John

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Reviewed

Chris Leave a comment

I’m a relatively recent fan of the Vlogbrothers. I’ve been working my way through all of their videos during my workouts because they’re a lot easier to muddle through if I’ve got something else to focus on, and I have to say that I’ve become a huge fan of John Green’s voice. In a lot of his recordings, he sounds so calm and soothing that I find myself feeling more relaxed, no matter what I’m doing while listening to him. I love Hank Green’s videos as much as I love John Green’s, but I don’t enjoy his voice the same way I do John’s. If I want to feel excited about something or to get psyched up about something I’m passionate about, then I’d listen to Hank Green.

As a result, I was very intrigued when John announced that he was starting a solo podcast in which he would review “different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale.” He has called it “The Anthropocene Reviewed” and his first episode was a review of Canadian Geese and Diet Dr Pepper. I’m not going to spoil the review by telling you how many stars he gave each of those things, but I am going to insist that the parts leading up to the numerical rating are the absolute best.

As a huge fan of John Green’s Vlogbrothers videos that were themed as “Thoughts from ________,” I enjoyed these podcasts because they sound just like an extended version of one of the videos. In the first episode, he talks about the history of Canadian Geese, shares some interesting facts, discusses how they’ve participated in the Anthropocene era of the world, and how we Humans have affected them. I learned a lot and I got to do it all while listening to the soothing tones of a wonderful writer. As if that wasn’t enough, he then went on to discuss the soda flavor known as Dr Pepper, which is incredibly interesting to think about. It is a flavor made up of other flavors and there is no naturally occurring equivalent that we can compare it to, so Dr Pepper would not exist without Humans.

The second episode, he discusses Halley’s Comet and Cholera, which are both interesting topics. Halley’s comet appears once every Human lifetime. Some people get to see it twice, if they’re lucky, but never more than that (at least by current life expectancies. Who knows what’ll happen in the next hundred years in terms of Human lifespans…). As a result, its participation in the Anthropocene era is more as a spectator, witnessing the drastic change of the world and Humanity at larger. Cholera, on the other hand, is what happens when people gather large numbers and don’t have access to clean water. Cholera is a side-effect of human expansion and continuously pops up because the people with the resources to end it don’t care about it. John does a much better job addressing the issues that have resulted in an ongoing Cholera epidemic, but I feel like my summary is accurate if a little angrier than John’s analysis. Sorry, but preventable stuff like that pisses me off.

While I haven’t found any kind of regular updating schedule for the podcast yet, I think that it will start to gather steam as more and more people start listening. John and Hank are incredibly busy people who somehow find the time to keep doing incredible new things, so I really can’t fault John for not having a specific schedule right now. He has a lot going on these days, by anyone’s standards. I say I’m a fan of the Green Brothers, but I haven’t even started to plumb the depths of their content outside of their YouTube videos. There’s just so much and I’ve already got so much going on!

Anyway, I suggest checking out John Green’s new podcast. There’s plenty to laugh about, plenty to think about, and you get to listen to Mellifluous tones of the elder Green brother’s voice for almost twenty minutes at a stretch. That’s a win all around.

Saturday Morning Musing

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Lately, I have enjoyed joking that my life is finally in order so now I can say that, for sure, I am the mess. There’s some truth to this expression, but it isn’t entirely fair to me. I believe that my mental issues are a part of me and that they are a significant characteristic, but they are not limitations. I am bigger than my mental illnesses. I am more than them, though I am them as well. I may be a mess right now, but I’m a fairly organized mess and I’ve got a plan for becoming a not-mess. I’m in-between bookshelf organization methods. Sure, my books are stacked all over and covering the floor, but I know each stack and where each stack needs to go. I’ve just got to do the work of putting the books away.

I’ve been having a lot of stressful weeks, lately. I’m currently trying to do everything I can to avoid feeling too depressed and wanting nothing more than to just stop doing stuff for a few days or weeks so I can rest. Dating, writing every day, blog posts, working more, and more! Then there’s been a lot of individually stressful things like a few super busy weeks at work, tax-filing, and realizing I need a strict budget. This leaves me spending my Sunday in bed, watching my Steven Universe DVDs while listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack and playing Pokemon, only leaving bed for D&D at 5 pm and a few times before that for food and the bathroom.

I don’t even know if I can say I actually enjoy days like those. I have them every so often and I know I need them, but I don’t really enjoy retreating from the world to that degree. I talk to almost no one, get nothing productive done, and make a mess in my room because I can’t even be bothered to go downstairs to put my dishes in the sink. Don’t forget the time I spend agonizing over stupid little things that shouldn’t be stressing me out as much as they are while I ignore the actually legitimate issues I should be fretting about. Sometimes I eventually work through it all and can think about the real issues, but not always.

Depression is a bitch. As John Green once said in a video (I can’t find the video so I can’t attribute it to its primary source), “Depression is melancholy, without its charm.” There’s nothing fun about this. Anxiety also sucks. Nothing ruins a day quite like feeling like you forgot to turn off the oven about literally everything. I woke up at 6:30 because I apparently don’t like to sleep and then spent the next seven hours stressed out. That was last weekend and it was the longest day I’ve had in a couple of years.

I really want to find a way to calm down and let go of my tension, but my tension is a result of constantly working on things that are good for me and that I enjoy. I want to do everything I’m doing and more, so I’ve only got myself to blame for the position I’m in. If I want the successes I’ve set as my goals for 2018, then I have to pay the price. It’d be really cool if I could just get out of my own way and no longer waste so much energy on dumb shit like freaking out about whether or not I’m going to see an increase in the daily average views for this blog or if I’ve actually got enough clean underwear for the next week (which doesn’t matter because I’ve got a washer and dryer, so I can just do laundry whenever I want).

I’m used to being able to turn my anxiety and OCD toward useful ends. Even my depression had its uses. Now, all of my worries and OCD traits feel frivolous or irksome. It is hard to enjoy the feeling of being in control engendered by the act of cleaning your space when you can’t actually get down to cleaning because your cleaning supplies need to be cleaned first

I’d like to just shrug and say I’ll figure it out in the end, but it feels difficult to maintain that level of confidence and belief in the strength of the future when I feel like I no longer have any part of my mental health problems figured out. That’s the stress and exhaustion talking, but they sure talk pretty loudly these days. They’re becoming dominant aspects of my mental landscape every week. Hopefully another quiet weekend or two, following on the tail of a quieter work week, will help me get back on my feet and feeling like I can figure it all out in due time. That’s always a nice feeling.

NaNoWriMo Day 5 (11/05)

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As I predicted, I did not get much done yesterday. I don’t regret it, though. I really enjoyed my day and feel rested and charged for a full day of writing and then running my Dungeons and Dragons campaign. A full day of storytelling! My favorite!

I realized this weekend that I have a tendency to make a lot of time commitments. I like to fill my time with projects and things to do so that I’ve got very little time to sit around and wonder what to do with myself. I’ll admit it is definitely conscious on some level since my depression and anxiety tend to take any time that I’m not occupied and fill it with fretting and too much thinking. If I don’t have the time to sit and stew in my maudlin musings, I can avoid ruining an entire day with, as John Green quoted in a recent video, “melancholy, minus its charm.”

I often feel like I’m spreading myself thin as a result of this desire to fill my time, and that often results in me spending my time doing nothing. I hope that, since I’m more aware of it now, I can find a way to better balance my proactive time and my rest time so I can eliminate those periods of time lost to depression. There’s no time like the present. Maybe I’ll make it through an entire month without looking at my entire library of video games and sadly thinking that nothing sounds fun and I should just go to bed at 5pm.

Daily Prompt

Today, consider a situation where your character can show off their growth to someone who knew them before they became a protagonist. Show them overcoming a challenge that someone close to them thinks should have stopped them, and specifically focus on how their relationship with this person changes as a result of this person’s reaction to your character’s growth.

 

Sharing Inspiration

My inspiration is, you guessed it, this John Green video. I had the opportunity to see John and Hank Green touring for John Green’s new book, “Turtles All The Way Down” and had this amazing moment where I heard John Green walk up on stage and talk about problems I’ve struggled with for years. He came out later and told us a story about a friend of his who passed away earlier this year and a song she reclaimed for him. I’d suggest watching the video if you have not already, because I can’t improve on the way he tells the story so I’m not even going to try. It was this amazing moment for me that came at a time I’d been struggling with my own depression and invasive thoughts. He immediately followed it up with a song with his own twist. Hank played Sweet Caroline and, at the bits everyone loves to shout, everyone was supposed to be silent instead of shouting back. As he said, you never really know that everyone is participating when people are shouting but you know that everyone is participating when you’re being silent. It was this amazing moment of connectivity. It was an amazing night and it was the reason I decided to do NaNoWriMo and post every day. Because I’m here and we’re all here and sometimes it is nice to just reflect on that and embrace it as much as you can.

 

Helpful Tips

Today is day five. If you’re sticking to the NaNoWriMo recommended daily word count, you should be working on words 6,665 through 8,330. If you’re ahead, good job! If you’re behind, don’t sweat it! You’ve got 25 more days to go! If you’re struggling, try a change of scenery! Go out to a coffee shop! Find a nice, cozy library to hole up inside! Move from your writing nook down to a public area around your family/friends! As urgent as this feels, remember that life should not support art, art should support life. Don’t hide away from everything around you as you write, losing touch with the world is only going to negatively impact your writing.