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My Daily Walk – Talking to Yourself

My Daily Walk is a podcast with a Hollywood producer who records a podcast when he goes for a walk. Today we discuss the subject of talking to yourself.

What are those voices in your head? Good morning and welcome to my daily walk. I’m still working on the intro and how to start the show. It’s a brand new podcast. I will begin with a question that is a topical type question, and that will be the theme that’s covered in that day’s episode. That half hour walk. I am literally walking.

I try to walk every day. But the name of the show was is just … The name of the show is not just literal … it is literal, but it’s also has another meaning, a deeper meaning we’re on a … We’re all on a journey, we’re on path. We have a direction we are going, we’re aiming in our lives. And we’re either being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

I don’t know … every to and fro … I mean there are so many voices speaking, claiming, declaring fessing truth. Professing to be correct, convincing people any number of things. So we all have a daily walk. We have to navigate through those voices. Oh! Ti es right into our first thing, voices, okay let’s not get to the topic yet.

The topic is to keep this one episode on track. We may exhaust a topic at times or we may not. I don’t know if you can exhaust any topic, but we can do multiple episodes on one topic. I’ll figure it out as we go. I do this one … I do want this to be a dialogue and that’s what the email address is about.

If you heard me say something or triggered something in you and want to contribute to the discussion, I will read emails. I’ll read all of them, I guess, if I can. I mean, I’ll try. For as long as possible, I’ll read all of them on the air. And I already know I can’t address all of them but I’ll read them all.

And other people ponder those topics where I will focus on one, maybe two per week that I do address. And maybe that’ll be our extra … maybe that’ll be a Saturday episode because I only want to post five days a week, half hour segments. Five days a week. And then a Saturday something. Inevitably more content.

There’s always more content than what is exhibited and that’s what ETS way back when you had your DVDs or your VHS is … Sorry, I do need to get this thing figured out.

In production there’s always more content that makes air and editors cut good stuff out. There’s so much good stuff that never gets seen or put onto a DVD or in the director’s cut, or the expanded version of it … They’re always spending money on all this amazing new sets and these actors and all the things you know are in the really good movies, you just want more and more and more.

And so there’s more content. So if there are fans of this show or if it ends up being that kind of thing where there are people who like to listen to for some reason, what I have to say, that’s all icing on the cake. I’m just doing … I’m really doing this for at very least myself and the few people that are interested in what I’m working on.

So I should disclose here early on that I am what you might call a Hollywood guy. So the walk that I’m on is in the neighborhood where I live, that it just so happens a lot of other movers and shakers live or whatever. So I don’t want to go too much into who I am. I mean, I’ll talk all about who I am, but I’m not … I just don’t want to draw … It’s not a false humility. It’s a sincerity.

Genuinely who I am is not even important. It’s just I’ve got this thing that I get to work on, and if it goes the way I think it’s going to go, it’d be like, “Whoa.” It’s a project. It’ll be something very interesting. I think the people … and if anything is interesting to people at all, it’s just … it’s good for the people involved in that project.

So I’m involved in a project that is … it just feels like it’s going. Like it’s going to go in the right direction and everybody’s going to … But it’s involved in … it’s going to get to be working on something they believe in. I’ll stop going on that tangent. I am a Hollywood guy. It’s like … I don’t want to go into that either, maybe that’ll be a topic one day of what that really means.

People have all kinds of misconceptions of what that means. All right, so I’m still working … like I already said, I’m still working on the tech. So I did a test run. I’ll just tell you the story of the story.

There’s so many stories within stories. It’s life. So I was on a test walk, and I have earbuds … that are not … they’re not playing anything, I’m not talking to anyone. I just have the ear bud in my ear. It’s like I’m wearing this thing. I don’t … didn’t even have my phone with me on that test. One of the tests walks … I did like two or three test walks.

And I was just talking out loud, just walking down the street, talking. Talking to nothing, nothing recording, no one. And it’s like, oh, so if I’m going to be recording a show … and there’s always a stage, and there’s tech set up, if there’s a show. A TV show or radio show, you have to go somewhere. Well it’s like my tested walks were finding my set.

And then testing if my voice could be heard audibly in this environment, which I think it can. So walking alone talking to myself and that’s where this topic came from. Walking alone, just talking to myself. Just opening my mouth and speaking and whatever comes out. Right?

It’s a … it’s a blessing and a curse. Like some people just can’t stop talking. Well, I mean … everybody can stop talking, but some people, they’re social … I don’t know, they have a trigger in social settings or even by themselves. It’s something they can’t shut off. We all mutter to ourselves every now and then, right? We all mumble.

We all … “Oh, that was good.” Like you do something stupid and you just ridicule yourself out loud audibly. So you’re talking to yourself. It’s reflexive. So we all talk to ourselves. I mean, I think everybody listening to this … because if you’re listening … like “What? voices in my head?” Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. One of the voices in her head is you, right? Anyway.

I don’t want to go in the direction of other things. I know this conversation has been a go, I hope because I can tend to get on tangents and I can tend to eat up time. And I don’t know if any of it is interesting. Like if I go off on tangents will people follow me on that tangent and be able to come back? Will they remember what I was talking about before? And say, “Wait, wait, wait, wait.”

“I got to find out that one thing.” Sometimes I forget. Oh, that’s … okay, it’s another kind of a programming note. Yeah, that would be a … If I do go on a tangent … sometimes I go on a tangent and I forget where the tangents going and I do get back to the subject. I mean, I have so much going on in my head, I have so many stories of what’s been happening in my life in the last two years.

So many stories that it’s just a … that’s why I’m doing this. It’s like I don’t have time to write it all down. I do journal, I do a lot of journaling. I don’t have time to write it all down. I don’t … it’s just I have to work on this project and I’m disciplining myself to record, take notes, audio notes. And I do some journaling, but it’s a limited time, I got to schedule it in.

And then get to work on the other stuff. So I think I’ve got a system down. I think this is going to work. This is the actual launch, right? How far in did I go before I even mentioned it? The reason this doesn’t feel like the first special … whatever it is that I did a test recording that’ll be posted on Saturday.

So this is the first … I want to start out Monday through Friday and then on the Saturday. So my test record, will be the Saturday special. So I want to get back to where this topic goes. I’m already under 20 minutes left of talking. It’s like it goes by so fast to me, because I have so many things I want to say. I have to self edit because there’s so many things I can’t say, just because of the nature of what I do.

When you work in this business, you’ve signed contracts that require you to be quiet about what you’re working on. You just do not tell people. And I know that’s … I don’t know how self evident that is to people that don’t work in this business. I don’t know if people realize that when you walk around town, you can talk about any number of things.

But there are certain things you just can’t talk about with your friends that work in the business at other companies. And so that’s what this is. It’s like I can self-edit, I can keep it topical, I can talk about any number of things that are happening right now that I’m not contractually forbidden to talk about.

But I could talk about things that have happened in the last two years. So that’s … well, I won’t go into detail about that. But I do want to be … be topical. You’re all waiting. How many … people have tuned out by now. Okay, so now I’ve got people that are still listening. There’s some people that will tune in and listen to one minute or they’ll listen to 30 seconds. Who knows?

Some people listen to five minutes, “Huh! He’s not coming back to the topic for good. I just want to know what he had to say about that.” Okay, voices in your head. What are they? What are the voices in your head? So when I asked the question … it’s 12 something. Gosh, I got to keep it … Oh, I okay, turn it down. All right.

So the business that I work in … one of the jobs … there’s all these different jobs and Hollywood people working on sets, working on casting, looking for the right people, characters. And there’s writers and cinematographers spending the money and budgeting. And it’s a couple people here … sorry.

It’s a little bit of parking and public intersection and walking across. So in one of those capacities, one of those jobs in Hollywood … the writing part. What the writers are … well, there’s all kinds of different books to teach you how to write. There’s structure. There’s some that say … I mean there’s any number of teacher saying, “This is the way to make a film. This is the way.

This is the best way.” And I came across a couple books. Settled on one that had a really good … well, we’ll get into that. That’ll be a topic somebody can bring up in an email. If you want to know about the book. I’m going to be as anonymous as possible with one of the associations. And I can mention the book because the writer of the book doesn’t know me or anything.

So I … how to use all these production things. Sorry you’re … I’m working out the kinks in this very first episode. Still, so I apologize. Back to … as a writer, one of those teachings that … one of those teachers, that say, “Do this, do this, do this.” There’s a teaching … and I don’t remember who said it. It’s not in this … I don’t think it’s in this book.

I don’t know what teacher it was, but … one of the things … I don’t know if it’s so much even a teaching or as it is what some writers just say. That’s what I experience. What’s the difference? Teaching or explaining something that I experienced? It’s the same thing, right? So teachers do that, they just explain how they learned what they know, et cetera.

So one of the teachings is, in screenwriting, you got to know your characters. Know your characters, know your goals. Know where they’re going in life, period. And then put them in a scene together and let them tell you what they would say. It’s just the way it happens. It’s like, “This is what so and so would say,” and the voices just start going.

They have a conversation and you have this sensation of simply recording the conversation. That you hear in your head, right? There’s these voices in your head. You create a character as point of view and this other character and you listen to that … just explain how it’s described. And so if you join that conversation, that’s in a sense what I am engaging in.

If you join that conversation and you speak out loud, that’s like … those people who walk around and just talk out loud. They’re speaking extemporaneously and I mean and this is extemporaneous so I’m just speaking. And when I’m not speaking, I’m having thoughts. I’m hearing something.

And there are … there is a sense like we … we do say this when we talk … talking to ourselves and talking … What does that mean? Ourselves? The pole, right? That’s funny. I don’t know, it could work, but … I don’t know if anybody followed me there on that idea. I’m going to drop it right there, but I’m going to get back to the topic.

So when you are a screenwriter, you are encouraged to listen to the voices in your head. Trying out the sound bite right there. When you’re a screenwriter, you’re encouraged … When you’re a screener, you’re encouraged to listen to the voices in your head. And man, I’ve done a little bit of that. I mean, not as a profession, but I … well I’m working on my fifth. I think it is, yeah.

I just … teaching myself to structure just because you should know how to write a story if you want to be a storyteller. And that’s what this is also about. It’s like, “Ooh, how many tangents will he go on? Will he stay on topic?” I mean, I’ve hardly even scratched the surface of the voices in my head.

If you’re a man just wandering around in the street, they’d send you to a doctor and you’d get labeled schizophrenic. And it’s the same thing … if you encourage … if you encourage someone to listen to the voices in their head … So I don’t know.

There’s a … there’s many, many world religions, right? There are … how many? There are … I don’t know. I mean, there’s the major ones. There’s Christianity, Judaism, Islam … am I even naming them correctly?

Like I know there’s Muslim and Islam … one’s an ethnicity and one’s the religion. I don’t know. Like Jewish … there’s a religious Jew and a secular Jew. So there’s … there’s all these different permutations that you have to wander through with the different … Buddhist. Okay?

So what other percentage … there’s also atheist and agnostic, and … So all these world-views …. and a huge percentage of them will believe in a heaven. I mean, that … which means the majority of humans. I mean, statistically, I think the majority of humans are at least associated with a faith that adheres to immortality or an afterlife. However you phrase that.

I don’t know if there’s a difference between those two. Afterlife. It means you could die again somewhere else, another life, and then another one after that. Or is it you just Allah, forever and ever. It’s this notion of heaven. All right. And so I’ve studied some of this. I mean I know a little bit about a bunch of religions and a lot about two … like Judaism and Christianity, because I had done a little studying in my day.

I mean, you never stop learning. So it’s been a long … a long study and that’s my daily walk. My daily walk you’re just talking about that. And one of the teachings … and this is something that I had learned before I came back to … We’ll cross over it again. You know, because when you studied, there’s a lot to study. It’s just a lot of material and there’s like 66 books of the Bible.

It’s like 66 … it’s not 66 authors, but there’s like 40 authors or something. It’s all these different points of view. These people went through stuff. And for some reason they accumulated into this one home. So the Jews have a similar experience where they … I don’t … It’s how many books in the old Testament? Is it 27 in the new Testament? Oh, whatever the math is. 39? I’ll get corrected.

I think it’s 27 new Testament. Is the 39? Is that how you get to 66? I don’t remember the math, but I remember those numbers … barely. Whew. So let me just elaborate, I think it’s in … Hebrews? I think it’s the first verse? No last verse? Somewhere. Early Hebrews chapter 12? Or late Hebrews chapter 11? I think it’s early Hebrews chapter 12 … somewhere there. It says we … yeah, we. All people who agree with the teachings of this book, right? We … or every human.

I don’t know if it’s distinct. But … it might be every human. Epiphany I’m having that, okay, we are. Okay. It’s making a declaration about reality. We are! And then the next word is surrounded. So you look horizontally all around you. You stand still and look horizontally in every direction, and look down, oh, you’re stuck at this ball. For some reason your feet are locked into this rock floating through space.

All right, so we are surrounded on every side. Surrounded by … what are we surrounded by? You look around you to see buildings and structures and a few people here in there, depending on where you are. We are surrounded. Oh man. Down to 20 … By a great cloud of witnesses. And so it’s present tense. Everywhere around us, on every side of us. There are … and we can’t see them, but they’re there. Right?

An original podcast by Christian Podcast Central