Before today's episode, you're going to hear some advertisements, which help make it possible
for me to do this as my job. But if you want to support me and would rather not hear adverts,
I completely understand. You should try easy stories in English premium. Premium means extra special.
And by joining, you not only get all the episodes without adverts, but also extra special
bonus content, like extra stories and conversational podcasts. Just go to easystoriesinenglish.com,
slash support, suppoart to start your seven day free trial. If you're listening on Apple podcasts,
just click try free at the top of the episode list to join. And now a word from our sponsors.
Welcome to easystoriesinenglish.com. The podcast that will take your English from okay to good
and from good to great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today's episode is a
conversation about normal people problems. You can find a transcript of the episode at easystoriesinenglish.com,
slash problems where you can also download this episode as a PDF. So what are normal people problems?
Well, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, then you'll know that I am a very
normal average run of the male typical person. Yeah, nothing strange about me,
nothing unusual. I talk normally, I act normally, I am just a heterosexual male, I'm married,
I have children, I love watching football. Okay, I can't keep going. Obviously you know that that's
not the truth. I am a bit different, let's say. Now in the past, I used to think of myself as very
weird, but since moving to London, I've been embracing the fact that maybe I'm not so weird.
I'm just interesting. Before I lived in the countryside and there I was weird, I very much stood out
from the crowd. We say I stood out like a sore thumb. I was very obvious and that's quite stressful.
But now I feel like I've really found my tribe. That's an expression when you find your tribe,
you find the group of people that you really connect with where you can be your most authentic
self and express yourself fully. And I say I've found my tribe here in London, but really it's more
like three, four or five tribes. I'm very much involved in the storytelling community in London.
I've got involved with my church. So that's two tribes. There are probably others. I won't go into
all of it, but anyway, before as well as being a bit different and standing out like a sore thumb,
I really was going through a lot of problems, let's say. My 20s were not easy years for me.
I know everyone says, oh, your 20s are for discovering yourself, your 20s are for making mistakes.
And yeah, that was definitely my experience, but at the same time, I feel like my 20s were pretty
unusual by most people's standards. Most people don't change gender twice. Most people don't go from
one extreme to the other quite as much as I did. So a lot of these problems I dealt with were,
you know, quite big problems on a scale. They were quite a high up, you know, things like mental
health, struggling a lot with identity occasionally, having housing problems. Of course, as I'm saying
this, I have to acknowledge the time very lucky that I've never been homeless. I've never had to
move country. So, you know, actually on the grand scale of things, I have been very lucky. But at the same
time, I've always known a lot of people who have struggled with being marginalised, let's say.
So the margins are the edges of something. And we talk about the margins of society, the edges of
society. And people who are pushed towards the margins are marginalised. So often that poor people,
LGBTQ people, immigrants and so on. And I've always known quite a lot of marginalised people, I guess,
that's quite often the kind of people I make friends with. You know, I've had friends who have had
very serious mental health struggles. I've had friends who have been sectioned. So when you're
sectioned, it means you are forced to go into a mental health hospital. So if someone has a really
serious mental health crisis and they are at risk of hurting themselves or hurting other people,
then they can be sectioned and forced to stay in a mental health hospital until they get better.
And I have several friends who have been sectioned. I have friends who have suffered with drug addiction.
And then recovery from addiction. Fortunately, I've not had to go through any of those problems
myself. But when I talk about, you know, big problems, you can probably, oh, sorry, if you are
listening, I just hit my microphone. Silly aerial, stop hitting the microphone. If you're not
watching on YouTube, you're really missing all of my fun facial expressions. And I know you love
that stuff. So anyway, you can probably understand that, you know, these are what I would consider
real problems or back then that's what I considered real problems. And I often saw other people having
what I am calling normal people problems. Yeah. So what are normal people problems? Normal people
problems is things like, oh, I spent too much money when I went out this week and now I can't go
out again. Or, oh, I've started dating someone, but they want to go fast and I want to go slow.
Or, oh, I really wish I could go on a holiday, but I don't have the money right now. Or, oh,
I was going to go on a holiday on that date, but then my sister's getting married so I can't go,
that's so annoying. That kind of stuff. And of course, these are real problems, right? But
back then, they didn't seem quite so real to me because I was going through, I guess,
what felt like deeper crises. But since moving to London in December, God, I keep talking about
that. I just talk nonstop of moving to London. I'm so annoying. My life has got a lot better.
I am thriving now. I have really hit the ground running. That's like when you start doing something
and you just are doing it really well straight away. I've hit the ground running here. I'm having
a fantastic time. And so a lot of my serious problems have now been replaced by normal people
problems. And at first, this was quite disconcerting. This was quite surprising and unexpected. But
I soon came to realise that actually this is lovely because if I'm having normal people problems
and I'm complaining about normal people problems, that means I'm not suffering from
really serious issues, right? And I'd much rather it be that way around. So today, I thought it
might be fun. If I just talk about some of the normal people problems, I've been experiencing.
So problem number one, my upper back has been itchy. When you have an itch, when you are itchy,
you really want to scratch part of your skin. And I think technically, scientifically,
it doesn't actually help to scratch an itch. But of course, you have this feeling of like,
oh, I really want to scratch that itch. And if you can't scratch the itch, it's very annoying.
And for some reason, since I moved, my upper back has been itchy a lot. Now at first, I thought
this was to do with the hardness of the water. So in some parts of the UK, there is very soft water
and in some parts of the UK, particularly London, there's very hard water. So hard water is water
that has more minerals and like tiny, tiny bits of rock in it. Hard water is very good for you.
It has a lot of nutrients, but it's also quite rough on the skin. A lot of people find after
they move to London that they maybe have some skin problems or that their hair gets greasy a lot.
Because London water is very hard. Where I lived before in Devon had very soft water. So I thought
maybe the issue was adapting to the hard water here. But the thing is, I grew up in Bath,
which I think has even harder water than London. There's an actually an ancient volcano in that area
that means that it's a very hard water region. So I thought, it's probably not that. And then I
realised it might be the laundry detergent I'm using. So laundry detergent is the powder or liquid
or capsule that you put in the washing machine with your laundry to clean your clothes. And there
are two types of laundry detergent. There's bio and non bio. And I don't really understand the
difference. I think bio laundry detergent uses more harsh chemicals and non bio detergent is
more gentle and natural. So I was using bio and I switched to non bio. And since I switched,
my back has been a lot less itchy. So yay! Normal person problem number one solved. My second
normal person problem or normal people problem. Now I'm not sure which one to say. Anyway, my problem
was that I was dating someone and they wanted to go slow. And I wasn't used to that. I'm very
used to intense relationships where you dive in right from the very beginning and we're seeing
each other all the time and it's really romantic. And I'm really not used to taking things slowly.
Practically, it's a lot harder in London to go really fast in a relationship because often you
live far away from the person and there are travel times and also people tend to be a lot busier
here. So it was quite an adjustment for me to get used to taking things slowly. But actually,
it's probably a very healthy experience. And I haven't seen that particular person in a while,
but I've sort of been dating other people and I'm trying to keep that mindset, that practice
of going slowly. So that normal person problem was very much a learning experience for me. So I'm
very happy to have had that. In the past, I was always so desperate for a relationship that I would
just dive in and not worry about these things. And I would get very, very emotionally attached
very quickly. So actually, this is a sign that I'm doing really well because I feel confident and
independent enough to take the space and the time that I need. So very happy about that.
On that note, the next two problems are kind of similar. One is that it's hard to see all my friends.
Everyone is too damn busy in this city. Not only that, before I moved to London, I traveled a lot.
I visited London a lot, but I also visited other parts of the UK pretty often and I saw a lot of
friends. But since moving to London, I've left it about once, which was over Christmas. Oh,
and then another time I went to Stratford upon Avan with my friend to see a play. But generally,
when you live in London, there's so much going on. You're so busy. There are so many events you
want to go to. You're already traveling a lot within the city that it becomes psychologically
very hard to leave the city. There are so many friends who I said, oh, after I move, I'll be
nearer to them and I can visit them and have I visited them? No, I very much just stayed in my
London bubble and not left. So that's an issue. There are also friends I have who live in London,
who I haven't seen since I moved. So it's definitely hard to find time. And the next problem,
very closely related to that, is it's hard to find time for me to read, go to the cinema and
go to the theatre, which are all very important things for me. But particularly reading. Last year,
I read around 137 books. And this year to be fair, I've read I think at least 45, but it's still
probably going to be a much smaller reading year for me than last year because I'm just
busy. And of course, you can read on the bus or on the tube, but I find it quite hard to focus
when it's loud and believe me where I live, people are very loud on public transport. People sit on
the bus and they watch football matches. They listen to TikToks out loud, no headphones. They talk
really loudly on the phone or to other people. It's a bit of a nightmare. And even if I put my
headphones on, my noise cancelling headphones on, often I can still hear them very loudly. So it
can be very difficult to focus on my book. And often it's actually nice for me to just sit on the bus
and look out the window and kind of have a bit of a mindful moment. So I often don't want to read
as well. The next problem I kind of mentioned this before is I really want to go on a holiday.
And it's funny, before I moved, I was traveling a lot, but I wasn't really traveling abroad.
I've traveled abroad very little since COVID. And I was kind of okay with that. I was happy to save
money. I didn't feel like I needed that holiday abroad to get a change of air. I just felt okay
with it. But now I don't know if it's being surrounded by advertisements or knowing people who
are going on a holiday. Or it's just that I'm kind of in this bubbling pot of stress in London.
It's a very fast paced hectic city. Everything is loud and bright. And more and more, I've really
been feeling the desire to just go on a holiday somewhere, go sit on a nice beach in Spain or whatever.
And I can't because I don't have the money, which is frustrating. To be fair, I am going to Hamburg
later this year for a family party. I may do an easy stories in English meet-up in Hamburg,
because I know I have quite a lot of listeners in Germany. So look forward to that. But yeah, that's
just a bit of a small frustration. And speaking of small frustrations, my biggest normal person
problem is you can't get good cider in London. So cider is a drink very similar to beer,
but cider is made with apples. Usually you can also make cider with pears or other fruit. But
traditionally cider is made with apples. I come from Bath, which is in Somerset, which is part of
the West country, which is kind of southwest in England. And the West country is the cider
producing region in the UK. So I grew up with access to very good cider, lots of local
ciders. And I took it for granted. I didn't really think much about it. But since moving to London,
I've been drinking more and I love having a nice cider. I don't really like beer so much.
You know, I still want a drink that's got quite a low alcohol percentage, something relaxed,
something just, you know, summary vibes. But in London, it's very hard to get good cider.
They just choose really bad ciders here. Now, when you go to a pub in the UK, there will be
beers and ciders on tap that are fresh and usually better quality. And then they also have ciders
in bottles. And often the cider they have on tap in a London pub is a very basic bland cider.
And then often the bottled ciders are fruit ciders. So not apple, maybe like pear, raspberry,
pineapple cider, which I don't mind. I quite like fruit ciders, although I think some fruit
ciders are not very nice. They're far too sweet. But sometimes I just want a really nice dry
west country cider. I just want a nice, a nice pint of cider to have an old Sunday afternoon.
But alas, it's hard to get here. Now, there are some specialty cider pubs in London,
which I haven't been to and I want to go to. The thing is, no one else around me really cares about
cider the way I do. So it's quite hard to persuade people to go with me. So those are my normal people
problems. And I will say one flip side of the fact that I'm doing so well and that I have these
relatively insignificant problems. You know, I have these very simple problems now is that I still
have friends who are going through the ringer. When you're going through the ringer, you're going
through some really difficult problems. You're going through a difficult life phase. I have a lot
of friends who are still going through the ringer. And it's quite difficult because when I talk to
them, I'm up here all like happy and fun and like living my life. And then they're all the way down
there going through the ringer, suffering, you know, really chewing on the big problems, right?
So in the past, when I was also going through a lot of crises in my life, it was much easier for
me to relate to them, to empathize with them. It was much easier for me to give them advice and
support them. But now it's weird. It's like I'm in a very different position. And I feel like
sometimes if I do give advice, it sounds very kind of preachy. So preaching is when at a religious
service a priest or someone else tells you, this is what you should do. I'm preaching about what
you should do with your life. That's preaching. So when someone is preachy, they're basically telling
you, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Do this, this, this, this is what you need to make
your life better. And if you're in a good place, if you're really thriving, having a great time,
it can be easy to be preachy, right? It's like those people who are really healthy, who exercise
all the time. And they just tell you to, oh, well, if you want to lose weight, just diet and exercise.
It's so easy, right? That's being preachy. And I really don't want to be preachy to my friends.
So I have to be quite careful, I guess, about what I say to them. I heard someone say recently that
they heard somewhere that when you're doing badly, when you are in a low place, when you're depressed,
you actually shouldn't go to your friends who are doing really well for help. You should go to your
friends who are maybe just doing average or who are also in a low place. Because if you go to your
friends who are doing well, you're kind of dragging them down in a way. And being a good friend
means, you know, being considerate of that as well. And I have to admit that kind of surprised me,
like it's a very different way of thinking about friendship and support. But in a way, I kind of
understand it now that I'm in the other position where it can just feel really hard to support someone
when you're doing really well and they're doing terribly. To be fair, I think it partly is just
a practicality thing. If I have a friend who's doing badly, but they live near me, I can go and visit
them, I can cook them food, I can really support them in a very immediate physical way. But if it's a
friend who lives further away and we're messaging online, it's quite different. And I don't feel
like I can really support them or I worry about being preachy. So I think it's also a bit
contextual. Anyway, that's been my normal people problems. I would love to hear what you think
on this topic. Come on over to easystoriesinenglish.com slash problems or find this episode on YouTube
and leave a comment and tell me about your normal people problems. There's a phrase people say
I've got big fish to fry. I've got bigger fish to fry. And the idea is that the big fish that you're
frying, they're the big problems. Let's say someone complains to you about a small problem
and you say, oh, I don't care about that. I've got bigger fish to fry. Right? Like I've got more
serious problems to deal with. But there's a podcast they listen to where the host always says,
no, no, no, no, no. Here we fry the small fish. Here we talk about the very small, insignificant
problems. Here we fry the small fish. So I feel like at the moment I'm very much frying the small
fish. I don't have bigger fish to fry. Or even if I do, I'm frying mostly the small fish.
Okay, this metaphor is going a bit too far. Anyway, I look forward to reading your comments.
Thank you so much for listening, watching, commenting as always. I hope you're also experiencing
normal people problems and not serious problems. I hope you're not going through the ringer. I hope
you can just fry all the yummy little fish and not the big scary ones. And I'll see you soon.
If you enjoyed today's episode and want to be able to read my stories in a physical format,
then good news. I have a book of 10 short stories called, well, easy stories in English. Get it
on Amazon, Applebooks or Google Books, or go to easystoriesinenglish.com slash book to find out all the
places it's available. Thank you for listening and see you soon.
