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Episode 210: Kaya is Burning Out
180 Plays11 months ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today is a very special miraculous episode (aka we are back form our break). We took the month of December off to recharge and it was needed. So why not come back with a topic that's important to us (so much so that we talked about it previously here and here). That's right Burnout! This time we are looking at the journey of Kaya who has been summoned back to Ravnica by Teysa Karlov.
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com
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Transcript
Return from Break
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. It feels really great to be back as we were just off for a month. We got everybody back. All three of us are here to record.
00:00:43
Speaker
We have particular goblin energy going from getting our recording working. And we're ready to go. This is only take two. This is only take two. Yes, perfect, excellent execution on the whatever is it rig reason to record this thing.
00:01:02
Speaker
So we are back to talk about Burnout tonight, which felt really appropriate for kind of, you know, we just took a week, we just took the month of December off because we were kind of struggling to get regular episodes recorded in November. And then the holidays at the end of November into December, we're just making things worse. That's always a time that historically has been rough.
00:01:27
Speaker
We sat down as a cast and intentionally said, you know, we keep, like you said, Alex, finding difficulty time, finding time to record or it wasn't happening or canceling last minute. And we just said, we're going to take practice what we've preached in the past and intentionally say, let's take this, let's take off a month, like regroup, get through the holidays and just not try to piecemeal this together. Yeah, exactly. And so that was what we did. And we are back.
00:01:57
Speaker
And so burnout felt
Introductions and Support
00:01:59
Speaker
appropriate there. And also it is a topic we've done a couple of times. I just look like we have two episodes. Like we did an episode on burnout and Nissa, which was episode 30, was one of the first episodes that I helped write. I know it's one that I always have a fondness for. And then the most recent one that I can find was from 2021. Almost three years ago now, we talked to Chase.
00:02:25
Speaker
and talked about burnout. So that looks like the most recent one we recorded with them. And so it's just, it's a good topic. It's been a while, felt appropriate here. We've got a cool story tie in, but first I'm going to do my introduction because I volunteered to go first to answer our question for this episode. And so I'm Alex Newman found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler.
00:02:49
Speaker
For now, at least. And my pronouns are he, him. And before I keep going, because I almost forgot again, again, we need to thank the Granny Coffee Company. It's been a little while. I have purchased coffee in the meantime. Do you want to just take that away, Hobbs? And then I can pick up from there. Yeah. So Granny and Coffee Company.
00:03:11
Speaker
They've been our longest partner. We've had a relationship with them. They are a LGBT and women-led and run company that makes coffee for gamers and supports gamers. They have been very supportive of us with really believing in our mission, especially as it relates to mental health and charity work.
00:03:34
Speaker
Shortly before we took our hiatus or our break, we did the event for Sheldon Menary and they were, they don't know Sheldon, you know, they just know that we were involved with this. I reached out, they were like, yeah, here's coffee. Like here, like we will give you stuff to just support. And we just, we really believe in their mission and I believe in their coffee. I love their coffee. So yeah. Yeah. So.
00:03:59
Speaker
Glad to have their, always glad to have their support, especially, well, for many things, but also keeping Hobbs caffeinated is an important thing on that list. A little lower than some of the other things, I suppose, the mental health work and the charity stuff and all that's more important. But anyway. We can't do any of that if I don't have caffeine. That is fair. That is fair. That's a good logistical thing, the support that they provide for the cast.
00:04:26
Speaker
But all of that is, like I said, great goblin lore energy going into this recording.
New Year Traditions and Mental Health
00:04:33
Speaker
So this week, for our question, we just want to say what's something we did over the break for our mental health and stuff. And I wanted to talk about a new tradition I started with my dad recently that has been, well, we've done it two years. We're calling it a tradition because we're planning to keep it going.
00:04:50
Speaker
But every year, the last two years, I've gone up to see my dad. He lives on the north shore of Lake Superior, well up very, very near Canada, Minnesota. And next year, I think this year will probably be down here. But we go see the first sunrise of the year is a thing that I've done with him around New Year's. And A, it's just nice to go see my parents. I don't see my mom all that often. She doesn't come down the cities very often. So it's nice to go up there.
00:05:21
Speaker
It's a thing I got from an anime. For those who are familiar with anime, it was in the Yuru camp, and I can't remember the English name now, laid-back camp.
00:05:38
Speaker
show where it's just kids going camping. And it's just one of the most relaxing, chill things I've watched. I love the show. But that was one of their arcs. It was like they went camping over New Year's and decided to go see the sunrise, which really resonated with me as a person who hasn't stayed up till midnight on New Year's for five or six years, maybe longer than that.
00:06:00
Speaker
I just like, I'm getting older. I get tired. I don't want to stay up that late. And so now I get to like flip that get up early or maybe around this, you know, later even than when I would get up for work and go see the sun sunrise, which was cool. But then now doing it with my dad, his husband has been great. It's a good time for us to connect to do that. And so that's, that's what I did over break, but uh, need to want to
00:06:28
Speaker
Just been Hobbs, you've been talking. Do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah, so I'm Hobbs Q. I can be found still on Twitter, hanging on, going down with the ship at Hobbs Q. I can also be found on Blue Sky at Hobbs Q and Discord at Hobbs Q and pretty much everywhere on the Internet as Hobbs Q. And one thing that I have done, well, it's a two part thing.
00:06:51
Speaker
I did a role of black and white film photography, which was my first time doing a role of film in like 15 years. And the reason this is self care is it's a different way to look at photography where I can't review an image. I don't know what it's going to look like. I took a couple of some of them back to back just to kind of see but I, I really didn't know
00:07:17
Speaker
how well I was doing with exposure. I had control over very minimal compared to what I have with the power of like a modern day camera. The second part with that was I found a converter that let me put old manual film lenses that are still very much no autofocus, very like bare bones, but still really good glass. I mean, the quality of camera lenses in terms of the glass itself is not really changed a ton. It's just more in the mechanic side of it.
00:07:46
Speaker
putting those onto a modern day digital camera and being able to just get some really cool effects by using these lenses on a camera they weren't designed for, a camera that's designed for a lot more sharpness and just the power of what you get from modern day technology. And it was kind of fun to go back and shoot with just like different mindset and kind of looking at things in a different way. And that's something that I'm really hoping to carry into 2024.
00:08:16
Speaker
My pronouns are he him. Since I neglected that, I think early on. All right. Well, I guess it's my
Personal Self-Care Stories
00:08:24
Speaker
turn. Hey, Taya. Hey, uh, hi, I'm Taya. Pronouns are she, her, they, them. Uh, I am broken my Twitter habit, which feels really good. Um, but you can find me on blue sky at Taya transcends. I.
00:08:42
Speaker
took a bunch of time off in December, which felt really good and had plans to get a bunch done. But what I mostly did was sleep. And apparently my body needed that, uh, which kind of, you know, felt bad when I thought about it afterwards. But then I had to tell myself that, you know, this is what I really needed and not to feel bad about taking that time to do what I needed.
00:09:11
Speaker
And I could almost believe myself when I told myself that. So I tried to try to, you know, take that stance at least. But I got a lot of rest that was much needed. And it was good to have that time to kind of recover. And it's good we're talking about burnout today because I kind of feel like
00:09:36
Speaker
almost being in a constant state of burnout in general, just from day-to-day stuff even. It feels like, oh, I've got to feed myself three times a day? Wow, that's really hard work. Autistic burnout is really a thing. And sometimes even doing the simple stuff gets hard. So taking that time to rest was really good for me.
00:10:05
Speaker
I was mentioning before the show that this week will be my first time doing like a near full week of work since like the start of December. So I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. But I kind of have to get back to the real world. And then Monday is a federal holiday. Yeah, I guess it is this Monday, isn't it? It is. Wow. Yeah.
00:10:35
Speaker
I was just thinking like, gosh, I need a vacation day. I'm going to be off for most of February for surgery recovery. So I guess I'll get another break. Although most of that will be spent at least a good the first week and a half will probably be spent in bed. I say do you have some good anime lined up or
00:10:56
Speaker
You know, the winter season is just starting, so hopefully we'll have some English dubbed episodes to watch by then. So yeah, hopefully we'll have something. If not, I'll be rewatching some of my favorite stuff.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's, oh, that's a, and that's a good reminder. I got to get back and start rewatching a time. I was reading current it as a slime. Cause there's a new season coming this year, but yeah. Oh yeah. That's coming later this season. Uh, I just read all the light novels for I'm a spider. So what, uh, which is.
00:11:27
Speaker
I just watched that series. I watched that series, rewatched it with my girlfriend because she hadn't seen it and then I'm like, you know what? I like this series, so I went ahead and read all the light novels. That's one of the things I did in December. Yeah, I got to get back and finish. I was reborn as a vending machine and now I wander the dungeon.
00:11:48
Speaker
That was a silly series. Hobbs, I need to underline. We are not making these up. I was literally just about to say I am fully convinced most of the time that y'all just make these up and you just go with it with each other. And I have to sit here and feel like, wow. Yeah. I'm not in on the joke, but it's not real. This can't be real. A spiderling of any machine. This is not.
00:12:14
Speaker
yes no these are legitimate shows i am not that good at improv light novels that can't be a thing
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The spider one makes sense. The vending machine, that was best enjoyed with recreational substances. Yeah, that I mostly watched the day I was flying home from spending a week with friends and the flights were just really bad. So I was in a hotel room and I don't sleep well around travel. So I had two days in a row of poor sleep. And so I just sat in a bed in a hotel when I was planning to wake up at 3am to and I just watched like two hours.
00:12:54
Speaker
Where's the fat went to bed? So sleep deprivation or high is how I would need to enjoy this. I mean, I'm sure people enjoyed it without those things. I'm just repeating my circumstances. Yeah.
00:13:19
Speaker
We actually joked about this with some co workers recently that we're talking about either series or animes that they were on and I was like, yeah, I don't have that. However, I am on the third doctor. And I, I'm on season eight of 20 something of that and I don't remember how many episodes there are. So I understand it's just a different Yeah.
00:13:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And in particular, the whole Isekai thing, which we have done an epithete and I did an episode on. You did. There's a lot of art reacting to art is sort of just a thing it has always done. But like the Isekai thing, it's happening like quickly in a lot of public vision where you have the titles are getting longer and more ridiculous intentionally to poke fun at the long and ridiculous titles that came before them and things like that.
00:14:15
Speaker
And that's how you end up with like a refrigerator anime. It's not a refrigerator, a vending machine anime. Oh, no, you just gave this. You just gave Skynet an idea, Alex. Now we're going to get a refrigerator version.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah. But speaking of none of that, we're here to talk about burnout. We are.
Understanding Burnout
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, we are. I mean, a lot of animates do start out with somebody burnt out and then dying and reincarnating. Yeah. That's a lot of isekai. The joke is... Or just falling out of your chair and hitting your head because you've overworked yourself to death. Yes. I mean, that...
00:15:00
Speaker
a sentence of a librarian, or a sentence of a bookworm, is one that's a little bit like that. There was a different one I watched too, where a person literally had spent the entire, what was that? I spent 100 years killing slimes and accidentally maxed out my level. There's one like that where the person- You all can't convince me. This is not some elaborate joke.
00:15:26
Speaker
No way. Her whole like teens and early 20s just like working herself to death and then died in early death in the office. And it was just like, all right, I'm being reborn. I'm doing nothing. My plan is to do nothing all day long. And that was what she did for 100 years.
00:15:45
Speaker
How was a good show? This is a common theme. It is a common theme. I mean, it is. I mean, right. You said, Alex, I mean, we've done two episodes on it here. It's obviously found its way into that type of other media that you are talking about, but like it is common. God, it just feels like, yeah, sorry. You mentioned not having done this since 2021. And my thought was like, wow, yeah, gosh, that was a long time ago.
00:16:15
Speaker
But at the same time, it doesn't feel that? I don't know. That's the nature of it. It is. And it's a good reminder. I like to try to say when we come back to topics, especially at this point, where we've passed five years of this podcast. And so for us, particularly when I've actually been on most of those,
00:16:37
Speaker
It feels like we've talked about this and sometimes we have and sometimes we have fairly recently but there are a lot of topics that are worth talking about again and that's kind of how we got to this one when i was. I sat down to spend some time trying to just come up with some things that we could talk about my realize it's been you know with the times two years since we talked about burnout it's like this is an important topic to talk about.
00:17:01
Speaker
It's a thing that happens in general, in work, in family life, there's all sorts of stuff. Constant stress can just lead you to burnout, but particularly
00:17:14
Speaker
when there's more circumstances going on in the background of the world and lots of, you know, various factors there, the last few years with political stuff, with COVID, with other circumstances, and that makes it that much easier to burn out. I don't know. An analogy that I use to try to, I was talking to a supervisor of mine to explain,
00:17:40
Speaker
Like I have social anxiety. I have my own things that we talked about a lot on the show. And so I was trying to explain to her that just most days I'm fine, but it's like there's a cup that can only hold so much stress.
00:17:55
Speaker
And the last two years, it's just baseline at a higher level. So it doesn't take a whole it doesn't like somebody's turn the faucet on to right? Yeah, and like for me, like it was kind of what I was trying to get at there is like, for talking to her about daily work things like particular issues that would come up that kind of pushed me to a point where
00:18:19
Speaker
I'm not necessarily struggling, but push me to a point where now I'm overstressed and it's obvious. And it's like, it takes less to push me to that now because of all the background stuff. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does because we're in a constant state of pressure just at the default level. And then you add your daily stress on top of that.
00:18:47
Speaker
Um, it's easier to get to a burnout level because we're operating at a higher level of stress on a daily basis without even doing anything. And we have now for, it's not that things, I mean, I would just say for years now, right? Like for years where we're talking about like everything is this, you know, like the joke of I'm tired of once in a generation stuff happening to me because we're followed with like once in a generation things.
00:19:16
Speaker
over and over and over for the past five years. I don't know. More since 2008. Yeah, yeah. That's what it feels like. And then I will say, you know, it's like I want to get to a point where I don't have to just feel like I'm mentioning the pandemic with everything, but that's what it like. The acceleration that came with that has been something that, you know, we're feeling and speak from the health care field.
00:19:45
Speaker
People are leaving, right? And so every, you know, people are leaving at a rate quicker than people are coming in. And also it's the people with experience who are leaving who are then replaced by people with not a lot of experience. And then those of us who are still here, kind of in that mid point, like where I am.
00:20:05
Speaker
It just – it's not getting better. Like I just – I literally – every time somebody leaves at somebody that either has the same amount of experience as me or more, work comes down. New people come on who have a lot less experience. And on top of that, onboarding to bring anybody on at our hospital is –
00:20:23
Speaker
four or five months and during those four and five months gap that work still needs to be like those productivity demands and what the expectations are of like say a system haven't changed like they're not changing those there's they're not changing what those look like or what they want the number of people to be seen however you want to measure health care yet
00:20:48
Speaker
We're in these constant state of like gaps of just, so it's like, I think what you're saying, Alex, to being what really stuck with me is like, I feel like my work, the amount of like what's happening with my work is maybe the same, but I just don't get a break. There's not like a down period where there was like gaps in between these events because there's just so much more that we all have to be picking up and doing that. I just feel like my baseline is I'm just a little bit closer to burnout.
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah, like I think the pressure of baseline, like at all times, like if I think of myself as being on a zero to 10 scale.
00:21:25
Speaker
like when things are going well, maybe my day today is like a two or a three. And now my day so like that gap between going from a three to say overwhelmed at like a nine or a 10. There's like a good gap there. But if I'm starting every day at five or six, like I go to bed, I wake up, I'm at five or six instead. There's just no room. It's just a very small, very narrow band before I hit overwhelmed.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, right. And I know something for myself too is, is part of the reason why this is so important to talk about these things. But it's like, I'm not used to that new level. It's like, even if I got, you know, quote unquote, used to it, it still would be not good that it's at a higher point. But it means that now my expectations for myself are set at my
00:22:15
Speaker
base stress level being lower, and so when I hit that point and I feel less productive or there's things I'm not getting done, I add to it even more by feeling like I'm not hitting the things that I should be hitting because five years ago, eight years ago, 10 years, whatever, that wouldn't have been an issue, but now it is.
00:22:35
Speaker
and having these conversations happen. We could adapt, except that there's no time. That adaptability to these new levels where this is my new normal. The problem is that new normal is not actually, you don't have enough time to start making it a new normal. Yeah. And there's a thing where things just start to get
00:22:58
Speaker
too highly, that gap just gets closer, even if you're a little more used to that, then maybe, you know, I don't know, starting to get two into three reticles there. But yeah, it's been tough. It's been tough, I don't know.
00:23:14
Speaker
That's why we want to talk about this. This is an important thing to just be aware of. I think it's something that a lot of people will feel. I know for years that I would feel this, but without having a lot of
00:23:30
Speaker
I terms for it and concepts of how this kind of works. That makes it even harder to deal with kind of understanding it having these conversations and talking about it can help to make it easier to deal with or to some degree give a little bit more cushion. Yeah, it's it's you know, hard to deal with everything. It really is. And then like our go tos
00:24:00
Speaker
We've talked about this before, I think, Alex, I could remember you and I talking a lot about self care.
Self-Care Importance
00:24:07
Speaker
I want to say around two years ago, so it probably was around, it could have even been in that episode, it's been so long. The first thing to go out the window is self care, or hobbies, or things that we enjoy, or things that are actually going to hopefully make us feel better, because we have a very limited bandwidth and we
00:24:30
Speaker
you know, the pressures of society, whatever, the realities of needing to make, you know, pay bills, oftentimes means that we, if I only have a couple of hours at night that I'm not working, it's, I don't have the motivation. This was the hard part of, right? Like, it starts bleeding over into the things that I would rather be doing that I love, like this, right? Which can exacerbate the whole thing.
00:24:59
Speaker
And you can also get, and this is less something for me, but there's something to be cognizant of too in the conversation about burnout and hobbies in particular, which can be very helpful. But I believe when Chase was on there, talked about this, but I know the topic has come up on the cast before, maybe outside of this context, but when your hobbies become something that is giving you stress, because I remember we talked about that during COVID,
00:25:28
Speaker
I want to say Chase talked about the two because that's the thing that they kind of had gone through in the past years where magic went from a hobby to a job, like to a career for Chase and which is great and they've been really successful. But then that means all of a sudden now sort of the context of that changes and it's harder to then use that as the release.
00:25:52
Speaker
Valve is how I think of that, to release some of that steam, to release some of that buildup when it is now part of your career.
00:26:00
Speaker
And there's other contexts, like during COVID, if magic was a thing we went to a store to play, like I know getting together with a lot of the Minneapolis group, that was a thing that I love to do. We couldn't do that for a long time. And suddenly that, trying to do stuff with magic, even if it didn't cause a lot of stress, it either wasn't present for me because I couldn't go play, or I'm trying to keep up with the releases while I can't play and do things. And that honestly caused a little bit
00:26:29
Speaker
of why I started to step away from the game for a while because there was so much coming out and I couldn't do anything with it. And even now that I'm back to playing here and there, I haven't really kept up on recent sets in specific detail for cards. I haven't picked up new cards for some of my decks.
00:26:46
Speaker
For two years because I'm just like that is hard to keep up on and so I have found a decent balance for me where I start For that but like for a while that was a point of stress too where it's like this is a hobby that I love Why am I struggling with this? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is you know, I noticed that a lot and not just for burnout but for depression is that my hobbies tend to be one of the first things that I drop when I'm
00:27:16
Speaker
just not able to handle enough things anymore. And then that kind of leads to being even more depressed or more burnt out because I don't have that release valve to give myself a break from what I want to or what I needed a break from. And I just don't have the energy to do both things.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm just hearing it's the cycle. And I know that for me, that that's like you're saying with the depression is like, I get burnt out, my depression level goes up. I'm then.
00:27:55
Speaker
I'm never getting rest. And so then I go into work and then I'm, I'm, I, I tend to freeze. I tend to shut down when I get overwhelmed. So then if I have time at work, I'm not being as efficient because I'm being asked to do too much, I would say, right at times, but my depression also kicks in. So then when I get a free moment at work, I just kind of stare because I don't want to do anything. But then that just means I have more work to do, which means it has to be done before I go home, which means I get home and I don't have time.
00:28:23
Speaker
to engage in these things that you're like, that you're saying, right? Like my hobbies are not really going to be engaged with because I'd have to, I'd have to feel that I, yeah, I'd have to get home in a decent hour so I can spend time with the kids. I can do a bedtime routine and then I can go play a game of magic. And I just, if I'm getting out of work late, it just, it feeds, it feeds. Yeah.
00:28:49
Speaker
Feed like the vampires and Karlov Manor. No, I'm sorry. So I was, you know, it's laughing because we're just talking amazingly about burnout. Whereas we were, you know, we had a magic tie in, which is nice because we want that. As Alex said, we, when we did this before, I think we did, did we do, we did Nissa. Nissa was the first episode. I don't remember what our topic was when we talked to Chase. I felt like, was it just Nissa again? It might have been Nissa again. No, no.
00:29:18
Speaker
Was it Tiana? No, that was imposter. No, that was it. Yeah. And I'm sorry. Yeah, I just I didn't have specific notes in our in our planner where we just kind of track all the episodes. I just said it was like chase and burnout is all I wrote for that episode. So we have notes for it somewhere, but not that I pulled up. And so I'm not sure who the Lord was for that. I think we had one.
00:29:45
Speaker
We did. We were a lot better back then. It's been two and a half years. We do have one now. Yeah. I mean, if we watch you. Yes. Yes. And it's like really topical. Do you want to talk about it? Because you're the one who brought this up. And yeah, so I think what I want to look at this through is kind of the lens of Kaya.
Kaya's Burnout in MTG
00:30:08
Speaker
And if you've read the first story,
00:30:12
Speaker
of Murders at Karlov Manor, Kaya just looks burnt out as hell. She's there at the party because her presence was requested by... I like this, yeah. Yeah. Her presence was requested by Tessa. Obviously, Kaya does not want to be there. Kaya is tired. She is...
00:30:43
Speaker
exhausted from everything. She is suffering some severe survivor's guilt and PTSD. She is. She's a planeswalker. Well, I mean, yeah, he still is a planeswalker. He's still a planeswalker. I also just met with the PTSD reference since yeah, that's that's how I like to have her the invasion. She's really, really feeling it.
00:31:09
Speaker
But if you look back at her whole past, she has been jumping from one continual disaster to another that has been completely out of her control for the most part. And ever since she was introduced in the story, she has had no real agency over to what's been going on with her and has always been put into the position kind of outside of her control and is
00:31:39
Speaker
been worked, you know, worked over and hasn't had a chance to rest, hasn't had a chance to recover. And you see the exhaustion on her, you know, the exhaustion and awareness at her bones to this point. And if
00:31:57
Speaker
I like that the last line, um, Seanan McGuire is the author for these stories for Mervs and Carla Manor. And she's doing, uh, what she calls DVD extras for this. For the first story, the last line is poor Kaya bruised and exhausted, but still a hero. I'm not sure she ever won't be. And, you know, Seanan is now, you know, Kaya is bruised and exhausted.
00:32:25
Speaker
But she's not going to stop. No. And here, I want to share this quote. This is just somewhere in the middle that I read, but so Taya, oh my goodness, I'm so bad at talking right now. She's talking to Judith, who's a rectal, so it's kind of teasing her. And then it just, it comes to this line.
00:32:47
Speaker
Judith opened her mouth to answer and stopped as Kaya looked at her. There was a wall behind the planes walker's eyes that hadn't been there on their last meeting, an unbelievable barrier keeping her in and the rest of the world out. It was as if she slammed shut at some point during the invasion headed yet to remember how to open. Unsettled, Judith looked away and was like, oh my God.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, if you, if you unsettle a Rakdos performer, imagine how unsettling that look must be.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah. And and that well, it's like the absence. It's an absence. Like to unsettle rectos. You take away passion. Yeah. And you're just everything you take away everything basically. Sorry, I'm getting hit with this quote. Go for it. Like, that's why I grabbed it because I was like, this this feels like a good pull out. Yeah. To express this concept of burnout.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's a complete shutting down. That's what I mean, at least from from my perspective, like where I'm at, it feels like a shutdown. And it's almost like I like it. You could use the analogy like the light behind my eyes or whatever, but it's. You. You. You. Sorry. Point.
00:34:06
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, there's just so much there's so much but I want to say like I don't want to lose that you literally referenced earlier hubs just staring at the wall and that's that's like this that's this is
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, that just that can happen. You're you're just you're at the point where not the cup is full, there's nothing else can go in there. So you just you stop and you let it drain a little bit and then you keep moving. At least again, that's how I sort of conceptualize it. Yeah, I you know, and this kind of goes back to you look at what Kai has been through, you know, she got duped into
00:34:51
Speaker
going to find the immortal son, she got duped into becoming the head of the Orzhov, which she obviously had no interest in doing. She got duped into going and fighting Voron Klex. Before that too, didn't she kill? She got duped into killing Brago. Yeah.
00:35:18
Speaker
Because there's even like, there's some line and I, this one, I didn't grab a quote, but someone was talking about how whenever she shows up, all of the guilds put in their emergency powers acts or something. Yeah, she's really good at her job of killing ghosts, but
00:35:43
Speaker
you know, maybe she needs to think more about who she takes jobs from. And she's even said that before is I really need to think through better. Yeah, which she responded to this. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I think guild leader, the last we've seen in war of the spark was, you know, she was obviously there at the front lines of war the spark yet again. Yeah. And she ran her tail.
00:36:10
Speaker
doing her best to be guild leader of the Orzhov and freeing the debtors and everything.
00:36:17
Speaker
pissing off most of the guild members because she was actually freeing people from their debts. Or taking it like taking it on herself, right? I mean, yeah, kind of the what she would did with it, she took it on. Yeah, well, and that's God, there's there's a lot of good resonance to this, too. Because that's, that's the thing she in this. And I just read the story today. And I'm glad I read it kind of fresh beforehand. Because she was talking about how
00:36:43
Speaker
Like, Tessa kind of blames her for not being there on Ravnica when Ravnica needed people to defend it from the Phyrexians, because of course- Right, but Tessa also finally got what she wanted after all this year. She stole the leadership of the Orzhov because Kaya wasn't president. Kaya wasn't there. Yes, but that, whether it's accurate or not, and Kaya knows that there's some,
00:37:12
Speaker
Not necessarily, there's some self-service for Taysa behind making those points. But at one point, Kaya was thinking about, well, if I had been here, would things have gone different? And started to go down that sort of line of maybe if someone else had gone to new Phyrexia, maybe if I hadn't been part of that strike force, if I had been here, things would have been different. I could have helped turn the Orzhov to a force for good. I think it was an actual line from here.
00:37:39
Speaker
Yes. And so it's like, she's, she's now at that point where she's going through all of those things. And it's kind of just piling on. She's already burnt out because of all of the stuff that happened. She managed to make good out of the circumstances she had in the end and helped save the multiverse. But that isn't enough to stop from it isn't enough to end that burnout. It just sort of adds to the pile.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah. And, and she, she does go into that questioning mode. She's like, maybe things would have been better if I was on Ravnica instead. Yeah. And she's taking on, she's taking on stuff that she has. I really going through her job history, which is kind of like the fact that everything was kind of has been out of her control where she's ended up in these positions.
00:38:33
Speaker
through manipulation or through whatever, but she's really ended up in these things where she didn't have as much control and running from fire to fire. I mean, Tasa even admitted she was hoping the contracts would kill Kaia when she absorbed the contracts from the ghost council. Yeah, she was just hoping the way to the contracts would outright kill her.
00:39:00
Speaker
And it didn't and right. Like this is the thing we can, we can deal with so much. Um, didn't kill her. However, where she's at right now, ain't great either. Yeah. God, that line about the bruised and exhausted, just Hey Sean, and we just need to talk. We just need to talk. Might be about goblins, but maybe about this too. We just need to talk. Yeah.
00:39:28
Speaker
She's on board with coming back to talk to us after the story's over so we can look forward to having another conversation with Seanan soon. I am so excited. I mean, just the quality of writing, how much it resonates with me.
00:39:47
Speaker
Cranko's back, I mean, we know that. We don't know how long, we don't know if he'll live through the rest of the story though. That's why, that's why, when I reached, when I, when I said on Twitter, hey, hey, Seanan, we just need to talk. People jumped in not realizing that we actually know her, or like she'd be out here with like, uh-oh, Seanan, Hobbes is getting a look in his eyes. I was like, nah, we don't know what's happening. We just, there's some remarks about Cranko looking a little out of place at the party, getting it in light.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah. Trying to network. Trying to network. Like a good business goblin. Legitimate. Run a bakery. He is a legitimate business goblin according to Seanan in the DVD notes. See? Yes. And hey, in the cookbook, didn't we get reference to this?
00:40:40
Speaker
There's actually was a reference to Cranko in the in the cookbook and it was along the lines of like basically I think running a bakery is like a storm run.
00:40:50
Speaker
It was amazing. This is what I like yelled at people for not telling me that this book had this like they like all the recipes have stories alongside them or with them. And it was funny because I just randomly saw it in a bookstore or not even a bookstore, a game store. I picked up a copy and opened up to like one of the first ones and saw that it was Ravnica and saw that it started off with a blurb about Cranko. And I was like, how's nobody told me this? How's this not come up in conversation yet?
00:41:17
Speaker
That product got zero advertising whatsoever from Wizards official did not even tweet about this product. And the only time I even heard about it was on the Borthos cast. So I guess technically, it's not his bakery, but it's talking about how he Cranko went to go see Mr. Taz. So as we know, Mr. Taz from the Cranko story, like he's the one who wanted to go in where he ends up going for giving him the like the job to go in to the Boros
00:41:45
Speaker
Like Stronghold, right? Right before he like, actually manages to like, unlock Feather. And like, in the sequence of him hitting Gideon, drawing blood. That's right. That's right. And it said like, over the years, all the stuff that Mr. Taz had given him but today it was cake. And it's Keyhole Cake.
00:42:06
Speaker
Made by the made by the demeanor And it has a like they have little stories with them Yeah, I don't know how this thing didn't get more press because this is a fantastic. Sorry. Sorry The magic cookbook Did do a episode on it So if you're interested go listen to their episode on it because it sounds like a really neat product Sure, but have they done a whole series on the color pie of food? Oh
00:42:42
Speaker
Whoa, whoa, whoa, is Jay trying to muscle in on our territory here here on our cast? Listen here, Jay.
00:42:54
Speaker
Because if you're talking Cranko, we'll talk food. We'll talk food. Yeah. But I mean, I do want to talk Shannon because her writing resonates with me for a reason. And I think that, as you were kind of, we were searching for somebody other than Nissa. Not that we have to go very far, probably in magic to find burnout. The war of the, not the war, gosh, war of the spark, war of the whatever.
00:43:19
Speaker
March of the Machines, the Phyrexian War, the state of where we are in this world now with who's a planeswalker, who's not the aftermath, what the Omen Paths mean.
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah. Well, nobody stopped running. And here's Kaya Kaya again. I mean, and you want to talk about burnout to there is some wonderful descriptions from from Sean, she's an extraordinary writer, talking about a world that's burned out. Like this whole party. Mm hmm. Was a killing it an expenditure. Every burst of color falling from the sky reminded people living in the shadow of the Orzo of Sunday kit who their saviors were.
00:43:58
Speaker
There's this whole thing. I love how this whole thing opens. See, it's not just a fortune or a favorite as they send out things. See, we have so many resources, we can spend them on frivolities. Ravnica is safe. We don't need to worry or conserve for wartime. This whole setup is based on the fact that everyone is burned out.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's the multiverse is a pretty crappy place to live right now. It's yes, the multiverse. Yes. And Ravnica and Magic the Gathering. Not the parallels to our own world. There is a clear thing you're trying to say, and I'm not understanding.
00:44:47
Speaker
Yeah, the multiverse. That's what we're talking about. That's what this show does. That's what we do. We talk about magic and nothing else that you could take home for yourself. Yeah.
00:45:07
Speaker
So, you know, all days back in the early days when I think that we were, as you said, Alex, like writing episodes and stuff. One things that we did try to end with was real world take home, right? Like, what can we learn from Kaya other than what not to do, I guess, in this situation? Don't take contracts to kill ghost monarchs.
00:45:30
Speaker
I love life lessons like that that are translatable. Great life lesson. Don't take contracts from Elder Dragons. It's a very important one. You can trust the rest. Only some Elder Dragons. Just be careful which Elder Dragon you're taking contracts from.
00:45:56
Speaker
Just don't take contracts from ghost council. That's what we learned today. Yes. But yeah, I don't know. I think – I don't know that we have a lot of – there's no magic bullet. There's no ghost killing dagger.
00:46:15
Speaker
to just solve it, but at least being cognizant. For me, a big part for me in my mental health is being aware of things helps a lot more than it seems like it would until you're in the middle of it and that awareness can help to navigate through it. Because a lot of times being in the middle of an issue of the anxiety is acting up, I'm fully burned out, I'm whatever.
00:46:42
Speaker
Not having that context or that understanding can just make that worse and last longer and feel worse, at least for me. And kind of having this idea of this is a thing that happens, there are circumstances that have caused this, I can get through this, and that helps me a lot.
00:47:00
Speaker
I'm just gonna go back to that last line in the DVD extras is that Kaya will never stop being a hero. If you don't take time to rest, you will never recover from burnout. And Kaya's not the kind of person to rest, so she's gonna have a hard time recovering from this state. And I'm kind of worried she's gonna end up like Gideon in just a constant state of
00:47:27
Speaker
burnout and pressure until she does something stupid because of it. Yeah. It's interesting. So going back to our previous episodes, Alex, with Nissa, I actually think we've seen this emerge. Because basically, she did, I mean, her burnout to the point where she fully shut out, but she actually did step away and took time for herself. Yeah, she just peaced out. She did.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yes, because that was around the Dominaria story where she showed up, the gate watch showed up to Dominaria and this a little just quit. That's when she left the gate watch.
00:48:03
Speaker
And that's kind of what we talked about. But yeah, I like that's a good call out hops that she kind of emerged from that. She took that time. She came back and lots and lots of things that happened. Yeah, there's a whole there's a whole thing. But no, that's decidedly male. No, sorry, that was a different story. But but I mean, I guess it is that we know that there is a pathway forward here.
00:48:29
Speaker
or even planeswalkers. I mean, we haven't seen periods of rest because we've, the story hasn't given us enough breathing room yet. We're starting to get some of that breathing room I feel, but we're still kind of feeling that out. So we're, we're, we're seeing the effects of this event that is meant to be a cataclysmic shift and
00:48:52
Speaker
What is that we need to figure out kind of what the omen pathway forward is? Oh my gosh Alex I just saw that in the chat as I was reading Yeah, it worked well into the sentence I was oh my god, that is amazing but I mean
00:49:16
Speaker
I'm with Taya. I want to know what's going to happen to Taya. I'm hoping we get some of that in this story, along with a murder mystery, which I love murder mysteries. So that's cool. Love Clue. I'm so glad they let Seanan write a murder mystery for us. I am, too. It's so good.
00:49:35
Speaker
But I think it is, it's like, if we, if you don't take that time, you are going to end up in the pathway that I'm seeing a lot of people that I've worked within healthcare that's either leaving healthcare or drastically changing course at this point and exploring what that might look like for us, for each of us. So. Yeah. So, I mean, we need, Kaya needs some serious time off.
00:50:04
Speaker
needs to find a beach plane where she can just chill for a bit, no ghosts. I just think it's a beach plane. Yeah, it might be. But there are tiny leviathans to worry about. Yeah, she needs some time off and she needs to chill.
00:50:34
Speaker
Which we did. Yeah, we took our time off and it was helpful, but I'm glad we're back.
Intentional Breaks
00:50:40
Speaker
Me too. Hanging out with y'all once a week is really good for my mental health and talking about these things with you is great.
00:50:52
Speaker
That's, that's just it. I think, you know, we, we made, and I think it was a good decision, honestly, from my end, because I don't want to quit working with you two and I don't want to get burned out on something that I love. And so, you know, a recharge that's intentional to me is the way to go. And I'm glad that we did it, but I'm also fair and, and not, but, and I'm very glad to be back.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, I'm also glad to be back. And I want to just highlight something. You say a lot, Hobbs. That intentionality is very important. Because often, for myself, with my anxiety and things, I found that I've gotten very, very good at avoidance. Like, way too good for my own good.
00:51:35
Speaker
to unconsciously just avoiding things. And so it's easy, easy, quote, unquote, to just check out and completely avoid something. But that doesn't make it healthy. Doing it intentionally is what really helps. Because especially when you do it intentionally with a plan to get back. And again, I think I
00:51:57
Speaker
That's something you've talked about in episodes where that's what we did. We took that intentional month off. We planned to come back and that really helps. So yeah, so we're glad to be back. We may have an extra bonus episode coming soon. We're hoping to see that it is a little bit of a
00:52:18
Speaker
Well, it's a panel with Taya that Taya did at a con recently that we're hoping to get up depending on how the audio is We'll see but if not, we we have actual plans moving forward. We have exciting stuff I thought you were mentioning or talking about a different bonus episode. We're gonna have coming soon. Oh, I Yes, we we may have another bonus episode coming that is redacted. So yeah Yeah, glad to be back
00:52:46
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the goblin lore pod on Twitter or email us at goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com.
00:53:08
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobsugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at stevereffel on Twitter. Cob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:53:36
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.