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Brain Fog and Existential Dread: Why I Can't Find My Words · You're Not Too Much

• 0:00
  I ended up somewhere else.
• 0:01
  I started answering an email, completely forgetting that my responsibility at
• 0:06
  that point in time was to click a link in the right browser and join for the
• 0:12
  people who were literally waiting for me.
• 0:15
  There is this simmering, constant, just below the surface anxiety that is with
• 0:22
  you all the time, especially if you have one or more people who you are
• 0:27
  responsible for who do not have somebody else there as a set of eyes all the time.
• 0:33
  I don't even remember where I got these kids.
• 0:36
  They just showed up one day as far as I'm aware.
• 0:39
  I don't know where I g- I don't know, I don't know where I… Where did I get…
• 0:43
  I don't know where I got this… Boop.
• 0:45
  Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken Network, a podcast
• 0:49
  about how you're not too much, they're not enough, space expands, so let's fill it.
• 0:59
  Okay, I don't wanna brag.
• 1:00
  I don't wanna brag.
• 1:02
  I'm, in general, a pretty humble person, except when I'm completely
• 1:04
  not at all humble, which happens occasionally, and women do not have
• 1:08
  a reason they need to be humble.
• 1:10
  But I'm generally pretty humble.
• 1:11
  But I don't wanna brag, but recently it has occurred to me that I am very advanced
• 1:18
  for my age, just exceptionally advanced.
• 1:22
  I have trouble with word finding, and my short-term memory is absolutely gone.
• 1:27
  And so I have the cognitive capacity of somebody well beyond my
• 1:33
  years, and that is to say limited.
• 1:37
  Very limited.
• 1:38
  I don't remember what word I was trying to say the other day.
• 1:41
  It was grass.
• 1:41
  I was trying to come up with the word for grass.
• 1:44
  Trying to explain something to my kid while standing outside of my mother's
• 1:48
  house using the word grass, and I could not remember the word for grass.
• 1:54
  I think it ended up coming out lawn, which is still right, but wasn't
• 1:57
  exactly right in that context.
• 2:00
  It's just like things don't come to my mouth.
• 2:02
  Like, they're just, they're there, and I can tell that they're there, and
• 2:05
  I can like almost grab them. But also they're words, and they're not actually
• 2:11
  tactile, and so there's nothing to grab.
• 2:14
  But, like, you can feel them clamoring around in this big, empty head I got.
• 2:19
  But, like, the recall, man, like, getting them to come out of my
• 2:23
  mouth when I know they're there.
• 2:26
  And, like, my entire skill set is words.
• 2:29
  That's it.
• 2:30
  I've got nothing else going for me.
• 2:32
  And I try to say things, and it's
• 2:37
  blah, blah.
• 2:39
  And then sometimes it comes out, sometimes it doesn't.
• 2:42
  Sometimes I literally have to say, "There's a smart people word for that,
• 2:46
  but I don't know what it is." And, like, I probably could talk to a doctor, but if
• 2:52
  you've asked other women what it's like to talk to a doctor when their brains
• 2:56
  kinda start to fall apart at, like, my age, which is late 30s, early 40s.
• 3:01
  I already know I have anxiety.
• 3:03
  I don't need a doctor to tell me that.
• 3:04
  This isn't anxiety.
• 3:05
  I can tell you what's anxiety.
• 3:07
  It's not that.
• 3:08
  I've got anx- You want some anxiety?
• 3:09
  I've got extra.
• 3:10
  I can share it with you.
• 3:11
  It's not anxiety.
• 3:13
  I do need to exercise more, but that's not it.
• 3:15
  Is it perimenopause?
• 3:17
  Is it the crushing existential dread of this godforsaken timeline?
• 3:23
  Is it the sheer number of people who need things from me at any given time?
• 3:29
  I do not know.
• 3:31
  But I will say that I went to get on this recording earlier.
• 3:35
  When we have to record, I get a link, like, a couple minutes
• 3:37
  before the recording that takes you to, like, the recording room.
• 3:42
  I don't know.
• 3:43
  It's very fancy.
• 3:43
  You'll have to ask Neal how it works, but … I actually know how it works.
• 3:46
  I just don't wanna explain it.
• 3:47
  Anyway, but I go- went to get on the recording, and I use Safari usually,
• 3:52
  but it doesn't work on Safari.
• 3:54
  20% of the time I remember to open it in Chrome, and I feel like, "Oh, I finally
• 3:58
  got it. I finally remembered, and now I'm gonna remember every other time."
• 4:02
  No, that resets immediately afterward, immediately afterward.
• 4:06
  So the next time I'm definitely getting on it and s- trying to get on in
• 4:08
  Safari, and then I get the prompt that says, "Doesn't work in Safari," and
• 4:10
  then I have to switch over to Chrome.
• 4:12
  It's not that big a deal.
• 4:13
  I'm making it sound a whole lot more involved than it is.
• 4:15
  But the point being that today I got the link, clicked, it went to Safari.
• 4:20
  Safari was like, "You really haven't learned this yet?" And
• 4:22
  I'm like, "Shut up, Safari." Close Safari or that tab in Safari.
• 4:27
  God knows I do not close Safari.
• 4:29
  That, that would be, like, the literal end of my life.
• 4:32
  Every functioning thought I have is in one of those tabs. Do not close my tabs.
• 4:38
  But between closing Safari, going back to the email, clicking the link to
• 4:46
  open in Chrome, I saw a shiny object.
• 4:49
  I ended up somewhere else.
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  I started answering an email.
• 4:54
  I started responding to some Slack messages that came in, completely
• 4:58
  forgetting that my responsibility at that point in time was to click a link
• 5:04
  in the right browser and join for the people who were literally waiting for me.
• 5:10
  So I'm just sitting here like, "Do-pa do-pa doo. I'm gonna get these things
• 5:14
  done." And then I do the, "Oh, shit," and go, "Where am I supposed to
• 5:18
  be? I'm supposed to be somewhere." Oh, shiny object in the middle of a
• 5:22
  literal three-second chain of events that was supposed to happen, where
• 5:27
  I forgot where I was supposed to be.
• 5:29
  That is what it is like being inside of my brain right now.
• 5:35
  There are so many people who need things from me.
• 5:39
  There are so many things to remember.
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  I'm not great at remembering things on my very bestest day.
• 5:47
  I've been that way my whole life.
• 5:49
  I've been the absent-minded professor my whole life.
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  I will get lost in thought and disappear, and you will have to bring me back with a
• 5:59
  firm snap or a, a chili dog or something.
• 6:02
  I've always just been elsewhere.
• 6:05
  But man, this timeline, I literally have to text my mother a couple
• 6:09
  times a week and say, like, "What appointments do we have this week?"
• 6:12
  And they're already on my calendar.
• 6:13
  Oh, and if you don't put things on my calendar, dead to me.
• 6:16
  If it's not on my calendar, it doesn't exist.
• 6:19
  Doesn't exist.
• 6:21
  I remember when I was just out of high school, I went shopping, and I bought
• 6:25
  a bunch of new clothes, and I put them in a special place in my closet 'cause
• 6:29
  they were my special new clothes, and they were so cute, and I loved them all.
• 6:32
  And I had them for a while, and I could go through my entire closet and say,
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  "I got that from Ross Dress For Less, and it cost $7.99, and it has pockets."
• 6:45
  "I got that from Express, and I got it 50% off, and it has pockets."
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  Pockets are a thing.
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  I got… And I could literally go through my whole closet and tell
• 6:55
  you where I got everything, what I paid for it, how long I've had it.
• 6:58
  I don't even remember where I got these kids.
• 7:01
  They just showed up one day, as far as I'm aware.
• 7:04
  I don't know where I got… I don't know, I don't know where I… Where'd
• 7:07
  I get… I don't know where I got this.
• 7:08
  Where'd I find Neal?
• 7:09
  I don't know.
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  I don't know.
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  I'm walking around in a constant fog, and part of it is this timeline
• 7:16
  is insane, and we are constantly being inundated with things that
• 7:22
  we should not have to think about.
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  We should not be making decisions between putting gas in our
• 7:27
  car and buying groceries.
• 7:29
  We should not be making decisions between prescriptions and paying rent.
• 7:34
  Those are not decisions we should have to make.
• 7:36
  We should not be walking around in terror that these things that
• 7:40
  are already markedly worse than they were a year ago are going to
• 7:43
  continue to get as such, or get worse.
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  There is a crushing existential pressure from this timeline as we're watching
• 7:54
  things just get harder at baseline.
• 7:57
  It is harder to pay rent.
• 7:58
  It is harder to find work.
• 8:01
  It is harder to buy groceries.
• 8:03
  Also, what can you even eat?
• 8:05
  Because there's poop on the lettuce.
• 8:07
  There's poop on the lettuce.
• 8:09
  They recalled tofu.
• 8:11
  There's barely food in tofu.
• 8:13
  They recalled tofu 'cause it had ink on it?
• 8:16
  What?
• 8:16
  They're recalling all the food.
• 8:19
  If it's fresh and healthy, you can't get it, because who knows
• 8:23
  what's on it, because they went and stripped back all of the regulations
• 8:26
  that you use to keep food healthy.
• 8:29
  And then the Taylor Farms did a recall, and instead of following
• 8:33
  through with the recall, they just went and paid Trump off so that he
• 8:38
  said that they're, "Oh, what recall?
• 8:39
  No.
• 8:40
  It was a false positive.
• 8:41
  It was definitely a false positive." That's the world we live in right now.
• 8:44
  That guy had money.
• 8:45
  They get to say it was a false positive because the president,
• 8:48
  he's not my president, the president thinks he's a, a mafia boss, and
• 8:51
  he can just do business that way.
• 8:53
  Yes.
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  So yeah, this timeline is really hard to exist in.
• 8:56
  So there's that.
• 8:57
  There's that at a, like a cosmic level, at an everybody level.
• 9:01
  Everybody who gives a shit, let's be honest.
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  There's people who are not affected by it because they,
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  in fact, do not give any shits.
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  They might have the shits, they don't give them.
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  And so that's hard.
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  And then on top of it, there's all of the personal things that are going on,
• 9:15
  the fact that I am now responsible for basically an adult toddler with car keys,
• 9:24
  and I have to explain things like, "No, you are not going on a trip to Hawaii.
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  You just got out of the hospital. No, you are not going across the Pacific
• 9:35
  Ocean to hang out with your friends.
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  No, I'm sorry.
• 9:39
  I'm gonna be that guy.
• 9:40
  No.
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  Meanwhile, I have, like, a 10-year-old who's like, "Mom, can I have Doritos?"
• 9:45
  And I'm like, "No, you're not gonna have Doritos just before dinner
• 9:49
  because you need to eat dinner."
• 9:50
  It's the same fricking conversation.
• 9:52
  You know the answer to that.
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  No.
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  I took my mom to the doctor last week for a follow-up, and she
• 9:58
  looked at that man in the session.
• 10:00
  She's done this to me twice now.
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  She got the same response twice.
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  She looked at her doctor and said, "Am I allowed to fly?" And before
• 10:06
  he even responded to her, he, like, side-eyed her and said, "Are you
• 10:11
  trying to get me to say that you're allowed to travel in front of her?
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  Because I'm not gonna do that.
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  She'll kill me." And my mom was like, "Dang it.
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  That did not work." I was like, what?
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  Why did you think that this man saying that you're allowed to travel would,
• 10:25
  like, oh, okay, he said it's fine.
• 10:27
  I have to tell him what to do.
• 10:30
  No.
• 10:32
  How many times a week do I get on the phone with him and say, "I need you to…"
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  No, he's a pass through.
• 10:37
  No.
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  And then I don't know if people don't realize this, but if I have to
• 10:41
  remind you of something, and please don't take this the wrong way, people
• 10:44
  have to remind me of everything.
• 10:46
  Allison, who keeps my life in order, sends me daily reminders of
• 10:49
  things, often things that she has reminded me of for multiple days.
• 10:53
  So, like, I'm not against reminders, but the point being, when you are
• 10:57
  offloading something to somebody, if you are delegating something or
• 11:00
  you're asking for somebody's help, and then you have to remind them
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  about the thing that you offloaded to them, you're still doing work.
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  That's still work.
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  That person is not alleviating the burden for you.
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  They're just moving it, 'cause you're still doing work to
• 11:13
  make sure this thing gets done.
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  They have not taken it off your plate.
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  It's still on your brain.
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  You've not turned off to it.
• 11:18
  Is my brain broken because of dehydration?
• 11:21
  Is it broken because of existential cosmic dread?
• 11:24
  Is it perimenopause?
• 11:25
  Is it being stuck in the middle of all of these people who
• 11:28
  need my attention all the time?
• 11:30
  Is it the fact that we have to work harder to make any amount of money?
• 11:33
  Is it freaking all of it?
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  I'm gonna guess it's that last one.
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  Point being, it's not just me.
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  It's not.
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  Every day I talk to somebody else who is in the same situation, who is
• 11:46
  juggling all of the things for a job or their company, who is responsible for a
• 11:51
  family member, who even if they're not a day-to-day caretaker for a family member.
• 11:57
  Here's what people I think don't understand unless you have been,
• 12:00
  like, full-time in some capacity responsible for another human,
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  and it's different when it's kids.
• 12:07
  It's different when it's kids.
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  Because for the most part, your kids live in your house or they live with an
• 12:13
  adult who is responsible for them and you hope is making good decisions for them.
• 12:18
  That doesn't mean that you don't worry about them when they're not with you,
• 12:21
  but, like, there is an expectation that kids are being supervised.
• 12:25
  There is no expectation that the old people are being supervised unless
• 12:29
  you pay just a metric butt ton of money to have them supervised.
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  And that they have this idea that they're grownups and can make their own decisions.
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  No.
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  When… No, you lost that card when you decided to get old.
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  No.
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  I'm sorry.
• 12:47
  There is this just below the surface anxiety.
• 12:53
  We'll be back with more after this short break.
• 12:57
  There is this simmering, constant, just below the surface anxiety that is
• 13:08
  with you all the time, especially if you have one or more people who you're
• 13:14
  responsible for who do not have somebody else there as a set of eyes all the time.
• 13:20
  And it is really hard to have somebody else there as a set of eyes all the
• 13:23
  time, unless they're physically in a facility or the type of living
• 13:27
  arrangement where they have somebody who is charged with them all day.
• 13:32
  That is their responsibility.
• 13:34
  It is so distracting, and it's constantly there.
• 13:38
  We've talked about my weird brain before and how my brain just has
• 13:41
  two simultaneous thoughts all the time because I'm missing pieces.
• 13:44
  It's, there's things that are supposed to stop that don't.
• 13:46
  I don't have pieces that are there.
• 13:48
  Anyway, and so, like, I'm baseline thinking about two things all the time.
• 13:52
  That's a lot.
• 13:54
  I explained that to Stephanie, our, the host of our wonderful new podcast,
• 13:57
  You're Not In Charge of the Scale.
• 13:58
  We were talking about it.
• 13:59
  She had asked me something.
• 13:59
  I was like, "Oh, no, no, no, my brain doesn't work that way.
• 14:01
  This is how it works." And she listened to me, and then she went, "Wow, that
• 14:04
  sounds exhausting." And I was like, "Funny you should say that." At
• 14:09
  baseline, I don't know any, I don't know any other way for my brain to work.
• 14:12
  At baseline, may- I don't know, maybe it's exhausting.
• 14:14
  I don't know.
• 14:14
  I am exhausted, but I don't know if it's from that.
• 14:18
  But so take that, my brain that has so many things to do all the time, and
• 14:23
  the likelihood is your brain is in this situation, too, because we are all really
• 14:27
  in this boat right now, regardless what responsibilities are in front of you.
• 14:30
  There are a lot of them.
• 14:31
  So you take that daily things that you absolutely have to do, and
• 14:36
  that might include things for the person who you're caretaking for.
• 14:39
  But then this constant, unrelenting, simmering anxiety of what's about to
• 14:46
  happen, even though you don't know that anything's about to happen.
• 14:49
  It is so distracting.
• 14:51
  It means that every time your phone pings, you panic.
• 14:54
  There's this, like, constant toss-up if my phone rings, and it's
• 14:57
  my mom in the middle of the day.
• 14:58
  Is she dying, or did she just forget that other people work?
• 15:03
  It could be anywhere in there.
• 15:06
  Is there an emergency, or did she butt dial me?
• 15:10
  Could be either. Could be either.
• 15:13
  Is her watch notifying me that she fell, or was she trying to put a new rhinestoned
• 15:19
  case on it and it, she dropped it?
• 15:21
  That's a thing that's actually happened.
• 15:23
  Too many of her old rhinestones fell off.
• 15:26
  She purchased a new rhinestone case.
• 15:29
  She dropped the watch.
• 15:31
  The watch thought she fell.
• 15:33
  The watch notified me that she fell.
• 15:35
  Now, the watch has also notified me when she did actually fall, and I would
• 15:39
  rather it notify me when she didn't fall than not notify me if she does.
• 15:43
  So we're okay with that.
• 15:44
  It's like you're constantly activated.
• 15:46
  You're constantly ready to go.
• 15:47
  It, bro, it is exhausting.
• 15:50
  Everything is exhausting.
• 15:52
  And this has manifested itself in me going to say very intelligent things to very
• 15:58
  impressive people who pay me good money to hear the intelligent things that I have to
• 16:02
  say, and me saying, "The thing that we do.
• 16:05
  Healthcare, healthcare." That's what I w- healthcare is what I was trying to say.
• 16:09
  That's the thing that we do.
• 16:10
  If you're finding yourself not able to find words, I'm just gonna imagine
• 16:14
  that they're, like, all in a field somewhere enjoying their respite from
• 16:20
  being overused by pedantic a-holes like me, 'cause Lord knows we are
• 16:25
  not overusing the words right now.
• 16:28
  In fact, there are some words that are tucked deep in there and are never
• 16:32
  going to be seen again because I do not have access to that part of my brain.
• 16:37
  I'm making a healthy assumption that this is a fairly accurate representation of
• 16:43
  what other people are also experiencing.
• 16:46
  And so come hang out with me and we can have bad words.
• 16:52
  Not bad.
• 16:53
  We can have F words, absolutely.
• 16:54
  We can obviously have F words, but I just meant, like, ineffective words,
• 16:58
  insufficient words together because I'm trying to imagine the change in this
• 17:04
  timeline that would have to happen for me to wake up one day and be like, "Yay,
• 17:07
  my brain is functioning fully again."
• 17:10
  It would require many things that I don't think are gonna happen, so we're
• 17:12
  just gonna, like, stand in the corner and stare and pine for the time when
• 17:17
  we had functioning brains and the capacity to process more information.
• 17:20
  Come stand in the corner with me.
• 17:22
  We can cry together
• 17:25
  Ask L2.
• 17:28
  We have a question from Janna.
• 17:31
  "I vanished for two weeks and came back with an entire second product nobody
• 17:35
  asked for while my paying work sat untouched. Is hyper-focus an asset in a
• 17:41
  small business, or is it just expensive?"
• 17:44
  No, I'm just trying to record my podcast, and I don't know why you had to attack
• 17:48
  me like this on a random Tuesday.
• 17:51
  I'm just trying to help people, and I didn't realize I was
• 17:53
  gonna have to be introspective.
• 17:55
  I think it's both.
• 17:57
  As a person who can easily get distracted by the big ideas that pop into my head, I
• 18:03
  have had to learn when something can just be jotted down and put away or put on the
• 18:08
  back burner, and then there's a lot of me that just goes and plays and tinkers with
• 18:12
  stuff because that gets me motivated to do the regular stuff that I have to do.
• 18:18
  I think it depends on your goal in doing it, right?
• 18:23
  So if you get a bright idea and it is actually hurting the business
• 18:29
  that is paying your bills because you're focused on this bright idea,
• 18:33
  and you can't pay your bills because you're distracted, that's a problem.
• 18:37
  But if you're like me and building is play, and that really is what it is.
• 18:42
  I was never a kid who played with toys.
• 18:44
  I really didn't.
• 18:45
  I read, and I imagined things, and I wrote, and I would build stuff, but I
• 18:53
  get very overwhelmed by blank space, and so I didn't love starting from nothing.
• 18:58
  I really never played with toys, but I played with situations, and I played
• 19:04
  with ideas, and something would pop into my head, and I would take it to the
• 19:09
  nth degree to see how that plays out, and that's always been how I played.
• 19:14
  And so sometimes people ask me if I have hobbies, and I'm like, "Not
• 19:18
  really. I really just work." But I really like my work, and I really
• 19:22
  like playing and building things and putting things together and recording
• 19:26
  stuff and coming up with new things to write about, and I just enjoy it.
• 19:31
  That's the stuff that I enjoy.
• 19:33
  And it's always with me.
• 19:34
  It's… I can do the kind of stuff that I build anywhere.
• 19:37
  It's always with me.
• 19:38
  And so it's just like, that's how I play.
• 19:41
  But we're also grownups, and we have to work.
• 19:44
  And so if you are actively losing money, if you are actively losing relationships,
• 19:51
  if it is causing you stress to be focused on something that is not driving
• 19:56
  revenue now, yeah, that's a problem.
• 19:59
  If you can still do the stuff you do day to day and build other times or
• 20:06
  there's enough in your schedule that you can play and tinker and come back with
• 20:10
  something that's super valuable or maybe is something that somebody would want,
• 20:15
  I don't see a problem with it at all.
• 20:18
  I think go play because play is as important to work as the work is.
• 20:24
  And if that's how you play, then go play.
• 20:27
  Don't do it all the time.
• 20:28
  Just like if bowling is how you play, you can't bowl all day unless
• 20:33
  you're getting paid to bowl all day.
• 20:36
  But if you're like me and building and tinkering and imagining and creating
• 20:41
  things that people can consume is really fun for you, then why the hell not?
• 20:46
  But there is a balance there.
• 20:47
  And is it okay to occasionally leave what you're supposed to be doing
• 20:53
  and focus on something that maybe is not technically as important?
• 20:57
  Yeah, sure.
• 20:58
  Everybody gets to play hooky sometimes.
• 20:59
  If that's how you play hooky, cool.
• 21:01
  But if you're two weeks in and you have people yelling at you because you were
• 21:05
  supposed to do things for them in those two weeks and you did not do those things
• 21:08
  that you were supposed to do for them in those two weeks, and now you're at risk
• 21:11
  of reputational harm, business harm, whatever, yeah, that's probably not great.
• 21:16
  But, like… Play how you play.
• 21:19
  I play how I work.
• 21:20
  It's just the way my brain has always operated, and I've been
• 21:22
  like that since I was a kid.
• 21:23
  It's not gonna change.
• 21:24
  It, it just is.
• 21:25
  It just is.
• 21:27
  If there's something that is your actual hobby, and this is just your work is
• 21:31
  being damaged because you're unfocused in your work, and you do other things
• 21:36
  for play, yeah, you probably need to evaluate what's happening there.
• 21:40
  But also, like, don't let anybody judge you for how you play.
• 21:42
  That's up to you.
• 21:43
  That's … Whatever your brain likes is what your brain likes.
• 21:45
  Also, don't attack me.
• 21:47
  Thanks for being here, guys.
• 21:48
  Have a good day.
• 21:48
  Love you, mean it.
• 21:54
  It's so nice to do these without Neal.
• 21:56
  It's just so much more calm