Latest / You're Not Too Much / Sudoku Shame, Sandwich Logic and Ridiculous Brains

Transcript

Sudoku Shame, Sandwich Logic and Ridiculous Brains · You're Not Too Much

• 0:00
  If your brain beats you up over very stupid stuff, tell it to
• 0:03
  shove it. I have sudoku shame.
• 0:07
  I make myself feel so bad. Speaking of
• 0:10
  stupid things my brain does to me on the regular.
• 0:15
  All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record 'cause that feels right.
• 0:19
  Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi
• 0:22
  everybody, I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different
• 0:26
  Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that,
• 0:30
  that there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken, and
• 0:33
  the reality is you're just different, and that's fine. I like to
• 0:37
  eat sandwiches that normal people eat, like, for
• 0:41
  lunch for breakfast. I don't usually eat actual breakfast food.
• 0:44
  I'd eat, like, turkey and cheese sandwiches, which isn't that far
• 0:48
  off from a breakfast food in the US, at least. But anyway, and so I
• 0:52
  was making the sandwich, and there's nothing like
• 0:55
  eating salami at, like, 6
• 0:59
  o'clock in the morning. Like, it sets the tone for the day.
• 1:03
  And I did regret it afterward. I was like, I think I'm officially too old
• 1:06
  for this kind of garlic at 6 o'clock in the morning. But anyway, so I
• 1:10
  have just like the turkey sandwich that I eat all the time,
• 1:13
  I have a very specific salami sandwich that I
• 1:17
  eat, which is salami, usually kosher salami,
• 1:21
  on white bread with mayonnaise, and that's it.
• 1:26
  That's it. And I
• 1:30
  cannot tell you when I started eating it. Actually, that's not true.
• 1:33
  That's not true. We were on vacation
• 1:37
  when I was a teenager, and it was the only thing that we had in
• 1:40
  the whole, like, little suite we were in. For some reason, my mom
• 1:44
  bought a, like, a log of salami. I don't know. Anyway,
• 1:48
  so I made a sandwich and I was like, this is good. And then I
• 1:51
  proceeded to eat that forever. So anyway, one time
• 1:55
  I'm making my sandwich and I did not realize that my dad was standing in
• 1:58
  the kitchen with me. And he looks at me and he's
• 2:02
  like, "What kind of sandwich is that?" And I was like, "Salami."
• 2:07
  He goes, "Wait, like salami
• 2:11
  on what?" He's like, "That's white bread." And I
• 2:14
  said, "Yeah, salami on white bread with—"
• 2:19
  mayonnaise. And he goes, salami
• 2:23
  on white bread, white bread with mayonnaise.
• 2:26
  And I was like, yeah, that's how I like my sandwich. And he looks me
• 2:30
  straight in the face and goes, that's antisemitic, and just walks away.
• 2:38
  I was like, well,
• 2:42
  I'm just I'm gonna, just gonna eat my hate sandwich then. It's just
• 2:46
  how I like to eat my sandwich. Apparently it was supposed to
• 2:50
  be on rye bread with mustard, which— ew.
• 2:54
  Ew. I don't mind mustard. Not on that sandwich. I don't want mustard on
• 2:58
  that sandwich. But rye bread, I can't do it. I understand that there's
• 3:02
  something wrong with my DNA coding that I,
• 3:06
  as a Jew person, cannot eat rye bread, but I do not like rye bread.
• 3:09
  It tastes like feet. Tastes like if you mixed
• 3:14
  feet with unground grain.
• 3:19
  I don't like rye bread. Sorry. So anyway,
• 3:22
  that was when my dad nearly disowned me over a sandwich.
• 3:30
  My dad loved me so much that he allowed
• 3:34
  me to live in his house despite my questionable choices. That should really
• 3:38
  be the punchline. So I have a genuine question about
• 3:42
  why brains are weird, or why they're weird in this way particularly.
• 3:46
  Or maybe this is just my brain. I don't know. Why
• 3:50
  does my brain think I hate water? Not like water in a swimming
• 3:54
  pool, like water in a cup. Because I swear to you,
• 3:57
  I will go somewhere and have a glass of ice water, and it will be
• 4:01
  like, what is this delicacy? And how do I get more of
• 4:04
  it? This is delicious. And then
• 4:08
  I go home and it's time to get something to drink and I'm like, blah,
• 4:11
  water, blah, I don't want that, blah. Or like,
• 4:15
  I have a fridge full of seltzer. I like seltzer. I like flavorless
• 4:19
  seltzer, just water and bubbles. It's a very
• 4:22
  Jewish thing. It's— I've drank seltzer my whole life.
• 4:26
  I really enjoy it. I don't
• 4:30
  want that. And then I drink it, and I'm like, this is amazing. Why don't
• 4:33
  I have this more often? Why does my brain
• 4:37
  think that I don't like water? Why is it
• 4:40
  that— that it's like, you definitely need to drink something
• 4:44
  full of sugar and other
• 4:48
  carcinogens, probably,
• 4:52
  instead of going to the fridge that is that
• 4:55
  like literally has access to cold filtered
• 4:59
  water that is delicious every time I drink it. You put a little
• 5:03
  ice in there and it's like, it's amazing. It's every, I
• 5:06
  rediscover it all the time. I'm like, this is so good. I should drink it
• 5:09
  more. And then the next day I'm like, blah,
• 5:13
  blah. Why does my brain do this? Does your brain do this about
• 5:17
  anything, particularly water, but anything? I need to know.
• 5:21
  Because I don't— I just, I would save myself a lot of time and money
• 5:24
  if I would just go to the fridge and get water. But I think about
• 5:27
  drinking water and I'm like, "Blah, gross." And then I drink it and I'm like,
• 5:30
  "Oh, this is quite nice. This is so refreshing. This is certainly more
• 5:34
  refreshing than the big gulp of
• 5:37
  aspartame that my brain wants to drink." And
• 5:42
  so anyway, I just need to know why that happens. And if somebody could fix
• 5:45
  it, that'd be great. Speaking of stupid things my brain does to me
• 5:49
  on the regular, once you start noticing them, it's like everything's a stupid
• 5:53
  thing your brain does to you. And I unfortunately have been paying attention to these
• 5:56
  lately, so this is fun. So
• 6:00
  I, LinkedIn has those like little games that you can play
• 6:03
  now. They're like little, and it used to be
• 6:07
  that they weren't connected to anybody. You would play them and other
• 6:11
  people would play them, but there wasn't like a leaderboard or anything. And you also
• 6:14
  don't have to participate in the leaderboard. Also, nobody pays attention
• 6:18
  to the leaderboard, but there are, I think there
• 6:22
  are 4 of them that I play. They usually take like 30
• 6:26
  seconds a day. This is not like, this is not like me devoting an
• 6:29
  hour to solving logic puzzles every day. Like my life is a logic
• 6:33
  puzzle. I don't need to spend that much time doing ones that are created for
• 6:36
  me, but it is kind of fun to just go on there and
• 6:40
  Whatever. And usually they're very quick and they scratch my brains
• 6:44
  in the way my brain needs to be scratched. And it's, it's very nice. And
• 6:48
  I always like to be under the daily average. So like if
• 6:51
  the daily average was 35 seconds, if I'm 34 seconds or less, I'm
• 6:55
  solid. And not that it matters, but like that's how I
• 6:59
  don't wanna be longer than the daily average. So most of them I like blow
• 7:02
  the daily average outta the water cuz I am I am very good
• 7:06
  at logic puzzles and nothing else. And so most of them I'm like
• 7:10
  way under, but they added a mini Sudoku
• 7:13
  in the last, I don't even know how long it's been a little while now,
• 7:16
  but they added one. I'm pretty bad at the
• 7:20
  Sudoku. Like I think I put way
• 7:24
  too much thought into it and it makes me very slow with the Sudoku. I
• 7:27
  figure it out. Don't get me wrong, I get there. But
• 7:31
  every day I finish the Sudoku and like brace myself
• 7:35
  because I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna be so— I'm gonna be so much
• 7:39
  higher than the average. Oh my God, I'm gonna be mortified. And then I'm like
• 7:42
  a minute— like the average is 1 minute and 52 seconds and I'm like 2
• 7:46
  minutes and 45 seconds. And I'm like, this is the end, this is the end,
• 7:50
  my life is over. How could I possibly— nobody sees
• 7:54
  my fucking Sudoku speed. No one
• 7:58
  knows that I completed the Sudoku. Even if it goes on a
• 8:01
  leaderboard, no one's checking it. It's not like—
• 8:05
  there's no— there I am. I am like deeply mortified
• 8:09
  every day, so much so that I don't even want to play it. Not because
• 8:12
  I don't enjoy it, but because I am
• 8:16
  not fast enough at the Sudoku. This should not
• 8:20
  matter. The shame that I carry, and I wish I was
• 8:23
  joking about this, I have Sudoku shame.
• 8:27
  I make myself feel so bad because I'm not
• 8:31
  fast enough at the Sudoku, and I have to have like a pep talk
• 8:35
  every day. Like, that's just not how the brain works. That's
• 8:38
  okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Nobody else can do
• 8:42
  the snake one in 8 seconds. I can do the snake one in 8
• 8:46
  seconds. That should be enough, right?
• 8:50
  But the idea of some stranger on the
• 8:54
  internet knowing that I am inept at the
• 8:58
  Sudoku gives me a great sense of
• 9:01
  shame. Great enough that I almost don't do the
• 9:05
  Sudoku some days. And that is silly. It
• 9:09
  should not matter. Sudoku shame is not a thing.
• 9:13
  My brain is creating that. My brain is making me feel bad.
• 9:17
  For academia just to see what happens. There is
• 9:21
  no— there's no value to this thing. But
• 9:25
  every day I get done with it and I'm like, is this the day that
• 9:27
  I finally beat it? Then occasionally I do and I'm like,
• 9:32
  I'm getting good at it. And then the next day it
• 9:35
  doesn't matter. It's a brain game. It's just proving that my brain works.
• 9:40
  Brains that work slow still work.
• 9:44
  There's no additional value to my life or to my own person because I
• 9:47
  can do the Sudoku quickly. It's not a thing. It's not a
• 9:51
  thing. Anyway, if your brain beats you up over very
• 9:55
  stupid stuff, tell it to shove it.
• 9:59
  And you can take as long to do the Sudoku as you want, and that
• 10:01
  is more for my need to hear it than it is for yours, but you
• 10:05
  should also take it with you. It's
• 10:09
  just do the Sudoku. It's good for your brain. It might not be good
• 10:13
  for your ego, but it's good for your brain.
• 10:20
  That happened this morning. I was really disappointed in myself. It took me a long
• 10:24
  time to do the Sudoku. I was like, LinkedIn people are
• 10:27
  smarter than I am.
• 10:31
  Either that or they just are better at picking random numbers that happen to
• 10:35
  fit into the mini Sudoku.
• 10:41
  And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's
• 10:44
  Small Talk. Okay, so we have a question from
• 10:48
  Devin in Pasadena, California.
• 10:51
  I'm scared of being seen trying. I'll work really
• 10:55
  hard in private, but the moment something becomes visible,
• 10:59
  I want to disappear. How do you let people see you without feeling
• 11:03
  exposed or ridiculous?
• 11:08
  Man, do I feel this. This is like my whole vibe.
• 11:12
  Like, first off, if I'm not immediately good at something, I don't wanna do it.
• 11:16
  I don't wanna try again. Like, and I see my 7-year-old doing that all the
• 11:20
  time and I'm like, oh, that's not great. Don't do that. Like if, if I
• 11:24
  have to work really hard at something, I immediately assume I'm a failure because I
• 11:27
  wasn't just good at it on the first try, which is like a thing. But
• 11:30
  I have always struggled, always,
• 11:34
  with the idea of looking like I
• 11:38
  think I'm good at something, something that like requires talent
• 11:42
  and that requires trying and it requires vulnerability.
• 11:45
  Because what if you're not good at it?
• 11:49
  What if, like, what if you decide you
• 11:53
  want to sing in front of a bunch of people and then you end up
• 11:57
  not being a good singer? Or, or
• 12:00
  why would— like, what if you made the presumption that somebody wanted to
• 12:04
  listen to you sing and you were wrong? How mortifying.
• 12:08
  That's how I felt. I'm not saying that that's actually true. That's how I always
• 12:11
  felt, is like going out of your comfort zone— not
• 12:15
  even out of your comfort zone, doing something that requires
• 12:18
  eyeballs on you makes the assumption
• 12:22
  that you think you have something to give them, something to offer them that
• 12:26
  they might want to take and, or
• 12:30
  they might want to consume. And that is
• 12:35
  that level of vulnerability. And I say this as somebody who literally shares my
• 12:38
  entire life into a microphone multiple times a week. That level of vulnerability
• 12:42
  feels like the end of the actual world to me, or at least it did.
• 12:46
  In some ways it still does.
• 12:50
  I think you're coming at it from the wrong perspective.
• 12:54
  I think it's not about figuring out how to not feel ridiculous,
• 12:58
  and it's about just getting comfortable feeling ridiculous.
• 13:02
  Like, you're gonna feel ridiculous all the time. I do it constantly.
• 13:06
  But what is the logical outcome? Or like, what's the
• 13:10
  worst thing that comes from you feeling ridiculous? Somebody else thinks
• 13:13
  you're ridiculous? Okay, fuck 'em.
• 13:18
  Most people don't care. Most people are not paying attention
• 13:21
  or they're like, it takes way too much thought to put emotional
• 13:25
  investment into whatever you are doing. They're busy paying attention to their
• 13:29
  own stuff. Nobody's paying attention to you. I actually learned this when I
• 13:33
  very, very start— first started sharing content on the
• 13:36
  internets, which was mortifying to me. And please
• 13:40
  note, I'm talking into a microphone right now that's going to get
• 13:44
  posted on the internet. So that was our starting point.
• 13:48
  I was like, people are gonna read this and they're gonna be mortified that
• 13:51
  I— they're gonna be mortified on my behalf that I thought
• 13:55
  I had anything to say. They're gonna be like, who is this chick?
• 13:59
  Why should I give a crap about what she has to say? She should be
• 14:03
  so embarrassed. And someone very early
• 14:07
  on said to me,
• 14:11
  You're not doing things because you're worried about what people are going to think, and
• 14:15
  they are not thinking about you. They don't
• 14:18
  care. There is nothing that you are doing that they give a
• 14:22
  shit about. And if you do anything big enough
• 14:26
  that they give a shit about, you've done something huge.
• 14:31
  People are not paying attention to you. And also,
• 14:35
  if they are paying attention to you, just to say something
• 14:39
  shitty, why do you care about their opinion if that's the type of
• 14:42
  people they are? So you just get used
• 14:46
  to feeling ridiculous. It's not a bad feeling.
• 14:50
  In fact, once you get used to feeling ridiculous and being comfortable with it, it's
• 14:53
  actually kind of fun. There's a lot of, you
• 14:57
  know, I say this as the person who again, doesn't like to put on
• 15:01
  shoes or pants and leave the house, but that's like
• 15:05
  That's not because I feel ridiculous doing it. That's not because I feel out of
• 15:08
  place. It's because it's a lot of work that I don't want to do.
• 15:14
  It's— if you were like, hey, we're
• 15:17
  going to go to this place and we're going to do a really stupid thing
• 15:20
  and we're going to wear sumo suits and jump around
• 15:24
  like crazy people and sumo wrestle in a
• 15:27
  giant sumo ring, I'd be like, done. Let's
• 15:31
  go do it. Sounds delightful. I'm on board. Because
• 15:35
  when you feel ridiculous, it's because you're probably having fun.
• 15:39
  You're probably moving outside of your comfort zone. You're
• 15:43
  probably doing something that is not anything that
• 15:46
  you don't have any sense memory on. You're not just repeating something over and over.
• 15:50
  You're doing something new. I don't think it's about figuring out how to not feel
• 15:54
  ridiculous. I think it's about figuring out how to do things when you feel ridiculous.
• 15:57
  Feel ridiculous, whatever. People who have negative opinions about
• 16:01
  that can get bent, and the people who love you will
• 16:05
  come be ridiculous with you, and the rest of the people
• 16:08
  aren't gonna be paying attention. And why are you making decisions for yourself
• 16:12
  over the responses of other people who don't matter? They
• 16:16
  don't matter. Go be ridiculous. The world needs a little bit more
• 16:19
  ridiculousness that is not tied to an orange wannabe
• 16:23
  despot with tiny hands. Go be ridiculous.
• 16:31
  He's really sensitive about his tiny hands, so I like to talk about them all
• 16:34
  the time. Also his cankles. Come at me,
• 16:38
  bro. I'd be much more likely to end up with RFK on one of my
• 16:42
  feeds because I talk so much shit about him very directly,
• 16:46
  but I'll take either. That would be like—
• 16:49
  that's the moment where I would die happy. Is when either of them know
• 16:53
  that some random woman with a microphone is talking shit about them
• 16:57
  on the internet without fear. Get fucked. All of a
• 17:01
  sudden, my birth certificate is nonexistent.