#509 Let me bore you to sleep

Hello and welcome to let me bore you to sleep. My name is Jason Newland. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

And Andre is stirring in the background. Yeah, I can hear him. I'm just trying to hear if there's any other other sounds in the background.

Let me see if I need to turn the knob a little bit. That's okay. So I hope you're okay and all of that.

Yeah. So I haven't made one of these recordings for... I don't know since when. It's anyone's guess.

I don't know. It's probably a couple of days. Let me bore you to sleep, yeah.

The last recording was the 30th of September. It's now the 2nd of October. It's only a couple of days.

It's not a long time. Yeah, so there you go. So this is Friday, the 2nd of October 2020.

I hope that you are well and all that jazz. Let me see what messages I've got. Rachel has a... Rachel says, I like Cliff Richards too.

One of my favorites is Wired for Sound. Yeah, mine too actually. One of his favorites.

Wired for Sound. It's not a good impression of that, but I quite like Evil Woman. What's another one I like of his? It's so funny how we don't talk anymore.

Oh, I don't see. I do like some of his earlier stuff as well. Everything's earlier, isn't it? When you're 97 like him, everything's kind of earlier.

But you know, stuff in the late 50s. Or was it 60? I don't know. But the doll, the living doll thing.

Got myself a crying, walking, talking, living doll. And then sort of, what's the other one? We're all going on a summer holiday. That's more like Calex Rock, isn't it? We're all going on a summer holiday.

No more working for a week or two. Oh, Calex. Gemma says, Hi Jason.

Just a quick one about your holiday idea. I came home from a caravan holiday yesterday. I paid £120 for four nights in a gold caravan.

Wi-Fi included and entertainment passes too. I went through, I went through park holidays. They have loads of dates and places available and prices vary depending on location.

Gemma, is this an advert? Do you have shares in this company? It's just the way you say it. And, you know, prices vary depending upon location. Much love.

Just another quick note. The clocks go forward in spring and back in the autumn. Spring forward, fall back.

So that's the reason why it's called fall. It's not good enough reason. Molly says, oh, Molly hasn't sent me a message.

Molly, send me a message. I want to say a big thank you to. Give me two seconds.

I'm stuck in my head now. Okay. All right.

This is for Viola. Viola. Viola.

Is it Viola or Viola? Anyway, Viola, thank you for your PayPal gift. Very much appreciated. Very timely, I would like to add.

Very much needed a little bit of help for the coming week. So thank you. And Mari.

I was asking me, hi, Jason. Hope you and Andre are well. I'll do it in Mari's voice.

Mari's voice. Hi, Jason. Hope you and Andre are well.

Which version of your podcasters adverts as I try to listen to act one in order to bring in some money for you. Best wishes, Mari. Mari.

Wow, that was hard on the throat. P.S. When I said I was crossing people complaining about the ads, I was being polite. It's not a word I use.

I leave you to fill in what I might have said. And I replied, hi, y'all. Thanks.

I can actually just do a voice for myself as well. They all have ads now. I gave up trying to please everyone.

And then Mari replies, oh, I used a link on Twitter last night and no ads. So I went on to the website and still no ads. That was loud.

Okay, I have to edit that bit out. Well, there's a few things to cover there. That's a few.

There's a few things. A few things to cover. I did not have another message from what's her name? Rachel.

Oh, yeah, she sent a message. I really enjoyed. Let me bore you to sleep.

508. You had me laughing as well as helping me off to sleep. Zed, Zed, Zed, Zed.

Hope you are okay. Kiss, kiss. Um, yeah, thanks.

I don't know. 508. When was that? Oh, that was the last one I did.

In other words, can you hurry up and make another one? I've waited forever. Where's the latest one? Thank you, Rachel. It's very kind of you.

Right. Here's the thing. This is not in relation to what Rachel asked.

This is probably more to do with the adverts. I don't know anymore. I really don't know.

I took them off and added them back about five times since yesterday. It's a weird one, really. It's a weird, weird situation.

I don't want to ruin people's experiences of the podcasts by having adverts. But I don't also don't want to ruin my experience of being alive because I haven't got enough money by not having the adverts. It's, you know, it's a weird one.

Um, it's not just paying for all the stuff that it costs to run this stuff and all the backdated money that I've paid out. 20, 25 grand, probably, if not more, over the years that I've kind of, I kind of owe myself, if that makes any sense, that money's owed to me by me. So I need to pay myself back eventually.

And it's not just the fact that I haven't actually had a full-time job since 2014. And that full-time job only lasted between December and, so for a year, I wasn't working for the last five months there, but I still was, was still employed. But I didn't have a full-time wage because I was on emergency money.

So just, just low, lower. So I only had December, January, February, March, April, June, July, or I think I had eight months of full-time money. And the previous time I had full-time money, actually working full-time and getting paid a full-time salary, was 2006.

Okay. So, and that was September, 2006. So since September, 2006, ironically, 2006 is the year that I started doing this online stuff.

So since September, 2006, I've worked full-time five months or seven months. The rest of the time I was working part-time or also I was at university for three years, between 2007, 2010. And then I was a counselor, excuse me, again, part-time, getting paid hourly, doing the most I did was like 20 hours a week.

Yeah. So, and then I get that, I got that full-time job back in insurance in 2012, I think it was in 2013, something like that. So, I don't know what my point is, but during that time, I've spent every, pretty much every penny I've had on this, you know, outside of rent, food, all that stuff.

All my money's gone on this, all my money's gone on equipment I've bought. And yeah, I've had quite a bit of help actually to get stuff as well over the years. But for those first few years, I got no help.

So really, I didn't really start getting a bit of help. Blimey, what was that noise? I just heard a banging around somewhere, I don't know where. So, I got a bit of help probably, let's say 2012, I started getting a little bit of help from people.

And, you know, over the years, I've had quite a bit of help getting stuff, buying stuff, you know, help with paying for things, gifts. I mean, that chair I've got there, the TV I've got, no gifts. Got help to buy a camera, I got, yeah, so I've had lots of help and also to pay for stuff.

It doesn't add up as enough to cover, you know, even when I have like the months where I get help sort of with PayPal gifts. Overall, it doesn't cover the costs. But it does, everything helps, it really does.

But over the years, I just literally, I worked it out, like, honestly, 20 plus grand, which isn't really a lot if you consider it's 14, 15 years, 20 grand is not really a lot. And so it's probably a lot more than that, in fact. But every month, if you think I spend £100 a month, which is very little, if you think, you know, let's say, for every year, I spent £100 a month for every year.

So what's that? 12 times by, wait a minute, 12 times, how many years is it? So 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Okay, so let's say 14 years, 168 months. So even at £100 a month, it's nearly 17 grand.

Hey, you know, I've spent a lot more than that. I mean, just just this iPad alone is costing me 1700 over four years to buy. And that's obviously quite a high interest rate.

But I needed, I needed something. And so I've got the best one I could get, which is this iPad Pro. Yeah, so the point of the review, the reason I'm saying this is just to let you know that I'm not saving up for a yacht.

I don't drive, I can't even think of a car. I was gonna say Mercedes, but what's a Lamborghini? I'm not driving a Lamborghini. Are they called Count Tash's still? I'm just stuck in the 80s or 60s maybe.

So yeah, it's and I have these little fantasies, these little fantasies that I can do this, you know, the online stuff that I do for a living. And then something else comes along and knocks that cigar out my mouth. And it's just, I've tried so many, tried so many different ways to make this work.

I mean, it doesn't work. It works as a free service. But to work as a business, would involve charging or getting money from somewhere.

And the adverts, first of all, they're unstable. So yeah, I could have a really good day with the adverts. And make not saying it's not a lot of money, but you know, it's it could be like a really like, wow.

And I could have had less, less listens and downloads than a day before, but have twice as much money come in. And you are looking at pennies, you know, when it comes to, I mean, I don't know how much per thousand that comes in, but it's not a lot. Honestly, it's really quite a small amount.

But when you see it, and you think, okay, well, I'm averaging 5000 downloads a day. So that's, I really go below five now. Although today's been a really low day for some reason.

And I've even reached 4000. But it's rare, that's a rarity. And I think, well, times that by 10, or double it, or whatever to see, well, ah, so if I times that by 10, that's actually livable.

It's a livable amount of money. I could afford to pay my rent, buy my food. Remembering that I still have to run this service, I still got all those costs.

I still got the things I need to pay off, which for things, you know, like the iPad that I use for this service, I don't need an iPad for anything else. I don't hardly ever even go on the internet anymore. And I spend way too much time staring at this screen as it is, you know, do some research and stuff.

But, you know, if I watch YouTube, I watch it on TV. I don't need a laptop or you know, an iPad for that. And the phone I've got is what I usually do most of my Googling now.

If I want to search something, I just do it on the phone. I never used to really, but I do a bit more now. So it means I've got to get up from my chair.

You know how much of an effort that is. Oh, yes. Really, Andre? Can you not get yourself comfortable? He's such a little monkey.

Andre, he's a little monkey. No. He's a guaranteed son of Ryan.

Dear Jason, I think you find he's a ferret. Blimey. You know, it's really weird.

With these headphones, him running to the paper to do a... I don't know what he's doing. Oh, yeah, I now see this what he's done. It's not a wee.

Let's just put it that way. And what he did on the paper is a good boy. Good boy, Andre.

Smelly little creature. And it sounds louder when I got the headphones on than what it normally does. Because I'm hearing through the microphone instead of through my own ears.

Yeah, I'm still hearing through my ears as well. Because even without the microphone on, with these headphones on, I could still hear him. Because they're not noise cancelling headphones.

They're actually really cheapy headphones. Because I've got this £2000 set up. Oh, it sounds... How impressive.

Pressing, if, is, you know, through the mixer, the microphone. It's a really good microphone. All that stuff.

And I think I spent about £16 on the headphones. But they work. You know, I've just got to be able to hear.

Yeah, I could have could have spent £200 on some headphones. But I couldn't. But, you know, I mean, I just genuinely could have got, you know, you can probably spend thousands of pounds on headphones if you want to.

What would be the point? I suppose if I was in a recording studio, then I'd want a better quality. Probably. Yeah.

It's really weird because I was thinking about that. I hadn't even considered. I was talking about when's the last time I worked full time.

I didn't realise. I was like, wow, September 2006. Because from September 2006, I worked part time in the call centre.

Until I think it was June 2007, I left. And they basically, they said either come back full time or leave. That was the options I had.

And at that time, I didn't want to go back full time because what I was doing with the rest of my time was volunteering in a drug and two different places, a drug rehab centre and an alcohol charity. So I was volunteering in those two places, doing group sessions, relaxation sessions. I was also doing the free payment service that I was offering to people in the town I lived.

Plus, I was doing online recordings as well. So I didn't want to go back full time because I was using all of my time. I mean, literally, you know, every minute of the day pretty much was taken up.

Which I was happy with. It was good. I liked it.

And then I decided to apply to go to university to do a counselling course. It was a gamble. It was a gamble.

And so I said, no, I'm leaving. See you. And I did my month's, I was going to say sentence, I did my month's notice, did that, worked.

And I started thinking, you know, because I'd never, I'd never worked my notice before. And I think if I ever had a company where I employed people, and they were doing something important, which kind of should be everybody that you employ, shouldn't they? I mean, every, every job should be important. If you're employing someone else to do it, you'd want it to be done properly.

Well, I noticed in that last month, the further into the month I got, the less I cared about the job I was doing. I'll scratch my ear. That's better.

I started to realize, especially the last two weeks, and then the last week, when I was asked, have you finished that yet? And this is the deadline needs to be done by that this date. I started to think, oh, don't think I care about this anymore. It doesn't seem to really bother me at all, whether or not I do the job correctly.

Now, I've never been in that position. When I worked in call centers, just any job, really, I generally try and do my best. And, but, you know, more so probably in the call centers, because I was, I started doing that kind of work when I was 31.

So I kind of classed myself as being more of an adult by then. And more conscientious, I did put my best work in. Yeah, I did.

And even when I was working part time, I still, and I'd like to do the job properly when I was doing it. In fact, I would say I possibly worked harder when I was part time than I did when I was full time. Because I went in there at nine, finished at two.

And I just worked full on the whole time. And it suited me perfectly. That was a real stutter then when I just turned it into an extra, I extended the stutter, but that was natural stuff.

Perfectly. And I extenuated it. I turned it into instead of just being a stutter, it was erotic, I think.

Well, neurotic, probably. So I, I didn't want to go back to work in full time, because I had built for the first time in my life, the first time, I'd built a life that I was actually enjoying. Yeah, I enjoyed my job.

I liked the place I worked at. I preferred it doing part time. So I enjoyed working there part time.

I was living in a Buddhist community, which meant I didn't have a lot to pay out for. The, you know, I could afford on my part time money, I could still afford to live there. Still afford to eat, you know, didn't have a lot of money, but I got, I got by.

And having that extra time to build up, I think I had a fairly good reputation for a while, when I was doing the pain relief, when I was doing the volunteering and the charities. And then, you know, sort of started to focus online. I mean, the online really built more in 2007.

And then by 2008. Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, I was part time from 2000s to the beginning of 2007.

So that's when I was really, was doing the online, of course, but it was less than what I did afterwards. Once I went, once I left the job completely, I spent more time doing online recordings. I just go to the park, make recordings.

I remember once there was like a little opening, you can climb, not climb into, you can get into it. And it was like a bush. I don't want you to have the image of me hiding in a bush.

I wasn't hiding, but it was like a, it was a big opening. But you could just walk in there. And there's loads of birds singing and I set my little recorder up.

And it was going really well. And I needed to go to the toilet. So I had to run, run home.

But I wasn't, didn't live far, lived across the road from the park. So it wasn't far to go. I just remember that because I'd never attempted to make a recording in public before.

I'd always done it in my bedroom. And I suppose like I'm doing now really. But back then I used to make videos and then convert the video into an mp3 and then upload the mp3 to my website and to podcasts.

And the video would go onto YouTube and MySpace. And probably by then Facebook as well, actually. Because Facebook was around, wasn't it? Because that was 2007.

Yeah, I remember that. That's right. And so yeah, I did, what did I do? I was happy with how things were going.

I was getting a little bit of, quite a bit of positive feedback from online. I'd been nominated for a volunteering award with one of the charities. I didn't win it, but I was nominated.

Best Volunteer or Weirdest Beard or I don't know what it was. And I didn't even know I'd been nominated. And I was so pleased, just, you know, I turned up at this thing just to go along.

I was invited to go along with the staff. Not knowing I'd be nominated is like, wow. But I didn't win.

But this was a, like a regional thing. So it wasn't just in that town. It was a whole region.

So there was a lot of different charities there. So that was, that was cool. So yeah, that's, it's weird just thinking about it.

I hadn't really thought, the fact that I hadn't really worked full-time since, apart from those five months, haven't worked full-time. Well, I've only worked five months full-time since December 2000, no, September 2006, which is, you know, what, 14 years. Blimey.

But it doesn't mean I haven't been working. I worked, I was still working part-time while I was self-employed for a couple of years, two or three years. So I was always working full-time.

I just wasn't working full-time. What do you mean? That doesn't even make sense. No, what I mean is, I wasn't getting paid.

But I was still putting the hours in. I was still, yeah, still putting in 16-hour days sometimes, maybe longer, especially when I was working on websites or making recordings or those kinds of things. So there's always, or promoting, you know, it's always been work.

There's always been a lot of involvement. I mean, if anything, it's probably easier now than it used to be. Like, for example, the podcast I'm with, Spreaker, they let you automatically add your podcast to loads of podcast directories, such as Spotify and Stitcher and other places.

When in, you know, going back a few years, you'd need to do it everyone yourself. You need to manually submit each podcast and take a long time. So yeah, it's, I don't know.

I started building my website, like the new one I got. And it's still the old one, but I've been sort of making changes to it. I've taken it offline at the moment.

And I started working on it thinking, I know what I'm going to do. Let's give this a go. Let's try and see if I can have a business out of this.

Let's see if I can actually, you know, I've been so long without any money, like a salary. And even that only lasted for five months. So it'd be, even minimum wage, which is about 15 grand a year now.

I'd feel rich, actually feel like I was a millionaire, I reckon. Even on a minimum wage, there's the law we have now in this country. Well, the law's been around for years, but the minimum wage has gone up to, I think it's eight pounds, 10 pence an hour, something like that.

So it works out about 15 grand a year, which is quite weird because when I left school, when I was even 18, 16, 17, five grand a year was kind of the average wage for my kind of a, you know, for someone 17, 18. Five grand, 100 pound a week, the rent would be probably 25, 30 pound a week for a room. And I think it was a livable, it was a livable amount of money.

And I got paid tax, I still pay tax on it as well. On 100 pound a week, I still pay tax and National Insurance. Now, I don't know what the minimum is before you pay tax.

I think it's like 12 grand or something. Unless it is the minimum wage of 15 before you pay tax, but I doubt it. I reckon it's probably, it went up to 10.

See, I'm a little bit rusty on this stuff. It's been such a long time, but even still, I've still been working, not working. You just said you'd still be working, but you're not working.

I mean, come on. Yeah, what I mean is I've been, that's Andre in the background, by the way, if you hear grunting, it's not me. It's not my stomach.

It's him going, it sounds like he's on a toilet struggling. Don't do that, Andre, you give yourself piles. Don't strain, let it happen naturally.

And have some prune juice. So I have these ideas and think, you know what? Yeah, why not do this? I could live and do this. I could have a nice life, nice, financially stable, but also be able to do things like go out, be able to buy presents for people on birthdays and Christmases and be able to have some nice clothes instead of the scraps that I wear these days.

Should I do the, okay, I'll play the violin. Yeah, smallest violin, la la la. Oh dear.

Why does it always rain on me? It's because I stole that car when I was 17. So I'm kind of in a quandary. So I've been backwards and forwards with the adverts, taking them on, taking them off, put them on, taking them off, all day, virtually all day.

And now the thing is, when I think of the expenses that are coming up and the $72 that I'm going to have to pay for the podcast hosting, which is probably, I don't know, probably about a week, a week or so's time, I'm thinking, like it's always, it's like every, almost like it's every week. I mean, it's monthly, but it just keeps coming around. And then, yeah, I just, it's a little bit, it's a little bit, it's a little bit funny, this feeling inside.

And yeah, I don't know. You could say I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. All I know is yesterday, I didn't feel motivated to do anything.

And all day today, I hadn't felt motivated to do any recordings until now. And I had motivation. I'm like, oh, I want to make a recording.

Not to earn a living, not to make money, not to do anything, just for fun. You know, just because there's some people like listening to these. And I'm not going to do any versions with music either.

I'm just going to leave it as it is. Just, just me. And however, saying that, what I'm thinking of doing, either weekly or monthly, or just whenever I fancy it, I'm going to perhaps do a relaxation sleep session that I did the other day.

Like that kind of thing. Just a little bit different. A little bit ooh, a little bit ah, you know, just a little bit.

Some people like it, other people perhaps won't, but not regularly. I don't want to do that regularly because I already do that regularly with the other podcasts. I do, you know, deep sleep whisper ones.

I do the relaxation hypnosis podcasts, and quite a lot of those are for sleep as well. And I do the sleep hypnosis weekly. So yeah, I think I do my fair share of relaxation in the sleep sessions.

However, I think it's always nice to mix it up a little bit to do. If nothing else, let you see that I'm not just, I'm perhaps not quite as weird as I come across. I'm not just some weird middle-aged man that talks absolutely rubbish for an hour.

Even though I am, that is all I am. But I'm just saying, you know, I can give the facade that I am also a, I was going to say professional, but semi, definitely, I like the word semi for some reason, semi-professional. Well, not professional as in getting paid, but like as in my presentability, the way I present my stuff is more professional in the other podcasts than it is here.

I mean, there's no way I can pretend that I'm, I can't pretend that I'm being professional in these recordings. Professional, not bad maybe, but not, you know what I mean? It's kind of, I was gonna say it's a different hat, but this is just me. This is me.

Although I believe that even when I do the other recordings, you can also hear it's me. I don't mean by my voice, but you can, there's something you get with my recordings, I think, I believe that you won't get anywhere else. And I suppose the only thing I've got to offer really is me, because if you listen to other people's recordings, you're going to get them.

So I'm not saying you get me and isn't that wonderful, and I'm better than everyone else, because, well, we all know that's true. I am, me and we all know that, but I don't want to say it because it sounds arrogant, doesn't it? I mean, you know, let's face it, if you didn't like what I'm doing, then you wouldn't be listening. So we all know I'm great, and you're great for listening.

You're the best audience, and I'm the best podcaster, but let's forget that for a minute. God, can you imagine some people, dear Jason, I just banged the microphone again. I've noticed you've been very arrogant lately, even more than normal.

Well, I'm probably the least arrogant person. I don't know, there's probably some people out there that, you know, spiritual people, I don't know, actually. But yeah, it's probably people are less arrogant than me, but less arrogant, more.

I know what I'm trying to say. I don't feel I'm arrogant, actually, because I'll be honest, I don't see, I don't experience... I'm kind of not really sure why people listen to these recordings. I can understand why people listen to the relaxation ones, and the sleep one, you know, the hypnosis-y stuff that I do.

I mean, I can't even listen to it without falling asleep. And it's just boring, if nothing else. I'm just, you know, I can't have known this stuff with that, but it's because I'm just naturally really tedious and boring.

And when I make a sleep session, I am doing it at the same time, and I am falling asleep. So the chances of, you know, I'm relaxing when I'm doing it, when I'm doing a relaxation session. So I just, I can't see how someone could listen and not feel relaxed, because I'm focusing on what I'm saying.

And I'm still, you know, I've got this microphone, I've got everything, I've got Andre running around sometimes. I still end up feeling really, really, really relaxed, and tired, and I start drifting, and I'm not kind of quite sure what I just said. I hope for the best that it wasn't anything too rude.

But yeah, I can imagine now, I might, if I actually put effort in, I might actually be good at this. If I put some, if I actually knew what I was doing. Oh dear, dear, dear.

So yeah, it's, I think, I think making this recording has kind of cheered me up a little bit. Sometimes I do, if I make a recording, not just these ones, but the, it might be a relaxation or sleep one, it might be something completely different, you know, one of the self-development stuff that I do, or motivational, or something like that. And I end up feeling really uplifted.

I was like, wow, I'm walking on air. And I realize, nope, I just sleepwalked, and now I'm up a ladder. Where did I get up this ladder? Oh no, that never happened.

So yeah, it was, I think the bottom line is, I just don't know what's going to happen next. I just don't know what to do. I just don't know.

And I just can't foresee, I do have to have some money coming in at some point. Not through greed, but just practically, practicalities, you know, to, I don't know, I'd like to go on holiday. I'd like to be able to go on holiday once a year, go somewhere nice.

I'd like to be able to wear nice clothes. Maybe, you know, have a girlfriend one day, which means going out and spending money, and buying presents. Not because it's a cliche, and I have to, I think I have to buy presents, because I want to be able to buy presents for my girlfriend, or fiancee, or wife, or, you know, I like, I don't know if it, it's not even that I'm old fashioned, although perhaps I am.

But when I, when I date someone, I like to pay more, because I suppose, I don't want the date to be about money. You know, I think you just get the money out of the way, and just carry on. I want it to be about me.

I want it to be about me, us, you know. And not really, you know, I don't, I don't want to be looking at, I don't want to look at the bill, or I don't want to be looking at a menu, and having to sort of work out, well, I've only got £35. Can I afford to have that? Can I afford to have this? But I'll be able to get a taxi home.

I need to get some condoms. You know, I just, it's kind of, and when I'm working, it's been a long time, but when I was working in the call centres, generally I had money. You know, I had, apart from one point when I was really in debt, but, you know, when I very first started in call centres, or in insurance in 2001, I had so much spare money, because my outgoings was just very little, very, very little.

I think I had £65 a week rent for my studio apartment. I had this little studio flat thing, one room, but with a bathroom and a kitchen. And then the electricity was probably, I don't know, £10 a week, and that was it.

So £75 a week was all I had to pay out for. I had no credit, so I couldn't get loans, I couldn't get credit cards, nothing. So I'd always been on really low money, low, low, you know, yeah, never earned hardly a thing, just barely, barely got by for most of my adult life up to that point.

And even though I wasn't earning huge amounts of money, I was earning, well, when I was doing, yeah, Churchill, I was earning £24,000 a year. So the basic salary is £12,000, and then I get, I doubled it with the bonus. I didn't know what to spend my money on, honestly, until, this is, see, it might sound like, oh, is this always bragging? Well, I'm just telling the truth, actually, it's not really bragging, I don't think, I don't think it's particularly exciting stuff.

But I had an embarrassing moment with my boss, and he wasn't just my boss, he was like a big boss. So my team leader, it wasn't him, it was his boss. And then, so there was one to four, four departments, sales department managers.

And then they, their boss was one person, he was the sales manager of the whole place. So there was four underneath him, and then each department had about six teams with 16 leaders. So I've got a story I could tell, I'll tell you another time.

But he liked me, you know, he uh, I hadn't been there long, started in September, and the Christmas party was in December. And I ended up in McDonald's with him, eating. And it might be because I was more his age, because there's a lot of young people working there.

So maybe I kind of got on with him quite naturally, because I was more kind of, I was probably older than him, to be fair, but not by much, maybe a couple of years. He was, he's probably in his late 20s, early 30s, maybe. Anyway, he, he pulled me aside one day, and he said, you know, to get on in this place, it's a lot about appearance, appearances, how people perceive you.

And I said, yeah, so it's very nice, but can I finish going to the toilet? And he said, well, first of all, yes. Secondly, can you please do that away from my desk? But no, this is in the office, he said to me, there was no one else around, so he did it quietly. He said, Jason, he said it, no, normal, normal talking.

I didn't really know what he was getting at, because at this time, I was in the top 5% of the salespeople. You know, I was consistently in the top five out of about 200 people, quite often number one. I would say probably in the top two, top three.

I was, you know, definitely either second or third, most of the time, sometimes number one, but second a lot of the time at that, at that period. And he said, you know, you're really good at sales and everything, but you're very scruffy. He said, what do you actually spend your money on? Which I thought was a bit rude, but it is a bit rude, isn't it? But I was so, it doesn't take a lot to, no, it does take a lot to shock me.

Back in them days, it didn't, it did, you know, I was quite hard skinned, I think. I'm a lot, I'm a lot more sensitive, no, I don't know what the right word is, sensitive towards other people, other people's feelings. I didn't used to be, really.

It was almost because I couldn't be, you know, I was in survival mode for most of my life, not in a dramatic way, just survival, you know, getting by, paying rent, working crappy jobs, just getting by, just managing, you know. But as I got older, you know, training to be a counsellor, meditation, you know, studying, I turned into a little bit more sensitive towards others, not always, but there's, you know, there's a possibility, you know, I have the option. I think in my 20s, I just didn't even have the option.

I didn't care about other people or their feelings. I just, I just cared about myself because there was no one else to care about me. It was just me, sort of a maverick, travelling, almost like I was travelling in the wilderness on my own.

I had to always be looking out for myself, so I had to be selfish. Anyway, I'm not sure what I was talking about that for. Oh, yeah.

So at that time, I wasn't easily shook, but I was a bit shook by that. I was a little bit humiliated. I was very embarrassed because no one had ever spoken to me like that before.

And, well, not without me ravaging them verbally at least. And, but I didn't with him, not just because he was a boss, none of my guests lost my job, but he had a point. And also he was really smooth with how he dressed.

He's really, really well dressed. He was, you know, one of the bosses. Just like, oh, damn you.

I was really, I was annoyed. I was upset. I was whatever.

But at the same time, he's taking me aside quietly. He said it to me for my benefit because it's not going to benefit anyone else. It's only going to benefit me.

Other people might have been talking about how scruffy I was. Now, I was wearing a shirt. I was wearing trousers, but they were cheap.

The shirts weren't particularly well fitted. I think they were still old shirts from before, you know, that I had for a while. Perhaps not ironed properly.

And for me, I kind of, it was my, my mentality is I'm on the phone. The customers can't see me. You know, I could be wearing a kippah on my head, dressed up as a ballet dancer.

They don't know. They might be thinking, I used to tell some people I was dressed like that, but I, it didn't matter. It was my voice.

It was my personality. I can't even stand up and laugh. My winning personality.

And that's what I thought I needed. That's all I thought I needed. And he pointed out that if I wanted to progress in the company, that isn't all I needed.

I needed to look the part as well. Now, I had the money to do this because, as I said, I was drinking nearly every night as well. So that wasn't great, but even then it didn't cost that much.

I had plenty of cash. So what I did is I went on a spending spree for clothes and I bought all new, I didn't buy any suits, which I'm not quite sure why I didn't buy suits. I think it was because I spent so much money on shirts and trousers and shoes and ties.

So I spent hundreds of pounds on all this stuff and it was a bit of a shock to the system spending that much money. It really was because I had a lot of stuff that were really, and they were all, yeah, they were quite expensive, but probably not that expensive. But at the time it felt, you know, spending £25 for a shirt just seemed like a lot of money, or it might be more than that.

But I bought a lot of shirts so I could have one, I think I had about 14 shirts so I could have one for every day for 14 days so that I never ran out, you know. You might say, yeah, but what if you work more than 14 days? What was it, 10 shirts for two weeks? What if you work more than two weeks? You'd need to, no, you'd have to have them. But I didn't have them washed either.

I started having all my clothes dry cleaned every week. So I probably had at least 10 shirts dry cleaned at a time and perhaps two pairs of trousers, which in itself was quite a lot of money to be paying out every week. So it was, in my head, it was an investment.

It saved me ironing, so I didn't already, I can iron. I used to be in the sea cadets, we used to have to iron our uniform the proper, with certain creases and, you know, it's very, very complicated actually. It always seemed like completely pointless, but, you know, I did it anyway.

Why did I go to, there was no fun, there was no fun. I don't know why I did it, why did I go? I went to the sea cadets, going somewhere, literally I went to the sea cadets to get away from being shouted at at home. And I was shouted at at the sea cadets, it was like, what is the point in this? Just silly, really silly.

Anyway, I learned to iron and how to polish boots, a proper spit and polish. Yep, I learned how to do that. I haven't done it for a long time, but I still know how to, because I spent hours doing it.

It's almost a meditative experience, it's very calming actually. In fact, I would say, for people that want to relieve their stress, get yourself some old boots. So you don't have to, don't buy new ones, just go, go to a second-hand shop, buy some leather, old black leather boots.

Get yourself some black polish, some cloths, you know, get plenty of cloths, but you can use anything, an old, old shirt, an old t-shirt, it doesn't matter, really. And it's a little, a little bit of water, a little tub of water, and then just circle, do lots of circles around and around, put water onto the thing and then put some more polish and just do circles. And then what you could do is you heat, get a spoon and you heat the bottom of the spoon up, and then you just roll the spoon over the, you know, the toe caps.

So we're going to focus, it'll be the toe caps that you'll be focusing on, just so it kind of melts, melts the, the polish. And then keep doing that, just do keep doing that. You can do it for hours and hours It's very relaxing, it's completely pointless, but it's very relaxing.

Mind you, you get to a point where you can see your face in the, you know, the toe caps. I remember saying to the, one of the men in charge of the sea cadets, and I said, why do you, why do you want us to do, spend so long doing that? And he said to me, yeah, but look, you can see your face in, in your toe caps, you can see your face in them, look. I said, yeah, but I have got a mirror at home.

Why don't I just look in the mirror if I want to see what I look like? And he said, uh, you know, Jason, you're just weird. Quick as a flash, I said, I'm weird. I'm not the one that wants to spend my spare time with children, am I, mister? He was like, oh, that's a bit rude.

But it's very, very calming. It's very calming. Not, not spending your time.

I mean, I'm talking about cleaning boots, but you do it really methodically and you focus just on the toe caps, really. And it has to be leather, but only buy leather that's already, you know, like second hand. Don't buy a new pair of shoes or boots.

You don't need to do that. You don't need to wear them either. Just get them.

Doesn't matter what size they are then. Get them from a second hand shop or from a market store or something like that. So just pay like maybe a couple of pounds, a couple of dollars, dollars, and you can transform them.

But at the same time, it's almost Zen like experience, especially if it's a nice day, nice enough to sit in your garden. I mean, you could take them to the park or to the beach to do, but I'm not sure, you know, it's, yeah, probably, I'd probably stick it to your garden if you got one. But it doesn't really matter these days, just long as you do whatever you want to do.

But yeah, not sure what the point of this recording is. So I don't know what title I'm going to give it. What should I call it? Oh yeah.

Anyway, so the, I smartened myself up and the manager was really pleased with me. He sort of like couldn't believe the transformation in me. So I had a nice haircut and sort of made myself look really smart.

I had a different tie for each day. Not of the year, that'd be three, that'd be a lot of ties, but, you know, I'd kind of changed things around different ties for different days. And I remember him saying, that's really good.

You look so much better. Now all you need to do is just start washing. Start washing more.

I was like, oh, okay. We might have a bath. He said, yeah.

He said, do you have a bath where you live? I said, yeah, I do. I just haven't used it yet. He said, how long have you lived there? I said, about a year and a half.

He said, well, do you have a shower? I said, no, I don't have a shower. I don't have a shower thing of mine. He said, what do you do? I said, no, I just, I just, well, I do do a lot of exercise so I can sweat the dirt out.

Sweat out the smell. Yeah. Oh dear.

I don't want to talk about that now. I'm going to go now. I'm going to go.

So thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love.

Bye.