#Adulting

Join us for a mini episode as we bring you some words of wisdom including cosplay positive affirmations. Affirmations in written form can be found on our instagrams.

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Produced by LVC Productions. You can find us on facebook, instragram, twitter, and vero at La Vie Cosplay. Our podcast instagram is podcastscs. Our website is laviecosplay.com. Have a fun, crazy con or cosplay related story? Absurd cosplay question? Or just something in general to share with us? Email us at podcastscs@gmail.com or DM us at podcastscs. If you like what you heard please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and remember; just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. 

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https://www.instagram.com/laviecosplay/
https://www.tiktok.com/@laviecosplay
https://linktr.ee/podcastscs for additional listening platforms

Transcript

Ashlyn LaVie  0:15  
Hey guys, welcome back. I'm Ashlyn

Elle LaVie  0:18  
I'm Elle

Ashlyn LaVie  0:19  
We are La Vie Cosplay 

Elle LaVie  0:21  
And this is Sh*t Cosplayers Say #adulting edition 

Ashlyn LaVie  0:27  
Adulting? 

Elle LaVie  0:29  
Although we did just recently do an entire episode on adulting, we are going to talk a little bit more about adulting today. 

Ashlyn LaVie  0:37  
This is the official #adulting edition.

Elle LaVie  0:41  
Yes, this is the official more applicable to everyone's everyday life version of adulting. 

Ashlyn LaVie  0:49  
Well, that sounds like no fun. 

Elle LaVie  0:51  
Sometimes even in cosplay, things aren't necessarily fun, but are necessary. 

Ashlyn LaVie  0:59  
Boo. 

Elle LaVie  0:59  
Boo. So I'm sure that everyone has had a lot of adulting changes with all our loveliness due to COVID-19. 

Ashlyn LaVie  1:13  
Oh, yeah, lots of adulting changes around here. 

Elle LaVie  1:16  
So we wanted to talk a little bit today about being okay with making those changes. Because I know a lot of us thought that most of this would be very temporary. And here we are, what, six 

Ashlyn LaVie  1:29  
Months. 

Elle LaVie  1:30  
or seven months.

Ashlyn LaVie  1:31  
Months. Well, depending on where in the world you live, I mean.

Elle LaVie  1:34  
It's true for the US. If we say we started in March, we're going on six to seven months now 

Ashlyn LaVie  1:43  
Yep. 

Elle LaVie  1:43  
of dealing with COVID with no end in sight, basically. 

Ashlyn LaVie  1:47  
Yep. 

Elle LaVie  1:47  
And yeah, that has made a lot of changes in the cosplay community in general. 

Ashlyn LaVie  1:54  
Well, and I've noticed that a lot of people are like, Well, my con's cancel, but that just gives me more time to work on everything. And then they feel bad when they don't. 

Elle LaVie  2:02  
That's very much an American thing in general. So for our non American listeners, we have a problem with downtime. 

Ashlyn LaVie  2:09  
Yeah. 

Elle LaVie  2:10  
We are kind of taught in our society that if you have time, you need to fill it and you need to fill it with something that is considered productive, or you are a failure, essentially. 

Ashlyn LaVie  2:23  
I would say that's a good summary. And I don't know why as Americans, we're like that other than the fact that it's kind of ingrained in us from like birth. 

Elle LaVie  2:32  
It has a lot to do with that, like pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make something of yourself kind of like rhetoric that we have in our society. 

Ashlyn LaVie  2:42  
Yeah. 

Elle LaVie  2:43  
And we are very much if you are not working hard, and you are not making money specifically, then you're not succeeding, we base a lot of our value on whether or not you're making tangible progress that others notice, or that makes you money. And so you feel like I have all this time, and I should be making these costumes. And I should be doing these awesome things on my Instagram and my TikTok or I should be working on making my cosplay a business. But you're exhausted because we are still in the middle of a medical and societal crisis. 

Ashlyn LaVie  3:23  
Collective trauma. 

Elle LaVie  3:24  
Collective trauma, which we talked about in a past episode, where there has been this consistent, unpredictable stressor that is affecting a large portion of the community that has continued to occur. So we are all in somewhat of a heightened state of alertness, because we don't know what's going to happen next, which makes you get exhausted faster and makes it really hard to like, plan out and pattern and entire costume or feel like you want to spend a bunch of time on a costume. 

Ashlyn LaVie  4:01  
Well and the other thing that a lot of people have had problems with, especially early on in this crisis in our country, is a lot of people were not in essential jobs, or they had to take a break to take care of family or friends. So a lot of people were either unemployed or underemployed, or super stressed because they're worried about getting sick because they were forced to go to work because they are essential employees, which adds a lot of guilt to doing something that is more so seen as a luxury. So you're like, should I really be spending my time working on costumes? Should I really be spending my money on cosplay right now? Because what if I get COVID tomorrow, and I'm off of work for months because they put me on a respirator? I mean, that unknown factor with this crisis that we've all been dealing with, definitely hasn't helped people's mental states. So even if they can financially afford it and they do physically have time there's an extra mental barrier to actually getting anything done. 

Elle LaVie  5:07  
Well, and then you flip-side that and you have someone like me who worked from home for a large portion of this, who technically had more time than I had when I physically went in, but I could not find the energy to make cosplay. I just like the mental energy- I could not find it. 

Ashlyn LaVie  5:31  
Absolutely. 

Elle LaVie  5:32  
Because I was trying to navigate this very unpredictable form of providing treatment for my clients. 

Ashlyn LaVie  5:39  
Right. 

Elle LaVie  5:39  
And even if I wasn't technically working heavily with clients, as many hours as I had been when I was physically at my position, I was far more exhausted than I ever had been before. 

Ashlyn LaVie  5:55  
Oh, definitely. 

Elle LaVie  5:57  
And I didn't have the mental strength for like, I don't have the mental strength half the time for patterning anyway. And then you want me to pattern when like my brain is fried from trying to do like tele-health services. Yeah, no, Iike, it just didn't happen. And I'm still struggling trying to get that motivation back to start mathing. Because I don't want to do math. 

Ashlyn LaVie  6:20  
I can relate to that. Even though my actual job technically was paused when this whole thing started, I was assigned for a few months to our COVID Task Force and just having to deal with that, and how your decisions affect everyone else around you, which I'm sure you felt with your clients too, as far as helping them cope with what was going on and adjust to their new e learning situation. It's just mentally and emotionally draining. 

Elle LaVie  6:51  
Unfortunately for me with cosplay, my least favorite part is patterning. It is my absolute least favorite part. And it's unfortunately the first part. So I haven't gotten anything done. Because I already hate the first part of making a cosplay. And now my brain is fried. And I mean, I'm trying, I was trying to reorganize my sewing room. So I have room to actually pattern Hinoto because giant circle skirt, I need space. But then I have to do math. And my brain just is like, I too tired for math, because right now my brain is running like crazy, because I'm actually returning in person to my position soon. And so that's going to bring a whole new level of chaos with it. As we go into this unknown of me going back in person with all my clients instead. So exciting. 

Ashlyn LaVie  7:47  
But we thought, especially because we know that we are not the only ones that have had struggles with productivity during this crisis. We hear from a lot of our friends, pretty much every day, I see somebody posting about it. And that's okay. We just wanted to let you guys know that that's fine. It's okay, if you need to pause. It's okay, if you need to take a break. And it's okay, if you need to change your plans. 

Elle LaVie  8:13  
Yes, your worth is not measured by your productivity, which is important to remember, that is very much an American thing. Right now, with everything that's going on, it's a good time to find a way to become okay with changing plans, being okay with those cosplays not getting done and kind of finding a way to accept that these changes have to happen. And I'm not going to say it's easy because I have been struggling with that like crazy. 

Ashlyn LaVie  8:45  
And it's okay to be disappointed. That's a totally valid emotion. You really, really were hoping and expecting something to work out a very specific way. And it didn't and that's okay. And it's okay to be disappointed that we're in the situation that we're in right now. And that things didn't work out the way that you wanted them to. That's totally normal. 

Elle LaVie  9:05  
Yeah, I mean, we're kind of unfortunately, in this hobby starting to get used to some disappointment, since pretty much all the cons are canceled for the foreseeable future at this point. But again, that's, well, I guess it's time to change your plans. So maybe you change to doing something that you didn't expect to do. Like I randomly did a distance photo shoot the other weekend, literally, like a week notice had nothing appropriate for it had to go pull out Rikku and like, re-fix a bunch of stuff on her because she's like five years old, but I was like, You know what, I'm gonna jump on it. I'm gonna change my plan for what I was gonna do. Because I feel like I need this right now. We're gonna take this change. And it was a good time it was that like little tiny taste of con that I needed in my life. And I got to distantly see a couple of my friends. And the photographers did a really good job at like shooting us from like six feet or more away. And it was like that little bit that I needed. And had I been really stuck on like, well, I only want to shoot this cos-, because like, I really need photos a Beryl, had I been very much like, Oh, well, I only want to shoot Beryl. And I only want, you know, a regular photo shoot. And I only want this. And I'm very, very stuck on what I would have wanted originally, I would have missed out on this opportunity, because I wasn't willing to change my mind. And so sometimes making those changes, you can end up with some nice surprises as well. Which brings us to a change that we're going to make for our sanities. 

Ashlyn LaVie  10:52  
Dun dun dun

Elle LaVie  10:52  
Because we have a lot of adulting to do, particularly me who does a lot of our editing is having a really hard time keeping up with the responsibilities of this podcast. So we are going to start bringing you minis every other week for the foreseeable future. I don't know when that's going to end, it may be a thing that we keep for quite a while, we're just gonna have to kind of see until some of our stuff chills out a little bit. But this seemed like that happy medium for us, we would like to be able to continue to bring you quality instead of quantity, as we've talked about in the group episode. 

Ashlyn LaVie  11:35  
Weird. 

Elle LaVie  11:36  
We don't want to feel like we're rushing through episodes to churn them out every week, what we want to make sure is we continue to bring you quality. And if we're both feeling stressed, and pressured, it's going to be really hard for us to turn quality out for you. And by doing this in sort of an every other week pattern, we're also going to be able to do some of these more research heavy episodes that we've really wanted to bring to you guys that we've been shelving because of the every week schedule. 

Ashlyn LaVie  12:07  
And on the plus side, we have had some topics and some questions. And just random snippets of conversation that have come up, that are just kind of fun to talk about. And we thought would be good to be included somewhere but weren't necessarily substance enough to fill an entire normal length episode that we do so now we get to talk about some of that stuff, too, and still bring it to you. 

Elle LaVie  12:32  
So our hope for the minis is they will either be like words of wisdom, kind of like today, or just some funny, ridiculous things that happened. 

Ashlyn LaVie  12:42  
Sometimes they'll just be pure shenanigans because you need that in your life every once in a while. 

Elle LaVie  12:47  
So hopefully, they'll be still fun and still a good time. But what they will allow us to do is to keep up with the quality without stressing ourselves out. Because just because you can doesn't mean you should. 

Ashlyn LaVie  12:58  
Doesn't mean you should. 

Elle LaVie  13:00  
Like we can put a full length episode out every week, should we right now? That's debatable. 

Ashlyn LaVie  13:09  
Subject to change at any time, of course. 

Elle LaVie  13:11  
Yeah. So if we find that things are chilling out, and we feel like we're ready to start putting full length out again, then we might switch back to the old format. But we're just gonna kind of keep this for now. And hopefully that'll help us get through this time period. And it was hard for me, I didn't want to have to make the switch. I was struggling with it. Because I feel like I'm not being productive enough on our podcast if I'm not making sure that an episode is getting out every week. But you need to do what's best for you first, because if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't produce quality content for other people. And it's how it rolls. 

Ashlyn LaVie  13:51  
Weird. 

Elle LaVie  13:52  
So we wanted to leave you guys with some positive affirmations. So a positive affirmation is an I statement that is basically a positive statement about yourself. So these are used a lot in mental health to help curb some of that negative thinking. And I know there's a lot of negative thinking around cosplay right now. So I wrote some positive affirmations in relationship to cosplay. So we're gonna say these and we want you to repeat after us so we will leave you a space so that you can repeat after us. My worth is not measured by my productivity.

Ashlyn LaVie  14:40  
My worth is not measured by likes and views. 

Elle LaVie  14:48  
I am worthy of love and respect.

Ashlyn LaVie  14:57  
It is okay for me to take a break

Elle LaVie  15:05  
I can change and adapt to suit me best.

Ashlyn LaVie  15:15  
I will choose to learn from my mistakes instead of letting them own me.

Elle LaVie  15:28  
My cosplay will get done when it gets done when I am ready to finish it.

Ashlyn LaVie  15:44  
So thanks for taking part of that little exercise with us. We're gonna go ahead and leave you on that note. Just remember that because you're having to change and adapt does not make you a failure. It just means that you're growing and evolving like a butterfly. 

Elle LaVie  16:00  
A beautiful butterfly. 

Ashlyn LaVie  16:02  
So again, I'm Ashlyn. 

Elle LaVie  16:04  
I'm Elle. 

Ashlyn LaVie  16:05  
We are La Vie Cosplay 

Elle LaVie  16:06  
And this is Sh*t Cosplayers Say.