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Virgo Season Has Arrived! (Season 7 Preview!)
91 Plays3 months ago
In this exciting sneak peek into Season 7 of "Friendless", host James Avramenko returns revitalised from his summer holiday, ready to dive deep into personal growth, friendship, and community.
Celebrating Virgo season and his 37th birthday, James reflects on his nearly 11 months of sobriety and the transformative journey he's been on over the past year.
Join James as he opens up about his summer experiences, the struggles he faced, and the profound lessons he learned in self-acceptance and personal boundaries.
This episode offers a heartfelt and candid look at what to expect in the upcoming season, including a fresh mix of solo episodes and interviews that will explore deeper themes like mental health, lived experiences, and the quest for hope in chaotic times.
Get a taste of the first official episode set to launch on September 10th, featuring the return of poet jaz papadopoulos discussing their new book, "i feel that way too." James also invites listeners to engage with him more directly this season, fostering a deeper community connection through shared experiences and open dialogue.
Don't miss the rebirth of "Friendless" as it embarks on this new and invigorated journey.
Tune in now and feel the love, sweet peas!
Read "Hey, sorry I missed you"
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Transcript
Season Seven Kick-off
00:00:08
Speaker
Well, hey there, sweet peas. Did you miss me? I'm your host, James Avramenko, back from summer holiday and ready to dive into season seven of Friendless. I have missed doing the show so much. I've missed you, my little sweet peas. And I am just so excited to be back. I cannot wait to share with you everything I've got in store for the new season. Today, we're gonna do a little update on everything that's been going on, how the summer went, and how the rest of this season is gonna play out. So buckle up, sweet peas.
00:00:38
Speaker
Lean back, get comfy, set your volume at a reasonable level, and enjoy my sneak peek of season 7 here on Friendless.
Birthday and Sobriety Reflections
00:00:47
Speaker
it's the best time of year you know it i know it it's virgo season baby happy virgo season to all who celebrate anybody who thinks this isn't the best time of year well you're probably a gemini so you know kick rocks kid. I just celebrated my 37th birthday ah a couple weeks ago and I'm feeling good. I'm feeling really you know um clear eyed, fresh minded. My body's recharged. I've spent the summer just resting, recharging, recouping, and I'm just like chomping at the bed ready to go. I'm also just a about to hit 11 months sober and I could not be proud or could not be more excited about it. I sometimes, I don't know, I can't fucking believe it. I, I remember this time last year, just being in such depths of depression and substance abuse and thinking that that was just, you know, that was my reality. That was how it was always going to be. And I was always going to be trapped in where I was and a year removed from it. I feel like I'm in a new body. I feel like that past is dead and done and gone. And I could not be more excited about the future that I'm building towards right
Summer Self-Acceptance
00:01:55
Speaker
now.
00:01:55
Speaker
summary general is a funny season for me because i gotta to admit i'm not the biggest fan in general i'm not somebody who does well in big heat um and so i have been just like counting down the days to end of august september when it's finally starts to cool off And cardigan season starts. Ooh, yeah, get some linens on ya. Ooh, baby, you're gonna do just fine. Already, I see in Vancouver, all the tiny little hats are coming out. Everybody loves their tiny little hats. And it is just, it's the best time of the year. This summer, I really spent just focusing on recharging, spending, you know, quality time with with with people that I love.
00:02:37
Speaker
But realistically, and most importantly, spending time with myself and really trying to reflect on where I've been and where it is I want to go next. And the funny thing that happens is, you know, you get into these gears of like self-improvement and what you what I've come to really realize is that more often than not, those periods end up turning into sort of a process of like self-acceptance or route recognizing that it's like,
00:03:00
Speaker
Everything that I want to be, I already am, um you know, I'm already good enough. I'm already doing really good. And, you know, sometimes I can grasp that and sometimes I forget it a little, a little bit. And, um, I really spent the summer really cementing that core self-belief and that core self-love in myself.
00:03:21
Speaker
And I'm ready to kind of put the stress test to it, right? I always talk to therapy about like, you know, therapy sort of like the theory, you know, you're, you're so almost like in class and you're sort of theorizing about what can happen, but then you put it on the world and you have to test it against actual interactions and actual reality. And I'm, I'm really ready to, to dive into that and really test myself, um, and see.
00:03:47
Speaker
where i really am versus where i sort of feel like i am because like as satisfied as i am with myself and as satisfied as i continue to be i know that there are still parts of my life and parts of my work that i have yet to accomplish you know i still have goals i still have things i want to do i still have places i want to go and And so navigating the that, it's almost like threading the needle between sort of like feeling that self-satisfaction already while also being desirous of of something else and not letting it overtake me, but also letting it kind of guide me through, right? This idea of like, I often see these sort of like utopian ideals of like, If we didn't have money, we'd have no jobs and everybody would be fine. But it's like, you know, work is a fundamental element of life. Like nature, um animals and nature work, right? You know, they're not all just kind of laying around. they they They still have to survive. They still have to go and do things. And and you can't just be um completely like static or or docile, right? You still have to go and stimulate yourself and you still have to go pursue things.
00:04:53
Speaker
And that's really what my my kind of aim is, is that it's like, I'm not looking to stress myself out. I'm not looking to overburden myself, but I am still continuing to find the next challenge. And such a deep element of that has been just, once again, circling back to this idea of like cementing that self-acceptance because, you know,
00:05:10
Speaker
This year has been a motherfucker. Um, the last couple of years have been a motherfucker. God, the last decade has been a motherfucker. You know, like I, I've just, it feels like I've just been on such a goddamn roller coaster and, and there's just been so many road bumps and so many, so many impediments that I've been navigating that I'm just, I'm really ready to put them down and, and move
Redefining Boundaries
00:05:35
Speaker
on.
00:05:35
Speaker
This year, ah the vast majority of it, I've been an an absolute mess. I was in such a state of just like perpetual stress and anxiety. And I was trying so hard to hold so many elements of this past life that what i what I needed to do was just bury and be done with, but I was trying to hold onto them and keep them active. And and it was doing so much.
00:05:59
Speaker
emotional and psychic damage and realistically this show was playing a part in it because you know I was being monitored and like I was being kind of like surveilled and and what I was putting out was being used to perpetuate these attacks and so I needed to to pull away from it I needed to put a just put a wall up and I needed to relearn my boundaries and I needed to reassert my boundaries from from this past life So I pulled back from everything, you know, I pulled back from the podcast, I pulled back from posting online, I pulled back from my writing and I just really recentered how I perceive myself and what matters to me. What are my values? What are my aspirations? What? Who am I? And that's fucking scary, man. And it's hard and it's like, it's intimidating, you know? Um, but I feel like.
00:06:50
Speaker
It's not that I'm ready, because I don't think, at least in my experience, i I'm never ready for anything. um But I still want to do stuff. So I have to kind of start before I'm ready. And I'm at that stage now where I have enough on the plate that I i can sort of fill in the gaps as I go.
00:07:08
Speaker
and this show obviously plays such a major factor in that and so you know i've spent this summer really reflecting on what is it that i want this show to be about and what is it that i want to be sharing with the world through this show i've come to be so grateful for this platform and for this outlet and for the opportunities you know to speak to the people who i do to share their stories to share my own experience and my own stories And I've realized that it's still even that was feeling a little stagnant for me you know it might be my ADHD it might be something else I don't know but I you know I continue to experiment with with the formatting and the content of the show and and I keep on just trying to refine it and and recognizing that it's never gonna be finished it's always gonna change around but um I'm ready for sort of a new phase or a new iteration of that so
00:07:56
Speaker
I've kind of come up with a little bit of like a multi-pronged perspective on how that's going to kind of
Exploring Friendship and Community
00:08:01
Speaker
materialize. um and And I think what so much of it boils down to are these you know the central questions that I have been asking on the show. What does it mean to be a friend? What does it mean to be in community? um And I've recognized that For all the years I've been asking this question, I've never actually truly taken the time to answer that question for myself. um Nor have I ever taken the time to share what I feel about those questions with you, the listener. So a good chunk of um this upcoming season, I'm going to be spending really diving into those questions from a personal perspective.
00:08:37
Speaker
I had mentioned at the end of last season that I have this goal of or or this sort of idea in my head of kind of doing half interview, half solo episodes for for the upcoming season. And what I'd like to do is basically take these these topics, whether it's friendship, community, connection, or or deeper you know so um ah mental health ah topics, you know lived experience topics, things like that, ADHD, autism, borderline, all these things.
00:08:59
Speaker
And I'd like to do a more um sort of, ah I guess the word is deep dive into them and really, you know, research the topics, flesh them out into into sort of longer form stories and and weave those with my own lived experiences. um I think often about this book I read earlier this year called Unmasking Autism and how it talks about how When they were first sort of identifying the condition, it was all observed ah behavior. right The doctors were watching um autistic boys, you know um which already was skewing the data, but they were they were basing the diagnosis only on what they were looking at.
00:09:37
Speaker
And it took decades for you know people on the spectrum to get into places of of privilege or power to be able to vocalize their own lived experience. And that's when we finally started sort of opening up um our perception of what neurodivergence is, what the spectrum is, and and and we realized how wrong these observations were because we were finally getting the lived experiences To sort of color in these these diagnoses and you know of course like I'm not coming from a clinical perspective I'm not a professional i'm not a trained professional um you know a friend of mine once described friendless as like an ongoing freelance sociological study and and
00:10:19
Speaker
I really like that. And I want to lean into that, you know, I may not have the clinical training, but I do have the lived experiences behind it. And I also have a very deep rooted curiosity, not to be right, but to find out what we could know more about these topics. So that's, I think, how the solo episodes are going to start playing out is, you know, find a topic, deep dive, infuse the sort of the lived experiences, the personal anecdotes.
00:10:45
Speaker
and and really try to open up the conversation around these topics. The internet has this really beautiful and strange opportunity to um open up new lines of dialogue and new lines of conversation. um But they also run the risk of dropping into very black and white, unnuanced conversation because you know they're compressed. And I think that's what's beautiful about a podcast is that I don't have to boil it down to a 15 second tech talk or something like that, right? Like I can actually give these topics room to breathe and really expand on them and really explore
Importance of Self-Care
00:11:21
Speaker
them. And of course still leave room to be completely off base and wrong, but you know, ah it's with the, with the best intentions here. And then of course, the other side is going to be the continuation of the interview series. Um, I already have a couple of guests recorded in the can and they're incredible. And this season I'm going to be much more targeted with the guests. I want to be bringing on people with with you know expertise or experience in really specific areas of life and really get to the bottom of of how they can shed some light onto some of the
00:11:56
Speaker
Issues that are really you know plaguing me and plaguing a lot of the people in my life I've been thinking a lot about you know, where does this show fit in the sort of grand tapestry in society because you know Shit's not great out there right now you know to put it really uh pithily i don't know um blithely is that the word i don't know but it's like the reality is that you know there are genocides happening in this world there is climate crisis there's whatever the fuck we're calling politics these days there is a lot of reason
00:12:31
Speaker
to be upset and to be afraid and to be angry. And there is just so much um chaos in our day-to-day lives. And I feel like we're being sucked into it. You know, we're glued to our screens and we're just in these constant maelstroms of panic and and anxiety and well i don't by any means want to be like and let's just ignore that for a bit but it's more like i want to create a space where we can set that aside for a moment and just breathe you know and find a little peace and recognize you know that we can't ignore it we have to do our part and we have to participate and at the same time too it is okay to recharge and it is okay to take a moment of peace and and and you know to take care of ourselves right like like if i've learned anything um
00:13:20
Speaker
One of the biggest lessons of this year has been that you cannot help anyone if you are not first helping yourself. And that's not in, um you know, ah ah what's the word, like a selfish sense. What I mean is that it's like, you have to take care of yourself. You can't do any good for anyone else if you're not doing good to yourself first. So if you're burnt out, if you're overexerted, if you have nothing left to give,
00:13:43
Speaker
then what good could you possibly do? And I really want to ah celebrate that and I want to create a space where we are allowed to recharge together and we are allowed to find that peace and tranquility and and connection, right?
00:13:59
Speaker
um And that leads into the new question that I'm adding into this season. you know On top of these continued questions of friendship and community and connection, I'm also trying to dive deeper into this question of hope and what gives us hope and what is it that we hold onto that keeps us going? Because you know there is so much darkness in the world and there is so much difficulty and it does feel at times to be completely hopeless. you know um And I want to come back to this idea of holding on to something worthwhile. And what is it, you know, no matter how big or small that we hold on to, to create hope in our lives? I've seen this um explosion in the discourse around this idea of sort of like loser culture and this idea of like my personality is now just like rotting in bed and kind of waiting to die.
00:14:50
Speaker
And look, I personally have participated very much in that kind of behavior. I've spent a lot of this year in bed staring at my ceiling, wondering when the fuck Sweet Oblivion was going to come wrap me up, right? But I just personally, I don't find that mentality helpful anymore. And I'm not here to tell you if it's good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.
00:15:14
Speaker
I'm just I'm in a place where I'm not willing to participate as actively in that as much as I have before and that comes with no judgment because the fact of the matter is you know I think a lot of this conversation is coming out of you know burnout and out of depleted energy and depleted capacity and something that i've continued to work on very very ah mindfully with myself is recognizing that you know my adhd my autism my borderline these are things that directly create disabilities in my capacity and in my energy levels and so you know right now i'm feeling energized and i'm feeling good and i'm feeling really charged up and i know that that won't last because i do not have the capacity that our society
00:15:56
Speaker
Demands we have in order to, you know, satiate that the content mill or the, the other demands of, you know, nine to five work and, you know, Monday to Friday and all, yeah, on and on and on and on. and Um, so, you know, it's about a balance. It's, it's okay to rest. It's okay to slow down. And at the same time too, we do still have to, or I want to keep moving and I want to keep pushing at the rate that my body is able to.
00:16:21
Speaker
And I don't have the full answers for it yet, but I am asking those questions and I'm exploring those questions and those are deep themes that are going to be woven into the upcoming um season. I keep coming back to this idea of kindness and softness and this phrase keeps on playing in my head about staying soft is the hardest thing we can do.
Podcast's New Phase
00:16:42
Speaker
you know And I think that is a central sort of philosophy behind um this coming season is this idea of how do we stay soft in the face of so much hardness. um and And I don't have that answer yet, but I am really excited to find out what answers do come from those questions.
00:17:06
Speaker
So yeah, in synopses of that, that's the plan. Back and forth of solo episodes with interview episodes. I'm relaunching this substat soon. Again, in honoring my capacity, it is not going to be a weekly thing. It's going to be much more of kind of a, there's going to be bi-weekly updates with like a monthly long form. And there is going to be some extra goodies that I'm throwing in there.
00:17:28
Speaker
um I am trying to make it worth the the paid subscribers while so I'm going to be offering some behind the scenes stuff, some exclusive interviews, things like that. um And I'm just I'm just really excited to get created again, not necessarily be forcing myself to be onto some kind of treadmill, but to just be getting out there being a part of the conversation and sharing the stuff that I'm creating because i'm I'm finally at a place where I have a new surge of excitement and creativity and I feel so much more rooted in my body and my nervous system and my brain and you know with the sobriety and with the regulation and just with everything that I've been processing through, i'm just I'm feeling more myself than I have in years and I'm excited to share that with with you. So get pumped, sweet peas.
00:18:17
Speaker
The first official episode is going to be launching shortly in about two weeks with a returning guest, the one and only poet Magnifico. I don't know if that's a real word. Jazpoptopolis, they have a brand new book out called I Feel That Way Too, which is incredible. It's gorgeous. It is devastating. You have to get a copy. The link to that is going to be in the show notes.
00:18:43
Speaker
um and they They're actually having a book launch in Vancouver on the 12th of September. and um I am writing a review for the book, which is going to be up to the sub-stack. They graciously came back on the show to discuss the writing of the book, the ideas that they were having behind it, and but some of their process. so That's going to kick off the season in two weeks and then we're going to just kind of launch in from there and see where we go. But I think that's going to do it for me today. I um just really wanted to pop in, say hello, see how you're doing, let you know I'm doing good. And the show is going to be back so soon and better than ever.
00:19:21
Speaker
I'm just so excited to be um I kind of can't believe I'm at the seventh season of this fucking thing. It's incredible. I'm so freakgging excited to be back. I love this show. I love you. And um I just can't wait to get things rolling again. So mark your calendars. September 10th is the official launch of season seven of friend list. Get excited. It's going to be an absolute blast. In the meantime, if you have any questions, comments, feedback, anything at all,
00:19:47
Speaker
do not hesitate to contact me.
Listener Engagement and Community
00:19:49
Speaker
You can email me friendlesspod at gmail dot.com or you can follow me at friendlesspod on TikTok and Instagram. Send me a message. I love to hear from you. So please, you know, this is a part of the new season that I really want to promote is I want to build a much deeper connection.
00:20:05
Speaker
of communication with the listeners. I want you to feel like you are part of this more than just sort of passive listeners. So reach out, make your voice heard, share your experience. We're going to find lots more ways to have you kind of share the spotlight and um just really build this community ah one interview at a time. So I hope I'll catch you back here on September 10th for the season premiere. But hey,
00:20:31
Speaker
I'm not gonna worry about that right now, and neither should you, because that is then, and this is now. So for now, I'll just say I hope you had a wonderful summer, I hope you have the best Virgo season possible, and I hope you remember, I fucking love ya, babies. All right, button safety, sweeties.