67 episodes

If you thought the world was supposed to make sense, you were wrong. The covers are pulled back on Bedletter as we dive into what makes us unique, how powerful our minds are, and why it all matters.

bedletter.substack.com

Bedletter Christian Ashliman

    • Society & Culture
    • 5.0 • 4 Ratings

If you thought the world was supposed to make sense, you were wrong. The covers are pulled back on Bedletter as we dive into what makes us unique, how powerful our minds are, and why it all matters.

bedletter.substack.com

    The Ides of December

    The Ides of December

    What are the days of our lives, if not the passing of time into tomorrow? The moments here and now are stolen away and buried under all that will be, cast long like a shadow of the future. That darkened image sketched before me, mirroring back my movements, copying my arm waves and leg shuffles—it grows the darkest in December. Always black as the evening tide in the ides of December. I hate the twelfth month of the year, when everything’s rounded out and times tick down and everyone’s busy as the bees in spring. But it’s winter, it’s hibernation time, ice-time, time to batten down the hatches and cradle in warm, fire-lit living rooms with people we know, filling up on their chuckles like melted marshmallows in a mug of hot cocoa. Always so warm and willing and it’s December, the worst month of the year.
    I shouldn’t be surprised. The calendar rolls out like an ancient scroll every year, the same months following one after another. I shouldn’t be surprised when November ends and December punches the ticket for thirty-one days to come. It always has. It’s the bookend, the capper, the final act of the play, the anticlimactic climax of two-thousand twenty-one just as it was in twenty-twenty, and all the gatherings of days before. I shouldn’t be surprised. But for some reason I always am, always struck by the mood of winter, the emotions of slumber. When dopamine finds itself in hibernation, leagues away from the meat of my mind. I wake up in December like counting to twelve, and am stunned that I made it all this way. All the way up the rungs to twelve, just like I did every other year. Still caught off guard, ignorantly off guard, still wondering why I can’t manage the melting enigma behind my eyes. It’s seasonal. And we’re here in December and I’m always dazed.
    December’s a big pharma commercial. The ones we see on television while we watch “Christmas Special” football—this year it’s my green men, my Packers, versus the Browns. We won. It was too close, an ugly victory. And the commercials reel like fast-jargoned cinema. It’s hard to keep up and the small print is so small the pixels deflate when you step a little closer. It’s so lovely, though. Two grandparents, pacing through a meadow, hand-in-hand. They smile and sheen their pearly whites at each other, a kiss on the cheek, the woman rests her head on the collar bone of the man. It’s a snapshot of days to come, future days. Floating through love and life like the kitschy family room signs plastered up above entryways—live, laugh, love it all. They sure are in this forty-five second ad run. The screen shifts to a family, dancing around the holiday tree, lights blipping and beaming bright and it’s all slow motion and perfect. Their teeth are all so perfect, lined up and whitened up and spotlighting the aftereffects of December. The parts we all live for, the times we all pray, eat, drink, and hope for.
    But December’s big pharma, it still lists its attributes to me and every year I forget what the coked-out auctioneer voice raced through as side effects of ingesting the twelfth month of the year. Short days, a low sun, cold temperatures, and holiday extremes may have secondaries including mellow moods, depression, existential anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, invisibility, and a disconnect from the world around you. You may also consider wrapping your car around the nearest telephone pole once every third car ride downtown, but results may vary. If you are pregnant or at risk of heart failure, please consult Father Time before ingesting the twelfth month of the year. It’s a doozy. Do all the consulting you want, you can’t out run, out hibernate, out navigate the onslaught of December. I still try.
    It’s a month of extremes, a span of double-living. Either lost in the emotional sauce of another year passing you by, or flipped one-eighty and hugging and kissing and sitting with family and telling tales of the last three-hu

    • 7 min
    Because It's Meant To

    Because It's Meant To

    “You ever look outside and just get lost in the seasons?” he said, pacing around the shop. His eyes were glued to the waves of tumbling leaves wafting around on the wind outside. It was their time to die, their time to break off the twigs and branches that once held them tight. Their time to gracefully flip over a few times before resting between the blades of brown and yellow grass.
    I’d seen Gavin in here many times before, but rarely ever talked to him. We usually just exchanged glances, head nods, and when one of us sneezed, the other would bless. This coffee shop was a sort of home-away-from-home for us both. The same could be said for a host of locals that frequented this place. I’d been musing frequent visits into every day occurrences, cementing my time in routine. They had the best coffee, and the best side conversations to spy in on; great commentary on the problems that plague life and plenty of posited solutions. It all happened here, gears churning and wheeling ideas into new blips of caffeine-fueled ambition. The artists, the real estate agents, the business people, the dungeons and dragons folk, musicians—there was a spectrum of brain and brawn that crawled out from the trees of north Georgia and gelled together here. Coffee is coffee and when it’s roasted, they come.
    “The seasons are really somethin’. The way they change, I mean. They’re all so different from each other. It’s honestly really quite wonderful, ya know?” Gavin said. He was still pacing and rubbing his chin, eyes still stapled to the autumn swirl stirring outside the window. I was across the shop, cozied up against a stretch of glazed oak that formed a table, staring out the window and humming the tunes of fall as well. His feet were restless and he paced and gaited around the shop to every corner and was grinding out some thoughts on the changing weather. Most people used the weather to break the ice or talk small, but Gavin had real substance to pick like a bone off the chicken wing. And he was.
    “It’s like, summer is long and hot and steamy, especially down here in the south. But then there’s this transformation into winter that takes several months. And winter is completely different! The humidity is gone and you can see between all the trees and suddenly there are houses and stores that you never could see before,” he exclaimed, massaging his scalp, completely mesmerized.
    “That’s a good point. I’ve always thought it interesting to be able to see between the trees in the winter. Everything out here always feels wild and forested in. Then the leaves fall and the trees grow thin and you can see everything. Like the south’s clothes got ripped off and everyone’s privacy is out and open!” The barista behind the bar replied back, and they were conversating now. Everyone in the shop was tapping away on their keyboards, scribbling in notebooks—doing something else, something we all came here to consume ourselves with. But really, we were just listening.
    “Exactly! It’s so weird. But it’s supposed to be that way,” Gavin went on, bouncing off the barista’s perception of winter. “I think it was all created that way—which is really quite brilliant.” Gavin was halfway across the shop, still wearing tracks in the floor of the coffee house, chiming back to the barista over his shoulder. His eyes were wide and you could see the autumnal reflection in them. It was the little things that warmed up his blood. The little things, little like summer, spring, winter, fall. Seasons—the normal, everyday seasons, the ones we all live through year after year. But they weren’t so little now, they were happening. The world was changing, and it wasn’t miniscule or trivial. It was happening and we all took it for granted. But not Gavin, he was watching and graphing it all out across his mind. The barista was nodding and wiping a mug clean. She placed it up on a rack with fifty other mugs and leaned against th

    • 7 min
    Time Happens Twice a Day

    Time Happens Twice a Day

    The other day I was pouring through YouTube videos, crawling down rabbit holes, refreshing new clips every ten or fifteen minutes. Nothing was connected. It was video game reviews, politics, then a tutorial on French pressing coffee. Music videos for the new country songs I’ve been vibing out to. And boy, have I. Country music—the hidden genre I always thought I hated but am winding up loving. It’s strange, but I’m here for it. Just shrugging my shoulders and crawling down rabbit holes all the time and letting the mud stain me up.
    Along the way, I heard a quote. One of those blurbs that floats in past your ear drums and in a moment you know you won’t forget it, even if the context was utterly pointless. And this context was utterly pointless.
    Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
    I’m a package fanatic. Box up a phrase in the right way and I’m sold and jotting the letters down in my journal and reminiscing on them for too long. Wallowing in them like a pig out on the farm. Even an idiot is right sometimes. Nope, that’s not packaged right enough. That’s a no-brainer, a given, a little life-trope that turns out true every once in a while. But a clock? There it is. And there it went, floating, dubbing out loud across the back of the front of my skull. Just right enough.
    And I suppose a broken clock is right twice a day. Two minutes of every twenty-four hours it gets to chime and cry like the town drunk just how right it really is. I love that—even something as useless as a broken clock can be valued for a slice of the time-pie every light cycle. That feels familiar.
    I’m a broken clock. That must be it. Obsessed with the passing of time and the remembering of it, the jotting of it, the recording of it all, like I’m falling down and down and trying to grab the straws, the rope, the handles, anything that can anchor the world for just a minute. Pause it all and let me breathe. But it doesn’t. It just ticks on, ever on and on, and leaves me behind and I feel it. But it drags me all the same. Kicking and screaming and reeling out, living in the past and the future but always accidently existing in the present. So I’m preoccupied by time. The idea of it, the passage of it, the forming of new times and the graveyard of old ones. Troubled and haunted, walking through it all the same.
    It’s seamless and perfect. Everything the same, like a row of blank dominoes lined up one after another, tipping and tipping with exact cadence. And they do, they always do and there’s not a damn thing you could ever do to pause ‘em, stop ‘em, switch ‘em all up. But even a broken clock can be in the right frame of mind twice every day. And I feel like a broken clock. Most of the moments I burrow in are strange and uncomfortable and seem to be ten minutes off, two hours behind or ahead. And twice a day I catch a weird little glimpse at what real life is like. I smile at it, wink at it, and I’m all right. But just for sixty seconds, and another sixty later on.
    Two hits of exactitude doesn’t always feel like enough. Sometimes when I’m smearing all over the place and neurotic and wrung, I wish I could be right all the time. Wish I could feel in place, in time. But then I’m reminded that I’m three minutes off, and the right digits might sweep by soon, but they’ll disintegrate again and I’ll sit and tap my knees in the sunshine and imagine rain. The leaves will blow down and scatter across the pavement like dust and dog hair in the corner of the living room, and the world will die and remind you it’s dying.
    I’ll weep for it, but those tears won’t be for the crunched and husked-out leaves or rotting bark, nor the trash and litter that blows around. They’ll be for me and my misplaced stake in time. Out of time, on top of it, below it, confused by it, lost in it and away from it. And I sure am. But it ticks on and I keep looking at my shoes and tapping my heels like Dorothy and thinking I’ll get wisp

    • 9 min
    Guest: Rebalance the Body w/ Ashley Bernardi

    Guest: Rebalance the Body w/ Ashley Bernardi

    In this week’s installment of Bedletter, I’m diving back into the discussion I had with Ashley Bernardi! Ashley is the author of the new book, Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel. This is the second half of my interview with her, where we continue peeling apart ways we can get primal with our meltdowns, how Ashley’s FEEL framework can be used to navigate difficult emotions, how she has taken on the task of rebalancing her body after intense trauma, and what she learned from speaking to over 20 experts in her research for this book.
    In Ashley’s new book, set to release on December 7th, 2021, she lays out the process behind her battles with depression, anxiety, addiction, and illness, and details how those very things have helped her grow into the inspired person she is today.
    Subscribe to Bedletter: https://bedletter.substack.com/welcome
    Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cashliman
    Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel: https://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Power-Give-Yourself-Permission/dp/195141232X
    Ashley’s Website: https://ashleybernardi.com/
    Ashley’s Podcast: https://nardimedia.com/podcast/
    Ashley’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookerbernardi/


    Get full access to Bedletter at bedletter.substack.com/subscribe

    • 46 min
    Guest: Give Yourself Permission to Feel w/ Ashley Bernardi

    Guest: Give Yourself Permission to Feel w/ Ashley Bernardi

    This week, I’m joined by Ashley Bernardi! Ashley is the author of the new book, Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel. She’s also the founder of her own media company, Nardi Media, and has previously worked as a veteran news booker with CBS, energyNOW!, and the Washington Post Live—just to name a few.
    Ashley is the survivor of previous trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, as well as Lyme disease. Through her struggles, defeats, successes, and triumphs, she has formulated a perspective on life that is incredibly positive, realistic, and insightful. Not to mention completely contagious, once you get to talking with her! In her new book, set to release on December 7th, 2021, she lays out the process behind her battles with depression, anxiety, addiction, and illness, and details how those very things have helped her grow into the inspired person she is today.
    This is the first part of our conversation, where we talk about the premise of her book, her connections and accomplishments, and how she “gets primal with her meltdowns”. Below are the links to Ashley’s book, as well as links to her podcast and social media if you are interested in connecting with her.
    Subscribe to Bedletter: https://bedletter.substack.com/welcome
    Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cashliman
    Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel: https://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Power-Give-Yourself-Permission/dp/195141232X
    Ashley’s Website: https://ashleybernardi.com/
    Ashley’s Podcast: https://nardimedia.com/podcast/
    Ashley’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookerbernardi/


    Get full access to Bedletter at bedletter.substack.com/subscribe

    • 50 min
    Quit Your Binging

    Quit Your Binging

    I hate binging, and yet that behavior still worms its way into my life at times. My most recent slip came at the hands of Netflix’s new hit, Squid Game. This week I’m yapping about the dangers of binging T.V., why I enjoyed Squid Game so much, and how great South Korean movie and show productions are.
    Along with that, as I round one of the final corners of writing my book, I’ve been editing the early chapters in tandem. As I plan to have the main meat of the book finished by the end of 2021, the editing process has been a roller coaster. Some days I’m left liberated and excited about what I’ve omitted and what I’ve corrected. Other days, those editing decisions are much more difficult and maddening. Overall, the process of writing my book has been incredible—proving to me that I’m capable of big projects with intensely challenging aspects.
    Finally, I’m wrapping up this episode with a yucky little bow—my previous video game addiction. As you may have read in a recent column I wrote, I’ve been dealing with some inclinations to dive back into gaming. With a newfound ability to exercise some self-control, I’m scared of touching one of my bigger weaknesses again. I don’t want to fall into the cycle of binging, and yet, I feel that I should be able to balance my game time appropriately. It’s an ongoing battle. And yes, that is an old picture of me with long hair. No shame, those locks were beautiful.
    Subscribe at bedletter.substack.com Follow Christian on Twitter @cashliman Link to I’m Scared to Play Video Games column: https://bedletter.substack.com/p/im-scared-to-play-video-games


    Get full access to Bedletter at bedletter.substack.com/subscribe

    • 56 min

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