274: Yes Comma And, The Brett Terpstra Story

Overtired 274

[00:00:00] Christina: You are listening to overtired. I am here today with a I’m Christina Warren, by the way. Uh, and, uh, I’m here. Hey, Hey, Brett. Um, so this is, uh, is our second, uh, episode that we’re doing with, uh, Jeff Severns and we’re so excited. We had such a great time talking with him, um, for both the last episode and, and, and our episode last week that we had to continue this conversation.

[00:00:29] So Jeff, Brett, how are you both

[00:00:32] Jeff: good?

[00:00:33] Brett: I am good. Jeff. So your, your last name is hyphenated, right?

[00:00:38] Jeff: Yeah, without a hyphen. I

[00:00:39] Brett: Without it’s like two,

[00:00:41] Christina: see, and I, and I miss the Jeff Severns console. I’m sorry. I only saw the first half of that. I’m.

[00:00:45] Brett: totally fine. I’ve just always wondered. Which one of those is your birth name?

[00:00:50] Jeff: Uh, Gunzel and, and the weird thing is like, I often get emails addressed to Steven that are definitely, to me, they’re from people that I’ve like just met or something. And I don’t know [00:01:00] if they see the Severns and they decide I’m Steven. That’s totally what it is. Is it? Yeah, it’s so weird.

[00:01:05] Brett: I called you Stephen for years. Let’s talk about Jeff for a second. Jeff, who are you?

[00:01:11] Jeff: Um, I, I, I, uh, let’s start with the most immediate, um, sitting in my home office in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Um, I was a reporter for about 25 years or so, um, and then switched to something. I call investigative research. So I focus right now on the juvenile justice system in, uh, one particular county in the U S and am working to develop ways to see inside the system so that you can see.

[00:01:43] No, what questions to ask the premise being that there’s so much sort of opaqueness in the, in the juvenile justice system. Of course, that’s really important in many ways and for many reasons, but that when you start doing a work of an investigative nature, the first thing you realize [00:02:00] very, very quickly is that that opaqueness is also protecting people who are doing harm to kids in the system.

[00:02:08] And, and unlike, you know, if you’re covering adult prison or something, that’s still can be hard or people or adults in the criminal justice system, it could still be difficult, but like there’s a lot, there are a lot more inroads. There are a lot more windows to peer through to kind of understand, you know, what’s going on here.

[00:02:23] What might be patterns of harm here and with the juvenile justice system, it’s just so difficult. And so I, I work with some programmers and I, I work with some qualitative data people and, and our work is, is sort of. Part of our work is sort of, um, focused on creating tools for seeing into the system that can be used, um, more broadly than just in one county

[00:02:45] Brett: If you want a, if you want a more in-depth look at what Jeff does. Uh, he was on one of the last episodes of systematic before. Possibly permanent [00:03:00] hiatus, maybe. I don’t know. But, uh, back in June of 2021, he was on episode 2 60, 1 of systematic. And we talked about, uh, his investigative research and his 20 years of journalism and definitely worth checking out.

[00:03:16] Jeff: and Brett Brett, does that work with me now a little bit, which is really amazing.

[00:03:20] Brett: I help with automation, which is, you know, my way, it’s my way. Like we’ve often talked about Ella and I talk about how, uh, when, when push comes to shove, we, we have very specific roles we can play in, in a crisis. And like, I’m not great at any kind of like, I don’t show up for a protest in the street, but I will 100% be the guy that like goes in buys, um, materials, uh, gallons of milk and like hands them out.

[00:03:55] Like that’s, I’m, I’m a, I’m a behind the scenes guy. And if I can help with [00:04:00] automation in an important project, like what Jeff is doing, I’m happy.

[00:04:04] Jeff: Well, and now it’s, it’s more than just automation. Like certainly that’s what you do. And that’s, you know, what you do really incredibly, but it’s, it’s about, um, just as we’re creating a model for being able to look into the system, we’re also trying to create essentially a tool set so that doesn’t require a staff of five to try to do something and especially so that when you’re doing work, that is really trauma facing.

[00:04:27] Right. And a lot of people that do trauma facing work. Uh, kind of out of their own trauma, right. That can actually get in the way of your productivity. And so what Brett helps so much with is just making sure, Hey, there’s some important steps you have to take every time you interview somebody with every kind of data you bring in, whatever.

[00:04:45] And, and this tool is going to make sure that you do it right without having to really think about it too hard, because we can all get so paralyzed by like, oh crap, I have to take these six tedious steps. So it is automation and it is automation for the reason that people do automation. But, [00:05:00] but I also, I think it’s bigger than that in breaths really like created, um, some spaciousness for me doing the work with some of the way that he, um, builds tools.

[00:05:10] So, and that was true. That was, and that was true before we should finish that shit. And that was true before, uh, we worked together. That was it’s using your stuff forever. So anyway,

[00:05:18] Brett: Um, all right. So last episode, we’re going to have a mental health corner. After I promise these two, we could talk about the real-world, which is not going to involve me much at all. Um, but you too, I’ll let you.

[00:05:33] do your own lead-in and everything. Let’s get back to pop culture for a sec.

[00:05:39] Christina: Yes. Okay. So I kind of wanted to close out like our, we talked all about the nineties last episode, but what we didn’t get into when we both wanted to, as Jeff put this on our list and I was very excited because I know that Brett doesn’t care, but I do. And I feel like I’m the only one who does, um, it’s in my mind, one of the most important television shows of the nineties was the real [00:06:00] world.

[00:06:00] And, uh, for. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for so many horses. And, uh, and, and, uh, I, uh, they brought it back last year. They now had two seasons and a third one’s coming aware. Uh, basically last year it took place like during the pandemic. Um, they rented for a couple of weeks, the original loft that the first season of the real world in New York state and back when no one knew what it was going to be.

[00:06:28] And they got the, all of the original cast members back together, except for Eric niece who was stuck in a hotel because he had COVID. Um, and, uh, It was a very interesting reunion in a very interesting kind of documentary project of like bringing these people who changed television kind of back together, uh, you know, 30 years later.

[00:06:47] Um, and, uh, and then they redid, uh, Los Angeles has a true stowaway, uh, season.

[00:06:54] Jeff: I’m doing season two.

[00:06:55] Christina: Aren’t I, when I do that, yeah, she was the LA. And then, uh, I think the next one’s going to [00:07:00] be, uh, from like, uh, one of the more popular areas. Like it was. A completely different show at that point. What was new Orleans?

[00:07:06] So, anyway, let’s talk about this. Jeff, have, have you been watching them? Which one have you watched, or have you watched them

[00:07:11] Jeff: both? I’m particularly interested in, um, the New York, uh, group. Um, and what happened was I watched the first, probably 15 minutes of the first episode and realized that I really wanted to go revisit the original, which for me, I watched in real time, I was absolutely fixated.

[00:07:32] I, I, there, you know, I, it was that I was at an age, like, what was it like 92, I think. Right. Um, so I was going to graduate, well, I didn’t graduate, but I was supposed to graduate from high school in a year. And, um, and I was. Really wondering, constantly circling. What does it mean to be an adult out in the world?

[00:07:51] What does it mean to be out there? What does it look like? How did people talk to each other? Like, I was a pretty, like, I had a group of friends, which was my band for most of my time in high school, but I [00:08:00] was really, I really kept to myself. I just, you know, one of those kids that didn’t feel like I related to anybody.

[00:08:05] And so I just kept to myself and had this like really intense, like life in my mind. And, and I just felt like this whole minimum security prison thing called the high school. Like the second I get out, I’m just going to live a real life. And this for me was like the was like such an interesting window.

[00:08:25] You know, as overly produced and sort of dishonest as, uh, as a reality TV show can be, we now know, right. It doesn’t matter because what I did see, just what I got was more, it was less about is this interaction true? And it was more about what that person is saying right now, or how they’re expressing that emotion and how these people are handing things to handling things like racial tension and sexual attention and everything.

[00:08:47] Like, I didn’t have anybody modeling that for me. I mean, I just, I lived, I was an only child and live with my mom and like, so for me it was. It was huge and it just made me want to be an adult so goddamn bad. And [00:09:00] sometimes that made me want to be an adult so bad because I was like, ah, I wouldn’t have had that problem in there.

[00:09:04] Christina: Totally, totally. Or you’re like, I want to hang out with Julia and

[00:09:08] Jeff: Julie’s almost exactly a year older than me. And so, so she, this that really felt close,

[00:09:14] Christina: you know? Right, right. Um, so, so for, for, for listeners who might not be aware, so the first season of the real world, and I actually think that in terms of homecoming, it is far and away, like the two seasons that it did have errors as far as it is definitely the better of the two that the second one, which makes sense, um, is much more like more of the traditional kind of reality thing we’ve known, which also makes sense.

[00:09:35] But what was so interesting about the first season of the real world was that they didn’t, no one knew what they were getting into and no one knew what they were doing. So even though there are production elements to it, and it’s not a true verite documentary thing, it is much, much closer to that. Then what happened.

[00:09:52] Even the next season, because at that point it had been on television and people understood what the reach could be and what the potential could be and started to [00:10:00] change how they acted. Whereas with the first season, no one knew that it was going to become this phenomenon and that MTV would re aired over and over and over and over and over again, you know, I was like seven and I watched it all the time and, and I would watch, I don’t know if I watched it in real time or if I started watching it that the second year, but I definitely saw the first season and definitely have seen every episode of probably the first, you know, five or six seasons probably actually going all the way through.

[00:10:25] I don’t know. Seattle. I, I washed a lot too. I mean, and I, I watched the, the one subsequent to that, but like, there was an error in my life, especially when I was like in elementary and middle school where I would just spend my weekends just watching MTV and watching world marathons. So I’ve seen some of these episodes, like, it feels like hundreds of times it hasn’t been bad, but it feels like I’ve seen these episodes like so many times.

[00:10:48] Oh, sorry. No, no, no. I was just going to say though, but what’s so interesting about that first season is that no one knew. And so I think that what you see with it, especially like from that your perspective of you being that perfect [00:11:00] age for the audience was you got to kind of see these possibilities and these different interactions and conversations that just weren’t happening on telephone.

[00:11:09] Jeff: Yeah. Like not at all. And also like I am I correct that this is considered like what’s considered like the first reality TV show

[00:11:16] Christina: is. Okay. So the first one would be, there was one in the seventies that was like a PBS thing, kind of like the family, but this is honestly like the birth of it as we know it.

[00:11:25] Yeah. I thought

[00:11:26] Jeff: because I had never seen anything like that. And all I did was watch TV. I mean, like I watched six to 10 hours a night after school every day. And like, I imagined that if, if I had to sell this to somebody, why would you go back and watch this right now? Right? Like. You would watch it because it’s the only opportunity you have to watch a reality TV show where no one, including the producers knew what a reality TV show.

[00:11:50] Christina: Right, right, right. Because, because I think up until then, so, so the very first one, the one that most people point to, I think there’ve been some other things was there was a PBS series in 1973 [00:12:00] called an American family. And, um, and then there was like, um, like kind of a UK version that kind of came from that, but that’s PBS.

[00:12:10] Right. And that’s definitely done as like more of a documentary style thing. Whereas the real world was. You know, they had like the music, because it was MTV. They had music rights to be able to use all the, like the best music of that era, like in the, in the quick cuts. And, and you had, you know, the, the, you know, confessional footage and you had like other stuff, you know, and it was just, I don’t know, stylistically, it’s just very different from anything that we’d seen until then.

[00:12:38] And at that point, even though like MTB had a distinct style, like that was to my knowledge, I think they’d had some game shows, but that was like, MTV’s first. Into, like there was MTV news, but in, into programming.

[00:12:52] Jeff: Yeah, totally. And like I, so I started watching MTV the year it came out and I remember in like [00:13:00] 1984, my brother and I had this game where the credits for the video would come on.

[00:13:06] I think two seconds after the Vizio video started maybe four and you would see the name of the artist, the song, the album director, all this stuff. And we had this game where we had to try to get all of those credits out of our mouth before it came on. And like, it was so about music and so about that.

[00:13:23] And, and like, knowing who’s doing what videos and you know, what album that’s from, like it was this, it was this awesome enhancement for, for fans. Like all of a sudden you had a little more data to take in and you were a little more consistently exposed to it. And so I loved it just for music forever and ever, and ever, like, I still have VHS recordings of most of the video music awards from

[00:13:44] Christina: those days.

[00:13:44] Right? Oh yeah. Yeah, no, they were huge. And, and I mean, that’s another thing too, you know, 92, like that the, the show comes out and like, No one who was in it knew that it was going to become this phenomenon. And you know, it, it starts airing not long after they, um, um, stopped filming. [00:14:00] I think they might’ve even had them like doing some of the photo shoot stuff at the very last things they were, you know, um, like episodes and then it, it becomes just this, this phenomenon.

[00:14:10] And they wind up at the, at the VMs and are like bigger stars in some cases than, you know, the, the actual musicians. And that makes the homecoming thing, I think really interesting because you see all of them reunited and where they are in their lives and how they’re still grappling in some cases with, with what happened, you know, 30 years previous.

[00:14:30] And like,

[00:14:31] Jeff: I got to thinking about, you know, cause like any reality TV show, there are all these sort of blow ups and there are some like legitimate, like sort of really difficult conversations that happen. We don’t really know how they were handled because it’s edited. Right. But we know that, like we know that there were real tears.

[00:14:46] We know that there was real screaming and we know that that was the tears and the screaming were coming from people who had no idea what reality TV was or how it would look how, and when it cared. And so I was thinking a lot about, so like I’m again, like, I mean, [00:15:00] Exactly. You’re younger than, than Julie, who I think was the

[00:15:02] Christina: youngest.

[00:15:03] She was the youngest and she was sort of the, the protagonist, like, I mean, they were all kind of, you know, in that thing, but like, she was the one who I have to think that when they found her like the casting people, cause it was a casting process and most of the people were, were artists and she was a dancer.

[00:15:15] But I have to think that when they found her that the, even, even if you’re new to the genre of television in that genre was brand new. But even if you’re like new to that, like you see someone like her. And I would just think even from like a documentary perspective, like you would just light up.

[00:15:30] Jeff: Holy shit.

[00:15:31] Totally. Yeah. And like, so then she comes out of, I think Birmingham, she had never left and she goes to New York and, and like, you could, you could feel that, you know what I mean? Like as a white kid in the suburbs, like I could feel that totally.

[00:15:44] Christina: And in what was, and what was interesting about her is that, and this is different than when they would kind of do the fish out of water thing.

[00:15:49] The other stuff is that it would be easy to put her in a boat of, okay, well, she’s just like, uh, uh, you know, a hillbilly, you know, whatever, but, but she, she was [00:16:00] really open to new experiences and, and, and obviously, you know, the most famous thing from that season was, is the, the fight between her and Kevin Powell, um, about, about race who’s black, uh, about race.

[00:16:13] And they deal with that a lot in, in the, the homecoming show. Um, but even like, If you go back and watch the rest of the series, which I know you’re doing, like, it is interesting to see, you know, she hadn’t been exposed to a lot of these other things and certainly she was wrong in that argument. Although I think that, you know, you have to put it with the perspective of like she’s 19 years old and, you know, didn’t realize, you know, all these things would wind up, you know, living on forever.

[00:16:37] Um, but, but she wasn’t like this minded person. Right. Which, which, which I think made it, which I’m not sure if they knew right. We tried, which I think made it that much more interesting for the audience, because she was in many cases, the, the stand-in for the audience at home of the suburban white kids who were watching this.

[00:16:55] And most of us, I mean, I was, I certainly had never been exposed to [00:17:00] people like Kevin or Norman, you know, were, are, or, or even, you know, um, uh, Eric, you know what I mean? Like there were just people like you, you didn’t know that, that. Supermodel remodel. Exactly. MTV’s Eric. Nice. Uh, from the grind. Um, yeah, like you didn’t know, you know, these types of people and, um, and she didn’t really seem to shy away from that.

[00:17:22] Like, she actually understood that when she went anywhere, the cameras would follow her. Like went in like wanted to highlight homelessness because she’s. savvy actually. Yeah,

[00:17:34] Jeff: totally. And, and like I was thinking about, I was so as I watched the really just like the beginning, like the montage beginning, where they kind of juxtapose now, and then, and everything I was realizing like, man, I, again, they’re, they’re in this brand new situation because they, they all have, they all have like, uh, let’s just say, I mean, there’s no doubt, gotta be some level of traumas from that experience, whether it’s related to celebrity [00:18:00] related to things that actually happened in that loft or whatever it is.

[00:18:02] Right. And then they all went their separate ways. And like, I know that for me, um, there are people from high school that like, uh, you know, I could probably imagine somebody saying you should get together and work this out with them. I wouldn’t want to do it again in the cafeteria all these years later.

[00:18:20] But I think for them, I can’t imagine there’s any other way they can. Reconnect and reconcile and whatever they need to do to put, to put some of those things, you know, properly away in the drawer for the rest of their life. How do they do it without going back into the

[00:18:34] Christina: exactly. Exactly. No, I mean, and we’ll stop here because I know bread is, is, is dying, but

[00:18:39] Brett: even get to talking about the homecoming yet?

[00:18:42] Jeff: well, no, cause we are,

[00:18:43] Christina: cause that’s what we talking about.

[00:18:44] Like

[00:18:44] Brett: Okay. Like I know I left. I just got back. I’m just checking

[00:18:48] Christina: We’re we’re we’re but, but, but, but I was going to say like, um, and, and if you need to cut this down, you can bread, but like, um, w what.

[00:18:56] Brett: edit.

[00:18:57] Christina: What watch watch the homecoming. Jeff, I [00:19:00] think you’ll really like it. It’s very interesting to see how everyone is turned out.

[00:19:03] And it’s very interesting to see what people didn’t evolve in, in ways that you, that you thought they might. Um, uh, I will just do a spoiler because I think it’s very cool, like, especially because, and they do focus a lot on, um, um, uh, you know, uh, Kevin and Julie’s fight and they deal with that like very head-on, um, and in both of their traumas from that, you know, and, and, and she, you know, had, um, had a very different like, uh, perspective, but like, what she does now is she works with like getting, um, you know, um, lower income and, and disadvantage, like, like kids in, like, she works with them, getting them into colleges and stuff, and, and, um, and her daughter is like, who’s, you know, like 17 years old is like a massive, like, like civil rights activist and.

[00:19:49] You know, so, and Kevin was right. Everything that he said in that argument, people weren’t ready to hear in 92. And I think he, he gets his comeuppance not come up, but like he gets his, his credit. He gets [00:20:00] his dues for that because he was correct. Um, and, but, but it is interesting to see, like you see who’s evolved and who hasn’t.

[00:20:07] And, um, and, and it’s really, really interesting, but I, but I think, uh, because she was the protagonist of the, of the show, it is interesting, like to, I still really like her a lot and it, and it’s kind of heartwarming in a sense to kind of see like, How her life has, has changed in how she’s evolved and in it.

[00:20:26] And it makes you hope, you know, because again, she was kind of like the, the standard for the audience. Um, and this is too helpful, but like you think like, okay, well maybe the audiences has evolved and changed and grown to in that.

[00:20:38] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and just one last thing, what you just said, something that’s really important, which is that like, in that, without recapping the conversation or the, the really the like argument and discourse that Kevin and Julie were having, like, he was fucking right.

[00:20:52] And also what I, what I, and I was coming at it, you know, I spent a good chunk of my childhood and I half black half white household. And so, like, [00:21:00] I was feeling some of that in that sense too, but I was definitely feeling Julie more than anything. Cause obviously I’m the white guy and I like, right. We have some programming.

[00:21:08] Um, but like what I didn’t realize until we were just talking is that that whole series, that whole season was shot over the time that, uh, Rodney king. So it’s like February to may and March Rodney king is beaten.

[00:21:20] Christina: And that was exactly.

[00:21:23] Jeff: Yeah. And here they are. And here they are just about, you know, I guess now a couple years past George Floyd’s murder, but it’s just interesting that there’s this kind of connection to those two events.

[00:21:33] I don’t remember the king. Uh, beading being brought up in that season.

[00:21:38] Christina: They, I don’t know if they brought it up or not. There are, there’s some footage in the homecoming thing where I think they show some stuff that wasn’t, um, filmed or it wasn’t shown on air where it is addressed. Um, and, and I know in, I know in the Los Angeles season, I think the trial happened and they talked about it, but you have to remember, I mean, this is what was weird.

[00:21:54] They, they wound up instituting different rules, but they initially, you know, like [00:22:00] later on you weren’t allowed to have television or anything. And so they, they did have TV then, you know, they were allowed to watch news and he came and went. Yeah. I mean, later on it became much more of a, like,

[00:22:10] Jeff: we don’t really want race coming in like

[00:22:12] Christina: this again.

[00:22:13] Well, it was more or less. We don’t really want, like, we, we want to control the complete, like, you know, narrative of all this stuff. And, and we want to, we’re making this a social experiment of as much, as much as anything else, you know what I mean? Um, so, um, I feel like, uh, but like, um, Yeah, they talk about that.

[00:22:31] And then they also talk about the George Floyd stuff. So I think, I think you’ll like it, and now we, now we can be, we can be done.

[00:22:37] Jeff: I can’t wait. Thank you.

[00:22:38] Brett: you.

[00:22:38] know what I need a doctor after all that. Um,

[00:22:41] Jeff: W what kind of doctor?

[00:22:43] Brett: I’ll tell you, what kind of doctor?

[00:22:44] Christina do you want to tell us about Zoc doc

[00:22:47] Jeff: I definitely

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[00:24:27] Brett: Ah,

[00:24:27] Christina: you see, we see what they did. They they’re.

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[00:24:49] Brett: it’s so easy.

[00:24:52] Christina: It is all right,

[00:24:54] Jeff: so it’s easy.

[00:24:56] Clean Installs and Mental Health

[00:24:56] Brett: so so Jeff added like Jeff put, [00:25:00] pitched a bunch of really good ideas for, um, this, this episode. Well, the last episode, but we kind of screwed them on less episode and just talked about the nineties.

[00:25:10] the whole time, but one of his topics, and I will read this verbatim your mental health ain’t right. Colon one Mac users, early warning system.

[00:25:20] And I feel like that’s a perfect way to get in our mental health corner because for everyone else it’s been a week, but for us, like literally nothing in our mental health has changed because it’s, we just hit a mental health corner an hour ago.

[00:25:35] Christina: Exactly. So, so, so yeah. Yeah. So Jeff, tell us about your system.

[00:25:39] Jeff: Um, okay. So this here’s, here’s what this is about. Um, I, I have this, this problem and it’s like sort of an addiction or something and it’s, it’s addictive behavior. I cleaned install my Mac operating system and everything else. Sometimes multiple times a year.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] And I have long been a little bit ashamed of that because I lose a lot of time. And I recently was kind of like reassessing my general behavior in light of my mental health and some recent diagnoses. And, and I realized that if I’m clean, installing my Mac or even thinking about it, I am on the verge of.

[00:26:26] Imbalanced mental health. And, and I’m trying to, I’m trying to gain some sort of control over what feels very chaotic. And so for me, the work I do, uh, involves so much context shifting so much context, shifting that everything can just feel so scattered. And if you, if you ma, if I match that feeling of feeling scattered with a feeling of just being desperate, to have some sense of control over my, my kind of work-life my, you know what I mean?

[00:26:58] I, what I will do [00:27:00] is, and I’m not saying this makes sense, again, this is a mental health, like it’s a, it’s a warning, right? Is I will completely clean install. I love a fresh install. And then I will just consider all of my apps again and bring them in. And then I will, you know, decide what notes to bring in.

[00:27:17] And what this has done actually is horrible because it’s created for me a digital archive of. Oh, it’s awful. It’s such a mess. Like I have some times, you know, if you figure that I’m like throwing everything onto an external drive, right. Or I’m, I’m pulling a cloud backup down when I like clean, you know, completely erase the computer.

[00:27:36] Like if I don’t finish that process, which I never fully finished a clean install, then I’ve just, I’m like going to end up with basically like duplicate documents. Right? So like, if my, if my envy alt now envy ultra archive is like in several folders and I don’t bring them all in. Some they’re going to sit out there and then sometime they’re going to join up with some [00:28:00] duplicates when I do this again, and pretty soon, I’m going to have 60 copies of like one, one, you know, text document of meeting notes.

[00:28:07] This also, if this, if this hold on, if this all sounds crazy, it’s because it is. But what I just realized in this last week was that I can actually go back and look at the times that I’ve done a clean install and it actually matches up with times that I was not right in other ways in my, in my life. And so it’s not just, it’s clearly to me, not just that I need to get control of my work life.

[00:28:33] As I used to think, even though I knew it tended to create more chaos than it did calm, um, what it is in fact is something I can trust that if I am starting to think I want to do a clean install, I may need to find some spaciousness and figure out what’s going on with me inside.

[00:28:51] Brett: so multiple clean installs a year, and your system’s actually messier than if you hadn’t done it at all. Does that seem.

[00:28:59] Jeff: [00:29:00] Oh, yeah, way messier way messier. So, uh, so I mean like a pattern for me in my life. So first of all, when I was a kid, I moved like 36 times. Wow. And, and so part of what I, what I have traditionally kind of, um, attach this to, cause I’ll, I’ll do the same thing with like my office or something. Like I’ll just like pull everything up, undo all the cables, make a map and redo all the cables.

[00:29:25] And then if there’s something that, that feels comforting in doing that, and I have such distinct memories of like setting up my room in an apartment, building my posters, just right. Um, my, you know, my treasured, you know, items just right. Really loving the feeling in that room. And then in six months having to like take it all down and then move to a new room where it was a completely blank slate.

[00:29:50] That was frustrating as hell, but it also became something. I liked, it was like, cool, let’s start over. You know, I know I have friends and maybe one of you, or [00:30:00] both of you are like this. I have friends who still have their, their room from childhood. Exactly. As it was mine changed constantly. And, and I have a feeling that something was written into my brain from that experience, uh, repeated experience and it, and it sort of plays out in my adult life where, when I need to feel like I need to start over.

[00:30:21] Part of that is literally just cleaning every single. You know, and, and, and the really like, kind of really sad part about it is that it creates a lot of additional mess because redoing a computer system when you’re like a quote unquote power user, um, and especially the way I do it, which is I tend to want to kind of like build it all up from scratch.

[00:30:41] You can never finish that. Like you’re never going to get fully finished and what’s going to happen is someone’s going to need a document or they’re going to need you to do something. And you realize, oh, I haven’t linked those two things yet. And that’s the only reason I can’t answer this person right now.

[00:30:53] So I understand I’m describing something that’s very extreme. Right. But it makes me wonder for you all. Is there a [00:31:00] way in the way that you manage your computer or some other thing that’s kind of a non-traditional early warning system. Do you have those.

[00:31:10] Brett: for me, it’s my RSS feed like you and my GitHub commits. Well, okay. So maybe not as an early warning system, but as documentation of my, my bipolar episodes, like I can look at, you know, that graph that get hub gives you showing activity on a repository. I can look at my overall, get commits and see exactly where I was manic.

[00:31:37] Like it’s, it’s a perfect match. I can also, I have like, you know, sleep apps that tell me where I wasn’t sleeping too, but, uh, get commits and, and RSS feeds, I guess, really the early warning system is, am I making more than to get hub, like pushes to get in a day, then I might be manic. [00:32:00]

[00:32:01] Jeff: Wow.

[00:32:04] Christina: I hadn’t ever thought about this, but I have a feeling so like you, I, I don’t think it for me, the clean install thing is maybe like, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, I don’t know if it’s a early warning sign, although I do like to do it, if anything, sometimes it’s, it’s a way I kind of come out of stuff, but for me it is definitely, I don’t know if it’s computer wise.

[00:32:24] Um, I’m trying to think maybe, maybe if notes are disorganized or maybe again, like if I’m not, if I haven’t access that, that I’m usually actually. Frequently. If I looked at it, if I looked into the data, I bet that would probably tell me that that is like, Hey, this isn’t common, right? Like you’re not, you’re not using something that you usually use.

[00:32:42] And that means that you were depressed. Like I have a feeling you’re very common. And

[00:32:45] Jeff: do you mean when you say that, do you mean like a workflow you usually use or do you mean?

[00:32:50] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I mean like a workflow or even just nap. I like write like, but if there’s a workload like that is me, like when I’m in my kind of, you know, more like not depressed and like kind of [00:33:00] happy space versus actually, you know what I know exactly a great one.

[00:33:04] And, and right now, ironically, it is garbage, which is kind of accurate when my email is completely out of control. That is a sign that I’m depressed because I don’t want to go to my email. So I don’t want to look at what’s being sent to me. So it’s, it’s completely out of control. So when my, my email is never in a great place, but when it is one of those things where people send me messages and I just don’t see them, it is because I’m not opening it because I mentally can’t even go there.

[00:33:27] And so that to me,

[00:33:29] Brett: go ahead.

[00:33:31] Christina: No, I was going to say so, so that, that I think is a, is a big indicator for me when I’m depressed is it might, if people say, Hey, I sent you a, met a mail and I have no concept of it because I genuinely like cannot like mentally open

[00:33:45] Jeff and Christina: my

[00:33:45] Jeff: mail. There are other ways that you sort of disappear when you’re in that, that kind of depressive space

[00:33:51] Christina: or is that there definitely can be that’s that there definitely can be.

[00:33:54] I think email is one of the ones where I feel like I can almost like hide it [00:34:00] the best. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. Cause, cause for me, with my depression, I never want people to know I’m depressed. And then that’s a common thing with most people who are depressed. Like you don’t want

[00:34:07] Brett: That’s like a symptom of depression.

[00:34:09] Christina: Exactly.

[00:34:10] Like you don’t want anybody to know. And so you’re trying to keep on like the, like the, the big face of like, everything is okay. Um, but for me, I definitely, uh, there are things also like, like text conversations will be less, you know, I won’t comment with people as much and, and whatnot. So that is definitely a thing.

[00:34:24] But I think email, I hadn’t even thought about it until this conversation. I think when my email is neglected and where it’s that thing where I’m not even opening it. So it’s not even so much that I haven’t necessarily replied or what level, but I don’t even open it because I just don’t like, I, it just gives me anxiety and I just, you know, don’t feel like I can, that, that is definitely a

[00:34:41] Jeff: symptom.

[00:34:42] Yeah. Yeah. It’s so weird. Right? Cause like, I think we’re, we’re all saying is that to the extent that we share with anybody else, either in our life or in our wider community, that we’re depressed, our computer knows and it doesn’t know, it doesn’t know. Cause we’re opening up a text [00:35:00] file and journaling, it knows does have this or that.

[00:35:03] Yeah. I have long had this, this wondering that I don’t want to call it a theory because I think it’s, it’s a little too forward, but I’ve always had this wondering, you know, as I, as I’ve listened to the like power user community over the years, um, like how I would love to just have a way a language around assessing the connection of like mental health to the need, to do certain things, to have that kind of control.

[00:35:33] Like