Marsha Sucks at Going to Bed on Time

Marsha Shandur has a flip phone and all kinds of social media blockers...yet she still manages to not go to bed at a decent hour. Kelsey and Marsha discuss time for yourself after kids are down, the allure of old Sex and the City and Seinfeld episodes, and how even locking yourself out of social media doesn't help us go to bed earlier.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:03

You're listening to the story shout podcast hosted by Kelsey Jones. We're a weekly podcast dedicated to destigmatizing failure and laughing at our normalcy. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Story shout. My name is Kelsey Jones. And I'm so excited to be here today with Marsha Shan door. She is a storytelling and Keynote Coach and Trainer from Yesus. Marsha, Marsha, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. This is going to be so fun. I know. I'm so excited to talk about what do you suck at today? I well, I suck at it. I would say I have a gift for not being able to go to bed at a decent hour. A gift. Wow, that's just really good at it. Yeah. So what's okay, what is a decent hour to you, because if you asked my husband and decent hours at midnight, and that is not a decent hour to me. So it's changed a lot over the years. Like, I feel like one of my dream jobs in terms of my what I like for my hours was I used to have a radio show one till 3am. So I would get to bed at four. Everybody was asleep, like no one was awake. This was kind of before the Ubik. Like before we had the internet on our phones. So I would usually get to sleep at four and then I'd wake up at 12. That was great. And then, you know, I started going more in the other direction. And then four and a half years ago, my girlfriend at the time had a baby. And so then it really shifted. So then suddenly, because she was waking up at five or six every morning and often several times in between going to bed anything later than kind of 930 or 10 seemed scandalous. I mean, we often did. But then eight months ago, I found myself like my my ex and I you know broke up and decided to live in different houses. And so we now don't have the kids every night. And and I was like this is like I'm now a morning person I would I would get up with her every morning. So I was like five or six every single morning. And I was like this is great. This is what I've always wanted. I've always wanted to be an early morning person, I've always wanted to be someone who's in bed by 930 or 10 every night. But it just hasn't happened. I just snuck back into my old ways. And with a new fun bonus, now that I have a sleep thing where I fall asleep fine. But once if I wake up at around five, I'm basically awake for the rest of the day. And so if I want to not be a complete zombie, I have to try and be in bed by 930 and asleep by 10. And, and yet, Kelsey, and yet, it doesn't happen. Or when I or when the kid is here and I know she's gonna wake me up. I mean, it's a little just in the last six months shifted that now she's waking up at sort of six 630 It's a little bit more reasonable. But I just last night was a perfect example. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna after a bit, I'm not gonna watch any TV, I'm not going to go on the internet. I'm going to clean up the house. I'm going to do a couple of other things. Maybe I have a little read in bed. And I'll be asleep by 930. And then I was like, maybe I'll be asleep by nine. And then I went and I watched not even anything good. I watched you old. I've been comfort watching old Sex in the City recently, I kind of did it before the new ones came along. And then of course now I'm watching the new ones as well. And I watched like two old episodes of sex and see but I even like fast forwarded through bits of it because it's like this is I know it's gonna happen. Charlotte is going to get caught out because she went on two dates in one night and and then I just and then of course I had to do all the things that I still had to do. And it's like after 11am getting into bed being like, I don't if you swear on your podcast, I'm going to not sweat just like what the eff is wrong with you. And I that happens to me and I get so mad. I was just talking to my sister in law I love reading always have. But lately and I don't know if it's because of the pandemic and like this is how I'm coping or something. I just want to zone now. And I've been reading as much I've just been scrolling on tick tock. I don't know if you're on tick tock, but don't get on tick tock bedtimes gonna be even worse. I don't want to enable you to stay far away. But it's so funny on that app. Like, the videos are honestly so funny. And it's just like a joy. It's just such it's social media to actually like, makes me laugh and makes me you know, feel like good, I guess which probably still isn't right. But anyway, that's what I've been doing the last few months is all get on tick tock, and then an hour's past hour and a half and then it's like you said I try to have the same bedtime as you're saying, but then it's like 1111 30 And then my husband, like I mentioned he likes to stay up way later. Like he'll come ask me at 1030 If I want to watch a show or a movie I'm like, Are you insane? Your mind is telling 30 And he looks at me, like what? If it is nine or after I'm done. You can't ask me to do anything, but I tell him that but to his credit, I'm up in bed scrolling Tik Tok. So it's not a completely unreasonable request from him. But I didn't get on Tiktok for that exact reason, because the one time I tried it, I lost like three hours or something. But let me tell you all the things I put in place. So usually, I clearly didn't do it last night. But I usually set or use, I have a Mac. So I use self control app on my computer. And I usually set it usually sometimes during my work day, because that's when I haven't gone into the like, hypnotic hour. I locked myself out of all of the TV platforms I have, and Facebook and Instagram, and BBC News and The Guardian and CBC News because I'm like, Well, I'm just gonna look at CBC it's news. This is important. But then, you know, I have to read every single story. I was reading a lot of ask Polly who this lady had the hair, Heather have valesky does an amazing advice column. It's now on substellar. I locked myself out of New York Magazine out of the cut magazine, because she's on it. And so I would lock myself out of all of those things far in advance. And if I'm really smart, I do it. So it also locks me out for the first two or three hours in the morning. And then I got freedom app on my so so that's Thing Number One Thing Number two, I have a flip phone. So I have a smart I have an iPhone with no SIM card in it. Because I wanted one for apps and to be able to take pictures. But on my iPhone, I don't have that the only time I have the Instagram app is I download it if I want to upload pictures of stories, and then I delete it afterwards. I mean, and then I scroll for two hours and I delete it afterwards. But the mostly the way I access Instagram is through the browser on my phone. And I do it through the incognito browser so that all like through the safari private browser, so that it will automatically log me out as soon as I'm done. And I don't have Facebook as we have to do Facebook through the browser, which crashes all the time and my phone doesn't know my facebook password either. I have to type it in manually every time I don't have the email app. Again, I have to do it through the browser. And the browser isn't even an icon I can click on I found a way where you can hide you can have no Safari browser, so you have to like do spotlight search and then pretend to search something and then go in and do like there's so many steps. And yet, Kelsey and yeah, and and I bought freedom app, which is supposed to lock you out of things on your phone, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. But I even last night so I now the only way we managed to get my kid to brush her teeth is to show her a movie on YouTube kids. So she watched the movie about brushing teeth and she brushed her teeth so I can't lock my realize I can't lock myself out things for that reason. But I had a WhatsApp message from someone. So I was like I am going to when I get out of her room. I am going to go and listen to that I run a storytelling shown it's one of my storytellers. So I knew it was timely. Like, I'm going to go, I'm going to listen to the WhatsApp message. Then I'm going to do the washing up. I have a really exciting podcast I'm listening to at the moment called passenger list. It's like a thriller about a missing plane. And I'm like I'm going to do the dishes. I'm going to listen to the passenger list. But what did I do? I came out I didn't even look at bloody WhatsApp. I picked up my phone. I carried it to the couch and I sat down and I speed watched two episodes of Sex in the City that I probably watched not that long ago if I still remember what happens in right, which I did. And I don't know what it Yeah, it's so it's so weird. Like the siren and often even I'm doing as I'm doing it as I'm punching in instagram.com Because I have to do it that way. There's a tiny little voice that's going I know why. But I'm just like, Shut up voice I deserve this. This is always it's like I deserve this. I don't I do not work hard like I've one of the best jobs in the world. I don't work hard. Then with my kids like I love being with with my kids. Like I miss her every second she's not here. But the silver lining is that when she's here I'm like, fully focused. I have a great time. I'm just delighted by every tiny thing she does, and so I don't deserve it. So okay, I have a few things to comment on first, tick tock. After you scroll for an hour, this alert pops up and it says hey, you've been scrolling for a while you should take drink some water. The speed at which my finger flicks that video off. Get out of here I don't want to know about water. I don't want to know that I've been on this app for an hour I get so mad at the person's face. It's probably some poor employee at tick tock. I scroll the fastest I've ever flicked a you know on a screen and and so I and I'm like you too I go to so on my phone I have folders that have by top So I have like a social media folder. So I have to cope with that. And I have to open Tik Tok. And like, I'm like you as I'm doing it, it's like No, get out of there. You shouldn't open Tik Tok, you need to open your books app and finish your book, The One stupid book you've been trying to read for three months. And I'm the same voice talks to me and I, I don't know, I think it's like a serotonin rush or dopamine rush or whatever they say like social media, you get it faster, at least for reading. It's like it's more of a long burn of satisfaction, maybe I don't know. And, and I think too, I use social media as a way to connect with people, especially people that I don't see a lot or because of the pandemic, maybe we haven't seen each other like I have a cousin. I'm really close to you that lives. A six hours drive away from me, I Midwestern in the US so we measure distances by how long it takes you to drive somewhere. So six hour drive, which is pretty far and then my brother's a two hour drive. So him and I and my cousin always share tick tock videos with each other, like almost every day. So I think that's a way of me like connecting. And this is what I'm telling myself is like that's a way of connecting with the social media, in terms of like just binging on shows like you were saying, I think I found myself lately like there's so many great shows on on today, just like across all the apps like everybody's like, have you seen this? Have you seen this? You know, people are winning Emmys whatever, I always want to watch reality TV, just like give me the worst trash of people arguing or something I've seen a million times i i Like Sex in the City. But Seinfeld is one of my favorite shows of all time. So all rewatch Seinfeld. And I think what it is, is my brain just wants to turn off. Because you know, I have a team of people that I manage, I just, I just want my brain to be turned off. It's kind of like junk food for my for my brain is what I tell my husband. I don't want to watch them like a you know, some long saga. It took me forever to get through like Breaking Bad because it's such like, that's all you can focus on. It's very dark. I'd rather just like turn my brain off. And I yeah, I don't think that's healthy. But I that's what I I don't know. I think it is, I think I don't think it's unhealthy. And I think part of the thing here is that all of these things are true, right? You are connecting with your family. You know, Twitter and Instagram is so funny. Somebody posted on Instagram the other day, I think it was my friend Jess, one of her things is I love you the monsters. And she posted and said it was something like therapy isn't around dealing with the root of your problems. Therapy is about making making your therapy making your therapist convinced that you're their favorite. And I loved because I'm so convinced that I am my therapist. Like I told my therapist about that meme, but I was like don't comment, don't comment I don't. And you know, somebody posted something the other day it was like it was on Twitter, but it was a bit of so I even deleted my Twitter account. I did that thing where they're like you can come back in a year if you want. So I haven't committed to it but I still go and look at other people's Twitter's and somebody posted this guy is a Wednesday man and he just repost the funniest stuff and some that there was some research that Shakespeare had like maybe smoked weed when he was writing. And the person who quoted it wrote To be or not to be what was the question? Me love for like an hour. And I also will screenshot those I have, you know, my mom and then another friend who are not on Twitter and not on Instagram, so I will screenshot the best ones and send those. And, and I think that that's true. You know, at the end of the day, we've been challenged like part of me with Sex in the City. I generally have been trying over the last few years to be influenced by my by my ex by my co parent who's very good at this and thinking Okay, where am I spending my leisure time? Where am I? What am I listening to? What am I reading? What am I watching on TV? And is it all whites, this non disabled people like me, you know, is it straight? I'm not straight, but I code straight to people. So I didn't I haven't experienced I mean, I'm a queer parent, and I'm a non bio parent, but I haven't experienced most of the oppressions that queer queer people have. And so I've been trying to watch stuff, even if it's something like blackish you know, that's so funny. So like most of the time and but when I don't want to be challenged at all, it's when I want to watch something I've watched 1000 times and maybe that's friends all right now I'm like single and I'm so far away from being ready to date. But I'm also very interested in other people that eating so that's why I'm watching Sex in the City because I'm like, I want to I don't want to do any of this stuff myself, but I really want to live vicariously through even though they're all straight people, you know, having heterosexual relationships apart from one instance, and and Stanford. But I think it's like, we don't have the capacity to watch anything new. And so that's why you're watching Seinfeld and that's why I'm watching Sex in the City and friends even I'm like, yes, it's problematic. I should be using my time better. But I think I don't think it's bad inherently, I think What's bad is when I A when we're when there's other things that we want to be doing. And we're doing it at the expense of those be when we're just getting hypnotically kind of sucked into staying up way too late. And we're making ourselves miserable. And see when we're not even totally enjoying it, because part of us is thinking that dishes are next door and you still have to do them, you're going to get woken up at 6am by a small boys gang man. And you can't ignore that small voice and so, but I think yeah, I think in a dream world, because there's definitely been times where I've been like, I'm having a really rough day, I am going to sit down and I'm going to watch for, you know, two hours of friends, I'm going to watch for four or five friends episodes. And you know, I'm going to eat whatever this food and I'm going to sit and I'm, and I'm sitting there being like, God, this is the best. My life is amazing that I get to do that, you know, and that's very intentional. I got really I had get stopped reality TV for years. And then I hit it hard around the time of my breakup. And it was a lifesaver, like, because I just did a deep dive into love is blind and the circle. And I got a break from having to think about this difficult situation that I was in, because I just was completely obsessed with everybody else's manufacture difficult situations, right. And so I think there's, I think there is real benefit in them. But I think it's like in the dream world, we every night, we would be saying, Okay, I'm going to spend 20 minutes dicking around, and then I'm going to go do this this. And actually, I think in a dream world, I would just get those dishes done soon. But there's some, for some reason, as soon as I come out my kids bedroom, the siren song of the dicking around is so loud. I invented an app, which doesn't exist. So if anybody makes apps, please make this up. I did. I've told a couple of people about it. And they've said they might but they haven't yet. But it's called SFA which stands for stop effing around. And you tell it which websites just like self control app, you tell it which way or freedom you tell it which websites. And then what happens is as soon as you go on those websites, a big red timer in the corner starts up and shows you how long you've been on, it doesn't go away. And then every five minutes it goes. And then like every half an hour it goes something like so annoying, right? Because the other thing is often with Facebook, it's like I have to go post this thing for work, I have to go check this thing. And then it's like, oh, seven notifications. And then 45 minutes later, and then I panic log out. And then I couldn't even do the thing. I know that happens to me all the time. I so I agree with everything you're saying. We are talking about the siren song of dicking around I so I read it was probably a meme or something that people are saying for parents especially so I have a son, he's three and a half. And for parents especially, and especially working parents even more not that, you know, being at home as an a job. I'm not saying that at all. But just like having the mental brain of another project besides at home. Whenever we finally put our kids to bed or whatever. It's almost like you want to fight against doing the things that you need to do because you've done the things that you needed to do the entire day. So, you know, for the most part most of us you know during the day we do all our meetings, we do all our due dates or whatever we manage people from need to met, manage if you're if you're working in the home, maybe you completed a project or all these errands or bills you had to pay I don't know. And then when you finally have the time to yourself at night, you are like fighting against having to do something else, even if it's self care or like beneficial to you. Like sometimes this is so bad. And I probably shouldn't admit this on like a public forum but sometimes even like showering or taking a bath like not that I'm like beyond help or you know, have a hygiene issue, but I'm like I really need to shower but like today, I know we're never gonna let this video today. I haven't I haven't washed my hair in like three or four days and I really find hair so I need to be washed yet last night. Nope. did not do that watched a show with my husband and laid in bed and I mean, it's just fighting against like what you feel like you have to do I guess I think it's the shoulds and I think that all makes sense in terms of being a parent or working parent but absolutely this was my experience before I mean I have a 17 year old stepson and he does he's actually my my very very interesting parenting so he's my ex is my other exes kid and so he does he a pre pandemic he would do three nights with each parent and one night with me so I only had him one night a week. and the rest of the time or when I was with the ex, you know, I would be there for whatever three nights of the week, the rest of the time, I didn't have it. But I did, I still dicked around like I still, that's why I loved having the work at the end of the day when it was being on a radio show, which is a super easy and fun job. Because it meant that there was no I wasn't, there was no like capacity for dicking around because I didn't have a phone, I could lie in bed and be on Instagram in because it was whatever the mid 2000s. And I just kind of want the choice. I mean, this is why I have a flip phone. Because I need to not have the internet accessible to me at all times. And there's so many other things I do I have homescreen zero, which is where my I try and put as many apps as possible into blocks. And so on my home screen, I actually have two apps and one is like a Pomodoro type timer. And the other exercise thing, but then I can see the picture of my home on my stepson when he was eight. So I have homescreen zero, I have a thing, a brilliant thing my friend Dave taught me, we worked on a talk that he did called taming your tiny Tiger, which is all about how your phone is like a tiny saber toothed Tiger. Well, if I press the home button three times, then it turns out it's not working. It turns everything black and white. And suddenly like all of the apps, because one of the things he taught me is that the app designers are trying to make the app as exciting as possible. And when you see that green app with the like red, you know, the little red symbol of how many notifications you're like who when you look at it in black and white. Yeah, you can barely see it. Who cares? It's so much less. But it's also just less exciting. My friend Courtney Carver from be more with lesses is as we're recording is doing a five day challenge on spend less time with your phone. And she said one of the things she discovered is that phones are somewhat, I wish I could remember who it was that said this, but he described your phone as being like a tiny slot machine for dopamine, right in our pocket. Like imagine if you were if you were addicted to gambling, and you had a tiny slot machine in your pocket, you would just play it all at the time. Like of course, we're non stop going on. And so really, you know, I think that's the other thing in terms of the self forgiveness and the shame around it is like remembering that it's not totally our fault. Like literally, people are profiting from not being able to get to bed. I'm like I'm reading a lot about diet culture and the myth of the obesity epidemic and kind of inspired by this podcast you're wrong about and one of the questions I keep hearing, which I really love is whenever you hate on your physical appearance in any way, ask yourself who is profiting from me having this thought? And I think it's you know, it's just occurred to me now talking to you that we should think that every time we like, I'm dicking around on my phone, we should ask ourselves who is profiting and I think the bit of me that's like an activist and you know, anti capitalist is like, if that you know, right, yeah, rebel, even as I as I work for many of these big corporations myself, I'm just like, yeah, he's profiting. I don't want someone else profiting. But it's, but it's hard. It's hard. But I also think I did it before like, I just remember being a student and doing it. And when we have them with analog TV, and VHS is like, I still would stay up to I've got diaries from when I was 14 years old. And I'm like, it's 1am and I'm just like, What are you doing 14 year old Marsha go to Instagram, in 1990 Whatever it is, they said, You know, I've heard before that if something's free in technology, then you're being you're the product right? So Facebook or Instagram or whatever, like we're the products and and so that's very true. Like we they definitely profit off of our addiction to social media and to technology. As you were talking to before even mentioned, like when you were younger, I was trying to think Okay, before we had the internet, because when I was in elementary school, I'm 35 so in elementary school, we had like computer lab, but we still had dial up internet and everything so we had internet at our house but you couldn't be on it for a long time because it blocked up you know, the phone line. So I was trying to think like, okay, middle school me or high school me like did I stay up really late? And I didn't really I think it was really after the internet that I you know, when I was on my own after college so in college, I had a million jobs. So I I don't think I really dicked around if I was by myself or wasn't with friends but after I lived by myself for a year. And I was a super night owl then because I freelanced and had my own schedule, and I lived completely by myself and I just you know would stay up really late and sleep in. And I think at that time, it was more about like, I want to build my business. I have to make money to pay my rent because otherwise like I'm going to get thrown out I didn't have anyone to help me So I think at night, a lot of that meeting up was from working. And now it's almost like it shifted into. And I guess we're getting like, kind of deeper on this podcast, but I'm into like connecting with people. Because now like I told you, I'm staying up later to connect with, you know, people. So I know what's going on in the collective world or sending the TIC TOCs to my family or whatever. I think it's like, every time that I've stayed up late or found myself in a pattern of staying up late, it's for a reason. It's either for like, it's not for, it's either it's just something that's like going on in my life, that I'm processing in whatever different ways. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, as I said, I've always been I remember for years saying to people, I mean, this is a bit of a dark joke, but I used to say, I think I'd be really good at in like a hostage situation, as long as I wasn't being tortured, because I'm really good at using up time whilst achieving nothing like I've always it's always been a real gift of mine, that I always imagined, you know, you could stick me in like a white walled room and just feed me my meal through a slot and then come back to me three weeks later and be like, Oh, do you want to hang hang out and have lunch together? I'd be like Kelsey, you know what I would love to but maybe like, in two weeks, there's this spider and I've got this. And but I think I think what you said earlier about the showering thing, because I'm so with you on that because I think it's the shoulds. And I think that's also why when I was a kid, it's like there's always some should somewhat, I always left my homework to the last minute. And I'm with my stepson. Like, I see him doing that. And I do the thing that my mom used to do with me, which is sometimes I just grabbed the book and I just do it. But it's usually I try it. I tried to do it less because my mom is to do that for me. But also like I survived, you know, I went to university, I got a psychology degree from pretty good university. And I think that I remember I remember being either at university or at school, and getting pretty good marks in something having crammed them all. At the last minute I got my foot my last year of university, I was doing a radio show at the local station. I was working for the BBC Radio One like the biggest national station. Yeah, I was running the lope I was I was running the the National Student Radio association for all the student radios in the country. And I was the producer of the Edinburgh Festival coverage, this coverage. And I was doing my final year of my degree like it was bananas. And I crammed everything at the last night I just gave up eight weeks of my life to nothing but psychology. And then I came out and I got a two one, which is like a be honestly I'm stunned that. But I remember talking to a friend of my mom's who's an interpreter and saying, oh, you know, I don't know all about maybe my school results like saying I don't know if I deserve those marks because I did it all at the last minute. And she said there are many jobs and minors one of them were being able to cram at the last minute is absolutely an asset, that if I had you know, in our job, we're often just told, okay, you went to a sugar conference tomorrow, go learn all of the technical terms about the chemical components of sugar, and learn them in two different languages in Russian and French as well as English. And, and it's and I feel like even for my job now that I'm coaching, or I'm running workshops, and when I run workshops, you know, I leave the writing till the last minute and I hate myself and think this could have been better. But I also starting to kind of learn that that's my process. And I'm really good at pivoting in the moment when something happens in the workshop. We had it recently it was this big company and they were using this new technology and then this breakout I was supposed to do couldn't work. And in the moment I just I just pivoted, it was fine. Like it was seamless. And I think that's because of having done things often that you have to be seamless. I mean, I think it's also a bit of an ADHD thing that our add rather that I that I am sort of learning this as a person who was only diagnosed at the age of 43 that that you you lose attention so often that you have to be really quick when you are six you have to make nobody know that you weren't actually listening for the last five minutes. But I think that there yeah, there's there's some part I think another big part of it is leaving things to the last minute and again, there are some silver linings to leaving things at the last to the last minute. And honestly one of the things that has helped with all of this stuff really. And this came from a brilliant coach, I worked with Kate read and who I ended up writing a whole talk about this based on something she taught me which is to look at my relationship with Shane and to when I'm sitting there and I call it your beast but my beast is its number one hit like Top Billboard 100 hit is your you're an effing loser, like it loves to tell me I'm a loser loves tell me I'm a loser. It loves to shame me for having dicked around all day loves to tell me that I have the potential to really help people but I'm wasting it and just learning to just like let it be noise you know, I don't think my belief is you don't ever really extinguished that voice but you can Just tune it out. And so that's the thing. I think even the fact that I can come on this podcast and talk to you about this, rather than being like too much, is because I've been learning to just be like, Okay, well, there you are. But, and, and surrounding myself, I have a brilliant, brilliant coach. By the way, I know I'm saying lots of names of things, but I am going to make you a secret webpage right link to. Yes, I love that. But I have a brilliant coach Laura Wellman, and she's really good at I'll leave her a Voxer going, I'm such a loser. I didn't deliver. And she'll write back and be like, but look at all the things you've got done this week, you know, look at how you learned this big contract or whatever. Like, maybe it doesn't matter that you dicked around until 11 At night, because you actually got x y Zed done. So I think that also helps. I agree. And I, I, we I did an episode with someone about procrastination, and it's really good. I think you would like it if anyone else listening. It's it's probably one of my favorite episodes we've done. But one of the things we talked about is like, if you're still a successful person, a lot of the shame that goes into procrastination or what you know, you and I have been talking about, like that's just from society's pressure on us. And it's if you look at things more at a granular level, the things that we feel shame about, is it because you feel like you should feel shame about it, or is it actually like being detrimental to your life. Now, for me staying up so much later, where I'm exhausted the next day, that's detrimental to my life. But if we look at like, last night, I didn't go to bed till 1130 Because, whatever, I'm fine today, I'm I woke up at 730 I think usually I wake up at 630. So I slept an extra hour and my son woke up late, I didn't have enough time to get ready this morning. But that's okay. Like the world didn't end I didn't have like a presentation, you know, to 100 people that I to be on camera for. So it's okay. So like any shame that I had last night or guilt about going to bed early, it actually is like, made up and it didn't really affect my life. And so maybe that's something you and I can can think about in terms of what we've been talking about this. So this whole episode is like, is the shame, really something you even need to be feeling like just staying up late and dicking around really detrimental to your life because for me, you know, spending hours on tick tock, I feel like I shouldn't, but I still have all my work done. I'm flourishing. I you know, I have, you know, contract work I have everybody's happy with what I'm doing. So at the end of the day, like it's not really detrimental to my life, and you got to laugh and you got to connect and you didn't have to challenge your flooded brain. It's such a good point. It's such a good point. And I also find and this also goes for procrastinating is, but I find sometimes I need to do a few nights to just get sick of myself, you know that I just need to like, I mean also just to get so tired that I physically can't stay up. Like on the sixth night or whatever, that sometimes it's like, you know, ebbs and flows. I feel like it's like with my office of really truly accepting and understanding that my office is never going to be full time tidy but what happens is I tidy it and I'm like, this is how I'm gonna live and then the piles start you know, one pile happens then another and then they increase and increase and increase increase. And then I have a big Blitz and then it's tight again and just I guess it's the same as understanding you know that it's a that it's a cycle that the way just somewhere on the circle and sometimes we're on the staying up late on tick tock slash watching all the episodes of a problematic TV show that you've already seen. And sometimes we're on the circle of like, getting into it. I mean, here's the advantage. Here's a silver lining. When I get into bed at 930 my god I'm smug and self congratulatory, and I just like feel like the winningest if I got into bed at 930 Every single night I just would be like oh another night. But as it is I'm like yes look at your Shanda water hero. You are living your best life here. Yes, everybody should learn from you. You're amazing. And that's a pretty nice feeling to have true but then you turn into one of those like smug a holes who is like oh well I don't have Instagram I don't use social media I go to bed at nine o'clock I don't know about the rest of you so you I think you need failure to like put yourself in your place Yeah, but also wouldn't feel special to you and I feel like I could look like one of those smart gay holes right I could say to you I have a flip phone. By the way flip phones a the battery lasts three days be they are indestructible. See they fit in your bra. But in the days we're allowed to go to places but like I don't have a so I don't have a smartphone. I don't have any social media or email apps on my phone. You know, I have I put self control app on all the time. I could look like one of those but it's like I do all of those things. And yet, I used to take a quarterly and I'm just out as this is coming out of my mouth being like good point, Marsha. I used to take a quarterly internet break or take a week off email and all social media. And of course, I would sneak on the internet but but in theory, I would take a week off. And the reason I would do it is to remind myself that when you don't respond to every, like reply to every comment, the sky does not care. It turns out. And I feel like it's good to like, give myself, you know, in the same way, as I've accepted, I'm not going to reply to every email, it breaks my heart, because so many of them are lovely people who have either said something nice about my blog, or invited me to be on a podcast or something, and want to reply to them all. But once I accepted, this was, again, Kate read and who helped me with that, once I accepted that I was not going to reply to every email and found my peace with the discomfort of that. So I guess really, that's the key is not having a meticulously planned day where we plan our dicking around, I think the key is comfort with discomfort and tuning out that shame. Yes, I love that. Well. And I think that's a good note to kind of close on today is like, at the end of the day, let your dicking around just happen. Let it let it just embrace it and accept that you're going to do it instead of fighting it. And if it's not detrimental to your wife, or your well being or your family or whatever else most of the time. Yeah, then it's fine. I think does. Do you have any other parting words? Besides that, to kind of sum it up or leave our audience with I mean, I will say the other thing based on today's talk about it with someone because when I'm just carrying it around, like one of the weird things about having lived with someone for years, and suddenly going to living by myself again, half the week is you do sometimes feel a bit like a space person who's you know, lying to the spaceship has been cut off and you're floating off in space, because there's no one to tell, you know, I can call my friends or whatever and tell them about my day, but there's no one there like witnessing me staying up late. And sometimes I'm like, do I exist? And and I think that the part of what happens there is that I carry the shame around and actually just talking to you about it being like maybe I don't need to hate myself as much as I'm hating myself. And sometimes there's a way out and, and so I would say talk about it, or just listen to us talk about it and know that you're not alone. I love that. I love that. That. Yeah, just talking helps a lot. So if people want to learn more about what you do, or just you online, where can they do that? I'm gonna make a special webpage where I talk about all the different all the apps, I talked about all the people I mentioned. There's also I can't help it. But I'm going to add there's a link to a podcast that I just found over Christmas that I've listened to three times in a row that really changed my life around accepting the shame and the discomfort and the fact that you're never going to this guy, Oliver Berkman. And he talks about how you're not going to magically become a different person. It was from that but I started to realize the lifecycle of my tidiness of my office, the tidiness cycle of my office. So I'm going to put that in there too. And I will put it up on my website. Special page I make which is yes, yes. Marcia Mar sh a.com, forward slash story shell. I love that you're doing half my job for all the links. So thank you so much for joining me. It was really fun and thanks to everyone else for listening until next time. Thank you for listening to the story shout podcast. Don't forget to review us on iTunes and connect with us on social media at story shout or online at story shout.co Until next time, stay normal.