Therapeutic Outlet - Start as You Mean to Go On

Transcript

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art. For artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being. So have you ever been on a Zorb? One of those giant inflatable bubble things that you climb into and roll down a big hill. It’s the human equivalent of a cocktail shaker and the cause of a queasy stomach at the beginning of many a stag do. Well coming into 2025 feels a lot like being in one of those. Both for me and I assume pretty much everyone else. Now I’m not going to get into all the the news and the politics of the stuff. You already know all that. I’m not going to whinge again about my personal woes. I’m sure you’ve had enough of that. I’m going to talk about starting as you mean to go on. And how do I mean to go on? I intend to go on by doing whatever the bloody well I please. That’s how. And so I’m going to define that in this episode. And that by definition means also defining what I’m not going to be doing. Now let’s start the new year on a positive note shall we? Since it’s all going to hell on the paint palette we might as well start off as we mean to go on right? So I’m going to start off with the things that I am going to do. So firstly I am going to try new things. I ended the new year actually doing quite a lot of this already. I had a bit of a foray into the world of abstract art and creating sort of abstract messes on canvases. This came about partly because I just needed something new to be focusing on. And partly because I don’t have a lot of money and I have a whole bunch of old sort of canvases and materials and stuff that I kind of need to either resurrect or repurpose or reuse and I couldn’t really afford to buy new stuff. Since all of this stuff was expendable I decided to play around a bit and allow my creative juices to flow and try and try my hand at abstract art and see where I got on. And knowing that if I ruined a bunch of canvases it wouldn’t matter too much because they were already kind of knackered anyway. So I spent a lot of time doing that at the end of last year and sort of moved into this sort of new phase of adding more sort of symbolism and stuff in my art which was actually a symptom of me trying to sort of impose a bit more meaning and structure onto my abstract paintings. It turns out that I’m not very good at just doing purely abstract stuff since I love my work to have some sort of meaning. So I started to impose and superimpose various sort of structures and form on those and also with these old canvases let the thing that was on them come through in the piece to sort of create yet further sort of structure and meaning. So I was already in quite an experimental phase and that hasn’t really stopped. Over Christmas I was gifted a rotary tool and if you’ve never used these they’re a little sort of handheld drill thing that you use almost like a pencil to draw actual carved things out of various materials so you can use it to etch onto metal or carve into words. I’ve used it to carve lino for lino cuts and all sorts of things so they come like a drill you can just put lots of different bits in them and they’re really great for I mean a lot of people use them for just you know standard work like buffing up bits of metal for a car or whatever or cleaning things and polishing things but they’re used quite a lot in the craft world for for carving and creating prints and stuff like that. So I was really excited to get this and I’ve got a lot of wood lying around the place so I started carving patterns in the wood using this thing and I’ve really really enjoyed it despite the fact that I spend my time permanently covered in sawdust. It’s made a total mess of my workshop but then that’s what it’s there for. I’ve had some successes and some failures already and we’re only two weeks into the new year and I’m really really loving it and I’m doing fairly well I suppose but I seem to be sort of progressing quite quickly and sort of figuring out how things work and this is a process that I absolutely love. I love trying new things and finding out new things and exploring new things and it’s also a medium that lends itself more to sort of crafty things that can be that will probably be easier to sell and that are a little less imposing than my usual type of work but I can still squeeze in my sort of normal flourishes and also bringing some of the things that I’ve learned from my abstract work and the symbolic work that I was bringing into that. So I’m really really enjoying trying new things but there’s a certain amount of anxiety that comes with this and also a certain amount of expense. So obviously it was quite a cheap rotary tool, I don’t have a lot of money. The bits that came with it were almost useless so I had to buy a whole bunch of new bits and they’re not very expensive and you can buy them on Amazon or whatever or even down your local hardware store but that was a bit of extra expense that I wasn’t expecting and then am I going to be able to do anything with this? Is it going to work? Is anyone going to be interested in what I do? The results of the first few things I produced were pretty cool, I really liked them but they were quite messy and there are plenty of people out there using computers and machinery to do wood carving and so you know that my stuff is not going to look as good as that and perhaps that will make it less desirable but I like to think that in this day and age of AI sort of swallowing up everything creatively that people are looking for stuff that has rough edges simply because it means it probably wasn’t created by an AI or you know a robot. If I get some money in the new year I will buy a few more bits and pieces for it just so I can branch out a bit, try different things, try more detailed work and try and neaten up my work a bit but I’m quite happy with what I’ve got at the moment, none of it costs a lot of money and it’s providing a lot of scope for me and I’ve got so much bits, I’m a bit of a squirrel when it comes to collecting old bits of wood and stuff, I don’t like throwing anything away so I had stacks of the stuff and so we had a couple of old beds that had the wooden slats underneath them and I deconstructed those because we needed to get rid of them because they were broken and rotten and I saved all the bits of timber from those that were still in good condition and I just had them sitting around and so I can just glue those together now and make sheets of wood and it’s pretty decent quality stuff and this is all free, you know I paid for that bed for my kid years ago, like a decade ago and I could have just kept taking that to the dump but no I’ve got this free stuff now and so I don’t have to buy it, it’s another thing that I don’t have to buy in and I can do this work instead of buying new canvases so it’s all quite positive from that respect. Will I keep doing this? Maybe, who knows with me I don’t really know and that’s not really the point. What I’m not saying is I’m going to spend the rest of this year becoming a wood carver and making wood carving art, it might well be the case that I do that but it’s not my aim, my aim is to have fun with a new medium and I think you know to add to that and this is another carrying on from where I was at the end of last year, I intend to use what I’ve got and this is partly because I don’t have much money and partly because it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing to do from the perspective of me having a bunch of crap lying around the place that needs using or throwing away, it’s right from the perspective of saving money, it’s right from the perspective of the environment and not creating waste when I don’t need to. So I’m going to try and sort of reduce the stockpiles of stuff that I’ve accumulated in my studio and workshop and try and make something of it that’s both fun to make and perhaps I can sell and I love the idea of that because it’s a bit of something from nothing, I’m not really getting something from nothing, I mean it was the tree that grew the wood not me but it’s something that I didn’t have to pay anything extra really for that I can either sell to someone or gift to someone that will bring some lightness into the world that cost me almost nothing or cost me just what I’d already paid for a different reason, those old beds have got a second life which is an idea that I love. So next one, next do, make new friends and connect with old ones and this podcast has been amazing for that, my art group here in Okta Rada has been brilliant for this and doing these interviews so if you’ve been listening to my podcast I’ve got three interviews now published and I’ve got another one coming and I’m on the hunt for other people who might want to do an interview so if you’re interested then get in touch with me and that’s really led to me forming sort of closer relationships with those people, some of them I’d never met before and just generally some really listening to people, I’m not a great listener in general, I tend to get overexcited and talk over people and try and make myself hard and it’s just part of my ADHD and autism, I don’t really mean to talk over people, it’s just something that I do but when I’m interviewing someone I’m forced to sit and listen as it wouldn’t be much of an interview if I was yapping on over them and listening back to the four that I’ve done I think I did a pretty good job of that actually but it forced me to sit down and listen to someone else’s story, someone else’s side of things and really sort of ponder it and think about it and try and react and try and get the best out of that person and I’ve really enjoyed doing that so I’m really looking forward to doing more but I’m sort of running out of interview candidates so that’s going to force me to go and hunt down some more people which I can go through the same process with and I also get to introduce those people to the world so not only am I making new friends, in theory they’re making new friends or at least they’re making new fans or people who appreciate what they do so it’s something I’m really keen to do more of and also I’ve spent the last two years putting on art exhibitions and art events around my local area I’ve met lots of people doing that and I’d like to keep growing that base and keep extending the reach of the people that we can work with and help in their artistic journey and making new friends and taking in new inputs and there’s nothing better than meeting other artists and exchanging ideas and exchanging advice and that type of thing and just sort of getting to know people and I’ve really really enjoyed that and I’m not very good at it being autistic but this sort of framework of the local community and the podcast has really allowed me to go and reach people on my terms but also on their terms and on the level playing field that makes it a lot easier for me to meet people. Related to that I’m going to keep finding new artists I think I started a podcast about art really from the perspective of making it I speak mostly about making art on this because I think that’s where the majority of the value is certainly for me in terms of art and its therapeutic value and so as a result I don’t talk that much about artists, art history, art theory, that type of thing and it’s not really what this is about but I’m also not ignorant to the fact that a lot of people get their kicks and their therapy from consuming art be that going to an art gallery or going to the theater, the cinema and so on and those type of people far outnumber us creators and I acknowledge that and it’s not that I’m ignoring it it’s just that I try to keep this balanced and my focus is where it is but I have artists and illustrators who I love and filmmakers and so on and writers and I like to talk about those and I squeeze them in wherever I can but I think in the process of having to make this and also in the process of generally you know meeting new people I’ve been introduced to new artists over the last year or so and those have brought me a lot of pleasure but also expanded the boundaries of my work and pushed me into new areas for example I dug out a book about a Chinese artist called Zao Wu-Ki last year it was actually something I’ve had in my collection for a long time but largely ignored it was given to me by my friend Imo it belonged to her mother and she had a whole ton of art books and after she died this was like 20 years ago or something Imo had to sort of get rid of them and she asked her all her arts arts inclined friends if they wanted them so I went and collected a few books and this was one of them and I sort of picked it up leaf through at the time for this looks interesting I’ll take this and then largely forgot about it and for some reason I think probably in the move when we moved house last year I found it again I was leafing through it and was absolutely blown away it’s all abstract it’s all very organic and mood related and and it’s all really quite beautiful and that’s one of the main drivers for me trying abstract as part of my portfolio of work and so that’s amazing and then another artist who I’ve been aware of for a long time but hadn’t really spent much time appreciating is Grayson Perry obviously you know one of the the British are rock stars but I’d never really appreciated how good his art is and the ceramics and but also the breadth of different mediums and styles and themes he works with and it’s just simply incredible and I’ve got a book for Christmas about him and I absolutely adore it and there’s been bits of that sort of social commentary or the symbolism but also thinking about different mediums and the wood carving is part of this and you know the thinking already about what I can do to get more into three-dimensional works like his ceramics I doubt I doubt very much I’ll be into ceramics by the end of the year but who the hell knows so and that’s been a massive inspiration to me and and I love this stuff and and I think that I can sometimes be a bit lazy in terms of seeking out new art and new artists or new sort of mediums and approaches and subject matters and part of me trying to make this a great podcast and to try and keep it as open and interesting as possible I’ve been researching a lot of artists I spent a lot of time reading about Frida Kahlo at the end of last year for one of my episodes and that was incredible and and it’s really forcing me to sort of look at other things but also look hard as opposed to sort of wafting past something in a gallery or a book or something to actually really think about what it is that that person was doing and it’s really enriching my understanding of art and my appreciation of it as well as feeding into my own artworks so I think as I go into the rest of this year I think I’ll find myself getting further and further into the the realms of of art and particular artists and movements and stuff and I’m really looking forward to that. I also want to discover you know artists that are out there I mean Grace and Perry’s still alive but there’s lots of other much smaller artists and less well-known artists and really creative people and and if I can get some of those to come on my podcast and rock and roll and there’s some people out there that are some artists out there that I already you know have either interviewed or worked with or or getting really well with so I’d like to try some collaborations. Me and Mark Burden who was the interviewee on my second interview just before Christmas. We’ve long talked about collaborating because there’s a big sort of overlap between our our works and and we’ve we really get on well and we really think similarly and there’s this whole thing around the overlap of art and science and maths and technology that we’re really fascinated with and I think there’s a lot of stuff we can do there. We’ve also discussed doing some audio or video stuff for the new year either for this podcast or for a new one that talks about the overlap of art and science, maths, technology and so there’s some collaborations there. I’ve also discussed in the past working with Caitlin there. I’ve interviewed them for the for the next interview that you’ll see coming out probably next week and I’ve talked to them about collaborating a few times because again there’s quite a big overlap there but I’d like to find some new people some new artists to collaborate with and different mediums and forms. I’ve got quite a few things on the boil for my local community in the coming year. Not least I’m building a website and we’re talking about different ways to distribute content, artworks, films, performances, all of these things via the web. I mean it all feels quite old school right now and I’ve been working in the internet since you know my early 20s so nearly 30 years. So all of this is quite old school but it’s still necessary and for a local community group getting a strong sort of digital profile is not easy to do and so I’m quite pleased to lend my skills to doing that. So and I think that will lead to lots of really amazing inspiring ideas about how to merge the digital world and the physical world and I’m hoping that will trigger off quite a few collaborations and also hopefully influence my own work. And finally what am I going to do? I’m going to keep spreading the love. I’m going to keep encouraging people. I’m going to keep recording this podcast and I hope and spreading you know the love around using creativity as a way to manage and maintain mental health. To just as a way to make yourself happy as a way to bring you know some light and beauty into the world and to get people talking and bring people together. It’s a very big mantra of mine. The antidote to all the horrible things that are going on in the world at the moment is community. The thing that we’ve lost is community. The thing that we’ve lost is that connection and that could be online but I’m thinking more specifically in the real world because online relationships are always somewhat disjointed and I know that there are some people out there who find it difficult to interact in the real world and I’m all good with that. You need to take your community where you find it but if you can get outside your front door go talk to people that live in your locality and collaborate and work and talk and exchange ideas with them. Those are the things that are going to break down the barriers that are causing the divisions in the world that we live in at the moment and I think it’s essential that we do that so that people stop just hating on anyone that they don’t know or they don’t understand that looks or acts or behaves slightly different from them. The best thing about the art community is it’s everyone’s in it. I’ve got kids right through to non-legenarians in my art group and they’ve all got different attitudes, they’ve all got different approaches and sometimes it doesn’t gel but sometimes it gels in ways you can’t possibly predict and all the while you know maybe this person and that person might never be close friends or or even anything more than an acquaintance or a member of a group together but they still have to come together and appreciate each other’s works or appreciate the effort that each other is putting in and ideas get exchanged and if those people are aware that they’re different either in their political views or they look different or they behave differently but they can still appreciate that other person their works their impact on the world then that’s going to break down one little barrier and I know that it doesn’t seem like a lot but lots of little barriers being broken down add up to a very big barrier being broken down and that’s the barrier that the predominant and growing power base in the world is trying to do they need us divided they need us looking suspiciously at each other because that’s how they maintain control and power and that’s how they continue to concentrate the wealth in their pockets and the worst thing for them is collaboration community love and integration and it’s not a political thing it’s simply something that we’re missing if you talk to people on either side of the political spectrum they’ll all tell you the same thing in one way or the other they’ll all be saying well where’s the community why isn’t anyone talking to each other why do I feel like an alien and and and this is exactly what they want everyone blaming everyone else and being suspicious everyone else bring people together collaborate talk to other people you don’t have to start off a big art group you don’t have to you know do anything other than be open to talking to other people be open to joining a club doing whatever it is show your art and talk to people about it oh I said that was my last but it isn’t my last thing for for my dues in 2025 is aim high and despite all the horrors of 2024 it was actually quite a big year for me I achieved lots of really big things a couple of absolutely huge exhibitions I started a podcast I met lots of new people I just did loads of cool stuff and I was highly creative and because of my job situation I had more free time to be creative so it was really quite a year for me despite the fact that my mental health for a good part of it was was completely among the worst states I’ve ever been in and if I can do that when I’m totally broken what can I do when I’m in a reasonably good state like I am now and and the sky’s the limit and I’m not gonna I’m not gonna you know kid myself I’m still on the road to recovery and I still have the limitations that I had both psychologically and and financially as it stands right now and so I you know I’ve got a big hill to climb but if I achieve what I achieved in in 2024 and and and then some in 2025 I’ll have achieved some really big things and and that’s such a sort of positive thought and something that I’m really going to hold on to and and I’m not I’m not here to set unachievable goals for myself I’m just simply saying if I did that when I was broken what can I do when I’m better and so I’m going to put on bigger shows you know I’m going to uh look to do more creative and and and more interesting things reach more people and I’m going to try and not exhaust myself the the achievements I I made in in 2024 were amazing but they did burn me out and and I think it doesn’t really matter what mental state I’m in I’m susceptible to burning myself out particularly when um I’m having to you know deal with a lot of people so I do need to look after myself and and and check in on myself regularly and and just make sure I’m okay and make sure that when I when I’m scheduling things in that I am doing so in such a way that I give myself downtime and I give myself a break from people from doing work and so on and I think I’m getting a lot better at that now recognizing the signs of when I’m getting into a bit of a state so I’m hoping I can go bigger and better in 2025 um but also not break myself in the process and I guess that’s the the one aim above all other aims is to not break myself and that brings me quite neatly on to the don’ts and the number one don’t is don’t break myself again um I’m not going to break myself again if I can possibly avoid it the world is going crazy and so uh there could be a lot of stresses coming out from all over the place that make it hard to maintain my mental health and and most people will be in the same boat and that’s that’s that is what it is the best we can do is to shore ourselves up and make sure that when things are relatively calm like they are at the moment that we are recharging ourselves and making sure that we’re ready for what might come next and if nothing bad comes next if everything is rosy and everyone’s happy then you’ve got that extra energy to do something else but I think it’s not pessimistic to say I need to be fit and ready for whatever the world may throw at me both good and bad and and to do that I need to be not completely broken again um I’m not going to worry too much about what’s going on in the world at the moment it’s really easy to end up doom scrolling on uh well I don’t use twitter because it’s evil but I’m on blue sky at the moment and it’s very easy to get stuck in a scrolling loop on that uh outraging yourself about what Donald Trump or Elon Musk has done now and and it’s fine and I get my fix but I got very uh badly addicted to twitter back in the day and it was very very um destructive for me and so I’m much better at rationing myself on that stuff and plus it’s a good place for me to sort of rant and and talk about stuff that I care about and to share my artwork and so on and so um you know I just need to be careful that I get don’t get too emotionally dragged into this stuff I’m really worried and outraged about what’s going on everywhere but on the other hand um I’m not going to be able to fight the good fight if I’m permanently angry or permanently depressed or broken or anxious I’m much better off keeping half an eye on what’s going on focusing on the things that I can do and the things I can change and just be ready to maneuver if things change for the worse or indeed for the better the other thing I’m not going to do is the exact opposite of that I’m not going to sweat the small stuff and and this is a thing I’m actually relatively good at anyway um which is just things happen from a day-to-day basis there’s no need to attach too much um emphasis on any bad thing that happens or mistake or fuck up or a piece of art that it doesn’t work or or something like break or whatever and I need to keep doing that because all the little things will build up and build up and build up and and and suddenly they’ll hold together them out to a big thing and that’s a big bad thing um and you’re better off sweating the the good stuff and and and looking for all the good little things and letting them build up to a big good thing right and and so I’m not going to sweat the small stuff and I’m going to try and help the people around me not do that next I’m not going to worry too much about what people think of me and my work again I’m all right at this but I can get sucked into this vortex of of self-doubt quite easily and I I’m aware my logical brain is well aware that um you know that I shouldn’t pay too much attention about what people say I shouldn’t feel pay too much attention to the fact that I don’t sell a lot of art um and uh my art is sort of a fairly niche thing uh I’ll find my audience eventually and and if people don’t like my stuff it’s just they’re not my audience if people don’t like the way I present myself or or or when I’m sort of presenting my sort of I don’t want to use the word authentic I hate it but the the unmasked me um I I if they don’t like that then they don’t like it I’m I’m a bit marmite as a person you either like me or you don’t and and that’s fine and I and people are welcome to to test like me and I know the people who do like me and they’re good people um uh because they like me obviously um so I just need to not worry too much about that sort of stuff and try my hardest not to get sucked into these uh doom spirals of of uh of low self-esteem um and low self-confidence um and next relating to what I was saying earlier about social I’m not gonna I spent a lot way too much time in 2024 stressing about my social profiles and how the algorithms were ignoring me and my art and all this stuff particularly meta i Facebook and um Instagram but I I even had a foreign to TikTok boost guy is working quite well for me uh Twitter I ditched um but the the meta is broken meta is not fit for purpose anymore very few people I know enjoy it I don’t see the post from people I care about I don’t see the post from stuff that I followed I uh no one seems to see my stuff I spent some advertising money or increasing my um Facebook and Instagram follow account and it had absolutely no effect on my engagement because follows don’t matter on meta anymore people if people don’t regularly like your stuff they won’t see it and maybe that’s right that’s maybe that’s the way it should be but it wasn’t always that way and people seemed happier before um and quite frankly what I’m jostling with what I’m fighting for attention with is not other artists or other celebrities I’m jostling for visibility with advert after advert after advert and and that’s quite galling and and I recognize that meta needs to make money but they have made a lot of money and and their agenda as recent um news about them would suggest is is is not very focused on their users so um and we can see that they’ve turned into a very political entity and I’ve got very little uh interest and so I’m unlikely to be actually winding down my output to meta and I’ll be looking for different channels to to promote myself my art this podcast and to try and be more creative and and and to try and find my audience where my audience are and find them in a way that that suits them and makes them want to come and experience the things that I make um and I don’t think unless meta changes dramatically are they have much of a place in that uh and finally I’m not going to worry if no one listens to this podcast I get a fair few listeners I’m not Mr Beast um you know I’m not Joe Rogan thank god I don’t have legions of listeners now um and maybe I never will partly I do this for me um and and it’s something I enjoy doing I get a lot out of and it it opens all sorts of doors for me and I do hope more people listen to this and and I but only if they get value from it and and and I want to um I want to reach people I want to spread the word on on art as a therapeutic outlet um but you know I’ve got a I’ve got a little group of listeners and and thank you all I love you all thank you so much for for tuning in regularly uh and and please tell more people and please spread the words and you know I don’t expect to ever make any money out of this really I don’t I don’t really know where my endgame here is it’s as ever my mantra it’s about the process just keep turning up um and we’ll see but if I could get a wider listener base and I could um you know make a little bit of money to cover my costs on this and that would be incredible and and it would really be motivating so um I’m not going to worry too much if people aren’t listening but that isn’t going to stop me from trying to get more people to listen so that’ll do for now I could probably talk about um a bunch more stuff and I’ve probably missed some absolutely mission critical things you know I think you should consider the you know as already said the the obvious things like I’m gonna look after my family I’m gonna try and make some money I’m going to try and spend more time outdoors all of these things um that I do sort of anyway and I need to keep those things up um I’ve really tried to sort of focus here on the stuff that relates directly to my artistic creative endeavors and my mental health and I’m doing this in the new year um this is kind of when people expect it I think if I piped up with this in the middle of July people would think I’m a bit weird but you know the new year Christmas this stuff is a bit of an arbitrary boundary it has some significance in terms of you know the the um the path of the the earth around the sun and and so on and um you know we we’ve reached the shortest day and we’re now getting to longer days again and and obviously the Christmas new year period is very much a sort of a break but it in some ways it’s it’s sort of arbitrary and a bit meaningless but psychologically on on most people certainly in the western world it has a lot of significance and so you know we get this concept of new year’s resolutions now now this this the podcast episode here is this is not a new year’s resolution the things that I’ve said here are not new year’s resolutions they’re just intense they’re just uh um an agenda or uh maybe even like an attitude that I want to take to this year because I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions I think they’re they’re more often than not destructive and and counterproductive because if you set big goals and you and you fail you feel like a failure if you set small goals then you you just feel like you’re being lazy um and and will those goals regardless of whether you achieve them or not regardless whether they were valid or relevant will they have any meaning in a year’s time will they have any meaning in a month’s time Jesus the world we’re in at the moment uh who the fuck knows right so I I don’t really see that they’re very useful but uh my my attitude on on achieving stuff for better or for worse is you sort of pick a destination uh and you head vaguely towards that and you hope you get there but you don’t mind too much if you don’t and and along the way you might see a better destination anyway and and and zip off to that and you shouldn’t consider not having got to the your first choice of destination as a failure uh it’s just you know you got to pick a direction if you’re you’re setting off and you’re jetty across the border you see a bunch of islands in front of you pick the one that looks like you might want to go there but if you end up at one of the other ones then so be it worst case scenario you just get back on your boat again and head back towards the your first choice so I sort of view things like that I see the the things that I’ve I’ve said in this this episode as as less like the the destination and more like the boat itself and and just this is what I’m going to take with me here’s the things I’m going to put in my boat here’s here’s my general direction um and here’s here’s how I’m going to approach it and the attitude I’m going to sit out with and and I’m really excited to see um where this all ends up and and and it’s going to be interesting I don’t I think I would be and everyone else will be incredibly surprised if we end up at this time next year looking back at 2025 and going well that was a boring year not much happened um I I find that extremely unlikely uh my life has to change um in the next year I have to find some money from somewhere um and I might well have to move out of this house so we might have a another house move on uh on on the go um and any number of other things could occur and so look it’s a bit scary uh I’m I’m certainly not in a in a solid position from my financial perspective but it’s going to be interesting as the old adage goes may you have interesting times well I I do hope my times and your times are a good type of interesting um and uh and and I hope we all get this get through this on unscathed um but as I keep saying and I’ll keep saying over and over again it’s a journey that counts focus on the journey and see where it takes you and and maybe we can swap some more stories in a few months time otherwise uh I’ll see you soon thanks bye