Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 202: The Vegas Panel!!
332 Plays1 year ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today is a very special, and timely episode. It is the audio from the Panel at Magic Con Las Vegas from this past weekend. It features Hobbes, Chase, Ryan, and Shivam talking about creating content while dealing with Mental Health Struggles. This build off the panel done in Minneapolis which you can check out here!
It is Suicide Awareness and prevention month Month and we want to include a Content Warning (Mental Health, Suicidal Ideation, Substance Use, Trauma).
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
____________________________________________
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
____________________________________________
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
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:32
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. This is Hobbs Q, and I have a very special episode for you all today. This is going to be the audio from the panel that I did along with Chase, Shivam, and Ryan, Tron is Bad, at the MagicCon Las Vegas this past weekend. This panel is meant to build off of the one that the Goblin Lore podcast did at MagicCon Minneapolis, talking about mental health recovery and planeswalker journeys.
00:01:02
Speaker
The focus of this is really talking about making magic content while dealing with our own mental health struggles. Each of the panelists that was brought on are people who are very open, who are very honest, who I find to be very vulnerable and willing to share their experiences. And the key thing is, I think they all had very different backgrounds and experiences to share to talk about how we might be able to cope with the stress and to kind of get ourselves going when we're really in that tough place.
Content Warning and Episode Context
00:01:29
Speaker
Before we get started, I just want to let everybody know that this episode was recorded during Suicide Awareness and Prevention Month. And therefore, some of the topic content may be a little heavier as we are talking about mental health and our own struggles. So we wanted to add a content warning around basically suicide, substance use, trauma, depression, anxiety, and any of these topics or related topics that may have come up.
00:01:54
Speaker
The reason I'm sharing this now is we did give this as a content warning for the panel, but unfortunately I did not hit record immediately. So you're going to be jumping in in the middle of Shivam's introduction. So we do have video that will be coming. I am working on finding out how to get that edited and to get some help with that. And we will have that video and that video will contain everything that is kind of build the whole thing. It'll include the introduction. But for now, please sit back, enjoy, and I look forward to hearing any feedback that you all have.
Chase on Positivity and Social Media
00:02:22
Speaker
less enfranchised magic players and making it so that there's room for people like me to show up and be able to be accepted in this community. I'm like, that is the work that I've been trying to do. And knowing that it's working is the most gratifying thing that we can have, right?
00:02:44
Speaker
Hi, my name is Chase. My pronouns are they them. I'm also known as Manicurves on Twitter. And everywhere social media is. Got that branding down pat. And one thing that I am really grateful for kind of today is just being able to make people smile this weekend has just been really nice. Like talking to people.
00:03:07
Speaker
Um, being able to, like, I was given a couple booster packs to hand out and I just handed them out to people and I saw people, like, get really excited, like, that they got handed a random pack or that, you know, they get handed a random secret layer. It's just really nice to see people experiencing joy in person because I feel like a lot of the time when we ourselves are on social media,
00:03:28
Speaker
We get really clouded in the sort of negative echo chamber that we really kind of, it just presents itself very heavily and prominently and that doesn't seem to be the case when we are at these events and we just see people happy. We see people excited and we see people passionate and that's just something that I really love and I'm really grateful for.
00:03:47
Speaker
So I said I was Hobbs and I will at least share what I am grateful for this morning is I have a lot of creativity and stuff that I enjoy. I actually used to be kind of a theater kid and do improv and I haven't done that in many, many years. And yesterday I dressed up as Squee and walked around.
00:04:03
Speaker
and danced around at the event last night. And I am just grateful for the people that I have around me that encouraged me to go and go last night and to do this, and to kind of just be uninhibited in a way that I'm not in typically anymore. It was a way to kind of let go. I will agree with Chivo. There was the element of that music was just a surrealness that I never thought I would experience. Like, go back to Hobbes 40, 20 years ago. I'm not that old. 20 years ago.
00:04:33
Speaker
And you tell him that he's going to be dancing around at a goblin while Frodo DJs. And I really just don't think that person could have ever conceived a world. But magic and just community and these things has made it possible in a way that I just cannot fathom. I'm sorry, I'm like straight up going to start bawling today. So that's me.
Ryan's Sobriety Journey and Mental Health
00:04:56
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Good morning. My name is Ryan Nicholas, better known as Trana's Bad on all social medias. I'm very new to all of this, so bear with me. Thank you for being here. Big thank you to all of my peers that have invited me to do this. What I focus on is I focus on competitive magic. I do modern legacy, vintage arena of magic online. Pretty new to the commander scene.
00:05:23
Speaker
But for me, specifically since playing since 2010, also I go by Ehem. Specifically since 2010, I've struggled a lot with mental health and more specifically with substance abuse. So that is kind of where my background is and I recently celebrated. Well, this week specifically on the 28th is my 1000 days sober.
00:05:49
Speaker
I want to say thank you to Hobbs and Beth for orchestrating an incredible little get together the other day and thank you so much. I still don't feel like I deserve it.
00:06:07
Speaker
That's why we're here. But me specifically, what I like to focus on is that journey. And quite transparently, in competitive magic, it doesn't get talked enough about the mental health aspect and the substance abuse that is behind the scenes of competitive magic and trying to get the upper hand on your opponents or staying up late to grind and test.
00:06:33
Speaker
transparently Adderall abuse and these mental focus drugs that people are trying to use to make sure that we are in the proper mindset while at the same time that is in my opinion and what I feel is kind of the negative side of competitive magic and the competitive players don't really have
00:06:59
Speaker
They don't really use their voices in the sense that, hey, I'm struggling. I want to get better. And I'm fighting against myself the entire time. So if you've seen me on Twitter before, I post these little videos every morning. Big shout out to Mental Misplays, because honestly, without Alan, I wouldn't be posting those videos. He gave me the entire idea to do it. Because prior to that, I was posting a picture of coffee. And pre-Magic Twitter, I would post a picture of coffee every day for the past three years.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I have a little tagline at the end, raise him high and raise hell. And I've said the same thing every day, just because you are that champion. You are the champion in the morning. You're the champion at night. You're the champion tomorrow and yesterday. So now what they've kind of changed into is my brother over here reached out to me and said, hey, do you want to, have you ever thought about putting it under an umbrella tag? And I said, no, of course not. I just post these videos because this is kind of just me shouting into the void.
00:07:55
Speaker
But Hobbs and I both founded Better Days MTG. And if you've seen the thread online at all, what we want to do is just kind of host an inclusive space and make sure that everyone feels like they can talk about the things that they're going on or talk about the things that they've really been proud of or the things that they've been struggling with. So I know that was a little bit, but that's kind of like my intro where I'm at right now. So nice to meet you all and thank
Practicing Gratitude and Positive Psychology
00:08:20
Speaker
you for being here.
00:08:20
Speaker
And one of the reasons that I wanted to do kind of this gratitude or this kind of a daily gratitude is one of the exercises that I use with my own family. We do kind of a thing at night where we do three good things from the day and something that we're looking forward to tomorrow. And sometimes it literally is a cup of coffee is on my list of three good things because that day wasn't great. But there's a concept within positive psychology as we're kind of getting into this.
00:08:44
Speaker
where it's about, you know, you look at the habits of what healthy people do, you look at beyond not being depressed or not being anxious to actually say, what does it mean to be happy? What does it actually mean if I focus on positive instead of just trying to get to some baseline of zero? And so that's why I wanted to do this. It's a great, simple activity that I love to do. So, yeah.
00:09:06
Speaker
Also, I did forget, this is me showing up as a student. I forgot to answer the question. What was I hearing? I thought there was like six things written there, so I thought you did it. But for today, specifically this morning and this weekend, the amount of people that have come up to me and said, hey, thank you for doing what you're doing because I have not been able to kind of like talk about my sobriety or the journey that I've been going on, that's probably what has meant most to me this weekend. And that's, it's been,
00:09:35
Speaker
I've been taken aback in the sense that I don't know what to say. And I've struggled on this journey, and everyone's journey is different. But to hear and see and meet all these incredible people saying, hey, I'm trying to get through this, too. Do you have a second to talk about it? Absolutely. I have all the seconds to talk about it. So that's what I'm grateful for. Thank you.
Hope and Awareness in Mental Health Recovery
00:09:54
Speaker
So we're going to be talking a little bit about today, the first half. We're going to talk a little bit about just a concept of mental health. We talked about this in Minneapolis. It's a concept that both Chase and I, so if people don't know Chase's background, their background is that they were also studying to be a social worker and they had their degree in social work. Chase and I have a lot of overlap in terms of our interest in that area. And there's a concept of what's called mental health recovery, which is really in line with the idea of actually substance use recovery. The models are very similar.
00:10:23
Speaker
We want to just do a little bit of framework with that before we get into talking about content creation or content That how we're putting it out or you know this group up here that I think does put out Consistently putting that out and I think I'm willing to say for myself and I'm guessing knowing this panel While we all have these things that we struggle with And so we're gonna kind of that'll be the plan for what we're gonna be doing today so mental health recovery is really this idea that I
00:10:50
Speaker
that you can recover. I mean, this is a whole thing against stigma. It's that idea that you're not going from point A to point B. This is not a linear process. This is a very messy thing. But overall, there are some things that are in there that are really important to recovery.
00:11:03
Speaker
A lot of people, when they think about their journey through mental health, they think about it as, again, like you said, a point A to point B. A lot of this is very cyclical. Mental health is cyclical. Your experiences with substances are going to be cyclical. There's not going to be, I'm not good, and then I'm better. And that's kind of a big deal that we kind of talk about with these kind of modalities, especially when we think about
00:11:29
Speaker
The concept of, I like how you said, recovery. A lot of people think when they go to seek help or seek treatment or seek services, it's about fix. There's no fix. It's just a constant working together. It's a journey that you're taking. It's not, I am bad and then I am good. It's just this illinear, like you said, a messy cycle.
00:11:56
Speaker
So with that, there's some concepts that are going into it. One is hope. And I mean, you think things like at the end of the day, if people take from today is that concept of hope and awareness, being aware of yourself and to know yourself well enough to know it's not, I need to focus on illness or I need to focus on symptoms. It's focusing on just knowing yourself better to know when you might need to ask for help or when you might want to post something that you can talk about openly. So hope is kind of the biggest thing that I want to kind of send an awareness.
00:12:25
Speaker
Then you have the concept of things being very person-driven. Again, it's not about, you know, I have depressions. I am a person who experiences depression. It's about that reframing everything. It's you're in the driver's seat with your mental health professional. It is a journey that you walk alongside together because it's not the substance or the mental health
00:12:50
Speaker
the mental illness that you are tackling. It's your relationship with it. It's your relationship with your clinician. It is a path that you use to work together. And I think that that's something that I really like about this a lot.
00:13:02
Speaker
And I handed this over to Ryan. Unfortunately, I didn't want to kill a tree. And so it's all on my phone. So I'm going to kind of be passing it around because I think this is a concept that Ryan is the next one. Both of these next two are really. It's this idea of being holistic in this peer support element. Yeah. So that whole point, the peer support aspect of things,
00:13:23
Speaker
So allow me to let you in on a little of my life and that journey that I was talking about. In 2014, I moved from New Jersey to Portland, Oregon, and I lived out there for about a year. And that's kind of like the high point of where I was like,
00:13:39
Speaker
I thought that I was the most competitive player in the world. I was traveling the country all the time to Grand Prix, if anyone remembers those. I was traveling to Grand Prix around the country and I was brought up learning how to play Magic from Pro Tour winners. One of my roommates at the time was
00:13:58
Speaker
Pre-2014, I lived with Jacob Van Loonen. He won the Pro Tour in 2007, and that's how I learned how to play. I learned how to play through competitive. I never had the opportunity to play kitchen counter magic, which is a very fun thing, I've realized. Just throwing haymakers every now and then.
00:14:15
Speaker
But when I moved out to Oregon on my own, my roommate at the time, who I felt was one of the coolest people in my life, played magic competitively all the time, but was also my drug dealer. Every single morning that I would wake up to start my day, I'd reach into my wallet, pull out $50, and I'd buy a bag of cocaine off of him.
00:14:34
Speaker
And I did that every day for almost a year completely. And where I kind of figured that I had a really bad issue was my father called me one day, and it's that parental intuition. I'd never talked to my dad about any issue that I never had. He said, hey, Ryan, I don't know why I have to tell you this, but if you have a drug problem, you're making too much money. And I did because I was also selling drugs at the same time.
00:15:00
Speaker
to fund my magic, to fund my travel. And I felt like I was doing all the right things because I was staying up late, because I was testing, because I knew the meta, and I knew how to beat my opponent. I would 3-0 every single F and M out in Oregon. But that was probably the most diminishing that I ever was to myself, period, because I didn't realize what I was doing to myself until that conversation.
00:15:21
Speaker
After that conversation, a few months after that, I just got on a plane. I sold a place out of Volcanic Islands when they were about $300 apiece. And I got myself back to New Jersey. I struggled a lot from the years of 2014 until about like 2016, 2017, where I kind of just like
00:15:43
Speaker
chilled out a little bit. Throughout all this time, I was friends with groups of people that were really negative towards my health. They were making the wrong decisions. But I thought that, in my mind, that this was the group that I was supposed to hang around with because they were
00:15:59
Speaker
supporting me and they were making sure that I was having a good time and they were always inviting me out to places. But I was blinded by the fact that I was abusing and I was blinded by the fact that I didn't realize how depressed I was because I was clouding it with all these substances and these
00:16:17
Speaker
these fake veils of being happy, and I couldn't give myself hope. So where all of the peer support comes in really was around 2018, where I just decided, I'm like, okay, maybe I should just stop doing all of this stuff. I've been clean, actually, let me pull up this cool little counter I have.
00:16:42
Speaker
Judge, can I use my phone? So off of cocaine specifically, I'm seven years, 10 months, and five days sober. Thank you. Off of nicotine, which that was rough. I started smoking cigarettes when I was like 13 years old. But nicotine, I'm off one year, eight months, 23 days, and then, of course,
00:17:11
Speaker
And then alcohol, which was probably the worst thing in the world for me, where I drank too much, too fast, too many days. Two years, eight months, and 23 days.
00:17:29
Speaker
I kind of just did everything on my own for a lot of this. I never sought help. I was always just told, hey, he's drinking too much. Can you drink all of that? Or someone was egging me on to drink a little bit more. And I thought that it was the coolest thing because I could just pound back all of these
00:17:50
Speaker
all of these things and I didn't realize how much I was poisoning myself but the pure holistic side of things comes in towards I have an incredible support system now and between the years of 2018 and now it's really shown and my mom
00:18:05
Speaker
Bless her, for real. She's one of the coolest people on the face of the planet. She's very, very spiritual. She's a Reiki master, holistic healer. She does everything very, very naturally. She's always been really worried about me, and I understand why. My mom is hands down one of my best friends, and I am so wildly thankful for my partner at this current time. Her name's Nikki. She's one of the best people that I have ever met.
00:18:32
Speaker
Oh, man. She's been supportive since the day that I met her. But all this time, I've really been doing a lot on my own. But because of Magic, to relate it back to Magic, to kind of reel it in.
00:18:48
Speaker
I found unity in the sense that I was able to rely on people around me for the first time within the past five years that people were there in the sense that other people were sharing the same problems that I was having. I just didn't know about it because Ryan is so headstrong and Ryan doesn't talk about any problems that he's having. He's dealing with everything on his own. There's only Ryan. Ryan is the only person that can solve this.
00:19:11
Speaker
And that's a lot of the ways that I've dealt with all of this. And up until recently, up until I've met all of these incredible people, I was alone. And that's my perception. I may not actually be alone because everyone's telling me, hey, I'm there for you. I will always be there for you.
00:19:28
Speaker
But when you are sitting there looking at me right now as I'm saying that, and maybe you have your days of like, I am by myself, I'm dealing with this on my own, it's that mental barrier that you are fighting against yourself. And people that have asked me how I'm doing this and to relate it, it is the hardest game of magic that I've ever played in my entire life. I am facing every single Pro Tour competitor. I'm on the world stage right now because if I lose, there is no tomorrow for me, there is no day two.
00:19:56
Speaker
So holistically and peer-wise, I've been able to kind of lean on all the people that I've met, and that is what I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for the fact that, yeah, I'm a pretty subpar magic player, but I'm more grateful for, as cliche as it is, the third word in Magic the Gathering. I'm thankful for the Gathering because peer-to-peer is how I am still here.
00:20:19
Speaker
So in true goblin fashion, we had like a rough outline here that I barely shared with the panelists. I'm giving it over there to achieve them. And we're just going to go off the rails and tangent hard because we're already talking about the topic. As you can tell, each of us is speaking. These things are coming out. And I think this one, that pure police, I don't think any of us do this without a network around us that is actually there to support. And so I'm going to just like let you all like speak to this because I think this topic is one that is huge.
00:20:47
Speaker
either any of them. You like going to the next.
Shivam on Community and Podcasting
00:20:53
Speaker
I know. Well, I will share off of Ryan's journey. In the past year, I've had just a lot of loss. I've had a lot of difficult stuff within both my work and not. And we were able to find another host to join us for the podcast for Goblin Lore. We have been down to two hosts since the original third host left. Well, we have our other host right here. They are still one of our hosts listed everywhere when we get a chance. We have one of our frequent guests, Michelle, here in the audience.
00:21:22
Speaker
We have these people but we didn't have a third regular host for those weeks when I couldn't record or Alex the co-host couldn't record so then it's like Scrambling to do we want to do something that we don't what is the plan? So we've actually I we sought out to bring on somebody else to make sure that we weren't doing this alone If you've been listening it all the summer, I don't ever expect that people are you
00:21:47
Speaker
I've been absent from a lot of episodes. There's been a lot more solos maybe two of us together but the three of us together has been a lot less frequent because of this and It's it like said I take it on a lot and it's not just me It's the whole cast and I could imagine that and I understand that but it the bad brain day. It's not there It's I'm letting down my cast mates. I'm letting down whoever so that's I was going just off the rails so
00:22:14
Speaker
I do it every month. And I started at the beginning of January 2020, because I was like, oh, it'll be great. I can go to events. I can meet people. I'll be able to find people to talk to. It'll be awesome. And of course, two weeks later, there's no tomorrow, right? Now, I don't know if you guys know this about me, but I'm an extrovert. And I get my energy and my joy and my laughter and my happiness from people, from crowds, from this. And we were in a place where that's not a thing.
00:22:43
Speaker
where you've got the four walls around you and the people in your household, and that is it. And I don't know about you, but my son and wife got very tired of listening to my stories. And they're like, Papa, I've heard about your magic. Please stop. And I'm like, OK, well, the thing is, what we've got here, I've got hardcore ADHD.
00:23:05
Speaker
I've got an inability to complete anything in my life and there are very few things I've ever done. There's so many projects I've had that like dream jobs or dream ideals that I've let wither away because I was so caught up in my own anxiety and inability to finish, follow through, get the thing done.
00:23:24
Speaker
And you know how many chances I have to work at Wizards or to make sets or do whatever? That I've just let die because I couldn't bring myself to do it or to turn into the paper. The opportunity has been given to me. I just need to sign my name and my ADHD won't let me do that. And so there are two things in my life that I've managed to
00:23:46
Speaker
keep going without fucking up. And that is A, my marriage, which this year we've been together 23 years. This is our 15th year of marriage. And B, casual magic. Since I started, I have not missed a single week. I'm almost at 200 episodes. Yeah, in like two years. That's more than that. That's a lot of people to talk to.
00:24:11
Speaker
Now the challenge is, I can't do it because I need to find people to talk to.
00:24:18
Speaker
because that's how I live. If I don't have people to talk to, I will wither away. And so being able to have an hour block where I can sit there and say, hey buddy, I need you to come on and we need to talk about cards or some government. It doesn't matter because the conversation's the important part. It's not the topic. It is the fact that this scheduled moment of my life allows me to have time to be able to do something to take that next step forward, to take that next step forward, to keep trudging until an action becomes a behavior, becomes a pattern, becomes breathing.
00:24:48
Speaker
Right? Like, in my other life, I'm a priest. I'm a Hindu priest. I focus a lot on spirituality, on finding ourselves, on finding our center. And one of the most important things is
00:24:58
Speaker
being able to give without expectation of receiving and being able to accept gifts given to you without feeling an obligation or need. And that is a very big challenge for humanity. And one of the things is I'm like, you know what? I need to be able to, for my own self, be able to continue doing this. Because if I don't put the podcast out, if I don't talk to people, then I start to lose this sense of purpose that I have. Because I was unemployed for the entirety of the pandemic. I only just got a job again last week.
00:25:28
Speaker
So literally, the podcast was it. If I didn't put it out every week, I wasn't talking to anybody. I wasn't leaving the house. I got so deep in my depression that my wife was like, look, dude, your hair is falling out. And I have a lot of it. That means it's all over the damn place. And she's like, you're losing weight. You're not doing anything. You're going from the bedroom to the office to the bedroom to the office. And there's no joy in your life anymore.
00:25:55
Speaker
And I was like, what the hell, man? I am known in magic as Mr. Happy Guy. That's bad for business.
00:26:02
Speaker
How do you find this joy when you've gotten it? Where do you go to draw water from the well to spread out to everybody when the well is dry? That is kind of the challenge of content creation. Our job is to be here. So many people, since we've come back since 2021 at Vegas and then all the other events we've been to, people are like, man, I was a first responder and I used to listen to your podcast while driving the ambulance around. I'm like, what do you say to that? What do you say to somebody who's like,
00:26:29
Speaker
Your show and listening to people have normal conversations is what got me through the worst times of my life. And you're like, but I made the worst time of my life. What do I do? Who do I turn to, right? And what you end up doing is you realize all this I'm giving away is coming from somewhere. I can tap into that saying, well, I just need to appreciate that this strength is inside of me, right? Like this carve iron is right here. But if I'm not looking within, if I'm not taking a minute to sit there
00:26:58
Speaker
OK, who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? And once you can sit there and we say, wait, you know what? I am the strength I've always had. And being able to do that has made me a better person. It's made me more accepting of these kinds of gifts people are giving me of the gratitude. But also, it means I can sit there and say, I am good at this. I am a good person. I am strong.
00:27:23
Speaker
being able to flip that switch and be able to say, you know what, it's not about self-reliance, it's more about self-awareness and about self-acceptance. It's about being able to sit there and say, all of these things are within me, I just need to stop pretending like I am not as good as I think I am.
00:27:42
Speaker
It's that challenge. It's very difficult. And being able to come back to these things has been so beneficial to me, because I can remember, I'm like, I'm actually kind of cool. I am cool. It's OK. Very cool. Very cool. We're going that direction, not the other way. OK. You mentioned the intentionality and purpose. And that is to me, I actually brought my journal with me today that is a purpose planner. We've literally hyped it up on the show and got a disk. They sent us a bunch of them. Because this is a mindfulness-based planner, because a normal planner
00:28:11
Speaker
Doesn't jack for me like I just doesn't but it prompts me to fill in. What is your strengths? What have you gotten better at? What is your intentionality for this month the fillouts in it is not just what you're scheduled? I was gonna say that questions like that are helpful to you They're stressful to me because that requires me to be introspective. Yeah, I don't like to do that but this is the other reason like at the start I want to say the reason we have four people up here is because
00:28:38
Speaker
I think that you're going to see the common humanity and the commonalities that we have. We all are going to find what works for us very different. Yes. There's so many nuggets of truth within what you were saying that I found to be very similar to my experience. So a little brief background on me is that in the middle of the pandemic, I believe the last month of the pandemic, I graduated with my master's in social work.
Chase on Therapy and Medication Stigma
00:29:04
Speaker
I was going to go on to be a therapist.
00:29:07
Speaker
That did not happen. I was content creating as a hobby and I was able to trick the people at EDH Rec into giving me a job into editing, which has been phenomenal. I hope so, staring at Matt and Dana.
00:29:27
Speaker
But one thing that I heard you say, Shivam, that I thought was very impactful for me was talking about how someone tells you how much you've impacted them when you yourself are at your worst. And that is a very interesting thing that's kind of been an issue of mine over the past however long.
00:29:43
Speaker
And so in a different vein is I'm a very introverted person, which I think is a very, very, if you couldn't tell. That's what's coming next week. Yeah, which I think is very interesting considering the line of work I've decided to do. I don't like to be perceived, and yet I'm very perceivable. And it has been very difficult for me, but because I edit, because I write articles, because I stream, because I do a podcast, I'm at home all the time.
00:30:12
Speaker
All my co-workers are all across the country. So I don't really have the social aspect that I think a lot of people really crave. The only good thing about going to your 9 to 5 is that you get to see people you kind of like. I don't get to do that.
00:30:29
Speaker
And so for me, a very big struggle was feeling very isolated. So I was very isolated. I was having a very rough time with my mental health. And even before then, when I was practicing social work, it was a lot of like, I would do a lot of different therapies. I did a lot of DBT therapy, a lot of CBT theory, and it was a lot of do as I say, but not as I do. I would never take my own advice that I would give people. It's gonna work for you, but it's not gonna work for me. And that was a very big issue.
00:30:57
Speaker
prevented me from seeking help for a very, very long time because I thought it just wouldn't work.
00:31:04
Speaker
because why would it? And then I finally took the plunge and decided to see a therapist. And it took a while because again, when you find a therapist, I said this in Minneapolis, I'll say this again, shop around. Don't stick with the first one you find. It's important to find a therapist that fits you and your needs. They are doing a service for you. You have the right to be picky and be choosy with this because you're entrusting them with very important
00:31:31
Speaker
private information that could be a very terrifying thing telling everybody about the deep dark thoughts that you have about yourself and so I've been very thankful and very happy to have been improving my mental health journey and very recently I was able to meet up with a therapist and a psychiatric nurse practitioner and finally get started on medication to help with a lot of issues.
00:31:58
Speaker
But I think that that is something that is, that took me a really long time to do because I had this own stigma against medication. Even as someone who worked in the field, I was like, it's going to work for other people, but if I take it, there's something wrong with me. Which is just, it's this rough thing of just being so hard on yourself and not relenting and just making yourself again, like you said, yourself, you're, you're, you're marinating and wallowing.
00:32:21
Speaker
in your depression and your anxiety and you're preventing yourself from experiencing these things and doing these opportunities and really kind of destroying yourself for no particular reason. And that was what my journey was. And, you know, to kind of relate it back to the healing recovery model, I still have very rough days. I have very few days where I can't physically move from the couch anymore, which I find to be absolutely fantastic.
00:32:46
Speaker
But there's also very interesting things about peer support, too. Look what Ryan said about finding those peers and finding those people in your life that can help support you. Because you're supposed to have this very good support network. And you can have people who can really help you, and then you can have people who can really harm you. And so you have to seek that out as well. And that's been a journey for me, especially because I've been so isolated. Especially because that's why I try to make myself go to F&M, is so I can experience that gathering and talk to people and hang out with people.
00:33:16
Speaker
If I can't, I'm just going to be at home working or editing or writing or streaming or staring at my phone, doom scrolling, thinking about tweeting, but not actually doing it. And I could definitely go into more detail about that. I don't think that will. It's awful. Nobody go look at my tweet count ever, please. I promise you do not do it. I don't know how to not tweet.
Balancing Content Creation and Well-being
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah, we'll talk about that. It's kind of like a job to be like,
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, which I hate. If I could give up social media in a heartbeat, I would live, laugh, love that for myself. But I think the reason, and I really want to kind of come across this, like when we were doing this panel, a big fear of mine was like, I don't want this to come across as us trauma dumping at you lovely individuals listening to us. I think the reason why I am very happy to talk about mental health and my experience with it, and I think all of us ourselves, is that it's
00:34:10
Speaker
Even the people who you watch on the screen or maybe you look at their tweets and you go, wow, they really have the funny ha-has. It's a universal experience that I think a lot of us face and a lot of us struggle with, you know, addiction, substance use, mental health, depression, anxiety, ADHD. It's a lot and it's more universal than we think.
00:34:36
Speaker
it's it's for me my experience has been removing myself of the mindset that it's only me experiencing these things um and my therapist blew my mind when she told me that something that i did you know and i perceived to be my fault might not actually be my fault it could be the other person what i didn't realize that i didn't take some notes from my client blew my mind blew my mind
00:35:04
Speaker
She has letters after her last name. If I can tag off of that for one second though, one thing I've learned in the course of 200 conversations, which has been really helpful to me is because I'm talking to all these other content creators, is that a lot of them sit there and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm using you as my therapist proxy because I can finally talk to somebody that's not just asking me about my Twitch numbers or whatever.
00:35:30
Speaker
All these talks are like, yo, you know what? It's really isolating to stare into a camera all day or look at your computer and just talk into a chat box and look at like who is on the Twitch thing or if you're on YouTube or if you're in some like podcast or even three steps removed from even having that conversation.
00:35:47
Speaker
And the thing that I've learned is that we need to have people we can just talk to as people that are not as content, that are not as, like, for instance, I sat the other day, I was talking about a game that I played with Tappy and Cass and some other folks, and somebody immediately was like, did you guys tape it? And I'm like, hell no, we didn't tape it. This was for us to be able to sit there and be humans and just relax. Like, people are like, hey, how come you don't play games at Magic Con anymore? Because I want to
00:36:16
Speaker
be able to be present and be here and not try to be on stage with you. I can't perform when we're in this. I've got to have something for me. I've got to have something that I can keep for myself that we can keep for ourselves.
00:36:34
Speaker
made me think like um so we did you know the pandemic sorry chase i didn't need to just oh sorry not at all okay um sorry we're apologetic people yeah this is like oh i'm sorry um where's mr uh anyway so um a lot of what's been in when we started the pandemic i was impressed at how quickly magic players moved to technology because we are adaptive this is the strength-based approach one of the last elements that we're kind of missing here
00:37:01
Speaker
we're talking about here when it comes to this recovery model is strength-based approach. It is literally based on what the strength is versus symptoms or whatever. Magic players took to, there was a few people streaming. We didn't have a spell table. We were playing on Discord before Discord then moved their weird wonky formats. Tabletop simulator. Yeah, whatever we could find. And people jumped to that during the pandemic.
00:37:27
Speaker
It is where a lot of content creation came from and I remember at one point I was very fortunate to get asked to do a boxing league. I think it was like the very first one that had been done kind of after BDM and Sheldon had had this concept and put it together and I'm.
00:37:40
Speaker
I'm not talking about it. So I got asked to do this. And to me, that was such an experience. And one of the best games I had was with these two folk right here where we didn't stream it. We had our boxing decks because we were doing a league, and we were supposed to do so many matches a week. And there were a lot of them being streamed. We played a game without streaming, and it blew my mind what a difference that game was. Turns out we had to share everything.
00:38:07
Speaker
No, well, I mean, but I mean, it's like even just like you said, like we I don't feel like I put on an image a lot of times, but I know they have impression management. It's an element of it. That's the thing for me is to try to be very open, which is discouraged in my field. I talk about this, like I'm probably going to share this video in my work people. I could I could see judgment that could come out of that. But I'm willing to do it because it needs to happen. It's a ridiculous concept that the people think this and
00:38:38
Speaker
That piece of taking that adaptability of the Magic community, just real quick, and we're going to let to some stories, but the last big element is culture.
Magic Community Adaptability During Pandemic
00:38:47
Speaker
And culture within WorkCover model is not just colored your skin or what your identities are in terms of like LGBTQ, which is, you know, I think if you throw that word culture out to
00:38:58
Speaker
a lot of people that they jump to certain things. Culture is literally microcosm of society and whatever. Magic is literally that. Like this is a culture. The gathering piece is literally what it is. And Shiva mentioned the priest piece and the helper piece and people telling you that therapist, you and I when we did our casual magic episode was about how both of you and I have those roles. And then we also do this other stuff. And that's what our episode was on. Yeah. And yeah, so.
00:39:30
Speaker
One thing I do want to say is if there's anybody in here who has ever thought about getting into content creation or maybe is doing it currently themselves, be it any single platform, I think one of the things I really want to have you take away is make space for yourself because it took me forever to really learn that. Again, with the whole concept of like, you know, we didn't record that game.
00:39:54
Speaker
There have been moments where I'll just be at F&M playing with random people in my hometown. And then my head will go, this would have been really cool for camera. And I'm like, why did I think that? This is for me. This isn't for content. This isn't for numbers or whatever. It's for myself. And it's taken a very long time for me to learn that, to take moments for myself, whether it's to
00:40:19
Speaker
to knit or to watch a dumb movie or to just play magic, but in a sense where I don't have to be on and I can just be my idiotic self. It's just for me. So if that's a journey that you are wanting to take, my biggest piece of advice is just make space for yourself.
00:40:39
Speaker
Exactly. Take up space. Do not be afraid to take up space. Because for the longest time, I was afraid to do that. Can I tag into that for a second? Nope. Of course. I'm not even asked. So, a very good friend would be too often, Margot Royce and Tracy Aitman, who created the Dragon Ball series.
00:40:58
Speaker
And I was at GenCon one year, and I'm like an Uber fan, so I've known them, I got to be friends with them, whatever. And we're at the, you know, there are books on me, and there's a signing book for people that are coming to fans, and Tracy comes going to everybody, I say, hi, it's so nice to meet you, oh my god, it's so wonderful, hi, it's so nice to meet you, oh my god, it's so wonderful, oh, it's so lovely, I love that you love my thing. And then he sees it, oh, how's she? And then he keeps going, oh, oh my god, it's so wonderful. And later on, I went to Margaret, I'm like, man, what happened? Does Tracy not like me? What happened here? And she's like, no, it's not that he doesn't like you.
00:41:28
Speaker
he knows you and feels that comfortable enough that he doesn't have to put a face on him. That he can look at you and just be like, oh, it's comfort, safe spot, I can take a breath. And I don't need to be like super exuberance. And that, learning that lesson and taking it into myself and being like, kids like, if you see me around here at the con, people come up to me like, oh my God, can you sign this card? Can you sign this card? Great. And then I'll go up and I'll see like, you know, Graham Stark or something. I'm like, oh, phew, it's a friend that I could just chill with.
00:41:58
Speaker
Or, you know, something like, or like these dudes, I can just sit there and be like, all right, I'm in a play break and relax. And learning to make, when you're a face, when you're a person doing content, when you're putting yourself out there, this is the performance. And when we're here, this is the stage. So we've got to have a minute where we can go backstage and be like, yo, I'm just sitting here, can I just have like a drink of water and we'll talk in a minute. Or if like, you know, somebody came up to me at the buffet two days ago, I had a plate full of food and he was like,
00:42:29
Speaker
I'm like, it's so nice to meet you, man. Come to my signing tomorrow morning. I'll happily give you all the time you want. I gotta eat right now. And he was very polite about it and it was really cool. But you have to be able to say that. You have to set that boundary. You have to be able to get to that point where you can set a boundary. And it took me a long friggin' time to be able to set boundaries. Because I'm a very giving and opening and like, I want you to be happy. That's where my happiness comes from.
00:42:54
Speaker
but I'm like, yo, I can't do everything. I can't play games with everybody. I can't, I mean, I'll sign whatever you want. I'll take all the pictures, but there's gotta be a bubble where I can sit there and say like, I need to now end this interaction and I can walk away and we're both good. Can I tap in on that?
00:43:09
Speaker
Anyway, so I I'm actually I've been a completely left turn because what you said sparked another thing because that's how my brain also fries and Yeah, anyway, um, you mentioned like you're the dragon lance that made me think about how you got to actually work on dragon lance and Which is awesome. This guy got to work on the dragon Yeah
00:43:39
Speaker
Right So it's a concept that to me is one things I've had to learn is other hobbies because with magic We have to really be able to go another direction at least for me because
00:43:53
Speaker
So when you mentioned the movie, you're mentioning crocheting, you mentioned that, you know, so what, you just play magic? That's all you do all day, every day. You don't do anything else. It's not about that grinder life. You have a relationship. You have things like seeing you do that camera right there is my photography camera because I needed another creative outlet that wasn't magic. I couldn't do it all the time.
00:44:23
Speaker
because it became at times too wrapped up into my identity. So we've all been talking identity here. The recovery model is about narrative and identity. Yeah. Um, absolutely. And there are a couple of points that I wanted to take on to, uh, kind of, kind of like loading it up, kind of like loading it up. Um, basically with what Chase was saying about like capacity and what she even was saying about like holding that boundary for yourself.
Raw Emotional Expression in Content Creation
00:44:47
Speaker
Two days before flying out to Vegas, I had a complete mental breakdown, like 100%. And I feel like a lot of us did. I'm on the phone with Nikki, and Nikki was just like, understand what it is that you're doing. And she's so real with me all of the time. She's just like, hey, snap out of it. You're doing something awesome. Be proud of yourself. And again, huge shout out to my wonderful partner for keeping me in line. But especially with something like Better Days MTG,
00:45:17
Speaker
I told this to Hobbs along the lines of the points that they were making of holding that capacity for yourself. My therapist has told me to write things down and that just does not work for me at all. So any video that you see me post online, that's just right off the top. Those are the two minutes and 20 seconds of my life that I am just being raw, I'm being vulnerable. That is what I am feeling in the current moment of like what I kind of want people to focus on throughout the day, whether it be
00:45:45
Speaker
Hey, I have anxiety about a job interview coming up. Or hey, I feel really, really good about the fact that I went 3-0 at F&M and now I have tomorrow to work on. I don't know what I'm going to talk about when I talk about it. Hobbs has said the same thing in his videos. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm sitting at the screen and there's no pause re-record. Those are just my feelings when my feelings are coming out.
00:46:11
Speaker
I absolutely do not rerecord anything with those. I literally hit record and I say in some of the videos, my goal is to hit record. And even if I don't say something, if I say something that just seems rambling, I hit record that day. I'm wanting to just interrupt real quick, Ryan, because Ryan was mentioning me approaching him about Better Days MTG. What I approached him about was,
00:46:34
Speaker
You're doing this. I have never done videos. I've never done any of this. I want to do it. I want to make sure that you don't think this is something that isn't. I don't know what people are doing. I don't know everybody's story. I'm just getting to know Ryan. I asked him for permission because I had the journaling that wasn't working and I needed something. And just hitting record, asking people to hashtag tweets that they do so we can find them.
00:46:58
Speaker
It's just been something that recently has and Ryan's like talking about this is like, it's easy. I think you're being dismissive in a way of your own strength there that I just got to work on that. I know. I'm just not going to let it go real quick because it's too important to me. So yeah, yeah. Um, so one of the other, one of the other points that I kind of want to tag onto as, as they were all saying, and she was saying, like, keep certain things for yourself. When I, when I met Chivam, we played a game of magic in Virginia, right? I didn't know who you were.
00:47:29
Speaker
at all. Exactly. And now, Shivam is, and I've told him many times, you are an inspiration to me in so many ways. You also keep me in check of like, hey, just block that person already. Stop letting the block button is your friend.
00:47:46
Speaker
that specifically of holding on to those moments that you can just keep for yourself and cherish those moments. I was just walking around, we were in Virginia, it was a Star City convention, and I was with Matt, Southwest DM, and we were just playing a game of magic and I had no idea who she even was, I didn't know about casual magic.
00:48:06
Speaker
I'm still learning things, and I complimented his lunchbox, the serial experiments lane box, because that's one of my favorite animes. And that's another conversation. But holding onto those moments of just genuinely figuring out who somebody is without this whole veil of, oh, they have 30,000 followers, they have 5,000 followers, none of that matters.
00:48:30
Speaker
What matters is the connections that we are making that can hold us and carry us into the other days. And that is our strength. We draw our strength from each other.
00:48:38
Speaker
And where I kind of just want to segue into is no matter what it is that you are doing in that room, if you are making connections, if you are trying to network, if you are trying to get into content creation, if you are trying to do a pack to power trade, which I think I'm crazy for because I haven't been able to do it yet, hold that time for yourself. Walk outside for five minutes, take a breath, grab a cup of coffee. I've actually not drank coffee at all this weekend minus that first cup before, which is crazy to me because I'm always shaking it around.
00:49:09
Speaker
But that's realistically what I always attempt to do with the videos is holding that capacity for yourself because, again, I'm going to reference something that Nikki told me. You can't pour out of an empty cup. If you are filling up your cup constantly or if you're pouring out that cup into other people, you're not going to have that stability for yourself.
Closing Thoughts on Self-care and Advocacy
00:49:28
Speaker
And then you are just going to sit in a corner crying being like, how can I do this? Who's there for me? You have to be there for yourself.
00:49:36
Speaker
And you have to be able to set that boundary. It's a beautiful thing to be there for other people and kind of what set me off of my mental breakdown before coming here was actually clicking through the tab of Better Days MTG.
00:49:48
Speaker
hearing all of the stories and kind of like broke me a little bit realizing like wow everyone else is dealing with something that they didn't feel comfortable enough talking about until right now so I think it's a beautiful thing of being able to talk to your friends about it so I you know if people do need to leave for anything we were wrapping up because I wanted to do is give everybody just like a final takeaway from each of us so
00:50:11
Speaker
You know, we'll just start down there so I don't interrupt you. So I think my final important takeaway is, look, making content is joy. Spreading joy, bringing happiness, sharing the thing you love with people who love that thing and helping them find more love in it. And you can't do this if you are taking time to remind yourself why you love this thing and to remind yourself that you do love this thing and you love yourself and that
00:50:38
Speaker
in doing it and creating, you're giving yourself more happiness. And so you need to remember that you need to be the core and you can't just ignore yourself and be selfish and keep giving to other people. Because if you give to other people without remembering that you're here, you lose yourself entirely.
00:50:56
Speaker
the thing that I want others to take away from this is of two things because I Apparently could only think of two the first one is It's one that has been told to me forever and it's still one that I'm learning is the concept of comparison is the thief of joy That is something that I experienced daily every single day. It doesn't matter how well I'm doing it doesn't matter if I got this super cool thing and
00:51:19
Speaker
I compare myself to others to the point where it's back breaking. And so that's something that I'm still learning, but if I can instill that within anybody here, that's one important thing. And the other thing that I want people to take away is in any situation, whether you are wanting to get into content creation, whether you are playing at your local game store, it matters not. Always advocate for yourself. You are your biggest advocate. Take up space.
00:51:47
Speaker
talk to people about things, be open, be honest, just have that open line of communication and it's served me so well in my local community and I'm very thankful to have an LGS that is as amazing, open and accepting and loving as they are.
00:52:03
Speaker
So I'm literally taking mine and stealing from something that Chase loves that I love to that is this concept of opposite action. So this comes from dbt. So they mentioned one of the topics being that it's called dialectical behavioral therapy, but it's really for people that maybe have difficulty with boundaries.
00:52:20
Speaker
have difficulty with communication social pieces where they they don't say no they don't like kind of take that space for themselves and they they have to learn that they can't always trust their emotions which is a very hard concept because our emotions drive a ton even within this concept of like trying to challenge your thinking there's a type of thinking called emotional reasoning which is i'm scared therefore something must be wrong
00:52:44
Speaker
There could be nothing wrong. Fear can come out of nowhere. We really can feel this. But because I feel afraid, that must mean that there is something wrong. Or we learn to over trust our emotions in that way so then if we get to feel that, we avoid. We don't do whatever it is that we feel like we wanna do. I pull out my camera and I'm gonna do a better day's MTG and I start getting shaky and I don't wanna be able to hit that record button. The concept of opposite action is literally
00:53:13
Speaker
force it to push that button and I have to then feel like I have to start talking. This concept of opposite action. So for me, my takeaway is kindness. The biggest thing in my opinion is always finding kindness for yourself. One of my best friends told me a mantra a few years back and I tell it to myself probably
00:53:35
Speaker
at least once a day and that whatever it is that you were dealing with this is a moment of suffering suffering is a part of life may have become to myself and I've told that to myself any single time that I have found myself being depressed or upset with something stressed out about some content that I have to put out and always remembering to at least give yourself that capacity because it's a beautiful thing of wanting to be there for other people and I have to tell myself this all the time
00:54:03
Speaker
but I can't be there for you if I can't be there for me. So that is kind of what I want to leave you guys with and with you all with. And if you ever decide that you want to do a better day's MTG, I can't wait to see it.
00:54:18
Speaker
So we really just want to thank you all for coming to let us have this conversation. This is the second time that now I have done this with Chase and now we're doing it with two new friends. But just doing these, I'm hoping that there's ways we can find ways to bring this into conventions. And I think these conversations are really important for us to be having. I cannot believe how many people are here. I am overwhelmed right now.
00:54:40
Speaker
And I am going to just, we just want to say thank you. The room is open for like 30 minutes. I have a little bit of time myself real quick before I have to leave, but not very long because unfortunately I do need to get going to Sheldon's Memorial and I want to encourage people if you have that ability to go. The kindness piece that you mentioned, I always say that the message that I learned from him was that, was the kindness and it just, I knew that that was going to end up coming up right now for me and I'm going to just share it. So thank you.
00:55:16
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 Tayatranscendence, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord pod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:55:38
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, 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. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:56:05
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.