Comedy Through The Chaos

Hello, hello, hello, hello, and happy Thursday, cadres fear. I am miss Shannon. Thank you for joining me here for our Thursday caregiver day on Cadre. As I talk about having some comedy through the chaos, I'm gonna get comfortable while we wait to see if we have a few people show up in the live. And just remind everybody if you're joining me in the replay. Hello, T. Hollis. Hello. If you're just joining me in the replay, my name is Miss Shannon Paul. I am a multidimensional event leader that focuses in stand up comedy, corporate speaking, voice acting, and a variety of the word related things.

Here in the Cadre sphere, I talk about caregiving because I am also. Hello, Jules. I also happen to be the mother of an adorable 16 year old human who also happens to be. Hi. Supports in the autism spectrum. Good to see you in the chat, Jules. So we are officially back to school here in our part of the great state of Minnesota Cyclone kid. My six year old had his first day back at school this Tuesday, and I am going to give him a pat on the back virtually because he is doing very well, much better than I had even anticipated.

Normally, summers are very complex for us, but he did a great job. He did a great job this summer, so I'm very proud of him. So hello, Luke. So that brings me to the conversation today. Last week, I was traveling for work, and it's the longest visit I've done for a while, and it's definitely the longest visit since my adorable 16 year old boy, who happens to be, as I said, on the autism spectrum, has been with me full time. So congratulations to him and my sister Casey, who watches him while I'm working.

They did a fantastic job, even with a couple little blips in the road like the Internet going out. And as I'm sure you can imagine, that could be quite the tragedy in our house, not only because mom uses it for work, but because he's 16 and really likes his Internet. So I'm glad that it worked out. And it's interesting, last week, I was excited, actually, to check in with all of you because I was in Watford City, North Dakota. So that's the part, like, up in the Badlands of North Dakota, near Williston, if you've heard about it.

So it was something that I wanted to talk to you about because it was interesting what was going on. I was there for a conference, for a summit, and got to meet some other people who, even though it seems like a very different community than what I would normally run into here in the first ring suburb of Minneapolis that I live in, it was a little farther out. But to the people that I was able to connect with, I was there talking about some main street initiatives and some other things that were not necessarily to do with caregivers, but to remind you that caregiverse happen in every community.

Of course, the people that I ended up running into, and we just started talking at one of the event, happy hours, and I ended up really bonding with another single mom that's in this community that's, I'd consider, you know, more rural than my current community. But a lot of our stories were the same. And deciding what we choose to do and how we choose to live our lives as single moms with complex kiddos. And how you balance that identity that you have as a caregiver, as a mother, as a father, as a parent, regardless when that's your role, how you balance that and how regardless of what physical community you live in, that the overall community that you're part of as a caregiver is very similar regardless of where you're at.

So regardless of where you are joining us, we appreciate you being part of this Cadre community, whether you are in a slightly suburban area like I'm in, whether you're in a big city like I'm adjacent to here in Minneapolis, or if you're in Chicago or New York or California, or if you're a little bit farther out, like in the, the hinterlands of North Dakota. We appreciate you all being here. Hello, Kathy. Thanks for joining us for this week's edition of Comedy through the Chaos, because a lot of the stories that make you who you are happen regardless of where you are based.

So thank you for being part of that. So what I wanted to talk to everybody about this week is the concept of making space in your life. And that's making space not only from an absolutely physical standpoint, but also the space and the things that take up room in your head. And what made me think about that was this week. As I said, my kiddo went back to school, so there were some things that I was putting off doing until I had him out of the house because I need room and I need time to concentrate.

So I just been putting it off. And the fact that my Internet went out last week caused this event where I had to redo my studio space. So since we're down here, I'll show you a little mini tour. So I had to redo this space because I needed to put in a bigger giant pod because my Internet's complicated now. And it made me think about the things in my living space that was taking up space. Like, I used to have this giant table that I was making do with, but wasn't really for the space. It was taking up too much room.

There's all the jumble of cords that live behind my computer. I finally cleaned all those up, and what I did is I called one of our local junk removal companies and said, okay, come get some stuff. And that included cyclone kids desk from when he was six. So it's been sitting here taking up space for ten years. It's me donating our old desktop PC that I kept thinking that maybe he was going to use instead of mine, which never really manifested. It was getting rid of a bunch of things that, again, were taking up space.

And how nice it was to have these two kind humans pull up in their junk king truck and take away these things. And they asked me a very interesting question, which I will pose to you. They said, is there anything else that you would like to get rid of? And I said, well, you know, while you're taking the stuff that I know I want to get rid of, let me go ahead and think about it. And so I went into. This is a duplex. I went into the garage and looked up into the rafters. And I had rented this space for a while before I actually bought it.

So there were some things up there that I just never really looked at. And so I went in that. My garage, my sister's side of the garage, and realized that there was a bunch of stuff up in the rafters that now is a good opportunity to actually look at and get rid of. And so I had them take that, too, and it was a bunch of random stuff, like some really old, like, surround, like, old bathtub sounds. Thank you, Jules. Yes. Purging some stuff in the house. Yeah, I'm pretty good at mini purges, but this is the first time in a while that I did a go into the corners or look in different places.

And so when I started looking in those different places, that's when I found, like, these old, like, bathroom surrounds, some old giant, like, metal pieces from two garage doors ago. A bunch of stuff, like, old, old. I'm in the midwest. Old roof rakes. Like, actual metal roof rakes. I'm not doing that. Like, a big aluminum roof rake that I'm not gonna do. I got the new hotness of roof rakes. You could check my social media if you want to see me pull that snow down like a. Like a champion you know, with my new fancy technology, roof rakes, so I don't need this old stuff.

So I got rid of that. I got rid of some old window air conditioning units that were taking up space. You know, I found a bunch of stuff up in the rafters that the squirrels had gotten to that was taking up space. So along with getting rid of the actual things that I knew were encroaching upon me, I got to get rid of all of this other stuff, too. And it just made me think about this. Like, how many things are taking up space in your life that you don't even realize are taking up space? How many things do you have in your life that you could be using that room, and you haven't even realized that something else is there?

Maybe you don't even realize that that space exists in your life, in your mind, in your brain, because you're so focused on what's at the front. And maybe if you can go, all right, this is my twice a year purge. I'm already purging. But go a little bit farther. Look into a corner, open a closet, you know, physically and mentally that you haven't opened for a while. Maybe there's a particular rock that's been sitting around in the back of your mind that you haven't turned in a while because you're too busy with the things that are right in front of your face, and you might be able to actually make up more space than you even know.

Like, the fact that I have all this room now that I can do other things in, just has made me feel just mentally and physically lighter. It was very. It's always a wonder if when things start to. When things take less space in your life, if you're gonna miss them. Like, am I going, yeah. I wondered if I was gonna have that remorse of, oh, I gave that away, and now this is gonna be the minute that I used it, you know? Oh, you know, where you hold on to things, thinking that you're gonna fix it, it's gonna get better one day, it might come in handy.

All of these things that you hang on to, waiting for that moment, and how long have they been collecting dust and space in your life when you're really not going to use them again, but you're so worried that you might need it that you let it continue to take up space and weigh you down. So maybe there are some things that you could really use that space for. Something else. Maybe there's something that you can go, you know what? It would be so much easier to move around. If some of this stuff was gone and then allow yourself to miss it, you can go ahead and go, you know, that was great.

Ten years ago, that's kind of how I felt about getting rid of my kiddo's desk. You know, it was cute. You know, he was really cute. But there's no way he's gonna sit at this desk anymore. My son is twice as big. Twice. I'm bad at math. More than that. Twice as. More than that. I could figure that out if I actually did the math on his height and his weight. He's probably more than twice as big as he was when he's that big. Yes. Jules, it is hard part separating the memories of how you know. You know that I appreciate when you.

What you're saying about how it's hard to separate those memories. And I love having the conversation about memory in general. And the more I talk about it, like, remembering that some of the things I like using the word remembering when we're talking about remembering and memories, is that a lot of the things in my brain is so adjacent to what might have been trauma or adversity or something that happened so that I don't have enough back to talking about space. Space for the good things. So I had to start figuring out ways to address some of those things.

So I did have room for the quality good memories as much as we have for the negative ones. Because, again, you know, I've talked about this here before, and I know some of our other contributors here have talked about that. The negativity bias that we have as humans and why we are wired to latch on to negative things. Because we can use that as a tool for self preservation, we can use that as a lesson learned. So something, hopefully negative doesn't happen to you again. But because we are so hardwired into that negativity spiral, it doesn't always leave us room to have that positivity side of things that we need to help us go.

This is why it's all worthwhile. This is how I make my life feel like, even though I can't address how long I am on this planet, I can do what I can to make the life that I do have feel more worthwhile. And that's allowing yourself space for all that positivity as well. So I encourage you to maybe ask your questions about will it feel good to look at these things that are taking up space and may not be the right thing for the space you have right now? Because that's okay. One of the things I gave away was a stand up desk that I had used, and I got it in the middle of the pandemic.

It was, okay, I'll have that. And this is what I'm gonna. You know, it did very well for me in this space at the time. But now, because I've tried really hard, I have a walking desk. Like, I just got a new desk for my treadmill and all those things, so I don't need this stand up desk anymore. And so what I did is I moved it around my house to go, well, will it fit in this space now? No, it doesn't really fit there. Well, what if I put it over here? No, it doesn't really fit there. Well, what about if I put it in my storage.

The storage locker, and. And I'll put it there because one day I might need it. And instead I said, nope, let me give this to somebody else because maybe somebody needs it right now, and all it's doing is just taking up space, and I'm not going to use it. And I don't know when I'm going to use it. So it's better off allowing somebody else to be blessed with that so that they can use it now before it ends up stale and dusty or dinged up or broken. You know, I got to get rid of it. And there might be some things in there that you're holding on to for the idea of what they were or the idea of what they might be.

When what you should do is just find the thing that is actually what you need right now and give yourself space. It's surprising. I wondered if I'd look around and go, wow, this feels empty. And I. Because we have an abundance of things. No, the space does not feel empty, but it does seem to be better utilized right now. It is more space for me to exhale and inhale and actually breathe. That's if you never notice one of my bracelets that I wear almost all the time says breathe. Because that's something very important that I have to remind myself to do, surprisingly enough.

So I encourage you to find a bit of time to make some more space in your life. And as you're doing that, ask yourself the question, is there something that you should let go in addition to what you know you should let go? Is there something hiding in a corner, in a closet, up on a shelf, in a part of something where you just haven't looked back there in a while because it take you a ladder to actually look into it? Is it in a corner of your mind where you have to look past a bunch of other stuff to figure out what's really back there, go a little deeper and maybe get rid of a little extra stuff.

You know, you're probably not using it anyway. It's just something for the squirrels to crawl through. Gosh darn squirrels. We have some very aggressive squirrels here in Minnesota. So that is part of what we get to do here on the Cadre sphere is help encourage you to look a little deeper and know that you're not the only one that is on that journey. That you're not the only one that's journeys might be doing this and you're like, oh wait, I thought I was going to talk about this and I found something else to discuss.

That is what we do here. So regardless of what you need at the moment, I encourage you, just do a little search here in the Cadre sphere and if you see something that you would like us to continue to talk about, please let us know. We encourage your feedback and anything that you would love for us to talk about more, we would love to explore for you. So as we continue to build the cadres, tell your loved ones and your family what we got going on and let us know how we can be a resource for you. So hopefully when I report back to you last week, I'll be able to tell.

We got through a whole week of back to school and Cyclone kid is still feeling like a champion and mom is still glad that he is in the right space and getting the right care. And so take care of yourself, take care of one another, help us take care of you and we will see you back here in the cadres next week.