In Episode 39 of the Creative Work Hour Podcast, we explore the concept of balance, discussing how to navigate personal and external expectations. Join Greg, Alessandra, Hilary, Dr. Melanie, Nate, Bobby B, and Shadows Pub as they share insights and strategies for recognizing and managing imbalance in their lives.

Greg
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the creative work hour podcast. Today is February the 1st 2025. This is episode 39 and today we're going to be talking about balance and how you know when something's out of balance. In the room today, you've got myself, we've Alessandra, Hilary, Dr. Melanie, Nate, Bobby B, and Shadows Pub. And today's question came about from a conversation we were having last night in our Practice Not Perfect. So I'll just get on with the question and we'll go around the room. How do you know, or sorry, how do you balance your personal expectations versus what's expected of you?

Greg
And how do you know when there's something out of balance? And Alessandra, we were talking about this last night, weren't we?

Alessandra
We were. And the whole idea is we all have work to do. And some of that work can be work to pay the bills. And some of that work can be work to keep your head screwed on straight. And not every day is the same day, day in, day out. There are times of crunch. There are times of project deadlines. There are times of union negotiations. There are times when you're supposed to be doing your thing. And you get COVID. Son of a gun. But it is. It's like a teeter-totter. So when we're in the perfect balance is a theoretical absurdity.

Alessandra
I'm not saying balance is bullshit. I'm not saying that. I'm saying balance is a theoretical absurdity. Here is our analogy. Dr. Melanie, here is the-

Dr Melonie
Theoretical absurdity, I love it.

Alessandra
Take a teeter-totter. Oh, we love our playground equipment. Take a teeter-totter and that fulcrum is, there's your balance. So on your teeter-totter, does it make any sense to draw the thing perfectly in balance? No, because some little kid weighs more than the other little kid. Or you get two scrawny little kids, but then there's two of them. You're out of balance, right? So some of that is absolutely functional. The perfect, perfect, perfect balance doesn't exist because we're always moving and things move through time. There's crunch time, then there's getting over crunch time. Like for instance, one of my parts is a musician.

Alessandra
and I'll work up to something for an audition or I'll work up to something on a performance. And so I'm really heavy on expectations of others, but how do I balance what I expect of myself and why am I there? The creative health of that is to be there for myself. to show what I have to show, to give what I have to give for others, not in the expectation of them. The thing that I know when I'm out of balance is when I cut my practice short, or I skip a day, or two, or more, and you have to pay for that, but likewise, totally in the spotlight, on the stage, doing the thing, playing it, playing the hell out of it.

Alessandra
What happens after that? Also, it's good, it's what I wanted, but it's out of balance. And I know that because I may feel blues, I may feel a little depressed after the big event. So balance may not be what you've always thought it is, but it's a very handy thing of how to negotiate with doing the big things. What do you think of that, Dr. Melanie? I saw you resonating with that all in your body language. And you very recently, when you came to visit me in Leeds, read the book on how to do big things.

Dr Melonie
Well, that's true. So here's what I thought in the beginning, because without taking notes, I can't respond to all that. In ice skating, which I learned as a two and a half year old, you're balanced on one point of a blade. When we moved to a horse farm in South Jersey, there were no ice rinks, but there was a roller skating rink. On roller skating, you have a couple of different points of balance. And so my brother and I started roller skating, and my mom, who was a professional ice skater, would come every so often, and she'd go over in the practice area, and you'd hear, da-da-da-da, boom!

Dr Melonie
Da-da-da-da-da, boom! Because she could not adjust her center of balance to being on four wheels instead of one point on a blade. So all the jumps and all the spins, she ended up on her butt. So that's what I thought of that. I mean, theoretical absurdity is, you know, balance is only out of balance when you don't feel good, and then we call it that. But I don't know when the hell we're in balance, to tell you the truth, except if that's when we're feeling well. And of course, if that's the case, then the Buddhists have it all over all of us.

Dr Melonie

So, you know, But what I do when I feel out of balance is lately, I just give myself a break. I'm like, oh, it's OK. You didn't do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this you were supposed to. And if I'm really serious about it, I prioritize what this, this, this is I need to look at. And if all of them can wait a little bit longer, then I go get a Chinese foot rub for an hour. And then I'm imbalanced. And then I start with the priority list. So, Hilary, you look very balanced over there with that cat.

Greg
Yeah, Hilary, how do you know when there's something out of balance?

Hillary
How do I know when something's out of balance? So you're talking about, you know, our creating and our personal expectation versus external expectations. So to know if something's out of balance, you need to know where you're at and where, what the expectation is. And then that will map out where you are in the balance on that teeter-totter. So without that evaluation, you don't even know where you're at to find out if you're out of balance. Now you could sit there and say, it's an internal feeling, you know, like I know something's wrong and I don't know what, but this is how you would find out what is wrong by evaluating.

Hillary
And knowing what the expectation is, has that been clearly defined? Often it's not, because we as people, when expressing things that we need, we've got a lot of information stuck in our head, a lot of context in our head. And getting all that out to make sure the person receives the expectation appropriately, well, that's a different conversation. But let's say you did get the good information. So now you've intrinsically absorbed some external information of an expectation, and then you incorporate your personal views into that. You know, what does that mean to you then to provide someone something that's now expected of you?

Hillary
And then you can really go into that balance, or you can work deliberately to maintain that balance of staying true to yourself to provide what's being requested. And then, you know, meeting the needs that they've requested. So, Oh, I think from there, that gives you what you need to get started. But again, like Alessandra was saying, it's never, we don't reach equilibrium. We don't stay there. We can reach it. There's a moment, but it's fleeting, which is fine. Because if you were to stay there, then you would stay there. You would have no momentum to move.

Hillary
And so through the teeter-totter is how you keep going because your personal expectation versus the external expectation, if you're mindful of it, you can really swing forward and let each of those drive you further to enhance the experience for both parties. And that's my two cents.

Greg
Hillary, I'm over here smiling because this is such a huge topic when you start to unpack it. And listening to you work through that out loud, Alessandra and I were kind of doing that earlier when we were balancing this off each other. And it really is when you balance, you know, the personal versus the external. But Nate, I can see that you kind of brewing something up there. How do you know when there's something out of balance?

Nate
I don't think I do. And I think I accept that I don't. And I think it cuts both ways. Like, I think I don't realize how in balance I might actually be in the moments that I feel out of balance. And I don't fully realize how out of balance I am in the moments that I might feel balanced. And I think there's some freedom I think there's some freedom in accepting that I don't totally know. But the thing that you said, Hilary, about if you're always balanced all the time, there's like a static quality. And you have to get thrown out of balance.

Nate
And I think that's a lot of my MO. Like, if I feel myself out of balance, sometimes I'll just keep pushing myself out of balance because I just want to see where it breaks. And I don't know if that's a great habit. I don't know if I would encourage my kids to do that. But like, It actually works for me better than being like, I'm out of balance. I better go over here now. Like, forget it. That's not going to work. Let me, all right, there's the edge. Fucking let's go, buddy. Oh, sorry. Rebel. Um, I think to me, one of the central ideas of balance is center and coming back to center and what is center and what does it mean to feel centered?

Nate
And what does it mean to feel centered? on your own, and what does it mean to feel centered with another person? Because in a relationship, there's a different center than when you're just on your own. And I find that concept to be important for sort of controlled dissent, right? If you're thrown out of balance, but you're holding your center, that is a different quality to it. There's

Alessandra
our hashtag, controlled dissent.

Nate
Controlled dissent, baby. That's it.

Dr Melonie
The fact that this sounds like quantum physics relate to anybody, everything Hillary was saying is like, you can't be in two places at once, you can't be stopped, you know, you can't, you're in relation, it's where you, it's like quantum physics. Yeah. I'm worried about

Hillary
Schrodinger's cat. I do want to say I actually am more prone to do what Nate does. Like when I feel things getting off balance, you don't always know how to balance it back. So you'll just push the teeter-totter further into the direction it's moving just because you know energy's moving and it'll just keep moving you and slingshot you back somewhere. You may not even be concerned about that. Actually at that point, you're not concerned about where. You just know you got to move.

Nate
I just saw a Buddhist monk. who, you know, writes these videos, whatever. And he goes, sometimes in order to stop yourself from eating all the chocolate, you have to eat all the chocolate. And I just like, that like really stuck with me.

Dr Melonie
It's pretty human and it's pretty industrial culture human as well. You know, but I mean, I think there's a level on which it's pretty human, you know, like, oh, do I share this or do I not? Oh, do I, it's not just, do I indulge in it? It's do I, you know, if we're talking about limbic mind and human evolution, do I share this or do I not? I

Nate
love that. You

Dr Melonie
know, so it's funny. This is a funny conversation and not at all what I expected. I really like it.

Greg
Good stuff, good stuff. Bobby, how about you? How do you know when there's something out of balance?

Bobby. B
There's usually an emotional twitch. You know, you just kind of sense something's a little off, but here's the deal. I love creativity. I love the edginess and the risk of creativity. And so given that I know I love that, then it's kind of like, okay, so what's this emotional twitch? What's this sudden little irritation in the back of my throat? What's this little buzz in my toe? And I try and go there, but I also know that I will spiral. like crazy if I let my emotions really pour over something like what we're talking about.

Bobby. B
So I actually kind of think, okay, wait a minute. Okay, I'm feeling, is, what, is it a problem? Is it really a problem? because the one thing I can always try and own is my emotions. I can't always control the situation or my accountabilities or all that kind of stuff, but I can control my emotions. And I know that the toughest thing in life sometimes is just to tread water, just to create a still point in the pool with all the crashing waves around. and it doesn't have to be a vortex that's sucking me down into the depths.

Bobby. B
Let's just kind of let my mind settle. Okay, wait a minute, is this real? And then of course I can parse it from that. So for me, it comes down to edginess and uncertainty and all that is great. And I can always learn from it later. But the one thing I absolutely can have complete control over is where are my emotions and how am I reacting to this?

Greg
Thank you, Bob. Thank you. Shadows, how about you? How do you know when there's something out of balance?

Shadows Pub
Well, the good news is I don't often have external demands on me. Not that I, you know, ones that I can't say, take a flying leap. And when my brain writes energy checks that I can't fill, I write a new check that I can fill.

Alessandra
17:23 - 17:28
So your energy balance is something you stay mindful of.

Shadows Pub
Well, yeah, either that or I have to take day off and just screw around.

Greg
What do you do to bring it back in bound?

Shadows Pub
Take a day off and screw around.

Greg
If that doesn't work, take another day off and screw around, right?

Shadows Pub
Pretty much.

Greg
Quite a topic, quite a discussion. This is good stuff.

Alessandra
17:49 - 17:53
What about you, Greg? You're not getting away from us so easily. Oh,

Greg
gosh. You know, I thought I would. This is really difficult for me. I kind of like what Nate said earlier. I'm kind of on the same team as Nate when I don't know or I didn't think that I knew, but as we were talking earlier before the podcast, we had shared, a few weeks ago, I wasn't in the best of places and even trying to distract my mind from chronic pain and things like that, nothing was working. But I've been playing a game called Old School RuneScape, and that's a plug for the last week or two.

Greg
And it's been a great distraction and really helped me piggyback from that and be more creative and do things again. I know that things are coming back into balance because I'm able to find distractions and things to do where that would have been too far out of reach before. So that would be my answer.

Alessandra
Oh, I think I took out all of 2012 in Plants vs. Zombies. I mean, the whole year gone.

Greg
Right. And

Alessandra
then when I felt all done with that, breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough, not of pain, but of creative success. But it took almost like I had to like sit on the plants versus zombies spring and let all of that energy build, build, build, build, build, build, build, build, build, build, build. And there was when that thing finally sprung, it wasn't just my own. breakthroughs, creative breakthroughs. But there was enough for Devin and his career just unlocked like crazy. And Brit's career unlocked like crazy. And I'm over here going, I could choose this or this or this.

Alessandra
All hell, I'll take it all. But I couldn't do anything besides play that game for a year.

Greg
Well, they do ask you when they do a mental health screening, like the depression. One of the first things they ask you is, do you no longer enjoy doing things that used to give you pleasure? You know, that might be one way of sensing that something's out of balance and that check engine light has come on on the dashboard, right?

Dr Melonie
Yeah. And it's really interesting times. Alessandra, you would have been diagnosed with an internet use disorder. Apologize me again. No, I find it very interesting, right? You did something for a year and it did something. Yeah, it did. Uh-huh. And it was a helpful thing. I just think that that's interesting. I don't mean... Oh, I didn't take it as a criticism. But I thought, you know, because that's more than three months. That's a year. You're in the DSM now, Dr. Melanie.

Greg
Sorry? Is that in the DSM now, Internet Eustace?

Dr Melonie
Yeah, Internet and gambling. The behavioral Eustace because it's finding they're doing the same dopamine jumps. Now you're knocking my hobbies.

Nate
What about video games?

Dr Melonie
Yes, that's they're doing the same. You know, they're having the same neurochemical neurotransmitter effect, that is to say, dopamine goes up and also you get tolerant. So you have to play more or longer or whatever.

Greg
That balance thing, right? If it takes over your life and you're not eating anymore and going to the bathroom, then then there's a problem, right?

Dr Melonie
Yeah. But even if you are going to the bathroom and eating, I mean, Alessandra went to the bathroom and ate. Ate a lot.

Alessandra
So that was the next thing to work on. But

Hillary
yeah,

Alessandra
but but but when it was done, it was done.

Hillary
That's what's interesting. Yeah,

Dr Melonie
I've

Hillary
had that game addiction for a while. Like I got laid off from work, wasn't working and yeah, I got sucked into games and it was, yeah, the dopamine hit keeps you entertained just enough. And it became something you could focus on when so much else is going on that you can't, you aren't grabbing onto. So it's an easy, low hanging piece of fruit that will feed you. But it's just not healthy fruit.

Greg
I think if that's too far out of reach, then you you're kind of lower down, right? You know,

Hillary
you got to work a little harder to get a more healthier piece of fruit. It's a lot more effort. And we're we'll take the path of least resistance.

Nate
Well, I think

Dr Melonie
anything terribly unhealthy about it until you're doing something like crazy. But what I think is interesting about this is that doing it more or less like crazy can also be a healing modality. And the thing I just thought about is, you know, with EMDR and brain spotting, The simplified idea of it is that like for animals, like a deer, if it gets scared, it freezes and then it shakes like crazy and keeps going. Theory is that humans don't do that and shit gets stuck in the amygdala and plays over and over and over again. And so because of the particular and specific neural contact between the eye and the amygdala in the middle, in that part of the brain, you can access it in a different way and perhaps let that processing occur as opposed to having it unprocessed.

Dr Melonie
And I'm just wondering what this might have to do with that.

Alessandra
I mean, there's something that I very distinctly remember is in that game, there was a lot of creating pattern and setting up the players and what their tools were. And there was a rhythm, there was a synchrony to it when I could

Nate
get that to

Alessandra
work. Yes. And at the end of the game, this is Plants vs. Zombies one, At the end of the game, Plants vs. Zombies won. It's by PopCap, the folks at PopCap. And at the end of the game, the ultimate thing, the ultimate challenge is this ginormous monster. And when I took his shit apart, I was done. And I really do believe it healed some trauma.

Greg
Alessandra, you really hit on it. Shout out to Jagex if you're listening, Old School RuneScape. The username's Goggleton, right? I'd appreciate any gold that you can give me. Yeah there's and I know Nate you got a fault on this and I'm going to come right right to you here in a moment but you Alexander you had talked about you know have to do this and you have to do that whether I'm killing blue dragons or I'm going on a quest and I've got to talk to this person and that person remember to take these things with me and how to find that stuff is exercising the brain that's To my mind, I know it's not the NBR, but those brain games that you do with the puzzles and stuff, it's making you think.

Greg
It's not just mindless clicking. But Nate, I know you're a big gamer, and I don't know if you had a thought with the gaming on your lapping there. I know that you had a thought you were gonna bring

Nate
up. It's just so, it's really interesting to talk about. And it's really interesting to talk about with this group because so frequently I talk about it with other gamers like me or other folks in game development who are building the thing and want to make it interesting. I wanted to circle back to balance because when you're in this state of eating all the chocolate, of playing Plants vs. Zombies, Part of my conception of balance is simply having other things that are similarly engrossing, engaging, because you can sort of pop cap your way out of one state by rebalancing in another.

Nate
And so this concept of balance becomes this dynamic, dance between various motivations. And it's, you know, it's taken a long time to sort of get to that point. But I think when some, when I, at least, when I am so singularly focused, I have to like watch out because I've gone down too many, too many plates versus zombies rabbit holes. And, you know, it can get bad to your plate. Your behavior can change because of. Oh, wow. Thing to engage and. I think there's, there's a certain amount of awareness to that. The reason I was smiling just now is, I think, to me, you know, your experience of playing Plants vs.

Nate
Zombies, and you beat the big bad, and there's something that happened in the accomplishment of Mameen, because I think that's real, and I think Video games have a unique sort of creative outlet for art because you can abstract stories and storytelling, but you give the user agency. When you watch a movie, you don't have any agency. You're taking it in and you're experiencing the story and maybe you're connecting it when you're playing a video game. you have agency. And if you're abstracting something that is meaningful or touches you or whatever, there's a different relationship. And I think that that's one of the reasons why I find them so fascinating.

Nate
And you hear stories about video games that are solving real world problems, right? You make this game be an abstraction of a real world problem and people will choose to engage with it. You know, it's rarely easy.

Dr Melonie
It's always been a problem solving method, but it's also the game doesn't have real world weight, like it's depressurized. Exactly. So if you're doing similar things in the game that you do in real life. I could, you know, popping back and forth, I think make, you know, it sort of makes sense. It's like, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm carrying this water because if I don't, I'm not going to get paid versus I'm carrying this water to dump it into this pond, you know, for my two points. And, you know,

Nate
like, yeah,

Dr Melonie
it's bizarre, man. We're fucking bizarre.

Greg
You're coming up with a good strategy there, dipping the water in the pond, I don't know.

Dr Melonie
Oh yeah, you like that for a new video game? You didn't see him taking notes? No, man, I'm organizing my taxes. I'm multitasking, but you guys, I'll tell you how else I stay in balance, you guys.

Nate
Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. 100%. I

Dr Melonie
mean, it took a while. I don't know how long I've been doing this, but now it works exactly as planned. I pop in and out when I can. I'm even on Discord a

Greg
little

Dr Melonie
bit, you know, talking to you guys and it makes, it's like you're my friends, which I, that's never happened

Shadows Pub
to

Dr Melonie
me before on the internet. Never. I

Alessandra
know,

Dr Melonie
right? I mean, we got

Alessandra
hearts going everywhere. This

Dr Melonie
is what's so fun about it. And we're all so interesting. Oh my god. We get more interesting by the

Alessandra
minute.

Hillary
On the note in regards to here being a place to establish some balance, because we reflect at the beginning and end of every hour, some sort of expectation of ourselves. So we are setting that fulcrum of what we're trying to do and, you know, evaluate, like, here's what I want to do. Here's what I did. And so we are constantly balancing ourselves.

Alessandra
Even if it's just for one hour a day or one hour, whenever you can fit it in. We're doing that

Hillary
evaluation of our, it's a personal expectation, but that could then be related to an external.

Dr Melonie
That's not how I get the balance with you guys. It's not the evaluation. It's the, dare I say, human contact.

Greg
Right. This

Dr Melonie
is IRL to me. I'd say that's

Alessandra
grounding

Hillary
over balancing.

Nate
Well, I mean, grounding and centering, right? Well, I

Dr Melonie
don't know. I mean, I kind of don't care. For me, I can come on here and feel balanced whether I check in or whether my check-in is nutty or not. And whether it's, I mean, you have a very precise mind, Hilary, and I'm like, wow, do you do all that? And I'm like, fuck. I just, I'm like, oh, hi, guys. Here I am. Here's what I'm doing. And what are you guys doing? You know? They might

Alessandra
earn our explicit today. Oh,

Dr Melonie
yes. I got both of them. Anyway, I mean, and it works for you your way, and it works for me my way, which is also really remarkable.

Greg
For me, the group is the firm ground to build upon to set that scale. Shadows, did you have a thought?

Shadows Pub
I thought I already heard it.

Alessandra
I know, like you could get one in edgewise. We went berserk.

Shadows Pub
Oh, if I had something to say, you'd have heard me.

Greg
Oh, I thought you were going to square turn green for a second.

Shadows Pub
Well,

Alessandra
Greg, what happened?

Greg
I don't know. I think the only thing left to say really is it's happened again. Some perfectly good time listening to the creative work hour podcast when you could have been doing something else. But what about you? Let us know. What's your relationship like with balance? How do you know when there's something out of balance? Let us know on the website. Yep. Come back again next week because we'll be here. Take care.