141. The Pivot Episode: Grieving the Alternate Paths You Life Could Have Taken

Explicit content warning

11/07/22 • 54 min

2 Listeners

There's a lot of episodes we've had about major life pivots: Andy Reinhold (Episode 78) talked about how he started in consulting, quit his job to follow his passion and work in gaming, and then went back to consulting to support his baby. Sara Alepin (Episode 123) wanted to be a teacher, but after a student stomped on her foot and left her permanently unable to walk more than a few hours a day without pain, she pivoted to being a wedding photographer, podcaster, and running a businesses community. Ayana Major Bey (Episode 134) wanted to be an actor in plays and then a global pandemic hit.
Aaron Matis' story is a bit of a meld between Sara and Ayana's stories: he dreamed of being an actor, and at 26, he was cast in a show on Nickolodeon. He had succeeded in almost everything on his 5-year plan: "I was peaking in every measurable way." Then, one fateful day, he was walking down a hill with a cooler and fell and tore his meniscus. This one fall changed the course of his life forever. 3 surgeries later, and his doctors say he will likely never run again. He moved back home to Scranton from LA and is starting on his next 5-year plan: one that doesn't involve acting.
He tells us about the sheer amount of self-hatred that came after his surgery, and how it was so difficult to accept help from those supporting him: "I so much hated myself that I started to resent people that loved me because I thought there must be something wrong with them." He thinks of his former self as a completely different person, and in therapy, he has managed to go through the process of grieving that former self and that former vision he had of what his life was going to look like.
But he also talks about the process of rediscovering joy and trying to find happiness in simply being around the people he loves, and not worrying so much about what physical activity they may be doing. He talks about being able to empathize in a new way with his sister, who has a rare condition that causes debilitating bouts of pain, and has found a community in online groups for people who suffer from chronic pain.
"I'm not the happiest that I have ever been...but I am getting there."
Links:

PALS Programs, a camp for kids with Down Syndrome that Aaron has worked with and loves: https://www.palsprograms.org/
Deondre's new show, 3Disc Changer, a podcast where three friends take a deep dive into an iconic album each episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3-disc-changer/id1644161173

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

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undefined - 140. The Disney Episode: Black Ariel, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and How Disney's Absurd Level of Historic Problmaticness Weirdly Set It Up for Success in the Modern Media Environment

140. The Disney Episode: Black Ariel, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and How Disney's Absurd Level of Historic Problmaticness Weirdly Set It Up for Success in the Modern Media Environment

This might be a little old because everything is a blip in the news cycle and yesterday's news is forgotten in like 24 hours, but we recorded this at the time that the Black Little Mermaid stuff was going on but only got to releasing it now. In this episode, we talk about how Disney has actually turned into...a kind of great company despite its historic levels of shittiness? We liken it to Krispy Kreme, which was totally able to bounce back from the fact that they used to use forced labor to make their treats and were basically run by Nazis.

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

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142. The Concussion Episode Part 1: "OK: I am alive. And I am in a body. And everything hurts."

Traumatic brain injury can change your entire relationship with the outside world. That's what happened to Razi, who has sustained multiple concussions throughout his life starting in college, but suffered his worst concussion in 2019, right before the pandemic. When that happened, he was completely knocked out of his normal routine: for months, all he could do was sit in the bathtub with no light, maybe a candle. He likens this experience to going back to the womb.
But it also highlighted to him how much the modern world we have built is constantly at war with our bodies and our biology: for example, artificial light is a fairly recent phenomenon in human history, and our almost constant exposure to it is so vastly different from the "natural" light environment we evolved to be in, where the sun shines so many different kinds of light on us throughout the day that our biological clocks have grown to be naturally attuned to. And artificial light has forced us to ignore these biological signals we evolved to have to be able to be productive and entertained long into the night.
Another example is being able to travel around in cars and trains: modern transportation is very loud, can go very fast, and for most animals would be a relatively scary and traumatizing experience that we have completely grown accustomed to. It makes you think about how many other things in our daily lives condition us to ignore signals from our own bodies.

We will continue this conversation next week in Part 2 of the concussion episode.
Links:
Razi's Website: https://www.therazy.com/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.