‘Casting Call.22
Podcast recommendations from August 5 - August 9, 2024
I work a regular job in a warehouse where I rarely need to use my critical thinking skills (I do get to drive a forklift, though). So, I listen to around 40 hours worth of podcasts a week, and here’s what I recommend from this past week...
High And Mighty - #497 Positive Thinking w/ Greg Hess
One of the things I noticed about myself once I got on depression medication (should it be anti-depression medication, because wouldn’t depression medication mean that it gives me depression?), is that when I was bored and just let my mind wander, I would default into negative thinking. Just about anything. Mostly about myself.
That sort of itchy wool empty feeling of boredom, I would immediately translate that to feeling bad. And if I felt bad, then I would have to think bad. And if I was thinking and feeling that way, then that’s what kind of person it had to mean I was.
It was the factory setting and I had no idea that I could change it. Of course, people would tell you all the time to be positive, or to think on the bright side, but it’s not until you’re out of the darkness can you see that that is an actual valid option. That road was always there, I just couldn’t see it. You can just think positive and change your knee-jerk reaction to things — be they good or bad.
And yes, I know that there is a deep irony in me recommending this episode if you’ve listened to it and heard the part where they talk about recommending this episode. Hopefully you listen so you can get the joke, too.
Sixteenth Minute (Of Fame) - grief, pt. whatever
This is a hard one to listen to if you happen to be actively grieving. Or even if you’ve ever lost a parent or someone you were close to.
Jaime just lost her dad, and it’s always a show of strength to put these kinds of things out in public. To expose raw nerves to the harsh elements. You want to curl-up and protect your soft, vulnerable bits, but you usually end up helping someone else by opening up yourself to make a possible connection (be it para-social or I.R.L.).
You show people that it can be done. You can and will survive, even though it may not feel like it.
I still have both of my parents. I don’t have any more grandparents, though. And when I think about how old my parents are getting — the health scares they’ve had in the last couple of years — I’m not really ... I don’t know if scared is the right word. But we don’t talk that much even though they live near enough to me. So it’ll be just like this, but more so.
I don’t know if it’s pragmatism, or maybe I never got close to them? They were eighteen when they had me. They still had their own growing up left to do when I was born. I can say that they loved me, because they told me, but I don’t know if I ever felt it. All I know, is that I never want my daughter to ever have to wrestle with that existential leviathan.
And that’s the other side of the double-edged sword of Damocles: being a good dad is only going to hurt her that much more once I’m gone.
But being a shitty dad isn’t really an option, ‘cause I’m not a monster. I want to take care of my little girl. I could have worked a job that would have me working weekends and nights — and might have even earned me more money — but I didn’t want to miss seeing her grow-up. I wanted to be around and go to her dance competitions and watch movies with her and try my best to do all that I can so that she feels loved. So that she never doubts it.
And in the sense that every parent wants their child to have a better life than they did, this is how I accomplish that with her.