Ep. 371: "Too Big to Be Angry"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Oh, you know, it's going.
John: It's pretty aloha.
John: Yeah.
John: Want to talk about that?
John: Yeah, sure.
John: I can always talk about aloha.
John: It's a little bit early.
Merlin: It's kind of early.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I slept well last night.
Merlin: Oh, I'm happy for you.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't always sleep well.
Merlin: I wake up in the morning, I look at my phone, and it tells me how well I slept, and it provides confirmation or punishment that I have very little actual control over.
Merlin: Let's see who's mad at me on Twitter today and how I slept.
John: Yeah, those are the two first things you need to know in the day.
Merlin: Willkommen.
Merlin: So you, is it fair to say that you, in as much as you can say, you know, operational security, you went to Hawaii.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: If you listen carefully, the discerning listener...
John: will perceive that I'm still in Hawaii.
Merlin: Shut your whore mouth.
Merlin: I'm still here.
Merlin: Oh, God, it must be so early.
Merlin: What is it, like three in the morning there?
Merlin: Three in the morning, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry, man.
Merlin: No, no, it's good.
John: It's good.
John: See, I need order in my life.
John: I need structure.
Mm-hmm.
John: And so getting up in the morning is a form of structure, as far as I understand it.
Merlin: It's certainly a step in the right direction.
John: So, you know, the chickens, of course, the rooster.
Merlin: Oh, they go at it early, don't they?
John: They do.
John: And these wild jungle roosters here, they first start to crow at about...
John: 3 a.m.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: They have an ordered life.
John: They do.
John: They do.
Merlin: That was a weird adjustment for me.
Merlin: I think we were, I don't know, I forget how long we were there, but when we were in Hawaii, a lot of adjustments.
Merlin: First of all, I had to adjust to the fact that all of our shit had been stolen in a break-in.
Merlin: That sucked.
Merlin: I also had to adjust to the, well, there's the food, which I'm not going to talk about.
Merlin: And what I will say is I was not ready.
Merlin: We weren't in, I want to say, Kauai?
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: Just go ahead and throw some syllables at it.
Merlin: We're one of the islands.
Merlin: And anyway, it's so early, John.
Merlin: I know.
John: There's some wild cats here.
Merlin: That's what I was just going to say.
Merlin: It was the roosters and the cats.
Merlin: There's just cats.
Merlin: I don't know if feral is the right word.
Merlin: They're not angry.
Merlin: But there are just packs of cats.
John: Here at the house, here at Shea Uncle Jack, you know the story here is that the various members of my family
John: over the course of the three months that Uncle Jack lives here in the winter, various cousins.
Merlin: um come for little little bursts of time a week here a couple of weeks to be with uncle jack this is what bit you in the behind last year right it was there was a scheduling um cock up with who was going to be where when and that led to you being there was that was that last the same time last year has it been a year same time really the aloha tortoise talk turtle talk was a year ago a year ago shit dog i know
Merlin: And anyway, continue with your story.
John: So some of my cousins, and I'm going to say the majority of them,
John: think that the feral cats are cute and they go to the grocery store and they buy a big bag of cat food and then they buy little cans of special cat food because, you know, cats need special treatment.
John: They're finicky.
John: And then they put bowls of cat food.
John: Let me see how many, if I can count how many bowls.
John: There are one, two, three.
John: There are two bowls a...
John: Tupperware container and the lid of a box of candy.
John: And all four of them have different kinds of cat food in them.
John: Wow.
John: And so what you get around here is a lot of feral cats.
John: And I can only imagine, I don't know, I haven't seen any rats, but the chickens eat the cat food, all the little birds and snakes and airplanes.
John: You've got everything eating this food.
John: And the mama cat now has the mama cat who, when you first arrive on the scene, hisses at you like, you know, she has four adorable little kittens.
Merlin: We had kittens.
Merlin: There was like, I'll send you a hilarious video of my kid when she was like three.
Merlin: And it's had to be like six or eight.
Merlin: Meow, meow.
John: little cats i was just i didn't want to get you know sure rabies or something yeah yeah you don't want hawaiian rabies no scratch foot or trench bud or whatever trench mouth the bucket head um so uh and like three of the cats have half tails and i and and i think that when i saw the mom i was like oh lost your tail in a fight huh
John: with your attitude but then i saw the kittens and they also have short tails so i think it's just a genetic thing anyway so and then there's the birds that go and the birds that go and all the other birds 100 kinds of birds
John: And, you know, my microphone may or may not be picking up the cacophony of bird sound.
Merlin: I hear a very, it does not, you sound really good, but I hear a very subtle cuckoo, cuckoo.
Merlin: Is that what I'm hearing?
John: It's not very subtle from where I am.
John: It sounds like the Jungle Ride at Disneyland.
John: Or like the Jungle Ride at Disneyland used to, if you know what I'm saying.
John: But anyway, I've been working on my Aloha.
John: I've been here for a little over a week.
John: I've got a little less than a week to go.
John: And yeah, the Aloha, you know, it's...
John: Boy, it's an elusive state of mind to get into Aloha when you're coming from...
John: No loha.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Sorry.
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John: No, no, it's all right.
John: It's okay.
John: Sorry, I just coined that.
John: No aloha.
John: No aloha.
John: It's so early.
John: It's really early.
John: I had a little bit of banana bread, but it's not enough to put me in a good head.
Merlin: It's been a year.
Merlin: And so that year ago, you were doing a lot of stuff with Uncle Jack.
Merlin: You got in some shoes.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: And you, if we go back and listen to those old episodes, you had a bit of a saga with Aloha.
Merlin: Just to maybe review for new listeners, as you sit here today, what is your conception of Aloha and its role in your life?
Merlin: Tell people what that means when we talk about Aloha from John's POV.
John: It's changed quite a bit because, you know, last year I was suffering from a lot of anxiety and stress and
John: I did everything.
John: While I was here last year, I got into several big negotiations and arguments with people I was in business with, and just none of it seemed like it was working out.
John: A lot of it just, I don't know.
John: I never lost faith in what I was doing, but it just didn't seem like the business relationships were panning out.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I was trying to sell my house, everything.
John: And so I was I was so stressed out.
John: And I got here and, you know, one of the things that drove me to stop drinking in the first place was that I was in this state of just perpetual frustration that.
John: That manifests as anger.
John: I was so angry.
John: I was angry all the time.
John: And that anger grew and grew and grew until it became kind of murderous anger.
John: Every situation I confronted, I was just like, these people need to die.
John: You know, like really, really, really kind of anger where there's no way out from it.
John: You know, you don't talk yourself down from it.
John: because there, because there's no, there's no, there's no reasonable position anymore.
John: And I saw, I saw the trajectory I was on, you know, I was sick and I was drunk and I was homeless and I was all these sort of things that on the surface were reasonable causes to stop drinking, you know, like, Oh, you, you're like, you're, you're sleeping outside.
John: Like that seems like maybe that should be a sign that,
John: But of course, none of those things are, none of the material world things are ever enough to really to cause a person to quit drinking.
John: I mean, it happens.
John: You know, people are like, I'm going to lose my job.
John: I'd better quit drinking.
John: But if you're like, you know, there are a lot of hardcore alcoholics that'll just lose everything and it doesn't stop them.
John: Right.
John: But I looked at my life at the time and was like, oh, the trajectory I'm on is one where I become so consumed with anger that
John: i become just a destroyer you know like like something terrible in the world and then something and just destroy me something destroy something fundamental about me well it starts i mean um i i'm sure i must have said this when we talked about this last time but it's it's been my observation that um
Merlin: how do I put this?
Merlin: Uh, anger can be a thing that happens all on its own.
Merlin: Like, you know, if something happens, if, if there's been a, a, a terrible injustice, um, even if it doesn't involve you, it's not unusual to be angry because I, it's not, I mean, anger can come up on its own.
Merlin: It's just that for me and possibly for you, anger is a result.
Merlin: It's not a cause in my experience.
Merlin: So like my hangups, my, um,
Merlin: Gosh, I've been thinking so much more about the voice in your head thing.
Merlin: I have a new update for you on that.
John: Boy, me too.
John: It has been such a topic of conversation.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it comes up a lot.
Merlin: And I guess what I'm saying is that one time I think on Back to Work, I called it the seven dwarfs of bad emotion.
Merlin: You get things like anger, fear, anger,
Merlin: You know, you have these sort of gateway emotions that when you repeat them start to form a pattern.
Merlin: And so like what starts out as like things aren't going the way that I want and it feels like people in the world are against me and I don't get a break or whatever it is.
Merlin: I mean, you know, everybody feels that way sometimes.
Merlin: It's just that I feel like when you get to anger, especially repeated anger or sometimes erratic anger,
Merlin: Bursting anger is usually, it's not a thing on its own, I don't think.
Merlin: I think anger is when the top blows off, sort of like with crying.
Merlin: Crying, in a lot of ways, it tends to be frustration.
Merlin: Frustration of some kind leads to crying.
Merlin: Even if that's frustration about, like, I'll never see this person who died.
Merlin: But I don't know if that matches with your take, but I do feel like anger is where it ends up.
Merlin: It's the sink that captures all those other bad emotions, and that's how it comes out if you don't have an ordered emotional life.
Merlin: And when you're living in that...
Merlin: whether that's as an alcoholic or as an anxious person or whatever, when you're living in that, it feels so real and so permanent.
Merlin: And so there's no way to pop out of it.
Merlin: When you talk about not realizing you should stop drinking or not realizing you need to adjust something about this anger coming out, don't you think?
Merlin: I mean, it's...
Merlin: It comes from somewhere else, it wells up, and then when you're living in it, it's difficult to see anything but that.
Merlin: It's like when you get to the idea of rage, what is rage?
Merlin: Rage is like an uncontrollable, often violent kind of anger.
Merlin: But I think it starts someplace else.
Merlin: And then it's hard to just strap some aloha onto that and call it a day.
Merlin: It's very challenging.
John: Yeah, you can't just... Aloha's not a thing you can... Aloha's not a strap-on.
John: No, it's not a strap-on.
John: It's not something that comes from the factory, right?
John: It's not like a true coach or an undercoat.
Merlin: Actually, this reminds me, just real quick.
Merlin: There was one time I listened to a lot of Mabim Bam, as you know, and they had a question from somebody about...
Merlin: I think it was a Yahoo question where somebody had said, oh, no, no, it was a letter from one of the listeners.
Merlin: Something like they have this family member, this grandmother, who insists on like, she's like a cereal baker.
Merlin: Like she makes things, she makes food, but she always uses expired ingredients.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I love her.
Merlin: Or like, you know, the equivalent here, what I'm saying is like,
Merlin: You know, you're not going to make that old expired nasty chicken tasty and healthy by heating it.
Merlin: It's already gone bad.
Merlin: You're using corrupted ingredients and no amount of wonderful cooking is going to make corrupted ingredients good.
Merlin: And I'll make it even worse here.
Merlin: You only need one little bit of corrupted ingredient to cause a lot of problems.
Merlin: You only need a little bit of bad ground beef, and with the good ground beef, and now you're making a stink burger.
John: Stink burgers.
Merlin: Are you following me on the analogy?
John: Oh, Merlin, analogies that bump over a rough Hawaiian road are my stock in trade.
Merlin: And so if you're working with bad ingredients, you're not going to get a good bake.
John: It's true.
John: It's true what you say.
John: When I was younger, and I mean all the way into my 30s, I didn't experience anger as I didn't experience any emotion, any negative emotion in any form other than depression.
John: And, you know, this is like after the murderousness of
John: That was sort of a special category of the kind of murderousness that... It was still waters, right?
John: Nobody would have seen anger on me.
John: It was just in me.
John: But in every other regard, all negative emotions got pushed into depression, into self-hate, right?
John: And then at a certain point...
John: Early 30s, I was doing a lot of work on myself and trying to figure out what was going on.
John: And I realized that anger was something separate from depression.
John: I realized that there were, you know, the disappointment was separate from depression.
John: All these things.
John: This is a long time before I knew what anxiety even was.
John: And I went through a phase where I was just really angry, angry, externally angry.
John: and that was when i realized like oh i'm i'm like i'm scary right i'm too big you're too big to be angry i'm too big to be angry right like somebody my size and my amount of formidable
John: I can't be angry in the world.
John: It's awful.
Merlin: You and I had a face-to-face one time at your house that was... I don't think we've had too many of these.
Merlin: I think we've had fewer than three or four face-to-face showdowns about something.
Merlin: And it doesn't matter what it was about.
Merlin: But I think we both felt very wounded about what was happening.
Merlin: We saw what was happening from a different point of view.
Merlin: But you were...
Merlin: You carried yourself in a way I've never seen you before.
Merlin: And I'll just say that you were very emotional, and it scared the shit out of me.
Merlin: Maybe because you're big, but also because I just don't like – you know me.
Merlin: I hate confrontation.
Merlin: But I think we worked it out, I hope.
Merlin: But it was – it is –
Merlin: When you get to be an adult and you're a civilized person, you don't want to be the person who becomes known as the angry... Not you, but anybody.
Merlin: The angry yelling could go off at any time, person.
Merlin: Because then people are even scared to tell you that you're scary.
John: Yeah, the thing about having that much anger, of course, is that when it does...
John: when it does manifest in, you know, when it gets, when you feel like you're pushed to the edge, there is no more, there are no checks on it past a certain point, you know, and, and that's, um, that's awful to live through.
John: And it's also awful to see reflected in other people.
John: And so I had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to stop it before it got there.
John: And a lot of that is 35 years of suppressing it.
John: So not having any...
Merlin: Not having built up the natural, normal skills that you... Yeah, I mean, like, the emotional toolbox that some people can sort of manage and deploy better than others.
Merlin: You know, there are certain things where, like, we have these intense emotions.
Merlin: This is getting very deep.
Merlin: But we get those very intense emotions that we're not sure how to resolve.
Merlin: But it's got to come out somewhere.
Yeah.
Merlin: Or, you know, you burst.
John: In a lot of interactions with people, I find that a lot of people get into a posture there where they're, you know, they're wounded or they feel confronted.
John: And the kind of blindness that comes over them is a blindness of it's all someone else's fault or it's all, you know, it's a blindness of victimization.
Mm-hmm.
John: which, you know, I think ultimately long-term in the world is as destructive as anything.
John: For me, I never feel like a victim, never feel victimized.
John: I feel injustice.
John: You know, I feel that anger that comes from a feeling of that something is being perpetrated on the world and needs to be
John: confronted, right?
John: But so for a long, long, long, long time, I've been trying to arrest that before it gets started because it's really, you have to be way upstream from it.
John: And sometimes in arguments with people, I'm like, I really, I'm not bailing on this argument.
John: I just have to go
John: you know, I have to go away from it.
John: I have to go outside.
John: I have to go walk around.
John: Like I can't just be in this cycle.
John: I can't be in a closed space.
John: I can't get, please don't back me against a wall, you know?
John: Um, but in the last couple of years, all of a sudden anxiety appeared, which was not a, which was not an experience I ever had.
John: Um,
John: separate from other bad emotions.
John: I never was just anxious.
John: You know, it always came out as some kind of other thing or maybe I just didn't feel... In a way, I mean, personally looking at it from inside, I don't think I ever felt anxiety.
John: And when people would describe anxiety to me, it wasn't a thing that I recognized.
John: And I think like a lot of people...
John: Like me when they started to confront people because anxiety became a thing that that people started to really talk about openly.
John: It seems like only a few years ago, at least in my perception, right?
John: I know people have been talking about anxiety for decades, but I always thought of it as a kind of Mad Magazine or Philip Roth anxiety, like a... Neuroticism.
John: A neuroticism, yeah.
John: That's right.
Merlin: But like somebody who writes short fiction for The New Yorker.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It's a very... Neuroticism to me is almost... In the same way that you very rarely call a man bitchy,
Merlin: I think that when you're trying to... I'm sorry.
Merlin: It's so goddamn early.
Merlin: I don't know what's wrong with my brain today.
Merlin: The anxiety...
Merlin: Okay, so here's the thing.
Merlin: The other night we were watching that movie Temple Grandin, about Temple Grandin, who's such an interesting person.
Merlin: Her TED Talk is really, really good.
Merlin: She's so fascinating.
Merlin: If you don't know who she is... She talks to horses.
Merlin: Yeah, she is a... Well, the nut graph here is that she is a woman...
Merlin: who grew up in a time where we didn't have, really haven't, well, we kind of had a name for what her deal was, but it was not widely understood and not widely well-diagnosed.
Merlin: But she's one of the first, I think, she's regarded as one of the first public figures
Merlin: Successful Public Figures to talk a lot about the experience of being autistic and, you know, growing up with autism and going through the systems of life with autism.
Merlin: And the movie is actually really good with Claire Danes.
Merlin: You know, what you get from her, she's not profoundly autistic, but she's pretty damn autistic.
Merlin: She thinks visually.
Merlin: She has trouble.
Merlin: She's word stuff, not great.
Merlin: She can do any kind of math, but algebra, like algebra is really hard for her.
Merlin: It's just the way her brain is wired.
Merlin: Subject of her TED talk is why we need people like her doing certain kinds of jobs.
Merlin: And it's really good and really inspiring.
Merlin: But, you know, so we're watching that and talking, and the family's just chatting, and I was like, you know, there's so many things today that we have some understanding of, that we have some name for, that just was not the case when I was a kid.
Merlin: Like, you know, it's really true.
Merlin: In my junior high and in my high school, there was always one double-sized room, and I think it was usually called special ed, or it was called occupational therapy, or it was called something.
Merlin: But to paraphrase the Simpsons, it was the Brown Reading Group.
Merlin: It was everybody who would be disruptive to have in class, but still was mainstreamed into the public school system.
Merlin: And so, like, you know, I'm going to guess in that group, things we have names for now, or, you know, I don't say labels, but things we can understand better than we did then is, I mean, there's kids in there with Down syndrome.
Merlin: There's kids in there with what I would guess is ADHD.
Merlin: There are kids in there with oppositional, like oppositional disorder, probably.
Merlin: Maybe some, you know, definitely probably some kids with dyslexia.
Merlin: And almost definitely some kids on the autism spectrum one way or another.
Merlin: And you know the word we used for that group of all of those different people.
Merlin: And it's an ugly R word that we used to use for all those people.
Merlin: So like whether you're like my father and you have bad eyesight and a little bit of dyslexia.
Merlin: Or whether you're somebody who is like, you know, Kim Peek level.
Merlin: Autistic person?
Merlin: You just go in this group that basically means other.
Merlin: Like on the form of that school, you are other.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes you certainly don't want people to live with a label.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You know, here's your sign.
Merlin: This is you.
Merlin: This is you.
Merlin: You are the autistic person.
Merlin: Please go with the autistic people.
Merlin: You don't want to do that.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: I think it can be very useful to have a name for that.
Merlin: This kid is not stupid.
Merlin: He just can't do letters.
Merlin: There's something to that.
Merlin: This kid, he doesn't like jumping around.
Merlin: He's unhappy.
Merlin: He's like an engine that won't stop running, and he's looking desperate with the amount of hyperactivity that he can't control.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And so just for any of those things, and I'm not saying this is a solved problem, but once you can do that, then you have options.
Merlin: And I feel like the same thing is true for us.
Merlin: So as people, as we walk around with these emotions that we experience,
Merlin: But we don't fully understand or have any kind of distance from.
Merlin: We don't have a box to put it in.
Merlin: And so when you're growing up, I think, so why am I saying all this?
Merlin: Because I think that relates somewhat to anxiety.
Merlin: Because anxiety in particular, now it's well known and well documented that, again, anxiety is associated with so many different kinds of disorders.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So, you know, so we've really kind of taken two big steps.
Merlin: One big step to say, wow, anxiety is a thing.
Merlin: There are people who have, you know, persistent thoughts.
Merlin: So, you know, anxiety can go with OCD.
Merlin: Anxiety can very much, believe it or not, spoiler alert, go with depression.
Merlin: Anxiety can go with so many things.
Merlin: It's like when you're watching MSNBC and every drug ad tells you you get headaches, nausea and diarrhea.
Merlin: It's like everything causes headaches.
Merlin: And anxiety is just one of those things where like, if you don't know what it is, you feel nuts.
Merlin: And if you do know what it is, at least now you have something like, I don't know if it's a foothold or a box, but it's better than not knowing.
Merlin: You walked around for years.
Merlin: I mean, did you know, I think you've kind of already said here, but you didn't realize, A, how angry you were, B, that it was most of the time, and C, that it was getting directed at other people?
Yeah.
John: My anger was not most of the time getting directed at other people.
Merlin: It was some of the time directed internally at yourself.
John: It was most of the time directed internally at myself.
John: It was only a period where I didn't know how to manage it.
John: It was just a period where I was interacting with a lot of people.
John: It started actually during the Western State Hurricanes year.
John: where it um maybe maybe started just a little before that you know i was working was working hard on uh you know i was trying to become less of an outsider and feel less like the world was um completely unaccessible to me the world that i wanted to live in a world that where i where i belonged
John: And in trying to find a place in the world that I belonged, I had to, you know, I started addressing all this stuff.
John: I was going to AA a lot and talking to people a lot about what was happening in me.
John: And, you know, I successfully started a journey where I did.
John: The end result was that I got involved.
John: more in the world or felt more belonging.
John: But it did require that I say like, well, wait, now I'm angry and not just depressed.
John: I'm not just, this isn't all my fault.
John: And, you know, and getting through that to the other side, which is there's a lot of stuff that's
John: nobody's fault, but also even when, you know, regardless of what makes you angry, anger is its own creative and destructive thing to bring and, um, and kind of figuring out it, but it's also, you know, and when I say constructive, like anger is a thing that you can be harnessed.
John: It can create, um,
John: it's not a thing to suppress because I'd been doing that.
John: Um, and that wasn't working.
John: It's not a thing that, that if you are, if you do have anger, if you, if it is destructive, if it is powerful in you and scary in you, you know, you don't just put it back in a box or put a cap on it.
John: Like you have to find a, find a path.
John: Um, but I didn't,
John: anxiety was a thing that I didn't like a lot of things that it's very hard.
John: It's just like, it's hard for people who have never experienced depression to know what other people are talking about.
John: You know, it's the inner voice, outer voice or the inner voice or lack of inner voice thing.
John: If you're on one side of it, you just can't,
John: It's possible, sort of like the inner voice thing, it's possible to live our entire lives and never even consider that a huge proportion of the people that you interact with every day are having an utterly different experience.
John: And an utterly different experience, so much so that all the literature and film and art that gets made...
John: where it is explicitly spoken in that stuff.
John: Like, well, my inner voice, like I was consulting with myself, all this stuff, like the whole idea of a narrator and, you know, really smart, like interesting, creative people can consume that and never actually, but, but lacking an inner voice themselves don't,
John: um, don't make the connection or don't understand what the art is about even.
John: Um, and yet they do.
John: Right.
John: I mean, are there, it's so interesting.
John: And so with anxiety, like I didn't, I heard people talk about it a lot and I didn't sort of in the same, like, uh, the same way that there are people that have not very much sympathy for depression, um,
John: And to say, like, well, the solution seems to be that you get up off your ass and go for a walk or whatever.
John: You know, like, go get some sun or get one of those lights.
John: Yeah, take a nap.
John: Meditate.
John: Take a nap.
John: Right.
John: Wrap a hot towel around your head.
John: Get some soup.
John: With anxiety, when people would describe anxiety, I kind of had a...
John: You know, I didn't know how to be sympathetic.
John: I was like, well, huh, that seems like something that you should just fucking man up or whatever.
Merlin: Have you tried not being anxious?
Right.
Merlin: Have you tried not procrastinating?
Merlin: Why do you procrastinate?
Merlin: Why don't you just stop procrastinating?
Merlin: That's a really good question.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Do you have a button that I could push?
Merlin: Maybe something to make it nice and easy for me?
John: What made Aloha so important last year was that there was no denying that I was having a new experience, a whole new emotional world.
John: And an unpleasant one where I, for the first time, felt something that could only be described as anxious and felt panic in a way that I had never felt.
Merlin: What would provoke it?
Merlin: Like in my case, I always have sort of just a baseline sort of buzzing, humming, persistent feeling that I'm searching, I'm kind of scanning the horizon for...
Merlin: threats, even when there's no reason to think that there's a threat there.
Merlin: And for me, and I think a lot of other people, it's important at this juncture to also say there's a difference between fear and anxiety.
Merlin: Fear, to me, is when you are, fear is what you experience or should experience when there is a threat or an imminent threat that is a, you know,
Merlin: I mean, it doesn't just have to be a lion running at you or a tiger running at you.
Merlin: It could just be the sound or seeing them that triggers that.
Merlin: Even if you're not afraid of snakes, it's going to be real startling if you step on a snake while you're out on a hike.
Merlin: Anxiety, to contrast, is not the same as fear.
Merlin: Because anxiety...
Merlin: is in search of what to be fearful of, even in the absence of evidence that there's anything to fear.
Merlin: And I think the thing that makes anxiety, and this sounds like real kid stuff, if you're familiar with this, but to just explain this to neurotypical people, the anxiety part is the, it's just, to me, it's just...
Merlin: is almost always there and almost always affecting something about how I'm thinking and doing.
Merlin: And it's that persistence.
Merlin: Everybody gets scared sometimes.
Merlin: Everybody poops, everybody gets scared.
Merlin: But what everybody doesn't necessarily have is this thrumming, like this constant buzz of like, oh, there's so many things going on and it's going to get me and this will be my undoing.
John: i know everybody gets those moments but it's like having that all the time it's just not fun and it affects everything yeah for me um it's connected to um denial of breath um you know i'm claustrophobic or whatever at some point along the way um
John: The first time I think I ever had a panic attack, it was on an airplane, which is, I think, pretty normal for other people, for people.
Merlin: It's a far too full of long pics.
John: It really is.
John: But I grew up on airplanes, so it was never a place that I ever felt uncomfortable.
John: And one time I got put in the back row on one of those Lufthansa, like, super...
John: super cow jets where it's like three row three oh it's like it's like it's like sitting in the back seat where like you've got a frame now you can see like that you really are in a tube well that and also there are 600 people and there's not a single empty seat and I'm in the very back and the and the girl next to me is coming down off of meth and I'm at the start of an 11 hour flight over an ocean
John: And we were still on the ground.
John: And it was the first time I'd ever had this experience, but I was on the, you know, I sat down and I was sitting and waiting through the whole, like, okay, we're taxing out.
John: We're okay.
John: We're, we're held up at the end of the runway.
John: It'll be just another minute and all this stuff.
John: And I suddenly had this feeling of like, I can't be on this fucking thing.
John: What the hell?
John: This is completely inhumane.
John: Like I can't, I can't be in here for 11 hours.
John: No way.
Yeah.
John: And we haven't even taken off yet.
Merlin: We're not off the ground.
Merlin: We haven't started moving.
Merlin: Are we ever going to move?
Merlin: Your mind just starts racing.
Merlin: And again, it's difficult to explain, I think, to somebody.
Merlin: Because everybody gets annoyed.
Merlin: Everybody gets inconvenienced.
Merlin: We all know all those experiences.
Merlin: But, you know, it's...
Merlin: You know, some people have phobias.
Merlin: Like, you know, there are people who have phobias of, like I say, snakes or spiders or, you know, just even being around tall buildings.
Merlin: And it's so, I'm really sympathetic to that because I understand what it's like to be scared of something that isn't there or isn't there yet or could happen.
Merlin: And once you get thinking about that, it's hard to stop thinking about that.
Merlin: And you get like a dog with a bone.
Merlin: And so like you could have dozens of really just fine flights where everything goes pretty well.
Merlin: But then when you start thinking, that's when the trouble starts.
Merlin: Because you're thinking about like, holy shit, how does this fucking thing work?
Merlin: How are we even like, I don't even, I don't like to think about this.
Merlin: We've all been on those flights where you get those dips and you feel like you're falling and free fall even for like a few seconds.
Merlin: And you're like, holy shit, how does this thing stay in the air?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Who are these people?
Merlin: What are they doing?
Merlin: When you start thinking about it, it can be very overwhelming, all the different angles.
Merlin: And then for me anyway, that turns into a feeding frenzy where without my consent, my brain goes crazy trying to figure out the worst things that could happen.
Merlin: even if they're very unlikely.
Merlin: And that causes, what was the wonderful word I learned for this?
Merlin: Like a worry chain.
Merlin: I think of it almost like you start out in the middle of the spider web and it just keeps getting bigger.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: Like your brain just goes, your brain will start making, especially a creative person's mind, you will make the craziest non-existent connections about something that has not happened.
Merlin: And you, for me anyway, I could just, I could do that all day.
Merlin: And if it starts down a path and now I'm thinking, Oh my God, what if I have to pee or what do I, what if I have to poop or what if I have to throw up or what if I forgot something?
Merlin: And then those worries just chain for me so hard.
Merlin: Do you, do you get things like that?
Merlin: Or do you, do you like you, you focus on one primary anxiety?
John: Yeah.
John: Um, I, uh,
John: I never had that experience, and then I started, and it was unpleasant.
John: And last year, I just tried to – I couldn't live like it.
John: I couldn't live like that, and I didn't know what could be done about it.
John: I still feel like it's – having had it,
John: i still feel like it's present all the time like a um it's really unlike anything else i've experienced uh but but that i was inoculated in it but not inoculated uh not in the sense that now i'm free of it but sort of like lyme disease like i always carry the antibodies from here on out
John: And it's accessible to me.
John: If I sat here and got thinking, I could pursue it until I was in it.
John: But I can also, I mean, since last year and since I tried to, since I went through that process that I described as aloha or seeking it, I
John: Things improved in my life.
John: My business stuff improved.
John: My health improved.
John: And I've been able, at least in the last nine months, to somewhat keep it at bay.
John: To keep it at bay.
John: But never to be free of it.
John: And I can't imagine being free of it, having had it.
John: But one of the things that really, really is right on the razor's edge of it is snorkeling.
John: And last year, over the last three... You know, I love snorkeling.
John: It's super fun.
John: It's super... You get to fly.
John: You get to see fun things.
John: It's a way to be in the ocean.
John: But I'm not a super strong swimmer and...
John: You know, the ocean has always been pretty scary to me.
John: I don't like to go too far out.
John: I don't feel... It's not an environment where I feel super comfortable.
John: And when you're in Hawaii, of course, you see young people who grew up in the ocean.
John: And, yeah, it's just a very different experience.
John: But at the same time, I love the ocean.
John: I've always been really attracted to it.
John: I like to live close to it.
John: I like to go in it when I can.
John: But I like to stay in water that's about neck high.
John: I like to go out and find my place and stand there.
John: And I'll stand there for hours submerged.
John: But it's just a set of skills I don't have.
John: I can't swim all afternoon.
John: And so snorkeling puts me in this environment where all of a sudden I do have a lot more control.
John: I am able to survive.
Merlin: Snorkeling, just to be clear here, I get confused about this.
Merlin: I'm very uncoordinated in certain ways.
Merlin: It took me a very long time to learn how to swim in that way where you... It takes a lot of coordination to get started with that.
Merlin: I will keep swimming in every N strokes.
Merlin: I will turn my head exactly 90 degrees, take a breath...
Merlin: And you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's that kind of coordination.
Merlin: And I had the same problem with snorkeling.
Merlin: With snorkeling, you plug up your nose, right?
Merlin: And what are snorkeling?
Merlin: You've got the tube, the tube's above the water, and you're mostly, you're breathing in and out through the snorkel.
Merlin: Is that correct?
John: Yeah, you have a mask where you can see.
John: So you're wearing eye mask.
John: And you hope that you get a seal on the eye mask so the eye mask doesn't fill up with water.
John: And so that's a source of potential disaster, right?
John: If your eye mask is leaking, your eye mask can also fog.
John: So that's a potential problem.
John: And then you're breathing through a tube and the tube is high enough that it's out of the water the vast majority of the time, but not all the time.
Merlin: So you might go swimming down 10 feet or whatever.
John: You can hold your breath and swim down, but also you can just be minding your own business and a wave washes over you.
John: And that's when all of a sudden you can't breathe and it's a surprise.
John: This sounds like a four-quadrant bad idea for you.
John: Well, not a bad idea because the benefits are so extraordinary.
John: I mean, all of a sudden, you're in the ocean.
John: In my case...
John: In my case, I don't feel like I'm very buoyant.
John: Boy, I envy that.
Merlin: I envy buoyancy.
Merlin: My late mother-in-law, she could float anywhere forever.
Merlin: Little skinny, little skinny, like five foot two, smoking, drinking lady, and she just gets in the water and she doesn't need anything.
Merlin: She just floats.
Merlin: I don't understand buoyancy, and I don't know why I don't have it.
Merlin: Maybe it's sin.
John: I wish that I could, but when I have a snorkel on, I can, because my lack of buoyancy is a 15% lack, and people that can float with their head above water seem like that is the...
Merlin: 10% that I don't have because I float with my eyes above water, but my nose and my... Yeah, but like, I don't know, I don't understand how some people like Polly were able, are able to like be just flat as a board.
Merlin: What do they call it?
Merlin: Planking?
Merlin: Like...
Merlin: she's just flat on the me i'm i first of all i'm trying to hold off the impulse to just leave uh and if if i can get over the impulse to just leave then i'm thinking a lot about treading water i'm pretty good at treading water but if i try to float i'm at like a 45 degree angle i look like i look like something from drafting class i don't i don't know my feet just go down anyways so you're snorkeling sorry i took you off your topic
John: The nice thing about snorkeling is that I do float.
John: I just float, but I'm breathing through it too.
Merlin: They told us in swim class that one way to help floating is to take in a large breath.
Merlin: I don't know if this is true, supposedly.
Merlin: Supposedly, if you take in a large breath, that's going to fill up your lungs, and like a balloon or a child's water wings, you will gain extra buoyancy.
Merlin: I don't know if that's true, but that's what I heard.
John: But breathing through a tube, you're not – you're breathing in and out.
John: You're breathing hopefully at a natural rate.
John: The problem is that you're – that for me at least, the ever-present threat of any one of those systems – and they're not very elaborate systems.
John: It's just a goggle.
John: But the threat of those basically three systems –
John: Is the goggle fogged?
John: Is the goggle letting in water?
John: And is the tube allowing you to breathe?
John: It's a threat that, at least to me, is an immediate threat of drowning.
John: Which is a terrible feeling.
John: Because if my goggle even fogs and I stop...
John: and lift my head above the water to try and unfog the goggle, then all of a sudden I'm not floating, then I'm thrashing, and then I'm sinking.
John: And last year, because I had had panic attacks and I was already, so I had become aware of it.
John: I'd become conscious of the fact that panic was...
John: Not just a thing that happened anymore connected directly to drowning.
John: It now was a feeling I was drowning that I could get if I was just sitting alone in my bedroom.
John: And then to put myself in a posture where I was actually going to take that new feeling of drowning on a bus and
John: and actually put myself back in an environment where drowning was real.
John: I was just, it was a transformative confrontation between me and fear.
John: And so I insisted that I go down every day.
John: and get in the water and snorkel.
John: Because I didn't want to be mastered by this, whatever it was.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: So you decided to face it head on, walk right into it.
John: Because I wanted to snorkel.
John: I wanted to see the turtles.
John: I wanted to have this be a positive and not... I did not want to come to Hawaii...
John: and have snorkeling be a thing that was just over the horizon as a, as a thing that was taunting me, a thing, you know, like a, like a demon.
John: I didn't want Hawaii to have a, to have that demon in particular.
John: Um, that when I thought of Hawaii, I thought of that demon when I, when, when I was here, it was omnipresent, um,
John: And there's a new kind of snorkel mask.
John: Hmm.
John: Which is a full face mask.
John: What?
John: Hooks under your chin.
John: You look like you're an alien?
John: You look like you, yeah.
Merlin: Like an alien mask.
John: From the movie Alien.
Merlin: Sorry, yeah.
Merlin: Kind of like when they're going to go check out the planet or whatever, right?
Merlin: And they land, and they discover some things inside.
Merlin: John Hurt has a situation, and they break his pretty scuba mask.
Merlin: I would love that.
John: It's very similar, and you have an incredible unobstructed view, but also what you get is the ability to breathe through your nose, right?
John: Because you're inside of a whole face.
John: I'm looking at a full face snorkel mask.
John: You can breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
John: Oh, my God.
John: You can breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose.
John: And for whatever, however...
John: However this technology works, at least in my experience, they never fog.
John: I've never had one fog.
John: Huh.
John: So all of a sudden these – so two factors have changed.
John: The fogging is gone and also now I can breathe freely.
John: Rather than have my nose plugged, rather than breathing through a tube, I can just breathe.
Merlin: This seems like a genuinely innovative idea.
John: It is.
John: Within snorkeling communities, at least, it is regarded as... In the scene.
John: In the scene.
John: It is regarded as some chicken shit thing for moms.
John: I hate to fall out with them.
John: Well, you know, because they're out there and snorkelers.
John: Locals only.
John: That's right.
John: And anybody that's like into snorkeling, a big part of it for them seems to be that they can dive down 20 feet.
John: They can hold their breath and dive down 20 feet, I guess, to look at a sea urchin more closely.
John: For me, the idea of holding my breath and diving down 20 feet is,
John: I'm just like, I can see everything pretty good from up here, and what I can't see from up here doesn't want to be seen.
John: I'm good.
John: I'm good.
John: So I embraced this face mask.
Merlin: Now, it's not without its, you know, it can also leak.
Merlin: Well, I haven't looked yet, but when I Googled for full-face snorkel mask, full-face snorkel mask dangers came up.
Merlin: That might be FUD from the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
Merlin: That might be FUD from the hardcore snorkel community.
John: The lifestyle snorkelers.
John: I'm not interested in what's wrong with snorkeling or what's wrong with those face masks.
John: I have a pretty good sense of what's right and wrong about them for me.
Merlin: They're kind of sexy in an upsetting way.
Merlin: One of the things I have to do is shave my beard.
Merlin: Oh, that's why Hitler cut off his mustache.
Merlin: That's why Hitler got that particular mustache.
Merlin: He used to have a big dignified mustache, but he cut it off so that he could wear a gas mask.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Oh, according to a documentary I saw.
Merlin: I mean, that and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee.
John: Well, it's very similar.
John: Same deal.
John: I don't like to shave my beard, but I have to, if I'm going to use this mask, and I want to use this mask.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's not, it does not, its relationship to panic isn't, it's not as clear as it might seem.
John: Like the full face mask is just,
John: what would I say, 10 or 15% better.
John: It's not like all of a sudden there's no panic involved.
John: It's not that at all.
John: It's just that...
John: It's slightly easier for me to breathe.
John: And that is... Does it help take the edge off, sort of?
John: It makes a huge difference.
John: But still, every day I had to go down and walk into that water.
John: And I was snorkeling alone, which who knows whether that's... But I'm sure there are people that think that that's a bad plan.
John: Because you're supposed to have a buddy.
John: I think so.
John: But for me, having a buddy is... It kind of scotches the whole effort.
John: No, it doubles my stress.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: I feel responsible for the other person's safety.
John: And part of that is that I recognize I can't save them.
John: Like I'm barely hanging on.
John: And if they had a problem.
Yeah.
John: And so, you know, and that begins a cycle of like of thinking where it's like this person, you know, I just wish that they would go away.
John: They if they went away, then they would probably be fine.
John: And if they were fine somewhere else, then I would be fine where I am.
John: Right.
John: It's like the like there's I do not feel any companionship with someone else snorkeling.
John: You know, I'm I'm just trying to look at the fishes.
John: Mm hmm.
John: But by the end of last year.
John: I'd gotten to a place where I went down every day.
John: I went in the water and I snorkeled and I watched the turtles and I realized the turtles didn't have anxiety probably.
John: The turtles were just, you know, and I had all these different sights.
John: Turtles were just turtling.
John: They were just turtling around.
John: And the fish were fishing.
John: Fish are fishing.
John: So this year I've been doing it.
John: I've been going down every day.
John: I've been trying to get out there and snorkel around and
John: I don't feel as proximate to panic this year.
John: It feels like feels like I have it at one remove.
John: Um, and, but of course, you know, as soon as I'm out in the water, um,
John: I just feel that sense of danger all around me.
Merlin: Does it lessen over time?
Merlin: Dumb question maybe, but does having survived that so many days help at all?
Merlin: It helps.
John: It helps, but yesterday I was out snorkeling and the wind picked up and I was getting buffeted by waves and
John: You know, I popped my head up and I was way, way out along a reef.
John: And, you know, it's the way, way outness.
John: All these things add to it, right?
John: When my face is down and I'm looking at this wonderful undersea environment and I realize that the sea is 30 feet deep or 40 feet deep or 50 feet deep, for me, the difference between that and 15 feet is
John: That doesn't inspire very much fear because I can just as easily drown in 15 feet as I can in 50.
Merlin: It only takes an inch and a half of water.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Don't put your baby in a bucket.
Merlin: That's not just day one shit.
Merlin: Don't put the baby in a bucket.
John: Day one.
John: Don't put the baby in the bucket.
John: But to pop my head up and realize that I'm a mile from the shore, whatever, three quarters of a mile from the shore, that's where I get...
John: freaked out.
John: And one time years ago, years ago, I was in Greece and I was swimming and there was a sort of, you know, a big rock outcropping.
John: I think I've told you this story.
John: And I went swimming and I said, Oh, I know there's a beach on the other side and I'm just going to swim around this big rock to the beach on the other side.
John: And I was young enough, 25 or whatever that I felt like, Oh, I'm bold and strong.
John: And what can, what can hurt me?
John: And I got out on the other side of this rock and it was a lot further than I thought.
John: And the rock had a sheer side.
John: So there wasn't any place for me to rest.
John: I couldn't grab on to the rock.
John: And waves were pummeling the rock.
John: So I had to stay away.
John: Because otherwise, if I got swept against the rock, I would have gotten beat to shit.
John: And so I had to stay away from this rock.
John: And all of a sudden, I'm out in the sea, basically swimming with no end in sight.
John: I can't see the other beach.
John: It's all the way around this rock.
John: And it's one of those situations, sort of a false horizon thing, where I would come around a corner and think, the beach is going to be there.
John: And then it was just more rock.
John: And this is a big, big, big rock, you know.
John: And, uh, so anyway, yesterday I was getting buffeted and all of a sudden I'm in this, I'm in this situation where I'm getting, you know, I'm going up and down in troughs of waves and, uh,
John: And I definitely turned around and was like, you need to just breathe and we need to just methodically start paddling for shore.
John: And you know, and each time I lifted up my head, it felt like I was making no progress and that was, and I would put my face down and go,
John: Only lift your head to see that you're headed in the right direction.
John: Otherwise, you just need to breathe and just methodically paddle for shore.
John: And in doing that, yeah, in doing it, I'm...
John: I never panicked, but panic was my... It's always an option.
John: It was my little helpful friend, right?
John: That was just like right there swimming alongside me going... Hey, buddy.
Merlin: Hey, buddy.
Merlin: And basically saying like, all it's going to take is one more thing to go wrong.
Merlin: You're like right on the edge of so many of the systems, including your own body's ability.
Merlin: I mean, my first thought would be like, I'm going to get too tired and I will die here.
Merlin: I will sink.
Merlin: I will sink between my cell and Charybdis.
Merlin: I will drop down.
Merlin: And now I live with the turtles forever.
John: Well, and the voice that would come in is like, okay, stop paddling altogether and realize that you can just float here and breathe.
John: So if you stopped paddling for whatever reason, you could still breathe.
John: And, you know, but then of course the voice is like, well, what if you can't, you know, what if the thing falls?
John: What if a fucking, what if a sea lion grabs your mask, you know?
John: But anyway, you know, every day there is, you know, I try to put myself just out to where the challenge is real and,
John: And yet, you know, not exceed.
John: And of course, it's, you know, of course, it's the same problem I have anymore with anything I do, which is I keep thinking that my borders are.
Merlin: somewhere back where i was where they were when i was 25 right like when i get on like your your abilities and like what you know what you could yeah i mean like i as i as i lose more and more bodily integrity i realize things like uh i need to use things like bags when i carry things because i need my arms for things like railings and steadying myself i i don't just i don't just jump up and down things anymore because like i don't i don't want to know where that border is
Merlin: I mean, I guess it would be advisable for me to learn, but my border is, nope, nope, you don't want to do that.
Merlin: Don't be cute about this.
Merlin: You're going to have to put this on a form in an emergency room, and that's no good.
John: You know, the challenge for me is that I can still ski as fast as I could when I was 25.
Merlin: With your knees?
John: Yeah, I'm a good skier.
John: The question is, can you...
John: survive a wreck at that speed yeah you're gonna get sunny bono at 25 or at 19 i could wreck i could i could wreck at 45 miles an hour and it would be a it would be a yard sale i would tumble end over end i would be i would be fucking whacked
John: Yeah, but I would pick myself up.
John: I mean, I broke a ski one time in a wreck.
Merlin: These kids on their skateboards going down, you know, I live on that hill.
Merlin: And he goes, and they'll do this thing where they're kind of like tacking to slow down.
Merlin: And I'm like, you're going to, I mean, like, of course, I'm 53.
Merlin: And I'm just like, you are going to go ass over tea kettle.
Merlin: And your mom's going to have to put so much water.
Merlin: of that, uh, what, McCure Chrome or whatever.
Merlin: That's my thought is like, you're going to be so, what is it called?
Merlin: Road rash.
Merlin: You're going to be shredded if you don't get a concussion.
Merlin: If I'm just saying, I, I, man, no, thank you.
Merlin: I'm, uh, I'm about tough enough to write a segue and that's it.
John: But the thing about, um, you know, the thing about that crash is,
John: is you i mean you don't you don't go into anything assuming you're gonna crash and the experience of skiing is still great and the thing is i don't look so fun it looks so fun it would be so fun to be good at that it's like watch people play piano you're like oh fuck man i want to be like that i don't i don't
John: I don't even have the ability, I don't think, to go to ski at a speed that is appropriate.
John: And so whenever I'm up there, I find myself each time like, oh, shit.
John: Oh, shit.
John: Like, I'm not even sure I have the strength to stop myself.
John: And I'm not presently in danger, but I need to figure, I need to gradually check my speed and
John: Because, you know, in the old days, I would just set myself sideways to the hill and create a rooster tail of snow three stories tall.
John: And, you know, I could stop from whatever, you know, unless I crashed.
John: But at, you know, at 51, I would turn myself sideways like that and I would chatter like a tray of ice cubes going down a slide.
Yeah.
John: And so so but but so that's true of all my limits.
John: I noticed that that's true.
John: That's true of my driving.
John: That's true of my just my experience of the world.
John: Like I don't jump off of retaining walls anymore because because I've had a bad knee for a long time.
John: But I still go into situations where it's like, well, if these people want to fight, I'll fight them.
John: And that's not.
Merlin: a good way to go through a dark you know to like walk through an alley or whatever that's not a good mentality well it's like it's like people who run run red lights or stop signs where it's like you know or bikes you know blazing through stop signs it's like you're gonna be fine as long as everybody else is is good with it but like if you do that long enough some's gonna you're doing a fucked up thing and someday that's gonna hurt hurt you and probably others
John: So I don't want to push my – I mean I've caught myself a couple of times realizing like, oh, wait a minute.
John: This – I have crossed over into what I think you could describe as semi-advanced snorkeling.
Hmm.
John: And, you know, like advanced snorkeling is something else.
Merlin: Would you say you're at least an intermediate?
Merlin: Would you say you're an intermediate snorkeler?
John: Well, that's the danger.
John: Because for me to say I'm an intermediate snorkeler is to immediately be wrong.
John: Right?
John: Like, no, I am a beginning snorkeler.
John: I am always going to be a beginning snorkeler.
John: Do not ever get confidence in
John: And that's not to say, like, don't keep pushing my, you know, my ability.
John: But don't ever look at a situation and go, this feels sketchy.
John: But, you know, I am an intermediate snorkeler.
Merlin: Cowabunga!
John: Every situation, if I look at it and go, this seems sketchy, I need to turn around.
John: You know, like, I need to not...
John: I need to not die in the process of trying to confront my anxieties about dying.
John: And, you know, this year it's been harder...
John: because of something really small, which is just, it's been a lot harder for me to unplug from my dumb phone.
John: Oh, of course.
John: Which is just, you know, it just intrudes, and I recognize it as intruding on my life normally, but it just, it stands in such bold contrast to what I try to do in Hawaii, which is aloha.
John: There's just nothing about a phone that is Aloha.
Merlin: And so, you know, so I'm reaching, you know, couldn't your phone be a little bit like the cigarette on top of the door?
Merlin: We're like, I mean, like where you, it isn't that you're going to like try and, but yeah, classic John Roderick, John Roderick classic would be somebody who says, well, you know, part of this is to test myself or part of this is to like, see, like I can have the cigarette here and not smoke it.
John: Well, the thing about that is that the cigarette above the door after you've quit smoking is very different from the cigarette above the door while you're still a smoker.
John: What the cigarette above the door when you're still a smoker is, is a cigarette that is there for you above the door when you've run out of cigarettes.
John: And so I have to, you know, I have to,
John: And the thing is, it's just like carbs or anything else.
John: You know, you think like, I feel so amazing without carbs, I'm never going to eat them again.
John: And so for that reason alone, I can have a big plate of spaghetti on New Year's Eve because it's New Year's Eve.
John: Oh, yeah, it's a treat.
John: I owe it to myself.
John: Right.
John: And that's how I quit smoking and started smoking again nine times before I finally quit.
John: and the thing that finally when i finally quit it was like when i finally quit drugs there's no one cigarette on new year's eve yeah yeah yeah yeah and i don't know how to do i don't know how to do that with the with the internet and what the other part is and i realize this sounds like an excuse like i i give people stick when they say things like oh i have to use facebook for my work or it's the only way to get to my homeowners association i got to use facebook facebook facebook
Merlin: And I was like, what is it going to fucking... Everybody's got... My family would kill me if I got off Facebook.
Merlin: I don't mean to sound as judgy as I am.
Merlin: I wish I could sound less judgy even though I am extremely judgy.
Merlin: But you've got to be fucking kidding me.
Merlin: What are you doing on there...
Merlin: But everybody's got their reasons.
Merlin: And so in that same spirit, I want to push back at this feeling that I have, but it is a real feeling.
Merlin: And as we know, feelings are real.
Merlin: And that feeling is there's still so much shit you have to do on a device in life.
Merlin: On the one hand, it's pretty cool that so much of life has moved into our pocket computer.
Merlin: On the other hand...
Merlin: And it's, I've, believe me, I've gone through, I'm not saying I'm a tortured individual, but I have, for a long time, I would do stuff like, say, I'm not going to look at my phone on Sunday until like noon or one.
Merlin: And like, so like, but bad on me, like I need that sometimes to, like Siri ain't there yet.
Merlin: The lady in the Amazon tube ain't totally there yet.
Merlin: It's close, but there's still stuff you're going to need.
Merlin: And in my case, it's also my ubiquitous capture device.
Merlin: It's where I write down stuff that I want to do something about later.
Merlin: And I know that sounds like an excuse, and I will cop to the fact that that might be an excuse.
Merlin: But that's the other thing.
Merlin: It's difficult to just go into airplane mode or shut the thing all the way off and then confidently know I will not need to touch this for eight hours.
Merlin: That can be difficult.
Merlin: That's part of what leads us into disappearing into the phone is I just need to go look at this one thing.
Merlin: What time does this place open?
John: Yeah, and that's the... I mean, I was saying the other day, why isn't there a device that just...
John: accesses Google and maps.
John: Um, it's just a device that only accesses those two things.
John: And I think that with that device, like even one that doesn't do texting and emails, um,
Merlin: I think over time, people have tried making these kind of simplified phones.
Merlin: It's almost like the way... It's like an old lady phone that has really big buttons and doesn't text.
Merlin: Well, exactly.
Merlin: I don't want to sound disparaging or ageist, but yes, it's very similar to the giant remote control, the hilariously large remote control you can buy at Walgreens.
Merlin: Where you'll see like lots of people who buy remotes for their elderly relatives will like it's festooned with tape and labels like never push this.
Merlin: This is volume.
Merlin: I think people have tried that.
Merlin: But I mean, you know, for me, like there are things where there's no excuse.
Merlin: Like I should be able to just shut my lights off with a switch like everybody else.
Merlin: But I do prefer to do things.
Merlin: um with my smart home automation but no even on vacation or even on just a regular old trip there's all this stuff anyway i took you off your thing that's so what you're saying now is that is your um vette noir now is the omnipresence of the phone uh the omnipresence of the phone is just uh it's just a
John: a concentrating lens that shows me that I'm not in charge of myself.
John: You know, I'm not in control of myself because it feels like I'm not choosing this, even though I am like I woke up this morning and said, because the phone for me is not, it's not all about connectivity.
John: It's about, um,
John: I think I told you way, way back in the old days, a long time before you and I even met, when I first discovered Minesweeper on the old IBMs.
John: And any time the phone rang, it was like lighting a cigarette when the phone rang, my dad's old thing.
John: If I had a long phone conversation to have with somebody, a long interview or a conversation I knew was going to go a long time,
John: I would go sit at Minesweeper and with the phone cradled between my shoulder and my ear, would sit and play Minesweeper while I talked.
John: And it felt like a thing that was occupying a certain part of my mind.
Mm-hmm.
John: So that I could talk.
Merlin: This is huge for people with ADHD.
Merlin: Whether that's things you're fiddling with on your desk, but sometimes in order to focus, you need something that will occupy some monkey part of your brain.
Merlin: And you can actually function better in some cases with the proper kind of pseudo-distraction.
Merlin: that I feel like.
Merlin: I mean, again, that could be an excuse, but I really believe that's true.
Merlin: Some people like, you know, listen to certain kinds of music when they're writing or something like that.
Merlin: Same idea.
Merlin: It's like, I need this one part of my brain to get a babysitter for a while so that I can go out and have an adult evening with my brain.
John: One of the things I do is play...
John: These mindless little stacking games, you know, solitaire or the one with the gems that explode or the or threes, you know, these things that are just they're just mindless.
John: But like if I have to be somewhere at 2 p.m.
John: and it's one o'clock.
John: And my conscious brain says it takes 45 minutes to get there.
Merlin: This goes back to the very first episode of this show about how the roads do not accommodate you.
Merlin: The drivers are in your way.
Merlin: They are.
Merlin: And it's because you didn't leave early enough.
John: But also, you know, there's 15 minutes to find parking and then you have to walk from parking to where you're going.
Merlin: Welcome to my life and brain is driving everybody around me crazy with all of the project management of why we need to do things earlier and faster than anybody thinks.
Merlin: And it drives everybody around me crazy.
John: But what I do in that moment is open threes.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I don't know why.
John: It does not feel like I'm in control.
Merlin: So you've accepted that you will be late.
John: Well, no.
John: I think I'll just play a game of threes and then I'll go.
John: And then I play a second game of threes.
Merlin: Why would you think that?
John: When I woke up this morning, it was Monday morning at 7.30.
John: And I knew I was going to talk to you at 8.00.
John: And rather than get out of bed and make a pot of coffee, the first thing I did, my eyes still straining to see, you know, still like, I opened up my phone and started playing threes.
John: And it's a thing.
John: I don't know what it's doing.
John: It feels like a thing that I need to do.
John: In order to... It is like a cigarette in that sense.
John: Make it, yeah.
John: And I don't know why.
John: And so many times I show up to a thing 15 minutes late and I played threes back at home for precisely the 15 minutes that I would have needed to be here on time.
John: Right.
John: And I didn't play threes for any other reason.
John: It's not like I'd already been playing it for an hour.
John: Like I turn it on and do it to do something to my brain, but not something that it feels... Not wholesome.
John: It's not wholesome.
John: And what could be unwholesome about something so dumb as threes or solitaire?
John: It's not perverse.
John: It's not...
Merlin: Well, you know, like people say when we talk about things along the lines of the president, but it goes for lots of things.
Merlin: For example, it's not illegal for anybody to own a shredder and shred stuff.
Merlin: It is illegal to use that to shred stuff that could be used as evidence.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: in a prosecution of you so it's you know it's it's a little bit evasive to say well oh yeah you know um and and i don't think you can say that everybody who owns a shredder is is a criminal but like it's what what is this in service of like when i do this thing why why am i doing this and that's why i love that word wholesome it's so useful to me like the the unwholesomeness of that is that
Merlin: insert almost anything else.
Merlin: Like if you ate a piece of bologna every time you picked up your phone, if you, I mean, if you jerked it so right every time you turn on, no matter what it is, it's that you are not, you are not driving that bus anymore.
Merlin: When now the phone is driving the bus, the bus belongs to the phone now.
John: Yeah.
John: And that, that, um, is an expression of self,
John: Something.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: I haven't given a name and I am not in charge of and it causes me real grief.
John: And it's grief I would like to not have in my life.
John: And so, you know, all of that is ongoing.
John: And when I sit here and think Aloha is what I'm after.
John: And I go, but before I get to Aloha, why don't I just play this video game for an hour?
John: And there are people waiting on me.
John: There are beaches to explore.
John: There's, you know, I'm here for a reason.
John: Right.
John: I didn't come to Hawaii to do this.
John: And while I'm at it, I would rather not do this at home either.
Merlin: Part of it is it's, I don't want to say exactly mindless, but it does feel driverless.
Merlin: It's a little bit mindless.
Merlin: So here's one for me.
Merlin: I'm a big fan of a service and an app called Instapaper.
Merlin: It was originally made by our friend Marco Armit.
Merlin: And that is the way that I choose to bookmark something and send.
Merlin: So I'm looking.
Merlin: I'm reading something on The New York Times.
Merlin: I don't have time to read it now.
Merlin: I want to read it later.
Merlin: I hit a little bookmarklet, and it sends it to Instapaper.
Merlin: And then I usually don't read it.
Merlin: But –
Merlin: If I do read it, I'll go in sometimes and I'll be like, I'm getting ready to take my nap I like to take and I'm laying on the office couch here and I'll go through Instapaper and I'll start reading something.
Merlin: But you tagged a long time ago.
Merlin: Well, or that I tagged like 20 minutes ago even.
Merlin: And can you guess what happens?
Merlin: I start reading it and I think, oh, I don't have time to read this now.
Merlin: I'll read it later.
Merlin: And I go to send it to Instapaper, even though I am currently reading it in Instapaper.
Merlin: If that does not tell you everything you need to know about me, I don't know what does.
Merlin: Yeah, that's good.
Merlin: That's really fucking stupid.
Merlin: I mean, it's one thing to touch your Mac screen because you're so used to iOS devices.
Merlin: I think that can... Don't touch your monitor, at least Mark's.
Merlin: But still, that you go, oh, that's just habituation.
Merlin: In the horrible days where I had to use a PC, when I first met you, remember I used to have a PC on that big piece of plywood?
Merlin: I sure do.
Merlin: And when I was doing ColdFusion on that, and that fucked my shit up because I had been using a Mac for years.
Merlin: You were mining bitcoins.
Merlin: I was mining bitcoins with ColdFusion.
Merlin: It was Bitcoin.cryptocurrency.cfm.
Merlin: But what happened was, though, I had never used anything but a Mac from 1987 to 2000.
Merlin: That would be around 2001 or 2002, at least.
Merlin: And then by spending a third of my time or so on the PC, I was completely fucking up on the Mac,
Merlin: and the pc because like my hands didn't know what to do and i i have to like sort of like context shift and remember oh the meta key is this on a pc oh yeah but that but it's not so what i'm trying to say is it's not weird to me that i sucked at using a pc because i was new to a pc what was crazy to me was even as i continued to suck on a pc i got less good at using a mac you know i was chasing two rabbits
Merlin: Chasing two rabbits.
Merlin: You know that phrase?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, it's a good one.
Merlin: Makes sense to me, though.
Merlin: People say variously that it's Chinese-Russian.
Merlin: I think it's originally French.
Merlin: If you chase two rabbits, you'll lose them both.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Think about that, John.
Merlin: Isn't that pretty good?
Merlin: I'm thinking about it right now.
Merlin: It happened to me yesterday.
Merlin: It happened to me yesterday again with the carrying and the age.
Merlin: And I tried to do the thing.
Merlin: This is a very reconcilable differences topic.
Merlin: Forgive me.
Merlin: I tried to do the thing where I moved through what I call the kill zone, which is that very narrow area.
Merlin: You know, when you come in our front door and you go up the steps and it's like you're in this, you're like, you're like in a temple grand and slaughterhouse.
Merlin: Like, it's real narrow.
Merlin: I'm not feeling comfortable.
Merlin: I'm a sad cow.
Merlin: So I got to get the door open.
Merlin: Remember, the door wants to kill you.
Merlin: The door's trying to close all the time.
Merlin: I'm carrying the most precarious collection of things, right?
Merlin: You know, it's so amazing to watch somebody juggle and they'll do like a bowling ball and a chainsaw.
Merlin: Craziest part of that is the difference in weight.
Merlin: So I'm carrying a heavy box, two light envelopes, a couple things of seltzer, and then I got some kind of precarious other handheld things on top trying to get through the door, get through the kill zone,
Merlin: Even at John, even as I'm opening the door and walking in, I'm going, I say to myself, I'm going to fuck this up.
Merlin: And you know what I got?
Merlin: Yard sale.
Merlin: Yard sale.
Merlin: Stuff rolling down the steps.
Merlin: Right down the steps.
Merlin: Total yard sale.
Merlin: Cause I chased five rabbits.
Merlin: Fucking dumb ass.
John: Yeah.
John: That's what I'm trying to avoid at every turn.
John: But, uh, but, and, and, you know, and I think Aloha remains the secret.
John: It did me such a job last year.
John: You know what Aloha saved me?
John: What?
John: Aloha saved me on the Joko Cruise.
John: Oh, really?
Merlin: The Joko Cruise.
Merlin: The Joko Cruise you almost didn't go on?
John: The Joko Cruise I almost didn't go on.
Merlin: Because of reasons.
John: The Joko Cruise had become a source of tremendous anti-Aloha.
John: And I walked on that ship, you know, fresh off of Aloha-ness.
John: And everything that happened that would have formerly sent me, I just said like, Aloha.
John: Aloha, he said.
John: And it was tremendous.
John: I came off the boat rested and mentally well and had not fallen prey to any of the
John: the bumps and bruises and it was noticeable you know i think it i think paul saborn noticed it and um and i brought i brought aloha rather than than bringing you brought it was brought not sought
John: No, I wasn't seeking it then.
Merlin: I want to just revisit one thing I believe I gleaned from last year.
Merlin: You tell me if I got this right.
Merlin: That there is a somewhat paradoxical thing here where if you try too hard to aloha, you get the opposite of aloha.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You cannot look for a turtle.
John: Don't think of an elephant.
John: Don't think of an elephant.
John: If you are in the water and you are looking for a turtle, you will not see a turtle.
Merlin: If you're looking for a turtle, you won't see a turtle.
Merlin: A turtle has to appear or just come to you.
Merlin: You have to just be looking.
Merlin: Just be looking.
Merlin: Just be there.
John: Just be there.
Merlin: Be present.
John: And I'm not saying you have to be looking like looking for something.
John: You just have to be in a state of looking.
John: Where's your phone while you're doing this?
John: Oh, you can't take your phone snorkeling.
John: Or if you can, it would require that you go to the store and buy a... You can't go swimming in a watermelon patch.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: You know, you can't roller skate in a buffalo herd.
Merlin: Pull on Superman's cape, leave your phone on dry land.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
Hmm.
Merlin: Can I tease something for next time?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Because we've got to go.
Merlin: You said something on your Twitter that I really liked, and I want to know if this is a topic that we can address because I think it's very important.
Merlin: You were talking about, I believe... I'm not going to look at the internet.
Merlin: I believe you were talking about the dust-up, about the punching the seat on Delta and the leaning back.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And as ever I want to stipulate for the record, I...
Merlin: do not, will not, shall not, fox in a box, I do not recline.
Merlin: Just a virtue signal a little bit here.
Merlin: But you said something about you never recline your seat.
Merlin: And the next tweet you said something about, I don't know if you said the men in your family, but you said, what was your quote?
Merlin: The men in your family treat life as an obstacle course.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Boy, I like that.
Merlin: I'm thinking about that a lot.
John: Yeah, it's true.
John: And it's not true of the women in my family.
John: Stark demarcation.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, I don't recline and it isn't... My take on that is if the airline didn't tell you you could recline, if that button didn't exist, would you...
John: Would it be something you missed?
Merlin: That tiny, tiny little bit.
Merlin: The enjoyment that's so disproportionate, so asymmetric, the amount of enjoyment, relaxation, and extra room you get from reclining is wildly offset by the extreme inconvenience you're doing to the person behind you.
Merlin: Right.
John: Whatever reclining gives you, it is only the act of reclining.
John: Because as soon as you have, quote-unquote, reclined, you are just as uncomfortable.
John: Like, it has given you zero.
John: It's just in the moment of pushing the button and leaning back.
Merlin: The exchange rate is explicitly terrible.
Merlin: It's bad.
Merlin: Like, you're going to get a nickel's worth of comfort, and I'm going to get a bill for $10 or $15.
John: for that little bit.
John: And as you and I, from the very beginning, you know, the whole premise of keep moving and get out of the way is do not inconvenience others.
John: Do not, as you pass through life...
John: You are absolutely capable of getting everything you need without ever standing in between someone else and what they need.
Merlin: It's so... And again, just to reiterate, the reason we say keep moving and get out of the way, it's not semantics.
Merlin: It's not logic.
Merlin: It's huge.
Merlin: The and part is arguably...
Merlin: Just about the most important part.
Merlin: Because here's part of the problem.
Merlin: Some people keep moving.
Merlin: Some people get out of the way.
Merlin: Not enough people do both.
Merlin: But because you kept moving or got out of the way, you feel like you're good.
Merlin: You're not good.
Merlin: You need to be doing both.
Merlin: And you need to remember you're part of a fucking society.
Merlin: Get out of the left lane if you're not going faster or faster.
Merlin: Move over.
Merlin: Let other people drive.
Merlin: And always be looking, looking, looking.
Merlin: What could I do to make this better for other people that would cost me almost nothing?
Merlin: That's aloha.
John: What costs us almost nothing is reclining because it gives you almost nothing.
John: And it's it's just a it's a chain reaction.
Merlin: Now, even nice, normal, normal sized people are going to start reclining.
Merlin: Well, I guess I better do this, too.
Merlin: It's such a social experiment.
John: It's like the people in the first two rows at a concert who stand up when the band takes the stage.
John: Why don't you go move to the back if you want to stand?
John: There's now 200 people that were perfectly comfortable in their seats who are forced to stand.
Merlin: You know what my grandma would say in that case?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: You make a better door than a window.
Merlin: Yes, she would.
Merlin: Bless her heart.
Merlin: Obstacle course.
John: We'll cover that next time.