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Episode 136: Mindfully Entering 2022
133 Plays3 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! This week's episode is a return to the topics of Resolutions and Goal Setting. The last time we talked about this was in January of 2020 (we were naive Goblins at the time) and Alex introduced Hobbes and Chase to a method for resolution setting. Around that time Alex had found an amazing Planning Journal and recently bought Hobbes a copy for the Holidays! In today's episode Alex takes Hobbes through it and we also look at how this method incorporates Mindfulness. Here's the link to the method and an online resource!
Also Yankee Candles if you are reading this we would like to light more things on fire...
Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter (with a link to where you can offer support both monetary and not).
We also are proud to have partnered with Grinding Coffee Co a black, LGBT+ affiliated and owned, coffee business that is aimed at providing coffee to gamers. You can read more about their mission here. You can use our partner code for discounted coffee!
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As promised, we plan to keep these Mental Health Links available moving forward too. 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: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
- 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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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @Mel_Chronicler. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
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
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Transcript
Introduction: New Year's Themes & Magic Visual History
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast. So today's episode is going to be fun and special because we're combining two very time appropriate things. So in honor of both New Year's and our recent rousing success talking about one of J and Ellie's magic visual history books, we're back to talk on the audio only format about another book.
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. Wow. Yeah, we're gonna be. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. That's hilarious.
Hosts' Return & Personal Life Updates
00:01:00
Speaker
We're also we're also coming back to record with you guys for the first time in. Jeez, it's gonna be about three. Well, it's been two weeks since our last episode with Amanda. Yeah. So we did have an episode a couple of weeks right before the holiday. But we've been there's been a lot going on. So December has been
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah, we let people know that we know we kind of said that, you know, I'm finishing up my first block of paternity leave with Freya. So we kind of had known that there'd be some potential for a little bit of gaps. And then the holidays, we knew that was kind of thing. And I just want to let everybody know that, you know, after two years, this episode is kind of timely, just making me think of
00:01:43
Speaker
when we last did this. Oh, how naive we were. Yes. The last time I was looking back at when I saw your notes about like, we've done similar topics to this, and then saw that it was like, literally, we've done we've done this is probably our most outside of well, I guess mental health in general, but yeah, in a particular sense, this is probably our most
COVID Experiences & Mental Health Support
00:02:05
Speaker
frequent topic. And so while we're still talking around it being an
00:02:10
Speaker
Well, before we get to there, I do want to say, you know, thank you all. We understand the break has been going on. My family household has all now had COVID basically except me. But you know, we're still dealing with
00:02:25
Speaker
as of today, Jen tested positive, Gwen tested positive due to an exposure at school. It's kind of one of those disheartening things. I'm fully admitting that I'm glad that Alex and I are recording because I've just been feeling like demoralized today, just just feeling like, you know, not having really done anything in two years, and then we're at this point. And I think that I'm glad that we're still doing stuff like this, because I need this connections, and I need these things. And so I
00:02:54
Speaker
Just want to thank people. We had already known that this was already going to be a little bit of a difficult time. And for me personally, it's also just been more difficult this week, especially. So I want to say that. And I want to thank Grinding Coffee Company because we've also been in a couple of weeks. We haven't talked about them in a while because there hasn't been a new episode.
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. And that it's always good to thank them for supporting us and also thank the listeners and the community for supporting us. I mentioned myself when we talk about mental health topics in particular, just in general, this podcast has been a very big positive for me for a number of things, but also just keeping that social connection with Hobbs and the community and mental health for myself as well.
00:03:41
Speaker
All of that aside, well, I mean, that's all important
Mindfulness, Planning & New Year's Resolutions
00:03:44
Speaker
too. But the thing that we're going to talk about today, today's topic is talking about planning and mindfulness. In the past, we've done this talking about news resolutions and smart goals. And at one of your first solo episodes, Hobbs, you talked about smart goals, and you talked about Bolas and his plans during the War of the Spark, which was a fun episode.
00:04:06
Speaker
As you alluded to, I think our most recent on this topic specifically was right at the beginning of 2020, so just about two years ago now, and we recorded it with Chase. And I know they brought a lot of good perspectives and things that were different from some of the episodes where it has really just been you and I for a number of these. So that's a really good lesson if you're interested. And I believe it was that episode with Chase as well where I went into more depth about
00:04:36
Speaker
a sort of thing that i would do that's like part journaling technique part new year's resolutions it's kind of an introspection slash looking forward sort of thing that as you say quite appropriately uh two years ago i never actually finished because i got kind of railroaded by
00:04:56
Speaker
The whole COVID thing, when that was starting, I had written a good chunk of it and then had no real idea of what the next year was going to look like and had struggled to finish that.
Rediscovering Mindful Planning Tools
00:05:07
Speaker
I was planning to come back to it and then never did and I never even started it in 2021.
00:05:14
Speaker
That actually was a thing that I started working on in December 4, this year now in 2022. And so I actually finished that today. And so getting back to that has been really nice. And this particular book I'm going to talk about today, sort of use this as a framework to talk about, have a lot of these conversations, is a planner that I found several years ago that I started using. I started filling out in the early 2020. I think I got it, I bought one in February.
00:05:43
Speaker
And so I filled it out and was using it in February and March and even some into April. And then it just kind of fell off. Cause again, it was hard for me because everything fell off because everything, everything fell off then. So I found, uh, actually in the last few weeks, I bought a blank one that I had bought to use because these are a six month planner, which we'll get into a little more.
00:06:02
Speaker
It's a little weird, but it makes sense for the structure of how they do the thing and the size of it. It'd be twice the size. It'd be a monster if they did 12 months in one volume. But anyway. The thing that you can't see. The thing you can't see right now. Just picture it. Yeah. Yeah. So I bought a second for myself thinking I would use that for the second half of 2020, then didn't. And I found it in December, just this last December, and realized, hey, I could use this for
00:06:28
Speaker
the next six months. And then also realized that, again, two years ago, when I got this thing, I really was like, Yeah, I can't wait to sit down with Hobbs and walk through this, because I think this is really cool. And I think he'll really like it. And we haven't seen each other for the last two years because of COVID. So instead, I just bought you one for Christmas. And now you have this book sealed and ready to walk through.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, so so part of this was, you know, Alex, Alex told me he had something coming to for me. And, you know, didn't tell me what it was, you know, just let me know that something was coming. And when it came, we had been talking about kind of plans for an episode, and I saw the book, and I know he's talked about his his like method for approaching this. And so I purposely have not opened it. I am literally
00:07:16
Speaker
carrying plastic off of this cool looking thing that I've had here for like almost a month like looking at it wanting to open it and now I finally get to Alex basically he has to talk me through this is a way to kind of explain his his his madness I don't know if that's the right word well yeah and and I will see I don't know how much I'll get into mice my specific thing that I do for this episode I think I'm gonna talk we're gonna talk about this planner which is
00:07:43
Speaker
kind of its own thing that does a lot of similar stuff to what I do.
Setting Effective Goals
00:07:48
Speaker
And my basic, which again, we covered in a past episode, you want to listen to, but I basically have six areas of my life, my personal life, my physical, my financial, I sit down and I'm like, what's the basic framework is, where am I at right now? Well, how do I feel about where I'm at right now?
00:08:04
Speaker
where do I want to be in the next year? And that's kind of, I write these two sections for all of this and I kind of put that together and create, try to create some goals out of that, try to use that again as a kind of a journaling thing. I can go back three or four years and be like, what was I concerned about then? What was I working on? This has a lot of those same elements, but it's a different structure. And I'm really excited about this. So, um,
00:08:29
Speaker
See, as we're going through this, this is a cool thing. We'll throw a link to the company, Runners, the name of the company, if you're interested in buying this. But also part of walking through this too is a lot of the things we're going to kind of verbalize a lot of the structure that's in here. You could kind of build your own if you really feel so inclined, I think, I hope.
00:08:51
Speaker
Though, I like the production value on this, but you certainly don't need to go buy this product if you want to do something like this and you can kind of figure out what would work best for you and what sounds like a useful thing or what maybe isn't as useful. I'll tell you, there's a lot of stuff in here and some of it I'm trying out this year that I didn't use two years ago and some of it I'm probably still not going to use a whole lot of.
00:09:18
Speaker
We're still kind of talking around the topic and not going into it.
00:09:23
Speaker
Why don't we just start talking about it? Don't we have a question? Oh, yeah. I feel like we haven't even met in a while. We haven't introduced ourselves. I don't know. This feels right. This feels right. Yeah. We missed you all so much that I don't know. All right. I might as well talk because I'm the one who's talking. So we'll just go with that. I'm Alex Newman. Found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler.
00:09:52
Speaker
My pronouns are he, him, and our opening question, and it's appropriate for this, is, you know, what's a goal that you have for 2022? And so I'm not going to answer a specific goal, but what I'm going to talk about is a completely secondary random thing for a different hobby that I have. The website that I found last year, which has been really, really helpful for me in kind of making and working toward goals for my video game collection. So I've played video games for
00:10:22
Speaker
Actually as long as I can remember my dad had an had an Intellivision and a NES in the household of Nintendo Entertainment System. I remember playing Mario and Dragon Warrior and some of these old games before I could read like I remember watching Flintstones and playing Dragon Warrior some of my earliest memories.
00:10:41
Speaker
So this is just, it's a hobby that I've always loved. But for me, it's been hard. There's always cool looking things. And especially as an adult, it's kind of the trouble as an adult, sometimes you have more as a kid, you don't have as much disposable income, but you have a lot more free time as an adult, you tend to have
00:10:58
Speaker
more disposable income, but a lot less free time. And so I found a website called backloggery.com that just lets you enter whatever games you have, just enter your games, create your backlog, and it helps you kind of keep track of what games I even have that I was interested in. And like last year in December, I'd kind of finished most of the games, I was kind of thinking about playing some of the goals I had around last year,
00:11:22
Speaker
around games but then I was like well let's just look at some of this older stuff and I found several games on my my PlayStation 3 that I'd had for nine or ten years and just had never finished so I just sat down and finished these games and it felt really good to kind of go back and play these things and so
00:11:40
Speaker
This is a, I've got, you know, we're 20, 22
Personal Goals & Tracking Progress
00:11:44
Speaker
now. I have a bunch of goals that I created, particularly taking advantage of this website, including one of their little features is just called a fortune cookie. And if you click this, it kind of gives you options in your library. If you want specific systems or specific things, then you just click open and it just gives you a random game. Just go play this random game. If you can't figure out what you want to play,
00:12:07
Speaker
Here you go. The website will tell you. That's a really cool feature. Yeah. And I actually found there's somebody on the site, a random user, who part of his annual goals, what he did is he creates what he calls fortune cookie bounties, where he'll just crack open 10 fortune cookies and be like, all right, I got to beat nine of these in the next year. And so I used that, incorporated some other things as well, and just
00:12:32
Speaker
I'm really looking forward to this year just to work on my game collection with using this tool and this community because you can kind of add people as friends and you can see what games they're working on and your menu. It's a cool thing. So that's how I'm going to answer, not answer my own question.
00:12:52
Speaker
I mean, for you, that was downright reasonable. I was going to just call you up for saying that this was a simple question. And I think that that's just because kind of some of that that I was alluding to at the beginning of just like, part of it is my demoralization, I guess that, you know, I
00:13:10
Speaker
A lot of my plans, like this has been a hard one for me to kind of come up with your plans. It's one of the reasons I'm excited that we're doing this, honestly, is because like I've struggled with this actually recently. And at the risk of stealing the mic for too much longer, I'll tell you up to five minutes ago when we started recording, I was still working on this.
00:13:29
Speaker
Because at first I was like, what are like my big significant, and then it's like, it doesn't have to be a significant thing. It's just, what's something I want to do this year? You know what I want to do? I want to play games because I like playing games. Yeah. So that's, that's, yeah. I appreciate that. But it really was just kind of like, it was difficult for me. Like, I think that, yeah. Um,
00:13:54
Speaker
just mainly thinking about the fact that like, I think it is that idea that like, this is, this has been a tough, this is a tough year. This is a tough year for me. Um, you know, I, I think that, you know, I'm a new father again, like a second time father now, which is a big difference. I don't really fully even know what to be expecting. Um, I think that one thing that I really want to do, and I have gotten involved. So there actually is now a magic dad's, um,
00:14:22
Speaker
like a Discord channel for dads who play Magic the Gathering, obviously. And there's a large number there. And so I think wanting to contribute to that and be involved with that is actually something that I really am making kind of a more concerted effort at.
00:14:40
Speaker
uh like to actually stay engaged with it because it can be very difficult at times to stay engaged with like discord communities like ours is the easiest right you know for i mean it was we always talk about this like we there's a reason that we you know we we love our our we love our our our discord because the people that are in our discord are just so engaged and so amazing and so part of this is a matter of like
00:15:09
Speaker
wanting to have another one that I can really feel that I'm engaging, that I'm staying engaged in.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's, that's a good, that's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. Yeah. Appreciate that. All right. Uh, did you actually intro yourself, your name and handle and all that? I honestly can't remember. No. Hi, I'm Hobbs Q. I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q. Um, pronouns are he him. There we go. Why would I, why would I do that? Alex, that wouldn't ever make sense. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Yeah, exactly.
00:15:43
Speaker
All right. So without further ado, you ready to open that book? Yeah, I now have the plastic off of it. It is good to go. All right. So I'll just say, like, there's actually, this planner actually has a table of contents. Like, that's a thing. But I'm not going to talk about it. I'm just letting you know. Page two, though. Very quick.
00:16:05
Speaker
So this is the notes index, which at first is kind of weird, like what's a notes index? Well, this book, one of the things, one of the features they have in here, there is pages for notes all over the damn place, just everywhere. Just about every section has pages for notes.
00:16:20
Speaker
which is kind of cool for you have random thoughts, random things. It's kind of nice to have a place to write them down. And it never would have even occurred to me to then have a place right in the front where you can write in and basically create your own table of contents for all the random notes you take. So it's just a neat thing, but not really too much to talk about.
00:16:43
Speaker
Unless you got something to say, but I was like, that's just a neat thing. It's not something we can contribute to the podcast. It's got too much visuals. That's part of the thing. I like the idea that as part of this thing, and you can kind of maybe fit if we want to try to hammer fist a lesson out of this.
00:17:01
Speaker
having these extra pages for notes can be really useful and really helpful and you don't have to have this planner to give yourself the opportunity to take notes, have your phone ready, have a little notebook ready, it's just that can be really helpful. And also it's nice that this thing is a planner that has that plate notes so you can have all of this stuff in one contained book. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:25
Speaker
And so, um, and then page five, they have getting started and here's some tips. I don't know if you want to run through these. These are just like wake up early, drink water, you know, move around, get some blood flow and burn some calories. It's kind of interesting that they have like, this is the stuff that they have in here that they want people to keep in mind and to think about.
00:17:47
Speaker
I like that there was like the general type of things that are just more I think like reminders and like what I laugh about it because like these are like the hydration one is one that I'm literally like, okay, I like I am really, really bad at it.
00:18:00
Speaker
Like I know that it's a really important one for me and I'm really bad at it. So this is an entire page of this stuff, but strap yourself in Hobbs because there is notes and quotes and recommendations and reminders throughout this entire. Are they all on hydration? No, but not none more of them are about hydration.
00:18:23
Speaker
I'll leave it at that confusing statement. So this is the first thing I was really excited to see. The next page, six month roles and goals. So this is, I think they have six pages for this and each one has two tips at the bottom, two different tips.
00:18:39
Speaker
This is about writing about six roles that you have in your life. So there are examples here are your career, your role within your career, wife, father, friend, healthy person.
00:18:53
Speaker
I, I, as a little fill in for, for y'all, I put podcaster is one of mine. Whoa, wait, what? So, and, and what I love also each, each role gets one page and it starts with establish your why state the underlying reasons that this role matters. Then you have five lines for goals for this role in the next six months, along with a deadline and a little spot for you to mark when it's done.
00:19:22
Speaker
And then at the bottom, it has list specific monthly, weekly, and daily actions that move you towards these goals. And they have boxes for each. So this is like setting the tone for how this thing works. They want you to be mindful and think about what it is that you're trying to do and how you're going to get there and set concrete goals and deadlines. And not everything's going to have concrete deadlines.
00:19:47
Speaker
that's part of it. And this kind of goes that's why this really goes to the mindfulness topic we've talked about. It goes to the smart goals topics we've talked about. That's why I'm really excited about this. Yeah, and I would say too, that you know, you mentioned the different categories or topics. And to me, that was the thing that was really huge was because I'm looking at this and like,
00:20:10
Speaker
It really plays well into the idea of a value system. So I think that for me, that is where it becomes important. So we've talked a lot about these ideas of smart goals and you need to have, I do love basically the way that this does, each goal has a why and the reason that it matters. And when I talked about smart goals, so smart, if people don't, you know, that's another episode that people can go back to, but smart is a way to kind of take your goals and to make them basically concrete to actually make them kind of,
00:20:38
Speaker
I don't want to tangent you too much. But what does that stand for? It's an act. Yeah, so well, I was Yeah, so one of the things is so it stands for specific. So the goal needs to be specific, not vague. So briefly, I want to have, you know, it's like the goal needs to be more than just I want to lose weight, I want to earn money, I want to save, I want to be healthier.
00:20:58
Speaker
I want to be happy. It's being specific about what that means. So, you know, what would happiness look like? What would be different? What would you be doing versus not if your goal is happiness? If you're looking at gaining weight or losing weight or
00:21:14
Speaker
a type of a change to your weight. Well, what is that? Are you looking at something drastic? Are you keeping it? Do I want to exercise? Okay. Well, what does that mean? What would it look like? So that's the specific. You want to get it as painfully detailed as possible. M is measurable. So that's just the idea that you're using kind of a measurable goal. So it's a goal that you have a way to know that you've completed. So there's a way to be able to say that, yep, this is a goal I can check off.
00:21:41
Speaker
attainable or realistic is that is the two things. So this is the hard part. Like a lot of people use different acronyms for the same thing. Um, I use a to be a realistic or you're attainable so that, you know, I don't want to say that I'm going to be a millionaire by next week. Like.
00:21:57
Speaker
I want to have goals that are challenging, but I don't want to necessarily have a goal that's just... I often joke when I'm teaching this that I don't want a goal that the only options I have for accomplishing it in the next week would be something that would be highly illegal or something that would be likely to be very damaging to me.
00:22:15
Speaker
So I don't want to do something like that. So, you know, I have to be thinking about that. So is it attainable? Is it possible? And now the R, the reason I don't use realistic for R here is I use relevant. And that is the big, big piece. And I love that this book literally puts that front and center. It's the Y.
00:22:35
Speaker
Like, why are you actually doing this goal? Like, it's not enough to have, you know, when we're thinking about goals and setting them to make yourself be set up for success. It's not just a matter of the fact that you have goals, you have resolutions. And this is where they talk a lot about why that idea of that concept of resolutions is not necessarily the best is people do the things that they think they should be doing. And they don't necessarily have the buy in for why they're doing it, like they don't really have a strong connection to them. And so
00:23:04
Speaker
The fact that this breaks it up, as you even just said, to have the different roles, so you already are kind of focusing on that. But it asks you front and center why. Why are you doing this? Why is this important? And that is because a lot of that goes back to this idea of value systems. So you're doing the things that are valued driven or valued to you. And I think that that is why, you know, the start of this is just something that I thought was absolutely gorgeous and beautiful for that reason.
00:23:33
Speaker
And every one of these sections has like a little cover page. And I just love for this one, it says, you know, and that kind of lists what you're doing or what the point of the section is. And this just says, set out the rules and define your life, establish your why to stay committed. Like I love that language.
00:23:49
Speaker
So like the big thing if you talk a little bit about, you know, like, so a lot of this, when we talk mindfulness, it oftentimes gets into like acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a whole cool area that we can, you know, we've talked about elements of that in the past, which is an idea that's a little bit different than just thought challenging, where you're changing your thoughts, it's more accepting them as for they are, it's really where that mindfulness element comes in, doesn't mean you don't try to change things. But it is that it's approaching it in more of that mindful manner. And one of the things that is really, really
00:24:19
Speaker
good about that is there is a big concept of committed action. You're committing to doing something. The big joke is that's the therapy that they really literally I've seen talks where people put a slide of Yoda up that talks about do or do not. There is no try. It's this idea that we're moving away from trying things to doing them or not doing them. It doesn't, it's not value judgment. It's that we're committing to doing them. It doesn't mean we're going to be successful. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
So that's the first big section I was really excited to share with you because I think that is, I've never really thought, I mean, like I could talk about sort of in my way of setting goals and doing my thing.
00:25:05
Speaker
you know, I look at the six areas of my life, but that's not so much setting specific roles of as a podcaster, what do I want to do in the next six months? Why is this important to me that I'm doing this thing? It's, it's more where, you know, and that one, it's, it's like, like I said, I think it's physical, financial, social, personal,
00:25:29
Speaker
vocational because instead of work, I had to have them all with the same name scheme and recreational. Yeah, that's that's obvious. So it's just kind of like, where do you know, what do I want to work on this next year? Where do I feel I'm at? And which which gets into some of this, but I've never really looked at it in this way.
00:25:45
Speaker
Like, as this particular role of my life, why is that important? And what are my goals that feed into that role that are important about what I'm trying to do in this place? So I love that. This is something I really need to dig into more that I didn't really do a lot of last time around. Okay, so I think we can move on to the next section, which is page 13.
00:26:14
Speaker
So this is interesting and I'm trying to work on this one a little bit more and actually maybe even bounce some ideas off of you and exactly what to do with it. Just a quick two page thing, but if this is, they call it their six month bucket list. Also, I like, here's your tips. The very first one is don't try to write it all at once.
00:26:32
Speaker
Feel like that would target different areas of your life, read other people's lists, make some easier to achieve than others and have fun. So this is just, they give you eight little spots to where they give you the prompt, I'm going to, and then you fill in whatever it is you want to be doing. And then there's, you know, spot for like everything there's space for writing, but then they also have, is there a budget amount that you need? Is there target dates? And then just section for details and ideas.
00:27:02
Speaker
So again, kind of neat to have you have your specific roles and goals. Oh, no.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I will say that this is one area that's really interesting to me. I would not have thought of this idea of a bucket list. Right. And I think that that is kind of like, I love the fact that it's giving you look at other people's lifts, the tips that are giving to you are very, very good. But it is weird to me to separate these out from like the roles. And I think you said you kind of wanted to bounce some ideas off because it is kind of that interesting, like the directive statements I'm going to, and then, okay, what are my target dates? And it is like you said, six months. So it is now to me, we're moving a little bit beyond.
00:27:46
Speaker
I feel like the bucket list makes it – I don't know. I just thought that this was a very different –
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I really like that it's, it's, I mean, yes, things you want to do. And, but it's also separating it from your specific roles, because maybe you're bucket list. And the first thing I thought of with like budgets and dates and things, it's like, go to a convention, go to things like that, that are like, well, that isn't necessarily going to tie into one of my roles.
00:28:14
Speaker
you know, that doesn't deal with if I'm going to a anime convention that doesn't deal with my, you know, work or doesn't deal with my family that doesn't necessarily deal with my friends, but though it can. And so I think, I think it's for things like that, at least that's my first impression. I like the idea that though, that these are like, here are things I want to do, but that it separates those.
00:28:38
Speaker
roam your roles, cause then you can still have goals that are tied into those specifically, but then these are just like other things. Here's just other things I want to keep in mind that I want to be thinking about or aiming toward. I mean, it doesn't make sense cause the next section really is like a reading list. So it's like, I like that it's not just, you know, I think that the roles and goals make it the bigger loftier things maybe that you're like what you're trying to do.
00:29:06
Speaker
Like I said, the value system things, but it also is trying to break you down into like, have fun, do things that are actually things that you want to do that don't have to be tied to something specific that they don't have to be tied to. I'm doing this for, you know, like whatever the value or role is that it's just, I'm doing this because I like to do it and it's fun.
00:29:25
Speaker
And I don't need to necessarily put more into it than that. It's something like you said, a con or something. Maybe sure friends is going to be a part of that, but it really is maybe just, I want to just get out of town and I just need some money. So I'm going to need to budget for it. And so like, that's more fun things to do. And then follow straight into the next section, which is like a reading list. So like, you know, like I kind of made me think of like the video game log almost like you could do almost anything here, but it's just this idea of like, what are some other areas that maybe are important. And what I love about this thing is it doesn't like,
00:29:55
Speaker
not every section is going to have to be it has a lot of flexibility but it's giving you thoughts and ideas like maybe that at least gets me thinking yeah i mean and we'll really get into that when we get into the actual like meat of the planner too when we get into the the monthly and weekly breakdowns but it's like there's so much in here that
00:30:16
Speaker
It's inviting you to do what you want, what works for you, what fills in. And if you're not using it, like maybe the next time you come around and you look at it and go, yeah, you know, maybe I'll try using this little section over here that I didn't really do much with last time. And it just gives you more opportunity to kind of engage with more things like this. Have your reading list. And like for me, one of the transitions, it's one of the things I'm kind of working on. I talked about my gaming goals. I mean, I always have reading goals too, but like I tended to just because it's easiest,
00:30:45
Speaker
build those around year to year, full 12 month, one year at a time goals. I never really thought about those goals in six month increments. And so that's, that's the thing that I'm kind of thinking about. How do I do? How do I work on that to sort of fit with this and to be honest,
00:31:02
Speaker
that may work better for me because part of my struggle with that in the past is I'll try to set specific goals for the year, but my goal would be like, here's 12 games I'm thinking about right now that I'd like to play. I get through two or three of them, then I buy some other new games. I forget about that list and I get on to something else. Pretty soon, it's all behind me because I forget about all of it. And it's like having that shorter window might actually help me focus on things a little bit
Organizing Reading Goals & Reflection
00:31:28
Speaker
better.
00:31:28
Speaker
The fact that you start saying that it just makes me think of like, you know, we've been using we've been using leave to catch up on TV shows and it's that same thing that like, you know, we we have ones that we start and then things fall off and we have like this DVR that just hasn't all the other things on it at some point it becomes it becomes cumbersome enough that like you said, we may knock off one or two things but like we we we may be missing prioritizing and what we want everything because
00:31:56
Speaker
Well, and when that pile becomes too big, it's really easy to miss the trees for the forest. It's hard to find the individual things that you actually want to engage with right now because of decision paralysis. There's just all the things. And that's why, like I said, for me, the back-loggery tool for my games has been great because
00:32:22
Speaker
I'll tell you a secret. I only put like 15% of the games I own digitally on there because I bought so many humble bundles and games on Steam and things for free from PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live.
00:32:38
Speaker
Now there's subscription passes. Like I like the Xbox game pass. It's a, it's a good value, but there's so many games on it. So it's like all of these things. I only logged a couple hundred games that I own, that I went through all of these lists and things and said, I read this name. I think of the, you know, I look at the game and say, I definitely want to like put some time into that. And so it's a curated list of things that I know I'm actually interested in engaging with.
00:33:06
Speaker
And then I dig in some time and I'm looking for something new. Maybe I'll go back to one of those lists and go back through my download log or my Steam library and find something else to add to it. But this is a curated list that I can work with now. And I think something like this reading list, because this reading list has, I think, 12 books on here, which is great. And that's a lot of books.
00:33:25
Speaker
I was like, I tend to read a lot more than that. Okay, I was like, for me for six months. Yeah, I'll see. Now part of it is I'm the last two years I've had like, I did a full reread of the Animorph series, which are like, small little scholastic books that were supposed to be for elementary school kids, except that there's some really traumatic stuff that goes on in there. So it's a whole thing about
00:33:49
Speaker
teenagers in a galactic war with aliens that take over your brain. But the whole point is there's like 60 of these books. And so my last two years I've read an exceptional, at least for me, a very large number of books in the last two years. And honestly, I think a large number for most people, just based on like goodreads and some of the things that they say for average people's average reading goals. So 12 is not a lot.
00:34:13
Speaker
especially for some of that, but it doesn't mean that this is everything I'm going to read. I mean, I'll tell you right now, I sort of cheated because I recently bought the entire Fullmetal Alchemist manga set, but that's 27 volumes of manga. Yeah.
00:34:28
Speaker
doesn't actually take that long to read if you really sit down and you burn through it. And I'm trying to mix it out, but ultimately reading a volume of manga does not take place. So I wrote full metal alchemist volumes 1 through 10 in one of these slots. So I could kind of cheese it a little bit. But this doesn't have to be everything I read. I don't even have to read any of it.
00:34:50
Speaker
But having this list saying, this is what I was thinking about in January. Here's the books I was looking at. And, you know, in six months, three or four months, maybe when I'm getting ready to buy the next book, you know, start working on the next six months of the year, I can come back to this and go, you know, I never did finish A Closed and Common Orbit. I should finish that. That's the second book after a different book.
00:35:12
Speaker
a Becky Chambers book called The Long Way to a Small and Scary Planet, which was recommended to me by a lot of people, including Morgan, the certified book scientist who was on our podcast a couple months ago. So I got the sequel to that. I haven't read it yet, but I put it on this list and if six months from now I come back to this book to start working on the next one and I see I didn't cross it off in the planner, it's like, well, maybe I'll put that on the reading list for the next six months and try to get to it then.
00:35:41
Speaker
know, this is a nice way to, again, be mindful of kind of what you're doing and keep stuff
00:35:50
Speaker
It's easier to keep track. Yeah, I think that's that's what I'm like as we're moving into like from these like the bigger things to I'm like these other categories now into actual like an actual calendar type that I'm looking at, you know, yeah Yeah, like actually having things just sections for notes the making plans and now we're moving into these like the monthly
00:36:14
Speaker
what these monthly calendars look like. I'm just getting really, really excited to do a calendar for the first time in a while. Okay. So you on the first page of the calendar, we go in there? Yeah, I'm there. Okay. So I'm going to read this code because I told you I was going to read this. So I love this in month one, and they actually have month one is just the open cell because again, this is six months. So you figure out whatever month it is you're in.
00:36:35
Speaker
But then the quote at the bottom on this page, and there's quotes all over this place. And I told Hobbs, there's only one that I'm going to read, because this is one that I need to read to myself all the time. So there's a quote from Sheryl Sandberg. Don't know who that is, but... I thought it's Susan Sontag. But that was a different one. Susan Sontag was good too. Okay. Fine, I'll read that one too. I thought that that was the one you were going to read. No, no. Neither of those are in my... Oh, neither of them are in your book? I don't think the quotes are in this thing. I'm going to go ahead and read them.
00:37:03
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. Because by the way, this book, as I said, is two years older than his. I just happened to find this one buried under stuff. No, it's just because I'm like, you mentioned that you know who you were going to do quotes by. I'm like flipping through it. I'm like, that's not like, okay, I have different quotes.
00:37:20
Speaker
That's great. I love that. Cause then whenever I buy another one, maybe I'll have different, different quotes and that's fun. But so the Susan Sontag was, and this is on the six month bucket list. So this feels appropriate. The quote was, I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list. I appreciate that. That's a nice little bit of humor, but the one from Cheryl is done is better than perfect.
00:37:42
Speaker
And I circled it like in pencil right here. That's when I want to fill this up because I need that quote. Like I need to say that to myself probably every day because I struggle with that so much done is better than perfect. So we're on now looking at the actual month calendar. So.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, I love this. So there's kind of three sections here. You have the actual dates, you have the monthly reflections for after, which I'll get to in a second, and then the monthly goals and priorities. One of the things that I think is interesting, and I'm guessing yours will be like this, but maybe not, this has the calendar sorted Monday through Sunday.
00:38:24
Speaker
different from just about every other calendar I've ever used. I'm familiar that some have done this, but I've never really used a calendar that does it. And it makes it a little awkward to line it up. Because again, this is a six month thing, so you have to fill it in yourself.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think they do have a digital one that is like a digital 2020 that has all the information in there. If you're interested in that, I like this physical thing, but I kind of, it's weird, the Monday through Sunday thing. It's made it awkward to sort of line up the calendar and fill in the dates.
00:38:55
Speaker
But what I like about it for me and how I organize my work weeks and my time, I organize the days. This has Monday through Friday on one page, and then there's the stitching, and then the next page has Saturday, Sunday, together on the same line. So unlike a traditional calendar or a normal Sunday through Saturday,
00:39:18
Speaker
Saturday this week is followed by Sunday the next week. But that means your weekend is broken up on two different lines of the calendar. And I love this idea that at least for me as a person who works, you know, a normal Friday, Monday through Friday, corporate schedule, I love the idea that my weekend, my Saturday and Sunday are always right next to each other.
00:39:40
Speaker
I'm laughing because I've seen it's interesting to see kind of because you know the one that you sent me Yeah, they they've changed this. Oh, yeah yours is set up different. They don't have it filled in it's still that well, but I mean it doesn't give even any days of the week It's got square so you could choose to start wherever you wanted to Interesting, but it still has like two off to the end. They're on the second page. It's like right. Okay, I
00:40:07
Speaker
Interesting. See how that's a good one whenever I buy a new one. I'll probably keep this Monday through Sunday model. Yeah. And I saw I'm thinking about this and thinking about the pieces that we're going to be talking into, because the calendar is broken into. And like I said, we're once again talking visually. Yes. If people are familiar with dot journals, there's a lot of elements of that in here. Yes. I was going to mention that. Yeah. So that's what I'm seeing about it. But it is leading to a lot of customizability.
00:40:36
Speaker
That may be one thing that they've gotten feedback on or change from even your year to mine. Um, yeah, but it has like this, I love like just looking at this, it has these kind of like. Just things to kind of keep in mind when you mentioned the mindfulness piece, I didn't know to what level we'd be talking, but they're literally like, there's ways to do end of month reflections here. Yes. Yeah. We want to go through these two sections. We want to go to the end of the monthly goals. Well, if yours.
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah, like this is where I'm not sure. Yeah. Okay. So maybe I'll run through these and then you can get that you're looking at too. So I was thinking the monthly goals and priorities, which are next to Saturday, Sunday. So this has six boxes, which are work and career, home and admin, friends and networks, projects and passions, fun and activities, and health and habits. And then each one of those has lines to fill in whatever you want to fill in for those for your month to think about.
00:41:37
Speaker
And then there's the monthly reflection section on this. So does yours have something similar to those goals and priorities section? So yeah, Alex, I really think mine has those. It has the different categories of the monthly goals. I really love that this book has a lot of the blank sections in between because it kind of starts what's interesting, we're going to get into this, but we're going from kind of these, this monthly overview to then more of a in depth weekly where you can do a daily kind of steps to it.
00:42:05
Speaker
But one of the things that I love is we talk a lot about we've had this on the show before about positive psychology or mental well being and not just mental illness or not this focus on just symptoms or things that are going wrong, but to balance those out. And it's not to try to ignore the fact that, you know, bad things are happening or that, you know, to try to like make yourself falsely positive. It's to recognize
00:42:34
Speaker
that there are things that we don't always pay attention to. And a lot of us, we're used to paying attention to the negatives. We're used to being paying attention to what's wrong. That's kind of how a lot of society is built. Well, and that, sorry to cut you off as an aside back to my whole thing that I've talked about on and off of my own personal sort of yearly thing that I do. That's how it started. It started about a year, year and a half after I started
00:43:01
Speaker
Was first diagnosed with my social anxiety started going to see a therapist and I was Dwelling on a lot of things looking forward that I felt like I wasn't attaining Like I wasn't getting to where I wanted to and so I just sat down and said well, what have I done? What have I accomplished? Where have I been so far and realized?
00:43:20
Speaker
I'm in a pretty good spot with where I was at and much better than I was thinking about because I was so busy looking forward to the things I hadn't seen or hadn't done yet and not thinking about all the stuff that I had already gone through. Yeah, so this what's and what I like about this is so Jen and I went to a talk for something called the bounce back project or and one of the things they talked about is the happiness project is part of
Positive Psychology & Gratitude Tracking
00:43:43
Speaker
that.
00:43:43
Speaker
And it's to basically be looking at things, the ways to increase just your recognition and your awareness of those things that have been happening to force you to give equal weight to them. And what I like about this is it literally just gives you the topics to be thinking about. We do, every night we do,
00:44:02
Speaker
three good things or and one good thing that we're looking for or just one thing that we're looking forward to the next day to kind of get yourself to be thinking about even if it's just a cup of tea on a work day on like it's going to be a cold day out. My brain is already thinking about all the things that I have to do at work. What could go wrong? Got to drive in the weather's cold.
00:44:22
Speaker
You know, these are the things that I'm tending to be preparing for, not thinking about the fact that, like, well, what's something that I'm going to enjoy tomorrow, even if the day's bad? Like, what is something that I can be grateful I have? And so this says reasons to be grateful. What are my strengths? What are the things I can do better? So acknowledge that. But what did I learn during the month? What were the memories I created? And to me, this one really stood out because a topic that I've talked or thought about
00:44:49
Speaker
bringing up for us to talk about on here is with depression returning to that topic we've done is we've talked about like memory and like how your memory gets can actually be impacted and I guess that's awesome.
00:45:00
Speaker
I've been noticing a lot more that like, I benefit a lot from having a cell phone that has photos in it based on the fact that I can look back and see that a lot better. And that brings me back to that moment, because I can easily and for many, many years, this has been the case that my depression has, you know, I don't have as good of a memory for some of those things. It's not that they didn't happen, but I have to be reminded of them.
00:45:21
Speaker
So to actually talk about memories created, especially as a new dad, it's great to be taking these. And then now we can move into, this book really has a top-down approach to me. We started with these broad categories.
00:45:36
Speaker
the rules, the value system. We now take it to the month. Now we break it down and we go week to week and we go day by day. And I just really appreciate that this is basically funneling us downward because to me that's how my brain conceptualizes. It's really that top down approach, right? Like you're funneling things downward instead of going, you're starting with your broader ideas and now we're getting more and more specific as we go. Yeah.
00:46:03
Speaker
Um, because now we're going to move into the next section is really the, the day by day. Yeah. This is, this is, um, you know, in one page open, so two pages, it's, it's a full week, but each day has its own hour by hour, like cells from, from 5am to 11pm. Hopefully you're sleeping during those hours, or at least for mine, I just, is yours blank there too, for the hours.
00:46:30
Speaker
It actually does have like the six, nine, 12, three, six, and it's like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this actually goes hour by hour, but then it's got, and mine has, down at the bottom of the hours, it has a little water drop and a spot to track how much water you've been drinking. I did, I was gonna say, okay, cool. I do have that, that's pretty cool. And then the next three are also BLD, which took me a second to realize that's breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to be mindful about what you're eating each day.
00:47:00
Speaker
They added a snack category. Oh, they added a snack? Oh, that's awesome. Or an S, like something to be a little aware of, yeah. Nice. This one does not have a snack category. So like that's day to day. Like those are the days. And like that I love. Probably my favorite. So there's a whole note section, which is cool. I also like that it's notes, ideas, reminders, and acts of kindness. Like I like, I love that. But for me, the two that I kind of like,
00:47:28
Speaker
I like these. There's a self care and fitness, and then a seven day habit. So the self care and fitness has Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday has all five, all seven days, and then a seven daily habits. These are seven habits with a section for all seven days so you can just track
00:47:44
Speaker
Did I do this? Did you do it or not? Did I do it or not? Did I do it or not? Yeah. Like seriously, legitimately the last two years, not, I'm just going to say I have shower on that list because especially during the week I go into the office every day, that's not so hard to keep track of.
00:48:00
Speaker
on the weekdays, but sometimes on the weekends, that's hard to keep track of. So I put that in there, and now I track that to make sure that's something that I'm mindful of, that it's not 7, 8 p.m. at night, where I just go, and I didn't shower tonight, today. I like to shower in the morning. That's usually what I do for work. On the weekends, without that workday schedule structure, I lose track of that.
00:48:23
Speaker
It's easy for me to do so. I'm not going to lie. I love everything that you're talking about and all these categories that are here, but my favorite is the not to do list. Oh yes. The not to do list. By the way, for this week, I have one item written in that list. Do you know what that is? No. Existential dread.
00:48:45
Speaker
I legitimately wrote Existential Dread in the not to do list for this week. So I'm not going to do it. It's on the list. I'm not going to do it. That's really, really funny to me. I love this. There's also to buy, and there's a sleep tracker, which is kind of neat too.
00:49:03
Speaker
on this bottom section. And then they have a section that mirrors the monthly thing that has a working career, a home and admin, projects and passion, and a friend and network section for your priority action. So you can kind of take those things you wanted to focus on or look at on the month and break that down week by week. And I just realized I didn't write in dinner tonight. So I'm going to put
00:49:33
Speaker
French toast and ham. That was my dinner tonight. I know now we're going to get way off because now I'm like, oh, French toast and ham. Oh, now we're on to food again. Yup. Oh yeah. Yeah. We got to visit that. We made gluten, gluten-free chicken pot pie tonight in a like cast iron Dutch oven, which was amazing because Jen got a bunch of gluten-free cookbooks for Christmas.
00:50:03
Speaker
And gluten-free Bisquick is really, really good. I mean, that's what it made. You put biscuits on top of it instead of a full pie and we're, see, this is why I need a planner. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Cause then I got to tell you, I have like maybe six weeks where I actually used this thing two years ago and I can flip through, see the days I had, you know, bagel.
Self-Care with Candles & Shopping Benefits
00:50:27
Speaker
bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwiches for breakfast or whatever it was that I was doing is like, Oh, yeah, that's right. I think it's Yeah, I think this is my biggest struggle right now, like short term small scale. I'm not sure if I should put
00:50:44
Speaker
burning because I love, I love me some, some jarred candles. I know you and I have been talking off air about, I'm not sure if that's a seven daily habit or a self care thing. I'm not sure which section I need to put that in. You know, are you getting a little caught up there by like nomenclature then? You know, are you being a little too rigid?
00:51:04
Speaker
Well, I'm trying to decide which word fits better because the self-care is just like, each day has its own section for what did you do for self-care and fitness. And I could totally write candle each day that I do that. But then if it's something that I'm aiming to just do all seven days anyway, maybe I just put it in the seven daily habits section. I just mark them off every day that I burn a candle. I haven't, I'm still struggling with this one. That's fair. That's fair.
00:51:29
Speaker
I'm laughing because you mentioned off air. I was like, we've been talking. You, you, you even convinced me this week that Yankee Candle had like, has a rewards that's free. Yeah. And then you, you, you had to fuel this by telling me that they were having basically a 50% off sale. And I went and dropped like $60 on candles two days ago.
00:51:51
Speaker
I'll let you in on a secret Hobbs. They do that like four or five times a year. Oh God, I'm sure. And that's legitimately like Yankee Candle, at least in the US. To be honest, I don't even know a whole lot about the candle market. But from what I've seen just going to Target and in different places and looking at these jarred scented candles, Yankee Candle is about the most expensive you can find.
00:52:13
Speaker
But if you go to their website, every season, like the end of the season, so we're coming at the end of the holiday season now, they're getting rid of particular scents that don't fit the season. They're getting rid of extra stock that they built up for, say for, you know, December, all the various holidays in December. And so if you are kind of patient and like, I like to then just get gift cards for Christmas or I get gift cards through this rewards program at work, I can get all sorts of gift cards through that.
00:52:43
Speaker
you know, so I can stock up like gift cards plus
00:52:49
Speaker
Sales plus sometimes their reward program you can earn like store credit, you know gift cards through that It's like so I just stack all this stuff up and get a ton of candles for really pretty cheap And again, like they're some of the most expensive but they're also some of the better ones They're not probably always the best but they're some of the better for sure. They're they're candles I if my experience their candles have always been good at least for me so it's like
00:53:15
Speaker
That's what I do. And then whenever I'm getting a little bit low, I kind of wait and see when that sale pops up, buy a bunch. Now I'm stocked up until the next time I get low. So there's your free tip. We're getting free tips. The better free tip from Alex and I, we're not getting paid by Inky Candle. I can guarantee you on this one. But they have wood wick candles. Oh my god, the wood wick candles. That's what I wanted recently. And we even found they used to do a campfire one, but there was like a
00:53:45
Speaker
Anyway, wow, sorry. But that does remind me, maybe we should see if they're doing promotions for podcast. Do they want to sponsor our podcast? Do they like, we're goblins, right? We're gonna be like, listen, we want to burn everything, right? If it's not on fire, it doesn't work. We are your best salespeople. If it's not on fire, it should be. So, you know, I...
00:54:13
Speaker
Each month also has just like, there's a lot of blank spaces and I think this gets into that, the dot method. If you wanted to talk a little bit about that. There's also some blank pages after each week, at least my model has two blank pages and you go into the next week. And then after five weeks,
00:54:31
Speaker
there's more blank pages to go in before you go into the next month. And I just, I love that you just always have that space to write things. Well, and then, cause we can just kind of fast forward, fast forward, flip toward the end of the book. Once you get to the end of those six months, there's another section of like 30 blank pages. Yeah, it's just tons of blank pages. And that is really the model. Like, yeah.
00:54:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that's again, to go back to the very first thing, at least in my book, the very first ad, there's table of contents and then the next two pages are your notes index. Two pages of just full lines, just blank lines where you can go on page, you know, 30 here is like, I just have, I took Thursday and Friday this week off. So I literally, I just have notes about some stuff I want to do over the weekend.
00:55:23
Speaker
So I put that in my notes index, but it's 33 long weekend, January 6th through ninth weekend goals. And so people, so I'm going to just like let people know. So if people, if you go to wrote runner.com, so R O T E R U N N E R.com, that's who we're using. They do have a digital version of this. You can order the physical. Um, I will put that in the show notes. Cause it's just the one that we're happening to be talking about here. But like it.
00:55:52
Speaker
It is awesome if you wanna check it out. Like I said, the digital version of it is, you know, like, it is a PDF and like you basically can go in and fill out. So, yeah. There is one more page, Hobbs. Yes, there is. Did you find the self-care checklist? A self-care checklist.
Mindfulness & Self-Care Checklist
00:56:13
Speaker
Did you read this? I did. I was looking through this and I was like, I was trying to figure out if I knew if it was a real measure, basically. I want to go through this for the audio listeners, which that's a joke because it's everyone. We're only audio. So this checklist just says, use a pencil to fill in.
00:56:31
Speaker
where you write no, come back and think about it, and then their thing is you should come back once a month or so to check with this list to think about yourself. So I'm going to read through all of these options, all these lines I have in here. So it's, am I making enough time for myself?
00:56:46
Speaker
Am I spending enough time with my friends? Have I been getting enough rest? Do I practice some form of mindfulness and spirituality? Am I getting enough exercise and eating well? Do I practice random acts of kindness? Am I spending my money wisely and planning my budget? Have I set out my dreams and goals and am I pursuing them? Do I avoid social comparison and focus and sit on improving myself? Do I express gratitude and cultivate optimism?
00:57:15
Speaker
Have I forgiven those I feel resentful toward? Do I have sufficient flow experiences in my work life? Do I allow myself to appropriately express emotion, including anger and sadness? Do I tell others what they mean to me often enough? Am I present for my family, my partner, and my children? Do I allow myself to receive love from others? Am I easily able to say yes and no?
00:57:42
Speaker
Have I created a powerful support system for myself? And the final line is, do I celebrate my accomplishments big and small? So all of that is a lot, it goes to the mindfulness thing that we're talking about. These are things that you should be thinking about. I mean, there's stuff to think about all those and it may not be yes all the time and that's fine.
00:58:10
Speaker
Excuse me. But it's being intentional. I think that's a thing we talk about a lot. That's a thing you talk about a lot, Hobbs. It's being intentional in what you do and trying to be mindful and introspective about where you are. And those are things that sometimes get, although a lot of those are things that get away from you very easily, especially now where our third year of this pandemic, where it's hard to meet up with people and it's hard to do some of this stuff.
00:58:39
Speaker
So having, having this checklist where you go and like, am I spending enough time with my friends? Am I, you know, that's a thing that's hard to say yes right now, but it's something to be mindful about. Throughout the pandemic, we've, we've talked about, we've, we've made self care. We've made this stuff be at the forefront because it continues to be
00:59:00
Speaker
To me, the thing that's the hardest, the thing I've been struggling with is we get further and further just things keep going, right? And, you know, it's, yeah, I mean, I hate I joked it even the other day that like, one of the things that I most want is just not have every conversation end up going back to
00:59:19
Speaker
pandemic because they tend to it just and it's natural it but it's also just it is demoralizing it is exhausting and I think people talked about like this idea that there's like we don't even like the whole concept is just hard right now
00:59:37
Speaker
Yeah. And so again, like some of this, it might even be I'm not spending enough time with my friends. But is there things that I can do to mitigate? So like this, like this podcast is a great way for Hobbs and I to get to chat. Yeah. They said we haven't seen each other in two years.
00:59:52
Speaker
No, we've been able to keep talking and keep organized You know, we have chats through discord and other things where we talk to each other direct message back and forth but being able to come on this once ish a week and talk has just been Incredible for being able to keep in touch and just keep a sense of myself
01:00:13
Speaker
Yeah, take to what's tying me to the community at this point.
Embracing Broader Lifestyle Discussions
01:00:19
Speaker
I mean, what's funny is like, if we're thinking about this, like, we're coming back with everybody for our first episode in a little bit. We're coming off of, you know, we did the Jay episodes, which were really great, but we did the Amanda episode, which was just very,
01:00:31
Speaker
very needed and necessary. A little bit of a heavier topic in terms of seriousness. We come back with this and we haven't even talked about magic, really. But it's universal.
01:00:44
Speaker
If you're looking at goals related to magic, you could be breaking them down into different areas. Are we talking, like you said, podcasts, but I mean, like streaming, you know, I think somebody like chase who like streams is on shows, writes articles, you know, like, like this method could straight up just be for magic. I mean, like you have enough of those areas that people don't necessarily think about.
01:01:09
Speaker
that like you said that they're looking at your value system and whether it's collaborations that you want to do or there's, you know, I mean, it just makes me think about the idea that there's so many elements that go into magic that we've talked about on here before that it's not just a singular thing that like, we haven't really been talking magic today, right? Let's be honest, right? No, no, absolutely not. We've been goblins, we have stayed true to our nature. But we haven't necessarily talked magic at all. And
01:01:37
Speaker
It's still not disconnected from what we do. I don't know. It just had me thinking. That's right. We're back. We appreciate people. We appreciate that there's still those of you that are listening and we're glad that we're going to continue. I think we're coming to a point where we're going to be able to start
01:02:04
Speaker
have to hopefully not miss too many. I know Alex has some solo episodes or a couple of recordings of some other people just in case I can't and we have some stuff on the horizon going into the like this coming year that just that we are working on and it's still we're still getting into that routine with now two kids in my household and just
01:02:27
Speaker
I know you've had a ton of work changes that we've talked about, I think last time and just, there's a lot, it's life. And this is an important part of it for us. So thank you everybody. And we'll talk to you soon.
01:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully this worked out. I'm a little worried, I'm a little more worried about this than the visual, because once we got going in the visual books, the visual history of magic, we got into conversations about actual magic and characters. Oh, yeah. I hope this translated well to someone listening who doesn't have this thing sitting in front of them.
01:03:04
Speaker
or that are tuning and expecting to hear about Magic the Gathering. Well, then there's that too. I mean, there is a reason that, I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I recently, we recently updated our podcast description and it now says, sometimes talks about magic.
Episode Closure & Audience Engagement
01:03:21
Speaker
Cause I felt like we need to keep, you know, prominent. We need to acknowledge that and set expectations appropriately.
01:03:32
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find the host on Twitter. HotzQ can be found at HotzQ, and Alex Newman can be found at Mel Underscore. Send any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to at goblinmoorpod on Twitter, or email us at goblinmoorpodcast at email.com.
01:03:50
Speaker
If you want to support your friends and neighborhood gospel, the cast can be found at patreon.com slash goblin web pod. Opening and closing music by Vindergarten, who can be found on twitter at Vindergarten, or online at vindergarten.bandcamp.com. Logo art by Steven Raffaeo, who can be found on twitter at steveraffle.
01:04:13
Speaker
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vorthos content, as well as magic content of all kinds. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmtg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.