Practice Session #21

CK: Heyo! I’m CK and you’re listening to Practice.

I’m your functional systems integrator, and this is my podcast where practice is not just the theme of the show, but the whole purpose behind it. I’m using this platform to practice podcasting, as well as speaking in general, while espousing half-thoughts and providing unsolicited advice.

As always, I am fortunate to be joined by my practice partner and partner in life, Pam.

Hey, it’s CK interrupting this session with a quick programming note. Unfortunately, we lost Pam’s audio for this session, so you’re not going to hear her until the outro where I edited in her voice from a previous recording. I also edited out the silence on my end and replaced it with this record scratching sound sample.

So you’ll hear that where Pam’s audio is. Cut out. Fortunately, you don’t lose too much in terms of the context of the conversation, and we’ll discuss the whole ordeal in the next session. So with that, let’s get back to Practice. Pam is also my pattern awareness manager, and every week we talk about my progress with this practice, along with other lifestyle practices, as well as theories and ideas behind the virtue of practice itself.

Our conversations are unscripted and unedited. We’re really doing this on the fly, so don’t hold me responsible for what I say here. Make sure to check out my show notes where I’ll provide some fact-checking, self-psychoanalysis, and commentary on things I could have done better. You can find this in more information about this project ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

Today we’re recording on Sunday, July 19th, 2020. It is our 24th practice session- or no, I’m sorry, 21st practice session. Getting ahead of myself there.

And so I think we’re gonna go right into the podcasting segment. This is the segment where I talk about my practice with this process of podcasting.

And I think what I’m going to do is kind of loop in our weekly update throughout these segments, instead of just starting out with the weekly update, because it seems like it all just kind of flows together anyway. And so I’m kind of looking at this Practice podcast as a self-reflective process, as we’ve talked about before- and self-reflective and mindfulness process. So, basically the notion is to provide an example for others in how they can do self-reflection for themselves and become more mindful.

And so with podcasting… actually made a ton of progress on the studio side of things. And I know I’ve been talking about this the past couple of weeks, and I always say, you know, “it’s pretty much finished. It’s only a couple of things here and there.. need to eek out.”

But what happened this week is that we had to prepare for visitors. So we were going to entertain visitors for the first time since the pandemic began. And when the pandemic began, this studio was a whole different room, basically.

So over the past few months, as you know, I’ve been changing things around and moving stuff around, building different things within the room, and then tweaking and iterating on things here and there.

And now with having to host guests, I needed to make sure the room was clean and organized enough.

Right. Right, exactly. Thanks for the clarification. So yeah, the studio doubles as our guestroom and other things as well. It’s a multipurpose room.

And so I had a ton of boxes, and this room is attached to our second bathroom. And so the door to the room, I actually had it blocked off with boxes piled up almost all the way to the ceiling. And so I was going through the bathroom to get into this room. So we didn’t have the main door to the room functioning for like the past couple of months.

So it was stuff like that. Uh, basically cleared the whole room out. Cleared everything that didn’t need to be in here, organize everything, put everything away nicely, and made it presentable.

Not that our guests would have cared if it was messy or not, but this was also impetus for me to clean and organize the room, which was something that I’ve been actually wanting to do. Like, kind of do like a complete clean a couple of weeks ago, and it just kept getting pushed back. So it was nice to get it- this event to push me to do all this cleaning.

So the studio looks freaking awesome. Yeah, it’s crazy how different it looks with all this stuff – all the boxes out of the room and the door open – and it looks so much bigger than it did just two days ago.

And it’s clean, and I can get to everything without having to move stuff. And- like, I was playing Tetris every day, moving stuff around, depending on what I needed to use the room for.

So yeah, it’s like, I feel like I can breathe in this room, per se. And so it’s exciting. It’s fun being in here. Not that it wasn’t fun before, but now it’s a whole another level. And so that’s cool.

And in terms of audio for the podcast… still working on that. I’m pretty happy with how it came out last week, during last week’s episode.

On that note, I messed up publishing last week’s episode. Again, for some reason I got through everything and then forgot to add the title. So it didn’t show up in the podcast directories.

So I’m not, I didn’t really look into that. Uh, you know, just kinda thinking off the top of my head, I would have thought it would have showed up as saying no title or something like that, but it didn’t show up at all. And I only checked the service that I use, which is Overcast. So I didn’t check Apple podcasts or any of that, which… I just wasn’t thinking about that kind of stuff at the time.

So that’s why last week session didn’t get published in a timely manner, but I’m really pleased with how my voice is coming out. And I think Pam’s was a little too bright on like the upper-mid range.

So still working on that, tweaking that, and you know, it’s a learning process and the thing is, this is very personal, I guess, or individual in terms of how you want the quality to come out. And oddly enough, Pam and I, right now, we’re using the same mics – not the exact same mic, but the same make and model. We’re each- we have two Blue Yetis that we’re using.

And the audio quality- or not the audio quality, but how our voices come through is so different. And that’s all- that also could be due to the room as well, because we’re both in different rooms. So the sound in the rooms could be different as well.

But with my voice, I am very, like, mid-range. So it’s, it’s actually pretty easy to work with in terms of the audio balance, I guess you could call it. Because usually voices are in like the middle and upper ranges.

And I guess I- I don’t really know what I’m talking about here, but my voice is kind of, I guess, typical in terms of processing vocal audio. And then Pam’s is, I guess your voice is typical for women in terms of being a little higher, obviously. And so I’m working more in the upper range with your audio processing.

So it’s kind of interesting working with the two different voice qualities and the contrast between them because in post, the EQ, or the equalizer, for all the different ranges is going to be different, where I don’t have to mess around with my mid range too much, and I just kind of boost the low a little bit and the high a little bit, which is a pretty typical EQ for voice.

But Pam, because her voice is in the upper range, I have to tamp down the upper range a little bit and bump up the lower range a little more. And then the middle range is what I’m having issues with right now, trying to figure out where her voice sits in that mid range. So still working on that.

And I think it’s that upper-mid range that I need to work on right now. But yeah, I mean, it’s all individual, like I said before. And it’s, I mean, for me, it’s just fun messing around with this kind of stuff. And I- I don’t know what it is, but I just really like listening to these- to the differences and making it sound like how I want it to sound.

So that’s just what I like to do. So we’ll see…

I guess we’ll see how it comes out this week, but this week I’m- I think I’m going to work on a lot of other things as well in terms of content and stuff overall with Forces of Equal, and Practice, and also Not Bad Advice.

Um, on that front, with Not Bad Advice, I got a little behind. I would have liked to have gotten a trailer out or had a trailer pretty much completed and ready by this weekend, but with having to get ready for visitors and stuff and other things that came up, that got pushed back a little bit.

But hopefully we’ll get that up and out within the next week. I think I can do that. And I feel like I have a lot of stuff that are- that’s almost ready. So I’d like to see how I go about in terms of completing those things. And I feel really good about this week, and I think it has a lot to do with how the studio has come about and how everything’s just clean and organized right now and I can just get to everything.

So I think my workflow’s going to be pretty dialed in- pretty well dialed in this coming week. So I’m excited about that. And let’s see, can you think of anything else?

Yeah. That’s okay.

So let’s move on to freetalking, which is the segment where I make tangent salads out of the half-thoughts that are floating around in my mind. And do you want to talk about why your brain’s kind of fizzled out right now?

Yeah. Pam keeps accidentally running a lot more than we set out to lately.

Yeah. So I kinda was itching to run today because I missed my run on Friday because I missed my beach day on Tuesday. So, I ended up going to the beach on Friday.

And I missed my beach day on Tuesday because our- on our run last week, we did a sprint at the end. And I was going barefooted on the street – and I don’t think I’ve ever sprinted barefooted on the street before, so I didn’t really think about it – and it felt fine during the sprint- I felt fine during the sprint.

But the next day, I had some soreness in my foot, and then it got worse throughout the day. And then I was limping really bad, I could barely walk. And I was- I thought it might’ve been an effect of the fascial issue I was having in weeks prior, because it was- it’s the same foot. And it’s just around the same area, actually, my big toe.

And then I remembered the sprint and I was slamming my feet down pretty hard on the asphalt – and remembered that that was why. And so I skipped the beach because I could barely walk and then worked on my foot throughout the week. And it got better, really fast.

Like, I worked on it really hard on Monday and Tuesday and by Wednesday it was almost a hundred percent, probably 90, 95%. And now it feels great. Like, I don’t feel much of the injury at all.

And so I went to the beach on Friday and then today I wanted to get out on the street for a run and it felt good up until two miles. And then when Pam wanted to go further, I started feeling it in my ankle. So I worked it out a little bit after our run and it feels fine now, so we’ll see how that goes.

But yeah, up until two miles, I was feeling great because the thing is I felt a little twisted throughout the week. My body – like, my fascia throughout my body felt like I was a little twisted., And throughout the run, like, I personally don’t listen to music or anything while I run, I just kind of meditate on my footfall and my breath and my vision.

So, I was doing that through the run, and I was feeling really, really good through two miles. And I felt like I was getting aligned, and I was getting the proper signals up through my feet. So I think it’s doing good for the issues that I’ve been having with my body lately. So we’ll see how that goes.

But on that note, let me run through my supplement protocol that I went through today.

So I did molecular hydrogen and that’s to hydrate my tissues theoretically, but I’m not sure. Maybe there’s more placebo in that than not, but did the molecular hydrogen. And I forgot to take Qualia Mind the nootropic, but I feel okay. I feel pretty good. Today, on Sundays, is usually the only day that I take it.

And I’m not sure if I feel a difference right now having not taken it. But I also had a really good night of sleep last night. I missed my nap yesterday because we had guests. So I ended up sleeping really well through the night. So that may help in terms of my brain function, so that it’s mitigating my not taking the Quality Mind.

And then I took ketone esters today. And I don’t take it for the run. Before I would take it for soccer, so I would take it for physical activity, but now I take it more for the nootropic effects and brain supplementation. Versus Pam who’s taking it more for the physical results or physical aspects of it.

So, I think that’s all I took today. Right now. I’m sipping the last of my cold brew. So I get a little caffeine and maybe that’s also mitigating me not taking quality of mind.

So yeah, I feel pretty good today. And I think that’s all I have to say about that. So, yeah. So in terms of other topics, Let’s see, do you have anything you want to talk about or..?

Okay. So I think I maybe want to noodle around about having guests yesterday. And so just to be clear, we haven’t seen- or, I mean, we haven’t had guests since the beginning of the pandemic and, yeah. True. True.

Yeah. So it was kind of something that we were preparing for. The- all of last week or, I mean, I always kind of preparing for it all last week. I kind of planned out when I wanted to get the room organized and cleaned out and thinking about, well, you know, what’s going to happen when the guests come over and all that stuff.

So it’s a new stimulus, all these new stimuli in terms of…

Yeah, it was really interesting. And like, we would think about this stuff and kind of prepare, but then it’s different once it’s actually happening and it’s easy to fall into old habits and routines. So, yeah, it was interesting, but I think, you know, all in all, it was easy and it went off fine and it was great to see our friends and it was a-

I mean, they were here for Pam. It was more of a girls weekend deal, but I got to piggyback in benefit off of some of it.

But I think maybe I also want to kind of talk about the whole general mindset of what’s going on with the pandemic. So like you said, we were, like, the group- our group, the gals that we had over and us, we know that we’re taking all the proper precautions and we’re marry- wearing masks when we go outside and we’re keeping our distance.

And us, in our group, we’re not even leaving our house if we don’t have to, you know, we’re staying home we’re staying in place and

Yeah. We haven’t been in restaurants, we’re not going to bars, we’re not really- we’re not shopping or anything like that.

Right. Yeah. So it’s interesting how there’s such a big contrast between people who are taking precautions and people who basically act like nothing’s going on.

So we were talking about some of this yesterday, and the thing is like, I don’t know, I don’t want to come off as being preachy or condescending or something, but it all goes back to the system.

Like, you have to think about the system. It’s not an individual thing. And like so many- I’m hearing so many things about people not wanting to wear masks because it’s- it infringes on their personal liberties. And- but this is why we have to have like rules and regulations, because people aren’t thinking mindfully about what actually goes into these policies.

You know, if people were being competent and intelligent and smart and going about things in an intelligent manner, we wouldn’t have to have all these rules and regulations, but there are smarter people who study these things and take into account the whole system, rather than just you, the individual, in terms of how to make the whole society better.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s crazy. And I don’t really know what I want to say about it. I just know that I should start asserting my own knowledge and intelligence into this because there’s another notion that I’ve been getting more and more comfortable with, which is that, you know, things happen randomly and things happen by chance. And there’s a whole spectrum of things that can happen.

It all goes back to spectral potentiality and it’s also beneficial for all of these things to happen across the entire spectrum so that we have the knowledge and information to improve and proceed with the better part of that spectrum.

And so, you know, there has to be, and there will always be unconsciously incompetent people or unconsciously incompetent acts. You know, mindless stuff going on. And it’s going to happen. It’s going to be there and it always be there.

But at the same time, there’ll always be mindful acts, and conscious thought, and critical thinking, and people that are doing that. And I’d like to think that I’m on that side of the spectrum.

And so we have to assert ourselves into the system in order to influence it towards the part of the spectrum that we think is better, and the part of the spectrum that we would like the general society to trend toward.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Right. Cause right now there’s like a preponderance of emotional reactions, and it goes into everything. I mean, politics, business… they’re creating narratives and stories to act on your emotions, which engages your primitive brains and system one thinking – passive thinking, you know, unconscious thinking – so that you do whatever they want you to do.

And so we have to engage our evolved brains – system two thinking, mindful thinking, you know, our prefrontal cortex and executive function – because we have that ability and we can reason through things and think rationally. So, yeah, I think that’s just what I wanted to say. You know, there’s better thinking available to us.

So it also goes into my VAST awareness protocol, you know, vectors across systems and time. You have to think how your actions will influence the system. So think about what the world would be like if everybody acted the way that you acted. And I mean, it’s not realistic, but it’s a good thought exercise to get you to think from a wider perspective.

Same thing with the time aspect. Think about what the world would be like if you acted- or, you know what life for you would be like if you acted the way you’re actin for a long period of time – for like five years or something like that. Or combine the two, think about, wow, the world would be like, if everybody acted the way you acted for the next couple of years.

And what I’m thinking is okay. If everybody wore a mess for the next three weeks, when they left their home, we’d pretty much be over this whole pandemic. I mean, you know, not a hundred percent, but significantly over the curve in order to pretty much just snuff it out.

So yeah, I mean, yeah, we’re going back to spectral potentiality and VAST awareness and complex systems. And you should know that I love talking about that kind of stuff. And so maybe I can come up with something better around those things next week.

I know I keep hinting about paedomorphosis and form versus function. And I keep- I come up with little things here and there throughout the week that relate to it that I could talk about, but I-

Something else that I want to do… I kind of feel a pull towards journaling. So maybe- I did start jotting things down more often when I have random thoughts, but I kind of feel a pull towards writing a little more. So I don’t know. Maybe I’ll start trying to add or experimenting with that a little bit.

And I know I’ve been kind of slacking with my commentary in the show notes. So I kind of want to get back to that because maybe that’s why I feel a pull towards journaling. Cause I kind of feel a pull towards that self-reflective process. So we’ll see how it goes. But I think that’s all I have for this week.

Do you have anything else that you want to add?

Pam: Nope. I’m all good.

CK: Cool. Well, before we leave off, where can people find you?

Pam: You can find me on Twitter, where I am @Pamela_Lund

CK: And you might be able to find me on Twitter @cKdisco. We’ll see if I can get back to that a little more this week, too.

And so thank you for joining us this week for this session of Practice. And you can find more information about Practice at ForcesOfEqual.com.

And I hope you come back next week and keep on practicing.

To-da-loo!