January 28, 2025

Look 108: Same Old Song

Fellow angler,

Where the hell have the past two weeks gone?

For the most part, I’ve been caught in the seemingly endless grind of making sure that I do all the stuff I need to do so I can continue grinding tomorrow. To a certain extent, that’s just living. But I’m still getting back in the swing of working full-time after three weeks of vacation to end the year.

That’s all to say I haven’t done much the past two weeks. I certainly haven’t edited any of my novel, though I plan to start (in earnest) this week. I may have also said that in my last few posts but, well, them’s the breaks.

One thing I have done in the past week is watch the first season of The Traitors UK. If you’re not familiar with this show, it’s based on the card games Werewolf and Mafia. If you’re not familiar with either of those, it’s time I politely ask that you step up your game.

If you’re one of my few young readers who knows how this very popular show works, you’re free to skip the next section. (Should you desire something else occupy your eyes and fingers, I’ll add an upgrade button below.) If you’re one of my more common but less hip readers, here’s some important context.

A most reasonably brief summary (though unreasonably long title) for a section that explains how the game show, The Traitors, works

There are 22 contestants in a castle. Each person is secretly assigned one of two identities: faithful or traitor. No one knows how many traitors there are except for the traitors themselves.

The goal for the faithfuls is to sniff out the traitors and vote them out of the castle. If they successfully do that, they win money. The goal of the traitors is to avoid detection and make it to the end of the game. If any traitors do make it to the end, they win all the money.

Each evening, everyone gathers round a table (the roundtable, they call it) to discuss and vote on one person to banish from the castle. The person who’s voted out then reveals their identity before leaving the castle forever.

Ideally, the group banishes a traitor each night and quickly wins (see the meme of that guy saying he’s just hanging around). But the traitors are working hard to convince people to unwittingly vote out a faithful.

After all that, everyone goes back to their individual rooms for the night — except the remaining traitors, who get to meet in secret and choose one person to “kill” from the remaining players. The next morning at breakfast, everyone else learns who has been murdered.

During the day they all do a group challenge to add money to the prize pot. All the while, they do their best to suss out who they should and shouldn’t trust.

Those are the basics of the show.

Why I bring up The Traitors

Mostly it’s the only thing I did the past two weeks. But the show also had me thinking about my slow start to the new year. And about that little voice in my head — dare I call him Traitor Derek? — who is adept at convincing me that I should skip the things I think I should be doing in favor of something easier.

For example, I like to take a long morning walk. I’m talking about an hour of walking. I can only fit such a walk into my morning if I wake up early. I know I enjoy these walks and I know they’re good for me. Yet if I wake up just a little late, that voice in my head is quick to say I should skip the morning walk. I could take an abbreviated walk but as I so kindly remind myself, that simply wouldn’t hit the same as a full walk.

It’s a very persuasive voice. It also knows how to get to me. It loves to prey on my sense that if I can’t get a “full” experience, it’s worth doing something else and trying again another day.

Me: I’m leaving five minutes later than I planned.

Traitor Derek: It’s too late to fully enjoy yourself. Skip your walk and relax.

Me: Today is the coldest day of the week.

TD: It’s too cold to fully enjoy yourself. Skip your walk and sleep in. You deserve it.

Me: Maybe I should try a new walking route.

TD: You’re tired of the same old route. You won’t enjoy a walk today. Skip the walk and do something fun.

My solution

I don’t have a solution. I don’t know of a solid way to fend off traitor Derek.

The closest I‘ve come is by building strong habits. I once read in a book (I can’t remember which) that once you repeat an action to the point that it becomes a habit, your brain stops using as much mental energy on it. That isn’t to say you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing. Your brain just no longer has to do the hard work of convincing yourself to start doing that thing and to continue doing it.

Of course, the hard bit of building a habit is showing up to do it every day so that it can one day become a habit. (Yes, this does remind you of my second post last year.)

My point is that I’m trudging through the start of a new year. People always seem so excited about the start of a new year but in my experience, it’s always a bit of a slog to get going again. Kind of like I’m Sisyphus and nearly had the rock at the top of the mountain, but then I took a break for the holidays and the rock rolled straight back to the bottom.

Hopefully, the next time we talk I’ll report that I’ve channeled the power within, told the voice in my head to shut up, and gotten back into a writing rhythm.

Title track

I’ve been reading a book called Bullshit Jobs, which has the premise that our capitalist system results in the creation of meaningless jobs. Since so much of the average person’s self-worth is tied to their work and since so many people know their jobs are kind of bullshit, there’s a lot of resulting psychological harm.

I’m only halfway through the book but I’m enjoying it and continuing my conversion away from our broken capitalist system. And while that’s a story for another day, it did remind me of a song by the legendary B.B. King: “Same Old Story (Same Old Song).” The song has a line that has stuck with me:

One hand will take, one hand will give
That's all we know and that’s how we live

Bonus track x2

Another well-known “Same Old Song” is by the Four Tops.

It’s a great song but more importantly, the lead singer of the Four Tops, Levi Stubbs, peaked when he voiced Audrey II, the (puppet) alien plant from Little Shop of Horrors (directed by Frank Oz). Stubbs sang the best song in that movie, “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space.”

That’s a lot of songs.

Until next time,

Happy fishing!