Emily: Hi, I’m Emily Ladau.
Kyle: I’m Kyle Khachadurian.
Emily: You’re listening to another episode of The Accessible Stall.
Kyle: What are we going to talk about today, Emily?
Emily: We’re going to talk about taking care of yourself.
Kyle: Do we have to? No one likes taking care of themselves.
Emily: Or rather, I think people would like take care of themselves but nobody bothers giving the time for that. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Kyle: Oh, man. Why not?
Emily: Because we’re too busy doing other things like worrying…
Kyle: Podcasting.
Emily: …about the state of America, the state of the country, not like America is a state, just thought we should clarify.
Kyle: Yeah. If there’s anyone dumb enough to think that’s what you meant, it’s our audience who is not at all the smartest people in the world, right.
Emily: We do have the smartest audience in the world.
Kyle: Don’t we, folks? Don’t we Emily?
Emily: Maybe we should scrap everything entirely and make this an audience-
Kyle: Yes, this is…
Emily: …audience appreciation episode.
Kyle: Yeah. Well, we love you, guys. Anyway, taking care of yourself. When it comes it activism, that’s a thing that we never do because we’re too busy focused on other things, like activism.
Emily: I think you do that in a way that’s not self-centered. How do you view, like…
Kyle: Self-care is self-centered. Be self-centered.
Emily: Sure, but how do you be like, “I need to take care of myself and…
Kyle: Like that.
Emily: …and ignore all of this?”
Kyle: Literally like that. What do you mean? That’s exactly how you do it.
Emily: Okay. Well, then maybe I have some issues that I need to work out internally.
Kyle: Yes, you do. You see, I did — wait. You’re actually not kidding. That’s exactly.
Emily: I’m not kidding.
Kyle: Oh, man, I’m sorry you go through that. I thought you were kidding this whole time because that’s exactly what you do.
Emily: Like, I sometimes want to shut down, turn everything off, not paying attention. Then I feel like I’m slacking on something or haven’t written an article or…
Kyle: I mean, that’s…
Emily: …haven’t done.
Kyle: That’s addiction. That’s addiction.
Emily: Are you sure it was addiction?
Kyle: That’s…yeah, man. You’re addicted to information and you’re addicted to knowing something and you like watching your likes and retweets counter go up, up, up. You cannot. You shake your head. I believe you.
Emily: I’m shaking my head because what I mean is I don’t feel like I’m doing enough.
Kyle: Oh, I see. I’m just messing with you, anyone who doesn’t know by now.
Emily: Please, retweet the crap out of me. Follow me on Twitter, bug me.
Kyle: See, see, see. Look, look….
Emily: I want attention.
Kyle: Holy crap.
Emily: Now, look.
Kyle: I know. I think it…
Emily: Ain’t it nothing…
Kyle: I sort of understand where you’re coming from, but at the same time, I mean, in the same way that you’re performance at work is probably not that great if you don’t get a full night sleep, how can you be the best activist you can be if you’re not taking care of yourself? I say this as someone who doesn’t take of himself as often as he should so I know.
Emily: I’m not even sure what taking care of myself means.
Kyle: Really?
Emily: That’s kind of where…
Kyle: I don’t know.
Emily: …I’m at.
Kyle: I mean, I guess, I’ve learned from my depression days as if they ever go away, right? Change your sheets, do your laundry, take a shower, make sure that you’re all nice and proper and get sleep and make sure you…
Emily: Yeah.
Kyle: …ate today. Things like that. It sounds obvious, but when you’re caught up in the heat of the moment, you forget how to do things like that.
Emily: For me, I want to unwind by watching a silly TV show. Then while I’m watching the silly TV show, I’m either working on something feeling like I should be working on something. So that’s what I’m talking about. It’s like taking care of yourself and removing yourself from what’s going on without actually removing yourself from it.
Kyle: Well, that’s…
Emily: There’s no off switch.
Kyle: Yes, there is. You just don’t use it. Try leaving your house without your phone for like an hour and you’ll see how amazing it is to be off.
Emily: I’d go into several different kinds of anxiety.
Kyle: All right. Well, that’s addiction. That’s just what that is. Internet addiction is a real thing and that’s…
Emily: I think it’s more like the leaving my house without a way to contact someone in case of emergency.
Kyle: Okay. You take up your old Motorola Racer from your drawer. It doesn’t have access to Twitter and anything else.
Emily: I don’t think I have any old cell phones.
Kyle: Well, I don’t know. We got rid of ours not to longer to so we don’t even. But my point is…
Emily: No, I get your point. I’m just…
Kyle: I’m just saying…
Emily: …rebuffing for this
Kyle: …are you able to not tweet for a day?
Emily: Sure.
Kyle: Are you not able to read Twitter for a day?
Emily: No.
Kyle: Well, there you go.
Emily: I just need to know what the heck is going on.
Kyle: Okay. What is knowing what’s going on do for you other than making you miserable?
Emily: Making me miserable? Then I also feel like if I’m uninformed, then I’m not going to be doing the best that I possibly can to speak up about things. Then I also feel like I’m not really sure why me sending a tweet about something actually matters.
Kyle: Counterpoint but not really, just an addemdum to your kind of counterpoint about yourself.
Emily: Addemdum?
Kyle: Addemdum. It’s a new word I made up. The news doesn’t disappear when you leave so anything that you don’t know today and when you come back tomorrow, it’ll still be there with the whole new bunch of…
Emily: Or it’ll be worse.
Kyle: Well, it doesn’t matter because if it’s worse, then what happened yesterday doesn’t matter. I don’t know. I mean, look, I work in a field where we have to be updated at all current events at all times but I don’t answer work emails after 7:00 p.m. or before 7:00 a.m.
Emily: I’m trying to get better about that for sure.
Kyle: You’ve been telling me that for literally a year.
Emily: You’re right. No, I’ve been telling you that since I met you.
Kyle: I was going to say, it’s more probably more like three but you actually made it closer to five so let’s just go with the worst estimate. Okay. So we’re terrible examples.
Emily: Don’t follow our lead.
Kyle: Don’t do as we do; do as we say.
Emily: You don’t have to do as we say either. We’re not authorities.
Kyle: I mean, yeah. Whatever, man, just take care of yourself. It’s good for you.
Emily: In all seriousness, I think there are some things that people can do to pay attention to their own needs in the midst of what’s going on in the world.
Kyle: I think the first thing anyone should do if they think about doing this is to sort of to assess their situation, right? The need of person specific and my needs might not be yours. It’s not even related to disability. Like, personal needs. What I do to take care of myself might be different what you might do.
Emily: Yeah, so for me, I need to get up and exercise and move around a little bit every day because otherwise, I just kind of sit on my behind which is partially because I use a wheelchair and can’t walk and minor detail, hands just sitting on my behind, but I can get up and move around. Sometimes, I just choose not to because I feel like I should be doing work instead, which is super silly.
Kyle: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I feel like for me, I just need — I need like an hour a day where I’m unplugged. I don’t care of the world or anything around me, I will not look at my phone. I need that because otherwise I literally can’t sleep. Like, the light from my phone will keep me up. Forget what’s on the screen and my brain, like, reading stuff. Forget that, just the plain old light coming off the thing. If you add in all the crappy information that you read about the world that is on every social media feed, I just don’t ever sleep again. It’s like, “Who needs that?” Right?
Emily: I take my phone to bed with me, so…
Kyle: No, it’s terrible.
Emily: I know, it’s so bad.
Kyle: Awful. Such a bad…
Emily: I read Thrive by Ariana Huffington and she went on and on and on about how she plugs her phones in to charge in a different room of her house so that she can’t have them near her bed so that she can get an adequate night sleep. For a little while, after I read that, I was just like, “I want to be just like her.”
Kyle: Then you realized she’s a big joke and her website is not new and it’s actually a blog so you sleep with your phone.
Emily: I still think she’s kind of cool. She is cool. Do I think that the Huffington post is the number one news source ever?
Kyle: You can if you want. I was just being a jerk.
Emily: No.
Kyle: I don’t know.
Emily: No, I really like Ariana Huffington. I was like, “I’m going to be just like her and take her advice.” Then promptly proceeded to not do that.
Kyle: I mean, that’s everything, right? You don’t do everything you read.
Emily: Right.
Kyle: You don’t listen to — but I mean, that makes it even better.
Emily: Then I also think…
Kyle: That raises the question, right, who does? Oh, go on. Sorry.
Emily: Oh, no. You’re absolutely right. I’m also thinking conversely a lot of people that I really respect and look up to listen to this podcast and eat this super food and do this new workout video to take care of yourself and don’t burn out while you’re fighting with from what you believe in. I’m like, “Yeah, I can be just like them except I don’t like whatever food they just digested and I don’t feel like doing what they’re telling me to do. Really, I’m just going to be so honest right now.
Kyle: Wait.
Emily: I’m not good at listening to podcasts.
Kyle: Hold on.
Emily: I can’t keep up with them.
Kyle: Hold on. I’m sorry. You just made me think of something.
Emily: Right.
Kyle: Are you a worst activist if you actively don’t listen to advice given to you by fellow activists or if you unplug for a day?
Emily: How are the two…
Kyle: Well, because you said, “If I unplug for a day, how am I informed from my day ahead? How can I be one of the best activists I can be if I’m not always informed?” If you’re not informed, is that not better or worse?
Emily: Oh.
Kyle: Then completely ignoring what you’re being told or asked to do.
Emily: No, I get you, but I’m talking about the books that you read and stuff. I’m not talking about the good advice that the nice people that I talk too good to me.
Kyle: No, but either way. What’s worst? Is it worst to…
Emily: You’re right.
Kyle: …skip a day of Twitter is it worse to have someone tell you to skip a day of Twitter saying that’s good for you and go, “Nah.”
Emily: I fall into the latter category. This is really just an episode in which…
Kyle: No, but I’m saying I….
Emily: …I’m going to crap on myself.
Kyle: I’m saying I don’t think that either of them are particularly good. I think we need…
Emily: Which is the lesser of two evils right now?
Kyle: I don’t think anyone should tell you how to take care of you. I think that’s your job. Self-care is very, like, self.
Emily: Have you ever noticed there’s all of this advice out there? “Avoid activist burn out. Follow these steps.” I think that reading it is counterproductive.
Kyle: Reading is doing it. Reading it is not experiencing burn out. Reading it is contributing to the eventual burn out you’re trying to avoid.
Emily: Exactly, exactly.
Kyle: By following what’s on the freaking list.
Emily: Yeah. I think the guidance in that area can be helpful and so far as you can apply it to yourself. Then I read all this stuff that people didn’t take
care of themselves. I’m like, “I’m not running a mile every day. I’d make sure I’d mill.”
Kyle: You don’t want that.
Emily: Girl, you can’t walk. Shut up.
Kyle: Yeah, but why not? I mean, you can.
Emily: I can? I can walk?
Kyle: No, no. You can’t…
Emily: A miracle.
Kyle: I don’t know your life. Maybe, no, I meant your treadmill. You can exercise. I know you said…
Emily: Sure.
Kyle: …you do. No. It doesn’t have to be exercise. You can’t follow some of their advice. You just don’t. I’m just as guilty, but I’m saying, “So?”
Emily: Yeah. It’s all about making excuses. My excuse, and we’re just being really real here, is I tell myself that my time is better spent getting work done than it is taking care of myself.
Kyle: Right.
Emily: I’d rather contribute to this bigger movement…
Kyle: Emily. Yeah, Emily is a better slave to other people than she is taking care of herself. That’s the Emily way. “I will sell my life, hours at a time, for a certain dollar value before I will value my own presence here on earth.”
Emily: I will say that I’m getting better about that…
Kyle: Feel like it.
Emily: …of handling it.
Kyle: No, she’s not. Not yet.
Emily: I am.
Kyle: Of course you are. I’m just — I live to break your balls.
Emily: I don’t have any.
Kyle: Well, I live to — is there — I have no idea. What would be now?
Emily: Break your bench?
Kyle: No. That sounds gross painful.
Emily: Breaking your balls doesn’t?
Kyle: Yes, it does but at least that an idiom that exist so it just sounds like a phrase before it sounds gross or painful.
Emily: It’s the same like being “grow a pair.”
Kyle: I hate that. Yeah, but it’s just, yeah.
Emily: There is no…
Kyle: Well, you got boobs.
Emily: …female gender equivalent. You don’t say gross on boobs.
Kyle: Well, no, but you could. I don’t know. It’s the pair you want. What the fuck are we even talking about?
Emily: I don’t even know but this is kind of just amusing. Yeah, I feel like…
Kyle: Yeah, no. It’s fun.
Emily: People need a light episode right now.
Kyle: Yeah, with all that’s going on out there.
Emily: It’s a tough world out there.
Kyle: Yeah. Here’s our advice for taking care of yourself, realize that the world is terrible and then listen to us talk to you about nothing.
Emily: Usually, we talk about very substantive thing, okay?
Kyle: I know. No, no, no. I’m taking the piss out of ourselves, Emily. I think this is a fun episode.
Emily: Seriously, the more that I think about it, every single time I look at an issue and feel like I need to dissect it in a hundred different ways, write three articles about it, record six podcasts about it, several tweets. Sometimes, it is okay to shoot the breeze.
Kyle: Does it…
Emily: It really is.
Kyle: Does it ever make you feel better?
Emily: Shooting the breeze or…
Kyle: No, no, no.
Emily: …writing 20 articles?
Kyle: Yeah, that.
Emily: It depends, if I get some kind of traction or response. The whole Women’s March thing, I feel like that was a good use of my effort.
Kyle: Sure, it was. It was the best use of your effort and your effort alone. What I mean is, like — I’ll give you that one. I mean, usually do you feel better at the end of your day? I don’t. I really don’t. This podcast for me, I’m glad it helps people, I’m glad people listen to us, I’m glad people take our advice, I’m grateful for it, but this is fun for me. This is a hobby.
Emily: I think — but that’s exactly the point. If this seems to be the one area of my life where I can talk about something good to disability or politics or whatever might be going on in current events at the moment, but in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I have two tons of bricks on my shoulders.
Kyle: Well, that’s because I don’t think in this case that you’re beholding to…I mean, this is just us, two guys. We’re just having fun.
Emily: Yeah, there’s no rules, in fact, you know what, I know we’re just like being silly right now but I think that’s a very real point. I think it’s good for people to have some way to let off steam and still address what’s going on in the world but with no rules. I think that a lot of people have jobs that dictate how they present themselves when they’re talking about various political issues, and a lot of people have jobs that prevent them from talking about it publicly. A lot of people feel that they need to come across in a certain way on social media. Sometimes, it’s nice to let your metaphor go hair down and talk about something in a way that has no rules. That’s what we do here.
Kyle: Yeah. I mean, contrary to what you might believe, this show has no structure, whatever. We just sort of ran with what we’ve gone used to. This is just a way for Emily and I to sort of argue with the void of activism in a way where we can’t get real-time fact check until after, which then makes it not real-time. I mean, you know, this is how — I don’t know about you — but this is part of me taking care of myself. I mean, it’s sort of counterintuitive to what I was saying before and that I am staring at a computer at 10:45 at night, but it’s a way to sort of prep my brain when I’m talking about a very serious issue typically where in almost any other situation were not for this podcast, to be honest, probably I wouldn’t at all. Emily would because she’s better at this that I am, but definitely not me. Hundred percent if I can avoid it, I would. I love this, though.
Emily: Great, because it’s super liberating, it’s not governed by anybody of rules except our own bodies and our own rules.
Kyle: I think that that’s where…
Emily: My body, my choice.
Kyle: Oh, Jesus Christ. I think that that ends to sort of like why people tend to prefer self-activism, right?
Emily: Self-activism?
Kyle: Yeah, or like social media activism or stuff like that – stuff that they can control, right? So…
Emily: I know like self-advocacy but I think you’re talking about an entirely different thing.
Kyle: Or am I? Probably.
Emily: You know the term like self-advocate? Like you’re advocating for yourself.
Kyle: You’re right. You’re right. I meant like doing it on your own time, although self-advocacy is very important and probably worthy of the second episode or an episode of itself. I mean like doing advocacy the way you want to do it. Not that you don’t that you have a job that involves a lot of this. Stuff that you do although you believe it is sort of constrained within the confines of your employer a little bit, right? Same with me, I don’t really do activism in the disability world but still it’s activism nonetheless.
Emily: Your job still entails being engaged in current political events.
Kyle: Yes, yes. It’s exhausting to have to deal with our President and his elk for eight hours a day. Then you come home and you go on Facebook, and what’s there? The same stuff.
Emily: The same thing that you were just doing for work.
Kyle: The same stuff but written by people and interpreted by people who don’t have the breadth of knowledge that I get from — it doesn’t mean they know less, but I mean you spot inconsistencies here and it just drives you crazy. I don’t know about you, but I have to tune out or record a podcast, but I have to tune out one of them.
Emily: I think you have a little bit of a better divide than I do right now. Even though you work from home occasionally, the thing for me is I haven’t mastered the art of when Am I at home and when am I on the job.
Kyle: I see.
Emily: I’m always on the job and I’m always at home. I mean, I’m not always either of those things but you know what I mean.
Kyle: See what I do? This is for real. What I do is when I work from home, unless it’s like to like use the bathroom or eat, I don’t leave. I don’t leave this room, just like in my office. I don’t open my door until it’s 4:45. You know, it should really be 5:00 but I’m already here so. I mean, it’s true. I have to do that because before this job, I did contract work in similar vein from my house and what I ended up doing was hating being in my house to the point where, like, hearing my phone vibrate gave me anxiety because someone needed me to do something immediately and it was like nothing is that important except it was so I have to do it. I had to really learn how to make that divide between home and work when I was working from — if I’m at the office, it’s easy. If I’m in the building, I work. Right? Yeah. It comes back around the self-care, right, because if you’re in the position to work from home or even if you work in an office, you have to remember that you got to take care of yourself. You can be the best worker that you are unless you’re well-rested, taken care of by yourself or someone else, or anything like that. Have you eaten today? For example, I forgot to eat lunch today, and I didn’t realize that until I was almost home.
Emily: I have that happened to me a lot.
Kyle: I do that all the time. I literally forget to eat. My co-worker must think I’m out of my mind.
Emily: Then do you reach to the point where you get so hungry because you forgot to eat that it’s just like if you don’t give me food right this second, I’m going to lose my mind?
Kyle: Yeah. Well, that’s the thing. That’s why you got to eat, it’s things like that, right? I’m the kind of person that tries my best to make sure that I, at least, am clean. No, I’m serious. There’s plenty more I could do. I could exercise but I’m not going to exercise, get out of here. Emily exercise because she’s better than me.
Emily: Okay. See, I exercise but not as often as I should.
Kyle: I don’t, which is way less than anyone should.
Emily: You know, the other thing is it’s so easy to beat up on yourself for not taking care of yourself or for not taking care of yourself properly, but I never ever see people trying to flip the script and be like, “Okay, so you did a mediocre job of taking care of yourself, but you still took care of yourself. Good for you.”
Kyle: What are you talking about? Yes, they do. It’s on Facebook all the time. “I folded the laundry today, plus five adulting points. Yes.”
Emily: I’m talking about the expert.
Kyle: What experts?
Emily: I’m talking about the, you know, the talking heads who were like, “Here’s how you will make your life perfect and take care of yourself. You need to do this, this, this, this, this and this. You need to do all of it or you’re not taking good care of yourself.”
Kyle: Clearly, you have not seen Dr. Oz because that’s exactly what he does all day.
Emily: That’s what I’m saying.
Kyle: He’s a terrible example because he’s Dr. Oz, but…
Emily: No, that is exactly what I’m saying. The people who say that, “If you don’t do this specific thing, you’re doing a terrible job taking care of yourself.” I think they need to be more celebrating the, “Hey, I brushed my hair. I went outside and got some Vitamin D.” I don’t know. I’m talking about very minimal…
Kyle: I don’t know. I mean….
Emily: …examples here.
Kyle: No. It all comes back to the bigger issue, which is like a complete lack of self-discipline.
Emily: Yeah.
Kyle: That’s what it is. That’s what all of this is, when you become so entangled in your day-to-day life that you forget about you. I don’t mean quote Dr. Seuss here, but you’re the only you you’ve got, so it’s a very important thing.
Emily: It’s only a social media driven thing.
Kyle: Well, at least in this case, absolutely. Sure. I mean, you can get lost in it.
Emily: Yeah, because I’m always interested to see what else’s hot take on something is.
Kyle: Can I ask you a question? I really don’t mean for this to sound sarcastic, and I mean this and I’m saying this more to the audience than you, but do you really? Here’s what I do – this is totally true – I will see the article
I love or I think I love. I will open it in a new tab. I will continue doing my work until the end of the day. I will say to myself, “Kyle, you’re going to read it at the end of the day as a little treat to yourself for doing a good ole hard day’s work.” Then, I get up and leave.
Emily: I am a queen of a million tabs. A million tabs, absolutely.
Kyle: I have 12 of them right now, no exaggeration, and I intend to use none of them. I know that, but I’m not going to close them.
Emily: You know, to be completely honest, my pension for wanting to read people’s take on everything stems from being a coping mechanism back when I broke up with an ex. I literally couldn’t bear to be alone with my own thoughts, so would read other people’s thoughts. Then it got to the point where knowing what other people were thinking helped me in handling my emotions.
Kyle: Did it work?
Emily: Were my emotions handled?
Kyle: Well, that’s a different question. What I was asking really was did reading other people’s opinion on everything assist you in the goal that you tried to seek out in controlling your emotion, whether or not it succeeded.
Emily: Absolutely.
Kyle: Well, okay.
Emily: Then I realized that other people also have emotions. I know how naive and dense that sounds, but I’m literally trying to get the point across that sometimes it’s okay to turn to what other people think when you want to turn your own brain off. There’s pros and cons…
Kyle: Oh, yeah.
Emily: …to being so plugged in.
Kyle: That’s a very good point. I should have thought of that earlier, but I mean then you get to the issue of, like, “Okay, you’re Emily and you’re going to read 50 different articles on person first language and then you’re going to read 51 articles on identity person language, and then you’re going to formulate your own opinion.” You read your 101 articles – and you need the extra one for the one you agree with, obviously – and then you formulate your own opinion. Then you write it and it sounds exactly like the 51 articles you’ve just read because that’s what you liked better. It’s like, “Okay….”
Emily: That’s hypothetical because I don’t do that.
Kyle: No, I know you don’t do that. No, this is hypothetical. I’m sorry, do I make myself — yes, it’s hypothetical.
Emily: You said, “You, Emily, read…”
Kyle: Oh, no. I was making something. I was making a situation.
Emily: Okay.
Kyle: Now you’ve written your — this is the 52nd article, right? This is your contribution. How much of it is yours? I mean, obviously, you need other people’s thoughts to kick start your own. That’s everything. That’s academia. When anyone says, “Oh, you got to eat acai berries because they’re good for your body and it makes you able to fly.” Is it really or you’re just saying that because you read it in some magazine somewhere that made you feel good? That’s what I’m saying. Like, how much….
Emily: You mean like, did you read 51 articles on the benefits of acai berries and decided that you also needed to do that and contribute to the joys of acai berries?
Kyle: Yeah. I mean, not even the issue of like do you mentally discount anything that goes against what you think you believe, but just more like how much of your opinion is yours if it took you this long to get here?
Emily: Yeah, that’s totally fair. I usually don’t read things to shape my opinion. I usually read because…
Kyle: No, I think that’s — I think….
Emily: …I’m just fascinated by whatever people say.
Kyle: I think that’s good. I think that’s a good thing. I mean, you’ve read after you’ve written your thing.
Emily: Although we’re being honest here, a lot of the stuff that I read has nothing to do with disability on my tab habit. I mean, I love things like Ann Friedman who has this podcast Call Your Girlfriend, which probably like everyone who listens to this podcast also listens to Call Your Girlfriend.
Kyle: Really?
Emily: An assumption. I don’t know. I receive a newsletter that she puts out every week and she sends a ton of links to Long Read, which I love. I open every single one of them, and they’re always about some of the
most interesting things – like, murder mystery or the history of some obscure makeup item. So…
Kyle: It’s actually really — I mean, I’m not interested in makeup at all, but I feel that if you can write an article about something like that, that’s probably worth someone’s read.
Emily: Yeah. Sometimes I just like reading about social justice issues that aren’t directly pertaining to disability.
Kyle: I don’t.
Emily: I know you don’t.
Kyle: Oh, boy. Well, disability are my favorite kind of social justice issues because then I can pick a part exactly why I hate your argument, but I generally tend to stay away from that sort of thing just because it’s a very odd sort of subject because it’s the only subject that I can – I mean I’m sure there’s more, and I can hear the fingers tapping on the keyboards already – that they tell you not only what’s good and what’s bad about ex, right, but exactly what to feel. I don’t like things that tell me what to feel. Give me information and let me figure out how to feel about it. No, I’m serious. I think that I just…
Emily: I think it’s like that for all social justice movement.
Kyle: Right. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t like that.
Emily: I thought you were saying it’s like that just for social disability issues.
Kyle: No, no, no. Well, it’s — that’s not to say — I mean, I tried to stay socially conscious but I don’t do it with articles like that because I just don’t like being told how to feel. I like coming up with my own feelings. It sounds ridiculous that you laughed because it is ridiculous, but they do that, you know. I say that and that makes me sound calloused and like I don’t care. It’s like, “No, no, I cared a lot. Just don’t tell me what to think and just tell me to think.”
Emily: “Don’t tell me what to do, just let me be myself.” That’s a song, right?
Kyle: It is now.
Emily: I know. I’m pretty sure it is. Anyway, I don’t know how we got here from where we started.
Kyle: Well, I mean, all of this does type back to taking care of yourself because — okay. This is actually really good ideology about how being too inundated in a given subject can lead to lack of self care in that.
Then I started talking about self care and we ended up here about why…
Emily: Activism.
Kyle: Internet activism and journalism is a bit weird. We totally got off topic because we forgot. That’s fine. That’s exactly what you do, you audience, when you inundate yourself with social media and internet and forget to do things like eat.
Emily: Attention span is a thing.
Kyle: Oh, yeah. I totally have shiny ball syndrome, which is probably offensive to five people and for you, I’m sorry. That is like — I really do. Although…
Emily: I actually will open an article or something, read part of it, do something else, go back to the article, go do something else.
Kyle: I do that all the time. In fact, actually I read an article today that I read it all the way through it. I was like, “If read it all the way through, I have to share it.”
Emily: If I read all the way something through, it’s because it is damn interesting.
Kyle: Yeah. That’s not to say that my bar is set particularly high, it’s just that I have zero will to read things deeper like the article. I mean, I don’t want to sound like I’m uneducated. I like books. I’m like…
Emily: I’m not uneducated, I like books.
Kyle: There you go. That’s going to be the clip that you share out of this episode, right?
Emily: Thank you. Kyle and I are at the point where we probably feel like everyone else in this country. We’ve just been so inundated with everything that we need to unwind.
Kyle: Then…
Emily: That’s what came out in this episode.
Kyle: To your very first point, it is extremely hard because I understand why not wanting to go on the internet for 10 days is hard because aside from the fact that it’s fun and you just have a horrible addiction to the internet as much as I do and any millennial does, it’s also necessary. Even though, yes, it might be a non-trivial thing to leave the house without your phone because you will come back, if you can’t, for whatever reason – like if you have an app that you need to do a thing, you need to do, or whatever -any reason that you carry it with you, you can’t filter it. It’s all or nothing, right? In the event that that is an impossibility for you for a real actual reason – I’m thinking medical but I’m sure there’s hundreds, you go on to Twitter to tweet about the pancakes you ate today, and all of a sudden you read about something terrible the President did or anyone else – we like to pick on the President – but it could be anything, then it’s like, “Oh, I’m trying to enjoy my day and here I am back here, the thing that exactly I tried to avoid.”
Emily: Did you pick the pancakes reference because of Denny’s who has the best Twitter and the luxury evolved there?
Kyle: No. If our lovely audience does not follow Denny’s on Twitter, please follow Denny’s on Twitter. We’re not being paid. I don’t even like Denny’s food, but I love their Twitter.
Emily: I have terrible luck at Denny’s. I once got my finger stuck in a car door…
Kyle: Denny’s is where I go. Denny’s is where I go if I want to beat my food to toilet time.
Emily: I once threw up in the middle of a Denny’s.
Kyle: Okay, this sounds like the end of an episode. I don’t know. But…
Emily: The point is I’m giving my final takeaway. My final takeaway is that self care is important, and whatever that looks like for you is okay. For us, it’s unwinding and getting a little silly, which quite frankly, made you a lot just about always on the podcast.
Kyle: Yeah. I mean…
Emily: Your final takeaway?
Kyle: Look, we did like 24/25 episodes being all serious. Can we just have this one please? We need it.
Emily: Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Kyle: No. My final takeaway is although we were being silly; self-care is a very important thing. If it means that you have to take a break from your activism or whatever it is you do to do it, it’s very important to do it and it’s a very good habit to start. If I may quote Mitch Hedberg, who’s a comedian, he said, “I understand how hard it is to quit smoking and I’ve never smoke”, he said. “It is as hard for you to quit smoking as it is for me to start flossing.” It’s the exact same thing with self-care. Everyone knows it’s good for them, no one does it. Not say that no one flosses, I’m sure there are many people who do, that’s why they sell dental floss, but many people don’t. For every one person that does take care of themselves in an adequate manner, then make sure that they’re the best activist that they can be, there’s probably like five that don’t, right? Do it however you want. Don’t let Dr. Oz or anyone else tell you what’s the best way to take care of you, that’s ridiculous.
Emily: Who needs Dr. Oz?
Kyle: I hate that guy. Anyway, Denny’s, Dr. Oz, follow them.
Emily: And you.
Kyle: Follow Denny’s on Twitter; don’t eat their food.
Emily: You said you don’t like Denny’s just now.
Kyle: I don’t, I like their Twitter, anyway, good night everybody.
Emily: Does The Accessible Stall follow Denny’s on Twitter?
Kyle: No.
Emily: I’m going to do that immediately. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Kyle: Good night.
Emily: Bye.