◼   ► So all of this is my kind of like half year refocus

00:46:10 ◼   ► on the year structure.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I'm continuing to think about what 2023 is gonna look like.

00:46:18 ◼   ► It's also led me to think a bit more big picture

00:46:21 ◼   ► for the next few years.

00:46:24 ◼   ► All I have as an idea right now is like,

00:46:26 ◼   ► what am I able to step away from?

00:46:29 ◼   ► I don't know what this means,

00:46:32 ◼   ► but it's a question I keep asking myself.

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00:48:55 ◼   ► So how's your COVID? Can we get a timeline? Can we get a timeline? Like how long have

00:48:59 ◼   ► you been dealing with this?

00:49:01 ◼   ► So okay let me set the stage here which is I went traveling with my family. So earlier

00:49:08 ◼   ► in the year we saw my wife's side of the family and now we saw my side of the family.

00:49:13 ◼   ► And at the end of that trip 100% of us got COVID.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Full success right?

00:49:18 ◼   ► Yeah a real COVID clean sweep. So yeah I was traveling with my family for about three weeks.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Very luckily I got it just at the end of all of that. One by one we started to fall and

00:49:32 ◼   ► I was unreasonably confident that that's, well I haven't gotten sick yet so there's

00:49:38 ◼   ► not going to be any problem. And then just in the last couple of days I was feeling a

00:49:42 ◼   ► bit off but I swear, just like with the first time, I have some kind of mental resistance

00:49:48 ◼   ► to believing that I have COVID.

00:49:52 ◼   ► else is like, they turn their head in a certain way and like, "Oh God, do I have COVID?"

00:49:58 ◼   ► You know, you're just like, "I have all these symptoms. I'm sure it's just a cold."

00:50:02 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, I don't know what it is, but I clearly have some kind of mental block on this.

00:50:09 ◼   ► And once again, like, we got home and then my wife was like, "Hey, you really need to take a

00:50:15 ◼   ► a COVID test and I was shocked, right?

00:50:18 ◼   ► I took the test, it was positive.

00:50:20 ◼   ► I was like, I can't believe this.

00:50:22 ◼   ► But yeah, so I got COVID again and boy, I feel like I set some kind of record

00:50:30 ◼   ► because I ended up testing positive at my wife's repeated insistence of

00:50:35 ◼   ► like, I still need to take COVID tests.

00:50:37 ◼   ► We went through this little pattern where I was like, I think I'm over it though.

00:50:41 ◼   ► So I don't need, I think I'm fine.

00:50:43 ◼   ► I don't need to take a test."

00:50:44 ◼   ► And she would go, "Oh, why don't you take a test?"

00:50:46 ◼   ► You know, just to confirm it.

00:50:48 ◼   ► And I tested positive for two and a half weeks.

00:50:52 ◼   ► So I had some people writing to tell me about this when I had COVID initially,

00:50:56 ◼   ► because obviously I was away, so people were concerned about me getting home.

00:51:00 ◼   ► It is normal enough that on antigen tests, people can test positive for weeks.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:51:08 ◼   ► weeks even if they are no longer contagious and that maybe a PCR test would have reported

00:51:14 ◼   ► slightly differently, maybe not, but some people will test positive for a really long time.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Okay, I'm kind of relieved to hear that because everyone I was talking to was like,

00:51:24 ◼   ► "What the hell, man? Like, you know, I've tested positive for a week."

00:51:27 ◼   ► Oh, it is weird. Like, it's weird from my lived experience and from the people that I know

00:51:32 ◼   ► that have had COVID, but I've heard from enough listeners during that time period that said that

00:51:39 ◼   ► it is pretty frequent enough that people will test positive for a really long time.

00:51:45 ◼   ► B: Hmm. Okay, all right, that does make me feel better.

00:51:48 ◼   ► S - Can we just take a quick pause because I know some keen-eared listeners will have heard

00:51:52 ◼   ► my whole family had COVID. B - We were very concerned about the Lady Gray and she seems to

00:51:59 ◼   ► to be the one who's been mostly fine for all of this, and I have been the one that

00:52:03 ◼   ► has gotten hit harder, so that is 100% the way that I prefer it to be. I'm pretending

00:52:10 ◼   ► in my mind like, "Oh, I've blocked the COVID for her."

00:52:13 ◼   ► You took it all. You took a bullet.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Yeah, like I took it all, right? It's like it was a bear running at us, and I got in

00:52:19 ◼   ► the way, and it hit me.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Nooooooo!

00:52:22 ◼   ► Yes. And then I hit her, but that's obviously like less bad, even though she was the one

00:52:28 ◼   ► who got it first.

00:52:29 ◼   ► - We don't have to think about things like that.

00:52:31 ◼   ► You just had a delayed reaction.

00:52:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:34 ◼   ► It was shock from the attack, you know?

00:52:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, but yeah, so she's, you know,

00:52:38 ◼   ► she didn't have like a fun time,

00:52:39 ◼   ► but it was definitely not remotely as bad

00:52:42 ◼   ► as a bunch of the other cases I've seen, so.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and she wasn't hit in the ways

00:52:45 ◼   ► that were worrying, right, initially.

00:52:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - Which is good.

00:52:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's, you know, we're very fortunate about that.

00:52:52 ◼   ► Presumably it's the, whatever we're up to now,

00:52:55 ◼   ► like BA5 Omnicromicon.

00:52:58 ◼   ► By the time this episode comes out, I'm sure it will have been, if not by now.

00:53:02 ◼   ► I got really annoyed because I was like, "Why are everyone calling these variants like B,

00:53:06 ◼   ► A, whatever?"

00:53:07 ◼   ► And then I looked it up on Wikipedia and I was like, "Oh, there's actually a sensible

00:53:10 ◼   ► reason for this."

00:53:11 ◼   ► I thought like, "Oh, we just stopped using Greek letters for unknown reasons."

00:53:15 ◼   ► But it's like, "Oh no, these are like the 0.1 updates on your software."

00:53:19 ◼   ► Yeah, bug fixes and performance improvements.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

00:53:25 ◼   ► the release notes on each one of these 0.5, 0.6 updates to COVID.

00:53:30 ◼   ► Bug fixes and performance updates.

00:53:34 ◼   ► It really is, though, right?

00:53:35 ◼   ► That is functionally what it is.

00:53:36 ◼   ► So yeah, we've been talking about it for 2 and 1/2 years

00:53:41 ◼   ► at this point.

00:53:42 ◼   ► The plan was always, you're not going to avoid getting it,

00:53:46 ◼   ► but we want to strategically get it at the best possible time.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And it's like, OK, we've been through many variants.

00:53:53 ◼   ► As these things do, they tend to get more virulent, but less harmful over time.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Like, not always, but there are evolutionary pressures for why that's the case.

00:54:02 ◼   ► And so it's like, "Okay, great. We put off her getting infected for a long time. Great. No problems."

00:54:08 ◼   ► However, for me, it led to what I could only describe as

00:54:13 ◼   ► one of the most frustrating months of my professional life.

00:54:17 ◼   ► - I am so happy we're in the same space right now.

00:54:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:54:23 ◼   ► - 'Cause like maybe the thing that I left out

00:54:24 ◼   ► is like I have also been very frustrated,

00:54:26 ◼   ► which is what pushed me to think so heavily

00:54:28 ◼   ► about a lot of this stuff that I've gone on in my life.

00:54:31 ◼   ► I've been very annoyed, very angry, very upset about this

00:54:34 ◼   ► and a bunch of other stuff going on.

00:54:36 ◼   ► It's just been this whole mess for me

00:54:38 ◼   ► this last six, seven weeks.

00:54:41 ◼   ► 'Cause like, I think the thing about the COVID

00:54:44 ◼   ► it is right now. Like, I remember a few months ago, I knew people that had it, they're like,

00:54:49 ◼   ► "Oh, it's just like a bad cold." But I know for me, and I know for you, it's been much

00:54:54 ◼   ► worse than that. And so like, I don't know if maybe we just got hit harder, or if like,

00:54:59 ◼   ► this is more akin to what these newer variants are, where like, they are maybe less deadly,

00:55:06 ◼   ► but still can put you in a pretty bad way for a while.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:11 ◼   ► So it's like, I know I had all the kind of classic symptoms for a while, but what has been the particularly frustrating point, which both you who have checked in on me, the people I work with, everyone in my life, I have constantly, I don't know, maybe every three days, given people an update of like, "Hey, everything's on the up and up.

00:55:29 ◼   ► Like I am on the upswing.

00:55:31 ◼   ► Everything's great.

00:55:32 ◼   ► great, this is all over only to come crashing down the next day and like starting all over

00:55:40 ◼   ► again.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Like, I've never had anything like this that's just so frustrating because I kept trying

00:55:47 ◼   ► to have like a mental trend line for this is getting better or this is getting worse

00:55:53 ◼   ► or even this is just staying the same.

00:55:56 ◼   ► But no, I'm just trying to think.

00:55:58 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know if you've ever heard those audio illusions where it sounds like

00:56:03 ◼   ► a tone is rising infinitely but it actually isn't?

00:56:06 ◼   ► I don't know if you've ever come across this.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Does that sound familiar to you?

00:56:08 ◼   ► I think I know what you're talking about.

00:56:10 ◼   ► Yeah, so like you can have these sounds that sound like the notes are going up forever,

00:56:15 ◼   ► but obviously that's not possible.

00:56:17 ◼   ► It's the audio equivalent of an optical illusion.

00:56:20 ◼   ► And I feel like I kind of had that experience a little bit of like, "Oh, I must be getting

00:56:25 ◼   ► better."

00:56:26 ◼   ► But it's like, "But no, you're not.

00:56:27 ◼   ► You're not getting better.

00:56:28 ◼   ► the same. It was super duper frustrating and the thing on top of it that just killed me is it has

00:56:37 ◼   ► been just a perfect storm of delaying putting out a video and I have been like working on this video

00:56:45 ◼   ► and it's like okay I wanted to try to get it done before traveling with my family but that didn't

00:56:51 ◼   ► quite work out and so okay I was like well when I come back I'm gonna get this video done. Full

00:56:56 ◼   ► Full steam ahead.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Full steam ahead.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And I've been working on this.

00:56:59 ◼   ► The video is 90% done.

00:57:02 ◼   ► I just need to get it over that finishing line.

00:57:05 ◼   ► I was like, man, in the past four or five weeks,

00:57:08 ◼   ► it's like, okay, I've moved this video from 90% to 91%,

00:57:13 ◼   ► to 92, it's been so slow.

00:57:19 ◼   ► And like every working day, okay,

00:57:21 ◼   ► I'm really trying to work on this thing.

00:57:23 ◼   ► I was just way less effective.

00:57:25 ◼   ► and then knocking myself out for a longer period of time.

00:57:28 ◼   ► And I don't know, it is hard to express how awful it feels

00:57:33 ◼   ► to not have uploaded something,

00:57:37 ◼   ► to have something that feels so close to being finished

00:57:42 ◼   ► and not be able to finish it in remotely

00:57:45 ◼   ► the time that you want to,

00:57:47 ◼   ► while constantly feeling like, oh, I'm getting better now.

00:57:52 ◼   ► And so now I'll be able to wrap this up in a few days, but you can't.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Like it has just led to one of the most miserable months of my life professionally.

00:58:02 ◼   ► Like it's just been awful.

00:58:05 ◼   ► And it's, it's partly why I was like, Oh, Myke, we got to move this podcast

00:58:10 ◼   ► recording back in the month, as long as we can and at the time of recording,

00:58:15 ◼   ► it's like, Oh man, I'm giving myself like a 50 50 shot of actually having

00:58:19 ◼   ► it up before this episode goes up.

00:58:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been waiting all day today

00:58:25 ◼   ► for if you were gonna send me a draft.

00:58:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:29 ◼   ► Because when we record and you have a new video going up,

00:58:34 ◼   ► usually if they're close,

00:58:37 ◼   ► we end up recording slightly before

00:58:39 ◼   ► and then we will hold the podcast

00:58:41 ◼   ► and usually put it up after your video goes out.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And I expected that that,

00:58:45 ◼   ► but from the conversations we've had

00:58:47 ◼   ► over the last few weeks,

00:58:48 ◼   ► is that was most likely gonna be what happened

00:58:50 ◼   ► because I definitely got this vibe

00:58:51 ◼   ► that you will like come hell or high water,

00:58:54 ◼   ► this video goes out.

00:58:55 ◼   ► And so we decided we'd like delay

00:58:58 ◼   ► and I've been thinking today, I'm like,

00:58:59 ◼   ► I wonder if he's gonna send me a video cut.

00:59:02 ◼   ► And the fact that you haven't,

00:59:04 ◼   ► does not make me feel great for you.

00:59:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I sent you a rough cut like,

00:59:10 ◼   ► I don't know, a week ago.

00:59:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you did something you don't usually do,

00:59:13 ◼   ► which is don't listen to the audio.

00:59:15 ◼   ► I was like, okay, I just put the audio down on my iPhone

00:59:17 ◼   ► and just like skim through a little bit.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Yeah, so part of the process is,

00:59:21 ◼   ► this is not how anyone should make animated videos,

00:59:25 ◼   ► but this is the way I like to do it,

00:59:27 ◼   ► is going back and forth between increasingly seeing

00:59:31 ◼   ► what the animations are going to look like

00:59:32 ◼   ► and then trying to tighten up the script

00:59:34 ◼   ► to match the animations,

00:59:36 ◼   ► and then tightening the animations to match the script,

00:59:38 ◼   ► and like going back and forth a few times.

00:59:40 ◼   ► Which is not how anybody who does animation

00:59:42 ◼   ► should ever do it because it takes a thousand times longer.

00:59:44 ◼   ► The proper flow for almost every video

00:59:47 ◼   ► you've ever seen on the internet,

00:59:48 ◼   ► or like movies you've seen, is audio gets finalized

00:59:52 ◼   ► and then video happens, 'cause it's like

00:59:54 ◼   ► changing the audio is such a pain in the butt.

00:59:56 ◼   ► But I don't like to do it that way for a bunch of reasons.

00:59:59 ◼   ► So I had recorded a really rough track of the audio

01:00:04 ◼   ► where I just talk through the script,

01:00:06 ◼   ► I don't really try to do it properly, it's just,

01:00:09 ◼   ► I wanna give something to the animator

01:00:11 ◼   ► so we can make something to see roughly how does this look

01:00:15 ◼   ► with the words that I'm saying.

01:00:17 ◼   ► but it's terrible, like no one should watch it.

01:00:19 ◼   ► So I had done this rough audio

01:00:22 ◼   ► before I had left on the trip with my family.

01:00:27 ◼   ► And that's partly why I was like,

01:00:29 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm so confident about this."

01:00:31 ◼   ► Because while I'm traveling, the animator can work on this

01:00:34 ◼   ► and that can get done.

01:00:36 ◼   ► And then when I can come back, I can just do,

01:00:38 ◼   ► "All I need to do, Myke,

01:00:40 ◼   ► "is make a couple of final tweaks to the script

01:00:44 ◼   ► "and then just record the final audio

01:00:47 ◼   ► And then it's all done.

01:00:49 ◼   ► I mean, except for the 10,000 little picky changes I do after that, but like really

01:00:53 ◼   ► it's basically done and there's no problem.

01:00:56 ◼   ► But God damn, like the, the thing that has been killing me is I just, I, for a long

01:01:04 ◼   ► time, I completely lost my voice and I've only really gotten it back in the last

01:01:09 ◼   ► week, I went to record the audio.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And I just couldn't do it.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Like it was unbelievable because here's the thing, like, I feel like there's kind of three levels of

01:01:21 ◼   ► talking. There's normal talking where I'm just at home and I say some things to my wife. There's

01:01:26 ◼   ► a second level of talking, which is what we're doing right now on Cortex, which is there's a

01:01:32 ◼   ► microphone in front of me. And so you, you talk more, you talk louder, right? Into the microphone.

01:01:40 ◼   ► - And the issue that I had and continue to have is

01:01:45 ◼   ► it's more sustained talking for a longer period of time

01:01:48 ◼   ► than a typical conversation would be.

01:01:50 ◼   ► It's very, it's like just an intense conversation

01:01:55 ◼   ► that you don't have very often in daily life.

01:01:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, or I think it's more like phone calls as well.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Like when you're doing,

01:02:02 ◼   ► there's a sustained thing there.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Which is why I always feel like conversations in real life,

01:02:08 ◼   ► The key thing that's different about them is it's easier for both people to just not

01:02:13 ◼   ► talk for a few moments and sit in silence with each other.

01:02:16 ◼   ► And on phone calls and FaceTime, like you can't do that.

01:02:19 ◼   ► And on podcasts, that's the whole thing.

01:02:22 ◼   ► You really can't do that.

01:02:23 ◼   ► You know, you're like, "Oh, we'll just sit here for a couple of minutes and drink our

01:02:27 ◼   ► coffee and, you know, look off into space and then pick up the conversation."

01:02:31 ◼   ► Like you can't do that.

01:02:32 ◼   ► So there's, there's this level, which is like a notch up from regular conversation.

01:02:37 ◼   ► But then the videos are one notch above that because it's like giving a presentation.

01:02:42 ◼   ► And I have a theory that you can maybe confirm for me about how you feel about this.

01:02:47 ◼   ► The type of content that you make, you would prefer it not to be pinned in time forever.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Like, that was the video Grey made when he had COVID and you can tell because you can hear it in his voice.

01:02:59 ◼   ► I can imagine you would prefer the video not to sound like that.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I would prefer the video not to sound like that, but the problem I ran into the first day I went to record the final audio is I physically couldn't do it.

01:03:10 ◼   ► I was absolutely shocked, and this again is like, you know, we just, here's the theme, Gray is constantly surprised by COVID.

01:03:17 ◼   ► What do you mean I can't talk in this loud, sustained way into a microphone?

01:03:24 ◼   ► I do this all the time.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Yeah, like I physically can't do it.

01:03:27 ◼   ► So yeah, I also kept giving up like, "Oh, I'll have the audio any minute now."

01:03:31 ◼   ► And it's like, "No, I won't."

01:03:32 ◼   ► Because I talked like this for 10 minutes and ended up just like uncontrollably

01:03:37 ◼   ► coughing and like, "Okay, well, that's just, this is just not gonna work."

01:03:41 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I don't want a video to have my voice sound like I am sick,

01:03:46 ◼   ► but I couldn't even get to that stage.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And so what I've ended up having to do, which I just, I loathe, I loathe so much

01:03:57 ◼   ► is I had to break up recording the final audio into multiple sessions.

01:04:03 ◼   ► I was like, "Okay, I'm going to just record as much as I can, and then I'm going to have to stop for today, and then that's it, and then pick this up tomorrow."

01:04:11 ◼   ► It's less than ideal.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Do you know what I did?

01:04:13 ◼   ► I put a little marker on the floor for exactly where I was standing in front of the microphone,

01:04:20 ◼   ► because to help minimize the different sound from the different days.

01:04:25 ◼   ► days. But that's just one of the variables. There's a million variables. Distance from the

01:04:30 ◼   ► microphone though is surprisingly important and I think it is one of the things that is actually

01:04:35 ◼   ► quite hard to fix in posts. Oh yeah. This is one of the things of like long-term projects and one

01:04:40 ◼   ► of the reasons why I would like an office is I would love to have a dedicated recording station

01:04:46 ◼   ► just for the videos where nothing ever changes. I can stand in this exact spot, I never touch the

01:04:53 ◼   ► the microphone, never do anything to help minimize when this needs to happen.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Yeah, but you know, what you've eaten and had to drink that day, what time of the day

01:05:01 ◼   ► it is.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Oh yeah, no, like...

01:05:03 ◼   ► If you've got sinuses going wild, like...

01:05:06 ◼   ► I know, I know you know.

01:05:07 ◼   ► I know you know, but I just wanted to put it out there that this is about being able

01:05:13 ◼   ► to control the things you can control.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Yes.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Control the things you can control.

01:05:18 ◼   ► You can also minimize a bunch of those variables by simply recording in the morning before

01:05:23 ◼   ► you've eaten any – like there's a lot that you can do if you have to do this.

01:05:27 ◼   ► But yeah, so the current state of my final audio is this horrific Frankenstein monster

01:05:33 ◼   ► over many sessions where I put many takes together to try to get something that's

01:05:38 ◼   ► a final audio.

01:05:40 ◼   ► And I think you can hear in my voice that I'm sick.

01:05:45 ◼   ► Like it's not terrible.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I think a lot of people won't notice, but I can definitely hear it.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Most people aren't going to be able to tell about the variance of time.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Like this, I know we've mentioned this on the show before, but I know it's

01:06:00 ◼   ► something that we can both notice.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Maybe it's part of our jobs or maybe there's just some people are more

01:06:04 ◼   ► attuned to it than others when you can hear like what's called ADR on a TV show

01:06:09 ◼   ► or movie where like somebody's added a line in that wasn't actually set at the

01:06:13 ◼   ► time.

01:06:14 ◼   ► And it astounds me, like I can spot it

01:06:16 ◼   ► and I'll turn to it and be like, did you hear that?

01:06:19 ◼   ► I have no idea what you're talking about.

01:06:20 ◼   ► But like, I don't know what it is.

01:06:22 ◼   ► I think that maybe it's just something like,

01:06:23 ◼   ► if you're used to dealing with audio

01:06:27 ◼   ► and like piecing together the way people speak,

01:06:29 ◼   ► it truly is incredible how hard it is

01:06:32 ◼   ► to try and make something match.

01:06:33 ◼   ► It takes a lot of work to try and get that right.

01:06:37 ◼   ► And a lot of skill in controlling your own voice.

01:06:42 ◼   ► It's really hard.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's absolutely shocking.

01:06:44 ◼   ► That is, again, there are a thousand things where if you work in the world of entertainment

01:06:50 ◼   ► or in the world of media, entertainment and media is completely ruined for you in a thousand

01:06:55 ◼   ► tiny ways.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And this is one of those ways of like, boy, you just always tune into it.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Like, ah, they added that line of exposition later because they were afraid that people

01:07:06 ◼   ► wouldn't understand what was going on.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Like, yep, there we go.

01:07:09 ◼   ► Hello, ADR.

01:07:12 ◼   ► But yeah, so it was brutal and that's how I've spent the last week is I was like really

01:07:17 ◼   ► just trying to kill myself to get this thing done, but I do these little recording sessions,

01:07:23 ◼   ► strip my voice, and then spend the rest of the day just like really exhausted and not

01:07:29 ◼   ► being able to do very much.

01:07:30 ◼   ► So when you were saying earlier about the up and down you've had in symptoms, this is

01:07:35 ◼   ► a part of that.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna tell you that you should be resting

01:07:40 ◼   ► because I didn't do it either.

01:07:42 ◼   ► But that was the thing that I noticed.

01:07:44 ◼   ► The harder I worked, the worse I felt the next day.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Like, I would start to feel better

01:07:48 ◼   ► and then I would do something

01:07:49 ◼   ► and it would pull me right back down again.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Like, this weekend, like Friday I went to the gym

01:07:56 ◼   ► for the first time and I also saw some family

01:07:59 ◼   ► over the weekend and I've been struggling more

01:08:03 ◼   ► the last two days than I was, say,

01:08:05 ◼   ► Wednesday, Thursday of last week.

01:08:07 ◼   ► 'cause I've exerted myself more.

01:08:09 ◼   ► But the way that, like I don't know how you describe

01:08:12 ◼   ► this kind of graph where like, but it's like a trend line,

01:08:15 ◼   ► so like it goes up and down and up and down,

01:08:18 ◼   ► but the valleys are always higher than before

01:08:20 ◼   ► and the peaks are higher than before.

01:08:22 ◼   ► You know, am I explaining that right?

01:08:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:25 ◼   ► - So paint a picture in your mind.

01:08:26 ◼   ► But so like, I still have times where I feel worse

01:08:29 ◼   ► than the day before, but even that worse is better

01:08:32 ◼   ► than the worse of the previous week.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Like that's kind of where I am,

01:08:35 ◼   ► and I think you'll get there,

01:08:37 ◼   ► but you've been putting yourself through

01:08:40 ◼   ► one of the worst things you can do.

01:08:43 ◼   ► - Here's the thing, Myke.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I'm gonna say words,

01:08:45 ◼   ► but I also know that I can't trust me saying these words

01:08:48 ◼   ► of, "Oh, I think it's finally getting better," right?

01:08:51 ◼   ► But I've been saying that for weeks.

01:08:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I understand.

01:08:54 ◼   ► - I really do, I can tell you, I really do think it's fine,

01:08:57 ◼   ► but I don't actually know if that's true,

01:08:59 ◼   ► and I just won't trust that that's true,

01:09:02 ◼   ► probably until I actually do the next recording

01:09:04 ◼   ► and could be like, okay, it's fine.

01:09:05 ◼   ► - But we couldn't have done this two weeks ago.

01:09:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is true.

01:09:08 ◼   ► I would simply, I would like not have been able

01:09:10 ◼   ► to physically record this podcast.

01:09:12 ◼   ► So yeah, that definitely is better.

01:09:13 ◼   ► But this is why I say like, yeah, in an ideal world,

01:09:17 ◼   ► I would not try to push so hard to get the final audio done,

01:09:21 ◼   ► but it is just that like, that unbelievable pressure of,

01:09:26 ◼   ► it's been forever since I've uploaded a video.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Like this has been, I think now the longest break ever

01:09:33 ◼   ► on the channel since an upload, it has to be the case.

01:09:36 ◼   ► And it's sort of like, you were talking about the theme

01:09:40 ◼   ► stuff as well and thinking about that.

01:09:43 ◼   ► And so that's also partly why I was like, oh my God,

01:09:45 ◼   ► I've had such a strange year kind of thinking about

01:09:48 ◼   ► all of these things and related to the theme as well.

01:09:52 ◼   ► But something I did maybe two weeks ago to kind of like,

01:09:57 ◼   ► okay, I feel awful about this,

01:10:01 ◼   ► But I can also rationally understand that it couldn't have been different.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And the way I worked this out is like, okay.

01:10:11 ◼   ► I went back and I counted from January what was going on in every week of my

01:10:17 ◼   ► life since January 1st until now.

01:10:21 ◼   ► So I just updated the numbers until now.

01:10:23 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, between traveling for my wife's family, for my family, for

01:10:31 ◼   ► Hawaii jet lag for also having COVID or being like now functionally in like a still a bad recovery from COVID.

01:10:41 ◼   ► I actually have only had 10 clear weeks this whole year, and we're halfway through the year.

01:10:49 ◼   ► And six of those weeks were the first six weeks of the year, making the highway video.

01:10:58 ◼   ► So it's like, okay, I can feel less bad about the situation when I look at it through that lens.

01:11:07 ◼   ► I'm like, all right, you know, sort of related to what you were talking about.

01:11:10 ◼   ► One of these fundamental ideas in life is that there's only four areas that you can spend your energy on.

01:11:19 ◼   ► It's work, it's health, it's family, it's friends.

01:11:23 ◼   ► And this has been one of those years where the intention was to spend a bunch of time

01:11:29 ◼   ► with family, which was very important, and I was glad to do this.

01:11:34 ◼   ► But what I was not expecting, and I feel like I've never really, in this category thing,

01:11:40 ◼   ► I've never really thought about the inverse of this.

01:11:42 ◼   ► I've always thought of health in a positive way of how much time do you want to spend

01:11:47 ◼   ► being healthy?

01:11:50 ◼   ► But there's also just the reverse.

01:11:52 ◼   ► When your health is bad, that just takes away one, like, that just uses up one of the categories.

01:11:59 ◼   ► And you can't do anything about that.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Like you don't get to choose, as I did at the start of my career, like, "Oh, I'm just

01:12:06 ◼   ► going to intentionally ignore my health."

01:12:08 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, if you're sick and not able to work or you're just really slowed

01:12:13 ◼   ► down, you don't get to make a choice about pushing through that."

01:12:17 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, okay, I just physically can't."

01:12:20 ◼   ► So yeah, I've had six months where there's just two categories.

01:12:26 ◼   ► It's been family and it's been health.

01:12:28 ◼   ► And I've had 10 weeks where I was able to do work.

01:12:32 ◼   ► And considering that, it's like, "Okay, I'm actually not that far

01:12:39 ◼   ► behind in terms of video production.

01:12:41 ◼   ► It's just, I have to mentally calibrate for how much of the year was

01:12:46 ◼   ► completely knocked out. So yeah, that's been my situation. It's been so

01:12:55 ◼   ► frustrating. Like, I can't... I feel like I can't even put it into words

01:13:00 ◼   ► articulately. But yeah, I don't know if the video is going to be out before the

01:13:04 ◼   ► podcast goes out. I really hope so?

01:13:08 ◼   ► But we know it's close though. Like, you know it's close now.

01:13:12 ◼   ► It is, it is close.

01:13:14 ◼   ► There's well, when you were asking about, ooh, uh, is Myke going to get

01:13:19 ◼   ► a, like a preview before the show?

01:13:22 ◼   ► I also wasn't sure because it was just the day before yesterday that I put all

01:13:29 ◼   ► the edits together and got it done.

01:13:30 ◼   ► And so it is off with the animator and it is off with the composer

01:13:35 ◼   ► and it is off with sound effects.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Like all of that stuff is being worked on.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And I just look now in my own company, Slack of like, Ooh, did

01:13:42 ◼   ► everything come through yet?

01:13:43 ◼   ► And the answer is no, it hasn't come through yet, so.

01:13:46 ◼   ► - But the thing is, even if you had a rough cut for me,

01:13:48 ◼   ► there's no point in me watching it

01:13:49 ◼   ► if we can't talk about it.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Because we won't talk about it until it's up,

01:13:54 ◼   ► until we know it's gonna be up, right?

01:13:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

01:13:56 ◼   ► - So there's no point in me seeing it.

01:13:58 ◼   ► 'Cause I could just be like, oh, it's really good,

01:14:00 ◼   ► you should go watch it.

01:14:00 ◼   ► But like, I could just say that anyway.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Oh, the video's real good, everyone, you should go watch it.

01:14:04 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:14:05 ◼   ► Like there's, we can't talk about it

01:14:08 ◼   ► because it might not be out by now

01:14:10 ◼   ► and you don't wanna do that 'cause--

01:14:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - It's bad enough

01:14:13 ◼   ► that we're already saying there is one

01:14:15 ◼   ► after six months of a gap, you know what I mean?

01:14:17 ◼   ► 'Cause now it's like, gray fans out there,

01:14:20 ◼   ► they're like, "Ah, all right, here we go, it's video time."

01:14:24 ◼   ► Well, soon, but not yet.

01:14:26 ◼   ► - Maybe, I don't know, I hope so.

01:14:28 ◼   ► So here's the problem is, I haven't made a decision yet,

01:14:32 ◼   ► but it's like, I might end up,

01:14:33 ◼   ► like I don't know if I'm going to re-re-record

01:14:38 ◼   ► the final audio?

01:14:40 ◼   ► Like I haven't really listened to it since I put it all together and that was also a workday that almost killed me.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Like I couldn't believe how tiring it was.

01:14:49 ◼   ► I don't think you should.

01:14:50 ◼   ► If you have gotten it to a point where you're 70% happy, I would just say go for it.

01:14:57 ◼   ► Because if you do it again, you do the audio again and it knocks you out for another two days, like, yeah, I don't know.

01:15:06 ◼   ► You would just be doing this forever.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:15:10 ◼   ► The reason I'm just saying it's like up in the air at this moment is I haven't with a clean slate in my mind, listened to what I actually put together.

01:15:21 ◼   ► So I feel like I actually don't have a good sense of what does the final audio sound like.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Because putting it together was such an exhausting day that it's like, I didn't really have the ability to like evaluate it at the end.

01:15:38 ◼   ► So that's why I'm like, I'll find out tomorrow because when we're done recording, I'm just

01:15:43 ◼   ► gonna collapse.

01:15:44 ◼   ► And so hopefully tomorrow I have the first work in progress of a potentially releasable

01:15:50 ◼   ► version of the video with the final audio and music and animations, and then I can try

01:15:56 ◼   ► to make a judgment call about, okay, is this fine to go up or not?

01:16:00 ◼   ► I really hope the answer is yes, because redoing the audio is just the absolute worst part

01:16:06 ◼   ► of it and I'm also not confident like I'm physically up for it again but we'll see.

01:16:13 ◼   ► So yeah, this has been uh this has been an absolute month of misery. That's what I've

01:16:20 ◼   ► been up to Myke.

01:16:21 ◼   ► This is such an interesting point for us both to be in I feel like this time of the year.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:28 ◼   ► For what was expected to be our half year, let's talk about how our themes have gone

01:16:34 ◼   ► so far.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:36 ◼   ► the answer for both of us is kind of like, not how we expected.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Yeah, not how we expected.

01:16:43 ◼   ► And also, I mean, for me, this is much more minor than it was for you, but I

01:16:48 ◼   ► have found myself thinking like, okay, so COVID isn't going anywhere.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Like it's just going to be in the world.

01:16:56 ◼   ► Um, we're going to keep getting these different variants.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And part of what I talked about at the start of the year was like, Ooh, I'm

01:17:01 ◼   ► going to do all of this travel and I'm, and like, I want to try to do more

01:17:05 ◼   ► grade goes outside stuff and like I have all of these ideas, all of which are

01:17:08 ◼   ► involved in being outside of the house.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But I do have to say it has been on the back of my mind this month of like, I

01:17:18 ◼   ► know people who have gotten COVID many, many times now and if this happens,

01:17:25 ◼   ► like every time I catch it, I need to reevaluate some of my thoughts about

01:17:30 ◼   ► travel.

01:17:31 ◼   ► But that's the thing you just can't know.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Like I don't know.

01:17:34 ◼   ► I don't know the answer to this.

01:17:36 ◼   ► I have already kind of cut down some of my travel plans for the rest of the year

01:17:40 ◼   ► because I just need, like, I just need to reverse this and focus on work

01:17:45 ◼   ► more for the rest of the year.

01:17:46 ◼   ► But I do have two conferences that I've been invited to that I will not miss

01:17:52 ◼   ► for anything and I'm going to go to them.

01:17:54 ◼   ► But they're going to be like a very interesting test case in if I go to

01:18:00 ◼   ► conferences and because of travel and because of being in a room with a bunch

01:18:04 ◼   ► of people who are talking about stuff.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Like if I pick up COVID again from another one of those, and it's like this, I don't

01:18:13 ◼   ► know, like I think I'm going to need to reevaluate some of my thoughts about,

01:18:17 ◼   ► Ooh, how are the next many years going to go?

01:18:19 ◼   ► Right now, we'll see, but it has been just niggling at the back of my mind.

01:18:24 ◼   ► You can't lose a couple of weeks frequently from getting sick from this.

01:18:29 ◼   ► So I don't know.

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01:18:43 ◼   ► So you can get all of this and more techs at getmoretechs.com