Episode 45
Mute Your Wonderwall Because I'm Clicking Things!
In this episode which is sponsored by our wonderful partners at Inflow I'm going on the record about something extremely important: loud music makes food taste bad, and I will not be taking questions or feedback on this. I support your live music. I will not consume it while eating my French fries. These are two separate things.
I also have a feelings-based relationship with computer keyboards that started in approximately 1994 in a Radio Shack, has never ended, and apparently runs in the family.
We also get into a question from Kayla in Tallahassee that stopped me: when I finally slow down, everything I've been avoiding emotionally shows up at once.
Rest feels dangerous. I have thoughts on this — including the uncomfortable truth that you cannot outrun trauma, it is always there, and you are not smarter than it.
(Neither am I. Trust me.)
Plus I read a listener review that is basically the entire reason this show exists.
- The sensory case against restaurant live music
- Keyboard switches, lifelong fixations, and the difference between that and a hyperfixation
- When your kid inherits the trait you didn't mean to pass on
- Listener Q: why does rest feel like an ambush?
- You can't outrun what you haven't processed
Again, please do check out our episode sponsors Inflow at http://getinflow.io/notbroken
They're helping us bring episodes like this one to your ears.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Okay, so we don't usually do this, but we got a review on iTunes, which
Speaker:is amazing. Thank you so much for doing that. It says, I find
Speaker:it incredibly refreshing to listen to someone talk about things that I thought were only
Speaker:being discussed in my own head. There are so many people roaming this planet
Speaker:who actually don't have official diagnoses but feel different. And it turns out when you
Speaker:start living authentically and doing what makes you feel comfortable, you are different, not broken.
Speaker:And that is like 100% what this is about. And
Speaker:an official diagnosis doesn't change who you are, and
Speaker:it honestly in our country doesn't even really change your access to that
Speaker:many services. That's not meant to dissuade you from getting one if it's something
Speaker:that's important to you. If you want to pursue that, I 100% support you and
Speaker:I'm in your corner, go do it. But there are also people who just need
Speaker:to be validated. Like they just need to hear that there are
Speaker:people in this world who from a from a very
Speaker:almost capitalistic perspective are considered very successful,
Speaker:who have the same things running around in their brains that you do,
Speaker:and that you can be all of these things all
Speaker:at once. You can be complicated and you can be introverted and you can
Speaker:be weird and quirky and all of the things that make
Speaker:us the tapestries that we are and still have all the things you
Speaker:want in life. Maybe you have to modify them to fit
Speaker:the world that you need to live in, or maybe you have to approach them
Speaker:differently, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It just means
Speaker:that not everything is for everyone the ways that we traditionally access
Speaker:them. So thank you to whoever left this. You are a delight,
Speaker:and I like you a whole lot. I liked you before you left this, but
Speaker:I like, like you like a tiny bit more now. That's not true, but it's
Speaker:a little bit true. And It's just nice to see that. But
Speaker:to know that some of you who are listening are getting the same benefit from
Speaker:it really does mean a lot. So thanks, guys.
Speaker:All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record because that feels right.
Speaker:Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi
Speaker:everybody, I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different
Speaker:Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that,
Speaker:that there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken, and
Speaker:the reality is you're just different, and that's fine. Fine. I'm gonna go on the
Speaker:record as saying this, and I will
Speaker:not be taking criticisms or feedback at this time about it.
Speaker:You will not convince me otherwise. This is my experience, and I
Speaker:believe it is a universal experience, but
Speaker:that also might just be my gigantic ego talking.
Speaker:Loud music makes food taste bad.
Speaker:Full stop. Food does not taste
Speaker:good when your ear holes are being assaulted.
Speaker:You— is impossible. There are people in this world, and I say
Speaker:this not being critical of musicians at all,
Speaker:good for you for getting a gig, good for you for playing,
Speaker:good for you for working on your craft. I'm so supportive of you
Speaker:doing that. However, I did not realize,
Speaker:or did not put thought to, the fact
Speaker:that there are people in this world who go to restaurants with live
Speaker:music on purpose.
Speaker:I do not understand this. I support your
Speaker:live music. I might even go see your live music.
Speaker:But if I'm going to a place to eat a sandwich, I
Speaker:would like a quiet sandwich.
Speaker:I— my experience is not enhanced by you singing Wonderwall.
Speaker:I'm sorry. I support you singing Wonderwall.
Speaker:I might even like you singing Wonderwall. If you gave me a
Speaker:recording or like an iTunes link of you singing
Speaker:Wonderwall, I would probably listen to it repeatedly. I was
Speaker:gonna say a cassette tape. I don't know if that's a thing anymore.
Speaker:Is that a thing? I don't think it's a thing. If you gave me a
Speaker:cassette tape, I would hold it dear and close to my heart, but I would
Speaker:not play it because I don't know how to play a cassette tape anymore. I
Speaker:don't have one of those. But that was what in my— actually, I think in
Speaker:my brain I saw like an early 2000s burned mix CD.
Speaker:That's more, but also I don't have a thing to play that on either. Little
Speaker:limited, but I will absolutely
Speaker:consume your music. I will. I bet I'll like it too, because I like a
Speaker:lot of music. But I just want to eat my French
Speaker:fries in peace. And I cannot
Speaker:concentrate on the things my taste buds are telling me
Speaker:when you are in my ears wailing about a champagne supernova.
Speaker:I love you dearly, and again, I support you
Speaker:in that. I do.
Speaker:However, loud music makes
Speaker:food taste bad. And so I will
Speaker:not consume my food and your music at
Speaker:the same time, unless it's very quiet. And I don't
Speaker:think you want to play your music very quietly live,
Speaker:because you're not like Raffi singing
Speaker:lullabies. Though, if you
Speaker:were, I might listen to you while I'm eating. I might,
Speaker:because that sounds a little bit soothing. Anyway, this is not,
Speaker:this is not a criticism of, this is not a criticism of musicians, and
Speaker:it's also not a criticism of restaurants that have live music.
Speaker:I'm just saying that I don't, I don't engage, and if you
Speaker:have live music, I'm probably gonna go somewhere else. Or,
Speaker:I'm not going to enjoy my food, and I don't like to go out to
Speaker:eat to eat food I don't enjoy. So good for
Speaker:you. I support you in pursuing your art.
Speaker:Also, please just let me eat my sandwich.
Speaker:Every fucking time I get on a recording,
Speaker:every goddamn time, these people start messaging
Speaker:me like I'm not available to them
Speaker:200 other hours a week.
Speaker:Hide alerts. Seriously, 12
Speaker:messages in the time that I did that.
Speaker:Ah! Stop.
Speaker:No, I'll make it worse. I'll make it worse. One of the first
Speaker:messages is, I think Lauren's recording right now.
Speaker:Yeah, it's a group chat. It's a group chat. So they think they're bothering each
Speaker:other, forgetting the fact that I'm still on the
Speaker:group chat.
Speaker:Ah, okay,
Speaker:okay, I did this one. Okay.
Speaker:All right, this one's a little silly. I don't— this is probably gonna be like—
Speaker:I say it's gonna be like 30 seconds and then I just open my mouth
Speaker:and start talking and it doesn't end, so whatever. I like hearing my own voice.
Speaker:As you get older, you start to realize— well, you start to get
Speaker:more comfortable with the weird things that you do. You stop apologizing for them as
Speaker:much, even if they can sometimes be embarrassing. Like, you just stop
Speaker:caring as much. And so there's that. But you also start to— I
Speaker:don't know if— I don't know if we notice them more. I'm much more aware
Speaker:of the things that I do that are just like— I don't want to say
Speaker:not normal because I don't like the idea of normal, but that other people don't
Speaker:do. Let's put it that way. Other people don't do these things. And then
Speaker:you especially notice them, especially notice them big,
Speaker:gigantic, big when you make small versions of
Speaker:yourself and they do them, especially
Speaker:if you haven't taught them to do them. So
Speaker:my assumption, and I could be wrong here, but my assumption
Speaker:is that people in general do not have
Speaker:emotional, physical reactions to computer keyboards.
Speaker:I feel like that's probably a pretty solid assumption.
Speaker:There may be a handful of us in the world, but for the most part,
Speaker:people sit down in front of a computer and use a keyboard and they don't
Speaker:think about the quality or size of the keys or the,
Speaker:or the sound of the click that it makes, or how quickly they can type
Speaker:on them. That's probably like a, like, I don't like the word normal.
Speaker:But like, I feel like most people in the general populace,
Speaker:that doesn't come up for. That is not
Speaker:my experience, and it has literally never been my experience.
Speaker:We used to go— there used to be a mall by my house when we
Speaker:lived in Louisiana, and it was a brand new mall, and right by the entry
Speaker:was a Radio Shack, and right by the entry of the Radio Shack were
Speaker:all the keyboards. And we would walk into the mall, and you would immediately
Speaker:lose me into the Radio Shack, where I went in to touch all the
Speaker:keyboards because I had to type on all of them and I knew which ones
Speaker:I liked best. And I got people— I used to like,
Speaker:I used to boggle the mind of my computer teacher when I was in middle
Speaker:school because I could already type like 80 to 100
Speaker:words a minute in middle school. Not because I had a reason
Speaker:to type that fast, but because I would
Speaker:just sit down in front of keyboards and practice. Because I liked touching
Speaker:keyboards. I just liked it.
Speaker:I still do. Every now and then I'll buy a
Speaker:new keyboard just to test it out. I don't think that's what people do.
Speaker:I don't think people buy new keyboards just to see what the keys feel like.
Speaker:Shut up. Leave me alone. Shut up.
Speaker:I have a keyboard right now that I think is the best one that I've
Speaker:had. And it replaced the previous one that was the best one,
Speaker:which is the same one, but the previous one had very tall
Speaker:keys, and I don't have very big hands, and so my
Speaker:hands would literally get tired out typing on it
Speaker:because they were very tall so that you could press down hard
Speaker:and get an extra clicky noise. Because if it's
Speaker:not clicky, get the fuck out of here.
Speaker:Give me my keychron with my blue keys or get fucked.
Speaker:Anyway, so I had the other one and now
Speaker:I have— and I eventually, after doing
Speaker:an unreasonable amount of research for something I didn't need,
Speaker:you would think I was looking for like a new prosthetic or something. No,
Speaker:I was trying to figure out how to make my hands less tired
Speaker:or feel less fatigued. From typing on these big
Speaker:giant keys without losing my clicky
Speaker:clicky clicky. And I eventually found this keyboard
Speaker:that is a low profile keyboard that still has the
Speaker:clicky clicky clicky switches. Oh,
Speaker:it's the best keyboard. It's so good. It's so good.
Speaker:I don't tell people, I mean, obviously I don't tell people about this until I
Speaker:say it on my podcast that gets downloaded 5,000 times a day. So apparently I
Speaker:do. Tell people about these things, but
Speaker:it's not like I walk around and like share
Speaker:my love of keyboards with people before this very moment,
Speaker:except for like maybe like one, one internet
Speaker:post ever. It's not something that comes up often. This is something that
Speaker:I do by myself without involving people
Speaker:who have slightly more baseline interests.
Speaker:When I— there was a period where I purchased a few keyboards trying
Speaker:to resolve this situation where the keys were too high, and
Speaker:then I had my Apple keyboard and those were too low, even though
Speaker:occasionally I will break out the Apple keyboard because I
Speaker:just— that's how I want to type that day. That's how this brain works.
Speaker:I'm sorry. It's just how it works.
Speaker:And so. I would test them out or there would be a problem with it
Speaker:and I returned to them. And
Speaker:every time I would return them, my now 9-year-old
Speaker:would, would like, as I'm boxing it up, would be like, what are you doing
Speaker:with that? I'm sending it back.
Speaker:Can I have it? No, I don't.
Speaker:I'm, I don't want to spend, we don't need it. You, we don't need another
Speaker:keyboard. I don't want an extra keyboard. It was expensive. Oh,
Speaker:okay. Before you put it away, can I type on it?
Speaker:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Here. So she would like, oh, okay. She was like, no, you're
Speaker:right. I don't think that one's as good. That's fine. And I would send it
Speaker:back. Now that I've found my holy grail keyboard,
Speaker:that the only thing that could make it better is if it was like, if
Speaker:it was white instead of black, I would like it to be white. That doesn't,
Speaker:that's fully aesthetic. It does not change the typing experience. But I would like
Speaker:it to be white. Now that I have found my holy grail keyboard, this
Speaker:child comes into my office fairly
Speaker:regularly and as if there's,
Speaker:as if there's an end date on this, says,
Speaker:are you done with your keyboard yet?
Speaker:No, that's my keyboard. I use it for work. Oh, I just figured. I like
Speaker:that keyboard. Can I have, I would like to have that keyboard. Can you get
Speaker:me one? No, you have a keyboard and she has,
Speaker:she actually has the other version of this that my husband got for like
Speaker:$30 that has the, it doesn't, it has brown switches. These are the
Speaker:things I know. It has brown switches, not blue switches, so it's not as clicky.
Speaker:And she doesn't know these things. She just knows that it does
Speaker:not feel as satisfying to her as the one on my desk.
Speaker:And according to her, there's an expiration date on the one on my
Speaker:desk where it becomes hers. And so anytime
Speaker:if I set up a new computer, sometimes I have to set up computer for
Speaker:staff, computers for staff members. If I get in a new keyboard that
Speaker:like has to go out with somebody, if I pull one out of our, we
Speaker:have like a tech closet that sometimes we use to, for staff and things.
Speaker:If I pull one out of there, she'll come up. Can I try it?
Speaker:Yes, you can try it, but this is not the, this is not the the
Speaker:trait that I wanted you to get. I have a handful of really good
Speaker:traits that I would love if you had. Some of them you do, but this
Speaker:is not the one that I wanted you to have. The other day I made
Speaker:her flippin' day because I bought a new mouse. It
Speaker:was $10 cuz my old mouse, the scroll wheel stopped working because I
Speaker:might, I might be a little aggressive with my technology.
Speaker:Maybe a little bit. Shut up. Anyway, and so I bought a
Speaker:new mouse. And it was $10 and it was fine and it was very
Speaker:clicky, very satisfyingly clicky, but the scroll wheel was
Speaker:very slow. And my, if my brain
Speaker:works faster than your scroll wheel, we have a problem. And that's
Speaker:a lot of pressure to put on a scroll wheel because my brain works insanely
Speaker:fast. But for the most part, we figure it out. Anyway, this one was not
Speaker:fast enough. So I bought another $10 mouse, different. This one's kind of
Speaker:cute. It's got flowers on it. Anyway., and I put the old one to the
Speaker:side. When this child walks into my office and goes to go get a piece
Speaker:of paper off the printer, walks past me, sees that there is
Speaker:an unattended mouse, leaves her course that she
Speaker:is supposed to be charting, goes right to the mouse and starts clicking it.
Speaker:And she's like, oh, this is a good one, mom. Mom, this is a good
Speaker:one. And I was like, well, I'm, I'm actually done with that one. Do you
Speaker:wanna use it? The look in her face, you would've thought it was
Speaker:Christmas. You would've thought it was her birthday and Christmas and Hanukkah
Speaker:all wrapped into one. She was like, I can really have this? I can really
Speaker:put it on my computer? 'Cause it's so clicky and I want it to be
Speaker:that clicky when I do my schoolwork. Go for it,
Speaker:kidlet. I made her entire day. So anyway, I don't
Speaker:think that the general population— I'm trying really hard not to use the word normal
Speaker:'cause normal is bullshit, but I don't think the general
Speaker:population has these feelings about keyboards. If you
Speaker:do, let me know. We could start a
Speaker:club. It will be a very small club, but we will love it.
Speaker:But this is how my brain works, and I'm going to make the
Speaker:assumption that many of you, though not
Speaker:keyboards, many of you have a thing along
Speaker:those lines. That you are an inexplicable expert
Speaker:at, that you know everything about and have a
Speaker:lifelong fixation on. This is not a hyperfixation. This is
Speaker:a lifelong fixation. I could tell you these things about keyboards when I
Speaker:was 8 years old, before we like
Speaker:regularly used computers for everything. Thankfully, I had
Speaker:a dad who was a giant nerd, and so I, I was born
Speaker:in 1986 and we had a computer in our house in
Speaker:1986. Uh, because he just liked nerd things. I, we had, I
Speaker:still somewhere have an original Commodore 64 and all the
Speaker:games. I don't have anything to plug it into, but I do have
Speaker:somewhere a Commodore 64. And my dad being my dad, we
Speaker:had the little, literally the floppy disk, the big floppy disk box,
Speaker:not the, not the hard disks that we called floppy disks, 'cause that was
Speaker:stupid. The big floppy disk box of every game
Speaker:you could imagine. So this is— maybe this is his fault, maybe this
Speaker:is some version of passed down generational trauma, I don't know. But
Speaker:anyway, there's a thing that you do that is like this,
Speaker:and I want to know about it.
Speaker:And you can tell me about it at
Speaker:differentnotbroken.com/voicemail. Where you can also call in and tell me about all the spectacular things
Speaker:you've done on our brag line. Anyway,
Speaker:what— I want to know what weird thing you do. It's not
Speaker:weird, it's particular,
Speaker:and I want to know about
Speaker:it. We have a question from Kayla in Tallahassee,
Speaker:Florida. I noticed that when I finally slow down, everything I've been
Speaker:avoiding emotionally shows up at once. It makes rest
Speaker:feel dangerous. How do you rest without opening the
Speaker:emotional floodgates every single
Speaker:time? If you have that much
Speaker:backlog, then that's actually the issue you should be
Speaker:discussing. Why— not why, I understand why,
Speaker:but, you know, you deal with stuff like that by chipping
Speaker:away at it a little bit at a time. You know, how do you eat
Speaker:an elephant? One bite at a time.
Speaker:And if you're, if you're
Speaker:being deluged by all of these
Speaker:things that you have not processed every time you try to turn
Speaker:off, then you probably need to start processing. And
Speaker:that doesn't mean that that should replace your rest, but it does mean that it
Speaker:might be time to look for some good help. To talk through those
Speaker:things because your brain in general doesn't torture you with
Speaker:things for sport. Like, it might feel like it does, but there's
Speaker:usually a reason why, some sort of
Speaker:psychological or whatever reason why. And maybe it's something
Speaker:that you need to go to therapy and figure out how
Speaker:to manage those thoughts better so that it's not— so that they're not torturing
Speaker:you. Or maybe it's Medication, maybe there's a diagnosis for it.
Speaker:Maybe there's unprocessed trauma. Maybe there's all sorts of things that you, that you would
Speaker:need to talk to a clinician and somebody who actually is
Speaker:qualified to talk about these things. But you
Speaker:should not be hit with a tidal wave
Speaker:of things that you have not processed every time you try to shut
Speaker:off. And that doesn't mean like, there are a lot of people in this world
Speaker:who are just bad at shutting off, who feel like they should be productive all
Speaker:the time and feel guilty when they're not productive all the time. And it, and
Speaker:it becomes like this vicious cycle. But that doesn't sound like what you're describing. What
Speaker:you're describing sounds like every time you
Speaker:stop, you try to stop moving, the things you're running away from are standing right
Speaker:there. And that's because that's running away doesn't—
Speaker:you can't run, you can't outrun trauma, you can't outrun grief. It's always
Speaker:there. We think we're smarter than it, but we're not. So it just sounds to
Speaker:me like it's time to go talk to somebody who can give
Speaker:you actual clinical direction. And the direction might not be clinical. They might say
Speaker:like, nothing wrong here. There's just, you know, you just
Speaker:don't deal with this type of stimulation well. And if you have this, you'll be
Speaker:fine. But more than anything, it kind of sounds
Speaker:like there's a lot of unprocessed stuff there. And the only way to get rid
Speaker:of unprocessed stuff is to process it. And that's gonna be
Speaker:a whole lot more work than trying to shut off for a few hours on
Speaker:a Saturday. Aw, somebody liked my Avenue Q
Speaker:reference. I do know who Amy P. is. She is a somebody who I
Speaker:truly adore.
