#157 - Just Hit Play

In the past year I've made a lot of YouTube playlists.

I used to have just one for workouts, but then I got into different types so that got split into weights, pilates, and cardio/dance. I have a bedtime ASMR playlist thats packed with self-affirmations and cord-cutting reiki. I'm not sure it totally works, but I don't think it's hurting so I'll take the placebo's where I can get them! I do find it funny that my subconcious is also getting Babbel ads drilled into it but hey, anything has got to be better than Duo Lingo–an app I committed to for a year straight and was grumpy with the entire time.

There's one of ambient sounds mixed with pomodoro study with me videos for when I'm working alone (I like ones where they sit by a rainy window, it's the cheapest way to body double that I've found yet!). I've made ones for when I'm cleaning (I usually put on a long podcast and headphones but I've found that having someone cleaning on TV in the background whenever I walk through the room), saved my favorite apartment tours and interior design ideas into one, put together my favorite BTS performances to send to a friend I was trying to ~convince in another.

And, as the emerging theme with these essays seems to be, I could sit here and defend why this practice is not emblematic of my attempts to get control over my life – but they are. Very plainly, I need help focusing on work, on cleaning my apartment to satisfactory levels, and on rewiring my subconscious so I stop thinking of myself as a bad and evil person who operates from a place of fear and scarcity (rather than my true combustion engine combination: love & abundance!).

Do the playlists always work?

Pretty much!

Because the thing they're mostly providing for me is the ease of not having to make a choice. I've done the prep work.

So often my tasks would get delayed by me trying to find the "right" accompaniment. Especially at my desk – I need a minimum of two beverages (water & a Diet Coke/iced coffee usually, but we're headed into tea season so, stay tuned), the entire area has to be clean, and the mood better be right.

I have a bunch of lighting options pre-saved because I invested in the Phillips Hue system and you bet your ass I get every single pennies worth out of these lightscapes. I love them so much but choice always has the chance to be overwhelming, so settling on certain defaults makes that really easy.

Music is great but unless I'm coworking with my friend I usually skip it. While I'm currently trying to spend more time in silence, I also really like the gentle consistency of rainy day background noise (and no, not for a single second does it make a difference to me that most of those noises are generated from chicken frying in oil. I know what Foley work is, I'm not a child.) and the additional bonus of having someone to work "along" with is always inspiring.

(Did this trend come directly from me stumbling upon my beloved BTS Study With Me ASMR video a few years ago and realizing that it does help keep me focused to have them on my screen? Why, yes!

But it turns out that while I love BTS, I do get more from watching someone highlight their law school notes in live time than from their carefully looped clips from livestreams that are edited to make me think we're all on a zoom window together!)

The thing is, it's all fluff and extra. I can do all these tasks without accotrement. But there is something compelling about figuring out how we best operate, and sometimes it really does make me keep cleaning when I catch a glimpse of someone de-cluttering while I'm walking back through my hallway/apartment for the sixtieth time.

Making playlists keeps me from spending twenty minutes making decisions. I just had to make the decision one time – when adding the video in.

There's plenty of the usual pitfalls with ~content. If you watch enough "Productive Morning Routine" videos you will end up on a religious side of YouTube where everyone wakes up and does daily devotionals in the morning. And if you fall into the other side you'll deal with a bunch of dudes slowly and unknowingly developing eating disorders as they become obsessed with "optomizing" their bodies. So like, you want to be careful, but also finding things that are inspiring, soothing, motivating, or lightly engaging from creators you enjoy is great!

Takes the guesswork out. Friction, be gone. Just hit Play All and go.

Just like my post about Pinterest yesterday, I feel a bit silly and immature admitting to the fact that I'm not effortlessly moving throughout my day. I do struggle to pick an album, I make walking playlists for myself seasonally and just keep adding whatever song I have on repeat recently to the end of it. (This week its APT. by Rosé ft. Bruno Mars. As someone who owns both Doo Wops and Hooligans and a bootleg Blackpink vinyl, I was very excited. Bruno is one of our best pop stars who cares if he's got a coke/gambling problem let him have FUN! This song sounds like The Ting Tings and I love it.) But these are the little things that have made a huge difference and so much "advice" for life out there is non-specific.

I want to be specific, but I also think that one of the things I've gotten away from recently with essays is the confessional because I realized that after writing them I often felt like I had asked the rhetorical question of "does this make me a loser?" but like...in long-form. With no way to get an answer that would be satisfactory.

Because the lesson I've been focused on internalizing for the past year has been that no one's judgement of my life matters, except for mine.

So many people are operating from a default place of skepticism and lack. Quick to criticize out of fear. And I don't blame them: we live in a tough world where having dreams makes us vulnerable.

But I also don't care if people think the playlist thing is lame because the living reality is that it does help me and my life has materially improved when I stopped worrying so much about what some unnamed entity of "others" might have to say about it.

I keep ending up in situations where I have to do art and/or crafts in public and I don't consider myself specifically adept at creative pursuits outside of writing and my literal handwriting. But in some of these situations, I wanted everyone else to feel really at ease because my best friend was running the event and I knew that modeling a nonchalant approach to picking beads would be beneficial for all of the other guests. Don't like the first one you made? Take the beads off and try again! Play around, have fun, there are no rules and there's no "wrong" way to do it even if you end up not totally in love with the end result you still had an experience!

Crafting and creating with our hands is so important because it IS empowering. And there's a product at the end that you can hold/wear/interact with/use and that's also incredible because I think humans really DO get the biggest rush out of creation and handwork and remembering our transformative abilities. Sure some of it will come out a little clunky and weird but that's still fun and lovely.

Before this year I wouldn't have considered how my confidence and action might inspire others, but after working in facilitation I fully understand the power of mirroring behavior and being the lighthouse beacon for others. It's okay that they're scared, I'm going to demonstrate through subtle moves that there is no reason to be.

So, here's me saying: go make playlists! Make things easier on yourself however you can because there's no award for struggling more than others to accomplish things!! Enjoy someone taking a rainy walk around Tokyo or Studio Ghibli ambiance! Just make sure it's not AI okay I love you this is essay 7/7 in the seven days of effort we did it gang whoo!!!!!