Comedy Through The Chaos

Happy Thursday, Cadre friends. Hopefully you can hear me. I am in a scenic location and I am also miss Shannon Paul. So I'll introduce myself a little bit while we wait for people to catch up to us here in the Cadre sphere. I am miss Shannon Paul and I am a comedian, a corporate speaker, voice actor, event Mc and benefit auctioneer that hubs out of the great state of Minnesota. So if you wonder where I am, I am at the St. Paul River center, the city cap, I mean, the capital of the lovely state of Minneapolis.

Sorry, the lovely state of Minnesota. Hello, Scanfield. Hello. Hello. Thanks for joining me. Hello, Laurie, as well. Welcome to Miss Shannon's comedy through the chaos here in the cadres. As I was saying, as you were joining, I'm hanging out the St. Paul River center. It's one of our venues here in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I am the emcee for a conference this week for the national co op grocer. So hopefully everybody can hear me. Okay. As I walked out to the lobby and I thought this would be a good place for us to go ahead and talk.

Hello, Jen. Good to see you in the chat here in the cadres sphere. So if you can hear me, go ahead and throw a little thumbs up in the chat. Just to make sure that I'm getting picked up, I decided to come out here to the lovery, the lobby. Hey, Jenkin. Because it's been very rainy here in Minnesota a lot this season, and it kind of brings me to the story that I wanted to share today. And when people talk to me about comedy through the chaos. Hello, Jules. Hello, Shannon with an o. Good to see you as well.

So if you wonder why my particular segment of the cadres here is called comedy through the chaos, it's because, you know, I'm very big proponent of comedy. Of course, I said that I'm a comedian. I'm a lot of things that are word related, like hanging out at this conference. I think that's part of the reason why we're still friends is they're like, oh, she can talk about all of these things and also get back to jokes. But like many of you, life is very complicated and layered. And I am fortunate enough to be able to use comedy to help me process a lot of these things.

But that being said, I never expect other people to think that funny happens in the midst of things. But you can find comedy and joy and laughter and things on the other side of some of the trials. Hello, Pennsylvania, my good friend, speak wonder. Thanks for joining us. So that's why I call it comedy through the chaos is that you don't necessarily find comedy in the chaos. There's lots of moments where I'm not laughing at anything when they're happening, but I can laugh about them later, and hopefully I can share them with you that way and encourage you to use those funny moments later to help you anchor to the good things that you have in life as much as we anchor to the negative things that we do in life, because that's where the neuroplastic plasticity of our brain comes into play and can be incredibly wonderful and pliable if we continue to train it to also look at the good things as much as we look at the bad things, because we'll anchor to those to try and preserve our safety in the future.

But we won't necessarily see those comedic things or those funny things or those join those joyful things as value if we don't practice. So I was thinking about this yesterday, and as I mentioned, it's been a very rainy season here in Minnesota, and I grew up in Arizona, and we did not have that often. We maybe would have monsoon season once a year where there'd be a lot of rain. And I loved rainstorms when I was a kid. I looked forward to them. I loved that smell that the air would get when you knew it was going to rain in Arizona.

One of my favorite things to do also is that, you know, once we'd had a good rain and you'd have just this water rushing down the street, and I could go outside with sticks and popsicle sticks and then have little races with the imaginary people riding these rafts that I would make down the street when we would have a rainstorm. So I love rainstorms. And I somehow managed to pass that on to my kiddo, who I call Cyclone kid, my adorable 16 year old son, who also happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum.

He loves rainstorms as well. So yesterday, when it started to rain aggressively here in my suburb of Minneapolis, we were both enjoying the rainstorm, and that was cool, you know, kind of thing. He actually went out on our porch and was standing there and watching it rain and aggressively for a very short period of time. And following the rain, I was going to sit down. My sister lives next door. She had come over. We were going to watch the Olympics, do some things like that. And I just was going to go downstairs, and what I found was not a little puddle, but a wash of water that had somehow managed to come through one of our downstairs windows.

And so a portion of my family room and my home studio, which you've seen me broadcast from before, were flooded. So there was a lot of water. I'm downstairs, but I was fortunate that I went down there when I did because it was not the most water that could have been down there. It was just a significant amount of water. So instead of the relaxing evening watching the Summer Olympics that I thought I was going to have, I ended up having to go into immediate handle this mode. You know that. I'm sure we all have it.

You're here on a caregiver day, so you have that handle this mold. What I was going to do, which was sit there and have dinner and have peace with my sister, I can't do. What I need to do is get my shop back out. I need to go ahead and mobilize and figure out how I'm going to make sure that this doesn't turn into a mold issue. I need to make sure that my kid is also engaged during this time period, because, as usual, this is when. And you can't. You never can say when somebody's going to have a meltdown.

But of course, there is a shop bag going on. There's something. Your mom's divided attention. There's all of these things. So he gets dysregulated. So then I have to stop cleaning up to go and help him get re regulated and find something for him to do so I can come back. To come back. To come back to all of these things. And so just to jump to the end of the story. Yes, I was able to clean most of it up. I managed to put a fan on it. That's what I had going when I left today to come and hang out with these wonderful human beings at this conference.

While I was here, during one of the breakout sessions, I went online to Home Depot and decided that my next project is I'm going to put in. There's things like a drain you could put in the outside of your house. I think it's called a french drain. I looked it up. You can see pictures about that later. So, anyway, I'm going to have to do some stuff to try and make sure that the next time we have an aggressive rainstorm like this, my basement does not flood the same way it did. And instead of focusing on the fact that I did not get the peaceful evening that I had anticipated last night, instead of having it pollute, my love of rainstorms, once I got through it and again through it, not in the middle of it, through it.

I just am in a point of gratitude because I was able to handle it. I was able to get my son reregulated. I was able to make sure that the rest of the night was okay and not have this moment of mini disaster be the thing that defined the rest of my evening. And the thing that I'm most grateful about is that I can still look back at rainstorms, and when I see them now, it didn't ruin my love of rainstorms. It just added to the adventure. And I know that's really difficult when we're talking about all of the things that we have to deal with from a day to day, trying to figure out a way where you can find a moment to yourself in the midst of all of the other things that we have to do.

A way to sandwich what you need in that layer of what you're giving. Giving to the person that you're caring for, what you're giving to the other people in your family, what you're giving to your career, what you're giving to your partner. Giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. That's what we do. But you really need time, and I use gratitude to anchor me back to that. You really need time to give back to yourself and to give yourself time to go. What is that thing that made me love a thing? And if we can figure out a way to anchor back to that, even if something negative happens in the midst or around that thing that you love, it doesn't mean that you have to hate that.

Just like you need to figure out a way that you need to give yourself space for all of those. So hopefully through your journey, you have those moments. If you need somebody to tap you on the shoulder every once in a while and ask you, hey, are you enjoying this experience? Are you having a good time? What made you like this in the first place? If you don't have that person in your circle, please connect with all of us here in the cadres sphere and go, we can help be those people for you, because that's really what we're doing, is building a community, you know, contributing to everyone's well being from a mental wellness perspective and giving a bunch of different resources, and also letting you know if you don't have the resource, maybe somebody else that you know does.

So what is it that you love this week that maybe if you don't remind yourself you love it, you'll forget about it? Me, I'm going to continue to love these rainstorms. And I ordered some things I'm going to take care of. There will not be any mold in the basement. I do need to preserve our health. It's all good. And maybe if you need some help knowing how a sump pup works, Miss Shannon will be your person. But tap into your resources, tap into your circles. See what else you can do as far as the information goes.

And if all else hit us up here in the cadres here, we have so many people that might be in your same boat, or if they're not in it right now, maybe they were in it before so they can help you keep steering. So speaking of people who help us do steering, one of our primary contributors here in the code is my good friend additional Shannon. m. central. So just because of her situation, my situation, a variety of the contributors here, we also have a wonderful partnership with the Minnesota Autism center.

So if you would like some additional information about what does the journey at the beginning of this adventure look like when you might be just getting that diagnosis? So regardless of whether it's for you or someone in your family, you're like, this is not what I expected. And maybe that diagnosis might still be very mystifying. m. central about what goes on during the beginning of that diagnosis. So chop in, I'm sorry, check in and we will give you that information. Also, my good friend JC, he is going to be popping in at 04:00 with some more information as well.

And then through the whole week, there's always rotating content from all of the contributors here, because we are here not only for one another, but we're here for you. So I'm gonna get back to this conference with one of my favorite, favorite clients in the whole wide world. And for the rest of you, we will see you next week. So be good to yourselves. Figure out how to give yourself that hug and find something that you love. See you next week, everybody.