I'm not keeping up with this like I'd hoped but it's also sadly #onbrand for me to abandon a project like this. I'm thinking I should focus on writing exercises and publishing them here for fun.
I just sat here with this post open while I looked for more podcasts to listen to, which told me that I had lost all interest in writing anything else because I had nothing to say... hence why this blog is fucking terrible at being frequent. But then my brain started spinning about how much I love listening to podcasts and why, so I thought I'd write about that instead.
I have a few go-to podcasts for self care:
I will save these episodes until I need a comforting pick-me-up. About how other people have died. I don't know why... Maybe it's that truth is always stranger than fiction? That these stories need to be told so they can be solved and/or never repeated? Or maybe I'm just glad I'm not as fucked up as the murderers? It's probably all of the above, but no matter the reason, I find these podcasts the most soothing, though a host on TCG is an annoying douche, but I get through it.
If I'm feeling anxious, doubting myself or just having an overall shite day, I forget about the garbage after getting a hit of these death shows. As a super special over thinker, it takes a lot for my mind to stop with the obsessive thoughts, especially when I'm in any of the negative situations mentioned above. So I guess it's a rare comfort for me to know that there are things out there guaranteed to stop the shitty, unhelpful thoughts I can't seem to shake. I wish it involved less death stories, but here we are.
I blame Serial for this odd coping mechanism. Like the #basic I am, Serial was my gateway drug, and once I found MFM, it was all over. I just found more and/or subscribed to any podcasts mentioned on MFM.
I have a few others that depend on my mood for self care, which include, but are not limited to: You Must Remember This, More Perfect, RuPaul's What's the Tee, The Dollop, Lore and Criminal. Up-and-comers (eg podcasts I've started listening to in the last few months that are more and more in regular rotation) are: Dressed, Forever 35 (funnily enough about self care), Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, Presidential and Unspooled.
I also fall asleep to podcasts every night to help tune out internal thoughts by focusing on a not-super-distracting story. I learned the hard way that I can't listen to murder/supernatural podcasts for this - shock! surprise! - but I found my ride-or-die bitches for sleep in Stuff You Missed in History Class. It's interesting but not twisty-turny enough to keep my brain on. And the ones I'm really interested in, I make sure to listen to when I'm cleaning or doing something else. But when you've got episodes like 'A Condensed History of Air Conditioning', I know I'll be soothed to sleep with facts.