#259 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (22nd November 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. This is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name's Jason Newland. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

I think this is two days in a row, or I did the other day, where I started the recording. I went to cough, so I kind of pressed pause while I did a little bit of cough, and I pressed the wrong button, and it basically stopped the recording, and I had to delete and start again. And it's really weird because I've not done that.

I've probably only done it twice in the whole time that I've been making recordings. So I've done it twice in a few days. I don't understand it.

So there's a couple of things. I can't bother to repeat what I'm saying, but a couple of things. I applied to do a master's degree in positive psychology, which was going to start January, this January coming, 2020.

And the student loan company agreed the loan to cover the costs of the course, but today I got an email declining my application for that course. So it's been probably six or seven weeks since I applied for it, and now just over a month before it starts, they've sort of said no, which is a little bit disappointing, a little bit. So that's kind of been today.

And then last night, or it was early yesterday morning, well, basically, here's the deal. Here's the situation. With my podcast, all my podcast episodes are hosted on Spreaker, and I've had the space for 1,500 hours, and I've basically got to the end of the space.

I've used the space up, the storage space, but the next jump up, or the next like to get unlimited storage, is $100 a month. No, $120 a month, which is a fair bit of money to be paying out. So I've kind of been putting it off the last three months, four months, and I've been deleting some of the older stuff from some of the podcasts, but I'm getting to the point where I can't do that anymore because I don't want to lose the podcast.

I need more space. Ultimately, I've just got too much stuff. So last night, part of the Black Friday thing, discounts, and this is an American thing, but England have taken it on, probably the last 10 years or so, maybe less, taking on the Black Friday, which is like November Fridays, a Friday in November, but we've seemed to be spreading it over on like a week or something.

And I've never got any money on Black Friday. I never have any money on bank holiday, you know, the, you know, was it bank holiday discounts after Christmas? Boxing Day discounts. I never have any money for those times.

That's, you can get some really good bargains. But anyway, part of this Black Friday, as they call it, and Spreaker, who, you know, they host my, and store my podcast, they offered me a big discount if I took on the, you know, the unlimited hosting, which is the next package up, which I need to do at some point. But they offered it to me instead of $120 a month.

It'd work out less if I paid it all in one go. If I paid for the year, it'd be a lot, a lot less. It'd work out $100 a month if I did it over the year.

But it's $120 a month if I pay it monthly. I don't have $1,200 to pay out for the podcast, you know, all in one go. Wow, that's quite a lot of money every year, isn't it? Wow.

Anyway, so, but they offered me a discount, which was, um, I need to double check it because I might have got it wrong. But I think it's $77 a month for the next year. And then it's going to go up to $120 a month, like next November 2020.

So $77 a month, it's still over $1,000 a year, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than, you know, it would have been. And so, yeah, I just, I did that last night. I just, I kind of, I'm not usually, um, swayed by pressure selling.

And they weren't pressure selling, but they were, it was a case of, you've only got till this time to take this offer. You know, if you don't take it now, then it won't be available tomorrow, which was a little bit, it's that, it's pressure, isn't it, I think. And, uh, so I thought, okay, I'll just, I'll do it.

So paying that amount out luckily, I didn't have to pay the full £77 because I just paid the, the normal £29 or whatever it is I've been paying was $77, 29, I don't know, whatever. But so I ended up paying out 40, 40 odd dollars, $44 or something based on how long I've already had it in there, whatever. So next month it'll be $77 and every month until November next year, and then it'll be $120 a month.

And it's left me really short. I don't mean I'm not like now five foot four, I'm still the same extremely tall five foot eight that I always was. But it's like, oh, it was like, oh, where did all the money go out of my account? But I just kind of, I don't know, they might, they might still offer that deal.

If I hadn't took it yesterday, they might have offered it next week. But I just, just, the podcast is so important to me. And I've had, I've been literally this week, a year ago is when I launched the Spreaker podcasts and haven't deleted them or anything for a whole year and got 564,000 downloads over that time with the podcast.

So I'm pleased with kind of how it's gone. And the, I'm actually getting an increase recently in downloads and, but let me, this podcast, let me bore you to sleep is, it just seems to get more and more positive feedback for some reason. I don't really understand it, but I appreciate it.

And, but as I think I said yesterday, or the day before, I've now got three podcasts that are over 100,000 downloads. And so this should be the next one. I'm about 77,000 downloads of this podcast.

And it would be a lot more if you include, because these, these episodes, these sessions are also available on three other of my podcasts and like the Insomnia ones. So they also get for every, well, in some ways, I suppose for every hundred downloads they get on this podcast, I probably get another, at least another 200 downloads elsewhere. So although this is 77,000, technically I've probably got 120,000 or 140, I don't know.

Wow. It's not bad, is it? So I'm looking forward to, this is the one I want to reach a hundred thousand with, I suppose, because this is the most personal one I do. And the relaxation for stress, anxiety, panic attacks is also like a really personal one too.

And that's also growing. That's about 44,000 downloads, I think, for that one. And I don't know.

I know I shouldn't, well, I used to say I shouldn't get stuck, stuck on the old statistics, but I like, I like the stats. It feels nice. It feels nice to, it's because I can't, I can't rig it.

You know, I can't, I've got no control over who listens and why they listen, anything like that. It's, you know, I don't pay for, I don't pay, pay like a, because you used to be able to pay bots, these things called bots, to, that would, like with YouTube, on Facebook, on MySpace, on various different podcasts, you could pay someone for 10,000 views on YouTube, for example, and you'd pay maybe $29 and they'd send, you know, your video would get viewed 10,000 times. Or the podcast would be listened to.

So, you know, but you could still sometimes sell, you know, sort of promote it. I've promoted it and paid for promotion with Spreaker itself, where they promote an episode online, you know, but on their platform, but I've still got a bit of credit on there, actually. I think I've still got about 20 pound, which I could use for that, but I don't know if it really, really did anything.

I mean, if it did, if it was, there would be, I suppose there's a way of working it, which I'm sure there is, a way of benefit from it, then it'd be worth the investment, but I just don't have the investment. And I do think, you know, if I was fairly well off, you know, so if I won the lottery and I had, I don't know, just, you know, let's say a million, just for cliche's sake, I would just continue to do this. Isn't it weird? Isn't it weird that I actually, I've had a few ideas about what I'd quite like to do.

If I won the lottery, I thought I'd go and live in a health spa for a year. So go and spend, you know, maybe a grand a week or something in a health spa and do that for a whole year and get healthy, eat healthy, do exercise. But I could also make recordings, you know, as well, because as long as I've got internet, I can do stuff like that.

And then at the end of the year, that'll give me time to think about what I want to do with the money. So I won't have just spent it all or spent loads of it because, I mean, it's a thing though, isn't it? If you had a million, to some people a million pound isn't a lot of money. To me, it is.

And I don't mean to people, you know, some countries where it's 500,000 whatever to buy a loaf of bread. I don't mean where the currency's gone, dropped out to nothing. But I mean, like in here, in this country, in this kind of society where a million, it's a start.

I had this conversation with someone and he said to me, 250 grand wouldn't be enough. He said 500 grand wouldn't be enough to retire. It wouldn't be enough for him to leave his job.

So fair enough, maybe not to retire, if you want to, especially if he's 40. It's like, okay. But I kind of think if you can't make 500 grand last, yet you managed to get by on earning 30,000 a year, yet 500,000 isn't a lot of money to you, if you're earning 30,000 a year.

That seems a bit, it's like, okay. So how would you like 10 years worth of wages right now? I know you wouldn't, would you? Because it's not a lot of money, is it? It's only 300 grand. You wouldn't want that.

It's not enough, is it? No, no, it's okay. I will take it. I do find it funny.

People would say, oh yeah, 250 grand, that's not enough. You know, that wouldn't even, let's pay off the mortgage and that'd be it, it wouldn't be enough. Yeah, if they walked past a 20 pound note on the floor, they would stop and pick it up.

In fact, if they saw it in the road, they'd probably try and get it out of the road. People don't have come up with some silly stuff, do they? Including me, obviously. 250 grand, that's not enough for me.

250 grand, I have 10 pound 20 pence in the bank. 250,000 pounds would be, that would last me for the rest of my life. Or at least the next 10, 15 years, if I didn't have any other income and I just lived on 20 grand a year, doing this, had holidays and you know, lived an okay life.

With the interest, 250 grand, that'd keep me going forever. Or at least until I retire. Because what am I, 49 now? 49, I can retire when I'm, I think I can retire when I'm 68.

So I've only got 19 years left to retire. That's all. That's not long.

So I've just got to find a way to get through the next 90 years so that I can continue living this lifestyle. Now 90, the thing is, I know that if I keep doing what I'm doing, keep doing this, keep making recordings for the next 19 years, I'll have, I don't know how many, what, 10,000 recordings plus, probably 20,000 recordings maybe, which is a lot, isn't it? It's quite a lot. Based on the amount that I do now, I haven't counted lately.

I don't mean I haven't counted anything. I mean, I did count the minutes that my porridge went into the microwave. But that was via a dial on the actual microwave.

So I didn't actually really have to count. But I did watch as the numbers were going up from like 10 seconds, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. So, but I haven't recently counted the amount of recordings I've made this year.

Because the last two years, so 2018 and 2019, which is the current year that I'm, as I'm talking now, this is the year that we're still in. Although there's only a month left, just over a month until 2020 arrives. I think, I think, I think, I think I've made more recordings this year than at any other year since I started this in 2006.

So I think this has been my most productive year as far as making recordings, but not making videos. I've made very few videos at all. Last year, I would say it was the most productive year up to that point.

It's been overtaken this year. I've made, I've done more this year, I think, than I did last year. But I would need to count them.

And in all fairness, it's only been the last two years that I've been adding dates to the recordings. I never used to do that before. Well, no, actually, that's not true.

When I very, very first started making audio recordings, because I had a podcast, and I used to also used to put them on to MySpace. It shows you how old, how far we're going back. That's before Facebook even existed.

And MySpace, I'm sure I used to put the dates. And I actually found, believe it or not, I found, I found, I found a podcast on MySpace and some stuff that's still there that I was able to download from, you know, a long, long, many, many years back. And it did have dates.

You know, sort of the 14th of July 2007. You know, it's that kind of stuff. But wow, I kind of wish I'd still, I'd kept that up all the way through so that I could just get more of an idea of the dates of when I did stuff.

And I don't know, just, just my own kind of interest, really. Because, you know, if there's nothing, if I'm very interested, as I'm sure you'll agree, very interesting indeed. Tell me more.

You know what? It's one thing that no one's ever said to me. No one's ever said to me, Jason, tell me more. Please keep talking.

Say more about that. Never, ever. Even in counselling.

I've even been in counselling sessions as a client, and the counsellors hasn't said, tell me more. Quite often they sort of say, can you please stop talking now? Remember one counsellor said, I suppose you don't mind if we finish the session early? I said, I've only been there 10 minutes. She said, yeah, no, I've got a headache now.

I said, okay. You know what I did? I did this as a joke with one of my last clients. But I'd say I'm letting you know that it was a joke, and she knew it was a joke.

But it was the last session, and it was my very last, like, closing, and I was stopping being a counsellor. And as the time went past, I just, I looked at the clock, I just put my coat on, and I just went to the door and walked out. And I just did it to make her laugh, and it did make her laugh.

But it was just, I thought it was really funny to do that, because it's so wrong. It's kind of the, and I've got to stress that it was funny, and it made her laugh. It wasn't as serious.

We knew that the sessions were coming to an end quite long before they did. But I kind of thought about it years, for years, how funny it would be to do that. But not funny, but wrong.

I think it's probably the, probably the best. I have the TV on, on mute, but they show stuff on there, on Channel 5 in England, they show stuff that they just, it's really, just not hugely pleasant to watch visually. So I'm kind of getting rid of it.

Yeah, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get rid of it. So I'm sure there was stuff that I was talking about. I, I, I, I, I, I, I. I haven't written a poem for ages.

You know what, I wrote a poem for my nan, when she, for her funeral, and it was going to be putting into her coffin is before she got buried and you know it's a nice thing so it's not really a morbid story it's just something that I thought would be nice. Now you know I was asked by my family and said did you want to work we put in like little cards in the coffin and other stuff you know some flowers and I said oh perhaps I'll write a poem. Okay yes that's nice and I wrote it and I gave it to you know family member to put it in there.

I had no idea that they were gonna read it. They read my poem. Not my nan I'm talking about the you know family members that read my poem and it was private and it peed me off a little bit if I'm honest.

I was glad I didn't put the original copy in. Like I'd be glad to get rid of these these people this family and they've got proper annoying haven't they. Something like that.

Hong Kong local elections. Oh I upset well I didn't mean to but I think I think I upset the lady in the garage today she's from I don't know somewhere in Europe and she's lovely she's she's the friendliest person in the garage and I said to her are you looking forward she looked a bit miserable today and I said to you looking forward to the elections or no I said are you looking forward to when the elections are over. I was referring to our elections because obviously the elections on the 12th of December and she said yeah I'm looking forward to the over tomorrow and I thought oh no I'm not gonna miss three weeks of my life again am I.

So I looked at my phone checked the date and said wait a minute what do you mean tomorrow it's not the 11th today it's only it's not even December yet.

She said what? I said yeah. She said no tomorrow that's when the elections are. I said no they're not it's the 12th.

She said no the elections in my country are tomorrow. I said elections in your country? She said yeah. I said what do you have a government there do you? She said what? I said are you joking? I said yeah.

I think she got a bit annoyed I didn't mean to just I was just messing around but I had no idea I don't because here in the United England of Kingdom Great Britain on the news because I do watch the news kind of can tell you this we don't especially the daytime news we focus kind of on ourself and maybe America you know we do cover some things like political things maybe in a Ukraine or if there's a new prime minister in Australia or New Zealand or Canada or France or Italy or Spain you know

might or Ireland you know there might be like a mention of it but not usually if it does cover an election it's there was something about an election on the news today where the the government couldn't well basically the winners couldn't put together an actual government so I think then it goes doesn't it go back to another election or something I don't know but they couldn't form a government they basically couldn't I think that's when there's no majority which means that a couple of parties or even three parties have to try and work together to

all you know to form a parliament but if they all want different things and they you know it was boring wasn't it politics it's a bit mind you you know I like well I don't like it but I've noticed when I watch the news without any sound you can kind of get an idea from the facial expressions if it's genuine or like a little fakie smile and the reporter on here or the news reader on this one because it's the middle of the night well it's not the middle of the night it's 114 a.

m.

is it's got quite a friendly face and seems genuine genuine yes genuine oh look see in the middle of the night they do cover more stuff but it's also quite repetitive they just reshow the same stuff like every hour unless there's a an actual news story that's happening in the moment so yeah so I've got my so I'm not going to university in January and I don't really know it's I'm not sure what to do with that with that new information and left me a little bit a little bit you know so I'm just letting

it sink in it's now a Friday tomorrow is Saturday and there's Saturday night there's boxing on all night and I mean literally all night from probably seven o'clock in the evening there's world title fights in England and now I'll probably finish about 11 maybe a little bit later and then at two o'clock in the morning American boxing's on world title fight between Ortiz and Wilder the heavyweight champion of the world WBC Deontay Wilder so I've got my Saturday night sorted and have a lovely evening in watching the boxing and I have a lovely evening in

every single night but yeah I suppose but I'm doing but when I'm watching when I'm watching the boxing when I'm watching the boxing when I'm watching sport and that's it so and it has been for boxing's been my favorite sport since I was probably 14 so how many years is that 24 34 44 45 46 47 48 49 so 35 years boxing has been my favorite sport I suppose it's not only my favorite sport it's the only sport that I love I did like you know I did love martial arts and stuff but didn't particularly

enjoy watching it because I did I entered a couple of competitions when I was doing karate and it is interesting to watch if there's someone there that you you know one of your friends you get to watch him or her in the tournament so there's that excitement one of your teammates you know one of your club people from your club but on telly I just didn't because it's very much point based and I think again it's kind of one of those things that I didn't have the I didn't have that ability I didn't have the

kicking ability that the top athletes have the top martial artists have even when I was young I could kick above my head but I was only three foot tall you know I was kicking people in the hips and that's it can do you know something but I just never felt right I had to I didn't don't I feel I even ever really enjoyed kicking just yeah you know I like punching didn't like kicking when I say punch and I'm talking about punch bags and stuff like that not people because I think with boxing in the

ring should be in it's a sport should be in the ring and it's the best place so I like boxing because it's I think it's something that I could have been good at if I'd have been young if I'd have got into it at a very early age I think I could have been proficient my granddad was a boxer in the army and he was a tough tough man very tough he was but then my dad he was judo the judo expert my dad was when he was at school and but he had he was

my size when he was at school he was just born big he was he left school he was like 14 and a half stone or something and I'm a bit heavier than that but he'd you know he was big standing he kind of he was it was I suppose he was like one of those kids that's already a man or already a woman long before they even are halfway through high school they're just physically as tall as they're ever gonna get as broad and heavy as they're ever gonna get as hairy as they're ever gonna

get and then there's the boys this is the boy and I remember being at school with adults people kids that was big as my dad like you know it's like why are you at school shouldn't you be on a building site somewhere or you know shouldn't you have your own company shouldn't you have kids mind you actually when I was at school the biggest one at school the one it was he'd been an adult right from high from junior school he was from the age of 10 I think he was basically a man and he

was big it's like tall wide way bigger than what I am now a lot taller as well and he did have a baby in the in the last year of school well he you know didn't know realize he was a girl he got he had a baby so it's quite weird imagine that was in so that baby was probably born in 1986 87 let's say end of 86 so 86 96 2006 2016 78 that child would be 32 or 33 years old can you believe it I love cheering myself up just the time it's like

it doesn't even seem possible that I could be a grandparent I'm not but I could you know I mean statistically age-wise I mean I am from a timeline perspective of from fertility to my age now I could have had a child at the age of 16 17 18 you know so I had a child at 18 and then she had a child or he had a child at 18 so 18 plus 18 which is 36 isn't it which means I could have a three-year-old grandchild I think the only person I nearly did have a kid

once but these apart from that the only real possibility that I have of having a child like you know would be from 19 I think I might be wrong but 1995 I think and that's there was a there was a couple that I thought possible but there's one but I've not seen her since so I've no idea so 95 2005 2015 16 17 18 19 so the again 23 years old I can have a 23 year old son or daughter or both could have been twins got twins in my family and ginger like the ginger

gene the ginger gene I've got my my Nan's brother was ginger not when I knew him when I knew him he was gray and bald you know bald and gray but he was in his 80s 87 or something but he used to be ginger and two of my eyes at three no at least two of my cousin's kids are ginger like different cousins like not but even one's a second cousin and one's a third or fourth third cousin and they're watching the said ginger ginger gene is there so I could have it if I had

a kid my kid could be Ed Sheeran oh my goodness Ed Sheeran could be my child he could be my son how cool would that be hi Ed I would have got in contact had I known and I've only got 10 pound in my bank otherwise I'd buy you a present costing 12 pound you fancy meeting up I can come around to your mansion if you send a send a private limousine Wow that'll explain why he's so creative he takes after his daddy yeah I was when I was younger genuinely I wanted to be a

singer or sing a songwriter and I did I did do those things but not professionally and I I just I really wanted to do but I couldn't I just didn't have I didn't have this self-belief perhaps the motivation I don't know whatever but learning to play an instrument that you can sing along to would involve me learning the guitar really or the piano and I've owned probably about ten guitars over the years with the hope that I can learn to play something that I can that can accompany me singing and it's never really worked out

but once I had actually had a really nice guitar I think I was working in security and I spent about 220 pound on this guitar and this was in 1996 so it's quite a lot of money but it's a really beautiful sounding guitar and I'd already owned probably about five or six before then as well perhaps more but the first I got a guitar I bought this guitar from the catalogue when I was about 14 and basically there was a time I'll tell you what a catalogue is if you don't know it's basically this really

thick book I mean really hundreds and hundreds of pages glossy and you could wipe them clean anyway I won't but there's this you could basically look at the pictures of everything that you was buying and it'd be thousands and thousands and thousands of items for all you know from every single thing and which is basically what you do now online if you go to Amazon or various different ones and this the catalogues have now moved online as well it's like Very Dorkado UK, Little Woods obviously there's Argos which is there so and whatever one that's

available in your particular country anyway I bought this guitar and I had these dreams of learning to play it and I've even as a child I had a sense of what's the right word something that no one else seems to really have especially people who share houses or consideration that's it I was considerate and I didn't want to disturb any other people because I had my fun with the violin and the bugle the drums I felt like I'd used up that credit that credit of disturbing the other people in the house when I was a

child and it was a little bit more tense because we're all teenagers at that point and they I was 14 one was 16 one was 18 so I couldn't kind of get away with annoying them so much as like I used to be able to so I got an electric guitar which had headphones and a speaker you know like a speaker that I could put headphones in so I didn't disturb anyone the guitar came through used to be really quick still it was just good you didn't have to wait more than a few days came

through and I'm all excited open it up and I'm looking at it they don't look right it feels nice it's nice and heavy and I kind of oh my you know and I had a strap and everything had a strap on so I could not yeah I could put my hands just the strap on allowed me to have my hands free and so that was good look in the mirror and just stand there almost I think of myself as Jimi Hendrix but slightly different looking and I could see there was something not quite right about

the guitar I couldn't figure it out what it was and it's bugging me now I thought should I just Google it and find out what's going on and I remembered that Google didn't exist and the internet didn't exist at that time so I thought I better not and I couldn't wait for 20 years for the internet to come about so I thought okay it's not really 20 years is it 8494 2004 that's less than 20 years so what 15 years 14 2014 to 1984 94 about 13 years I really the internet in the late 90s

was a bit very basic wasn't it very slow you know I remember just yeah sometimes I'd click on a picture to download and I'd go to work and come back 8 hours later and you still hadn't finished uploading onto the pic onto the screen you know it's very very slow sometimes it's worth the wait but that dial-up modem boing boing boing boing boing boing boing I used to quite like that sound but anyway the it turned out let's ask my brother I said brother he said yes brother I said what's that smell he said don't

worry about that what do you want I said do you I got a guitar but it's a bit weird I don't know what's wrong with it he said I'll have a look so he came into my bedroom and he started laughing I thought oh no he's seen me he's seen the underwear it wasn't that he wasn't I said well what are you laughing at he said I can't believe you know what you've just done I said I know quite a lot of what I've just done I'm fairly aware of my actions generally what were you

focusing on at this particular time he said well your guitar that's what you call me in here I didn't really call you in did I I just knocked on your door and he said didn't you have a look at my guitar he said yeah well in that case that's what I'm doing he said you know what you've done I said well other than go around in circles and he said oh you've got such a dry sense of humor ah he said you know you've only gone and bought yourself a bass guitar I said yeah he

said if you don't notice there's only four strings on there should be six strings I said I thought maybe they'd forgotten to put the other two on he said no it's a bass guitar I said yeah so so how are you supposed to write songs and accompany yourself with a bass guitar you need a normal guitar to do that you know a lead guitar just a basic standard six string guitar I said no I wanted it to be a bass guitar he said you wanted it to be a bass yeah said yeah why is that

because I heard that men or women or other people whoever that play bass guitars are idolized and thought of as highly creative and groovy people okay where did you hear that I can't remember where I heard it but I definitely heard it because otherwise why would I spend £90 on a bass guitar unless I wanted the bass guitar to be delivered to me to play the bass he said I don't think you did I said well I don't think you you you did either he said what I don't I don't this is a silly conversation

he said yeah it is isn't it I said yeah I know they said you were you doing one of those recordings again I said yeah I said you really should let me know when you're making recordings you shouldn't just record me you know without telling me that's what you're doing I said I know I forgot he said you seem to forget quite a lot lately haven't you I said like what he said you you know and I said yes leave it at that shall we he said yeah he said she said they all said then

an elephant came all the way up to the hill oh it's lovely up here said the elephant the monkey was at the bottom of the hill saying can you see the castle from there and the elephant said no I can't and the monkey said oh that's a shame that's the end of that story so what else has happened I think that's about it really not much going on just you know just doing my thing which brings us to the end of this recording so thank you very much for listening please remember to be kind to

yourself because you deserve to be happy lots of love bye