#758 Let me bore you to sleep - WHERE ARE MY EARS - Jason Newland (31st OCTOBER 2021)

Hello, hello, welcome to let me bore you to sleep. My name is Jason Newland. Um, I didn't think I was gonna cough.

Oh, there you go. Uh, hello, hello. Only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

So, um, I'm recovering from the whatever it is I've got, whether it's whatever virus I have, I have a virus, pretty much some kind and pretty sure it's the COVID. But if not, it's equal, I guess. Well, I don't know.

I've had both jabs. So if I did ever get this, it would be, I've been told, promised even by the experts that it would be mild, a milder version of it. Now, I wouldn't want anything that was less, I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want a stronger version of this.

I didn't enjoy the milder version. I definitely would not want the strong version. So thankfully, I, you know, I've had, I'd be jabs and stuff.

This is not an advert to take your jabs. Um, everyone's, this is, I'm just talking about my experience, uh, whether people want to take them or have issues with them. I'm not interested, not interested in people's opinions about politics or anything.

I just, I'm just talking about my life. If anything's made me less interested in people's arguments is the last week. Oh man, I'm just, there's a part of me just happy to be alive.

Honestly, there's a part of me is grateful to not be suffering, to be able to, I don't know, just to be able to be here. And I think when it comes to perspective, a perspective has to come naturally. You can't force a perspective to come along.

But last night I had a perspective come along and I was just really thinking about my life and the amount of time of my life I spend being miserable. Uh, the amount of time of my life I spend worrying about things that either will or won't happen. I mean, it's hard to know, you know, what, what will, what won't happen.

But the amount of time I spend thinking about the past, uh, the amount of regrets, the amount of time I spend thinking about regrets and changes are due, changes are in order for the future for me. From a very personal level, it's just, uh, this, I think doing nothing but just pretty much lying in bed for what? How many times? I'd say like four or five days and not really having anything else to do, not being able to focus on anything else. It's given me a lot of time to think about things, to ponder on my life.

And in a lot of ways, my life's going in quite, in a lot of ways, my life's going in a nice direction. Um, what I need to do is get out of debt. Debt doesn't work for me.

It, it builds a bit, you know, a certain degree of stress that I don't, I don't like. So I need to reduce the stress that I have, reduce the debt that I have, which I'm, I've been doing anyway, but I will do over the next two or three months. So that's good.

That's something that I need to, that I know I need to do. It's not a new thing. I just, I'm going to sort of get that done, done, done, done, done.

But other things, I'm going to start relaxing a bit more. Start to, I want to get to a point in my life where I can do some things that are actually enjoyable because I don't really, I don't do anything. The only, I'm solitary most of the time.

And as far as going out socially, I haven't done that for many years. I can't actually remember the last time I went out socially. In fact, it may well have been six years ago.

I went to a curry house with a lady. Outside of that, everything happens here. That's weird.

There's another weird thing. It's Halloween today, 31st of October, and it couldn't be nicer outside. The weather, it couldn't be nicer.

I'm sure it's a bit chilly. I'm sure it's not going to be warm, but it's a blue sky, sunny. It's a bit windy.

I've got the windows open. And it's beautiful, honestly. But that's really unusual for this time of year here.

It'd normally be like a bit, oh, it starts to get a bit bitter cold kind of by the end of October. You know, November, then it's kind of a whole month of like bitter coldishness. And then December and January, and then it starts to get nice again.

But it's starting, you know, those, those, the cold snap normally starts by now. I'm not complaining. This cough, I just muted my cough.

It's a full on cough. I didn't even have much of a cough at the start of this. And I'll be lucky that I've not had much in the way of headaches during this.

Like my friend, who lives downstairs, he's been really ill with a headache. So he had a headache every day for a week, all day long. Then it just stopped.

And he thought he was getting better. Then he got a headache again. And it stopped and he got it again.

And this is, you know, just like, what's going on? And it's not much good because we both feel at the same time, we can't help each other. If he's ill, and he can't leave the flat, I can go and get him what he needs. You know, if he needs something, whether it's medication, headache tablets, whatever, I can get that from the garage or from the shop, or if he needs food, and you know, I can do stuff to help him out.

I can't do that when I'm like this, because I'm not going out myself. Yeah. So how are you then? How are you? How's everybody who's listening? How are you? It's sounding insensitive.

How are you? How are you? Come on, how are you? Are you well? Oh, my ears. My ears are still blocked up, like proper. I can't hear very, very much with my ears.

But now when I blow my nose, my ears clear temporarily for like for a millisecond. And I can actually feel the pressure of the ears like changing as I blow my nose. So I'm guessing when the cold or the whatever it is I've got when this subsides to the point where everything else is fine.

I guess my ears were just clear and it'll go back to normal. I imagine if you notice on Facebook, people put pictures of their daughters. So a lot of some people put pictures of their adult children.

So it looks like that's who they are. So if no one doesn't know who they are, they'll go there and it'll just be a picture. But then you look and the little pictures of a different person, it might be them.

But the big picture comes up is of their adult daughter. Otherwise, before I mention it. Every time we say goodbye, I cry a little bit.

Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little bit. There's no love, love song. My ears itchy.

Maybe I'll give it a scratch. Maybe I won't. Oh, was that last night? This is a good one for Facebook.

Many people don't know this, but it is possible to read something you don't agree with on the internet and simply move on with your life. You need to pass this message on. I didn't know that.

No one told me. I thought it had to affect us emotionally. If I was a singer, not so long ago.

A singer from a different planet. Um, oh, wait a minute. Oh, um, I don't know what that was.

Sometimes I wonder why. Strange. I look at things, I think, oh, and then I'm thinking, uh, then I wonder and I think, uh, but yeah, I think this, this, uh, isn't there like a positive kind of, uh, a wellbeing feeling that comes after being ill, whether it's a sense of relief, a sense of, um, I don't know, maybe, well, it just, this is how the world works, you know, sometimes you feel crappy, sometimes you feel good.

And now it's time to feel good, baby. I don't, I don't know. I don't know.

Maybe now. Because even though I feel, I don't feel physically well, emotionally, I'm feeling okay. Even though I've, even though I've still got a cough, it's a bit of a full on cough as well.

I'm feeling okay. My throat is still a bit sore. I'm feeling, yeah, um, my head is, is weird.

It just feels weird. Feels a little bit scrambled if, if nothing else just feels, uh, it's almost like I've done too much thinking now. I'm not going to think anymore for a while.

That's it. My head, headache, uh, I'm okay with that. My eyes, still quite tired.

I feel like breathing is okay. There is always a chance for the coughing, you know, um, one way to avoid coughing is not breathing, but it's a bit of a extreme way to stop yourself coughing because we have to breathe. My stomach feels okay.

Uh, so, cause I was having problems. That's not, I've not really mentioned it, but I've had a lot of really bad stomach over this period. Um, like, especially in the earlier days, it was really bad, but that seems to have all kind of cleared up generally as far as I know.

I'm not aching anymore. So the parts of my body where I was aching and stuff, it's all, I don't feel strong. I feel quite weak.

I do feel physically weak, but that might be a lot more to do with just the fact that I've done nothing physical. I've not walked any further than my bathroom or my bedroom or my kitchen since Wednesday. It's now Sunday and that was Thursday afternoon because I went to bed in the afternoon and that's where I kind of stayed from then on until now.

Apart from I'm spending less and less time in bed as the last day or so went, but it's gone by. I have had time out of bed where I've just sitting in, but I'm still sitting down. It's also almost feels like I'm in tune with time because the 21 minutes I've been talking, it feels like 21 minutes.

Normally I talk and I look over and the time's gone by so quickly, but not here. It's gone very slowly. In fact, not slowly, I just, yeah, pretty slower than I'd expect.

So I guess I'm not really in tune with time, but I'm out of my own normal tuning, whatever that is. The thinking about what is it, what is it I'd like to do, you know, with my life going forward. As I've been thinking, I've been given a great deal of thought and I still want to do this.

I still want to make recordings and do the podcasts and maybe I'm going to be doing videos as well on YouTube and I still want to do this stuff, which I suppose that's what gives my life meaning and we have to have something. I speak from my own experience. I have to have something to get out of bed for.

Otherwise, I'm just, you know, but I'm lucky I don't go in the wrong direction anymore. In the past, in my younger years, I easily could have, there's always things to do, drink, drugs, whatever, there's lots of different things that I could have done as a distraction. I'm not, I don't that lifestyle anymore.

So, which makes it a little bit harder sometimes. It's like, well, it's, you know, how distracting is television really? It could be distraction a little bit, but it's, but I don't want to live a life of distraction. I want to live a life of purpose and watch TV because it's something I want to watch or watch the videos or stream stuff, watch a movie, because I want to watch a movie.

No other reason, you know, no, no, no, it's like, oh, oh, please take me, take my mind off of this thing. No, it's been a weird year for me. There's been some very strange things happened.

And it just goes to show, even if you, even if you don't even leave your home, stuff still happens. You know, I hardly go out. And the one day I did go out, which was last Thursday, and actually did stuff including going to the doctor's surgery, the pharmacy, the supermarket.

I even went out and had something in the restaurant and then traveled on three different buses, which were full, quite full buses, all that. And then that seemed to be the day when I caught this, because by the evening I was starting to feel ill. I started feeling dizzy for some reason, a bit confused a bit.

So I did a live broadcast and I stopped doing it because I was being annoyed by someone and I was annoying them and they were annoying me. So I stopped the broadcast. But I was a bit, my brain was not there.

It was almost, I don't know what, it was very, very strange. And I didn't feel well on the Thursday, on the Friday or the Saturday or the Sunday. And then the Monday and Tuesday, I thought I started to feel a bit better, you know, I thought I'll start, that's okay.

I'll be all right now. And then the Wednesday came and I woke up and I woke up with an earache. And I think, actually, I think I had an earache the day before, then I woke up with another earache.

But this time, that's it, because I was actually, I went on YouTube to find out ways of clearing the ears. So I kept, they felt, kept like getting earaches and stuff. But Wednesday, I woke up and I was sitting there and I said, I think I mentioned it, I was echoing in my left ear.

My right ear was fine, left ear was echoing. Like an echo of everything that was happening. And thankfully, it wasn't hurting, because both my ears had been hurting for previous days.

And yeah, it's weird. But then I said, it really got, really, Wednesday. Wednesday, I went to bed and in the afternoon, and Wednesday, and all day Thursday, and Thursday night, and Friday.

That was the worst part. That was me at my worst. Pretty much Wednesday night, up to Thursday night, Friday morning, and that was when it was at its worst.

When I was laying in bed, not able to do anything. But, I haven't eaten. I've been eating breakfast cereal, like bowls of breakfast cereal.

Even then, I can't eat a whole bowl yet. But, I've been, I'm going to try and cook a meal. Like just get one of my meal for one, frozen meals, microwave, and try and eat one of those.

Or, I might just have a sandwich. I had a sandwich yesterday, with a toasted sandwich, with some ham, so that seemed to be okay. And a cup of tea.

So, I might just do that again. I think I will just do that. And, I've got a banana, so I'm having a banana every now and then.

So, I'm eating little bits, but just really rare, you know. I'm not even really feeling hungry. Ah, yeah, I mean hopefully, hopefully, Sunday today.

So, I might be able to just get on with my life tomorrow, Monday. But, I'm looking forward to my ears getting back to normal. Because it feels very weird.

It feels as if I'm in, stuck in a vacuum. Sort of, I can't, I just can't hear. Like the wind, the wind has opened, yeah.

And there's wind blowing in. I can't hear it. It feels very strange.

I get a sense of an overall sound from that area, but it's very, very low, you know, on my hearing. If I can hear a plane, it's levels. If the level, because planes, I think it's like a, because they've got jet engines, so they're quite high on, you know, they've got quite a, they reach a different level of hearing.

Just like I heard something, I think it might have been, I was going to say it was a cat, but that wasn't, because that would have been a dream. Because I don't have a cat. That's it.

That's it. That's it. Oh, by the way, if you're listening to these and, you know, the last, you've listened to the last three recordings of me talking about how ill I've been and that.

Please don't, don't think that that's all I'm going to talk about. I'll get back to normal. I will.

I'm not going to be, once this is done, that's it. I'll forget all about it and I'll move on and do my normal silliness. But at the moment, it's quite hard for me to do anything right now.

So I'm making the effort to at least make a little recording just to say hi and let you know that I'm thinking of you. I'm not, you know, I'm still going to be around and I intend to make some more recordings for you very soon. Okay.

So on that note, I'm going to go. Thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself.

Do something nice for yourself today. Lots of love. Bye.