July 14, 2026 · Episode 75
1 Hr, 03 Min, 25 Sec 

Summary

Life has a way of making a mockery of your best artistic intentions. In this episode, we sit down for a Pain In The Arts creative health check, only to discover that neither of us has touched a watercolor in weeks. With the chaotic combination of school holidays, support worker changes, and settling in a new assistance dog, our primary art projects have taken a back seat to minor side quests.

Lyndon sits down to analyze the data to see if our low-stress promotional strategy is actually working, or if we’ve just been fooling ourselves. Ultimately, this conversation lands in an unexpected but necessary place: recognizing invisible progress and learning to be much kinder to yourself about how much you are actually managing when daily life gets overwhelming.

This episode is for you if:

• Your creative practice has been completely swallowed up by school holidays, caregiving or daily life survival.
• You’ve been avoiding your social media strategy but aren’t sure if a quieter approach to promotion actually works.
• You constantly tell yourself “I haven’t done anything this week,” completely overlooking the massive amount of invisible labor you’ve accomplished.

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Transcript

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life, and where one of us finds out the topic at the same time that you do.

Breallyn: Thanks for joining us. I’m Breallyn.

Lyndon: I’m Lyndon.

Breallyn: Today, I don’t know what the topic is.

Lyndon: No, and I barely do.

Breallyn: So all of us are gonna find out at the same time.

Lyndon: Depending on my editing skills, you may hear me say, “I’m just gonna wing this one.” That’s how I got through school.

Breallyn: The usual approach. That’s how —

Lyndon: That’s how I got through school. No point changing now. I just rely on the slightest amount of common sense. I don’t wanna say intelligence, but let’s say intelligence. I do wanna say intelligence. And a tiny bit of wit, a lot of distraction. Sitting in the front so that you don’t get suspected. And trying to befriend the teachers, and that didn’t always work.

Breallyn: They’re onto you.

Lyndon: I think, honestly, I think what got me through is the fact that I was in classes with a lot of really stupid people. So I just rose to… That’s not true.

Breallyn: Another shout-out to Karingal High School.

Lyndon: Not just Karingal. I went to a few. No, as we’ve discovered, all you’ve gotta do is turn up, show up, and be there at the end when they give out the receipts, or whatever they give out.

Breallyn: I don’t think this is —

Lyndon: The rewards.

Breallyn: — advice for anything.

Lyndon: Just be there on the last day. Put your hand out, and hopefully they put something in it, and you can go, “There you go. I’ve finished. I’ve passed.” I think it works for most people.

Breallyn: I think it’s just ’cause they don’t —

Lyndon: And if it —

Breallyn: — they don’t want you on their books for the next year. They just wanna…

Lyndon: If it doesn’t, there’s another system you go into. Yeah.

Health Check Intervention

Lyndon: What I thought we would do is what I like to call… I like to do this annually. And it’s what’s called a Pain In The Arts health check.

Breallyn: Oh. Okay.

Lyndon: It’s a longstanding tradition.

Breallyn: Yeah. I don’t recall the last one.

Lyndon: So this is a — this is a new annual thing… a health check, nay, intervention.

Breallyn: Oh, no.

Lyndon: Not really. But just to… a couple of weeks back, we set ourselves a little bit of an accountability to watercolour painting, wasn’t it?

Breallyn: That was one of the things that we’d chosen.

Lyndon: And then in the weeks that followed, I have not picked up a brush or a paint, and you’ve taken to doing jigsaws.

Breallyn: I have actually. Well —

Lyndon: You were doing more watercolour before that.

Breallyn: The very next day I was doing watercolour.

Lyndon: Were you?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Okay.

Breallyn: Yeah. I think what happened was we’d had a family session with our kids and so on, and then we just were all hanging around in what we like to call the analog room now, and I wanted —

Lyndon: The Transcontinental Drifter Room.

Breallyn: I wanted everyone to stay there longer, and I could see that a couple of the kids were drifting off. So I pulled out a puzzle that’s been sitting there for ages and set it up on the table. Now, our son’s girlfriend immediately got involved, so her and I started to do this puzzle. It was of the world — a massive big map of the world.

Lyndon: She loves puzzles and board games and things.

Breallyn: Yeah, she does. Yeah. She’s always wanting to get us together to do, yeah, she’s got a new board game or let’s play this one again, which is really —

Lyndon: And I’m like, “Don’t you try and bring this family together.” “Who do you think you are?”

Breallyn: She’s very good with that stuff.

So yeah, she was great at getting involved. Sadly, neither of our sons chose to join us. But what it did mean was that on our craft table, which is usually the table that I fold all the washing on —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: — it meant that there was a big puzzle there. And then I was absolutely driven to get it finished ’cause I needed my folding table back.

There was washing here, there and everywhere. So I got obsessed with doing this puzzle. And then you also got involved with doing the puzzle.

Lyndon: I don’t, yeah, I don’t — we don’t need to talk about this.

Breallyn: Yeah. You got so involved that I came down one morning and most of the ocean was finished.

Lyndon: The hardest part.

Breallyn: That was after I’d done all the continents. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. I did get a little obsessed. I was like, “How hard could this be?” And then 1:30 AM rolled around and I thought I think I should finish. And then I have a feeling after that I had to detox, so I watched a bit of TV. Something I’ve been wanting to finish. And then I think I came into the studio and did some work.

Breallyn: Oh, no. Oh, you’re useless. Your bedtime routine is nonexistent.

Lyndon: Yeah, it’s been bad. But it’s all right. We’ve got the health check today.

Breallyn: Oh, good.

Lyndon: I’m currently on zero.

Breallyn: What’s strange about doing this puzzle was that for years I’ve been like, “Oh, I’m not gonna do jigsaw puzzles because it’s —”

Lyndon: Such a waste of time.

Breallyn: — it’s a waste of time. It takes up your time that you could be actually creating something, like you could be doing something that’s —

Lyndon: Exactly.

Breallyn: — like building a skill or like —

Lyndon: Yes.

Breallyn: — develop an idea, do something else with that time.

Lyndon: It sits out in the way. Yeah. No one can use it.

Birdie-Proofing Life

Lyndon: What about also in the past, like we’ve had to deal with Birdie basically destroying everything?

Breallyn: Oh yeah, of course. There was no time for years.

Lyndon: So there was no way we could even — yeah, we’ve, we’ve —

Breallyn: It would’ve been laughable to have a jigsaw puzzle. We couldn’t even have our fruit bowl out.

Lyndon: There’s a reason that our keys and our bags are like hidden under the stairs in that cupboard.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Do you know what I mean? Like all this sort of stuff that we’ve done —

Breallyn: Oh yeah, everything we’ve thought through.

Lyndon: — that I’ve forgotten about that we’ve had to do. Keys locked at both sides of the front door.

Breallyn: Yeah, in lock boxes.

Lyndon: In lock boxes, because we can’t risk her escaping like she has done at times.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yes, anyway, it was — there’s all sorts of things where we just can’t —

Breallyn: Or just losing our keys. One time she saw that somebody had put the keys under the front doormat and she got them and just threw them in the garden. We didn’t find them for weeks.

Lyndon: There’s been stuff over the neighbour’s fences as well. So when we can’t find something we go, “You know what? It’s probably over one of the three neighbour’s fences.”

Breallyn: I remember one time she ran so fast from here to next door — I was metres behind her, and by the time I’d got there to where she’d finally stopped, she’d managed to find a bucket of sump oil that the neighbour had just drained from his car, and plunged both arms and like, all her front chest and everything into it.

I was like, “How? How do you find the most messy thing and do it?” She’s got a talent.

Lyndon: One time I looked out, she was about eight years old, eight or nine — I looked out and she was mowing the neighbour’s nature strip on the other side of the road with our mower.

Breallyn: There was the time that she pushed the mower down the driveway, which is steep. Our driveway is steep, and it went, it ran down the driveway, across the road, and over —

Lyndon: We didn’t see that.

Breallyn: — the road.

Lyndon: We just saw her with it, pushing it down the… That’s actually the — what I’m referring to. She —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I may have embellished the story somewhat. She —

Breallyn: — wasn’t actually mowing. She —

Lyndon: No. She was —

Breallyn: — she would love to start it. She gives it a —

Lyndon: Good go. She was trying. She was trying. Yeah.

Breallyn: Oh, dear.

Lyndon: But yeah. So now the mower has a lock on it in the garage. Yeah. So if you wanna mow, you’ve gotta — yeah, undo that. Got the — yeah.

Breallyn: It’s literally chained to a massive storage unit.

Lyndon: So all these things — oh, dear — so there was no —

Breallyn: All these things. So puzzles would’ve been an absolute laugh. Mind you, I have found the puzzle that was out — like she’s a lot better now, like if you say, “Hey, leave that one alone,” she’s a lot better at just doing that, and not having to — she’s not as compelled anymore to just grab everything, wreck everything.

But she does have a compulsion with stickers at the moment. So when she saw all the puzzle pieces out, I think she thought they were stickers, so —

Lyndon: Started peeling them off.

Breallyn: — she, yeah, she started picking them up, and I found a few here, there, and everywhere. So I thought by the end of the puzzle that there’d be some missing, but fortunately I managed to find them all.

Lyndon: When I was a kid, I must have done a few jigsaws — literally like maybe three or something. I think what happens is people give them to you when they don’t know what to give you as a gift, like aunties and stuff. I don’t know. Maybe the person you invite to your party that’s like a hanger-on. Someone that you —

Breallyn: That you don’t know that well.

Lyndon: — you got them there for the numbers. You felt sorry for them.

Breallyn: Lyndon.

Lyndon: That’s how I felt at someone’s party.

Breallyn: That was you —

Lyndon: I was the one giving the jigsaw.

Breallyn: — extra number.

Lyndon: Phew, got out of that. And I discovered that there’s a spray that you can get, and then you can frame them and it’s like permanent.

Breallyn: Oh yeah. But they look hideous.

Lyndon: I discovered that a decade after I did it. Oh, no. I looked at it and I went, “Of all the jigsaws to make permanent, why would you do that one?” It was just ’cause it was the one I had. Yeah. But yeah, I sprayed it and framed it, and what a — you’re right, what a waste of time.

Breallyn: It did bring back a memory for me, doing this jigsaw business. And I’m not gonna continue on this —

Lyndon: Oh, I hope not.

Breallyn: I’m not gonna continue doing jigsaws forever.

I have told you that I was a bit of a brat in primary school.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: In Grade Five I think it was, there were two classrooms separated by what they called the middle room. Do you remember seeing that in the portables? You’d have the middle room where you could do breakout classes, or sometimes they’d open up the doors and you could join the two classes together.

In the last term, our teachers decided to put a big jigsaw on the table in the middle room that all the kids could just do whenever they felt like it — just do a few pieces or whatever.

And my friend and I, we were keen at the start. We got a few pieces done, and then we stuffed around in our free time and didn’t contribute anything else to the communal jigsaw the whole time. But then we saw that it was getting close to the end, and we got really excited. And so we held a piece and we were like, “This is gonna be the final piece. No one’s allowed to put the final piece in except for us,” and we tried to bully the entire two classes into letting us have the glory of the final piece. And —

Lyndon: That stacks up.

Breallyn: It does stack up. I’m so ashamed.

Lyndon: At least it was primary school — the jigsaw bullies. Wow. Imagine a whole crime syndicate growing just from that. Why are they called the Jigsaw Queens? Is it ’cause they use a jigsaw to cut off your appendages? No. It’s ’cause they held a Grade Five class to ransom with the last jigsaw piece.

Breallyn: Just wanted the glory piece.

Lyndon: I’m adjudicating that you’re also on a zero.

Breallyn: I’ve done one night of watercolour.

Lyndon: Yeah, I know. Okay.

Calm Marketing Reality Check

Lyndon: So how are we going with… Let’s just do a quick recap. You may not have noticed, but over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working like a madman on a new marketing strategy.

Breallyn: Have you? Really? Haven’t heard about it.

Lyndon: And I wasn’t gonna talk about this because I figured, as your — remember you or your parents saying years ago when we were dating, “You don’t hang your dirty laundry out for the neighbours to see.”

Breallyn: Oh, this is true. Yeah. People don’t wanna know about the behind the scenes of — yeah — Pain In The Arts.

Lyndon: I can’t remember what the context of your parents saying that was, but anyway.

Breallyn: I think you were the dirty laundry. Don’t come around here again.

Lyndon: Oh, another old wives’ saying — “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is that why your grandfather named me after a dead dog or dead cat?

Breallyn: No, that was me. He named me Tiddles. That was after his dead cat. Oh. He couldn’t remember my name. I was Tiddles. You were Rastus.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: ‘Cause of your long hair.

Lyndon: Anyway, whatever. Okay, I’ll accept I was the dirty laundry, not being hung out to dry. Oh, you’re right, actually, now that I think about it. Oh, yeah, you know what? I remember now. ‘Cause for ages, if your mum ever had to introduce me to her friends, she’d say, “And this is Lyndon, Bre’s friend.” There’d be a pause and then she’d say, “Friend,” and I’d be like, “Oh.” Dirty laundry.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: But I’m gonna talk about it.

Breallyn: You are.

Lyndon: I am gonna talk about it because I figure it’s something that a lot of creatives would be going through in this day and age anyway.

Breallyn: Oh yeah. Yeah. Everyone has to be a marketing expert.

Lyndon: Now —

Breallyn: It’s not enough just to create your art. Yeah.

Lyndon: Now a year ago, at least, I reckon we were talking a lot about calm marketing —

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: — and how we were going to do everything we could, or as much as we could, to avoid falling into the social media trap.

Breallyn: We didn’t want that frenzied, oh, I’ve got to post every day. What’s the ideal time? What does my grid have to look like? All of that. We just didn’t wanna spend copious amounts of time —

Lyndon: Thinking about it.

Breallyn: — basically feeding the algorithm and feeling like we’re slaves to it. And —

Lyndon: Yeah. Because we’re… No, I’m not gonna go over all of it again, but it’s not necessarily where you need to find your people or your audience or your fans or your patrons. And so we were looking for other ways to go about it. We actually were asking the question, is social media necessary for us?

I think for some creative people, some artists, they probably find that it is, for whatever reason — it’s working for them, and that’s fine. And for others it’s not working for them. And I think it depends on a lot of factors. But it was more just to know that, okay, it’s not the only way to do it, and there are other ways that are worth pursuing if you find that you don’t have the headspace or just the desire to do it. And so we were like, “We don’t really wanna do it, so let’s look at other ways.”

What I’ve found this year, and this is what led me to going, “Okay, I need to come up with a strategy here” — this is why I’ve been on this marketing strategy — is I’ve found that as the months have rolled on this year, I’ve been basically posting from, I don’t know, four different accounts across four or five different platforms. It’s been haphazard. I haven’t done it with any strategy. I’ve just gone — we don’t even have — what an understatement — we don’t even have massive social media accounts.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: I’ve been on Facebook for about, I don’t know, 62 years, I think. And I’ve got 600 followers. And we all know that you post something to Facebook, not everyone sees it anyway. Instagram — I don’t know how many. I’ve probably got about the same followers on Instagram. So in my mind, I’m like, “I’m just posting, just letting people — literally people that I know and that are on the outskirts of my friendship group, and maybe outskirts of my professional life as well — let ’em know what we’re up to.” That’s been it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And so it would be when I’m just sitting outside having my lunch or having a second cup of coffee — in my mind I’m like, “I’m just doing this in this little moment.”

So what happened was instead of sitting out and observing what’s going on around me, I’d be on my phone with my coffee and a bagel and just doing some quick posts, right?

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: And then I’m like, “I hate this.” This — what’s the point?

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: So this is what led me to thinking about this whole — let’s just do a health check, and also just go, what happened? Because weren’t we meant to be doing Calm Marketing?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Has that not worked, or what’s going on?

Breallyn: Yeah. Where are we at with that? Yeah. That’s a good idea to ask that question.

Lyndon: Yeah. And the other thing too was because we’ve got a backlog, or a catalogue now of episodes, it meant that there’s also — what’s it called? Statistics. We’ve got the data now showing what people are listening to.

Breallyn: Yeah. What, who our audience is.

Lyndon: We’ve got a little bit of data. Yeah. We’ve got data gathered over a year and a half. It’s not extensive data, but it’s data nonetheless, and it’s across a few different sorts of platforms. So had a look at that, discovered a few different things, and now I’ve been coming up with a strategy to actually see whether I needed to keep using social media channels or whether it actually is a waste of time for us.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Do we need to have a Facebook account? Do we need to have an Instagram account? And just really scrutinising some of the things that we’ve done intentionally and some of the things that have just evolved.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: The long and the short of it is that we’re able to see where our listeners are coming from.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And so it means that for us, there is an aspect of social media that is worth doing. But what I have basically said is, “All right. I’m happy for us to have a TikTok account,” but what I’m sending to it is the same thing I’m sending to Instagram. It’s the same thing I’m sending to YouTube. It’s the same thing I’m sending to Facebook Reels.

So something that I was already doing, which is creating an audiogram. And the reason I started creating an audiogram was because I could do it quickly — I could do it as part of my editing of the show, like of the audio. Because what I do is I go, “Oh, that would be a good quote.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And then I’ll attach that to the audio that goes to Spotify. So then what it made me think was, where else can I put this?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: If you’re gonna do TikTok properly, there’s a certain style of video that you do, and then the trend changes, and it’s like —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — now this is the thing to do. If they suggest that you use trending music and you wanna reach as many people as possible, then you would do a particular style of post, and you would include the trending music, and then you would make sure that you post it to your feed and to something else, and you’ve gotta use a caption, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s — yeah, I’m not doing any of that.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I’m happy to put the video I’ve already created on there.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: But I don’t have to be on TikTok, right?

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: So it’s a —

Breallyn: — little bit — yeah, not continually following the trends, trying to stay ahead of it. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. It’s —

Breallyn: Being a slave to all that stuff. And yeah, spending literally at least a day a week on updating social media — that would be horrendous.

Lyndon: Yeah. And I think maybe this marketing strategy is for the next year, and then we’ll do another one, and —

Breallyn: Yeah. Oh, probably. We’ve only gotta —

Lyndon: The audience —

Breallyn: — keep a step ahead of what we’re doing.

Lyndon: The audience changes. Yeah. Our proficiency in certain areas of the digital realm might change. Who knows? Yeah, so it’s just — at the moment I just thought it was worth looking at, are we still doing Calm Marketing? Because we are on socials.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And what I’ve discovered is when I just sit down and I schedule the posts rather than just doing it haphazardly, I’m spending 80% less time on all of those platforms.

Breallyn: Oh, really?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Wow. That’s a huge time saver.

Lyndon: It’s not just the time saver — it’s —

Breallyn: And sanity saver.

Lyndon: — there’s something about having a plan and being in control.

Breallyn: Ah, yeah. Yeah. So much more proactive than reactive, and trying to go, “Oh, that’s right, I haven’t done one for a while. I better stick something up while I’ve got five minutes.”

Lyndon: Yeah. And the other part of this too that motivated me to do it — it was twofold, to be honest.

One was I wasn’t happy that I was dipping my toe into social media in such a haphazard way — in such a way that’s not measurable and was sucking my time. So there was that clearly.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And knowing that, “All right, we’ve actually got some data now that we could use to our advantage.” I was really hoping it said, “Yeah, don’t worry about social media.” That was one aspect of it.

The other aspect — ’cause I suspected I was losing time. I certainly wasn’t content. But I knew that I was probably losing time. I kinda wasn’t aware of how much time I was losing.

Interestingly enough, I downloaded an app the other day called Minimalist. I’ve since deleted it ’cause it wanted $7.99 a month or something. So I was on the free version, and I just wanted to see what it was like. And when you’re setting it up, it says, “How often do you think you’re on your different social media things a day? How many hours?” And I thought, “Oh my gosh, I reckon it’s about three, right? Three hours.”

Breallyn: Geez.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: That’s a lot.

Lyndon: It reckons that if I think it’s three, it’s probably seven.

Breallyn: What?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: That you’re on social media a day?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Seven hours?

Lyndon: That’s what it reckons. And so then it averages it down to five or something, right?

Breallyn: Who’s got five hours a day to spend on social media?

Lyndon: I think they’re including, like for instance, YouTube, you know. They’re including, who knows? But anyway. Mind you, the whole thing is so that they go, “Oh, so it’s this amount of hours a day, times seven days a week, at an average wage of,” — and I think it was an American wage — it said of $15 an hour or $12 an hour or something. I don’t know. It was like, “That’s $2,700.” So they’re angling you — to kinda go, “Oh, $7 a month.”

Breallyn: I could have a full-time job.

Lyndon: $7 a month — this is an easy decision to subscribe to this app.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Point is, whatever you think your time is that you’re spending, it’s more.

Breallyn: Yeah. And we — yeah. We know that. I’ve definitely heard that. We know that. Yeah, that’s right. No one wants to quite admit it — like how much time they spend on their phones, or how often they pick them up. So yeah, I think we all tend to underestimate that kind of thing, yeah.

Lyndon: And it’s not just the time that you’re on. It’s the time you lose before it and after it as well.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Do you get what I mean?

Breallyn: Yeah. It puts your brain into a bad space too. You’ve gotta recover from it.

Lyndon: Yeah. So anyway, so there was that.

The other side of it was — so I knew I was probably losing time there. But I also know how much time it takes to record, edit, produce, and distribute a podcast, let alone —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — let alone marketing it.

Breallyn: Yeah, of course.

Lyndon: So we haven’t done any marketing —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — at all. I want this to be sustainable. I also want it to be something that I can work out what part of that whole process I can delegate.

So this has been taking almost my entire working week for the last two weeks. So it’s a lot of time up front, but hopefully it’ll pay off in the long run. But all it’s actually saved me — if all goes to plan — it’s only gonna save me two hours a week when all is said and done.

But it does allow for growth, and it does —

Breallyn: Yeah, it saves you time, plus allows growth for us to reach our audience that we’re still discovering, still finding, or they’re still discovering us. Yeah. Then yeah, that’s good. That’s a win-win, as they say.

Lyndon: Yeah. But so that’s how that’s all gone. Yeah. So you might actually see more posts from us across the socials. But you’ll know that it’s all scheduled.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s —

Breallyn: It’s still part of our — it’s —

Lyndon: — me sitting —

Breallyn: — calm marketing because we’re making it sustainable and —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: — what fits in with what we wanna do, what we feel that we can do and can take on, and what is intentional for us to discover our audience or to let people know that here we are, come join us.

Lyndon: Yeah. And because we’re sitting here in this studio — I’m in virtually a matching tracksuit. No shoes, black trackies, hair’s not done.

Breallyn: Black hoodie. Yeah.

Lyndon: You’re in a Nike —

Breallyn: I’ve got —

Lyndon: — hoodie. Good on you. Jeans, but you’ve —

Breallyn: I’ve got jeans. I’ve got a jumper on, but I do have my son’s Nike hoodie on over the top.

Lyndon: And then you’ve got an old nana throw — a blanket — over you. Safe to say video podcasting is not on the horizon for us. We do like — we do the sort of radio aspect too, don’t we, of being able to just listen anywhere and not have to watch, not have to look at the screen.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Definitely.

Breallyn: I —

Lyndon: The only screen I wanna look at —

Breallyn: Still —

Lyndon: — is the twin drive-in at Dromana.

Breallyn: It puzzles me that people watch podcasts. Obviously people are doing that all the time, and they wanna see all the guests and all the different people, but the whole point is to do something else while you’re listening. That’s what — in my life, that’s what’s happening. I’m driving or I’m gardening or I’m doing something.

Lyndon: All right. So that is — I felt that needed explaining. And sorry for anyone that is a listener to the show and has no intention of ever marketing via social media. But —

Breallyn: We know we speak to a lot of —

Lyndon: I just didn’t wanna be —

Breallyn: — creative people and we’ve had —

Lyndon: It’s a thing.

Breallyn: — people talk to us like, “Oh, yeah, we liked your episode on calm marketing.” Like that rings true because we’re all sort of under this pressure to market and to have your socials up to date and all that. And a lot of people —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: — don’t want to and don’t feel like they — is there a different way, people are wondering. So —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: — we’re walking that road and just trying to find what’s gonna work for us, what’s gonna work for our audience, and can we do it in a way that doesn’t burn us out after six months or doesn’t make us, in the end, just go, “You know what? We can’t keep on doing this podcast because we just can’t keep up with feeding this algorithm, like continuing to do this marketing. We just don’t wanna do it because it’s not enjoyable, and it’s just draining us. We can’t do it that way.”

And as we’ve talked about, we’ve got our responsibility to Birdie, and we just don’t have the luxury of letting ourselves get burnt out with something that we can’t sustain. So yeah, it’s gotta be step by step and in a Calm Marketing way.

Major Projects Check-In

Lyndon: Let’s move on to major projects.

Breallyn: Okay.

Lyndon: So what are your major projects that you’re working on? We don’t have to spend ages —

Breallyn: It’s a health check. You’ve asked me —

Lyndon: Nay, intervention.

Breallyn: — today, and it’s funny ’cause the last week or so I’ve just been feeling sick that I haven’t been working on my major project, which is my novel that I’m writing. I haven’t done any writing for several weeks now.

Lyndon: Yep.

Breallyn: Which, yeah, just makes me feel awful. But that’s ’cause of —

Lyndon: School holidays, isn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah. We’re getting towards the end of school holidays, and it’s always a big disruption. Like the week before, there’s a lot of planning, trying to figure out what’s happening for the school. It’s not just the week before — I’m usually planning well ahead of time trying to figure out what schedule’s gonna be for those holidays.

And then we actually get to the holidays and because of her budget, of her NDIS funding, and because of a few different things — we had some support worker changes and so on — it’s meant that we’ve been operating on a skeleton crew this holidays. There’s been not many days of holiday program or full support worker coverage or anything like that.

So I’ve been doing lots of nights and lots of daytimes. I remember one day you had a client in the studio and it was the most bitterly cold, freezing rainy day, and I was out walking Birdie and Lacey along — I don’t know — it was like a dam, the bank of a dam, and we were getting rained on sideways. And I was like, “Yep, this is what it takes.” So yeah.

Lyndon: A support worker should’ve been out there getting frozen to the core.

Breallyn: Yeah. So it’s been one of those times. And just before the holidays too, I had an influx of new clients, so I’ve literally got three massive projects waiting on my desk for me to write their website copy — large websites.

So I’m feeling the pressure. Feeling crappy about not working on my creative work and yeah, just feeling a bit burnt out and tired from the holidays.

Lyndon: Why don’t you just go to the local bookstore, right? Go to their, I don’t know, self-help section and just buy up half a dozen of those books. You’ll be right then.

Breallyn: That I then won’t read.

Lyndon: You can do it — and what’s the other thing that’s just overused these days? You got this.

Puzzles as Coping

Lyndon: Oh, man.

Breallyn: I think this is why —

Lyndon: If I hear another “you got this” —

Breallyn: I think this is why I’ve —

Lyndon: I don’t know what I’ll do.

Breallyn: I’ve done the puzzles, is because —

Lyndon: Oh, do you — you’re putting your head in the sand.

Breallyn: Oh, no, it’s what we were talking about — that’s no.

Lyndon: You should come talk to me. I’m an expert at doing that. I’ve got a long list of ways you can put your head in the sand if you’re trying to avoid…

Breallyn: No, I’m not trying to avoid anything. I’m trying to cope with the current reality, which is, you know — it’s been the last couple of weeks. And so even my low stakes creative thing, which was watercolour, ’cause I don’t have any aspirations of doing anything great. I just wanted to experiment and have fun with it.

Lyndon: Sounds like I’m gonna win.

Breallyn: Even that, you can win it. I don’t care. I haven’t even gotten that out, mainly because there’s been a puzzle in the way.

But yeah, it’s like a puzzle — it’s literally no stakes in it. It’s nothing. It’s just sitting there doing something that isn’t on a screen, but allows your mind to float while you’re doing it. So it actually has a similar effect to gardening or even folding washing or, I don’t know.

It just — yeah, it’s got a similar effect to some of those creative things where you can do it and then your mind is free. So yeah, that’s actually been a little bit of a coping mechanism for me for the last few weeks. But yeah, my major project is just sitting there waiting for me to get back to it.

Lyndon: Right.

Major Projects Stalled

Breallyn: How about you?

Lyndon: We can move on. I guess my major projects should be the soundtrack to your audiobook.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah. You can put that on hold. That’s — you’ve gotta wait for me to write the book and then record the voiceover.

Lyndon: Who’s gonna record the voiceover?

Breallyn: I’ll do… I can talk it. You can —

Lyndon: You’re right.

Breallyn: — you can record it.

Lyndon: Okay.

Breallyn: Yeah. Let’s wait for it to be finished first. That’s a while down the track. You’ve got time for many other projects.

Lyndon: Oh, okay. Just I’ll just strike that one off the list. No —

Breallyn: No, just put it —

Lyndon: — and then as soon as you’re ready, I’ll just magically create the soundtrack.

Breallyn: I guess so.

Lyndon: Okay. All right. I’ll just move on to my own songs, which — for both of those things, soundtrack and own songs, there’s —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — I’ve got hundreds of ideas on my phone and on the computer, but I haven’t gone, “Let’s collate some of these together and start recording.”

So I’ve meddled around. I’ve had different thoughts on it. I’ve tried a few different things. So from time to time I might be playing slide guitar or something, and I go, “Ooh, that sound, I’m definitely gonna use that.” But I haven’t recorded it. So it is all in its real infancy. And so for my own songs — yeah, I have found that so much of my time — and then you’re right, in the holidays it gets — this all gets distorted more than we realise, I think.

But I’ll get to that. But yeah, I need to wrestle some time back and actually schedule time for my projects. And I’ve got into such a terrible routine for all sorts of different reasons, which I won’t go into, that I need — now I need to haul myself out of it. And I actually was laughing before about an intervention, but I do feel like I need to have a self-imposed intervention.

Breallyn: Let’s —

Lyndon: — do —

Breallyn: — it together.

Lyndon: Now. Allow myself to intervene myself. Okay. I’m gonna have — I’m putting an embargo on all my activities. Anyway.

Breallyn: I think maybe don’t do puzzles at 1:30, and then watch TV, and then go and start some work.

Lyndon: I have no willpower.

Minor Projects and Side Quests

Lyndon: Okay, let’s move on to minor projects. So the supporting roles, the side quests, the personal goals, the hobbies. These are the minor projects.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: We have touched on it — you talking about your jigsaws, watercolour, gardening. They’re all — yeah, all the — I guess all the —

Breallyn: It’s the middle of winter. Everything looks terrible.

Lyndon: You’re using these things as — what did you call it?

Breallyn: They’re like low stakes, yeah, little side quests essentially. Yeah, for mental health and to have that break, but it doesn’t kinda come with that loaded ambition and pressure that you have for your major projects that you’re trying to create something — you’re actually intending people to see the outcome of.

Whereas —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: — some of these minor things, they’re just to play. They’re just to have that creative time and to feed that creativity in yourself, but with no pressure on the outcome.

Lyndon: That’s true, except when I finish the Tarago camper van fit-out, I’m gonna be showing everybody.

Breallyn: That’s true. It’s, I suppose it’s true that people might see it, but —

Lyndon: Yeah. It bothers me that you’ll probably be driving it down to Kennett River at Christmas time, but without all of that stuff in it.

Breallyn: And you won’t get to show.

Lyndon: And then no, and then all the camping buddies won’t get to see it. Oh, gosh.

Breallyn: I’ll just —

Lyndon: Photos just won’t do it justice.

Breallyn: — you can drive that down, and I’ll drive —

Lyndon: No, ’cause —

Breallyn: — the other car with the camper.

Lyndon: Oh, I suppose it’s true. Hang on. No, that won’t — Birdie and Lacey — I don’t think that’ll work.

Breallyn: And the support worker. Yeah.

Lyndon: This is actually quite revealing that the minor projects have come to the fore to step into the breach in a way — yeah — when you haven’t got the time to do the major projects.

Breallyn: ‘Cause you don’t need to… I find that I don’t need to set aside a long time for the minor projects.

So I might — so for instance, Birdie’s support worker’s arrived in the evening, so my time is now set free. So I’ll do all the chores that I need to do essentially — like fixing things, like getting Birdie’s dinner, sorting out the animals, doing some washing, cleaning the kitchen, doing all the things, or putting stuff away everywhere.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Supporting them if Birdie needs help with showering and things like that. And then I have a quick shower. I’ve — you know, now having showers at night instead of the morning. It’s only taken me 30 years to discover that’s way better to do.

Lyndon: Having them at night.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Sleep Habits and Showers

Lyndon: You know why I started having them at night?

Breallyn: So you were warm in the bed?

Lyndon: No.

Breallyn: No — cold in the bed. I can’t remember. Something about temperature.

Lyndon: Well —

Breallyn: And falling asleep better.

Lyndon: One of the most important things for your health, physical and mental — and of course they feed each other — is getting sleep.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: If ever you’re having problems with depression, anxiety, mental health breakdown, whatever — sleep is one of the first things that’s gonna be looked at.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And the other thing is, if you’re not getting it, and then you find out how important it is and that you need to get it, it can spike your stress levels anyway. ‘Cause you’re like — it’s like this vicious circle.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah.

Lyndon: There are things that definitively help you sleep. Put you on the right path so that you can have better sleep.

I’ve obviously broken all of those of late, but there was a time — and arguably a time where it was more important for me to get it right. But there was a time where, yeah, it was like making sure that I was not having a coffee as soon as I got up. It was making sure that I got early morning, or just morning, sunlight into my eyes for 10 minutes. So not staring at the sun. Found that out the hard way. But so there’s things that you do — I’m not gonna go into it.

But one of the things is you shower at night before you go to bed, and then when you hop into bed, your body temperature drops by a degree and a half or something like that, and that brings on sleep.

Breallyn: Oh, okay. I’ll see. No, I’m… Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s the opposite of like — going, “Oh, I’m cold,” and hopping into bed and warming up.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Okay, that might be good when everything’s going well. But if you need to get into good sleep habits, and you’re actually having problems with sleeping for a number of different reasons — doesn’t matter what the reasons are — but if you need to get into good sleep habits, try showering before you go to bed. Because yeah, it’s that temperature drop that helps bring sleep on.

Okay. That’s interesting. ‘Cause the worst thing is to go to bed and then not be able to get to sleep.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah. You know, any time I can’t get to sleep, it’s ’cause I’m too cold, and I’m a cold person. That’s why I’ve got the granny rug on my knee. I’m always cold.

Lyndon: Got a cold heart.

Breallyn: Yep. Freezing. Yep. But I’ve always got cold feet.

Lyndon: Have you?

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. No. So my shower I have in the earlier evening, and then you might be getting dinner, and that’s actually my little window of that —

Lyndon: Jigsaw time.

Breallyn: — yeah, little low stakes do something else time. Yeah.

So rather than being on my phone — yeah, look, often I’m doing a household-y thing, but if I do have those few minutes, I will often choose now to do something that’s a little side quest, a little hobby. So yeah, some painting or something like that.

Double Down Focus

Lyndon: What about when to double down? So there’s a time and a place, isn’t there, when you get blinkered and you pull all your focus and all your energy into one thing.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And things that bring that on is if you’ve got a deadline. Ideally we’re like, “Yeah, that’s — we wanna be this way on our major projects that we’re working on.” We wanna afford ourselves the time to do it, but sometimes it’s deadlines with those things. Sometimes it’s a deadline with your work that you need to do it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Shows. I know for me, I’ve had to get very blinkered —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — about my activities when I know there’s a show coming up.

Breallyn: As in not something — a show you’re gonna watch. As in a performance that you have to perform, you’ve got a gig.

Lyndon: Yeah, not a show. Not Ozark.

Breallyn: I know that.

Lyndon: Oh, yeah. I was — someone told me about this brand new show called Breaking Bad, and I’ve got to schedule time to watch 10 seasons of it or something.

Breallyn: Yeah, yeah. No, so yeah. I’ve gotta put all my focus into that. That’s coming up. Yeah. No, I know you had when you were gearing up for working with Greta Zilla, who we’ve done a really fun podcast with.

You had to learn bass, and you had to — for one of those gigs you had to play the songs on guitar in another gig and learn different songs and all that. So there was definitely a time a few months ago you were really focused on just getting in here and getting that practice done and sorting out the parts and everything. So yeah, that was probably a good creative time, but it —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: — yeah, absolutely a double down focus on that thing.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yep.

Here’s one — like when you need to double down is when you realise that you’re getting out of balance, or something’s out of whack. All of a sudden there’s a — you need a priority shift, and you make time. Yeah. And you go, “Everybody, you’re getting your own dinner tonight, and for the rest of the week. And if you want your washing done…” Like where that sort of has to happen.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And it’s not because of a deadline. It actually could be in response to the fact that you’ve just spent the last two weeks working on — like for you, it might be working on other people’s websites, and now you feel like if you don’t do some serious work on your novel, you will punch someone in the face.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I’ve been so fortunate to be able to —

Lyndon: And you’ve threatened me with that too.

Breallyn: I apologize. Yeah, I’ve been fortunate to be able to schedule time away — like literally going away to get into a different environment and have a couple of days focusing on my novel, having that little writing retreat.

So that’s, yeah, when I feel like things are out of balance, or even if I just wanna kinda kickstart things again, that’s what I’ll aim to do, and I love being able to do that. That’s a real privilege that I don’t take for granted, ’cause yeah, for so long I couldn’t do that, and it’s just such a treat to be able to do it.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Holiday Time Distortion

Lyndon: You mentioned school holidays before. And this is what occurred to me because — I think — this is common when someone goes, “Oh, what have you been up to this week?” And I can’t think of a single thing that I’ve done apart from brush my teeth and, if it was the right week of the month, wash my hair.

I thought, “What have I done this week?”

And this was the list. And I’ll preface this by saying I felt like I hadn’t actually achieved much. Because I’m always going, “I’ve gotta get this thing done so that I can get this thing done.”

Breallyn: Yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: And I know there was an episode that we were talking about — or that I was talking about — and this was a long time ago. Just the difference it was making when I would get up in the morning and go, “Today’s gonna be a great day.” Yeah. As opposed to what’s happened for the previous few decades, which is I wake up and I go, “I’ve got so much to do today.”

And somewhere this year I forgot to do it the right way.

Breallyn: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Lyndon: And I think you’ve done the same thing.

Breallyn: Yeah. I usually —

Lyndon: We don’t sleep in the same — I leap out of bed anymore, so I’m not really sure. But I think when you get up, you leap out and you go, “What’s gotta get done?”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And it makes a huge difference to be able to go, “Today’s gonna be a great day.” And just —

Breallyn: I must try that.

Lyndon: You should try that. Yeah. Can’t you tell how chirpy I am? On three hours sleep every night and going to bed at 2:00 AM and waking up at 3:00, 4:00, and 5:30 nearly without fail for the past three months. It’s crazy.

Breallyn: Not good.

The Week That Was

Lyndon: Anyway, but this is what I did this week. I had Grace in here doing her vocal sessions on Monday. I had — okay, this is in no particular order.

Breallyn: It started with Monday. Are you gonna give us chronological?

Lyndon: No, because this week wasn’t a Monday to —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — Sunday week.

Breallyn: True. Yeah.

Lyndon: Right?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: When I wrote this, it was just the last seven days, okay? Yeah. I had two migraine attacks.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Which I hadn’t really thought about because that’s normal. I had a medication mishap —

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: — which was a neurologist had put me on medication because of my nerve issue in my finger. So I was on this medication. It ran out, and I didn’t take it for two days because I didn’t go and fill the script.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: So my fault. But I thought on the third day, “You know what? I really need to — I can’t go any longer than two days.” And so then I took the medication on the third day.

Long story short, what happened was at the time that I took the tablet on that third day, my body was already in a state of withdrawal. And then I basically threw this medication at it, and my body spiked, and I almost collapsed, and I had to lay in bed for eight hours before I could get up and actually walk without falling over.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s the medication. That wasn’t good. Yeah. That wasn’t good, and I got told afterwards when I went and saw a doctor that said that was a dangerous thing to do. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

So I had that. I was doing this marketing strategy and delegation. Yep. And quite obsessively. Yeah. But in my mind — that’s not my work. No. No. That’s a necessary evil. Yeah. That’s right. That’s just part of getting this podcast out there.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I was just out there one day posting, going, “I’m sick of doing this. Surely I can reassess everything.” And all of a sudden, there I go, I’m on this quest.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: I did a winery gig. I booked a corporate gig.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: And in amongst doing this list, I was like, “Oh, it’s school holidays.”

Breallyn: It’s school holidays. Yeah. So Birdie’s been in the house and — yeah — often we’re both doing things, or we’re trying to make the most of the sunshine and go for a walk with the dog and —

Lyndon: So this is just after someone’s gone, “Oh, what have you been up to this week?” I go, “Oh, nothing really.”

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done —

Lyndon: Can understand.

Breallyn: — I’ve actually done all these things.

Lyndon: Oh, a support worker resigned.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Another one came in just by happenstance the same week and is in training.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that —

Breallyn: It has flow —

Lyndon: — on effects to Birdie — that actually has massive flow on effects for us — yeah — and for Birdie.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And to top it all off, the AFL Cats lost at home.

Breallyn: Oh, such a shame —

Lyndon: You know what I mean?

Breallyn: — to watch that whole game and —

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.

Breallyn: Yeah, look, there’s been a lot.

Lyndon: I watched all but the last two minutes.

Breallyn: — going on.

Lyndon: I piked out of that. Yeah. I was just too sad.

Self-Compassion for Artists

Lyndon: But ultimately for us, I guess we’re looking at the entirety of our activities. Everything that we’re doing is either feeding or starving our health and our art and our ability to parent. It’s either feeding or starving our state of mind, and it’s all inescapable.

And I just thought — it’s that list that I did and I realised, oh, actually I have done a lot of stuff, and a lot of varied stuff, and a lot of things that had to be fitted in around other things. It’s not like I could just do these things from 9:00 to 5:00, or 10:00 to 2:00, or whatever. It had to all just be done when it had to be done.

And I was like, you know what? I have to be kinder to myself —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — primarily, and we can ingratiate that to other people as well. Be kinder to other people.

Breallyn: Yeah, a bit of kindness.

It’s surprising how long things take and yeah, it feels like you’re just on this grind sometimes of trying to get something done and making it work and all of this, and it can just feel like such slow progress. And feel like — certainly for me and for you and a lot of people we know — it’s like people go, “What have you been up to?” And you say, “Oh, yeah, I’m still working on this thing.”

And you feel like you’ve got no progress to really report, and you feel like you’re failing in some way. And it’s often the opposite is true — like the fact that you keep going step by step and keep on making this thing and creating stuff. That’s actually amazing — like it’s a continual thing.

I do have a friend, every time I see her — which isn’t often these days — we get together maybe once or twice a year, and she’ll go, “What have you been up to?” “Oh, I’m doing the podcast, I’m working on this novel, and doing this, doing that. This is what’s going on with Birdie, this is what’s going on with our other kids.” And she always says, “Oh, I can’t believe it. I’ve known you for 30 years. Y

ou’re always working on something. You’re always doing something new and like creating. You never just do a job and have a family. That’s not ever what you’re doing. You’re always just studying. You’re doing a new business, you’re doing something else, yeah. You’re doing something.”

And so looking at it from her point of view, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I guess I’ve always got something new-ish on the go, or that I’ve just started in recent years or whatever.” It’s always something that I’ve got an idea and I’m doing this thing and I’m doing what it takes to give it enough air so it lives. And maybe that isn’t a usual thing. It seems to me that it’s just normal, but I guess it’s not always.

Lyndon: Well — yeah.

Breallyn: Those sort of conversations go differently with me and my friends.

Lyndon: How do they go?

Breallyn: Like they’re a lot shorter, and they go generally like this: “So what do you do all day?” And then I go — just shrug and think, “I don’t really have a suitable answer.” And yeah, that’s about the extent of the conversation.

Breallyn: Have you seen those reels where it’s like when blokes get together with their friends, and then their wives go, “Oh, how is such and such?” “Oh, I don’t know.” “How old’s their child now?” “Oh, do they have a child?” “Are they still dating that woman?” “Oh, don’t know.”

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: And then you see the ones — yeah, I’ve seen the ones with men doing it, and they are giving their friends a quiz. Saying things like, “So remember that girl that I broke up with six months ago who I’d been dating for three years? And it really broke my heart, and I actually went into quite a deep depression afterwards. And I’m only just getting my life back together. Do you remember what her name was?” And their friends will go, “I didn’t know you were dating someone.”

Lyndon: Yep.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. I think we may have —

Lyndon: I see that.

Breallyn: — a common denominator there.

Lyndon: Yeah. It’s the difference in the sexes.

Breallyn: I think we are different species altogether.

Lyndon: Yeah.

We’re coming towards the end here, I think, I would suggest.

Breallyn: Our health check.

Lyndon: Was it a health check?

Breallyn: That’s literally the thing that you said we were doing today. Pain In The Arts health check.

Lyndon: Oh, I really wish it was an intervention and —

Breallyn: Oh, yeah. Oh.

Lyndon: — I could just point the finger at you. That’d be awesome.

Everything Connected Moment

Lyndon: What’s the moment in your week where you most felt that everything was connected?

Breallyn: Everything was connected.

Lyndon: That you felt like it was all connected. ‘Cause — yeah, okay — you were just explaining — I think — had you gone out with your friend this week or last week and had that conversation, and she’s gone — you’re doing all the — just what you explained. That’s probably a moment where you’d go, “Actually, that is my life, and it is all connected, and it is all important.”

But what about when you’re just at home and you’re like, pulling some laundry out of the washing machine where all everything’s tucked into the corners of a fitted sheet? Hasn’t quite —

Breallyn: Hasn’t washed properly.

Lyndon: Hasn’t washed properly. Do you feel like that’s connected to your novel?

Breallyn: I don’t know if this quite answers the question. But I did have to take Birdie to a specialist appointment this week, seeing an OB-GYN —

Lyndon: We don’t know what that is.

Breallyn: — obstetrician gynaecologist specialist.

So she was meeting Birdie for the first time and was asking some general questions about Birdie’s abilities, Birdie’s health, things like that. And one of them was about sleep. And I said, “Oh, she’s been sleeping slightly better recently,” because basically, long story short — I’ve given up the tactic that I was trying, which was having Birdie in a single bed, and I was sleeping in the trundle bed next to it. And so that we would be in separate beds, but I was still there to resettle Birdie if she needed it, or be there to support her. We don’t want her getting up in the night and not having someone immediately there because it can be dangerous.

So I’d been trying to separate and have these two beds going, but essentially what I was finding was that Birdie ended up coming to my trundle bed, which is the most uncomfortable single mattress you could imagine.

Lyndon: No, it’s not. I can imagine worse. But it wasn’t comfortable.

Breallyn: It wasn’t comfortable. It was not great for my back, and I would end up sleeping on the extreme edge of it with Birdie taking over three quarters of it and cuddling right up to me. But yeah, basically stealing all my space and my blanket and everything. So I was not sleeping well. Birdie wasn’t sleeping well. We were up and down doing musical beds all night.

So I gave up in the end — like we’d been trying this for a couple of years — and I just bought a queen bed. She’s in it, and I’m in it, so we’re sleeping in that one bed together, and she’s sleeping better because of that. I’m sleeping better because it’s got a good mattress. And we’ve got enough space, and she can know that I’m there. I can resettle her. It’s not as big a deal as changing beds all night. So that’s the story.

But I was just quickly trying to explain this to this specialist, in the middle of also explaining her condition, all of the symptoms and all the different things and what’s specifically going on that has caused us to come and see this specialist.

Lyndon: Right.

Breallyn: And as I was explaining the sleep situation as a good thing — “Hey, she’s sleeping a little bit better now that we’re in the queen bed” — she was like —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: — suddenly, like she’s looked at me and she’s gone, “Hang on. So you’re dealing with your daughter all night as well, as — she’s very high needs obviously all throughout the day as well. She needs constant support and care. So you’re doing this all night as well.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” And her eyes just filled with compassion, and yeah, it just felt like someone was like looking right into my soul and she was just like, “That must be so hard.”

Lyndon: A doctor with compassion.

Breallyn: A doctor with compassion.

Lyndon: Wow.

Breallyn: She just said — and she was one of these very strong, smart women that you — you want to see this specialist because it’s like this person knows what they’re doing, she’s very switched on with all the things going on here. Yeah. But she just had this real human moment, just saying, “How are you doing this? Like, how are you surviving doing this?” And I just — I was like, “Oh, it’s not so bad now. Like we’ve been through hell and back.”

Lyndon: Been through worse.

Breallyn: Like we’ve been through much worse. This is the good time. This is when she’s not in — like she’s not in this excited catatonia where she’s super aggressive. Yeah. And she’s not in the drop zone of catatonia where she can’t do anything. Like this is the good zone.

Lyndon: The good middle ground.

Breallyn: Yeah. So that made me go, “Oh, that’s right.” Anything that we’re getting done is a good thing.

Like the fact that we’re beyond survival. I never wanna take that for granted because — yeah — we’ve been in survival for so long, and in such difficult situations, that any time that we get to think beyond that is a bonus in our lives. So although I get frustrated that I am not writing my novel as fast as I would like, in the last few weeks it’s gone out the window, and all of that — we’re doing a bit more than surviving, so that’s amazing.

Lyndon: So —

Breallyn: Yeah, I don’t know if that quite answered your question, but it definitely was like a moment during my week that I was like, “Oh, that’s right.”

Lyndon: Yeah. It — I guess it did, from a different perspective. I guess it did.

Mind you, I reckon I could muster up some compassion for $2,000 an hour.

Breallyn: It was $520 — that consultation was for 15 minutes. Yeah.

Lyndon: There you go. Yeah. Was that two — is that including GST? $520.

Breallyn: Oh, it was a killer.

Lyndon: I was off by what? $80 an hour. So hang on, so she’s basically $2,000 an hour more expensive than me.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: That explains my lack of compassion. Yeah. It all makes sense.

Breallyn: Charge more to feel something.

Lyndon: It’s fake compassion, yeah. Oh, I wanna see what her compassion was like after you left. I wanna hear what she said into her dictaphone.

Breallyn: We walked in there. Birdie was there handing her books and stickers. She also smacked her hand on the desk at some point to let this specialist know that she was ready to leave. Like she was done. “Get me out of here.” We had the support —

Lyndon: That’s hilarious.

Breallyn: — worker, and I had Lacey who was strutting around the hospital like she owned the joint, and people didn’t quite know whether to kick us out or to pat her.

Lyndon: Part of my working week this week is going to go see Lost Ragus with your Uncle Phil.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah.

Lyndon: They’re a psychedelic country and soul band from Melbourne. Fronted by Matt Walker, and Matt Walker is — years ago, and I hadn’t thought of him for ages, but he used to have this outfit called Matt Walker and Ashley Davies, a drummer. And yeah, I used to have a keen interest in what they were up to back in the day. Great songwriter and yeah, so it’d be good to see them on Sunday. That —

Breallyn: That sounds intriguing.

Lyndon: But it’s all part of — if I hadn’t have had this realisation this week, and it’s not the first time I had the realisation, but it’s nice to be reminded of it — that yeah, actually I have been working hard.

And it’s, not that I deserve a night off, but — no, this isn’t a night off. Yeah, it’ll be a nice thing to do, but this is actually part of what I do for work. Going out to see the band is — it’s like making time to do that sort of stuff is good for anyone. But for me, it’s actually one of the ingredients of being a musician.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is absorbing music, going out seeing a live band. And also not viewing it like, “Oh, I should be at home working on my major project,” or, “This is taking time away.” Look, it’s — yeah, like I can go out and socialise and enjoy the band. And I can also know that it’s also feeding my art.

Breallyn: Yeah, absolutely.

Lyndon: And is a good thing.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So in that sense, it’s all — everything is connected. And the last thing I’ll add as well, to what’s been happening this week and these school holidays, is that a week or two before school holidays we got the assistance dog, which I know we’ve spoken about — yeah — a lot.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that is also… I just think for any family, it’s a big deal because the assistance dog arrives and you realise that, oh, this is not like getting a puppy and just putting up with the antics of a dog and whatnot. We’ve had to learn how to handle her. We’ve had to continue her training. We’ve had to be a mediator between her and Birdie — yeah — so that relationship gets off to a good start and is special and unique — yeah — to them.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that’s a lot as well. Yeah. And so I only thought about that after I’d finished that list. I was like, “Yeah, there’s been that as well.”

So —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: — actually —

Breallyn: It is. It’s a big change that we’ve gotta shift and adjust everything around.

Lyndon: Right. Yeah.

Lyndon: So I would — I’m a list maker from way back. I would implore anyone to just sit down with a cup — whatever you drink, beverage of choice — sit down and make a list of all the things that you’ve done this week. Yeah. And see which ones aren’t connected.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, everything is connected. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Exactly. ‘Cause you are the human at the centre of things.

Lyndon: Maybe there’s some things that shouldn’t — maybe there’s some things that you could cut loose. I don’t know. Set free. But yeah, anyway, so be kinder to yourself.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: And —

Breallyn: Do a little health check-in and —

Lyndon: Do a health check, yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. We hope your health is well. We thank you for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.

Lyndon: Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Breallyn: And check your mates. See ya.

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