Crow attacks, car problems and turning 25

This week I give you a little bit more insight into what the show is all about before jumping into a birthday weekend recap. I talk about all of the things that turning 25 has me thinking about as well as detailing a recent crow attack and car breakdown! 

Enjoy xo 

Transcript

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Good morning and welcome to Car Crash Outs. Or welcome back to Car Crash Outs, I should say. Okay, here's the thing. I have tried to sit down and record a little introduction episode more times than I can count. And it is just not happening for me. I don't know why I cannot seem to record a short little clip introducing you to the podcast, telling you what to expect from the show, letting you know a little bit about myself, where the idea for Car Crash Shots came from. None of it. I can't do it. It's impossible. I don't know why. I think it's because I can't be short-winded. Which is really the whole point of this show. Oh. Little siren going by. Um, yeah, which is really the whole point of this show, is that I do not possess the ability to be short-winded. And so, whatever, man, you're gonna get the long version. Although I am really gonna try. I'm gonna try with this little introduction clip. Essentially, that first episode last week was just kind of to give you a taste of what the show is all about without all of the boring like introduction-y stuff up front. I just kind of wanted to like put the show out, you could get an idea for it, and then we could do introductions later. So that's what this is. Essentially, car crash outs is just like your go-to podcast for talking through everything mid-20s. It's gonna be my hyperfixations, relationships, pop culture, health and wellness, mental health struggles, feminism, like all of the thoughts and ideas that plague me on a daily basis, essentially. And yeah, I want it to be like a really comforting space that you can come to when you're walking or working out or driving or just moving through your day in whatever way that looks like for you. I personally consume a lot of podcasts, a lot of podcasts. So yeah, I just want it to be a space where you feel heard and understood and seen, but I also want it to be a space where maybe you're like challenged by new ideas or I can give you a fresh perspective on something. Really, the premise of the show is this is like the conversations that you get into when you're on a long road trip with your favorite artist on aux, your favorite snacks in the center console, and you have like your best friend in the passenger seat, and you have however many hours to solve all of your problems and talk about every thought you've ever had and beat a dead horse. And that's what we're gonna do. So, welcome to Car Crash Outs. My name is Asia. I'm gonna be your host. I'm so excited about the show. I'm so excited for what it's going to become. And I have a little episode for you this week that was recorded a few weeks ago. There's gonna be a few episodes uh in the beginning that have been pre-recorded, and then we're gonna kind of settle into more of a consistent timeline. So enjoy this episode, and welcome to Car Crash Outs. I have a bone to pick with the crows of Vancouver. Okay, I had heard rumors that they could get a little aggressive in the springtime because I'm pretty sure that's when all the baby crows are hatching. The crowlings. What is a baby crow called? I don't know. But the other morning I was walking to my car, not my car actually, we'll get to that, an Evo, because the terrible, terrible car luck continues. I genuinely am cursed. I know that I've like put that out into the universe now that I'm cursed and I don't know that I can take it back and I need to stop speaking it into existence. But like, is it me? Is it me or is it someone putting a curse on me, a hex on me? I don't know. It's just I don't wish this for myself. So, anyways, what I was gonna say is I was walking to an Evo. It was like 6 30 in the morning, and something really large and feathery hits the back of my head, like smacks into the back of my head, and I look up and a crow is flying away, and it dive bombed me. To be clear, what type of threat am I posing to this crow? I don't know. I don't know. I've I'd heard I'd heard that crows can get a little bit aggressive, but I had yet to experience it firsthand. I'm genuinely terrified of crows now, and anytime there's a crow flying overhead, I'm like shielding my head and taking a different route, essentially. So I feel like a new phobia has been born, which is pretty upsetting, I would say. And I also am pretty sure that crows have like really, really good memory. They're actually really smart. So now I feel like this crow definitely is gonna remember me. And if it attacked me once, it's probably gonna do it again. So I can never walk down that street again, which is really sad because it's a beautiful street and I love it, and I need to use that street to get to all of the shops that I go to on a regular basis. So, anyways, if anyone has any tips and tricks for how to deter the crows, they would be super welcomed. They would be super welcomed. Okay, to get into why I was walking to an Evo and not my car, guys, my car broke down again, but more importantly, it broke down and I'm a freaking prescient. Okay, learned that word the other day. It means I can predict the future. Is that a commonly used word? Like, do people is that a common vocab word? I don't know. But I'm a prescient and I literally titled either the last episode or a few episodes back, On the Brink of a Breakdown, parentheses literally. Uh-oh. What happened like three days later? My car broke down. I've never actually had a car fully break down while I'm driving it. Um, which is also the reason that I'm not recording this in the car. So that is why you're actually getting some nice clean audio because I'm not driving around right now because I don't have a car. It's at the shop. It's been at the shop for like a week. I was driving down West 12th in Vancouver. If you're familiar with Vancouver at all, during rush hour, it's like fairly busy. It's four lanes all the way across. It's really not the place you would want to break down, essentially. It's I brought right in front of the hospital, is where my car decided to stop working completely. So I managed to kind of like pull off to the side of the road and put my hazards on. Shocking amount of people were so upset with me. Not maybe not so upset. I might kind of be, I might be like feeling a little bit defensive, but there were a number of people who are like trying to get me to move, or not trying to get me to move, but being like, um, can you please move your car? Well, bitch, I would if I could. Like, what do you think? Please, please take a moment, just take a look at the scene unfolding in front of you and like use your context clues a little bit. Okay, because hmm, car parked halfway on, halfway off busy street, hazards on, girl standing beside car on phone. What could possibly have happened here? Whatever, I'm sorry, what happened to hey, ma'am? Are you okay? Do you need help? What happened to that? What happened to checking in on each other? Because I didn't get a lot of that. One guy literally pulled into this kind of like little loop that I was blocking the exit of, but you could easily exit it from the other side. And he pulled in and he was like, Can you move your car? And I was like, It's broken down. It's clearly broken down. Um, and he he just looks at me and he goes, That's crazy, sir? Like, anyways, I was kind of shocked to be honest with you. So that's currently being sorted out, and it's not an easy fix, and it's not a cheap fix. So car crash outs might be ending as soon as it's begun. Just kidding. Just kidding. If you guys think that's gonna take me out, you've got another thing coming. You have got another thing coming. I will pivot. I will pivot, and um, I will continue onwards. So you can't end this that easily. And someone is trying hard, but it's not gonna happen. Anyways, okay, what else happened? This week, Olivia Rodrigo came out with a new album called You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, and it is such a great album. I'm really excited about it. I feel like this is the first album in a long time where I am seeing a really, really, really positive response like across the board, which is really nice to see because often an album comes out, especially when it's one of the top pop girlies, like especially when it's Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams, Chapel Roan, like all of these girls, I feel like they'll release music and we'll just be met with the harshest criticism. And like, fair enough because people are holding them to really high standards because they are like at the top of their game, at the top of their genre, and that's fair enough. But it's just it is heartwarming to see an album released, put out into the world, and just be loved. So just be really widely loved right off the bat. Because Olivia Rodrigo, her sound is different, to be fair, from the rest of like what is happening with the pop girls right now. It's a little bit more, I would say it's a little more like, it's got a more Avril Levine type sound to it. It's definitely got a little edge. Yeah, so I've been listening to that a lot. Although I will say this thing always happens to me when an artist puts an album out and I love the album off the bat, I feel like it burns out a bit too quick for me. And who knows, maybe this album will have staying power for me. But often if an album is released and I kind of sit down and listen to it all the way through, and I'm like not super immediately obsessed, but maybe there's a couple songs I like, and overall I like the sound of it, but I'm just not like, oh my gosh, right off the bat. That is the type of album that will be a slow burn and will have staying power for me. I don't know what it is. I think it's almost like I can relate it to so many different kinds of like experiences or things. Like I feel like I can find a million different metaphors for this, but it's not a crazy concept. Anything that has staying power and like can go the distance and continue to like spark those feelings in you are usually, when it comes to music at least, are usually the types of albums where maybe right off the bat you're not noticing all of the things that make it such a brilliant album, all of the specific choices, the tones, whatever it is. And it is the type of thing where you really do need to listen to it multiple times in order for it to like soak in and for you to really get the full effect. And I feel like the types of albums where off the bat it's just catchy and vibey and kind of in your face, that's great. And I love that, but it does exhaust itself quicker, in my opinion. But I don't know if that's gonna be the case with You Seem Pretty Sad for Girls So in Love. I hope it won't be. I think that I probably will continue to fall more in love with it every time I listen to it because it's cool, it's different. I love it, I love her. I've also been listening to, I think it's called Fluorescence by Maisie Peters. I love the way that Maisie Peters writes, and I know that she gets some criticism for her vocals, but I don't think she's ever really considered herself like a vocalist. I think she considers herself like a songwriter, first and foremost, which she is a brilliant songwriter. And I love how her songs really do feel like you're just reading a diary entry, but in a very witty, honest way. I just I love the storytelling element that she brings to the table. I think she does it so well, and I think she does it in a way that a lot of artists aren't right now, which is really cool. And, anyways, I'm loving that album. My standouts, okay, my standouts from You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, off the bat, are stupid song, which is obviously everyone's favorite. The video for that too is so fun. I love that video, and I'm not a huge music video person, but I really like that video. And you know what's I realized the other day, the standard that I hold so many music videos to is Hot and Cold by Katy Perry. I'm like, every time I watch a video, I'm like, doesn't do it for me the way hot and cold by Katy Perry does. But Stupid Song is beautiful. I really love that video. Anyways, I I like journal entry songwriting because I feel like that is the way that I write. I was speaking about this the other day where it takes a lot of skill to walk the line between writing in a way that is deeply personal and confessional and detailed and like very true to the artist's specific experience. And then also at the same time makes the listener feel like it could be about their own life. It makes the listener feel like when they listen to it, they can relate, they can interpret it in a way that feels true to them. Like that is a hard line to walk. And I don't think every single artist needs to be walking that line because I like that there's variety. I like that sometimes I listen to an artist and it's like I can't relate to their experience at all, but I am just so captivated by the story that they are telling about themselves. And I think that that's a beautiful thing because you don't need to be able to relate to art to appreciate it, I don't think. And I love that. But then there's also the songwriters of the world, like the Adele's of the world, where she writes in a way that feels like anyone could take a song of hers and relate it to their own experience because it is very vague, but it's so impactful at the same time. So that's incredible, and it's so valuable to have people all across that spectrum. I'm a huge lyric girl. So for me, when I'm listening to music, I'm really, really listening to the lyrics. Sometimes an artist will release a song and I won't even listen to it. I'll just go read the lyrics before I even listen to the song because I want to know what I'm getting myself into and I want to know if it's gonna be my cup of tea. Which I don't know, doing that kind of feels akin to like reading the last page of a book before you read the full book. And it's like, why? You're just ruining the experience for yourself, but I can't help it. I'm curious. Anyways, what I want to talk about today is my 25th birthday weekend, which was so much fun. And I also feel like turning 25 kind of prompts some deeper thoughts about where I'm at in my life and where I thought I'd be and what I've learned and what I hope to learn, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of these things. So I thought I would yap about that a little bit today. I feel like I had the sweetest birthday weekend. It was so lovely. I had a friend in town and then I had my twin sister in town, and we haven't celebrated our birthdays. I think this was the this would have been the third year. So I think the last two we were apart, which is so weird because up until that point we had never, ever, ever not celebrated together. So it was really special. It was just a good old-fashioned girls' weekend, which is so good for the soul, and you forget how good for the soul a girls' weekend is. I felt so celebrated and spoiled, and I felt like there was so much thoughtfulness that went into the weekend. And I just came out of it feeling really, really grateful for those friendships. I think that something I have learned maybe, or maybe it's a skill I'm still developing, is the skill of allowing yourself to feel celebrated and to feel grateful and to feel spoiled and to feel worthy of that celebration. I think that like even the small skill of being able to accept a compliment is so huge because there's also something really special about learning to accept that because we all love spoiling the people we love and celebrating the people we love and making them feel so special. And so when you are able to accept that, it's equally as fulfilling for them. And so I think I was just really trying to like allow myself to feel just grateful for the experience rather than undeserving of it and just lucky at the end of the day. I just feel really, really lucky. It feels weird to be 25. I feel like I was 17 literally two days ago. And for whatever reason, 17 is like the age that I still I mean, I don't feel mentally 17, and thank God for that. But 17 was one of my favorite years, I think, so far. And I always seem to relate back to it. I always, every year on my birthday, I'm like, oh my gosh, okay, now it's been X amount of years since I was 17. Like, for whatever reason, that's where I feel that time started to really, really speed up in like an uncontrollable way. And I'm like, holy, this is scary. But it feels good. I think turning 24 sent me into a little bit of a crisis. It's so funny and it's ridiculous at this age to be feeling so, so aware of time and how much time we have. And it feels like you have no time because for whatever reason, I think in your 20s, it feels like if you don't have it figured out by 30, like you're screwed. And it's also a time where everyone is on such different timelines and such different paths, and everyone is figuring it out, and very few people have it totally figured out and dialed in. And how can you? Like, you know, we've only been existing in this adult world for in the grand scheme of things, a very short amount of time, but it feels like it's interesting. It's kind of this feeling of I don't want to be successful. And I don't know if anyone relates to this, but I have this feeling sometimes of, well, I don't want to be successful if I'm not young and successful. I don't want to have it like 1000% figured out if I'm not young and having it figured out. I don't want to feel confident in myself and feel like have that positive body image if I'm not young and confident, if I'm not young and fill in the blank. Because at the end of the day, I do feel like youth and time, it's that one thing that's it is, it's so valuable and it is fleeting. And having something that's so valuable and being so aware of the fact that you will not have that thing forever is debilitating. But I know that if I don't learn to appreciate where I'm at and to appreciate what I have, even knowing that one day I will not have it. I think that's the biggest thing, honestly. I think the ability to appreciate and be grateful for what you have now, knowing that you will not have it forever, and appreciate it in a non-desperate way, in a way that isn't I I am white knuckles holding on to this thing. Please don't take it away from me before I'm ready. That is such a skill, and I have not developed that skill yet. I am fists clenched holding on to this period of time because I'm like, I just want to press the pause button. I just, I'm like, someone give me a button that I can push that freezes everything, I can figure it out, and then I can unpause it. But I think, I mean, that is it's not an unattainable thing to work on being present with the things that you're grateful for. It's just, it is a work in progress at the end of the day. So turning 25 feels really good. Mentally, I feel like I am growing as a person. I can feel myself in this moment right now, growing as a person and changing. And that feels good because there have been periods of my life where I've just felt like, oh my God, I feel like six months or a year has passed, and I don't really feel like I've grown. I don't really feel like I've pushed myself, I don't feel like I've discovered new things about myself. And that's not the case right now. I really do feel like every week I'm like this new version of myself, which is um kind of difficult. TBH, it's not easy, but it feels right. I do think that knowing that the like constant mental changes, the constant growth, the constant need to achieve more and be better, and um, I just lost my train of thought. What was I saying? Yeah, the constant need to like evolve. I also don't think that will last forever. Maybe it will. I don't, I mean, I I it's not like I want to reach a destination where I'm like, okay, and this is it, and I'm good, and I don't need to continue discovering myself and I don't need to continue growing or changing. But I do think that there will come a time when that will slow down and it won't feel so at the forefront of everything. And I think that that will be a beautiful period of time, but it's not right now, and I'm grateful for that because I like discovering new things about myself. I like figuring out where I can do better, where I need to demand better for myself. I like figuring out what I like and what I don't like and what I'm willing to accept and what I'm not willing to accept and what makes me happy and what doesn't. And it's it's cool to be figuring those things out right now and to know that I have the space to do that. I think up until this point, I spent a lot of time in a fight or flight space, just feeling like uh I don't have like the ability to dive into those things because I'm just trying to like figure out where the next paycheck is coming from and where I'm gonna live in six months from now, and what the f I'm doing with my career and keeping in contact with all of the people I love and dating and blah blah blah blah blah. Like it's just felt so overwhelming, I think. And for the first time in a long time, I'm in this space where I'm able to. kind of dive into figuring out what type of life I want to build for myself. And I do feel like I'm in the process of building that life, which I felt for a long time like I was on the outside looking in. And I was like tapping on the glass and I was like, how do I get in there? Like I'm out here waiting for my life to start essentially. Like, okay, once I do this thing, then I'll feel like I'm I'm in it and I'm making progress and I'm growing and whatever. And I I really do feel like I am in it now. I am taking the steps. Maybe they're small steps, maybe they're slow steps, but I feel like I'm taking them and that feeling is so, so, so nice and irreplaceable. So I'm really excited about that. It's funny too because I don't know if this is where I thought I would be at 25. I don't know if I ever pictured what 25 would look like for myself. Or if I did, it was very much in a like far off fantasy type way. And I don't think I ever had a super clear picture of it. It's funny because in some ways I think if you told Little Asia that this is where she was going to be at 25, she would be like oh my God, that's sick. Like okay you're killing it like hell yeah. And then in some ways I think she would be like um what? Like girl get it together. Like it's so funny how those two things interact. I because I feel both simultaneously I really do like there are some areas of my life where I feel so at peace with the timeline and I feel I I'm like I blinked and I found myself here and I'm grateful that I did. And then in some areas I'm like what are we doing? Truly what are we doing? Like let's lock in a little bit let's let's write some goals down you know like I don't know it's just so funny. I just feel like being in your early 20s being in your mid-20s is feeling every single thing all at once and every single thing that you feel contradicts the next thing. It's just a complete mind f but I kind of love it. I love it. I love not having to have everything figured out but still be in the process of actively figuring things out. It's a cool place to be I don't think I know it won't last forever. I'm grateful for it. Yeah. And I think that there's things that I've overcome that I didn't think I ever would. I have always been a very anxious girl. I was a very anxious kid. I definitely want to dive more into that in like a whole separate episode because there's so much I could say on that. But I think there was a period of time in my late teens where I really felt like the way I woke up feeling every morning and the way that I got through my days, which was not easy and not fun and was kind of like a constant struggle I felt like that was it forever and I thought I think I saw I I hoped that it wouldn't be and I hoped that there was a world in which I could dig myself out of that hole. And I did see that like far off tiny little light at the end of the tunnel but I had no concept of when I would get there. And it's so cool to be able to look back and be like oh my God I am there. And do I still deal with those things here and there? Absolutely like everyone does but it's not all consuming and it's just crazy to be in a place that you feel like you might never make it out of and then to make it out of that place and look back and be like holy shit I did that. And sometimes I I don't even view it as like oh I did that I got myself out of there. It's just like thank God that the time has passed you know I think time was was huge. I just I needed time and what was I even saying what was I saying I think I was just saying that it's really cool to look back at the things I've overcome that I maybe couldn't see how I was going to overcome them. And then it's also really interesting to take a look at the things that I currently struggle with that maybe I didn't expect I would at this point. I think the shift in the way I process things over the last two years has been jarring. And that is also something that I want to talk about in much more depth probably in another episode but because I was very much in that survival state and not in all ways I mean in like more of a mental way more of a like graduating high school moving out for the first time being on your own living in a new city just really being in the thick of that so in that way in survival mode but I think not being in that headspace it's been eye-opening because it has allowed me to take a look at myself and it's allowed me to connect with certain parts of myself that I was really really disconnected with especially in terms of processing more emotional things. I think I was like really cut off from this kind of like more emotional sensitive side of myself and I love that over the past two years I have kind of found that again and I'm also I'm like holy shit like okay get a grip. But I think I used to feel like damn I know I could feel things maybe on a deeper level I I know that I have an emotional depth to me that I'm not touching the bottom of and I feel like now I am slowly able to kind of access that deeper emotional part of myself which is cool but it's also like something that I think a lot of people maybe figure out at a younger age. I feel like I slightly have done things in reverse where all throughout high school all throughout my teen years I was pretty like what was the word I was described as very pragmatic. I was pretty like level headed and just practical. It took a lot to get any type of like emotional rise out of me. But that's because I I think that I was just detached maybe a little bit and now it's very much the opposite and I like that I do like that but it's also it comes with its own set of like challenges. It comes with a lot of I think work that I have to do emotionally and mentally because sometimes I do feel like because I was detached from that kind of like side of myself where usually you know teens are a little bit like all over the place emotionally and God bless like that is the season that they're in. But I was never in that season. I was just like trucking along and I think I'm in that season now. So anyways it's really interesting to be where I am now I'm really grateful for it. I feel like I have so much to figure out still but I'm excited about that. And I saw this thing and it talked about how if your entire life was a 24 hour was on a 24 hour clock then and say you live to 85 then 25 years old would be seven in the morning. So you know at this point you're just drinking your coffee and figuring out what the fuck you're gonna do with your day. And that is what I'm doing. Metaphorically and literally that is what I'm doing. So that is kind of a comforting thought and if you are feeling like I don't know what the fuck I'm doing or maybe you've turned 24 25 26 27 and you're like oh my God time just keeps moving at the speed of light and I need to figure everything out and whatever it's like 7 or 8 a.m babe it's okay just make a to-do list and have a cup of coffee and meet a friend and you're gonna figure it out. I also think I just think this birthday weekend and turning 25 and whatever I'm just like really a huge I think overarching lesson and something that I'm taking with me into like this new year, this new age is just the power of friendship and the power of having people in your corner who show up for you and celebrate you and care deeply about you and express that because it's just so special and I'm so grateful for that and I hope to like continue to find connections that imitate connections I already have um but obviously in new and unique ways. Because I really do think that those friendships specifically right now and that like connection those connections right now and the ability to confide in each other and talk about where you're at and relate to like this weird period of time where no one knows what the f is going on is so important because we're all experiencing the same thing. When I speak to my friends about this everyone is feeling the exact same way no one knows what they're doing. It's okay we're figuring it out it's all good and it's so exciting to go into a new year feeling so positively I feel like a lucky girl. It was a really great 25th birthday weekend and I'm excited for 25. So that's kind of all I wanted to chat about today. Hopefully next week we'll be back to the original location I miss my little Ford and I hope she's gonna be okay. But for now enjoy this nice clean audio recorded from the comfort of my apartment. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week. Bye