(no music) #5 Printers SLEEPY Boring Objects (Jason Newland) (19th September 2021)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Boring Objects. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

Now the object of this Boring Objects podcast is for me just to talk about a particular object and in the process you can relax and if you want fall asleep. That's it really. It's I guess a more boring version of my Let Me Bore You To Sleep podcast.

So you expect to be bored and while you're listening to me talking about, in this case it's going to be about printers. Now you might think, how, how on earth could this, this weird man on this podcast, how on earth could he possibly make the subject of printers boring? Well it's possible. I might give it a go.

So I'll just tell you about printers that I've used in the past. I've actually got a printer here and I bought it probably about two years ago. And the reason for it is because I intended to transcribe my podcasts because I've got thousands of recordings.

So I want to, well I am in the process of doing that. But back then I decided I was going to transcribe and then print out the text and then edit, you know, go through the the text of each individual podcast and edit it and maybe try and find some stuff that might be useful in the future. Because I've been thinking about writing a book.

In fact I've been thinking about that since I was about 13 years old. So I'm now 96. I know I don't sound it.

I only sound about 85 don't I? So I've got this printer. I'm not sure what the name, what type of printer it is. But it's an okay one.

It's not expensive but it's not cheapy cheapy cheap cheap. But it's, that's a song isn't it? Cheap cheapy cheap cheap song. It's not like really cheap.

You know you don't pick it up and it just dissolves in your hand and onto the floor like sand. It's not quite that rubbish. But you know it's it's okay.

I think it's got a scanner on it but yeah you know I don't, I don't really, I'm not, I'm not sure if I've used the scanner before. I might have done. But the good thing about this printer compared to the last time I owned a printer is we've got bluetooth now.

So I can wirelessly send documents and print off and instead of being connected. Because the last time I had a printer that I owned one was probably 2001. Yeah 2001 was the last time I owned a printer.

And yeah I think so. I'm pretty sure. And back then I got a printer so that I could print out leaflets for my hypnosis business that I was starting.

I think. I'm trying to think back. It's such a long time ago.

So I can't quite remember. I do, unless I had a printer in 2000s. I have a mild memory that I might have had printers in 2006.

You know when you think about something and you, you think back and you have a vague recollection of a memory. But it's not particularly clear enough to be certain that it's real. To be honest I wouldn't, I wouldn't bet any money.

I'd bet your money on it but I wouldn't bet my money. I'd bet all of your money that it's true because it'd make no difference if I was wrong. But I wouldn't bet any of my own money.

But I do have a recollection. I do. It's a real, quite a grainy, foggy memory of sitting on the floor printing things out.

But why would I print things out? What was there to print out? Because back in 2006, oh I remember in 2004 I printed out lots of leaflets for my free hypnosis service. I started a free chronic pain relief service where I was living at the time and I printed out lots of leaflets. I think just on pieces of paper I'd have the same writing three times on an like an A4 sheet and then I'd cut it into three pieces so that although I'd have one piece of paper I was actually able to make three leaflets out of that one piece of paper.

In fact I'm pretty sure that at one time I actually was able to get six small leaflets out of one A4 sheet of paper. But those leaflets were very, very small. Probably too small really.

Yeah, not really big enough. But in my memory I used to go into bookshops and just go through various different books and just put leaflets into the books. And then go into the libraries and put leaflets in the books.

So I'd spread a few hundred leaflets around the town by putting them into books and magazines and newsagents and things like that. But I'd also used to go into coffee places and pubs and leave. Whenever I left I would leave leaflets on as many tables as I could as I was leaving.

And sometimes I'd perhaps if I had always had blue tack with me so I could stick a leaflet maybe on the toilet door to give people something to read or use if they run out of toilet paper. So I've forgotten all about that. Yeah, so that was one of my little things that I was doing.

So I used a printer for that but very noisy. It was a very, very, very loud printer. So the one I had in 2001 was loud.

And I don't think I had a printer previous to that. So I think I've only ever owned three printers myself. Although, although I have, although I have used other printers because I had jobs where printers were part of that job.

So I would take advantage of the printers and print out leaflets for myself. I did that in a gift shop that I used to work in 2004. Admittedly though, I don't think, oh I remember, I remember.

It wasn't so much printing out leaflets when I was there but I would print out courses. So I would be doing online trainings and I would print out the course books. So they might be like a few hundred pages and I'd print them out on the printer.

And when I worked in the call center, I would print out leaflets as well. I wasn't supposed to. But what I would do is sometimes I would print stuff and other times I would do a photocopy.

I got caught a couple of times. I got told off but so I made sure I didn't do it when that person was around. But I didn't, I didn't print many to be honest.

I didn't print many because in 2006 I ordered, I think it was about 50,000 leaflets or they were postcards with adverts on you know. So I think it was 50,000 and it cost me nearly a thousand pounds to do. So it might be more than 50,000.

It might be 100,000 but I'm pretty sure it was 50,000 leaflets, well postcards. And I remember when they got delivered, they took up most of my bedroom. However, and I don't, I don't really understand of, I mean I've, I was told this years ago that if you put energy into something, if you really put positive energy and focus into something that you want to be successful, it has an effect.

Like the energy seems to attract a degree of success. Now I'm not really esoteric in nature. I'm more interested in fact.

However, in 2004 and 2005, I had zero interest pretty much from anyone. No one was interested in my free pain relief service. I was advertising online.

I even put adverts in the paper and nobody was interested. I had a couple of people I think wanting to help with stop smoking or something like that and I said no. I didn't say no like that but I'd said, I might have said no because I wanted to focus on pain relief.

That was the only thing I was interested in back then. Because once I, when I first started learning about hypnosis, I, I think that the thing that really grabbed my attention more than anything was the ability to relax and the ability to make changes but the ability to change how you physically feel so that you feel more comfort and are able to change any physical sensation that someone's experiencing so that you feel better, you feel more relaxed and um releasing negativities and you know things like that.

So chronic pain relief was something that really excited me.

So going forward from and that was back in 1998 so it was really, it wasn't till 2006 that once I started handing out those the, the new leaflets, the postcards that I had and putting them into shop windows, post office windows and spending you know a couple of hours every day after work posting them through people's letterboxes as well as the weekends doing it as well. Plus building a website and you know trying to promote it that way.

Suddenly I was getting phone calls from people and emails from people that were interested in using my free pain relief service and admittedly it was one of the most, one of the best times of my life.

Because I was finally, finally doing something that I wanted to do and I was finally putting myself out there and trying to make a difference and helping people and not charging because I wanted it to be a free service just as I still do. Everything I do is free, still is. 16 years later it's all free.

All my podcasts you can download on my website for free or you can stream them for free. So everything I do is for free. There's no charge and for the first time I felt quite good about myself and it was going really well.

I was seeing people for chronic pain and they were every 100% success rate, 100% success rate as far as accomplishing what they wanted me to do. Relieving the pain, relieving it so that they felt more relaxed. In some cases removing the pain completely.

So you know it was, and then part of that especially with an elderly man that had extreme arthritis, one of the things that he had the biggest problem with other than mobility was sleeping because his legs would just twitch and he had like restless legs syndrome I guess you would call it. After a week or two of me visiting him in his home, because that's what I did to start with, I used to visit people in their home after work and at weekends.

So I worked in a call centre during the day and he, the one thing he said is, and my main thing with him is, I was trying to relieve the chronic pain of his arthritis but the relaxation was the thing that really had the benefit for him because he could sleep again and his legs were calm again like they used to be.

I actually had a newspaper article written about me seeing him. I'm completely bald, it's an awful picture of me. I mean the picture of me at any time, apart from when I was a kid because I used to be quite a cute little kid but as an adult I don't, you know, photographs.

I remember my stepmum saying why do you keep making a funny face when we take photographs and I said if you don't realise stepmum is I'm not, it's just my face, I'm not. Why do you keep screwing your face up?

It's my face, it's just how I look, stop being so rude and I, yeah, so that was quite good and I was, as I said, I stopped printing, I stopped printing out the things, you know, leaflets because I had 50,000 and I still, I ended up chucking away quite a few thousand of them when I moved because I moved in the end of 2007 to go to university to be, to train as a counsellor.

I had a degree course, three years full time and all that.

I tried to continue the free pain relief service in this new area but no one was interested, it was just, again, it was a little bit like 2004 and 2005 in the other place and I posted thousands of leaflets through people's doors and I still didn't get any response apart from a couple of people phoning me up saying, can you stop putting rubbish through my letterbox please?

It's a lot of effort from their part, isn't it? They could just put it in the bin, make a phone call just to complain. But I did have a printer, I remember having a printer so I'm not sure what I was printing off. I sometimes used to like to do research online, stuff about hypnosis or NLP or whatever and just print off stuff and read it rather than reading it from the screen.

Yeah, I had quite a few, quite a few things that I had printed and stored, quite a collection of things, essays and things like that. But I didn't have a printer of my own when I was at university. I did have a laptop, so what I would do is, when it came to doing an essay, why I didn't have a printer, actually I know why I didn't have one because there wasn't enough room in that bedroom, there wasn't enough room for a printer.

It would be a printer or a bed, you know, I couldn't have both, just wasn't enough room. So I would take my laptop or, oh I know what I would do, I would save it into an email, then I would log on to the computer in the library at university and then I would send the document to the printer and then I would print it off and then put it into a folder or whatever the presentation requirement was for that particular piece of work.

It depended, I guess, because the final dissertation had to be in an actual plastic folder, if I'm correct, for some reason.

Don't really know why that was, I guess because it was a much larger piece, I'm going to say piece of work, but it was mine, I just chucked it together, I put pretty much very little, minimum effort. That is my, that's my life's ambition is to put as little effort in as possible. It's worked quite well so far, I'm very pleased with myself.

In fact, if I had longer arms I would actually pat myself on the back. So I'm trying to think what other printers there's been. I used, oh I used to go into, this is back in probably 1999, January, and there was this mobile phone shop and at that time they were everywhere because mobile phones suddenly became affordable for the general public.

Before that it was only really, really rich people, people who worked in the city or drug dealers that would have mobile phones. That's what I've been told, that's what my nan told me, so I don't know if it's true. She had one, that's funny, she wasn't rich and she didn't work in the city.

Maybe there's something, oh that's got me thinking. So I used to go in there into the, yeah I used to go in there but I didn't use the printer but I did use the photocopier which was kind of like a printer really isn't it? It prints off the photocopy. So I would take in, I think that's when I got a printer so I did it myself.

So I can't remember exactly but I think it was to promote myself as a hypnotist and I rented this room in a gym which is around the corner from where I lived and it was downstairs but it was a very poor decision on my part but as far as poor decisions go it's not even in the top 500 but it was a bit of a silly place to rent because it didn't have the privacy that I would need.

It was more expensive than I can afford, that I could afford at the time and but I still did it. I painted it and advertised in the paper and gave leaflets out and you know but I got no response at all and eventually had to give up the room but hey they got a they got a new they got a freshly painted room so that's not too bad for them I guess.

So that cost me probably quite a few hundred pounds in paint and in rent that was pointless plus all the yeah probably over a thousand pound I probably spent on that adventure which came to nothing but then I got involved in the internet in 2000.

I discovered I didn't discover the internet because obviously it was around before then but I wasn't I liked the internet so you know I used to use it 98 but it's very slow it's very very very very slow but I love I liked it and then I started to love it and then in 2000 I started to want to learn how to make web pages and I devoted a huge amount of time learning to code learning how to make web pages from scratch using html and in notepad and then just

it was again one of my fondest times was doing that I really enjoyed it and I learned how to I bought lots of books and I learned how to build websites now they weren't very high end they weren't like brilliantly designed websites but I enjoyed it I really did so that was useful for 2006 well 2004 I had a website called helpwithpain.co.uk but I didn't get hardly any visitors to that and then in 2006 I had a website called what was it called freepainrelief.co.uk and I built both of those websites

myself from scratch and they were very basic very basic websites but they did the job and I think although I didn't get huge traffic I think I got about 50 000 visits in the first year of that website I don't know where they came from because I don't think there was that many people in the town I was living I guess people came from different places and because I was also posting recordings because I started doing recordings and videos at that time as well so maybe because I was doing that

I was sharing the website and also jasonnewland.com at the same time so I was kind of sharing both those websites and they were almost in some ways mirrors of each other at the beginning but since then I can't think of any time that I've really used printers apart from this printer here and it's sitting over there it's not sitting I mean it's there it doesn't have a bum but it's just there on the table for its own little space and I guess my intention is to do what I did before

because I did print out lots of transcripts and then it was just a bit of a mess and I ended up chucking them out so I will be looking at maybe because I'm trying I'm trying to get myself more organized I've got these desks and just all you know it's all kind of spread out nice I'm trying to organize myself and you know I've been transcribing for the last three months using an AI app that helps so I will eventually have all of my podcasts transcribed and written down or you

know printed out on paper and then I'll be able to look through it and sort of choose different bits different parts that might be useful for a book or two that's kind of what I'm thinking of doing but I think my problem is I'm worried that if I write a book that it will be too interesting for people because I'm just such a such an interesting person and I don't know I'm going to try and do these boring things but you know clearly it is kind of edge of your seat

stuff isn't it really in reality and but I'm going to keep trying to be boring if I can although it is it's very difficult for someone like me who's naturally you know very bright and very loud and I am almost we could tell from my voice I'm almost like a peacock so but that's that's about all I can think of when it comes to printers so thanks for listening remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy and if you have any suggestions of an object that I can you know a boring object that I can talk about then please let me know take care lots of love bye