3 Fast Things
I’m living in London. And not paying rent. Hacking the system. Here’s how… Ever heard of trustedhousesitters.com? Well now you have. It’s this site I joined about two months ago, right before going hard to work in securing a bunch houses to sit/animals to care for/plants to keep alive. Now I have free accommodation in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. I’m thinking of trying to avoid paying rent for the rest of my life. Rebranding from Comfort is for Wimps to Rent is for Wimps. We’ll see how it goes. But yeah, I’m a trusted house-sitter. What of it.
I was in Los Angeles in June for a conference called VidCon. It’s one of the two major annual events where all the “Creator Economy” industry nerds congregate. My boss was a keynote speaker so I got an all-access-pass and felt like a real hero the whole entire time. But to be fair, I think I felt like more of a hero in myself because I finally felt like I was part of an industry I actually gave two hoots of lamb’s tail about. The President of Mr Beast did this mega talk on the industry and I completely drank the Kool-Aid. I’ll be attending VidSummit in Dallas, in October.
I finished my series of “Learning from Them”, the podcast where I was talking to comedians and other creatives to get insight into how to be better at either of those things. It was a good experience and my lesson was this: as with most practices, the more you do something, the better you get at it. But you can't get good at anything if you don't try, and if you're not willing to suck first. So this is a brilliant example of how just throwing oneself into something, without overthinking it, can lead to progress, even if invisible to the outside eye.
1 Slow Thing: How guilty do you feel?
I was talking to a friend last night about levels of guilt—how some people, like her, are so stone-cold they could break up with a boyfriend at a funeral and feel nothing. While others, like me, are on the complete other end of the spectrum and would feel remorse for not texting back on Tinder.
I’ve caused mega problems for myself in relationships because I can’t ever seem to shake the guilt of thinking I’m causing someone to feel unhappy or inconvenienced. Even though their happiness is absolutely not my responsibility and I really needed to use my car that day.
Why do some of us explode under the pressure of irrational guilt and others feel dead inside? Guilt appears to be something of a human commonality. It’s to be found all around the globe. But is it cultural? Genetic? Or is it just part of the emotional colour range, like happiness, sadness and anger?
Well I’m not a freaking scientist so I don’t know but here are my pennies on it…
Like any personality trait, you can pretty much place yourself somewhere on the bell curve, with most people bundled up together in the middle, where a personality trait is nicely balanced.
A while back, I wrote this article about how these laws apply to the trait of openness. As you can see below, I’m sitting on the right-hand bench with the weirdies.
I decided to punch together another one of these belly curves for guilt, to try and get some scope on what we’r looking at here.
Just the act of brainstorming what type of characters were going to sit on each side of the bell brewed up a new thought around this idea and it’s to do with trust.
Now, I’m a trustworthy human. I realise that if someone has to tell you that they are trustworthy, you feel more compelled to put them in the bin than to trust them, but I’m trying to make a point here. I think that a huge part of the reason I am so trustworthy is because I feel guilty about so many things. I’m not going to cheat because the guilt would destroy me. I’d never steal candy from a baby because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. And I think the reason why I am such a goddamn excellent house and pet sitter is because I feel guilty when their un-toilet-trained dog shits on their carpet under my watch.
Just yesterday I sent the owner of the house I’m currently sitting a message apologising about their pooping canine. She said she was sorry and I said I was sorry and we just totally trust each other. I can tell.
In fact, I found this study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which correlates trustworthiness with guilt-proneness. The paper suggests that people who are prone to guilt like moi are far better behaved because we want to avoid the sensation of guilt ruining our day. We have a higher sense of accountability than some people, so we avoid most wrongdoing.
So yeah, I guess like everything in this world, the good comes with the bad. I get all wound up with guilt from healthy things like setting boundaries, but then I can be totally trusted not to shit on your carpet while I’m looking after your house.
Watch
My Coachella video: I went to Coachella in April and it was so fun. Can you please do me a favour and watch it so that YouTube realise how good it is?
Upcoming Shows
Sunday 16 July: Sunday Smash Up — Camden Comedy Club
Wednesday 19 July: Cinema Comedy @ The Fellowship Inn — Edfringe Preview plus guests
Thursday 27 July: Somewhere in Nottingham. Have no idea about the details yet.
Recommendation
Watch: This boring-biz boss bitch (Cody Sanchez) bought a laundromat and became a self-made millionaire. This is a really interesting talk she had with Diary of a CEO. Highly recommend. Watch here.