#80 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (17th January 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com My name is Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. And I've got a little ferret called Andre who's asleep in his carrier bag making the odd little noise.

Only watch this video or listen to this audio when you can safely close your eyes as this boring session aimed at causing or leading you to fall asleep may cause drowsiness. So just want to do a big shout out to my friend Rachel and just to let you know that I will be, I do do other things other than the Let Me Bore You To Sleep sessions. I do relaxation sessions, I do deep sleep whisper sessions, I do chronic pain sessions.

So there's a lot more to me than just these recordings. I actually did a relaxation session today earlier. It was, uh, was it relax your body? No, full body and full body relaxation in 10 minutes.

I think. Something like that. Ah, I love the squeaky chair.

The squeaky squeaky squeaky chair. So Rachel wanted to know about the Weber which technically definitely fits under the category of a boring conversation. Although as an English person talking about the Weber is, it's one of the most English things that you can do, you know, outside of invading other countries.

It's, uh, talking about the Weber is just a standard thing that we, that we do. So, uh, I will tell you about the Weber. At the moment, today, uh, what day is it? It's Thursday.

I think it's the 17th of January 2019. And it's about, that's about five o'clock ish. Let me just have a look to get the exact time.

4.48 in the afternoon. And it's pretty much dark outside. It's, I've got the light on.

I've got the curtains in my living room, which are, I'm not great with colors. I think they're green. Greeny.

Yeah. They're not blue. They're not black.

They're not blue. They're not red. They're not yellow.

Although I can see a hint of yellow could have been involved in the making of this particular color. It's not brown. It's a green, but not, not like a grassy green.

When I say grassy green, I was actually thinking about it. It is a little bit like green of a pasture that's dried up. And I never thought I'd say the word pasture because generally when I say pasture, I think of pasteurized milk.

But when I say pasture in this context, I think I've got it correct. But when I do say that word, I am thinking of an area where cows or maybe other animals would graze and eat the grass. But if I imagine not being an expert on farming or cows or grass or anything else really, and imagine if they don't have enough space, enough area to roam, then the grass will just get worn out.

And it's kind of, the curtains have got that kind of color. The color of, oh, leave me alone. Let me grow back, please, kind of color.

So I've only got one curtain drawn over. The other one's still there, open. Just seems strange because now it's dark, but the sky is fairly, bright is not the word, because it's not bright.

I don't need sunglasses, but it's still, I can still see the blue, the blueness of the sky, because from the angle that I'm actually looking out of the window, because I'm sitting in my black chair, I've got my, I've got some tracksuit bottoms on, but they're a little bit short. And although I've got socks on, there's still a bit of my lower leg exposed to the elements. And you might say, well, it's not really the elements, JJ, is it? Because you're inside and you've got the heating on.

But nevertheless, there's a difference in temperature on that piece of skin, which is uncovered compared to the comfort of the other part of my legs, which are covered. And I can feel it. It's kind of unusual because my hands are uncovered and my hands feel fine.

They don't feel cold. They don't feel warm. They're not sweating, but they're not cold.

They're not shivering either. And my face is uncovered. So I've got my hair and I've got my eyebrows.

So I guess that covers, the eyebrows covers a part of the face, but not a huge amount. Only the bit above my eyes, kind of the eye socket, I suppose, area. And I am wearing glasses, although I don't necessarily need to wear glasses when I'm not using my eyes, but I am kind of using my eyes because right now I'm looking at something I've got on the wall.

I've got a piece of paper with the word SoundCloud written on it, where I'm going to be having the stats each month of the SoundCloud podcast. So if I didn't have my glasses on, I wouldn't be able to see the... In fact, let's have a look. It's hard to kind of question myself what it says because I know what it says because I wrote it, but it is blurry.

And with my eyes, my eyeglasses, with my glasses back on, I can see it. It says SoundCloud and it's sound at the top and then cloud, kind of the C starts underneath the D, but underneath and then it moves across a little bit. And it's basically just been written on a A4 size sheet, like, you know, sort of a standard refill pad, but it's sideways rather than, you know, upwards, if that makes sense.

So that's stuck onto the wall with some sellotape. And I didn't just put that there. I've also got one, another one with YouTube, but that's on the right hand side wall.

And I've got on the other side, the other side of the wall, the other side of the room, I've got... I can't actually see it because it's... Yeah, it's... I can't see it, but I know where it is. And it says Spreaker for my Spreaker podcast. So the plan behind this is to, every month, at the end of every month, so come, I don't know, two or three days into February, when all the stats have been added up and processed by the individual podcasts and YouTube, then I'm going to put the stats for that month and put it on the wall, you know, sort of January, for example, for Spreaker, December, I had about 10,000 downloads and plays on the Spreaker podcasts for December 2018.

So we're halfway through the month now, it's January, and I've probably had pretty much the same amount already with Spreaker. But what I'll do is I'll wait until a few days into February before I can get the full stats, because with Spreaker, they'll let you know how many downloads there are. But the plays, the plays don't come in until a few days later for that day.

So let's say at the moment, it looks like the last three days, including today, that I've had no plays, but just downloads. Yet four days ago, I had the same thing, like 462 or 500 downloads and no plays. But then they updated it with the plays, there's another 200 plus plays added on.

So although I get less plays and downloads, there's still thousands of plays as well. So it adds up. So I won't be able to get the full extent to what the January stats result is until probably two or three days into February.

I was originally going to put the stats in every day and put on the wall, you know, January 1st, January 2nd, January 3rd, January 4th, January 5th, January 6th, January 7th, January 8th, January 9th, January 10th, January 11th, January 12th, January 13th, January 14th, January 15th, January 16th, January 17th, January 18th, January 19th, January 20th, January 21st, January 22nd, January 23rd, January 24th, January 25th, January 26th, January 27th, January 28th, January 29th, January 30th, I think January 31st. I think there's 31 days in January. Do you know that song about the days in the months? That helps you to remember how many days are in each individual month of the year.

You know, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December. And there's a song that children are taught which helps them to remember how many days are in each month. Well, I didn't go to school on that day, so I never learned it.

So what I do is I cheat and I look at a calendar or a diary. With YouTube, although the stats are growing with the videos on YouTube that I'm uploading, it's so, so, it's slow compared to how it used to be when I had a successful channel. But I quite like the the gentleness of it all.

I'm getting a lot more subscribers now than I ever used to, you know, until recently, I mean. I think I've had about 43 subscribers this month, or in the last 30 days. I know that's not a lot, technically, but for me, it's just nice because I know that when people subscribe to my channel, they're going to watch the videos because it's just nice to know that.

It's, yeah, I don't know how many I've got. I haven't got that many subscribers. I've not even got 200 yet.

I think I've got a hundred and, I don't know, I should take more notice, shouldn't I? A hundred and something. Yeah, I've got more than a hundred. I've got to have more than a hundred, but it's less than 200.

180, maybe? Maybe it's 140. Maybe I'm just over-exaggerating, which is, or just exaggerating, but I have been aiming to do, you know, produce more sessions this year than I ever have done previously in the last 13 years. So that's what my plan, and I've kind of been keeping a track of how many recordings I've done so far.

But unfortunately, due to ill health last week, I went a few days where I wasn't able to do anything. But I'm still, I'm not far off having done at least one a day, you know, when they're all kind of spread out, averaging. So on January the 1st, I did one session.

On January the 2nd, I did two recordings. On January the 3rd, I did no recordings. On January the 4th, I did one recording.

On January the 5th, I did one recording. On January the 6th, I did two recordings. On January the 7th, I did one recording.

On January the 8th, I did no recordings. On January the 9th, I did no recordings. On January the 10th, I did no recordings.

On January the 11th, I did one recording. On January the 12th, I did no recordings. On January the 13th, I did one recording.

On January the 14th, I did three recordings. On January the 15th, I did no recordings. On January the 16th, which was yesterday, I did one recording.

And today, January the 17th, including this one, I have done two recordings. I will have done two recordings. But it's still early in the day.

I might manage to do another recording this evening. So all in all, I've done one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. So I will have done 16 recordings at the end of this, when I've recorded this, in 17 days.

So it's nearly one a day, nearly. So based on that, we're looking at 365 recordings at the end of the year, which is not the amount I want to do. My aim is to do over a thousand, to do a thousand at least, by the end of the year.

And they're not all going to be long. They're not all going to be the same type of sessions. I hope to do a few courses, and as well as doing these regular, Let Me Bore You To Sleep, doing the regular deep sleep whisper ones.

I'd like to do some more regular chronic pain relief ones as well. So that's all kind of in the pipeline as it were. So I'm hoping now that I'm feeling better than I was, the next, this half, I've done the first half of January.

So the next half of January, I'd like to do at least two a day. So if I do that, so I've got 16 done today. So tomorrow takes it to 18.

The next day takes it to 20 for the month. The day after that takes it to 22. And the next day it's 24.

The next day it's 26. Next day it's 28. The next day it's 30.

The next day it's 32. The next day it's 34. The next day it's 36.

The next day it'll be 38. Next day it will be 40. Then the 30th it'll be 42.

And the 31st it'll be 44. So that'll be 44 for the month. Based on that, if I did that every month, that'll be 500.

I want to do at least three a day, every day. But maybe I can build it. So if I can do two a day for the rest of this month, that'll give me 44.

February, I can do two a day so that I end up with 60. And then March, maybe I can try and do three a day, which would give me 90, or however many depends upon the amount of days in March. And then maybe in April, maybe look to do four a day.

And then May, I could do five a day. I don't know. I'll just see with me.

The only thing really getting in the way of me producing more sessions is finding a quiet space because I need a quiet space. I need to build myself some kind of recording studio within my home where I can just sit and talk and not hear a thing. Literally no background sound.

It's just my voice. I'm looking at doing that. So next month, I'm going to start getting some of these pads that you can put on the wall.

And they're, for recording studios, they're silencing or soundproofing pads. And like sponges, kind of hard sponge. So what I'm going to do is, I'm not sure exactly, but what I think I might try and do is put some up around my black chair.

So the wall to the right of me, the wall to the back of me. And then and maybe see about constructing some kind of wall just to block off. And by wall, I don't mean a brick wall, but just something that slides in.

Or you can actually get things that stand up. You know, those old fashioned things, and maybe they still have them in doctors surgeries where you would, you'd be in there and they say, and they want to do a, I don't know, go in and they want to do a prostate exam or whatever. And they say, what if you'd like to just, Mr. New Lind, if you'd like to just to go around and get undressed behind the curtain, but it'd be like a rail, like a stand up thing.

Which people in the old days, maybe used to have in the bedroom and you'd perhaps put your clothes on top of it as you were getting undressed, you know? Well, I saw something online yesterday, which was a similar kind of thing, but it was for soundproofing for someone that maybe, because behind it had someone who was singing, like a microphone stand and stuff. So I'm thinking maybe I could get one of them, if it's not too expensive, to be on the left side of me. The thing is I've got that little boy sneezing and running around and stuff.

I need, I want to get to a position where I, he can still do exactly what he wants, but it doesn't disturb me. It doesn't, I can't hear him. I realized I could put earplugs in, but that wouldn't make any difference to what you hear.

I can still, I can't hear him, but you'd still be able to. So yeah, it's, I've got storage room that I could, I mean, it's big enough. It's probably too big in some ways, you know, to soundproof.

I could soundproof it, no doubt, if I put the work in and put the invested all my pocket money in it. It'd take a few months probably. Just in case, just covering the walls, the ceiling and the floor, soundproofing the entire thing, including the door, putting, you know, everything.

And then just, I just know that as soon as I did that, I'd have it all soundproofed and Andre would be scratching at the door to get in. So I'd have to find a way to keep him away. Well, it's, yeah, even if I'm just thinking, if I put in some kind of a, you know, those things that people put up for dogs, like a rail, sort of, they put it up for kids as well.

Like a guard, like rail, maybe they put it on the stairs to stop the child from crawling up the stairs. So maybe get something like that for Andre, but it'd have to be completely flat surface. Otherwise he'd climb up it.

So, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. I'm going to, maybe in the short term, just get some soundproofing for this room, for this corner where I'm doing it, and then maybe look into doing the other room.

I definitely would like to soundproof this room anyway, because there's such a lack of furniture that it's a bit echoey in here at times. So I'd like to get the carpet, get some really, really, really soundproofed carpet or slabs or something so that it's completely soundproof. That's what I want to do as much as I can.

I want to soundproof this, my whole home so that I don't disturb anybody and no one disturbs me. So that I can't hear anything going on outside the flat. That would be ideal.

And also no one can hear me either. So that's nice. So that's what I'm planning, wanting to do.

But from a recording perspective, what do you think? I thought about, because I've gone online, I've gone onto YouTube and seen people that have created their own soundproof booths. I'll repeat that, soundproof booths, because Andre sneezed, just as I said the first time. And what I thought is have the soundproofing blocks on the walls to the right of me and behind me.

And then have some kind of a lid that actually could just slide in. So have some brackets on the walls around and have a lid that maybe it's just above my head, you know, so it's comfortable but not too far. That kind of boxes me in.

And then it wouldn't be completely, as a short term thing, I mean, it wouldn't be completely silent, but it would be a lot quieter. Still hear my stomach going like it is. I'm going to have some Eccles cakes in a minute.

When I've done this, I'm going to go and have some Eccles cakes and watch a film probably. Andre's been sneezing for a couple of days now. Well, I don't know if it's because I take him out and he wants to go out.

It's not like he wants to stay and he wants to go out because I find that I get ready and he's there waiting to go out with me. And then he rolls around in the mud and the wet grass, gets soaking wet. And before he does that, he's shivering and he's wanting to climb into my jacket and he wants me to carry him and stuff.

But then he gets so carried away and he just loves it. Loves the mud, loves the wet. And looking out the window again, the blue sky is gone.

It's just complete black now. Can't see a thing. Before I could see the outline of the sky where it met the rooftops of the other buildings around me.

So there was that like difference in colour. So I could see which part was the sky and which part was the building. Although I can't really see the building as such, just the outline.

Now I can't see anything at all. I do apologise for all this sneezing. It's not conducive really to, it's not ideal for me.

I prefer it when he's asleep. Not generally, just you know when I'm doing a recording. Yeah, I think he's got a little bit of a cold.

That's what happens when you get soaking wet, isn't it? It's all that moistness, get himself so moist. It might be that carrier bag that's making him sneeze. I've never lived in a carrier bag, but he doesn't live in it.

But I've never slept in a carrier bag either, because being a human being, carrier bags, you have to be careful with them. But he's completely, he loves the carrier bag. It's a very strange, very strange relationship he has with objects.

So it would be nice to, well the thing is, it's one of those situations where in the past, just trying to think, the different places where I've lived, always had the same issue, which is finding somewhere quiet to make a recording. Always been the same. See, when I first started doing recordings, it was back in 2006, and I used to live literally on a main road.

The traffic was probably about 10 foot away from my bedroom window. 10 foot, six. Yeah, maybe a little bit more, but it was very close.

And I got used to it after a while, to be fair. It's one of those things, it took a while to to become accustomed to it, but it was just very, it was kind of non-stop, you know. It slowed down a little bit between about midnight and four, which was very, very pleasant of it to do that.

So, you know, I kind of, because I was making videos and I just, you know, I tried to use, I mean during that period for a lot of years, I tried to use therapy rooms to make recordings. So, let me think, the different places. Right, I used to, a place I used to volunteer, I used to go in there and, yeah, I used to stay for an extra couple of hours and make some, you know, make videos and stuff, make audios, videos, sessions, recordings.

There's still, there's still on YouTube and still there. So, that's one place I did it. And then they moved and I used to do the same thing there.

I used to try and do recording at the end of my shift, maybe on a Saturday when there was no one around, because I used to work on a Saturday morning and maybe stay for an extra hour and do a, make a video or do an audio, because it was fairly quiet in there. But it was in the middle of the town, so it wasn't always completely quiet, if you know what I mean. And other places I used to use, a place I used to go do counselling in, I had a piano in there and I remember I used to balance, I think sometimes I'd use the phone, like the iPhone, and sometimes I'd use the video camera and I'd film myself and I'd do maybe a 20 minute video.

So I used to do, I did a few in that room. What other rooms did I use? Oh, in the same building, I, yeah, I did a, I think, yeah, because I used to go there in the evening, I think one evening a week, plus a couple of times during the day, during the week, this particular building. And in the evenings we, there'd be maybe three, two or three counsellors would be there and we'd stay there till the end, always make sure there was at least two people together until the end of the shift.

So sometimes I wouldn't have a client, but the other person would, so I'd be there for an hour more than I needed to be. So what I'd do is I'd make use of that time and I'd make a video or, you know, do an audio. And I still remember one particular time, I think it was a Tuesday evening and I just don't know why I remember this, but it was a weird shaped room going there and it was quite big, but there was a corner of it that was just a little sofa and it was just ideal to just make a recording, make a video.

And so that's what I did. And I did a recording or a video, I think it was a video and it was for not biting your nails. And one of the reasons why I remember doing this is because I started to laugh while I was recording it.

And because it was on video, you can, you know, clearly you can see my face. So I was doing everything to hold it in. But that was quite funny.

And what other places? Yeah, there was another place. Yeah, there was a couple of other places. There's another place where they moved, one of the charities I worked for, they moved into this new building.

And that's where I used to, I started recording on my iPhone, the hypno chats. So we're going back to 2010, no 2011, I'd say. And I was doing the hypno chats in that room during the summer, I started that.

And I remember just sitting there, the sun shining in, it was quite a good picture because there's a lot of really good light in that room. And just testing out the idea of being able just to sort of mix in a vlog with hypnosis session, kind of starting off as a general chat, leading to something a bit more substantial. And I made quite a few recordings in that room, quite a few videos, because it was a good space.

It was a good, it was fairly quiet as well. Because it was, although it was near the town, it was sort of down an alleyway and off the main road. So it was fairly quiet, still the odd plane and you could hear traffic in the background and stuff like that, but still fairly good.

And another place I had where I was counselling, there was a room that I quite liked and it was all, had these beams, it's an old building, and it had these wooden beams. And you can see, you'd have to search through my catalogue of videos, but there's, I did a few videos in there where you can see the wooden beams behind me. So I quite liked that room as well.

And it's fairly quiet. So yeah, that's quite nice. Another room I used was, and I actually used this room, the one I'm about to tell you about, in my most popular video to date, which was the, what was it? Try to stay awake hypnosis challenge or I don't know, something like that.

Try and stay awake. And I recorded that and a few others in this counselling room that I used to use when I was counselling privately. And it was, yeah, so that was quite cool.

And so what I used to do, because I lived up the road from there, and I used to go there sometimes because I had the keys. And I asked before doing it, and I went in there and probably about midnight, and I'd stay there for a few hours. And it's quiet.

So that was good. It was a nice quiet space to just do some, do some work, you know, get it done without interruption, without background sound and stuff. I've never actually lived in a place where it's been quiet, really.

In some ways, this is probably the quietest place. Well, actually saying that though, when I first moved to London, when I was 20, I lived behind a graveyard, or in front of the graveyard, depending on which way you look at it. And this graveyard was one that was not used anymore.

So it was like really, really old graveyard that was all blocked and locked off. So, and then the other graveyard had people that had been, you know, hundreds of years ago, so I don't know how old the ones that were in the other one. So quite quiet neighbours, you could say.

But back then, I wasn't making hypnosis sessions. I didn't, I had no idea that my life was gonna, well, or making recordings, I didn't know that my life was going to take this route, as it were. I didn't know.

Didn't have the internet back then. Sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had the internet when I was young, you know, teenager or early 20s, or even a child, you know, just to have all that knowledge available. I think sometimes I'd, you know, with things like I'm interested in mental, mental health issues, mental, just the brain, mental illness, things like that.

It's something that I'm just interested in from a personal level. And I can learn as much about it as what I want to as much, and have as much knowledge as there is to gain. But that doesn't make me qualified to work as a mental health, or give me any qualification, unless I actually do a qualification.

That sounds like the most obvious thing that anyone's ever said ever. And I just think it's a shame, I think if you put the work in to learn something, you know, you should get an award, some kind of an award. Well done, you're now an expert on the Kardashians.

Here's your degree, you know, here's your degree in boxing, boxing statistics, for the various boxers throughout history, or the heavyweight champions. You now have a degree in the amount of time you spent on the internet. So the more time you spend on the internet on a particular subject, or particular website, the more, you know, you get a degree for that.

And that could take us into some quite unusual situations. And some very interestingly titled degrees, I imagine, lots of which I shall not even mention. I have one degree, I'd like, I'd like to get, I'd like to get a master's, but I'd quite like to get another undergraduate, but with a higher grade.

Because I know I could have achieved, and well, basically, I would have achieved a higher grade, had I just submitted my work in on time. It's as simple as that. It was my, quite a lot of my coursework, you know, dissertation, various essays and stuff like that were handed in after the deadline, and after the extension, which meant they were capped at 40%, which is still a pass.

But although they were capped at 40, pretty much all of my marks were over 60. So they weren't, you know, they weren't like a grade one, I was never going to get a, well not never, but I wouldn't have got a first with my, you know, with my work. But I would have got a second, had it all just been turned in on time.

I'd like to go further than that. I'd like to not just turn, you know, give the work on time, but also put a bit more effort into the coursework and get a first. But then I'd quite like a master's and a PhD, just for me.

It's just for, to prove to myself that I can. It's not for anyone else's benefit, just for me. But it costs a lot of money, which I don't have.

So, but one day maybe I'll be able to get back into education. I'm very interested in, as I said, mental health and mental illness. I'd like to get a qualification in that, like a higher, high level education qualification.

So I hope I've bored you sufficiently for you to be snoozing away while I'm chatting about nothing. I'm going to end this because I'm going to go and have my Eccles cakes, because my tum tum needs some rum rum. Not the Eccles cakes if you've got any rum in them, because I don't drink alcohol.

And I'm sure if they had alcohol in them, they would cost a lot more money. So I'm going to go and wish you a wonderful day, wonderful evening, wonderful sleep. And please share this online.

And if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe. Thank you. And there will be another one of these very soon.

Lots of love. Bye.