Would you look at that! A full month where I didn’t post a single thing. I took a lot of time off to work on a new website for Alien Outkast studios. I am currently in the process of finalizing the color scheme and then making the modifications needed to change the website from looking like it was made from a WordPress tutorial, because it was, and into something I can feel more proud of. This is taking a lot longer than I expected because I had multiple things fighting for my attention. Blog posts, designing stuff for my game, coming up with an art style for my game, learning Chinese, learning new ways to help people learn English, setting up my new TOEFL tips site, and tons more. I’ve actually stopped playing games except when I am playing with my brother and his wife. For most of the week I do not touch my Switch or my PC for gaming. I’ve been booted from two guilds in Guild Wars over this! I decided to just focus on that website exclusively and abandon all other tasks in the meantime. I am trying to organize and prioritize a list of things to do once the website is finished, which is hopefully soon. With that said, there was one thing I could not give up: podcasts.
The dilemma of being an overseas English teacher
Whenever I listen to a podcast I zero in on it. I focus on it more than anything else I am doing. If I am gaming and I try to listen to a podcast in the background my gaming skills suffer a lot. Way more than when I was running a lets play channel. If I am trying to program and I am listening to a podcast I wind up writing portions of the podcast out, or replies to it. So, why do I do this?
Well, I have been trying to incorporate podcasts into my adult lesson plans for a long time now. Last year I figured out how to do this but I needed to test this out myself. I put all of my attention towards the podcast and basically I am paralyzed from doing anything except listening to it. I would frequently stop it to sum up their claims and then formulate responses. This is a great listening exercise that helps train your conversational listening skills for any language you are learning. Eventually it got to the point where I no longer needed to pause to properly respond. If you’re wondering why I, a native English speaker, needed to pause the shows to respond, it’s because podcasts typically cover topics at rapid speeds. Formulating proper responses without the natural pause in a conversation is challenging. Yes, by trying to improve my lesson plans I wound up fucking myself over in terms of work. I am unable to work for 1-4 hours, Christ podcasts are long these days, just because I am listening to people talk.
So why not stop listening to them? Well, it’s not that easy. I am overseas. I live more than 12 hours away from my friends and family. The only people in the US I could hope to have a conversation during the day with are in Hawaii. Everyone else is asleep or working when I am awake. Podcasts help me stay up to date with my home, even if it gives me a weird outsider view of my own culture. There’s also an issue when people here find slang terms and ask me what they mean. If I do not know these terms they will accuse me of being a fake American. This has happened in the past which resulted in one of the schools I worked at frequently being reported to the police for lying to parents and illegally hiring a non-native English speaker. This hurt our school’s reputation all because I didn’t know what “cap” meant. Podcasts help me stay up to date with the ongoings and evolving lingo back home. It’s kind of important I listen to them; sadly the same is true with scrolling Twitter.
Not only are they randomly necessary for work but they also help me cope with being overseas. When I listen to an episode of The CU Podcast I can close my eyes and pretend I am back home. This is another reason why they absorb me. Podcasts help ease the pain of not being able to see my family for the past 4 years. As well as not being able to easily speak to friends and family for just as long. This only happens on repeated listens and only with shows I used to listen to back in the US. Since I have picked up a lot of shows since moving overseas there’s very few that help me visualize being back home. This is a perfectly normal coping mechanism when you are far away from your home. When my brother moved to Pittsburg he used to always eat at Outback Steakhouse. He would do this because every Outback looks the same and has the same menu. He could pretend he was back in Texas instead of being in Pennsylvania.
Whenever you’re suffering from being homesick this is one of the most recommended ways to help deal with it. Have something that can give you the illusion of being back home. A very important detail is making sure it can’t be easily broken. For instance, I knew a Canadian in Beijing who always wanted to go to McDonald’s because it reminded him of his home. The issue with this was he lived in a predominantly white area. This means whenever he looked around the illusion was always shattered. He had to eat looking down at the table and cover all of the QR codes and Chinese text. Upon finishing his meal he had to rush out without noticing everyone was Asian. We didn’t talk about it much but I imagine this caused him a lot of pain because it was his only way to deal with being far away from home, and it was broken by noticing there were Asians everywhere.
Why this caused a delay in my website, and everything else
Yeah, why did it cause such a drastic delay? Well, I used to love to listen to podcasts while I programmed, or worked on anything. I even listened to them while writing; something I can no longer do. When I started this post I tried to listen to the CU Podcast but the second Pat spoke all of my attention was on him. I had to pause the episode and continue on writing else this post was never going to be finished. I can’t even listen to a podcast while painting Warhammer figurines anymore. It wasn’t until a few days ago did I even realize what had happened. I knew my productivity was shot to hell but I had no clue why. Now I know I need to create a new workflow to train my mind. I have to do this because I have ADHD and it is beyond easy for me to get distracted and walk away from whatever it is I am doing. Podcasts used to tell my mind to focus on work and whenever the show ended it was time for a break. Right now I am trying to will myself into finishing any task and it is proving difficult. For instance, I used to be able to write 4-6 pages in about an hour and a half. This post took me almost all day to write and I had to take breaks. I took enough breaks that I was able to finish the latest episode of the CU Podcast. I’m currently trying to come up with a new system to tell my mind when it’s time to focus on work.
Another issue with my addiction to podcasts is I was learning from an online class. This meant I needed to listen to my instructor. I couldn’t listen to a podcast, or music. So, if I was in a podcast/music mood I had to stop the lessons. Now when I start to listen to a podcast my mind goes into a podcast mode. It craves them and needs more. This makes it almost impossible to get back into a working, or even gaming, mindset again. This is why I had to put everything else on pause. I wasn’t working effectively. I was stressing myself out because I would listen to a podcast and lose 1-4 hours. My remaining hours were split amongst different tasks which forced me into rushing everything as much as possible. This resulted in me going back to the drawing board constantly because nothing turned out good.
So where do I go from here?
Well, like I said I am working on a new system to train my mind into knowing when it is time to focus on work. I have created specific work areas in my home, but they don’t work. I have tried turning my phone off, but that also doesn’t work. I’ve tried using a planner and my need to listen to podcasts beats the planner. I’m mentally addicted to podcasts so I try to limit my exposure to them. Today I have successfully managed to pause two of them to work on other things with minimal itching to go back and listen to them. As of this writing I have finished the CU Podcast and I have an episode of the SomeOrdinaryPodcast waiting for me. I’m not even sure why I listen to SomeOrdinaryPodcast because I don’t care for SomeOrdinaryGamers’ content. This is how bad I am with podcasts! I will listen to ones from people I don’t care about, and in some instances people I don’t like, because I need to listen to them. I have to expand my background knowledge on things as much as possible, and it’s crippling me.
Currently I am trying to pause them and work between my “fixes”. I am debating getting ear plugs so external noises don’t distract me, but I am unsure if this will work. My mind becomes very scattered when I am left in silence. This is why I used podcasts to focus my mind. The obvious nextstep is music but I have issues with using music, unless I am painting or sculpting. I am debating buying an egg timer and using the mechanical ticks to help focus my mind. This has the added benefits of also ringing so I know when it’s time to take a break. Another benefit here is I don’t need to rely on my watch or phone, both of which easily distract me. If this doesn’t work I might have to try meditation to help focus my mind and slow things down. I am unsure of what else I can do.
The only thing that can hold my attention these days is reading. Even if I am playing a game my mind wanders elsewhere. I’ve been unable to beat Digimon Cyber Sleuth because my ADHD is really bad these days. I desperately need to find something to help me keep my ADHD under control. I need to get back to focusing on work. I can’t even focus when I exercise or play guitar anymore. It’s that bad now. However, it’s not all negative. I now know how to properly teach using podcasts to learn a language and what mistakes to look out for. Gotta count the positives.