Talking Myself to Sleep

Aaron Clements
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Every evening, I lie down with a microphone and let my thoughts spill out—stories from the day, reflections on life traveling around Australia in a van, random observations, whatever’s on my mind. No script, no editing, no performance. Just me processing my day out loud until I drift off. Some nights it’s five minutes, some nights it’s longer. Sometimes it’s coherent, sometimes it’s chaos. But it’s always unfiltered. If you’re looking for something raw and real to fall asleep to, or just curious what goes on in someone else’s head at the end of the day, you’re welcome here. @_ad8d on TikTok

  1. 12/24/2025

    Reset Day: Activated Almonds and AI Sovereignty

    After the chaos of prison gigs and recording studios, today was a reset day. It's a few days before Christmas, parked in Peppermint Grove (one of Perth's most expensive suburbs), eating the world's most wholesome Woolies shop - activated almonds, spirulina powder, seaweed sheets, and tofu. The kind of shopping cart that makes checkout workers question your sanity. But this episode goes deeper than diet. I finally talk about the thing I've been building: a "Personal Context Layer" - my answer to AI companies eventually locking us into their ecosystems. It's about data sovereignty in an AI world, owning your own context, and being able to switch between AI services without losing everything you've shared with them. I'm basically augmenting myself to be Iron Man, and this might become something bigger. Beyond the tech stuff, I'm thinking about 2026: Thailand for Muay Thai training, another lap of Australia, or something completely different. The only thing I know for sure? No more nine-to-fives. We're done working for other people. Recorded: December 22, 2025

    31 min

  2. 12/23/2025

    Prison, Piano, and Poor Life Choices

    After a month of being AWOL, I'm back - and I've got stories. This week alone I played piano at a prison (surrounded by a merry band of sex offenders), sat in on a professional recording session watching how it all works, and accidentally upset a woman I went on a walk with because she thought my TikTok post was about her. Welcome to my life. The prison gig was something else. I had 48 hours to learn 15 songs I'd never played before, the guitarist didn't know half of them either, and we got handed new sheet music literally as the performance started. Oh, and one of the prisoners got nicknamed "the fluffer" after the assistant superintendent didn't realize what that word actually means. I'm still processing how I ended up in these situations. The studio session got cut short, but I got to watch Carla record and learn how professional recording works - and I'm lined up to record lead vocals for a demo track soon. Beyond the chaos, I'm reflecting on why I've been quiet lately - I've been in "work mode" rather than that reflective, creative headspace. But I think this marks the start of season two. Recorded: December 21, 2025

    46 min

  3. 11/18/2025

    Down the Rabbit Hole on a Swinging Pendulum

    Tell you what, it's good to be back. I've been completely offline for two weeks—and I mean properly offline, like 12-hour days heads-down in my laptop building this AI system I've been thinking about for two years. It's basically my version of JARVIS from Iron Man, starting with a knowledge graph that's consuming all my audio recordings, journals, chat logs, and constructing this interconnected web of my entire van life experience. And it's working. I can ask it "what are the top three things I learned on this journey?" and it just delivers on connecting the dots. But eventually you have to come up for air. I've been in full recluse mode on mum's farm, and now the pendulum is swinging hard the other way because I've got a wedding on Rottnest Island (my best mate Ben is getting married), I'm getting Margot the Mercedes registered, and somehow in the space of two phone calls yesterday I ended up with work from two completely different friends—one wants me to do embedded systems programming for defence consulting, the other wants me to host a live game night event. Because I don't fit in a box, and that's fine. This episode is about embracing the pendulum swing between deep work and showing up for people, the anxiety of returning to your home town as a different version of yourself, practicing conversations in your head that might never happen, and what it means to just follow your intuition even when it makes zero logical sense. Also: I rehearse conversations with myself so much I basically have an entire internal cast, and wedding anxiety when you're the single guy on an island full of couples. Recorded: November 18, 2025

    57 min

  4. 11/11/2025

    Alpacas, AI, and a Dingo Rat: The One Where I Said No to Church

    Well, this isn't exactly talking myself to sleep—I'm out walking a dog that looks like a cross between a dingo and a rat, the sun is shining, and I just came off a weekend where I learned to shear alpacas, built a massive AI-powered second brain, and had a weirdly significant milestone: I told my mom I didn't want to go to church. I know that sounds ridiculous—I'm almost 35 and it shouldn't be a big deal—but sometimes you've got to acknowledge your wins where you find them, right? This episode is about holding your own space when you're back in family territory, the surprising complexity of alpaca behavior (they vomit green gunk when they're upset, by the way), and why I've been heads-down building this AI system that's consuming all my audio recordings, journals, and creating what I'm calling my "pièce de résistance" of AI projects. There's also a conversation about getting voluntold for Saint Colin's alpaca shearing day, the state of the sheep industry in Australia, why my brother's Mercedes Sprinter is better than my van (but I'm not bitter), and what it means to have a software project that's been living in your head for years suddenly click into existence over four intense days. Plus: mom's spectacular inability to press record on her phone at the right moment, naked sheep running around the property, and why I haven't been posting as much on social media. Recorded: November 9, 2025

    25 min

  5. 11/09/2025

    Living the Hermit Dream: Nerding out on AI Projects

    After spending the day in my dressing gown building out my AI transcription pipeline, I'm feeling pretty good about this whole hermit-at-a-laptop lifestyle. I've just processed 35 gigabytes of audio from this year—conversations at chicken farms, numerology talks with energy healers, voice notes to myself I'd completely forgotten about—and watching it all get transcribed has been this weird nostalgic trip down memory lane. But this episode isn't really about the tech (though I do geek out a bit about having this "army of assistants" to remember everything for me). It's more about realizing how little I actually need: somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and whatever mission I'm on that day. I'm thinking about van improvements (filtered water tap, better workspace ergonomics), reflecting on how subscription services bleed your money the same way social obligations bleed your time, and getting real about the anxiety I feel when people expect a piece of me just because I'm back in Perth. Sometimes I just don't tell people I'm in town, and yeah, I feel guilty about it, but I'm learning to protect my time the way I learned to protect my money. Also: I'm apparently the eccentric artist type now, and I'm kind of okay with that. Recorded: November 5, 2025

    16 min

  6. 11/07/2025

    From Capture to Curation: Photography, Philosophy, and Finding Purpose

    This one's a bit different. I'm out in the van at my mom's place, a few days between recordings, and I'm feeling this shift happening. After six months of just capturing everything - photos, video, audio, experiences - I'm finally getting to the curation phase. I spent all day going through my photos in Lightroom for the first time, and actually found 30-40 shots I'm happy with out of about 2,500. Not bad for a beginner who's been learning photography on my own. I dive into this idea I've been chewing on about self-reliance and the pleasure of finding things out for yourself, inspired by Schopenhauer's writings. There's something about learning photography without leaning on my photographer friend Josh this time - just figuring it out myself, making my own mistakes, developing my own style. It's slower, less efficient, but it sticks. I also share about going up on stage at a local pub's open mic night (thanks, Mom), and how that turned into a surprisingly good time with the full band joining in for Johnny Cash and Robbie Williams covers. But the real theme running through this episode is this realization that focusing entirely on myself for these past months has been necessary, but something's missing. I'm feeling this pull back toward contribution, toward doing work that matters for something bigger than just me. I talk about my university thesis building a robot for a kid who couldn't carry his own ventilator, past projects with social impact, and this emerging plan to create a website as a hub for everything I'm working on. It's not the most cohesive episode - I'm tired, rambling a bit, comparing it to brain fog - but that's kind of the point of this podcast anyway. Recorded November 3rd, 2025

    35 min

  7. 11/04/2025

    The Vulnerability Hangover: When Sharing Gets Too Real

    I'm gonna level with you here—the last couple days I've been in a weird headspace. I've been struggling with vulnerability and a bit of overwhelm, which sounds ridiculous to say, but that's the nature of getting stuck in your head, right? It becomes so much bigger than it actually is. Here's what's happening: I posted a video on TikTok about cold approaching a woman at the beach, and for the first time in this whole journey, I edited it. I chopped bits out. I overthought how it would land. And then I made it private again because I got scared. That's such a different headspace from where I've been with pretty much everything else I've posted, where I just turn on the camera and go for it without a second take. This whole experiment—the TikTok, the podcast, all of it—has really been about trying to find a safe space to just be me without putting on a mask. And honestly? If you've listened to all the podcast episodes up until now, you probably know me better than most people who've been in my life to date. That's both terrifying and weirdly comforting. I'm trying to figure out what balance looks like between showing up authentically and not getting so in my head about how it'll be interpreted.

    40 min

  8. 11/02/2025

    "I Lost My Mind and Found My Soul": Random Encounters and Coming Home to Myself

    Today was one of those days that makes you believe in synchronicity. I woke up in Denmark to write my morning pages by the river, and what started as a quiet morning turned into a cascade of meaningful encounters—an ultra-marathon runner turned board game shop owner, a woman who lost her mind on a hike and found her soul (then disappeared like Yoda), and a meadery owner who left me with the perfect parting wisdom. I also announced the podcast today after a week of recording in secret. Nobody knew I was doing this until this morning when I posted on TikTok. It's been this weird experiment of creating in the void while simultaneously journaling privately, recording audio logs, and posting video updates on slightly different timelines. I've basically got no shot at remembering where I'm up to with what. But mostly, this episode is about that shift I'm noticing—how I'm actually comfortable with my own company now. I can sit at the edge of a cliff or alone in the forest and feel genuinely content instead of constantly seeking validation. That's new. That's actually really new. And it's changing everything about how I show up in the world. Also, I'm camped in a national park by a river with no phone service, tucked into my van with a little camp light on, and I've never felt more at home.

    44 min
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About

Every evening, I lie down with a microphone and let my thoughts spill out—stories from the day, reflections on life traveling around Australia in a van, random observations, whatever’s on my mind. No script, no editing, no performance. Just me processing my day out loud until I drift off. Some nights it’s five minutes, some nights it’s longer. Sometimes it’s coherent, sometimes it’s chaos. But it’s always unfiltered. If you’re looking for something raw and real to fall asleep to, or just curious what goes on in someone else’s head at the end of the day, you’re welcome here. @_ad8d on TikTok

Information

  • Creator
    Aaron Clements
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Aaron Clements
  • Show Website
    Talking Myself to Sleep