#82 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (21st January 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. This is, well my name is Jason Newland, this is a let me bore you to sleep. Only watch this video or listen to the audio where you can safely close your eyes because this recording aimed at causing you to feel bored enough to fall asleep may cause drowsiness. So generally for the next hour of your life, if you decide to, you will be listening to me ramble on about stuff, none of which may necessarily be of any relevance to anything whatsoever.

And the idea is that you basically just switch off and fall asleep due to boredom. Some people ask me, they say, JJ, I say yes, they say, how, how are you able to, to do these recordings? And I say, what do you mean? And they say, how are you able to, how can you pretend to be such a boring person? How are you able to do that? And to keep it going, not just for an hour, but you've done over 80 of these recordings so far. How can you keep that pretense of being the most boring person on the planet?

How do you keep it going? And I answer, I say, well, I would, I don't answer anything because no one's ever asked me that, but if they did, I would say, ah, but the secret is, I just be myself.

There is no act. I just talk about my life. Because many years ago, many, many, many years ago, I realized that not only are we as people, you know, generally more interested in ourselves than we are in other people.

It's kind of like a, kind of a normal human thing, I think. But we find as human beings, I personally, I find certain things interesting that other people have zero interest in at all. And I suppose I've kind of embraced the whole thing.

Embraced that which others find boring and use it in a way that can benefit other people. Because I know that sitting down or standing up, or even on the phone, well, I suppose you'd be sitting down or standing up unless you're in the bath or on the toilet, or dancing. I never said dancing, dancing.

Is dancing classed as standing up? I mean, you could class it as in between standing up and flying. Because you're in the air, aren't you, at some point? Or sort of jumping. Jumping is a similar thing, isn't it? It's being on the floor and it's flying in the sky, like levitating.

I was about to say levitation then, but then change it to levitating. So it's had a bit of a weird pronunciation to that particular word. So yeah, I don't know.

It's to just be talking to somebody and they're saying stuff that you really have no interest in. I find it funniest when in the past where I've met someone that from a distance I was really hoping to meet. So let's say at a party or a public function or occasion, somewhere where there was people.

And I'd see somebody maybe at a bar, maybe standing near the bar, maybe sitting in a chair, perhaps dancing. You know, whatever situation it was that they were in at that time. And I might think, oh, I'd like to talk to that person for whatever reason.

And then perhaps they come up and I start talking to them. And I start thinking, hmm, I'd like to stop talking to this person and try and figure a way out of the conversation. And I know that other people have had that with me as well.

Lots of people have found me boring all around the world. So it's a skill, but is it a skill if it's natural? If it's something that you are doing naturally? I don't know if it is. I mean, if you're naturally physically really, really strong and you hold a horse above your head, does that make you, is that a skill? If you can actually do it, if you can do it anyway, compared to if you'd train for years to become strong enough to lift a horse above your head with that goal in your mind from the time you wake up in the morning.

Can you imagine waking up and thinking, I want to lift a horse above my head? I can't really imagine that. I've never really wanted to do that. To be fair, I never even wanted to be under a horse, even just kneeling under a horse and just touching its belly and its chest the way you would if you were holding it above your head.

Just, no, it just never really appealed to me. I have seen horses. When I was living in London, my cousin was really into horses, like proper.

She used to, I think she used to get up in the morning. Well, she did used to get up in the morning. And like a lot of people get up in the morning, don't they? And she used to go to the stables.

The stables weren't a long way away from where she lived, but they weren't close. You know, it was a drive. She would go there and she would clean out the stables where her horse was.

And then she'd go to work. And then she'd come home. And I think she'd go and do the stables again before coming home.

And she'd do that every day. And then on a Saturday, she'd go riding on the horse. I'd still seen like a lot of work.

As we speak now, Andre is trying to get underneath the front door. I don't really understand why. Because I took him out earlier on, not that long ago, about an hour ago.

I went to the garage and I decided to go there. So I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll take Andre with me.

Because it was still light outside, not, not light, light. You know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't get a handful of coins or jewels, you know, rubies and, you know, expensive rings and just chuck them in the air, you know, in the park, in the grass, because it'd be difficult to find them because it wasn't really light enough. Andre's now staring at me.

I'm hoping he's going to go to bed. But he's not. He wants his dinner.

Oh, he's gone back into his bag. Good. So we went to the garage.

I took him. He was in his bag at the time, not a carrier bag that I've mentioned, but the carrier bag, like a proper, I realize the same words, isn't it? It's not a plastic carrier bag that you would use for groceries. For example, if he was in a shop or a store buying, let's say buying some bananas and a loaf of bread, some margarine, maybe some, what else? Maybe a box of breakfast cereal and some milk.

Maybe that's what you just purchased on that occasion. And they might ask you if you want a bag. And now in my country, we have to pay money per bag, like five pence, I think it is.

And what I do is I like to purchase a bag, like pay 30 pence or 50 pence and get a sturdy bag, one that lasts for ages. And because with the really flimsy carrier bags, I mean, they split quite easily. And I don't like things that split easily.

So what I like to do is get, pay extra for a bag, which is sturdy. And see, when I chuck a bag out, I like it to be dirty on the outside. It's just one of those things.

It's a personal thing. I was going to say fetish, but that's not the right word. It's a personal thing.

I like something to be used and know that I've made use of it. So I've got this bag, which I don't know where it is. Andre seems to have hidden it.

There was a bag that he was using to sleep in. But anyway, he must have took it somewhere. But there's another bag, like a carrying bag, which I purchased from amazon.co.uk. And there's, it's specifically for small animals, which Andre comes under that category.

And it's not specifically for ferrets, but it is for, I guess, I suppose for people taking their, or transporting their animals, their small animals to maybe the vets or somewhere like that. So it's big enough, probably. I wouldn't personally put a kitten in there because cats could, but I think cats would probably prefer to be in a, well, cats don't like to be in anything, do they? But probably more of like a hard plastic case would be better for a cat, but potentially a little puppy.

You know, if there's a little dog that needed to just be carried around and you've got your hands full, so maybe, yeah, you could put it in that little bag because it's got holes in, it's got air, can get in and out of it. It's like a wiry mesh top, which has got lots of holes so he can breathe easily. I don't do the zip or, you say do the zip up, but yeah, I don't close the zip when he's in it at home, usually.

Occasionally I have done if I've been perhaps getting a delivery and I wanted him just to stay in one place, but generally I don't close the zip when he's in it unless I'm in a public place and I need to keep him inside the bag. So there's certain places I can't go to without the bag. He has to be in it or not take him at all, basically.

So it's, you know, I just, I try to respect other people's customs, whether I agree with them or not. It's all part of being tolerant. I love that word tolerant, putting up with stuff that we don't actually agree with.

I think it's the, yeah, so I've got that bag and I took him out in it thinking, oh, you know, he'd like to go for a walk. It was still light enough, but as I said, you wouldn't do an Easter egg, Easter egg, Easter egg hunt. It wasn't kind of that light to do that.

So if you'd hidden Easter eggs all around the place, you probably wouldn't want to do it until it was a bit lighter, which would mean going back in time or waiting till the next day, or I suppose, rigging up some kind of lighting system. But there's, that's a lot of work, isn't it? To do that. So it was, I don't know what time it was.

I got back about five o'clock in the afternoon, because I'm pretty sure that when I got back, I looked at the time and it said about five o'clock, because I know that I'd started watching the Parliament Channel with Theresa May doing her Brexit speech thingy at 3. 30. So I started watching that and I was surprised because once I arrived back into the bosom of my home, I turned the television back on, unless it was still on, I might have left it on, I'm not sure, but I turned it back on, I think, and Theresa May was still there.

So I don't know how long, I guess you'd have probably gone by now, but the House of Commons Parliament thing debate was still going on. And I've been following it a lot lately.

I'm trying to reduce my level of viewing commitment, because there's other things to be doing. I'd like to spend a bit more time making recordings and, you know, doing stuff like that. So I think yesterday I only made one recording.

And reality, in reality, I should be able to do at least two a day, even more, maybe three. Because what I've been doing is, when I wake up first thing, I have to take a tablet for my stomach before I can eat, probably about half hour to an hour before I eat. And so I do that.

And then I've been doing this for the last three days, I think. And I think I'm going to continue. I leave André in his cage, and he's happy, he's usually still asleep.

I go into my bedroom, I make sure I've got my bottle of water with me. And so I'll have been up, gone to the toilet, done what I need to do. And I record a session, record not one of these, but a different one.

And it's a deep sleep whisper recordings. So I've got my bedroom door closed. And it's quite quiet, there's not a lot going on.

And the sessions last for about 20 minutes. And so far, there's been no external noise or anything, which is quite good. And I suppose, if it was a short noise, I could, you know, edit it out of the recording.

But it's not ideal. I prefer not to have to do that. I prefer to be able to just record the thing.

I do edit still the beginning and the end, so that the beginning fades in and the end fades out. And there's no sort of background sounds. So André's coming here to... I don't really know what he's doing.

He's climbing up on me now. What is it you want, André? Apart from a smacked bum from the sounds of it. You've been naughty, haven't you? I'm just going to hold him down, just let him have a little cuddle.

Go on, just cuddle, cuddle, cuddle. He wants his dinner. It's his dinner time.

I'm doing this recording just at the time when he needs to eat or he wants to eat, because it's six o'clock in the evening. And I'm not even halfway through the recording yet. So I don't know what he's going to do.

What he might do, knowing how he acts, is he might decide to start making some noise to get my attention, which might result... Well, he might choose to, I'd say, do one of three things. Either go into the kitchen and open a cupboard and start pushing stuff out. The other thing he might do is come in here and start scratching at the cat scratcher that he has, which is particularly noisy.

The other thing is, I guess he might go into the bedroom and start scratching at the cupboard in there. So I'm just going to let him go and see what he goes to do. He's suddenly got all this energy.

I don't know where he gets it from. He just gets this... Like he really wants to go and do something, but he doesn't know what. When I took him out for a walk, I had to get him out of the bag, because he didn't even leave the bag.

So I got him out of the bag when I was down outside, and I put his little harness on, and I put him on the floor so he could walk. And straight away he let me know that he wanted me to put the bag on the floor, which I did, and he climbed in the bag. I didn't see him again, pretty much.

He didn't want to get out, so I walked in. I walked all the way to the garage, and he stayed in the bag. He didn't get out once.

I got him out at the road where we were crossing, in the hope that people, someone might stop their car and let me cross, because people seem to be perhaps a bit more kinder towards him, but that didn't seem to work. And I put him back in the bag, went to the garage, came out of the garage. I was right, he's in the kitchen now, opening a cupboard door.

So I came, I came, I came out of the garage, and he still was fast asleep in the bag, didn't want to get out. And I don't remember, I don't think he got out of the bag at all the whole journey. I think he stayed, yeah, he stayed in bed, stayed in his bag all the whole way to the journey.

And as soon as I got into my building, and I come towards my front door, his head is sticking out of the bag. So he knew we were home. But now, an hour later, he's scratching at the front door like it's the most important thing in the world is to get out.

But it's going to be colder out there now than what it was when we went out earlier. I don't know. I can't figure it out.

I can't figure him out. All I can hear, and I don't even have to see him to know what he's doing. He's got his little nose underneath the front door, sniffing.

So there's something out there he wants to go and investigate. I don't know what. I don't know what he's doing.

Whatever it is he wants. His thing is, when I finish this recording, he'll probably just not want to do anything. I'll probably say, Andre, do you want to come out for a walkie walkies? And he'll probably look at me and say, well, not if you talk to me like that.

I'm not a baby. Walkie walkies. What's that all about? Walks, daddy.

It's called walks. And really, it's just food. I think I need to give him his dinner.

Give that to him in a minute. And when I give that to him, I will have a little chocolate egg. It's a little chocolate caramel egg.

It's like a Cadbury's chocolate egg, but I'm going to have to put a warning on this. Did you hear that? He could not hear that. So I did that one.

It just, if you had seen him just then, he knocked that thing, obviously making all that noise. And he just stared at me as if to say, see what I can do. I'm the boss.

Take that. And then he just turned his head and walked into the bag. I just don't know.

It's just, I think he might have to go on to the naughty step. The thing is, technically I should edit that out because it was a bit loud, but I can't be bothered. It's bad, isn't it? I don't know.

I might be able to try to... What time would it be at? 32 minutes in. So yeah, I didn't do that much yesterday. I only made one recording, but I had a similar thing today as well.

I woke up, made a recording, had my breakfast, had a cup of coffee, and then I went back to bed. Just, I don't know. I thought coffee was supposed to be a stimulant.

Although I don't drink coffee a lot, I drink, I basically have one cup of coffee a day and that's in the morning. That's it. And apart from very rare occasions, I don't drink more than one cup of coffee a day.

I like to... It's not that I'm limiting myself. I just, it's nice to have... I don't know. I'm not really a... I don't know what the right word is.

I like to take my time with everything really, including eating, including the amount I eat, but you know, I like to make things last, so I don't feel the need to eat all of everything, you know? And if I've got a... I don't have like four or five sugars. I just had maybe one in a cup of coffee. If I've got coffee, it's like teabags.

You only use one teabag, don't you? You don't put two teabags in a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea, or two heaps, spoonfuls, spoonfuls of coffee in a mug. I mean one's enough, isn't it? Unless the mug was the size of a, I don't know, a television set, like a big television. Mind you, if it was the size of a big television, that kind of width, you'd need more than two sugars, wouldn't you? And you'd need more than two coffees.

You probably need like a whole jar of coffee, or maybe not that much, but quite a lot. But you'd also need quite a few people to help to drink it. You know, I once went to a tea ceremony.

Not just once, but I actually attended. Kind of, I suppose it was a training on how to do a tea ceremony, like a Buddhist tea ceremony. And it was all silent, and there's quite a few of us there.

And I'm just trying to think, there was a table with all the tea making stuff. And kind of the premise of it is mindfulness. You know, it could be, you could equally have done a washing-up ceremony, or a cutting your toenails ceremony.

You know, it's the mindfulness aspect of it. Although cutting your toenails perhaps wouldn't have been quite as interesting to share in a public environment. Because tea, it's got that history of, you know, making someone a cup of tea.

Would you like a cup of tea, Bernie? Yes, please, Avril. As opposed to, would you like some nail clippings, Bernie? Bernie? Where are you? Where's Bernie gone? He's always happy when I'm offering tea. He doesn't want any nail clippings.

That's very particular of him. So this tea ceremony, it was technically probably the most boring thing you'll ever attend. And, you know, if you were going there to be stimulated, then that's not going to happen.

But it wasn't supposed to be stimulating. It's about the calming of the mind, and the focus of everything connected to it, including the movement of your hands and your fingers as you stir the tea. The feeling of your body and your spine as you're sitting there, observing the tea making ceremony.

Observing any thoughts that you may be having, whilst observing the tea making ceremony. And it's very peaceful. It might sound like a weird thing, but one of the things I really, really enjoy is walking meditation.

And I like it inside. And all it is, really, I like to do it outside as well. So for those that are not aware of what walking meditation is, it's really, it's just a case of walking and being aware of your body and the movement of your body, especially the feeling of your feet, the bottoms of your feet, the floor supporting your feet, and the whole process of your ankles.

You can feel your ankles, and you can feel your calf muscles, and your shins, and your knees, and your thighs, you know, the whole body being connected in the way that it is. And that awareness, there's a degree of self-consciousness comes in as well, where you can feel really conscious about the movement. Not self-conscious about other people, but just about yourself, just being self, be conscious of yourself, and the physical sensations of that movement of your feet across the floor, walking, and really just giving your entire focus to that physical dynamics of your whole body moving with some kind of synchronicity, and taking each step at a time, so no hopping, and you can walk slowly, or as fast as you choose, really.

You don't have to go in slow motion, and the benefit is, if you're doing it on your own, you can go as slow as you choose. If you're walking in a circle with other people, then there's the awareness of people behind you, the awareness of the distance of the person ahead of you, so you can't take five minutes for a step when you've got someone behind you waiting to move forward. But if you're doing it on your own, and you choose to take five minutes for one step, then you can.

But it's not a circus act, it's not balancing, you're not training to walk on a tightrope, it's about the mindfulness of the movement, so you can walk from one wall to another wall within that room, whether it's five steps or a hundred steps, you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a big room, because when you get to the other wall, you just turn around, and start walking towards the opposite wall, slowly noticing every physical movement in your foot and your body, and your mind naturally calms down when you do this. In fact, just thinking about doing this can actually feel fairly relaxing.

And something that I quite like to do is do walking meditation when I'm on my own, walking outside. Especially if I'm going somewhere at a fairly long distance, I like to just walk slowly, focusing on the sensations of my feet on the ground. And even though I've got shoes on when I'm outside, I can still feel the ground underneath my feet.

I can still be aware of the physical sensations of my feet, supporting the rest of my body, the feeling of my ankles, calves, knees, thighs, hips, lower back, my arms. It feels nice, because if something happens for me, in my mind, is the thoughts just either slow down or seem to stop altogether. And it's not because I've, you know, commanded my mind to slow down, or trying to stop any kind of thought patterns from emerging.

It's just a natural reaction to that focusing on my feet, my toes, focusing on my calf muscles, focusing on my ankles, focusing on the tops of my feet, focusing on my toes, focusing on my shins, focusing on my knees, focusing on my thighs, not just the front, the sides and the back. And I'm focusing on my hips, my lower back, my stomach, the whole of my torso, focusing on every part of my body, but not really focusing on it, but being aware of the movement of of my body as a whole, as one big element, something that's all joined together and is working as one, joined together and working as one. And that sense of relaxation that naturally occurs feels really nice.

That sense of just letting go really does feel so relaxing, so calming. I find it amazing that something as simple as walking, or even sitting down, or lying down, could be so relaxing. I can feel so right, I can feel so calming, loose and relaxing.

I can feel as though my body is just relaxed and melted into the chair. And even though there are background sounds in the distance, it's as if those sounds are part of this sense of calmness, deep relaxation, loose, calm, relaxed, peaceful, really, really peaceful, loose, letting go, really letting go, quiet, boring, sleepy, relaxed and sleepy, drifting, happy and drifting, happy and sleepy. This brings us to the end of this video and podcast.

Thank you for watching and listening. And please subscribe and share. Take care.

Bye.