Episode 11
Neurodivergent observation makes improv scenes better (ft. Isolation) - Ep #11
I had A WEEK. So you’re getting AN EP that gets real.
So this week I experienced something related to last week’s episode (ep 10). I wrote all of the notes for an episode about finding the unusual thing as a neurodivergent improviser. But you’re getting that one next week, friend, because I’ve been thinking about this stuff instead.
And you know what happens when we get all focused on a subject. Well… this.
So this week I’m talking about how we observe small details, things many others don’t notice, particularly well due to our neurodivergent traits. It’s how we gather all those details, spew specifics, read our scene partners with aplomb, and care so much about what we know, do, and feel. And the world. It’s also how and WHY we see those patterns and make the connections so very well in life (and scenes).
I’ll talk about what neurodivergent traits and experiences we commonly have that make us so good at these things, and how you can work to enhance your observation to help make your scenes easier.
I’ll also get up on a soapbox to challenge the improv advice to “get out there and live life for your scenes!” for those details with my “yes, but”. Very different approaches in this regard are valuable and valid and equal and need to be noted.
Some of our experiences, like feeling socially isolated, are hard. I won’t minimize or toxic positivity them here. But they’re real, happen, it’s life, and we can utilize the pieces of data we get from these experiences in our improv practice.
About this podcast
This podcast is hosted/produced/whatever by me, Jen deHaan. You can blame me for the whole thing, it’s my fault. You can submit your questions, heckles, comments, blame, more heckles, or even a voice note on the website. Find the contact form for this podcast at FlatImprov.com/substack. See the site for other shows and podcasts and stuff.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Neurodiversity and Improv Podcast from Flat Improv.
::I'm Jen deHaan, and I do improv stuff, and I like thinking about improv things.
::And these podcasts, as I always say, aren't for telling anyone what to do in improv.
::They are simply explanations to help encourage classes to be a little bit more inclusive, and teams, they are not excuses for the ways that we're doing improv, because we don't need an excuse.
::And of course, they are also not for diagnosis.
::Don't use these episodes to diagnose yourself or anyone else either.
::Basically, we are improv nerds, being improv nerds, doing improv nerd things, thinking about improv nerd stuff.
::And this week, I will also have a comment for the weirds again after the plugs.
::Maybe this will become a regular thing.
::We'll see.
::So about this week's episode.
::So I just wrote out the bullets for an entire episode about neurodivergent people finding the unusual thing in a scene.
::I think I'm actually now going to post it as the next episode and record something that's been on my mind this week.
::This episode is going to mostly be about the overlap of isolation, any kind, social or physical, neurodivergence, and improv, specifically about observation of details for use in scenes.
::Like, how do we get good at those patterns and connections anyway?
::And I'm almost certain I'm going to feel really weird and nervous putting this thing out there to you tonight.
::But I guess we're doing this series, right?
::We're committing hard to the premise.
::I don't know.
::Let's just say I often play characters in improv scenes for a reason.
::And before we get into the details, there's a content warning that this episode talks about the death of a companion animal.
::I won't go into the details, but I will speak about it in a high level way.
::So if that is an issue, this is your content warning.
::It has been a week.
::The previous episode, Episode 10, was about hyperfantasia.
::I recorded and published the episode on Sunday night.
::And in that episode, I touched briefly on one of the negatives of hyperfantasia, part of which is being able to replay negative events or any events in your head like you're there.
::Oh, a negative event happened over the next two days right after publishing that episode.
::One of my animal companions was unwell and then on Tuesday took a sudden turn at one point and passed away before the mobile vet could arrive to check out what that thing was.
::And it was pretty graphic, but I won't get into the details for obvious reasons.
::Anyways, I'm fine, but that hyperfantasia thing that I talked about in the episode 10, right the day before it started, was in full swing this week.
::But I noticed something quite interesting to me, that those two things happening side by side or right after each other, whatever, made me think even more about how this stuff works in improv because I was just talking about it and it was very fresh in my mind while going through that experience.
::So my brain started rehashing all of the episode through the lens of improv during the week, like in real time this time, and mentally making notes in tandem with all the crap that was going on.
::So I thought, why not make this an episode while it's kind of going on?
::So my thoughts kept coming back during this time, during this week, to observations about making connections and the way that neurodivergent people see things and analyze them, the way that we are processing the things we go through as part of this neurodivergent experience.
::All of this impacts observations a lot.
::And not just the visual way, like I spoke of last week either.
::Many of the ways that we process things from struggle or just how we process information in general enhances observation.
::Like we can end up just getting an overload of details because of the wiring that we have.
::And we become keen observers.
::This is a result of our neurodivergent wiring.
::All of us as humans, all humans, regardless of neurotype, have it.
::But we have this extra thing because of the neurodivergent traits that we have.
::Like my observation was an overdrive this week for good and for bad, but also for good.
::So of course, this will be true for most humans or all humans.
::We're all going to think a lot about these things that we experience, especially if it's something big or major for whatever reason.
::So I imagine some of this episode will apply to everyone, but there are some unique neurodivergent experiences and wiring that I will highlight in this episode.
::Being extra aware during certain experiences is just what we get as a side effect of our common shared traits or experiences in this world as neurodivergent humans.
::So let's go through some of these things now.
::So I'll start with mentioning hyperfantasia because that brings us back to the last episode and why this all sort of came up anyways.
::I spoke at length about what that is in the previous episode, which is number 10, if you're looking.
::You can listen to that if you want.
::But what hyperfantasia is, is a rather intense visual imagination or memory.
::You can draw up basically a photorealistic environment and kind of place yourself within them.
::So if you have a particularly intense experience in life like I did this week, you can essentially place yourself back in it in a way.
::It's kind of like a flashback, but it's like really real.
::Now, the hyperfantasia this week will help when I need to say flash memory to pull up an emotion or something that's not great.
::It's cool, but it's also not cool.
::But it's good for that kind of thing if you need to do it like an improv.
::And that, of course, relates to observation.
::You are not forgetting these details even if you want to.
::If I want to remember a room or a room where something not great happened, well, that kind of room, that's the easiest one to just order up in the brain because it's intense and you remember it extra good.
::But I'm not going to rehash that topic again.
::You can go and hear more about that in episode 10 if you're interested.
::But what this brings up is more about how we are processing this stuff.
::We have some kind of strong reaction to event as a human, say, and we often process it down to the minutiae as neurodivergence because it affects us sometimes in stronger ways.
::So that's what I'm going to be talking about is the neurodivergent experiences that are stronger because of the way that we're wired, the things that make us divergent and doing so, outlining some of these experiences can help you notice some of the same kinds of reactions.
::You're not going to react to things in the same way.
::We're all different.
::We're all on the spectrum.
::So one of the things I noticed this week with the experience that I had, it relates to alexithymia, which I touched very briefly on in the previous episode and will go into a lot of detail in a future one.
::But I noticed it thanks to recording that episode almost entirely.
::And it's this line in the sand, like a stark changing of emotions at some points during the middle of the event.
::Like when a situation changes during the intense event, it's just bam.
::Like it's just like the emotion is off and on like switching a light switch.
::I can do that in scenes too, but it's like experiencing it and noticing it in an actual real life event is something you can just think about in the improv sense.
::And I remember actually thinking about that in the improv sense and realizing why am I processing that right now?
::Let's not.
::Anyways, what I realized at the time, it was like now I need to process this new information and the old emotion is gone and I'll just like save that for later.
::And I wouldn't even say that these are emotions really.
::It's like I wouldn't be able to name even what I'm feeling at the time.
::If you said, what do you feel?
::I'd be like, I have, I don't know.
::It's just more of like this almost physical feeling in the moment with the knowledge that you'll figure it out later.
::And that's kind of the best way that I can describe it.
::And improv has made me realize to try and figure out where you feel these things in your body.
::And that's like so you can flash memory to emotions better.
::Maybe like I have no idea why I was noting that part so hard during the experience.
::Like it's really weird when you're tuned in now to this thing and think about like how does it work even?
::So now it seems to be more obvious in situations in real life because you're like, okay, how I do this now in improv and like I'm going to be coming back at some point to this emotion and grabbing it.
::Like how does it feel in my body?
::Like how is my character going to hold that in the body to express and actually feel it?
::Because I will feel it in the scene.
::So it's wild to be thinking this way in real life now, but it happened.
::The other one is just the emotional analysis bit.
::That's the alexithymia, not putting a word to emotion, but analyzing it, processing it later on.
::I touched on that in the last episode.
::We'll talk about it in more detail later.
::But I did notice that, like, it's a third-party real-time analysis of, like, the body part of whatever emotion it is.
::So all of this came up for me through improv.
::I didn't even realize I functioned this way until I started getting emotion word exercises coming up, like, hey, here's your emotion, do this.
::And I had no idea how to do that.
::And then I realized I could kind of through flash memory and going back and using hyperfantasia and all that kind of thing.
::But very new one for me this week of actually thinking about that while it's happening.
::And I also now realize in this kind of moment, I'm like, am I even human?
::I don't know.
::But that observation was useful.
::Processing all of this useful.
::So I'm just putting it out there.
::Maybe you'll find a use for this too.
::So let's talk about how else do neurodivergent people observe things maybe more intensely.
::Masking is the first one.
::I have a couple episodes in this series already about masking.
::You can go back and listen to those if you want to understand a little bit more about neurodivergent masking.
::To do masking, you have to observe other people and groups of people in order to mask.
::This is where we are just trying to fit in to make life a little bit easier for us.
::I shouldn't say just because it's a lot more complicated and detailed than that.
::But high level, we're doing it to kind of fit in and make ourselves maybe feel a little bit more comfort through having this very exhausting thing to do.
::It's kind of like being a bit of a character.
::So you get good at observing other people to match the flow of the conversation or the flow of a group situation.
::It's good.
::It's bad.
::It's just something that often happens for us.
::And if you've been doing it a long time, it's hard to separate what it actually even is.
::But it fine tunes our observation skills.
::We're getting a lot of observation skills through this.
::We notice a lot of the details.
::We get very good at reading other people, even if we don't totally understand them or what is happening socially.
::On the note of masking, because this one is tied right in, it's being misunderstood.
::We get misunderstood all the time because we communicate differently, because we are wired differently.
::There's lots of science around this, but we observe scenarios keenly in the very same way.
::Are we being misunderstood?
::Do we have to explain ourselves more or differently?
::These again are observation skills.
::It's pulling in information.
::It's pulling in details.
::It's processing those.
::Neurodivergence also have safety issues.
::There can be threats due to being divergent from the norm.
::And we need to be aware of what makes us less safe in order to accommodate ourselves, to compensate all sorts of things.
::This isn't a great thing, but it's something that we often need to do.
::We see patterns of red flags.
::We make connections to similar scenarios in the past.
::We're observing all of the signs or signals for lots of things, like being manipulated, for example.
::Safety, being understood, masking.
::All of these mean that we're highly tuned into reading reactions from other humans to just reading their body language and then reacting ourselves as a result.
::We care a lot about these things and all of these things we can use in our scenes.
::Sensitivities is another one.
::We might be more sensitive to noises, to lights, to movements, to being treated in certain ways that we might have a history about.
::About words.
::I react to words, information, whatever.
::But this is by definition, it's heightened noticing.
::We are sensitive.
::It's right built into the terminology.
::We can bring these into our characters as well.
::Our movements, our feelings, the environments we build.
::Being sensitive means we draw in tons of information about all of these things and we can react to them.
::But it's information nonetheless and usually things that many people never even notice because they're not sensitive to them like we are.
::It's also very easy to map these sensitivities onto other unexpected, unusual things.
::But that's for the next episode now.
::So for now, we're moving on to the last item I'll bring up today, which is isolation.
::Neurodivergent humans often feel isolated.
::Even if it's not geographical or physical, we feel socially isolated.
::It's very, very common neurodivergent experience.
::A lot of us feel isolated since we're wired differently in a cognitive sense.
::It might be physical due to access, but whichever one it is, it works the same for this podcast episode.
::So many of these traits have been mentioned in earlier episodes, but not the piece about isolation.
::That's the one I especially want to talk about today.
::So how do observation and isolation go together?
::So isolation, it puts us in our heads, regardless of what it is coming from, social or physical.
::We might have fewer ways to balance our lives out through interaction of any type.
::And oftentimes we just feel socially isolated because we are neurodivergent.
::We process, we think differently, and that makes it harder to connect sometimes except to animals.
::We connect great to animals.
::My animals are everything to me.
::We might, as a result, live in our heads a lot.
::We become our own company, for better or for worse.
::This can come from, and capitalize this in your heads, the neurodivergent experience.
::We feel like we're on the outside looking in a lot.
::People are weird and confusing to us.
::We are intimidated by them.
::We are misunderstood constantly.
::They can even be intimidated by us because we seem different or we talk a certain way.
::I've heard that.
::I feel on the inside like one of the most unconfident, unsure, worried, anxious people.
::And I've been told that I come across completely differently than that.
::I do not outwardly display how I feel inside.
::We are othered.
::We are kind of alien.
::That's how I feel.
::And we become hyper aware or confused by all of these reactions because we're just mentally trying to sort it out.
::It's confusing.
::And some of it might even seem threatening in a way.
::And many of us have experienced things like bullying.
::I sure have.
::But often it's much more subtle and benign than that.
::And that subtlety can really get us observing and analyzing and ruminating or rehearsing.
::Oh my goodness, the rehearsing.
::This acute awareness of people, it's very useful in improv.
::The other element is the fact that we just process a lot in general.
::Like this is, say, if you go to bed and your brain is just going wild, processing situations like your reactions or rehearsing those future conversations or rehashing the past ones to try to figure out what the reactions actually meant.
::That is a very common neurodivergent experience.
::And this can bring pain or joy or frustration or relief.
::I have a real love-hate relationship with processing.
::I love processing, but it gets so exhausting eventually.
::And I'll also say that I've noticed that it will also eventually like, like just turn off automatically.
::It's something I can't control.
::But I also want to remind everyone that saying that these can be used in Improv isn't here to minimize these experiences.
::This stuff can be negative.
::It can be serious.
::And hopefully for those parts, you can find support.
::But obviously that is an outside of Improv work thing to do, not something that we're going to work out in a scene.
::This is something that we can use the byproducts of in a scene, but not like actually do that kind of therapy working out in the scene.
::We don't want to do that because all of this is real.
::It's what many or most of us or all of us experience anyways.
::And we can figure out those ways to accommodate it outside of Improv.
::Of course, hopefully we're all kind of working on that, doing that work.
::But I think that noticing this thing and just being aware of it is a great first step for both of those things and one that can enhance our improv.
::We're using the data from this to inform our scenes, to put details and observations or character work into our scenes.
::This is the stuff that we flash memory to.
::And because that's now the second time that I've used that phrase, I will define it or kind of explain it.
::Flash memory means just thinking back to something that's happened in the past.
::You're retrieving that information.
::You're using it in a scene.
::So what does this thing remind me of?
::Or if you get a suggestion, what am I thinking of?
::You're thinking of something, you're bringing that, you're retrieving it.
::It's if this thing is true, what else is true?
::You might use it for that.
::What does this remind me of?
::Something else in my life.
::So you are grabbing inspiration bits from previous parts of your life.
::I will also say for me, this was incredibly hard early on.
::Like I could not believe how little of my life I could remember while doing improv.
::And that was because I was thinking of so many things, all the rules, all the structure.
::What am I doing?
::Oh, my gosh, I'm nervous about this scene.
::Whatever you are in your head.
::When you are less in your head, you let go.
::You're not thinking as much.
::It's like you get the rest of your brain and then you can remember and flash memory.
::So flash memory for me, super hard.
::And then suddenly again, that light switch, it flicked on, off, whatever.
::I don't know.
::It changed.
::And I finally got the rest of my brain.
::So if flash memory is hard for you, if it is, it might just get easier one day.
::Just keep doing improv.
::Back to the essay.
::I want to talk about again, about the accommodation and the good, the bad, this sort of thing.
::If I could get rid of a lot of these bad parts, I would.
::But also just due to the circumstances, the access, the wiring, that's not always possible.
::All right.
::We're going to have to live with a lot of this, maybe because it's wired in.
::And honestly, I do love the parts of being really, really highly self-aware in a lot of ways.
::I'm always processing that.
::I'm always looking inwards.
::I'm always trying to figure things out.
::It makes us thoughtful.
::And the fact that I care about so many things, maybe things that people don't often notice or don't often care about.
::We see it.
::We observe it.
::And that can be important and meaningful.
::A big learning and takeaway for me this week.
::I learned that I cared way more about this loss than I expected I would.
::And I probably wouldn't have if I wasn't so socially and physically isolated.
::And that was good.
::It's also always true that multiple things can be true at once.
::Right.
::And we can be living champions of that in a way.
::If this is true, what else is true?
::Something else is simultaneously true.
::I know that's not exactly what that phrase means, but let's say that it does right now.
::We can observe things to hell.
::And from that observation comes connections and pattern recognition.
::And some Neurodivergent people particularly rock at both of those things.
::And those are obviously big important improv things.
::We bring that to the table really well, or we will with enough reps.
::So now I'm going to talk about the social isolation part.
::Social isolation can be very difficult.
::But the reality is, is it can make us great observers, even if it comes from an often very challenging reality.
::The challenge, of course, it isn't great, but we learn so much.
::We learn about ourselves and we learn about other people due to just a heightened awareness and a lot of living in our heads, processing information.
::Many of us, especially the autistic ones, we are bottom up thinkers.
::And I believe this goes hand in hand.
::I have a couple episodes about bottom up thinking, and I encourage you to listen to those if you're interested, to learn more about it in the context of improv.
::It's pretty interesting, and it has just so much to do with how we learn and practice improv.
::We also become very sensitive to people around us, their reactions, their body language, how communication even works, and those social cues.
::We have a harder time processing these things because we're wired different than the norm.
::So we spend a lot of time bringing in those social details and doing that processing.
::And this is also isolating because we feel on the outside looking in as a result.
::And if we're in a group of people, we take those things and we just multiply them by that number of people.
::And maybe it's not actually like that, but it can kind of feel that way.
::And it's a pretty big isolator.
::Like for me, the bigger the group, the more isolated I usually feel.
::And especially if it's like some sort of social event, like a casual one, an informal gathering that might not have a plan or an itinerary or any kind of structure, like those ones are particularly hard for me.
::As a reminder, yes, I do do improv and I am a human, but that that can be hard for us.
::That's why I like the rules in improv.
::I like structured improv.
::But our experiences and our reactions will vary so much on this topic that I'm sure you can add many more ways that you make observation in these kind of social situations.
::I'm sure that you have many other ways that you feel socially isolated.
::But the point here is to be very aware of your reactions to all of these stressors, because they are stress.
::They bring many of us stress.
::And the more you learn about that, the more things you notice, the noticing of your noticing, those things are all things that we will draw into improv and benefit from in that way.
::So this next section, I will talk about physical isolation.
::So this might be from access issues that cause the isolation.
::And from this, we might just have much smaller worlds as a result.
::This is something I'm living right now.
::And in this kind of world, we live with ourselves.
::And this can put us in our heads.
::Like it can really put us in our heads.
::And I'll say that even that that internal monologue, even that, I mean, it can be useful for my like, look at what I'm doing right now.
::Like this is my internal monologue is on fire from this sort of thing.
::It's all day long.
::It's a good and it's a bad.
::But if we're living with, say, less interactions with others, what we do have, those things are just heightened in importance.
::We value and we focus on what we do have more.
::This is a coping thing.
::This helps.
::And how can you not even, you know, there is a negative element to it, but there can be a positive.
::You just, you're going to value what you have.
::You're going to notice it more.
::And so those details, those come into focus and that, that's good for improv too.
::So we hear a lot the advice to go out and live life and, and all that, to observe, to experience, to draw all those things into improv.
::Get out, do other things and go live life and see people and interact with them.
::That's not bad advice.
::This is, that's a great thing to do if you can access it, or you want to do it, or it's something that you enjoy.
::I did enjoy doing that a lot.
::I enjoyed the experience of structured social events immensely.
::And I would be doing that if I could, but some of us can't.
::And I won't say that this is a detriment to improv at all.
::It is not.
::If you can't do that, your improv is not going to suffer.
::It does not have to suffer.
::We can still access those same benefits, but just in different ways.
::Of course, the common alternate methods will include things like watching media, reading, learning things, being in nature, having pets and talking to them.
::I do that.
::And being a breathing human.
::And we will notice the minutiae, those little things more, being in a smaller world.
::We're noticing those details that we might have because we have fewer overall.
::And those are the things that other people are not seeing because they are living a different type of life.
::They are seeing maybe a bigger picture.
::They are maybe seeing social situations.
::That's the sort of thing that they're in.
::They're not seeing the things that we do in our life.
::They're not processing and thinking the same things that we do.
::And all of these experiences, theirs and ours, those all contribute to a scene and make the scene better and richer as a result.
::And having those different perspectives together in a scene is going to make that scene better.
::So what you have, even if you're isolated, even if you're living those different lives, a smaller life, that is a value in a scene just as much as somebody who is out doing different things.
::The smaller picture is a different picture, but it is equally valid and valuable.
::And that, in a nutshell, is the Neurodivergent experience.
::So now I'm going to talk about maybe a more universal experience, one that is neurotypical, neurodivergent, just everyone.
::So you might be feeling more balanced or generally more connected to others and not as isolated.
::Or some of you just might not experience this or can't relate to it.
::But I think we all universally have experienced something like this at some point in our lives, either isolated, you've felt the struggles of being an outsider, even just jumping back to having a very intense negative experience of, say, loss.
::We can always flash memory to these experiences, even if they're not fresh in our minds.
::You can remember that experience and maybe go back and suss out your feelings or suss out what you've noticed, suss out those details, and you can use them.
::Anybody can do that, I believe.
::To some extent, that's just your memory and you're using it.
::And we can all, regardless of our wiring, get better at thinking about or noticing these experiences while they're happening to learn about how we are experiencing them, or maybe just right after they happen when you're ready.
::Because thinking about this real fresh after recording that episode and then experiencing what I did, it felt different.
::And I think it was just because I had it top of mind of, what is the experience like?
::What am I noticing?
::What am I seeing?
::What am I feeling?
::What are the emotions like, etc.?
::Looking at it through that improv learning lens, it was helpful.
::And I think everyone can do this to a certain extent.
::And I also feel like I should perhaps start up an Overthinkers Support Group to accompany this episode, considering I'm recommending what I am.
::Anyways, the key here is to notice what you're noticing.
::Thinking about it myself in advance helped me to do that this week more intensely.
::I suppose maybe even if it works very differently in your brain, just being aware of how this works means you can see things in a little bit of a different way.
::And that will help your improv.
::So, in summary, the more that we observe, wherever it comes from, the more we bring to our scenes, even in comedy.
::And what these are used for, what these observations, these details are used for, they're used for your characters, they're used to build up environments, they are especially related to your reactions, listening intensely to your scene partner, listening to what they say and reacting from what they're doing, what they're saying, that you care a lot about all of this stuff.
::And really us Neurodivergent people, we care a lot and we can bring that to the scene.
::Some of the actionable things you might take from this episode is you don't have to go out there and quote unquote live life to gather these things.
::You can, of course, notice these details in your life, even if it's isolated socially or physically.
::You can notice your noticing, become observers of your observing.
::Oh, this sounds awful.
::I really should start that simple group of overthinkers.
::Just notice these things.
::It seems to make a big difference for me at least.
::And also notice how you do flash memory.
::See how you are returning to these things.
::Return to them if you can, analyze them a bit.
::See how you can use that in your scenes.
::But of course, I just want to remind everyone, this isn't to minimize these experiences because they can be very intense.
::They can be negative.
::Being isolated is not fun.
::It's damaging.
::It's harmful.
::We do need to think about this.
::We need to work on it.
::Please, if you feel that way, work on it outside of improv with someone if you can.
::But I do think that there is a small positive about these negative things, about being isolated in some way in particular.
::The one thing I noticed about this was my physical and my social isolation made these smaller things more important in my life.
::That's what I noticed very acutely this week, that I valued the small, the subtle things.
::I value them so much more in my life.
::And this is true when you just have a small world to live in.
::You're going to value what you have.
::You're going to care for what you have so much more.
::And this sounds like some cliché meme that you're going to like a sunset photo with a nice font on it that you scroll by on Instagram and you roll your eyes at.
::I feel kind of gross saying something so very cliché, but it legitimately happened to me this week.
::And I was surprised by how affected I was by something I thought I wouldn't be, that I didn't think was as pertinent in my life as it was.
::And while the overall experience of this loss felt bad as it would for anyone in any neurotype, it came from a heightened value that I wouldn't have otherwise had.
::And that sort of small thing being amplified, that part of it is quite neurodivergent and valuing and caring is good.
::And what was cool about the episode that I noticed was just thinking about it more, made me see these things more.
::So maybe some of that noticing stuff will pass its way on to you, hopefully in a good way, because most of what we see isolation as, and we see that like making small things big as a real negative.
::That's what we always hear.
::We're blowing things out of proportion.
::You have lost perspective.
::And that was my reaction at first.
::And that is also quite cliche that we shouldn't, that we're wrong, that we're incorrect to make a big deal out of a small thing, because it's lesser to most people, to the typical way of living.
::But why do they get to decide this?
::Why does the typical result, the typical opinion win in this situation?
::Because there is value in this experience.
::And I don't mean this again, in any kind of like toxic positivity sense, but in making these observations and noticing these details and eventually gaining the entire picture in a more holistic way, that can be a good thing.
::I mean, it's like what you do with an opening, like you want to use every piece of that opening that has value.
::It's kind of like that, you know, take the holistic thing and hey, you can use these good parts.
::So it's not always bad to care about the small thing, the perceived mundane, the every day.
::It might not be to you and that's all right.
::Like, why is that weakness or negativity?
::To value the small can be strength.
::It can carry value.
::It can be correct, especially if it's practiced in a thoughtful and very self-aware way to see those details that other people are just too busy maybe to notice.
::That's grand and it's wise, or at the very least, it's just different.
::Life is weird and us neurodivergent humans, we notice those details pretty hard.
::We care hard in our life.
::So care hard about your scenes, in your scenes, and use all of these details that you observe.
::Honor and value, the small.
::You had to go through these things now, currently, or go through them in the past, and you and your scenes can benefit from all of it, no matter what.
::All right, so we've got to the end of this episode, whatever that was.
::I have classes at wgimprovschool.com.
::It's a great school, so go look at the site for online and in-person classes.
::There's also free online jams if you want to join us for those.
::I have a site at flatimprov.com, which has a newsletter, and also I've linked podcasts and shows and jams and stuff like that.
::I hope that you'll check that out, and you'll also see other people's stuff listed on the site and in the newsletter, so subscribe to that newsletter.
::And if you actually liked this episode, if you liked it, like thumbs up kind of thing, please review it or rate it or something on whatever podcast platform like Apple and email me anytime.
::You can do that at flatimprov.com.
::There's a contact button somewhere.
::And I'm still doing that section after the plugs for the weirds out there.
::Hi, weirds.
::If you're not weird, you can leave.
::And I'm just going to say, yeah, I'm still listening to that same song on Solo Loop.
::If you listen to episode 10, you'll know what I'm talking about.
::Send help or send me some maple Oreo cookies, please.
::They're really good.
::Thanks for listening.
