The Fear of Finding Out | 2201

Fear of Finding Out is ‘The Long Fear’. It’s the question in the dead of the night. It hangs over you when things are going well, and remains unanswered when you procrastinate.

Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2022/01/08/301-2201-the-fear-of-finding-out/

Watch 301 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/jayspringett

Support the Show! https://thejaymo.net/support/
Website: https://www.thejaymo.net/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo


The Fear of Finding Out

New theme new me as they say. Hope you like it! setting the tone for 2022. I think it’s the most upbeat theme tune I’ve made since Season 1. This episode marks the first show of Season 5. Can you believe it?

It’s a bit mind boggling. I’ve never worked on a creative pursuit so consistently week after week for this long in my life. Making the 5th theme feels like a milestone.

If you’re keeping track: We had chiptune in 2018, a slightly ill judged breakcore track in 2019 that I still have no regrets about, 2020 brought some synthwave and last year’s theme was that weird Casio electronica track. Which in all honesty I’d become a bit sick of it by the end of the year. 

I’m hoping this year’s pop punk will be something we can all look forward to for the next 50 weeks. I made it the other night as I still had my guitar plugged in to my laptop after doing something else. 20 mins of faffing with Garageband’s weird AI auto drummer, plus another 10 mins with my bass. Within an hour it was all done. The whole time I was reflecting on how crazy living in the future is. 

I’m old enough to remember when a computer with a sound card was a big deal. The first time I saw an external audio interface at secondary school I was blown away. When I was about 14 my friends and I really wanted to start a sludge metal band. But the big problem was none of us owned a distortion pedal. Which as you can imagine, is a real hindrance to making heavy music. A farcical teenaged situation straight out of an episode of Pugwall or something.

Even at University MIDI and digital audio was plagued with clock sync issues and latency. It wasn’t until after I graduated that firewire interfaces became affordable.

Anyways, this is all to say a couple of years ago I bought a USB to quarter inch jack cable for a tenner expecting it to be terrible. But it wasn’t. I mean, of course it wasn’t, it’s the future now and I’m old.

But still. I think about teenage me. Scrimping and saving for months to buy a second hand Boss HM-2 stomp box. Today, I plug my guitar into my computer and have access to 100’s of simulated amps. This is a piece of technology I don’t think I will ever take for granted.

I bring all this up as this coming year looks like it’s going to be full of stuff that teenage me would also be going absolutely nuts over. Game engines, virtual environments, 3D modeling, VR headsets, Internet collaboration tools, mini projectors, vTuber tools, puppetry, internet money, land as platform and all my interests in regenerative culture and political gardening… The list goes on. Plus I just bought a 3D depth camera with onboard AI and spatial processing so I’m about to finally start learning python.

Over the break I’ve been thinking about 2022 a lot. About how I want to spend my time. What I want to do with my life and how I want it to feel. Due to some luck and some hard work I find myself in my mid 30’s working on things that I in some sense I have always been passionate about.

At the end of last year I spoke about how 2021 felt like a year of stasis. For most of the year I was dealing with chronic procrastination. A personal crisis, that meant I was unable to move forward with anything. 

To use that distortion pedal as a metaphor – this year I want to actually use it and do all the things I want to do. Actually do all the things I want to create, make and work on.

I have realised that the resistance I was feeling, the barrier to not doing any of those things all last year is related to the title of this week’s episode.

Am I the Person that I Believe myself to Be?

To actually do the things that need doing, is to answer the question. 

The resistance is The Fear of Finding Out. or FOFO. I’ve always been scared of the effort required to find out the answer.

The fear of finding out that I’m not the person that I think I have the potential to be? The fear of finding out is The Long Fear. It is the unanswered question of growing up. Is it not just easier to keep doing the things that you are already doing and put off the things that needed doing to another day? Of course it is.

It wasn’t just last year, it’s a question I’ve been afraid of facing my whole life. It’s why I never did any homework ever at school.

Am I the Person that I Believe myself to Be?

It’s the question in the middle of the night. It’s waiting for you at the bottom of a depression pit, it hangs over you when things are going well, and remains unanswered when you procrastinate. It manifests as the unwritten novel, the unfinished project, the staying in the job that you hate.

But I do know that if I’m not the person I believed myself to be then that’s – ok. Life continues to unfold, the world will keep turning. With the question answered and I will continue to become whoever it is I actually am instead.

The important thing is to find out.

Watch


The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the episode in the edit.

If you’d like to support this blog and its various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. It genuinely helps me keep things up and running, so thank you!

Prefer Email? 📨

Subscribe to receive new posts straight to your inbox!

Or subscribe to my physical mailing list from £5 a month


Leave a Comment 💬

Click to Expand

7 responses to “The Fear of Finding Out | 2201”

  1. […] Do what you can, with all the integrity you can bring, in the context you are in.  […]

  2. […] podcast. 301 is the show type. New containers open up a space to answer and act on the sentiment in Episode 2201. I also means new opportunities to make new mistakes, in public, in front of all of you. I’m […]

  3. […] I was younger I far prefered The Dream of Things. Comforting distractions. Excuses to avoid the Fear of Finding Out. Much of the Having Dones I was proud of at this age were done with others. Collective endeavours: […]

  4. […] I began the year with “Fear of Finding Out’. […]

  5. […] finished last year talking about Urgent Anxiety. This whole year has been dominated by The Fear of Finding Out. The sea is so very big and my boat is so very very […]

  6. […] Ignoring the obvious point that doing so would not in any way resolve the issue of not knowing where one was or where one were supposed to be going. […]

  7. […] This is a thread I’ve been pulling on for months now. Do the Things That Need Doing and Dealing With Procrastination in November. The Urgent Anxiety of December and January’s Fear of Finding Out. […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *