Lyrics: Be More Kind – Frank Turner, 2018
I’ve made it to my hotel in Bremen without any trouble with lots of time till the gig tonight. I considered napping for a bit, but anxious me was too worried that I might sleep through the alarm(s). I lay down regardless, starting scrolling through my phone and for whatever fucked up reason started looking up Covid infections risk at gigs. As if I haven’t read about all of that and considered the pros and cons for months now. Stupid, stupid me, letting me drag down that negative thought spiral.
I switched to the Calm app for a meditation and that helped a bit, I think. On the drive up I listened to two podcasts which both got me thinking, in a similar line of thought like yesterday. The first one was an episode of “How To Fail with Elizabeth Day” from January 2022 and the guest was the one and only Brené Brown. I’ve heard of Brené Brown and her talks / works / books about shame and vulnerability of course, but I admit I haven’t read anything from her yet. “The Gift of Imperfection” sits on my to-read self since… forever. I should pull that out and read this year, I think. There was a lot on this talk that got me thinking about how I see other people and how I think they see me and why I should try to change both of these perceptions. Vague, I know. I can’t express it any clearer at the moment.
The 2nd podcast was a German one from last summer: “Unterwegs mit…” (translated to “Travelling with…”) where the host and the guest spent a train journey together chatting. This episode was with Cordula Stratmann, a German comedian, but also trained social worker and family counsellor. And she’s still working as the latter. I picked this one, because I thought Cordula would be an funny and interesting guest and she was. One of the topics they also touched on was: how we see other people and how we so often do that with preset ideas about those people and how we often only see what we want to see and not really see the other person. Mmmh. Guilty as charged. Twice in one day…. 🙂
Three more hours till the doors open for the gig tonight. I’m still surprisingly calm. Here’s another Frank pic from the last gig. Almost 800 days ago…
