#17 Rest is Revolutionary

Resting is a revolutionary act in a world where we’re expected to always keep busy and work our backsides off. This week’s podcast is a call to arms, or a call to nap, to reclaim the precious time that is our lives and take back our right to take leisure without guilt or restlessness. We need to retrain our muscles of boredom, idleness and ultimately, imagination. These are all being stolen from us by the great distrator. Free yourself from the shackles of keeping busy and instead embrace the chaise lounge. 

In the words of David Hume, 

“Reading and sauntering and lounging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness.” 

Huzzah to that. Now I’m off for a little afternoon nap…

I mentioned in this episode that I’ll be interviewing a special secret guest at the Kooky Club on November 21st, which is being held in Candie Gardens, Guernsey. To find out more visit @kookyevents on Instagram. You can also get in touch with me on Instagram @kriyaarts or the Nonsense in the Chaos Page on Facebook. 

The music and artwork is by @moxmoxmoxiemox

Nonsense in the Chaos is available on all podcast platforms or you can listen here… https://nonsenseinthechaos.buzzsprout.com

Please like, follow, and review. Also, please consider supporting the podcast by becoming a patron on my Patreon page... patreon.com/JolieRose. And share far and wide please! The more people who hear about the podcast the better.

Huge love to you all and I hope you enjoy listening to this week's episode!

The music and artwork is by @moxmoxmoxiemox

Nonsense in the Chaos is available on all podcast platforms or you can listen here… https://nonsenseinthechaos.buzzsprout.com You can get in touch with me on Instagram @kriyaarts or the Nonsense in the Chaos Page on Facebook

Please like, follow, and review. Also, please consider supporting the podcast by becoming a patron on my Patreon page... patreon.com/JolieRose. And share far and wide please! The more people who hear about the podcast the better.

Transcript

0:05

The mountains and the caves. Wicked witches. Crusting the unknown. Um, Welcome to the Nonsense in the Chaos. I'm your host Jodie Rose. Outside it is grey and windy and raining and I'm curled up at home in my cosy little cottage wearing a onesie and having a day of rest. It's also a red tent day for me today, which is a very sacred, special day for me. It's the first day of my bleed. when this happens, if I'm able to, and I don't have work or meetings scheduled for that day, then I will take the day off and let myself rest. rest is revolutionary. It's something that we don't really grant ourselves permission to do and even today I've been feeling guilty. I had a long list of things that needed to be done and it takes quite a lot of willpower to make yourself stop and rest. So I want to talk a bit about that today. I'm tired. I'm really tired. I'm running around constantly. When I moved to this island of Sark in the Channel Islands, I thought of it as retiring. I retired, which obviously I don't have any money. So it's not really strictly true that I was able to do that, but I have been self employed for 20 years living as an artist and I've worked very, very hard. for much of those 20 years. It wasn't unusual for me to be working until two, three in the morning, answering emails and being on my computer trying to get things done. There was no off switch. I didn't go home at the end of the day and not have to think about my work anymore. I thought about it all the time, which was a privilege because I love what I do and I only do what I enjoy And so that's a joy to be able to live such a life, but it was very fast. I mean, I do think I am ADHD. I'm undiagnosed, but I'm pretty sure I am close to that end of the spectrum as you can get And I've always, worked too fast and I was living in a world, where we all work too fast. It's not okay. This isn't okay. I feel like this is something that we. all came to see and appreciate when the pandemic hit and we had to stop. The things that I felt hopeful for the future from the pandemic was that we got to experience nature in a different way and I hoped that was going to change people's attitudes towards nature and I feel like it has. people are more interested in pilgrimaging walking and foraging those have bloomed since the pandemic. The other thing I was hoping for was that we would slow down. It's not healthy for us to be living the life that we're living. So I now live a very different life. the problem is I brought myself with me. although I retired from Brighton to this tiny little island where one would think there's nothing to do. that's not true. we're in a very tightly connected community and there is literally no off switch. It's a bit like, it feels more like being at a festival than it does living in a town. when you're at a festival, it's, It's all encompassing, it's completely intense, ha, ha, pun, it's intense, it's intense, and it's like a sensory overload, and there is no off switch. When you're in festival land, that's what's happening, and on Sark, you can't just nip to the shop without the possibility of, really intense, crazy conversations that you weren't anticipating. You will see people, you know, and like I say, I brought myself with me. So as much as I was meant to be retiring, I'm in the government. I'm in four of the major committees in the government. I'm a barmaid. I help teach enrichment at the school. I write columns for the local newspapers. I'm doing this podcast. I, run women's circles and do the moon ceremonies I'm writing a book. I've just finished writing another book I'm a busy person and I like to do things, but that's fine. I enjoy that. But it is hard to stop when I was living in Brighton I was living in the world that we've been told is normality. It just felt absolutely insane for us to be going the speed that we're going. And now that I live here, which is sleepy and slow compared, this feels more like the way it should be. this feels like reality for me. the community aspects and everything, just feels like that's the way it's meant to be. When I first moved here, I started having loads of dreams about, Being at media parties up the Shard or, in modern spaces, like being at warehouse parties in Berlin it was interesting with my brain unravelling all of the Outer world stuff that I'd done and been to it was really weird. It was like my brain couldn't quite comprehend how green my living space now was, I am so blessed to be here. It's the most incredible place to live, there's no roads, no cars, no streetlights. It's a completely different experience. the nature, is absolutely mind blowing here. And then you've also got the community and the intensity of that. it's huge. the only way I can explain is that there's no off switch. It's, 100 percent immersion in human activity and human connection with all age groups and all types of people. And I love it. I absolutely love it. since moving here, I learned to nap, which I couldn't do before. when I said in previous podcasts, I've jumped timelines. That's something that felt like changed with the timeline as well. So not only am I no longer scared of heights and I no longer have asthma and I'm married to someone else and I live in a completely different reality, but I also can nap now. I just had a nap. and it was delightful. That's a real treat, to be able to slow down and just stop and nap. it is an art form. they used to make me feel groggy. They used to make me feel rubbish. it is about just having 15 20 minutes. That's the sweet spot. If you sleep for too long, you go into deep sleep. And then that makes you feel a bit rubbish. I just, yeah. let myself naturally do it and it just takes that edge off when you're really tired. I was too tired to do this a little while ago and then I had the nap and now I feel rejuvenated and able to sit here and chat to you. So the napping became a skill that I've learned and I did hope since 2020 that we would slow down and that things would not go back to normal. And then there was this real push for us to do it and is a revolutionary act to not break your back another thing about Sark is it's very hard working. although it is slower here and it's possible to live a slightly slower pace of life. People are very hardworking. Mainly because we only really earn money in the summer, If we're seasonal workers, working in the hospitality industry, we have to make all our money in the summer when the tourists are here in the winter there's a lot less work. But also There's no real retirement because people don't have necessarily pensions and things. So people are working into old age. I don't have a pension. I'm fully intending to just keep on working because I enjoy my work. So there's no reason for me to retire. I will happily keep doing things into my old age. if that's the case, the way I've always felt about it is I need to look after myself because my retirement plan or my pension is my body, my capacity to be able. To keep working into old age is a challenge. my safety net. I need to look after myself. It means I get up when I want. I don't get up early. I don't do meetings early. I'm getting up late because that's my privilege. I don't have any money, but I get up when I want and prioritize exercise so that I stay fit and healthy. And that's really important. I have done a few talks in colleges and, drama schools talking to kids about. Producing, and creative theatre producing, which is half of what I do, normally, back in the UK when I was there. And, I say to them that there are two types of people in the world, there are savannah people, and there are zoo people, and there's nothing right or wrong with either. savannah people cannot stand to be in a cage, but they don't know where their next meal's coming from, they don't have any healthcare, they're free, but they are, at their own risk and peril. And then there are zoo animals who know when their feed's coming, if anything's wrong they'll get looked after, they'll get medical care, there's an off switch at the end of the day, the visitors go and you can relax and you haven't got to do anything, and you're looked after but you are in a cage. It's good to sort of work out which of those you are. And I'm 100 percent a savannah animal. I do a couple of shifts in the pub here, which just ties me over. And that's the first time I've had What's the word? Limitation on my time? control, I guess. It's the first time I've had control on my time since working in the call centre when I was 35. So, that's 10 years ago now. And that was only for a year and a half and that was the first time since I was 18. I've avoided having had those kind of controls on my time. And it is someone buying bits of your life. I work in the bar here and I do actually really love it. Being a barmaid is definitely my archetype. It means I get paid to hang out at the pub where I would probably be anyway. I actually prefer being behind the bar than in front of the bar because I get to talk to everybody whether they like it or not. And get free alcohol because people buy drinks and it goes in the pot. So I've always got free drinks in my pot whenever I do go out drinking. And it's just gets me out of the house as well. being self employed, it would be very easy for me to while away weeks in there. Because I love our house so much, it'd be easy for me to just stay here the whole time and not go out. So it's quite good to have a job that does get me outside. In the summer I work for Adventure Sark, taking people out coasteering and kayaking. But I don't think of that at all as a control of my time. If anything, I see that as getting paid to exercise, which is really handy. So I love doing that. I do love the bar job, but I can feel the cageness of having to be somewhere every Thursday and Friday. It is a limitation on me and I definitely prefer being completely free and being able to listen to my body and be like, Oh, today I'm feeling really productive. So I'm going to get all this stuff done. And then, on other days, I need to take the day off. I feel like my week being broken up with having To actually go into a job does kind of mess with that a little bit. I am a lot less productive here than I used to be. I think that's for a mixture of reasons. Part of it is because I did imagine that I'd, retired, but it was also cause I needed to slow down because we all need to slow down. The level of production and speed with which we work is just too much. I'm not the only person who thinks like this. there is actually a bit of a movement around this and I'm going to be interviewing Rachel Taylor next week. He's a friend of mine and she's doing work around this revolution of rest she had an installation at Shangri La this year at Glastonbury festival. I met her at Glastonbury a few years ago and I love her work. I'm looking forward to introducing you to her. She's a brilliant human being. there's also a. magazine called the idler magazine. this was set up by someone called Tom Hodgkinson, who's a friend of mine I am going to try and interview him at some point. He's brilliant. He was a journalist. He worked for some of the big papers. writing for some of the broadsheets and then just went, you know what, this nonsense and he left and he set up his own magazine called idler magazine. there was also the idler academy which was a coffee bookshop in London and they'd have workshops and talks and things and there is still an academy now but it's online but you can do workshops and things and it's just brilliant i highly recommend look up google idler or whatever search engine you want to use look up idler magazine because it's just it's lovely Languid, beautiful articles chatting about skills and things that you do in your idle time, like crochet nature walks sailing beekeeping, that kind of thing. Michael Palin and people like that write for him and it's just a really lovely space to be in when you're reading these books. Articles that are about enjoying your time and making the most of your life. I've got the manifesto here. I'll read this to you. How to be idle, the manifesto. The religion of industry has turned human beings into work robots. The imposition of work discipline on freewheeling dreamers enslaves us all. Joy and wisdom have been replaced by work and worry. We must defend our right to be lazy. It is in our idleness that we become who we are. It is when lazy that we achieve self mastery. Jobs rob our time. Productivity and progress have led to anxiety and unease. Technology imprisons as it promises to liberate. Careers are phantoms. Money is a mind forged. We can create our own paradise. Nothing must be done. With freedom comes responsibility. Stay in bed. Be good to yourself. Inaction is the wellspring of creation. Art, people, life, bread, bacon, beer. Live first, work later. Time is not money. Stop spending. Quit your job. Study the art of living. Live slow. Die old. Embrace nothing. Know nothing. Do nothing. Be idle. And I even find that uncomfortable to hear. It's like, quit your job? What? I listen to it and I'm like, you're right, actually I'm gonna do it. I remember having a really funny conversation with my aunt once, she's a distant aunt, and so her daughter's a distant cousin once removed or something. she was sat with her daughter, and we were all having food, she said, Oh, you know, like homeless people, or people that sign on and don't have jobs. And I said, I have absolutely no problem with people signing on and not having a job. And she said, What? And I said, Well, you don't have to worry about them. You know, they're just sitting around getting stoned. I mean, they didn't choose to be born, did they? They didn't ask to be alive. They don't want to work. Why should they have to work? They're not the ones to worry about. It's the ones who are busy building bombs and have big red buttons. They're the people you need to worry about. a human being who's sat in a hammock smoking a spliff is no concern to me. It's the piggy faced Bastards with big red buttons that you've got to watch out for. the more people sit down and do nothing, the better. We invented work. We invented toil. None of this is necessary. Reality is completely made up. So that's what I wanted to, introduce the concept of. it's a struggle. And it's. been useful to think about it today and to then come and talk to you about it because I've really struggled today. I've got a huge to do list and I haven't got very much time and I'm beating myself up and I socialized quite a lot this weekend when actually I've been planning to stay in and work but that's what I needed, what my body wanted to do, it's what I decided to do in the moment. I don't regret it, I had a really good time. I'm also then feeling guilty about all the things that I need to do but half of it I don't get paid for You know, it's up to me. It's my weekend. It's a weekend for goodness sake. the other thing that's awesome about the Idol magazine is it has a snail for its logo and I love it. I'm getting it tattooed on my foot. The snail is my totem animal. So, as I mentioned the ADHD aspect of me, I've got some friends who are like a family the O'Briens. Shout out to the O'Briens. I love you all. The boys all have ADHD, probably the girls as well, the boys, it's very obvious they've got ADHD. that was diagnosed and they knew they had it. 15, 20 years ago. I've known them a long time now. So it was before the big everyone now has ADHD thing happened, which is you know, I've got no problem. I think it's a good thing. they were one of the early people to get diagnosed and I just found that I fitted in with them, they felt like home because I could be loud and fast and not feel like I had to hold myself back or be measured it felt like I could be free when I was with them. And they all said, you've got ADHD. So even though I've never been diagnosed, I've had this thought for about 20 years For me, the snail is my absolute opposite. my totem animal. It's a gypsy. It carries its home on its back. It gets to go wherever it wants. It gets to have sex with whomever it wants because it's hermaphrodite. I'm definitely a mixture of male and female. they move slowly, and they enjoy the ride, smell the flowers, chomp on the cabbage, and just litter around the place. there's an amazing scene from a film called Microcosmos, which is one of my absolute favourite films ever. I managed to get it on DVD the other day, but you can't get it online anywhere. there's a scene in there where the snails make out and it's the most glorious scene. It used to be on a KitKat advert a while ago. it's set to this beautiful operatic music. they are embracing and their little antennas are touching each other and pinging back. it literally looks like one of them bends one over whilst they're snogging. And they're just sliding their bodies together and rippling. And it's Absolutely brilliant. There's also really good slug sex which is David Attenborough. If you google Leopard slugs. David Attenborough, oh my god, they end up hanging from a string of slime and spiralling together and turning into a bright neon flower. It's actually crazy. So, yep, I'm well into my Slimy insect. Sex. but yeah. The snail is my totem animal. it teaches me to slow down and enjoy the ride. And when I've got my tent It had a little snail logo on it and that made me really happy. And when I do the pilgrimages, I very much feel like a snail with my shell on my back with all my worldly possessions. Me and my brother used to play a game when we were little where we'd crawl around the floor in our duvets with just our heads sticking out and pretend to be snails. then we'd go into our duvets and pretend we had bowling alleys and arcade games and watch a film and do all the sound effects of us being in the cinema eating our popcorn and stuff. So yes, this is a checking with myself and also a hopeful nudge to all of you to think about what you learned or what the pandemic showed you in terms of stopping and just seeing if there are ways that we can slow down. Because the more of us that do it. The slower things will become for everybody. This whole labor saving devices and internet and all this stuff has just made everything faster. it hasn't saved us time and we don't all need to be working. I'm absolutely 100 percent behind a universal, basic wage so that everyone, you can just not work. And then you can choose what you do instead of having to do a job, because if you just have your basic needs met, so enough money for rent and food and bills, and then you do whatever you feel like doing, because robots and AI 90 percent of everything anyway. And so we need to change. The way we work, there's no point in us having to work for money, which is all made up anyway. We could all just be being artists because that's the bit that robots can't do, although they can. And I know there's a whole hoo ha about them doing things and they are useful. I'm using AI. I think it's actually very useful. I'm not using it for a Google search because it uses up loads of power and heat and water to use AI. So I'm only using it for proper tasks. don't just use it willy nilly, but it's really useful. And it's like any technology when it first came out, like, the camera, when that first came out, everyone thought that paintings and portrait painting would, it was going to destroy that. And people got upset because suddenly they could be captured being in places and no, people didn't all obviously necessarily want that. And so that was, that was a huge hoo ha when photography came out. it's just us getting used to it. getting used to new technology. Reducing the number of human jobs all the time. And we need to change the way our economy runs because of that. we've just got it drummed into us that we need to work and that it's a badge of honor, but no one's going to be standing over your grave. when you die going, Oh, well done for working so hard. Oh, they were such a hard work. I don't want anyone to be saying that on my flipping funeral. Oh, they worked so hard. Yeah, no, that's not what I want for my life. You get one life, let's make this worth living. something else that I've, learnt to do is to enjoy winter. the way that I do that is through creation hibernation. January especially, I feel like November, December, it's lots of partying, lots of things going on. It's fun and busy. And then January, you really can get away with completely hiding. And that's when I write my https: otter. ai I'm very excited. I'm going to write the second book in my Walking with Autumn Seeds series. I wrote the first one last year. I'm trying to get it published. I'm getting close to self publishing it. I'm holding out a little bit of hope for a publisher that I've sent it to, but if not, then I'm going to self publish that. And then I'm writing the second one this winter. There's going to be four. They're covering the pilgrimages that I've walked across the UK and I loved doing that over last winter. It was a real joy and I'm doing it again this winter for the second one and I'm also going to be recording the three books that I've had published which is The Girl That Ruled The World, Neverworn and Sisterhood. I'm going to turn them into audiobooks over the winter because now I've got all the recording equipment for this podcast it means that I'm able to do that and I'm also going to start a Sark podcast which I'm only going to do one a month, but I'm going to make it into a podcast. really fun radio show type thing and doing interviews I think we'll do a just a minute and different little programs that will be fun to get to know people on the island and as a way of celebrating how lovely this community is. So I'm looking forward to doing that. by doing that and stopping overwinter and giving yourself that permission to just go inwards and create, I now look forward to it, like I can't wait for January. Also, me and Dizzle really lose ourselves in each other's love and have a lovely time and that's just delicious as well. It was one of my favourite months of this year We had a delicious time together and it was so lovely. This house is very much a wintry house, got a lovely big fireplace the windows are, north facing so we don't get huge amounts of light. but we have got a veranda which is nice because in the summer I can sit out on the veranda it's like we get an additional room in the summer but our windows look out over trees we're quite high up in the way that the land then It's in the garden outside. And so it looks like we're in a sort of tree house, kind of an Ewok house, which I like. And yeah, it's a really cosy space to be, so it's lovely being here in the winter with the fire on and the cats and just chilling out. So yeah, all these different ways to slow down and enjoy the ride and make the most of our time here on Earth. it's a pleasure to be here and we're very lucky. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. If you enjoy this podcast, consider supporting me on Patreon. You can find me at patreon. com forward slash Jolie Rose. There's two tiers. So just for a few pounds, you can support the podcast, which I thoroughly appreciate. And it's like you've bought me a pint in the pub, or in fact, it's significantly cheaper than a pint in the pub in the UK. maybe like a cup of tea or something. And It means I can create this work for free, for those who can't afford it, you're being generous and kind. supporting those people who haven't got the money and supporting me as an artist. And then there's a higher tier, which is seven or eight pounds. I think it's seven pounds. that one, you also get the videos of the podcast. So you get to see me in my onesie today and my new Mohican haircut, which I just cut. And when I interview people, you get to see the interviews and there's other things I put on. Posts as well, like exclusive content that I post up there. So if you want to access that, then go on over to Patreon and support me. I will be extremely grateful because it does mean that I hopefully at some point we'll be able to not necessarily work in a pub. Although I do really enjoy it, but you know, it'd be nice to know that I don't have to do it. My immersion weekend is full, so that's awesome. We've got a group of lovely ladies coming over for Samhain in a couple of weekends time and we're going to be losing ourselves in the yumminess of the autumn season when the veil is thinnest and enjoy being on this beautiful island for that special moment in time. I am doing a gig in Guernsey for those of you who live in the Channel Islands, the Kooky Club is starting up again, which is It's a brilliant event that I love being part of. I'm the interviewer, and I interview special secret guests every month. We have high tea, which is delicious, and we're always housed in beautiful venues. For this one coming up, which is on the 21st of November, it's in Candy Gardens, and it's going to be part of the at the Museum event. We're going to have a secret guest and we'll have high tea and I'll be interviewing someone it would be wonderful if you were able to come and join us. that's Candy Gardens on the 21st of November. do come along if you live in Guernsey or are able to come over from one of the other islands. Thank you so much. And now on with the show. thinking about rest and permission to rest, this is a red tent day. This is the first day of my bleed and I would like to explore menstruation, in more detail. I've got someone in mind who I'd like to interview who helps you talk through your period cycle and imagines it as seasons. she's wonderful. she designed her own menstruation cup called the Libby cup. her name's Heather Sanderson. I'm going to, See if I can interview her at some point. She's one of the pilgrims that came on one of the pilgrimages with me. but yeah, thinking specifically about rests, I'm gonna pull a rune. Necessity. So, this is Nara's, Nazoo's. I never know how to pronounce them. My friend Scarlett's really good at pronouncing them. she was one of the priestesses that came with me to Boomtown and was on the podcast She knows how to pronounce all of these, but it's the Rune of Necessity. I used to not necessarily, find this rune a positive rune. And then I flipped the script on it and realised that actually, sometimes, necessity's an important thing. So when I thought of necessity before, because I always draw symbols, I have a piece of cloth that I do my readings on. In the early days when I didn't know the runes off by heart I would have, I had the alphabet written down the sides of the cloth and I had little symbols to remind me what each of the runes meant. And for necessity I had beggar, with a begging bowl and I had a sense of it being this needy thing, like it was needing something. What I've come to realise, what this really means to me now, is some things are necessary, like rest. It is necessary, and we just don't appreciate how necessary it is. I think a lot about the hunter gatherer stuff. I'm actually listening to an audiobook at the moment called Money, by David McWilliams. It's brilliant. It's talking about money in a way that resonates with me from a human history perspective. And actually, because I'm on a journey at the moment, changing my relationship to money is a big thing for me. Because it's the root of my greatest pain. in my head, it's the reason why my parents split up, which was the biggest wrench in my life. the big crack from childhood was my parents splitting up. I remember it being because of money. My mum says that that's not. really true but from my experience at the time it felt like it was led by money I've always hated money and have a really poor person head I feel working class and fight for those causes, I fight to speak up for people who are less privileged, even, you know, I hope to stand up for people less privileged than myself, but I also try and be aware of privilege and where I am in the pecking order I'm in a very privileged position being a white woman in the British Isles, having an English passport I get how high up the pyramid we actually are. The money thing is like the big mountain in my otherwise well tilled soil, I'm always looking for things to work on and delve into and shadow work and all that And I've just constantly been ignoring the big mountain of money. It's not, it'd be nice if it was a mountain of money, the big mountain that is money, which is the thing that I've not looked at. All these years and I'm currently being called to by the universe a multitude of things going and now it's time for you to look at money. All right then. And yeah, I'm exploring how I can earn it be comfortable with it and work with it in a way that's productive and invites it in this book's been really good because it's made me realize, and it's something he talks about that People do things with money, it's not money. good people do good things with money. Bad people do bad things with money. It's the people, not the money. And money is just an amazing thing. And it popped up from us having settlements. pre settlements, when we were hunter gatherers, if you were swapping something or needed something, you would be sharing it amongst each other. people would know that they owed you a favor or whatever, like it was all just understood amongst you. when we started settling, and farming, the groups became too big and the people might have been strangers. so you went beyond the capacity of just knowing and trusting something had to change. fill the gap between, you know, how do you put a value on someone making shoes and having shoes to someone growing and having apples? how many apples for a shoe, you how does that all work out? And obviously that depends on how good the harvest was or how many shoes have been made. There might be shoemakers and a really bad harvest. Apples might be really rare and special. Money fills the gap. he describes it as an element. first of all, we tamed fire. We learned to use fire. And the next thing we did was we created money. We created the element of money That began with being grain and stuff. It was measured in bowls of grain, or notches on wood or bone remembering what was owed The first human name ever recorded was for a loan. the first ever written down name of a human being that's ever been found is someone borrowing something. it's a credit note. we've been doing this forever. as soon as we stopped being hunter gatherers, money came about. life got more complicated. it used to be associated with gold or silver, once there were coins, something that was pointed out, which I thought was fascinating, is that as soon as we created coins, it was the first time that people were able to change their So, if you'd been born poor, pre coins, you had no way of making yourself wealthier. wealth, would have been power or just having stuff, But once coins were invented, you could save coins. And coins got you things. if you saved enough coins, you could change your social status. You could buy different clothes. get a better house, whatever it is. it created social mobility, which is fascinating. it's changing my attitude to money and feels necessary, We do need to change the way the world is treating money, as in putting profit before anything else. Why are we doing that? It's just a made up concept and it's not even associated with anything anymore. It doesn't represent gold anymore. It's now just a made up concept. I mean, it's a great useful thing. It's now literally just a made up thing. therefore, why are you so obsessed with your profit and digit numbers that are off the scale that just is kleptomania? Like, what's the point? Why do we not all just have a universal wage and create a fascinating, healthy, beautiful world where we're all thriving and not hurtling towards an iceberg, about to crash and die. I think that rest is necessary. I think that our attitudes to work needs to change. And I think that we, we need to honor our bodies and honor the earth and slow down, think like a snail and slow the hell down. last of all, I want to think about a chaos crusade. this is in honour of the really beautiful soul that was Dr Michael Moseley, who very sadly died earlier this year. He was out walking on holiday, and I think he just had a heart attack and died, and they didn't find him for a few days. It was really sad because he was doing such amazing work. He had a podcast called, just one thing and it was just one thing you could do that would make your life better, like doing yoga or meditation or going for a walk. he's a really gentle, lovely soul. And if you haven't listened to that podcast, I highly recommend it because it is jam packed with useful tips to make your life more pleasurable just simple, lovely things to slow down And he was doing a series called Deep Calm as part of the Just One Thing. it's the episode called Using Music. It's lovely, I highly recommend going to listen to it, he talks about using music to meditate and just listening to music. we have Alexa here, and I'll just say Alexa, play spa music, and we have beautiful, relaxing, massage spa music playing throughout the house when I'm trying to work, because if I have radio or. songs with lyrics, they distract me and I can get lost in them, whereas if I've got instrumental music playing, I can concentrate, also with it being yoga and massaging music, it instantly makes my, nervous system relax because it feels like a spa day I'll light incense and have a nice chill what he was saying is to lie there listen to the music really focus on the notes and just lose yourself in it and you can even count them so you could count the notes notes up to 10 and then start again which is something you can also do with your breathing just let it wash over you and really immerse yourself in it i just remember as a child how much that was normal I used to lie there and listen to albums all the time. I used to dance around my bedroom, making up dance routines. But I regularly used to lie there and listen to music. I'm definitely aware of how much my attention span has changed. I struggled to read books. I did an English Literature degree. the internet only just really had become a thing. I had my first email address when I was at university. I got my first mobile phone when I was at university. wasn't anything like what we have now I'm so happy that I got to have an analogue childhood and that I grew up with technology, I said that to Diz the other day and I grew up with technology as well. And I went, now what I mean is me and technology grew up at the same time as each other. when I was little, it was giant computers and Sinclair Spectrums giant yuppie brick phones and things. The Simpsons began, and all of these things grew up with me. So I've seen the full journey of it going from its starting point to where it is now. it feels like a brother or sister, like we're the same age. I'm not scared of it or intimidated by it. But I can see how much it has affected my attention span. I had to read three or four books a week for my course. now I can't read. I just don't have the time for it. I listen to my books on Audible while I'm cooking or getting a shower. I can't just cook or shower without something playing. I can have an audio book playing whilst I'm writing something, it's ridiculous. I'll be scrolling Instagram and replying to messages or posts and things whilst listening to a podcast. We just try and cram so many things in and do too many things at once. And so yeah, just to keep finding ways to stop. So I do do a little meditation every morning, and I do yoga every morning. that changes my day. The days I don't do it, I feel very stiff and short tempered and just ill at ease. by doing that every day, that really helps. when I do the creation hibernation, I also do a digital detox. I give up social media for a month and I love that. I don't drink and I give up social media and cut everything out so that it's just pure, and it's not necessarily a month as well. Like I keep going, last year, well this year I went to Leicester. So I'll just keep going until I feel like, I'm done. but I love that. we need to take care of our attention span, our space for boredom, and room for our imagination. This was what we were talking about at Boomtown this year, From what is to what if by Rob Hopkins, he was saying that we're not having a climate crisis, we're having a crisis of the imagination now more than ever, we need to imagine a better world. We need to imagine new ways of living. we are groomed into imagining apocalypses and we can all see the future where we're completely screwed because we're seeing it all the time in films that narrative is well known. But for us to see a future where we thrive and survive and fix the rifts between us all and heal and all become human. That's what I dream of is a world where we're. all human and we're all on one planet together and there's no boundaries or borders it's just human beings on planet earth it's for there to be prosperity and shared resources and shared finances and freedom for us to dream and create and, explore space, absolute Bill Hicks here, but space both outwardly and within. We have the capacity for some amazing craziness and we have created this amazing craziness. It is incredible but it's not heading in a good direction. We are heading towards our demise if we carry on along this route, but I have absolute faith. I keep saying to people that it's like a computer game, that you only ever get the end of level bosses that you're capable of fighting. we had fascism, it was a big end of level boss that, the world didn't like. took part in fighting not long ago and the end of level boss that we're fighting now is environmental disaster and complete breakdown for profit, for this crazy speed of work that we're obsessed with for profit and for comfort. And because we don't have the capacity to imagine being able to live in a different way or treating people differently, the laws have all been made up to hold this all in place by the people who several hundred or a thousand years ago, Slayed your ancestors, and, enslaved your ancestors. Unless you're one of the landed gentry, you were at some point subjugated, and your freedom and land was taken from you. So, Everything's been made up to support that staying in place. every single bit of it is made up and we all go along with it because that's our reality, but it's not real. at any point we could go, do you know what? Actually, that's not the way things are anymore. I'm not doing that anymore, enough of us need to do that. it is about being the pixel that you are in the bigger picture. You can't, the whole picture is terrifying and there's a good reason why we have news blasted at us 24 hours a day is to immobilize us and fill us with fear and it feel like Goliath and it'd be an impossible task for us to, to do. challenge this huge edifice that is the reality they're feeding to us, but it's bullshit if you just switch that news off, don't engage with it, you can dip into it, you've, through the grapevine you find out anyway, you don't need it sensationalized and blasted at you all day long. And Change your pixel. Look at the people around you. Look at how you can interact with them. How you can live the best life ever and help and support everyone else too. How you can be the biggest, best version of yourself and support other people to be as well. It's not a competition. we're all in this together. And in the words of the sunscreen song, the race is long and in the end it is only with yourself. And in the words of Andrea, my mentor, comparison is the thief of joy. So enjoy yourself and enjoy your life and immerse yourself in the experience of this beautiful little segment of reality that you've been given. Don't believe the hype, create whatever you want, let it be whatever you want. And the more of us who do this, the picture will change. we just need to work on our pixel and not worry about. Everyone else, they can get on with their pixel. So that's my, Chaos Crusade. It's for you to go listen to this podcast or just lose yourself in listening to music. So put some time aside, put on your, favourite album from when you were a teenager and just listen to it all the way through. lie there and listen to it. Or put on some spa music and meditate and lose yourself and have a nap and let yourself have a lovely juicy nap. please this week have a nap on me I don't know what I'm doing with my life. next week I am talking to Rachel Taylor and we're going to be talking about this subject more and the other amazing activists and activism work that she does. it's given me permission today to own the fact that I've done nothing and that that's OK and my to do list can wait and the world will still turn and everything will be fine. So with that, I am going to have a nice sit down on the sofa, watch a little Strictly Come Dancing, which is amazing this year. The contestants are so good I don't have a clue who's going to win. I'm going to bed early. enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you for listening. I'll speak to you again next week. See you then on Yeah. Please subscribe! I don't know.