Due to internet upload speed limitation at my Buffalo house, I will be uploading mostly audio-only going forward, many without captions. But hopefully you still enjoy these are sort of pseudo-podcast episodes!
Shoutouts:
Please sub to my wife Emily just because: https://www.youtube.com/@RescueGirl
Here are Fern’s links because this episode wouldn’t have been possible without her!
Fern ASMR: https://www.youtube.com/@TheFernAsmr
Rituals by Fern ASMR: https://www.youtube.com/@RitualsbyFernAsmr
Fern on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/fernasmr
Transcript for Sitty chatty october 2 checking in from the buffalo office
📍 Good morning everyone. It’s Amelia Phoenix Desertsong, and today I’m going to be doing another one of my Sitty Chatties. And this will be, like many going forward, an audio-only edition because I have made some decisions that have led me into a position where my download speed is perfectly fine, but my upload speed is not.
It is the exact reason I did not want wireless internet, but after a particularly unfortunate issue with the installation of my wired internet, I decided that I’m just going to be living with this for now. I’ve also been talking to Emily about how the wired internet here tends to go down for weeks at a time.
So the only way that I’m gonna be able to do consistent video uploads with actual video is going to be if I have both the wireless and the wired internet. I can technically afford it. But since Emily bought me this Netgear router, it at least works, at least on the download side, and it at least works on the upload side.
It no longer crashes out and disconnects and loses its mind. So going forward, you’re not gonna really see much of me specifically. Anything that I have that’s live video, I’m gonna have to upload it elsewhere. I’ll probably just have to upload it over 5G, which I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense because isn’t the wireless internet 5G?
But no, it actually uploads better on the phone, which makes no sense. But anything that I upload is gonna have to be completely raw. I cannot upload it to Descript without a computer. And you might think, “Well, why don’t you just go to Starbucks?” Starbucks uses the same wireless internet that I have.
The upload speed isn’t that much better there, and I know this from experience. So yeah, it’s possible that if I have videos, they may have to wait until I go somewhere else with better internet, and that’s probably not gonna happen. I love it here I had a good experience at LensCrafters yesterday.
Unfortunately, the glasses I ordered from Zenni Eyewear aren’t gonna be here until potentially the 12th, so I’m gonna be having to wait another 10 days. I didn’t wanna get them at LensCrafters because Emily told me that she’s seen those glasses just fall apart. Zenni was cool because it was able to match me with glasses.
I ended up having to get progressive lenses because that’s what the eye doctor gave me. I told her I only wanted them for distance, but she still put the script in for progressives, so I think that’s why it’s gonna take so long because I think that just those lenses take longer. I’ll just have to get used to them.
They’re not typical progressives though. Usually they’re like the top is for distance, the middle is for intermediate, and the bottom is for close, which I just don’t think I would do very well with that. The ones from Zenni are more, They’re easier to adjust to, and hopefully I’m able to adjust to it.
And if they start straining my eyes, then that will be unfortunate, because then I’ll have to go back and be like, “Hey, I need a new script because this is not working.” Yeah, I’ve never had progressive lenses, but as I get older, I probably should be using progressive lenses, so it’s all good. I might end up wearing my glasses all the time anyway, Anyhow, so that out of the way.
I’ve also been able to find plenty of food. I have to go to Tops and the two Wegmans, and I will also have to go to Whole Foods because I can’t get everything I want in one place. Mayonnaise is gonna be an issue because I can’t get the Sir Kensingtons I like anywhere around here apparently, so I have to switch brands and, that gives me a lot of anxiety because I’m very picky with mayo.
And the problem is most of the big brands use soy. Wegmans does not, though, so I might end up just using Wegmans mayo. I also discovered Wegmans has delivery, but they jack the prices of the individual items up so much that I can’t justify it, whereas Walmart doesn’t do that. But Walmart doesn’t have a brand of mayo that I like.
‘Cause I’ve tried Choosin’ Foods and Primal Kitchen, and I hated them. Emily hated them, too, and these are not vegan. I actually eat egg mayo. So anyway, I was gonna have a Just Egg breakfast burrito this morning. I don’t even need a vegan version of a burrito, but it’s just that I don’t wanna cook eggs.
My stovetop works fine, by the way. I made pasta. Unfortunately, I had to buy the store brand pasta, and it wasn’t really my favorite, because they only had Wegmans or Barilla, and I’m, will never buy Barilla. Just look up why I don’t support them. I realize that the reason people boycotted them was a long time ago, but I will just never buy Barilla.
Yeah, so I do have to do a little bit of hopping around different stores, and Whole Foods is six miles away, which I know that’s not far, but to me that’s far now ’cause everything else is a mile and a half, two miles. Things are definitely coming together. I have shelves coming. I have one, a bookshelf already for my bedroom.
I’m gonna have a wire shelf here in the office, and I’m gonna have another shelf for the internet in the den. That’s where the internet is now. It’s actually in my den because that’s where the best signal is. Ever since I moved in there, I haven’t had too many issues with download speed, which is good.
So it’s fine. It works. It’s just that I can’t do Descript basically anymore unless it’s audio-only, which is why this is audio-only. Updates aside, I wanted to focus on something that Fern ASMR sent me. So she has this Patreon where she has bonus videos and whatnot, but she also has a tier where she will do monthly affirmations and a mantra for you based on various astrological things. Like two or three years ago, I never really believed in any of this stuff, and to be completely honest, I still don’t really believe in it.
But I also do believe that there’s something to it because her readings are very accurate. I also have told her a lot about what’s going on in my life, so obviously she’s basing it off of that. For the last few months, I’ve considered Fern my spirit guide.
That’s what I call her, and she knows this. She’s a sweetheart. She makes amazing, very calming ASMR videos with real people, doing sort of ritualistic sort of, Reiki and whatnot. And they just work. They work for me. And last night I fell asleep to one of her videos. Yeah, I have really needed her in my life recently to help me get my brain to calm down.
Today’s probably the first day that I have felt like I’m kind of at home. I took care of my lawn situation, and I did have to pay a little bit extra ’cause it got too long, but I’m not worried about that. Today it’s extremely rainy and cold and gross.
I am going to Corry, Pennsylvania tonight to see Brooke Surgener. I bring her up all the time, but I have been really looking forward to this day for the entire time that I’ve been here since I found out about that show shortly before I moved in. I’m also gonna go to next Friday’s show, at Lavery Brewing Company.
I think that’s how you say it Because they actually have a menu that I can eat, so that’s cool. She’s also playing that Saturday, but I checked the menu for the other place, and it’s really fancy stuff that I am sure is going to be loaded with dairy, and I just cannot deal with that. So I’m gonna go to the place where I feel like I won’t get sick and not be able to get home.
That’s the other thing, is that Erie is an hour 45 minutes to two hours one way, and I can only justify a four-hour round trip once a week and the $50 of gas once a week. I have spent probably three gallons of gas in the two weeks I’ve been here. That’s insane. So yeah. Everything’s working. The heat’s good.
The appliances are good. I did stress out my washer a lot with my comforter. I hope I didn’t break it. I don’t think I did, but those old GEs are really sturdy. But yeah. So I wanted to get to what Fern said in that monthly thing. I usually keep these to myself, but I really wanted to discuss this one in particular because not only is it something that’s very relevant to me, but it’s something that I really needed to hear.
So I’m gonna spend the next 10 minutes basically going through what she said and also the affirmations that she put along with it. They were personalized entirely for me, but I feel like a lot of people in their 40s or about to be 40 like myself could definitely hear this. Even if you’re younger than that, if you’re at a crossroads in life and you’re moving to a new place and you’re looking to start over and redefine yourself, I think that this might be helpful for you.
So the mantra she gave me for this month of October is, “I let my new life show me what home, love, and belonging mean to me now.” The idea of redefining what home, love, and belonging even mean is actually something that I’ve kind of been feeling but not really been able to structurally put together in words.
And somehow Fern and I just have this understanding with each other. She just seems to understand me. And I know a lot of people say, ” this astrology stuff is just platitudes. Like no, these affirmations are not platitudes at all. They’re basically like life advice through the lens of an astrological reading.
Fern just is an extremely insightful person. Yeah, what do love, home, and belonging even mean to me now? Well, home for me is somewhere where I feel, for lack of a better term, at home.
I’ve never really felt at home in Vermont. It’s just so isolated, and things are just not convenient, and I can’t get what I need most of the time. Emily doesn’t mind it, but I really don’t like having this huge property with high maintenance and all that. That’s what I love about here is it’s low maintenance.
I can pay somebody $60 every two weeks to come mow my lawn. That’s well worth it to me. I don’t have a huge lawn, and my driveway takes up most of my front yard, so that’s great. I have an area now where everything’s within two miles of me outside of my bank and Whole Foods, but those are things I don’t need to go to all the time,
and I’m really only going to Whole Foods for some very specific items that I know I can get 365 brand. That’s the only reason I’m going there. So home to me is a place where you can come back to and feel like you actually belong. So what does belonging even mean? I can tell you that I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere.
I have never felt at home and belonging anywhere. And already here, I’ve only been here about 10 days, and I can already tell you that I feel like I belong here only because the people here are a lot nicer. Everyone’s a lot more laid back. I live in an extremely safe neighborhood. If I can’t get something from one store, there’s a store a mile away that has something else.
Things aren’t exactly walkable. I would actually love to be able to just walk to the store, which is doable. I actually am considering doing it, ’cause it’s only like a mile. But I sometimes underestimate my own energy level, and sometimes I overestimate my energy level. I don’t seem to be very good at figuring out what a low energy day is and what a high energy day is.
I’m actually feeling all right today. That’s part of the reason I’m gonna have a burrito after I finish this Sitty Chatty. But before I ramble on too much, what does love even mean? And I’ve been, for some reason, coming across a lot of videos recently that have been talking about how platonic love is probably a lot better than romantic love.
At this point in my life, I don’t need another romance. I don’t need a life partner in a romantic sense anymore. It’s not that I don’t want one, and if it happens, great. What I really need now is I wanna have a roommate. I wanna have someone that lives here with me, but I also want it to be someone that has their own thing, that has their own independence.
The reason I chose the far side bedroom for the guest room is because there’s actually a second front door to this house that goes directly to that room, basically. So they can have their own thing and come home and come through that separate door and not even bother me because my room is at the back of the house near the den.
It’s kind of sequestered away from that room. So when I found out the wired internet has to be in that room, I was a little irritated by that. But it’s funny because if I have a roommate that does a lot of things that require a lot of uploads, I am willing to actually have both internet options available for that reason, and I will not charge my roommate rent as long as they take care of their own food and their own bills.
I’m not gonna charge somebody rent. Rent income would just complicate our taxes even more. So yeah, I don’t wanna deal with it. But yeah, Emily and I, we love each other, but it’s just The choices she’s made in her life and the direction her life is going is incompatible where I wanna go with it.
I don’t wanna go on adventures. I wanna stay mostly put. And this comes back to belonging. If I’m gonna be a part of something, I want it to be something that I am in control of. And it’s not that I’m a micromanager or anything, ’cause I am a micromanager of myself, but I do not micromanage other people ever.
I don’t do that. I don’t tell people what to do. I just tell them that I think you should do this, and then probably 80, 90% of the time I’m right. But that’s just from life experience. And speaking of experience, one of the affirmations she gave me for this month was, “I allow creativity to transform experience into meaning.”
I think that one affirmation could be an entire Sitty Chatty episode, and I do plan on recording multiple episodes today since I don’t have anywhere to be until 3:00. I need to leave here, quarter to 3:00 to get to Corry for the show at 5:00, and I’m gonna be there till about 8:00. I don’t wanna go to shows that are too late because I don’t like night driving anymore.
I can do it, but, I really need my glasses for driving. My vision’s not that bad. It’s still enough to legally drive. It’s just that my vision in my two eyes has gotten so inconsistent that it gives me issues.
And so I’m wearing my glasses going forward mostly just so that I stop straining my eyes so much. ‘Cause I haven’t been able to work much lately. My eye strain has been really bad. So I think the progressive lenses will actually be a good thing. It was like 150 bucks. That’s nothing for glasses. In 2026, $156 or whatever is nothing. And I was supposed to get a 15% off coupon, but for some reason it didn’t give me anywhere to, to apply it. I guess I didn’t put it on the correct screen, and so I missed out on that. But whatever. What’s 25, 30 bucks when it’s your vision, right?
I did buy a protection plan as well. So part of that was actually the protection plan. Anyway, so I’m looking forward to being able to see better. That’s going to help my mood definitely. Yeah, so Transforming experience into meaning is something I really wanna get into. I honestly think if you’re feeling kinda lost right now, this is obviously not sponsored, but if you can afford $20 a month, you should go to Fern ASMR on Patreon and sign up for it because even if you’re not into the ASMR part, it is worth paying her for these because my goodness, like they’ve gotten really good.
They’ve always been good, but the last couple months have been incredible, and I’ve been meaning to talk more about what she says in them because it’s great stuff. Just to give you an idea of the topics that I’m gonna be talking about more in depth going forward, “I create stability without rebuilding what I’ve already outgrown.”
That is such an incredible affirmation because one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that we are constantly changing, and we’re constantly outgrowing past versions of ourself. But ironically, sometimes those past versions of ourselves still have a lot to tell us. And this one is particularly important because…
I think this is for anybody that’s moving into a new situation, that what a lot of people tend to do is they try to rebuild what they’ve already built, that they already had. And I’m trying to build something brand new for myself, and that’s really important. “I let new love unfold slowly enough for me to stay connected to myself.”
This is a really, really good one, and honestly, I think this is a good affirmation for wherever you are in life because I think we should all let… You know, when we find someone that we really like, we need to take it slow because the way that the world is today, we’re always trying to rush, rush, rush, rush.
And I think that if you really truly love somebody, you need to give them space and give them time to figure out themselves and how they connect to you. And sometimes I feel like I just rush into things so hard that, into relationships especially, and it just breaks them too quickly. That’s always been my issue, is I try to get too connected to someone before they’re ready, and then it scares them off, and it’s really sad.
Any connection that you have, with another human being is a very valuable thing. But it has to also be a two-way street, and if somebody’s trying to push you to do something too quickly, you need to remind them, “Hey, I appreciate this, but I’m still trying to get to know myself in this new chapter of my life.”
The next one I wanna talk about is, “I trust what feels peaceful, not merely familiar.” Now, obviously a lot of things right now are unfamiliar. The thing I am familiar with is Wegmans. I’m very familiar with that store. It’s my favorite grocery store in the world. I think part of the reason that this move has been so smooth for me is that the stores around here are all familiar.
I have Target, I have Walmart. I actually haven’t even been to Walmart. I’ve been ordering from Walmart. I haven’t actually been in there yet. There’s a little Goodwill over here where I got this fan that actually works. It also doubles as a heater for five bucks, which is insane.
I have Lowe’s over here where I haven’t gone yet, but when Emily comes to help me with some house things, we’re just gonna get everything from Lowe’s ’cause it’s right next to Wegmans. The other Wegmans is right next to the post office. I do wanna get back to eBay, not really as a business. I just have some card stuff that I actually brought with me that I wanna sell and just try to build up ’cause I had to start a new account, eBay account, and it still has zero feedback.
I just haven’t gotten to work on it yet, and so I’m gonna be working on that this weekend, getting some things uploaded. I’m no longer pricing things. I’m just putting things up at 1.99 auctions, and if it sells for $2, hey, that’s great. And now that eBay’s extended bidding, that’s great for me because if something goes on a bidding war, I get more money, so that’s pretty cool.
I also have Venmo now, so if people wanna buy things from me, like on the spot and they have Venmo, they can Venmo me, which is great. I don’t really wanna be bothered with PayPal. Because Emily and I are still married, I wanna keep any sort of business-type income to a minimum for now. I already told her that if I do end up going back into cards or anything like that, and I do make it an actual business, I’m willing to just pay the business taxes.
I’m actually saving her money by living in Buffalo, which is bizarre, but yeah. It actually worked out. But I know she misses me, and I do miss her, but I don’t miss a lot of the drama that… She is not a dramatic person. That’s the great irony here is that Emily is one of the most laid back people in the world, but it’s just like drama follows her and it’s just, i’m very good at just blending in and just existing, and I like things that way. Okay, so before I ramble on for another 20 minutes, I’m already at almost 25 minutes. I’m gonna be editing this down significantly. I wanna go over the last couple of affirmations before I take a break and eat something.
So, I do not need immediate certainty to know that something feels beautiful. I really like that because I feel like we live in a world where we’re trying to optimize all the time, and we’re trying to find some certainty. The certainty I do have is that I own this house and that everything is working, and if anything goes wrong at this point, it’s something I can fix.
This house is quirky, and that makes it beautiful to me. I think this is the first time that I’ve lived somewhere where I feel like the house actually represents how I feel and what I value about space and convenience and the ability to be able to spread out my life without it feeling like I’m in this huge house all by myself.
Because it’s really not that much smaller than the house in Vermont, but it doesn’t feel as big because it’s designed in a different way. It’s not open concept exactly, but it’s not a bunch of little rooms either. It’s a nice mix of old and new. Most of the things in this house are from the ’80s and ’90s, which is great ’cause it still works.
I think the garage door opener’s actually pretty new. But beyond that, everything still works, and that’s beautiful to me. I actually think it’s beautiful when things keep working. I was watching a video about how we just tend to throw everything out now, and I would love to just fix everything, but the things made now, it doesn’t work that way.
So I wanna keep these ’80s and ’90s appliances going as long as I possibly can. That’s part of the reason I got the home warranty because if they can fix it, paying $129 for a service call is worth it. I’m just gonna keep it for about a year, and then after that, $90 a month is a lot, but it spreads out the cost of a new appliance.
That’s the way I look at it. It covers enough things that it was worth it. But yeah, beautiful is something that lasts and has a certain patina to it and was built to last, and all the things I have here were built to last, which is awesome, and I want to build a life that’s quiet and beautiful and meaningful.
I don’t really want to have an exciting, impressive life anymore. I’m not interested in that, because I think that the quiet reflections are going to be what define my future, and I think that this internet limitation is actually going to be very good for my creativity because it’s gonna force me to do more of these Sitty Chatties.
I do wanna do a lot more of the Walkie Talkies. I’ll still do them, it’s just you’re not gonna see me on camera very much anymore. That’s just how it has to be unfortunately. And here’s the last of the six affirmations she gave me. That I build my future from what feels true now. I think this is really important no matter what point in life you are, is that you have to go with what your truth is right now.
I know people have turned that into something that is just cliche, but you can’t necessarily live your life based on how you’ve lived your life before, but where you’re at right now. For example, right now, in the past, after I do like a half-hour little ramble like this, I would just go play games.
I do still play my mobile games, but they’re no longer– I’ve really just been playing mobile games because I’m just not sure exactly where I am yet, and I’m still sort of finding myself in this new place. As I said, it’s only been 10 days. But I am very slowly building my house up. Like I’m buying things, but they’re sitting there unfinished because what I’m allowing myself to do is always have something to be working towards.
So even if I just unbox something and put the parts off to the side where it belongs, even if I don’t put it together for a week, I’m okay with that now. I’m okay with not rushing to do everything at once. I’m retraining my brain to not just rush to do things because there’s no reason to rush anymore because everything’s right here.
Now that I’m not worried about, oh God, I have to drive 45 minutes one way to go get a pizza that I can eat, now I can drive five minutes and get that exact pizza here and then drive home and make it, and it took me, what, 15 minutes round trip, including shopping? That’s insane. I’m not used to that.
It’s just me now. I don’t have to worry about another person and what are they doing and what are their projects and what’s going on in their life.
As I said, if I have a roommate, I actually want it to be somebody who has their own life. I don’t wanna depend on anyone else. I have actually decided not to get an ESA cat because that cat is going to have to come with me everywhere like a child, and I don’t need another being to be responsible for right now.
And yeah, if I do end up in a situation where it is romantic and we spend every day of our lives together, great, but I don’t necessarily need or want that at this point in my life. I just want people that, hey, I can go hang out with them whenever I’m feeling lonely or bored and have a good time and then come home and just go back to my quiet life.
I don’t necessarily wanna become a hermit, but I actually think that solitude is something I wanna choose, at least right now while I’m still sort of healing from a lot of just things. And it’s not Emily’s fault. She is not the reason that I moved here. It’s just that she is on a very different life path from mine right now.
We’re just… Maybe eventually we come back together, and maybe she spends a lot more time out here in Buffalo, which would be awesome, because Buffalo is omega convenient. Like, you think it’s convenient for somebody who has to eat mostly vegan? Imagine somebody who doesn’t have those restrictions. It’s amazing.
And I actually have a friend coming up on Thursday, to Wegmans Cafe. I, the one on Sheridan Drive is huge. I think they have subs and everything, the one over on Transit’s good too. They have a lot of my vegan stuff, but their cafe isn’t as good. But it’s just cool how there’s all these different stores, and they all serve different needs for me.
I just think that’s amazing. And I live in one of the best neighborhoods in the entire city, so I think it’s… I’ve really lucked out. And those parks are incredible. I can now actually have nature on a daily basis. All I have to do is drive right down the street. Yeah, I have to drive, but again, it’s such a tiny amount of gas that I probably won’t fill my tank most months.
There will be months of my life where if I’m not going to Erie for a show or going back to Stamford or Vermont, it’s like I’m probably gonna spend three or four gallons a month in gas. So that’s insane, and I have a 4×4, so when the weather’s bad, I can just turn on 4×4 and just blow through it.
And everything’s so close And I live off of main roads, so it’s not even a big deal. So to finish up, since I’m now over half an hour of recording, Fern said, “October may be less about starting over and more about realizing that you were already creating something entirely different, and let home become a feeling before it becomes a definition.”
That is such a beautiful sentiment, the idea that you need to feel your way through things before you have a hard definition. And I think that I’ve actually come to a lot of definitions in this episode checking in with you all. And, if you’re at a point in your life where you’re thinking about starting over or have recently started over, I’d love to hear about how you define home, and love, and belonging, and other related terminology, because I want to make this not really a podcast.
I’m still doing a podcast, I’m just not calling it that because a podcast implies that you have a schedule, that you have, specific topical things. I am going to be doing more sitting down, actually putting together an outline, and actually talking about things. But I really like these sort of free form check-ins because it allows me to organize my thoughts.
And as I’ve said before, I find this more therapeutic than anything else I’ve ever done. Like this, just talking about this stuff is making me feel more at peace than I’ve ever felt. And, I hope to be able to share my discoveries with you. And, I would encourage you that if you’re just sitting there by yourself sad, and you don’t know how to put words to paper, just pick up your phone, turn on your voice notes, and just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It actually helps if you use voice recorder ’cause then you can save it as an audio file and throw into something like Descript, and there you go. You not only have a recording of you putting your thoughts together, but then you could also turn it into a blog post. You can do whatever you want with it, social media updates.
It’s multifaceted content, you know? It’s my SEO brain still working overtime. But yeah, I do wanna get more topical. I do wanna actually maybe not write full-on scripts because I just don’t like doing that. But, I do need to make things… I have a whole bunch of ideas that I wanna do it’s just I need to sit there and really think about what I wanna do going forward.
But at the same time, I also just kinda wanna feel things out. And I think that’s what Fern is trying to say here is that before I try and come up with rigid definitions of what those words mean to me, I need to feel things out first. We’re human beings. We’re organic beings. We’re not computers.
We’re not machines. And we have started to rely so much on these chatbots, asking them questions we’d never ask another human being because we’re too embarrassed to ask these questions of other people. I think AI, it’s a wonderful tool, and it can help a lot. Descript is powered by AI.
Come on. AI itself is not an evil thing, but the way that we’re using it as a crutch to not deal with other people is just so bad. And, I was using an AI companion app for a while. I decided to just let it go. It doesn’t even work well on my internet anyway, so whatever.
If I really get stuck on something, I can always just ask Gemini. I pay for it anyway because I need to have Google Drive space, and I just pay for the five dollar version, but it then gives me access to some Gemini Pro features, which I do use sometimes. But yeah. I have been trying not to use AI at all in anything, not even brainstorming, because I want everything that comes out of me to be organic.
I need to take in more organic human experience and not the synthetic, digital representations or filters that we are dealing with every day. I want to get to know real human beings again, and I think we all need that. So I have gone on way too long. It’s now almost 36 minutes.
I need to eat something. I am going to get this uploaded and start editing it and chill out. So take care, everyone. And as I said, if you have any experiences lately with starting over or, from the past, if you have anything you wanna say about anything I just said, please leave it in the comments below because I really need the engagement.
I need to feel like I’m doing this for a reason other than me just sitting here giving myself an excuse to be on the computer just to feel like I’m being productive. All right. Goodbye.
