Participant #1:
Hello, Cupcake, it's Me, a podcast with your host, Michael Peterson.

Participant #1:
Hey, everyone, michael here with Hello Cupcake, it's Me, a podcast. This is episode 29. It is June 16, 2022. And how are you? If you haven't done so already, please go over to the YouTube channel, YouTube.Com/hellocupcakeitsme.com and check out where I put the bulk of my content. I also put a lot of content over on www.hellocupcakeitsme.com And if you want to follow me all along on Instagram, you can do so by following Michael Scott Peterson. That is S-O-N not S-E-N but yeah, I upload videos two times a week over on the YouTube channel. And for the whole month of June, I've actually been uploading several videos a week because I am covering topics that are relative to the LGBTQ community. And so I'm spotlighting and showcasing prominent characters and events that have happened and who have taken place within the gay and lesbian community. So go check it out, though, because like I said, that's where I do a lot of my video. Well, that's the only place that I do my video, and I would love to make it more cohesive and just have a great community surrounding the Hello Cupcake.

Participant #1:
Tuesday's, trivia night, we did fairly well. Again, things started getting kind of dodgy toward the end. We're there from 700 to 915, and it was about 830 to 915 that things just got really dodgy and people started losing interest and talking and taking longer to come back from cigarette breaks like they did last week. So there's got to be some kind of a change that's made so that we can just keep people corralled and listen. You got two minutes in between rounds for smoke break or to go to the bathroom or whatever. If you're going to play and you're going to be on the team, you need to be here and not like a social butterfly. I know that's what bars are for or whatever, but we're trying to actually do something by getting our ranks up and hopefully finally getting out of the goddamn Bronze Division,

Participant #1:
having a lot of fun with it. But this week we had a lot of technical difficulties. For whatever reason, all the devices that I had with me were being kicked off of the server. And I'm like, what the hell? And I wasn't the only one that was having an issue. Two of my other team members, their devices weren't connecting to the Internet, and it was like, okay, what's going on? I had to take a full round without being able to play because my devices were not connecting. So that kind of made me upset. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in at like 600 this coming week and make sure that I can get my device connected and call it good. In other news, I've been walking pretty much every day this week. My sister has been forcing me to go walk with her during her lunch break. So it's a good thing. But at the same time, I don't like walking that late in the afternoon. If I'm going to walk, I would rather walk like 738 in the morning when I get up, or get up at seven or 08:00 in the morning, go for a walk, come home and then do my day. But that's what we've been doing. And it's not a huge walk, but it is a change from what we had been doing, which is going to just go get some lunch and hang out and talk. So, I don't know, eventually it should spur me on to be able to get back into walking more frequently and being able to walk further and just get back into the whole swing of things. And having done this has been really kind of good for my mental health because I have been inspired lately to just write a right now, it's just a paper with a bunch of random thoughts on it about mental health and stuff like that, but I would like to eventually turn it into a book. The working title that I have right now is just Mental Health. But in it I'm using statistics from the last couple of years and talking about how really since like 2005 we've had a decline in mental health and talking about how low, even though it's tragic with all the gun shootings in the nation and in the schools, movie theaters, so on and so forth, that we have to look at the underlying issue, which is not gun control, it is people not being heard, people not being understood, people hurting, people not being able to access the help that they need. And bullying also, you think of bullying as stuff that happens to kids on a playground or whatever, but bullying happens at any age, at any stage of your life. And a lot of people just feel so disconnected because we live in a world of instant gratification and instafame and that people don't realize that, oh, I'm looking at this Instagram account and they look like they have it all. They're happy, they're in love, they're traveling. Why don't I have that for myself? Because I work hard and I deserve those things and this and the other thing. But they don't realize that for those three or four photographs showing their absolute happiness, there's an entire life world and everything attached to the behind the scenes. We sell happiness, but in reality we're not happy. There's some of us that are happy, but on a genuine content level, just being happy is so far of a reach from everyone. Like, we work our asses off trying to build a life and make things happen for ourselves. And we had this vision of who we wanted to be and where we wanted to be, and this, that, and the other thing. And then because of life, because of choices, because of whatever, we get beaten down and we just can't get there. And so this causes a disconnect within our own psychological well being. And so the other night I was just laying in bed and I couldn't sleep and all of this came bubbling to the surface and I was like, you know what, I need to put this down on paper. And I just started typing as fast as I possibly could. And about six pages in I was exhausted because I had just had this creative word vomit coming out of me and it was making sense and it was cohesive and it was like well put together and well thought out and just worked. So I'm hoping that I can continue doing this and not turn into some kind of toothy overstated project or whatever, and that somebody who is just looking for help and doesn't have help to like, doesn't have the means or the ability to seek help in a professional manner might come across this and like, oh shit, this makes sense, this is stuff that I can do at home. And it's stupid simple techniques that sound hokey, but they actually do work. And there's tons of research surrounding these methods that prove that these methods work. And so one of the things that you can do is if you're really stressed out or you're upset or what have you, it sounds stupid, but you sit in a relaxing position. It can be in a chair, it could be on the floor cross legged, it could be on your couch, it could be anywhere. But you just close your eyes, relax all your muscles and just take in deep breaths. In through the nose, slowly out through the mouth. In through the nose, slowly out through the mouth. But you don't want to hyperventilate. You want to just

Participant #1:
completely fill your lungs and completely empty your lungs. And just doing that like ten to 15 times or even longer, doing it for a full minute. And just each time you inhale and you tense up all your muscles, you exhale and release all your muscles. And what that does is that starts to produce serotonin and all these other chemicals that just really help make you happy and put you in a better mood. And it also quickly lowers your blood pressure so that you're not feeling like that fight or flight intense, like rage or whatever. So doing simple things like that. And I know that there's hundreds of thousands of books out there and YouTube videos that are saying the same exact thing. But having done a lot of mental health classes and research and what have you, I find that a lot of those are just so bulky with this. I just want it to be kind of plain, concise and very easily digested by somebody who is in crisis right this moment.

Participant #1:
Like I said, I'm hoping to be able to continue to put something like that together. For a while there I was writing a book of daily aspirations and quotes and things called Carpe Diascrotum, which sees the day by the balls. And it was like my daily passages because what I was doing there for a while is every morning when I would wake up, I would write a gratitude post or something I was really thankful for and I would put that into a post and then I would finish it off with some kind of motivational. Go get them, guys. And I would always finish it off after that little motivational thing with, now go grab your day by the balls and fuck it up. Not like fuck it up in a bad way. Like you're going to just be a complete screw up all day, but make it your bitch. Make your day count for you, not against you. So I really need to get back into writing that. And maybe I can incorporate the two and make one cohesive thing. But I want to do like 365 days of those inspirational quotes and stuff and then release the first volume of it. And I also want to pad the book a little bit with self help techniques, meditation techniques, where to go to try to get free help and how to seek out mental health help and try to destigmatize the whole mental health help thing. Yeah, that's one of my pet projects that I'm trying to put together. I also have a lot of ambitions right now and things that I want to do, but having no money with gas prices at a million dollars per precious drop of liquid gold, it makes it even harder. But I do have some summer plans that I want to do. I would like to do a little bit of traveling, but again with no. 90 no and just not really having the ability to do so, it makes it hard. But like, some of the summer plans that I want to do is I want to go camping this summer. I have all this amazing outdoor camping gear and stuff like that that I've collected over the years. I have several tents. I think I even have an air mattress too. I got like a couple of hammocks that go up to 6700 lbs. And I got my shotgun and stuff like that. And I'd like to just grab my gun, go out into the woods and kick it for a day or two and just enjoy life being severely overweight like I am right now and out of shape from not walking in a while. I don't know how feasible that is, but it's stuff that I've been thinking about and like some of the summer plans that I want to make for myself. And as the weather is starting to get warmer here in the Pacific Northwest, that means I'm going to be able to get out to the lake more often, which I'm really looking forward to just getting out and doing some hydrotherapy. I love to swim. That's all I ever wanted to do when I lived in California, was just swim, and I took every opportunity that I could to swim. And before I moved here, the trailer park that I was living in had a swimming pool, and that was so amazing. I would go over there in the morning when no one else was in there swimming and just, like, spend some time out in the sun and swim for a few hours, get up, go into the house, get some work done, clean the house up a little bit, go pick up my niece from school, bring her home, change her out of her school clothes, get her homework done, take her back and go swimming, come back home, get her all cleaned up, and then get dinner started from when my sister got home, she walked in the front door to a hot meal ready for her, and then she could just spend the rest of the night, like, hanging out with her daughter. And that was the time for me to go hang out with my friends or do whatever I needed to do. And then I would come home and work for a couple of hours, because at the time, I was working online and I was doing a night time call center. So my busiest hours were from about 11:00 p.m.. To 06:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Participant #1:
I would get a few hours of sleep and start my day all over again. So I kind of miss those days. I don't miss the drama and the bullshit that happened during that time period, but I miss the simplicity of it all, especially when I was going to college, like, just being able to get up and get up, go to school, go to work, hang out with my friends, come home, play Mr. Mom, do all the housework that I need to do, go hang out with my other friends that didn't go to school, come back home and do it all over again. Those are some of the days that I miss. But we can't live in the past, right? So with these summer plans, I just want to start doing something in the summers other than just existing. Like, I go out to the lake maybe three or four times a week, but that's a 20 something mile round trip each time I want to go out to the lake. And with gas prices being the way they are, I really don't know how often I'm going to get out there. And even though I'm surrounded by water, because I live in a coastal city, that water is way too freaking cold to get into. And we have orca, and I'm a big boy, and I look like a tasty snack out there floating in the middle of the water. So I don't want a Shamoo to come over and come nibble on my toes. That just scares the bejesus out of me that we have a ton of seals also. I didn't think I was scared of seals, but last time I went out crabbing, I was just waiting out in the water and I was picking crabs up off the rocks and stuff. There was a seal about, I don't know, maybe 40 to 60ft away from me and I was just thinking this damn thing is going to come over here and bite me and cause problems with me and all this other stuff. And I had a full on panic attack to the point where I had to get up out of the water and sit on the rocks and try to get myself under control and I actually had to have some friends come over and get me. I'm like, you guys, I need help. Like my anxiety and I'm having a panic attack and all this other stuff. I just need somebody to come over and walk with me. Like maybe safety in numbers or whatever. But yeah, so I want to and need to do something this summer. So I guess I'm going to go ahead and wrap things up now. But like I said before, please head on over to the YouTube channel and it's Youtube.com Hellocoupkeekitsme and go check out the blog, Hellocupcake it'smee com. And until next time, I will talk to you later. Bye guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. You have been listening to Hello Cupcake is Me, a podcast with your host Michael Peterson. Please make sure to check back often as new episodes are released by weekly. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to send a message to hellocupcakeitsme@gmail.com. And until next time, stay happy, safe and keep doing the best you can with what you have been given.